Pepper le Phew

Oh what fearful beasties roam around the walls of my nighttime home?

I know we’re in for trouble when the garage door rises and Pepper shoots out like a half starved greyhound out of the traps snarling and barking with the hairs along her back standing up like bristles ( add Rhodesian Ridgeback to the lineage) and pulling the leash so hard I can hear her chest wheeze and my arm is wrenched painfully out of its socket. Of course I can’t see a damn thing but she obviously does and it demands to be intimidated by her. Usually it’s a deer that lopes off into the woods just far enough to be safe but near enough to piss Pepper off mightily. One night it was a Raccoon that sauntered up a tree to do the same thing. Tonight I couldn’t figure out what it was.

It could have been Sasquatch for all I know or illegal hunters. They have been known to wander a little too close to the house, which is both dangerous and criminal.

Pepper wouldn’t give it up. 

She was whining and growling and growl-whining. Eventually I pulled her away and off we trotted to do the usual business of the night.As we came back and got within 10 yards of the garage I had no problem figuring out what it was. The smell was unmistakable. Skunk. Great! My neighbor had his previous dog, an old lab, skunked pretty good one time and told me what a pain it was to get the smell out with tomato sauce. I think he said sauce; it could have been tomato juice.

Whatever, it took a trip to the supermarket and lots and lots of the stuff. As we walked in

through the hazy cloud of Skunkus Butjuicious I thanked heaven that I wasn’t driving to some 24 hour Kwikee Mart. And you’d think that her majesty with her super-refined canine nose gear would be pained by the smell. The opposite. She looked like she smelled roses. Dogs are strange beasts for sure.

Dishing on the dawg

I’ve said that Pepper is a princess of indeterminate lineage. A sniffer, a shepherd, a hunter, and now 

I have discovered another limb on her family tree, a dishwasher retriever. Like Pavlov ringing a bell all I to do is open the dishwasher door and she’s there in a snap with her tongue darting in and out like an ant-eater as she goes after any and all food fragments. I worry that one of these days I’ll decapitate her by slamming the door on her head in my hurry to stop her eating leftover curry or onion gravy. She can be asleep like a log in another room but between the click of the handle and opening of the door she’s there alert and in full food siphoning mode. Ever since going hard core on the food issues and trying to keep her to prepared dog food she has become extra attentive to any human food opportunity. If I take a knife out of the kitchen drawer she appears in anticipation of a food moment. It’s the same when I open the fridge door or anything wrapped in tinfoil. Its not as though she is suffering. Her weight hasn’t changed. But she’s still pissed off about the food thing. Often she will ignore the kibble all day and then eat it out of desperation at bedtime. Now that the American Kennel Club has recognized the Tree Walking Coon Hound how long before the Bosch Goal Hanging Grub Hound gets its day in the arena?

Dogmatism

When little hair took me out this morning he tried having an existential discussion

comparing and contrasting Utopia, Dystopia and Erewhon. His point of view was,

and it may have been triggered by the brutally cold weather we had over the past

few days, that Utopia was always sunny and warm where Dystopia was always bleak

mid-winter. I had to agree that dystopian movies like 1984 or the Hunger Games or The Lion, 

the Witch and the Wardrobe do have a grey leaden look about them that makes you feel cold and uncomfortable in a shivery way. They make me want to seek out the shaft of icy sunlight that warms up as it comes through the front room window and creates a suntrap to snooze in. And one never hears of Hawaiian dystopia its true. The Lotus-eaters were not in some bleak muscovite terrain.  So if Utopia is the opposite of dystopia it would be logical that Utopia would be warm and garden of eden-ish.  Erewhon is difficult to put a finger on. That could be because I don’t actually have fingers. And I’m not that familiar with Samuel Butler’s story. But from the Cliff notes I understand it looks like Utopia but is all FUBAR. While he was prattling on in the god-help-me pretentious vein I was sniffing the traces of a dog-related prowler. Not a wolf. Maybe a fox. Could be a coyote. The urine was a few hours old and I think I have a little cold coming on. I have to be on the alert. Little hair doesn’t get these scents at all. All high and mighty talk but no

great sensory perception. So tell me again how his tribe become the higher order mammal?

Fingers?

