#TT @ LA NM, DVM

Acronyms confuse me to no end.  I’ll be sitting there in the backyard, minding my own business like the good dog that I am, while my parents are eating at the dog table discussing their day at work.  And to be quite frank, it sounds like a foreign language with all the SPMs, HPLC’s, EP, etc.   I guess it really is another language distinct from what Zoe and I use to discuss among ourselves – often at a frequency our parents can’t even hear – but we have gotten pretty good at English…but this gibberish doesn’t even qualify as a dignified language.  Total aside but this is one of my favorite quotes from the Simpsons:  Homer: “Why cant you support my gibberish?  I’d do it if you were stupid.”

But, despite my dislike of acronyms as a form of communication, I couldn’t help but use them in the title of this blog since it made me laugh…unlike the actual event I am going to relate now.

As you may remember, I lost a toe nail in the first 15 minutes (ish) of our drive to Los Alamos New Mexico (LA NM).

So when we arrived at my mothers home town in the mountains, our first stop (after a night at the local Holiday Inn Express (HIE)), was at the vet shop that was open in town and had an appointment that weekend day.   Since Zoe had arrived in our pack, we have spent a lot of time at vet offices.  Some of these visits were for our routine yearly preventive maintenance (PM) check ups.  Dad says at work they have PM’s on their instrumentation and it usually results in the “fixed” equipment not working for the next week or so.  Luckily, our PM’s are usually pretty innocuous – a few probes of joints, some listening to body parts, a couple of shots, and maybe a blood draw.  In fact, a week or so before we left for NM we went back to our vets and since I hadn’t been myself lately, they requested a urine test, poop test (fecal inspection), and one more blood test to make sure things hadn’t gone haywire over the past few weeks.  As soon as the hypodermic needle entered my vein Zoe let out a screech.  Mind you I was “silent” – at least to the people in the room – but Zoe knew things weren’t right instantly.  The vet jumped and said “I think that was a sympathy screech!”

Back to LA and my nail.  On this occasion, the four of us in our immediate pack hustled off to the doctors office and were almost immediately ushered into one of the exam rooms where Zoe and I could not help but become quite agitated by our new surroundings and smells:

Finally the actual doctor (DVM) arrived with a vet tech.  She was a bit odd at first – immediately asking who had been skunked (it is coming to a blog near you soon, folks… be patient…) and constantly washing her hands and rubbing disinfectant gel up and down her arms.  Then she started talking about ringworm which did not sound like a good thing too me at all.  So I decided to give her a pass on the whole weirdness with the cleanliness thing.

She asked my parents once again what my issue was and they responded that I lost a nail – which was technically accurate but missed the big picture of what I have issues with.  To be fair, they did mention I had nail sensitivity.  But really, who can understand?  She said she would shave my toe hairs so that she could determine if the there were shards or sharp edges associated with the break.  So the vet tech picked me up and set me on the operation table in the room.  Zoe had not moved at all – still in repose on the cool tile floor.  Dad came over and held my face doing that stupid kissy face thing.  The vet tech lay on me.  The vet gently picked up my paw and started to investigate the damaged toe.  (“Gently” was a word the scribe inserted as my reaction was less than calm and would not evoke the term gentle…just saying).  At my voracious vocalization (#TT), Zoe stood up and looked at my parents and the vet to see if she should intervene.   She gave a sympathetic bark bark bark!!!!, but when Mom said “really?  Is that necessary?” she just lay down again and paid no attention to me – unlike the vein poke!

Then the vet continued to paw around with my paws.  This time I left no doubt I was unhappy with the whole nail touching experience.  And what did I get?  Nada.  The vet tech leaned in on me more (he was a big dude!!), Dad clamped down on my muzzle and Zoe slept.  Yep.  SLEPT!!!  While my very hurt nail was being tampered with and if you heard me you would know I was getting murdered in the most gruesome way possible!  Then the biggest insult of all came from the vet (DVM) herself when she claimed: “I’m no where near her hurt toe!  Honestly!  I started with the other paw, based on your warning.”   WTF?  All my toes are sacred to me.  And as I may have mentioned, despite my exposed quick and occasional bleeding, I made not one whimper about my condition.  That is until they brought me to this god forsaken place!  In response to my protestation they did not leave me alone – which I clearly requested in Zoe’s and my language – but rather they flipped me on my side and the vet tech (did I mention he was not a small guy?) laid over my torso and Dad further restrained my mouth and cooed even louder.  But these feeble attempts at constraining me were for not.  Eventually, after looking at my toe with her dentist-like magnifying glasses (of which I have read about but never have seen) she determined I’d be fine and that further shaving or manipulation would not work with “this one” (meaning me).

