Dogs. We love them in part because they have no dignity.

Yes, yes. I have two chew toys and she has none. Your point being?

Truthfully, I do not like the way you are looking at my chew toys. Please avert your eyes so that I may rest next to them.

Yes, yes. I have two chew toys and she has none. Your point being?

Truthfully, I do not like the way you are looking at my chew toys. Please avert your eyes so that I may rest next to them.

…r bone, I don’t want nobody’s bone, bay-beh!

…r bone, I don’t want nobody’s bone, bay-beh!

So trying to meet goals for the day. Three out of four isn’t bad, I think.

1. Household. I did the laundry and carried the vacuum cleaner down two flights of stairs to give the downstairs rug a good hoovering.

2. Exercise. I took Jakester over to Lafayette Square Park and walked around for half an hour. He’s totally petrified of everything, and horrible to walk with. I might make myself walk him more by focusing on the benefit for him, getting more socialized. I may take la Chelseapants next time though, she seems to walk better than the other two.

3. Social Stuffs. This one is harder for me, especially during the week. But after our walk I drove Jake over to Todd’s house, on the off chance that he’d be back from his class. He was! WIN! So I chatted with him for awhile about our respective first days of school, and updated his iTunes so that he could buy movies.

4. Creative. Hrms. Nothing so far. And now I am really only wanting to take a shower, finish the laundry and go to bed. But maybe I will think of something?

5. Spending large amounts of money. My laptop was indeed on the verge of failure. When I talked to the IT guy at work he told me that I needed to get my stuff off of it, sooner rather than later. So I bought a new laptop. Well. I ordered a new laptop, which doesn’t relieve my buyers remorse the way it would if I could have brought it home with me today. But overall it was a really good buy. It’s a Sony Vaio, and it blows my old laptop out of the water as far as RAM and HD capacity, plus it’s lighter, with a larger screen. And… it’s pink. I know! But seriously, it’s also a good laptop for my needs, in addition to being pink! I checked! It’s a model that’s on its way out for them, so it was discounted in price, then I found it at newegg $150 or so cheaper than MSRP, then I found it on Best Buy’s website $100 cheaper than THAT even! So, I practically made a profit.

My “nervous about spending money” threshold is around $200 or so, anything over that and I start to triple-guess myself. So this makes me angsty. But I am sure that will all go away once I have it. I had it shipped to work (less chance of it getting delivered to my neighbor, who I am still dodging quite well.) and I really hope it will come before the weekend. My only decision still to be made is whether I am going to wipe Vista off of it when it gets here and install XP. I feel like I would rather, since I use XP on my desktop and at work, and plus I don’t want to be the person with Vista, because I hate it without trying it like all good Intertubes dwellers should.

Anwyay, that’s my day today. Now, off to be creative…

Those that come immediately to mind are “anxious” and “handitarded”

Those that come immediately to mind are “anxious” and “handitarded”

She WILL eat the eyeballs right out of your head.

She will NOT feel badly afterward.

Todd was creeped out tonight by Jake’s tendency to sleep in zombie-mode. I have to admit, even I had to look and make sure he was still breathing - there’s a lot of eye white going on there.

Our flash photography woke him up though.

People, when they see pictures of the dogs, are always asking me the same question. “How do you tell them apart?” Which, aside from them being different sizes, with different coloration and different bone structure… duh. How do you tell your wee screaming children apart, dork?

But aside from knowing which one I am looking at, I also know which one is barking, by the sound. That’s a huge difference. And I would know Bruiser by her little doggy smell alone. And I know which one is sitting at the side of the bed crying to be picked up in the middle of the night because they all cry differently. And I even know without looking which one just jumped up and rested their little paws on my leg when I am sitting at my computer, by how hard they hit me. They all jump on me differently too.

Last time I went to my parent’s house my Dad came up with this sensitive bit of assholery: “Every time I see Bruiser she looks older.” Which, thanks for that. It’s both inane and hurtful. Yes, she’s getting older, and one day she’ll die. And I need no reminder of that because when that happens I am afraid I might die too. I’ve had her for 6 years now, and yeah she’s gone pretty gray. I compare pictures from then to how she looks now and it’s startling to see how she’s gone all white in the muzzle, and grown this white stripe on her back. And since she was a stray I have no way to know how old she is, or how long I might have left with her - if one could predict such things.

I likewise esteem people who, when meeting the three of them, say things like “Oh, she’s an old one, huh?” (Which I would like to say about their grandma, or maybe their mother, sometimes.)