A dog's tale

The little hair took me out this morning. I could tell he was cold. As I tasted the wind

and read the scents that lay captured in the ground and on the leaves all he could do was shiver. I do not feel the cold as he does and I was enjoying being out. Now don’t get me wrong, he is not an unpleasant companion on these rambles. I try to be discrete when I excrete but he always makes a fuss about picking it up. I would rather it stay there as a scent beacon to all the animals around her to tell them who I am. I lay down my urine for the same reason but he doesn’t pick that up. Inconsistent behavior. That is the big thing I have observed from living with my little hair family. We of the waving tail race read these signals and get confused. I saw the long horned ones with the white tails staring at me through the trees this morning. If I did not have the constraints of the leash that little hair ties around me I could chase them away. But I am confined to only bark and when I do that he tells me shush. I’m still upset with him about my food. I eat what he puts out only when I know I have absolutely no alternatives. I follow him wherever there is a chance for crumbs or scraps and I will not be made to feel guilty. We who walk on four must get the best whenever we can.I feel the air crisp and blue on my tongue and I know the snow will not come now. I wish I could tell him this but our communication is quite limited. He makes a noise that must be the name he gives me. I recognize it because he says it frequently. It is time for us to return to our home. I know I just woke up but I could use a good nap.

Snow time like the present

It was before dawn as we wandered out across the treacherous arctic ice field that is my New Jersey neighborhood. The snow that fell over the weekend has mutated into a crispy cold topping that collapses under one’s weight to send your feet (in my case) or your belly (in Pepper’s case) crashing through a wet compote of sleety sludge. At first we pretended we were racing towards the

South Pole. I had eaten all my fellow travellers in the first week and reinforced my rickety sled with their bones. I had also eaten all of my darling sled team with the exception of lead dog Pepper. Wolves, or worse, were howling and prowling around us their wicked eyes flashing from behind the trees. I tapped into my inner Jack London as I contemplated disemboweling Pepper to distract them while I made a mad but tragic rush for cover.  Pepper’s long-suffering sigh as she turned away from me to sniff a deer print brought me back to reality. Somewhere in the distance a neighbors Jack Russell yipped to be let in and the arctic adventure became just another suburban stroll.

Snow going

A lot of snow has fallen around here and the walking is a little treacherous. But we are game for a little walk in the freezing morning air. It's always surprising how a snowfall can change the landscape
and our perception of it. I am always dazzled by the brilliance of the light and how almost painfully bright it is. Pepper is always a little perturbed by the change in the smell patterns that she sniffs out so intensely. Whatever animals have passed by they have left no tracks but there must be a vapor trail because Pepper has her snout in the air sniffing the breeze. One worry is the snowplow. When she was a little puppy not more than 6 months old I took her walking after a heavy snow.The roads had not been cleared and the snow was about a foot and a half deep. Slow plodding steps for me.Kangaroo bounces through the white fluffy cold stuff for Pepper. We had walked about half a mile when the `weep' `weep' `weep' sound of a big township snowplow came towards us. Pepper began to freak out.Either the frequency of that flashing alarm on the plow was hurting her ears or simply the sight of this giant bearing down on us was a shock. Her tail locked between her legs and she began
trying to escape the leash by spinning around and around and succeeding only in getting herself all wrapped in it which made her panic more. Then another plow came on the scene.Then another.It was a nightmare.She was thrashing around like a bronco. And I was trying to get us away from the threat of being plowed over.I felt like i had a wriggling fish on a line. A big brown wriggling fish that was yelping and howling. We did eventually get home but she has been traumatized by the sound and those kind of trucks ever since then. Today the plows had been and the road was mostly clear.
But her ears were on high alert just in case the trucks suddenly came back to frighten her. We walked a bit.Sniffed the air again.She peed. And then we trotted off home to sit in front of a roaring fire.

ZZ Dog

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I wish I could let my sleeping dog lie but this girl could win the Olympic gold medal for

sleeping if there was such an event. Pepper has her own special bed that’s super comfortable and toasty warm. Unfortunately it’s my bed. Some time ago, during a storm that knocked out power to the house for days and the inside temperature dropped below freezing, she was granted access to the bed because she was shivering like an epileptic. And kind of like the table scraps thing discussed earlier, she took this exceptional treat as her divine right. So every night she settles down in what is the most uncomfortable position for me. Having a 70lb dog draped across your ankles can be quite painful let me tell you. The usual compromise we reach is that I curl up in a fetal position and she stays as is. Now,not only does this sleeping dog lie, she lies very unquietly. Many nights I have been woken by her imitation of a howling wolf as she dream chases some creature across the landscapes of her mind. Or if its not a muffled howl I’m wakened by   a strange chuffing noise as she dream barks at imaginary squirrels and delivery men. When I get up in the morning its very early. I get up around 5 and these days that’s still before dawn. I get up shower and dress and do this and that and come to take her out around 6. Trying to get her up and in her harness is always like trying to raise the Titanic. It often turns into a wrestling match and an undignified one at that. And when we come back me with my cheeks all aglow from the briskness of the morning air and Pepper with an empty bladder and bowels what does she do?  Goes straight to sleep.