So they gave my parents some drugs in case my toe got infected – with a “good luck to you with that one, people” – and then allowed us to leave without any further torture.  In closure, although my toe did bleed a couple more times on our trip, I did not get any infection nor did I have any lasting XXXX from this injury.  Although my nails are still long and on occasion will catch my parents in a painful way, no further efforts have been made to trim them – aside from long walks on pavement.

And the winner is….

Tempi Trouble (#TT)

Backyard Bash

First off, I can’t believe it was a week ago already that this event happened.  Secondly, it was most memorable for me since I was actually invited to this soiree (first time a dog ever was)….unfortunately so was Zoe.

As it turns out, my parents have an annual(ish) get together in their backyard for their coworkers and neighbors.  This year, the party was called a “backyard bash” but the subtext to the invite was something about puppy destruction of the yard.  No idea where such a reference would come from as Zoe and I (The Tempest), are absolute darlings – which will become evident in a moment.

But before I begin the full-on story of the evening I have to say that this was the most people I have ever seen in one place in my entire life.  Well, except the time I visited the Big House in Ann Arbor.

Or maybe the time that our car told us to take a detour on our way to Michigan which included a pass through the heart of Chicago.   Sammy and I were originally minding our own business as it related to bones that needed chewing, but then we were on the top of our game as soon as we got off the freeway – barking at the first person we saw walking sedately down the sidewalk.  Then we may have succumbed a bit to the over-stimuli of tens/hundreds/thousands of people walking astride our car as we neared the city center.

Irrespective these asides, on the night of the party, it was by FAR the most people we had ever seen in OUR yard.

And as such, we are back to the present…or at least the not so distant past.  More precisely, last Friday in our backyard. And as I have already said, our neighbors and my parents co-workers appeared in what seemed like droves.  But even before them, the FOOD came – thanks to the great people our good friend Diane hooked us up with.  This is an important point, as it will come up again in a paragraph or two.

Anyhow, after the food arrived and the people started accumulating in our yard (which thanks to Mom was largely a poop-free zone), Zoe and I put on out best hostess outfits (leashes) and welcomed all new comers with the proper respect and decorum that was appropriate to the situation.   In other words, we lay on the ground and pouted that we were not free to roam and eat the baked salami.  This attitude played in our favor in two ways.  The first, many of the party attendees accused our parents of providing us with illicit drugs…OK, not really true “drugs” but sedatives to make us act less active. And here is the interesting twist: many of the people are readers of this particular blog that Montana started and I assumed authorship over after she was accepted into graduate school – without having to suffer through the rigmarole of general studies (she was one smart puppy).  In short, upon seeing Zoe and I in our “company has arrived” attitude, people started to question the veracity of our previous posts in which we are depicted (by the scribe) as mega-imps.  BA-HAHAHAHA (dad taught us the evil scientist laugh).  The second bonus?  There were a number of kids and we received lots of love from my peeps as well as some new friends.

So, in summary, we were perfect angels throughout the evening

1. letting kids pet us,
2. staying quiet – mostly
3. not interrupting anyone’s meal (except maybe drooling a bit as the kids around us ate – Zoe totally performing the extreme party foul by letting drool escape both sides of her mouth at one point).
4. sharing our chocolate chip cookies – which we are very keen on but have never tasted as apparently they are “toxic” to dogs (aside: I think this is an invention by the scribe so that he can eat them all himself).

