A Meeting of the Mutts

Drake has to have surgery soon, and he'll be doing hydrotherapy afterwards, to rehab his leg. The head of the humane society was gracious enough to offer her old life jackets for Drake, so we went out to the shelter to get them today. This meant Drake got to be returning royalty for a bit, with the workers fawning over him.

It also meant that, just by chance, he got to meet Nalu, and I got to see him again before he left. Yes, Nalu is at long last in foster care. However, before he left, I walked into the lobby of the humane society. A worker warned me: "There's another dog in here. Nalu."

"Oh, Nalu." And we went in. Now, the non-workers there were a little scared by two male pit bulls in a small space, but I knew my boys. They pulled to get to each other, sniffing and playing, and in general had a good time.

Once we got them outside, I put Drake in the car, and turned back to Nalu. He rushed at me and lunged his front paws into the air, so he could hug me. He burrowed his snout into my belly, as if saying, "I’m not leaving."

He was, though. He had to, and unless we were going to adopt him, which we couldn't really do with Drake having the surgery, he was better off.

But my boys met, and Nalu is finally out of that box. That's a good day.

Greg

Eagles and Puppies and Pit Bulls, Oh My!

So, yesterday Drake I went swimming. That's not news. Ever since he followed two labs into the water about six weeks ago, we've gone swimming almost every day at noon.

Some days we have the lake to ourselves, and I let him off leash. Other days, now that it is warm, we have to share the lake, and I keep him on leash and we swim together. (I just get concerned about people overreacting about a pit bull running free.) Yesterday as we were headed down the trail to the beach, we ran into two teenagers. They were very attentive: "Is your dog friendly?""Yes, absolutely. He loves other dogs."

"Oh good." We saw the reason for their concern a few seconds later. A tiny black lab puppy came bounding around the curve in the trail. He was soaked, and the boys told me, rather proudly, that he'd just had his first swim. He and Drake had a friendly meeting (nose to nose, both tails flailing away, etc.), then Drake told me it was time to go swimming, and we did.

Drake loves other dogs so much that I wasn't sure he'd stay with me, so I kept him on leash for a while. We went swimming out to the center of the little cove, and then something in the air caught my eye.
It was one of the local eagles (there's a nest in the woods we visit most often), flying overhead with a small fish in its beak. "Eagles, Drake!" Drake dropped the tennis ball he was holding and starting swimming in a circle, looking for whatever had caught my eye.

Then something more caught my eye. The eagle was being followed by a crow, who was doing a little Top Gun action on him, trying to get the fish. The crow was diving bombing the eagle, so that the eagle had to turn its beak to one side to keep the fish safe.

I was stunned. The crow was enough smaller than the eagle that at first I thought it was an eaglet, but he wasn't backing down. The eagle flew in a big circle to try to shake him, and the crow hung on, coming at him from above, below, and both sides, trying to get that fish. "Look at that crow!" I yelled.

Eventually, I realized my yelling was freaking Drake out, and since I was standing on firm ground but he was swimming in water over his head, I calmed us down. I helped him float while the aerial battle played out. The eagle kept the fish, but the crow won my respect.

Nalu

Last week Drake went to doggie day care at Tails a Wagging. (A great place: I can't say too much about it.)The theory behind Drake going to doggie day care is that he'll get a chance to play with other dogs, and we'll get a chance to get things done with him not there.

The reality is, we brought another dog home from the humane society for a day, sort of a one day foster trip. Nalu is a fantastic pit bull I'd been walking at the shelter. Everyone there loves him, and it's hard to say too many good things about him. He is stubborn, of course, but he only uses his stubbornness to try to stay out in the grass, or to lengthen his walks, which makes a lot of sense to me. As nice as the shelter workers are, the kennel has to be a little bit like going to jail. Maybe more than a little bit like that.

In any case, Nalu is a fantastic dog: loving, gentle, etc. He is, however, a male pit bull, and so he's been sitting in the shelter for weeks. He seemed to be going a little crazy, so we brought him home.

It was like springing a kid from boring school and taking him to Disneyland. Nalu loves the grass (rolling in it, lying in it, eating it), and so loved the back yard. But he also misses being someone's dog, and so he slept on Kathy's legs, and on my feet at the desk. He would run in from the outside and jump on to the couch, throwing his head in our laps.

We tried to get everything in on one day: toys, treats, walks in the woods, meeting people, a roll in the water, sleeping with people. He was so happy. If Drake weren't injured, and we weren't afraid of becoming the crazy pit bull house, we'd snap him up. He is simply pure love.

The only painful time of the day was when I took him back to the shelter. He was perfectly willing to go into the building and lick everyone…but he wouldn't look at the door to the kennels. He laid down on the floor and looked away, then looked up to charm /beg me. He was ready to be my dog.
Sigh.

Things in my Pits

As a mailbox was ruffling my underarm hair, I mused over just how many things I've had in my armpits.

It isn't something I used to give much thought to. After all, for most people there's a shirt, a finger, and, ideally, deodorant. Otherwise…?

However, in recent months I've accumulated quite the tally of things in my pits. Today, of course, saw not one but six mailboxes, one after another, skimming the flesh and hair o'me pits. Or rather, five skimmed, and one kind of dug in, because Drake shifted a bit, pulling me forward.

In other words, I blame Drake for these many things in my armpits. Today he wanted to walk on the other side of the mailboxes, and I thought it was easier to let him than to renegotiate with a stubborn pit bull. I was largely correct, until one mailbox was a little taller than the rest. Scrape!

I've also lost track of how many trees I've had in my armpits. This sounds unlikely, I know, but the woods near our house has a lot of scrub trees in it. They're pretty flexible, and many are only four or five foot tall. Since Drake likes to take the smallest trails he can, we sometimes end up walking right over these trees, with the trunks sliding along the leash and popping up again in a tingling and spritely fashion into my armpits.

There's the leash itself, of course, which sometimes gets wrapped around, especially when I'm bracing myself, and any number of bugs and blackberry thorns, which carve brief and bloody trails through areas best left unplowed.

Recently, there's been a Boston Terrier by the name of Roscoe. Drake and I have been getting him to take him for walks, and he likes to ride on the arm rest between Drake and me, his soft and pointy gargoyle ears tickling my pits.

Finally, of course, there's Drake himself, who is a rather… intimate dog. He can time a yawn perfectly, to lick the inside of your mouth, and who seems to think that any bend in a limb is an invitation to snuggle in. Unlike some animals, who only tuck certain parts in when they snuggle, Drake's fine with any part of his body being tucked into any bend in someone else's. So a snout? Sure. A doggy knee? Of course. A bizarrely exposed groin? You know it.

All in me pits.