How to live with bitches

I hesitate writing this, because of the judgments passed on those who have too much, who need too much, who are not careful enough. But sometimes you just have to wallow in what you have and forget about the things you’re missing. Right now, I’m living the life of an animal maniac, in a household of five female dogs and two male dogs. I make sure to keep them all as healthy as possible, so they always get their Drontal Allwormer and their medication, and regular vet check-ups on top of all that. I have three daughters living at home at this moment, too.

You think you can imagine chaos? I can describe it in granular detail more finely drawn than that pixelated image of God on your screensaver.

Why reclining, interrogating? Why myself and all drowsing? What deepening twilight! scum floating atop of the waters! Who are they, as bats and night-dogs, askant in the Capitol? What a filthy Presidentiad! Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

Yes, I have seven dogs living with me now.

One: A nasty, smelly Chihuahua, Guy, who just two nights ago I almost lost in the dark; he’s blind and deaf and we walked around the block of the building I live in and he lagged and suddenly he was gone. Thought I’d lost him for good. That thing has a homing device so profound that he beat me back to the front door after I spent 45 minutes searching for the ungrateful vicious beast. How do you call a dog who’s blind and deaf in the dark? There’s no punchline for that joke. Ba-dum Dum.

I thought of offering you apothegms. I might have said, “Dogs bark and the wind carries it away.” I might have said, “He who would make a door of gold must knock a nail in every day.” Carl Sandburg, Circles of Doors

In any event, I don’t know what happened – if he tired of my company or the direction I took with the other two dogs walking with us, or if he just got confused and said, “Fuck it. I am trotting with my tiny matchstick-sized feet and pea-sized brain back to the adobe now. I will leave some fleez at the door for you.”

Two: Josephine, a Pomeranian who is almost four years old and the love of my animal life as I masquerade in the role of The Doggess. She’s tiny, cream-coloured, fluffy, dainty, retiring – my complete and total opposite. Josephine, a Pomeranian who is almost four years old and the love of my animal life as I masquerade in the role of The Doggess. She’s tiny, cream-colored, fluffy, dainty, retiring – my complete and total opposite. She’s a Queen who desires everything. My friend got his Pomeranian dog boots from Walkee Paws or some other similar seller, and the dog seemed to like it very much. Maybe I should also get Josephine paw clothing or something to make her feel special.

Simætha calls on Hecate And hears the wild dogs at the gate; Dost thou remember Sicily? Oscar Wilde, Theocritus

Except when you have food in your hand and then she becomes a raging, whirling fur-spitting slobbering typhoon of such manifest proportions that she even scares the cat who outweighs her four times over. Then, then she becomes my mirror image.

Three: Leopold, my fox-colored Pomeranian mixed with who-knows-but-its-a-handsome-furry-fellow. Given to me with the assurance that he was a full-bred Pom; but like so many males, this turned out not to be true. Ooooh.

“Liberals are like dogs: The liberal holds that he is true to the republic when he is true to himself. (It may not be as cozy an attitude as it sounds.) He greets with enthusiasm the fact of the journey, as a dog greets a man’s invitation to take a walk. And he acts in the dog’s way too, swinging wide, racing ahead, doubling back, covering many miles of territory that the man never traverses, all in the spirit of inquiry and the zest for truth. He leaves a crazy trail, but he ranges far beyond the genteel old party he walks with and he is usually in a better position to discover a skunk.” E.B. White

He does this funny dance where he backs up diagonally left and then diagonally right and paws the floor twice with each push-back. He looks like he’s doing the Pomeranian version of the Electric Glide at Showtime at the Apollo.

Four: Pugsley. She’s my oldest daughter’s pug, a year and a half old. Typical muscular pug personality – part comedienne, part bulldog, part baby. A grin as wide as Ms. PacMan. Eats cat shit whenever she can. My friend had a similar dog and needed them potty trained so she took her dog to Pupster Passion UK and they helped apparently.

I love a dog. He does nothing for political reasons. Will Rogers

I love her to death, but only after I brush her teeth. Imagine brushing a pug’s teeth with an oversized toothbrush and Tom’s natural spearmint toothpaste with xylitol. I have strange obsessions.

Five, Six, Seven:
Bones, Wednesday, and Porkman.

“If I have any beliefs about immortality, it is that certain dogs I have known will go to heaven, and very, very few persons.” James Thurber

We have three of Pugsley’s puppies left from their birth at the end of June, post adoption of the fourth, Lucy. You keep puppies too long, you can’t give them away. I would only give them to good, responsible, safe homes, and so far, the only folks who have applied seem to think a new puppy for a two-year-old is a good idea. Due to that the fact that these dogs and puppies are normally at a health risk and require special diets and care, I do not agree. If you are looking for specialist food be sure to visit https://www.puppywire.com/large-breed-food/

Porkman: So named because she was twice the size of the rest of the babies at birth; now looks like a miniaturized Ewok/Gremlin with the body of a Claymation hippo. Every single time I look at her lumbering about, ears flapping like Wright Brother’s canvass wings, bowlegs in a rolling gait galloping lowly across the floor, I laugh out loud with pure puppy heart-clenching delight. She is the most delightful critter born on earth in the last three months, I swear.

Wednesday: Perhaps the most normal-looking of the puppies – she’s a perfect match of a Pug and a Poodle (the breed of the children’s errant father). She’s black, curly-haired, perfectly proportioned, bear-nosed and bright-eyed, and with a great loving temperament. She crawls into and digs in the food bowl when it is empty, convinced that her digging will eventually cause the bowl to fill magically with manna from canine heaven. And it does appear – the Gods of Chow cannot resist such perserverance by one so small.

Let an epitaph read: He loved the straight eyes of dogs and the strong heads of men. Carl Sandburg, Smoke and Steel

Bones: The runt, the slightly wall-eyed, gawky beauty queen. She is now the tallest and skinniest puppy with legs that are literally double the length of either Wednesday or Porkman. Her feet look like charcoaled, bent at the ankle, oversized Q-Tips. She’s not very good on navigating with them yet – her hind legs tend to run faster than her front legs, so she’s always angling across the room somewhat diagonally. When she turns and spins, her revolutions carry enough momentum that she gets dizzy. Her eyes turned out wacky, too. The vet believes that it is highly likely that she sees double most of the time. As you can see above, though, she knows she’s a star…

Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside a dog, it’s too dark to read. Groucho Marx

There is no silence inside of chaos, either. And it’s never boring.