Then as fate would have it, the skies opened up, and the rain fell.  Thus causing the guests to mostly scurry for their cars as our house is not really big enough to accommodate all the people that were invited.  This led, I am afraid to say, to an early ending to the nights festivities.  However, since many of the neighbors – who did not have rides to “jump into”- stayed around, we had some more fun times!  And this is where things really became interesting.  First off, since the gates were now closed and our parents had complete control of us (not), we were allowed off leash.   Even with this new freedom, we behaved admirably.

That is, until one guest left forgetting to shut the front door after them.  This opportunity, which I have coached Zoe to be prepared for since the moment she arrived, was enough for her to bolt out the front door, barely avoiding the outstretched, grasping fingers of the aforementioned scribe (aka Dad).  The girl, bless her heart, ran back and forth across the street and engaged all the neighbors who were still at the party in a massive (hu)man hunt for the fugitive.  It is hard to find a black dog in a black night, so Zoe had to engage in quite the antics, getting close enough so the people could see her and then zooming off.  In the meantime, I was trapped inside the house (with all the food) so that I too would not be “lost.”  Zoe gets a solid A for her effort.  And by that I mean that she got everyone distracted without any injury to herself.   In the meantime, I took advantage of everyone’s focus on the escapee and helped myself to the remains of the baked salami (YUM!!!!).  But my efforts were not discovered until much later since I joined in the rescue operation to return Zoe to safety.  Upon my suggestion, Mom got into the car – me riding shotgun – and pulled out of the driveway.  Hearing this, the electric car being so loud, Zoe came running over.  After Mom opened the door and said “Zoe; your car is here!”, Zoe jumped in beside me – much like Sammy had done in the past.  Mom then put the car into reverse and moseyed back up the driveway.  For some reason this satisfied Zoe – most likely because she didn’t smell the baked salami (YUM) on my breath…yet.

The Tempest

Trash Day

This tradition of taking the garbage cans from the backyard out to the curb happens weekly.  As it turns out, where we live trash day is Tuesday morning so the cans go out on Monday.  This seems apropos as many people hate Mondays and think they should be tossed out with the trash.  I believe that this comes from the fact that a lot of people – my parents among them – (mostly) don’t work on Saturday and Sunday and then have to return on the day in question.   I for one understand this dislike…to a point.  True, I don’t get free reign of the backyard, nor do I get to play with Mom and Dad as much.  However, the current rule is that on “workdays” Zoe has to stay in her crate except when our friend from Paws stops by to take us for a walk and then again when my parents return home.  In other words, I get the run of the house, which includes defending our turf from such intruders as the postal delivery folks – or any delivery types for that matter – and chastising any dogs who dare walk in front of our house.  Sure Zoe chimes in with her own high pitched chatter on these occasions, but I am the only one who is able to get right up in the window.  So, in short, my feeling about Monday’s?  Eh.

But the whole thing about taking things we no longer have a use for out to the curb got me thinking…

Obviously, since Zoe was the one making the film, the story had a different ending than I had envisioned (I did manage to slip in a hint of a possible sequel though while she was off barking at something in the front yard thinking her video was uploading onto Youtube 😉 ).  I must say though, that it proved to be much more difficult getting her into the trash can than I had anticipated.  My parents make it look so simple when they toss in the bag from the kitchen.

The Tempest

P.S.  I guess my point is, despite the PS in my last blog, I still miss Parker.

 

Toe Nail Tempi

First BIG road trip with Zoe occurred a week ago or so.  Sure we took a weekend trip to Ann Arbor but that doesn’t even require a hotel stay.  Although Zoe did do some unusual  and unkindly things that trip, those are stories for a later date (spoiler alert: a furry black and white creature with potent anal glads may be a character in that saga).

Today’s story, though, is about our drive to New Mexico to visit my mother’s parents – in Danish that would be mor-mor and mor-far but we prefer calling them Grandmother and Grandfather.  And we love them no matter the name.  We can tell when we are in store for a road trip – well I can tell and I let Zoe know.  First off, there are a lot of trips by our parents in and out of the house.  Many – nay, most – excursions they are burdened with certain items that belong to us pups.  For instance: Zoe’s crate, our big barker beds, treats, dog food, piles and piles of bones, kongs, our regular favorite toys and brand new toys (something about hotel room etiquette), etc.  The more of these items that leave the house, I have determined, significantly correlate to the duration of our adventure/drive.  So, when cases of wet dog food (I was still on my hunger strike) got loaded in the car I was pretty sure the mountains of NM were in our future.   Good Times Ahead dear Zoe-bird!