Anyway, just meditating this morning on the way you get to know the creatures with which you live, and how comforting that can be, esp. when other people don’t fudge it up with their dense commentary.

This is Jake’s patented foot-pounce/pet maneuver. First he lays down next to my toes and swats them with his paws, like so:

then he waits for me to poke him with my foot to get him to stop:

Then he lays back for the belly-rubbing to commence. And adopts a crazyface/boxer pose.

This is Jake’s patented foot-pounce/pet maneuver. First he lays down next to my toes and swats them with his paws, like so:

then he waits for me to poke him with my foot to get him to stop:

Then he lays back for the belly-rubbing to commence. And adopts a crazyface/boxer pose.

This morning Jake decided it would be a great idea to see what electrical cords taste like. I was sitting in my office at 6:30 a.m. drinking tea, browsing my RSS feeds, trying to wake up when I suddenly hear the most horrific screaming coming from the side of my desk where the dogs’ beds are. I thought Jake and Chelsea might be fighting, but when I jumped up to intervene I saw Jake laying on his side, his jaw locked around the white extension cord he’d just chewed into. The current had locked his jaw around it and he couldn’t let go.

I knew I was not supposed to touch him until I got the power off, but I couldn’t help grabbing him and trying frantically to pry his jaws apart. I couldn’t get them open and he was screaming in pain, causing me to freak out and the other two dogs to run in crazy circles. I tried to pull the cord from the wall, but realized it was plugged in across the room and behind a table. I redoubled my efforts and finally got his mouth open. He scrambled away, still screaming in pain and fear. By this time I was screaming too. He ran downstairs and crawled under the kitchen table, and I followed him down there, bawling hysterically, sure that any second he was going to keel over dead of heart failure. He sat under the table, not continuously screaming any more, but letting out these piteous howling/screaming sounds every few seconds. I didn’t want to agitate him, so I went and sat on the couch, hoping he would come to me. Eventually he came out and went to lay in the bed in the corner, looking at me all bug-eyed and distrustful. I got a hold of him and looked at him, he seemed to be breathing normally. I carried him upstairs and Googled “Help, my dog just electrocuted himself” or something similar. What I found was that in most cases the dog is knocked unconscious and their heart stops. Most of the first-aid advice dealt with how to get their heart started again. In a case like Jake’s where they’d been shocked but not knocked out, I had to look for burns in his mouth and watch him for signs of shock. There was a chance his heart and/or lungs had been damaged too.

I looked at him, and he looked back at me all googly-eyed, like nothing had happened. I decided that we were going to the vet no matter what, I wanted him checked over. I still thought he was going to keel over any second, and I just kept thinking “He could have died just then. He could have died just then. He really could have died. That would be it. No more googly-eyed retard Jake, all his short little boundless-energy-filled life would have been gone, over, done.” You may guess as to whether I was also working myself into greater and greater heights of hysteria by now.

I emailed work to let them know I wouldn’t be in for the morning, and we went off to the vet. Their vet opens at 8 a.m. and I got there at 7:45, so I stood outside the door with him in my arms, looking to see if I thought his gums were pale, trying to see if his mouth was burned, and crying like Nancy Kerrigan. I went in at 8 and the doctor looked him over, had a peek inside his mouth, listened to his heart and said that he was not in shock, and the chances of him going into shock at this point were very small. However, he did hear a slight heart murmur, and there was none when I had him in for his shots a month or so ago. Heart murmurs are not normal in dogs his age, and he didn’t know if that could be caused by a jolt of electricity. Also I have to bring him back tomorrow for an x-ray of his lungs, since he could start to form small pulmonary edemas. Those wouldn’t be visible for the first 24 hours, the damage takes some time to develop. Overall he pronounced Jake incredibly lucky. The only reason I can think of why this didn’t kill him is that he was chewing an extension cord and none of the items plugged into the cord were actually on. I think that would mean that there is less electricity flowing through it, right? I don’t know. It’s not my area. But maybe he got the minimum jolt. As far as I can recall he’s never chewed an electrical cord before, I don’t know what possessed him to start now, but I think that when I get home this afternoon I am going to rearrange the office so that their bed is nowhere near any cords or outlets.

When I left him (around 9:30) he was happy as a clam, chewing on a chew toy that I gave him (so I don’t think his mouth hurts, even) and that’s how I hope to find him tonight when I get home.

Here’s the cord he chewed, with blood from his mouth and maybe a little puppy fur on it, though I don’t know if you can see that at this resolution.