A Posy of Pictures Of Posy with Posy

Some blogs that I read these days have a feature they call "Wordless Wednesdays" -- as in, a picture is worth a thousand of, etc. etc.  I thought today I'd follow in their footsteps with a Mute Monday.  And hope it doesn't fade into Taciturn Tuesday, Wordless Wednesdays, Thoughtless Thursdays, Feral Fridays, Silent Saturdays, and then Sunday, let's chat!

And so I present a posy of pictures of Posy with posy!  Behold the fierce tigress as she approaches nature!

Dorothy Under The Knife

On Thursday, Dorothy had her spaying surgery.  Her milkshake will no longer bring the boys to the yard.  She will not have any unwanted gentlemen callers showing up at strange hours tracking pheromones.  She can now no longer be a bio-mom.  And to all this we say:  yay!

Or we will in a few days hence.

The worst part of the whole ordeal so far has really been denying her breakfast on Thursday morning.  She could have water then, but nothing else, and Dorothy is definitely the kind of gal who believes in starting her day with a square meal.  When I fed the cats and didn't feed her third, as is our wont, she cried a bit.  And then sat in her crate and cried a bit.  And then snake-crawled into her bed and lay there all despondent and oh woe is me.  It was very hard not to just scramble her an egg and slip her a slice of buttered toast.

Then, because I had no treats in my pocket to give her, did I think she would actually walk all the way to the vet?  I had hoped she would, but No.  No treats, no trotting.  So carry her to the vet I did.

We picked her up at 4:30 all groggy and pathetic-looking and wearing the cone of shame. She was barely out of the anesthesia at that point, so once we got her home, she just lay down and shivered and cried at the cone encircling her neck.  She walked like a drunken sailor, and she kept somehow suction-cupping the cone to the walls as she stumbled down the hall.  So sad!

I ended up taking her cone off at night and she didn't once try to even look at her stitch area, let alone bother the wound (and she still hasn't, three days later).  She's been on painkillers every morning, but in the afternoons when they wear off she has been her old self:  running and jumping and doing everything she is not supposed to want to do.

She even has forgiven the cone of shame.  Here she is thinking it a fine chew toy:

The only negative, so far, has been that she seems to have acquired a UTI, which meant that starting Saturday afternoon she asked to go outside pretty much every ten or fifteen minutes.  Of course, it didn't really occur to me what was going on until about 4:55 on Saturday, which is basically the beginning of the Vet Dead Zone.  I lunged for the phone in slow motion -- NOOOOOOOOO! -- and made the call, but it was too late.  The office had closed and would not re-open until Monday morning.  (A vet who opened up a Sunday walk-in clinic could make a fortune, I'm convinced, since all my pets get their ailments on that day).  But after the eightieth time of taking Dorothy out at 10-minute intervals, I was grumpy enough to call the vet's emergency line, and now I'm to give Dorothy vitamin C today to make her urine acidic, and then if it is still going on tomorrow I can pick up antibiotics.

Despite her making it through this one with flying colors, Dorothy and I are both very hopeful that this will be her first and last surgery.

The Goalie

These pictures might look to you like two companionable animals lying in the slightly disheveled hallway of someone who needs to learn how to put her shoes away in the closet.  And about that last part, you'd be right.  It's the companionable part that is the falsehood.  For the real scenario here is that Dorothy made the strategic error of wandering towards the door for some random sniffing, and Plum seized the chance to block her in and pen her there, by lying down nonchalantly right in front of her across the hallway.

Dorothy, alas, then had no choice but to lie down for a snooze on the hard rug, since she is afraid of what would happen if she tried to squeeze by Plum, or worse!  Step over him.

So they are at an impasse.  The impasse of a bullying big brother with talons, who is not afraid to use them.

Poor Dorothy!

Howl

"There are nights when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls." -- George Carlin

Ladies Who Lunch

Each day, while I am at work at my office, Dorothy is hard at work asleep in her crate.  Because she is still a puppy with a puppy’s small bladder, I walk home at lunch daily to take her out to do her business and so she can stretch her legs and get a bit of exercise.

“I’m off to take my dog out at lunch!” I’ll say as I leave work.  Dorothy, however, seems to misunderstand that phrase.  I’m afraid she hears:  “I’m off to take my dog out TO lunch!” and begins to picture the Russian Tea Room, say:

Or a fancy buffet:

Dorothy would much prefer some caviar and borscht in the Russian Tea Room or some goodies at a buffet to a walk in the hot city sun.  But she soon learned that she was mistaken, and that our walks around the block were for walking’s sake, and not a journey to a bountiful kitchen.  So now when I get home and greet her, she doesn’t even lift her head, although her eyes will open and swivel in my direction.  I will open the door of her crate, go find and say hello to the cats, and perhaps look through my mail, all while Dorothy remains in crate-sleeping position, without moving a muscle.  I’ll put on her leash, and this is what happens:

She is hardly a racehorse chomping at the bit to get out the gate.  In fact, I usually have to bribe her with a treat or two to get her up and moving.

We walk around the block slowly.  If she is lucky, she will get to kiss many admirers.  If I am lucky, she will deign to finish the block with only minimal sitting.

Nowadays, when we return to the apartment, she will go into the bedroom and stretch out on the bed with a toy for ten minutes.  She likes to stretch all the limbs that don’t get to be stretched while in the crate.  Here she is enjoying her uncrated luxury, with one of her favorite toys, a stuffed rat:

One day soon, I tell her, when she becomes a more trustworthy sort – the kind, say, who doesn’t torment kitties, rummage through the garbage, or chew Items That Belong To Others – she will be able to have the run of the apartment for the entire day.  But she is not that sort, yet!  So in the meantime, she has to brown-bag it in her crate for the afternoon; and it is one of the very good things about Dorothy that she has always liked being in her crate, even if the coming out of it at noon remains an effort that only receives a C+. 

The Cat Cave

"But whatever the reason,

His heart or his shoes,

He stood there on Christmas Eve, hating the Whos,

Staring down from his cave with a sour, Grinchy frown

At the warm lighted windows below in their town."

Below the thunders of the upper deep;

Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea,

His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep

The Kraken sleepeth...

There hath he lain for ages and will lie

Battening upon huge sea-worms in his sleep,

Until the latter fire shall heat the deep....

(from "The Kraken" by Tennyson)

Now the LORD had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. 

And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.

Passive One-Upmanship

On occasion, Dorothy and I will meet on our walks a yellow lab being walked by its owner. The lab is about 18 months old and although a little exuberant at times, it seems pretty well behaved, all things considered.  Dorothy is always happy to give the lab a greeting, although it isn't one of the dogs that she sees and instantly begins playing with.

Lately, however, our interactions with the lab have become a bit odd.  Dorothy and the lab seem to be engaging in a contest to see which one can be more submissive.  I'm reminded of two people being uber-polite and engaging in a kind of contest of "After you!"  "Oh, I couldn't possibly!  After you!"  "But I insist!"  Etc.

For this is what happens when Dorothy and the lab are about half a block away from each other.  They will see each other and stop.  The lab will immediately lie down on its belly, in a submissive, come hither, let's greet way.  But Dorothy, when she sees this from half a block away, won't keep walking towards the lab, but instead will lie down herself, and then roll over on her back, showing the world --and presumably the lab half a block away--her pretty pink belly.

So there the owner of the lab is, standing over a dog who is lying down on its stomach, and there I am, standing over a dog who is lying on its back.  All four of us are at a stand-still.  All four of us fools.

Dorothy, not liking to be called a fool, thank you very much.