But before I go on, let me remind you what happened on my first trip with Sammy to NM.  At one point during the first leg of our trip – Sammy and I were of course being perfect angels – our mother turned around to pet the old guy.  While petting him, Sammy smiled his previously perfect, heart warming grin, and in doing so, revealed the absence of one of his lower canines…well, not total absence but definitely not the full set of teeth that he left with.   He was totally nonplussed by the missing top of his tooth – no caterwauling,  no whimpering, in short, no signs that anything was amiss.  In this instance and future tooth shortening incidences, there was no sign of the missing tooth.  Thus Snagletooth Sam had arisen from the ashes – Phoenix like.

Back to the present…or rather recent past.

As you might know, we live in Illinois.  Not too far from one of the busiest airports in the world: ORD (aka O’Hare International).  This is basically in the city of Rosemont, which depending on traffic is either 15 minutes or 3 hours away from our domicile.  So not 20 minutes into this, the first big road trip that Zoidberg and I were embarking on together, we got in one of our big, all-out fights in the backseat of the car.  Something to do with a bone.  It was the only one on our trip, so don’t worry – we were actually really good overall in the car – so I am told.  Anyhoo, Dad was quick to break up our fisticuffs, dragging Zoe into the front seat, but the damage was done.  Tempi the Elder now had an addition to my title: “Toe Nails”.

This loss of a nail and exposure of the quick on this toe freaked my parents out – to say the least.  My Mom first noticed the blood – Mom!  Keep an eye on the road!  I played it cool.  Sure there was a little blood oozing from my toe for the next few days (or more), but I proceeded with the same stoic quality that my big brother had taught me.  Nothing from the backseat folks.  This might have changed when we got to the vet in Los Alamos but that story has a totally different aura so will have be a part of a future (or never told) blog entry.  At this point lets just say I was blamed for this incident due to my toenail sensitivity.

Tempest “Toe-Nail” the Elder

PS – Fortunately, the exposed quick never got infected and I am back to normal – including eating my kibble without being prompted by my parents in any way.  Maybe road trips, despite the inevitable drama(s) that may surface during the expedition, are a powerful uniting force for our pack.  Sure, Zoe still can get under my nails, but I understand now that she is a full fledged member of the pack and therefore not the worst companion for me.

Tempi the Elder and The Ref

I learned a lot from Sammy about what it takes to be the oldest dog in a pack.  For instance, eating much slower than the young one so they get disciplined when they try to encroach on your meal.  Then there is the closely related behavior of when a treat is tossed to you and you miss it you have to continue to look at the treat provider in dismay while the younger dog swoops in and eats it.   Then there is the backyard game of chase where you must stand relatively still, occasionally barking or snarling while the young one runs circles around the yard.  Then there is the tried and true favorite game which can be played in the yard, living room and even the car.  This activity requires two bones/antlers.  Part 1 consists of each dog getting one of these scrumptious items.  Part 2 is when the younger dog takes the prize from the older dog.  Part 3 requires the old dog to pout until the provider of said treat reprimands the younger dog with a statement such as: “you don’t need both of the bones.”  Subsequently one bone is returned to the elder pup for all of about one minute at which point the younger takes back what they believe is rightly theirs. This may be a game that lasts only a single round or could go on for hours – depending on how engaged the referees are in the game.

Since Zoe has shown up, and I’ve officially become Tempi the Elder, I have tried all of these but found them all very trying…and then some!

So in certain cases I’ve shed this role and joined the chase.  And as it turns out, this weekend Snowy was visiting so Zoe and I had a referee!  Maybe in a future post she can give her ground level perspective of her visit to our den.  But until then, in preparation for the new football season which is nearly upon us, here is a sample of her refereeing skills that Zoe put together in her latest film entitled “The Ref:”

I’m back from vacation folks and have lots of stories to tell :)!

The Tempest