Rest in peace, big boy. 2002-2012
I’m on my mother’s computer right now (it’s connected directly to the printer, which unfortunately refuses to network with my computer, which is running 64-bit Windows, so, here I am) and thought you all should see this picture that she has as her wallpaper.
Her Imperial Highness Princess Momoko came home yesterday; these are all from within the first two hours or so that she was home, because I got tired after that, and also, it was about nine million degrees in Rhode Island yesterday.
She’s beautiful and hilarious and smart as a whip. She keeps picking up Sofie’s tennis balls even though they don’t really fit in her mouth; she’s determined to get herself up on the couch even though she can’t lift her back legs high enough; she’s probably going to destroy the strip of wood that separates our living room carpet from our dining room floor. Her name is quite becoming — she really is a peach. A peach with little needle teeth and razor-sharp nails, but a peach nonetheless.
Dryfuss has been fine so far; he’s just chosen to ignore her, which I think is more because it’s too hot out for him than anything personal. Sofie is being obnoxious, though — she follows Momoko everywhere and refuses to let her play with her, even though she keeps trying to sniff/bite/hump her. (Well, she only tried to do the last one once; Momoko snapped at her.) She’s trying to establish dominance, but she’s really bad at it, and we’re not going to let her be the dominant one anyway. Hopefully it won’t be long before she figures out Momoko is a more ideal playtime partner than nine-year-old Dryfuss is.
More photos, and probably video, will be forthcoming. She’ll be fully grown in no time, so I’d like to document that as well as I can.
We took the dogs to the vet yesterday. Look how good they are in the car.
And now for something completely different: canine anecdotes.
I went upstairs fairly late last night to make something for dinner. My mom was watching TV, and Sofia was fast asleep on the couch. I mean fast asleep. She was curled up on a pillow and had her eyes shut tight. Mom and I agreed we had not seen her so peaceful since we adopted her over four months ago.
I thought the coast was clear, so I went into the kitchen to make a sandwich. How foolhardy. I opened the bread drawer and happened to look over to the couch. Sofia was sitting bolt upright, staring at me over the back of the couch. Next thing I knew, she was in the kitchen with me.
Dogs are selective listeners. They always listen for food.
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Dad told me this one when I met him for lunch at work today.
He took his motorcycle to work this morning, as he is wont to do when the weather permits. During the summer, he keeps his bike in the shed in our backyard, so he has to wheel it out the front gate and into the driveway in order to take off.
Well, he didn’t close the gate this morning, something he’s done a couple of times before, but someone usually notices in due time. Usually.
Mom got up a couple of hours later, let the dogs out, and jumped in the shower. She heard Dryfuss barking a few minutes later, but it sounded to her, from the shower, like he was just in the side yard, and it wasn’t a distressed bark, just his normal how-dare-you-walk-on-my-street bark to announce that he’s watching everyone in the neighborhood.
She got out of the shower and he was still barking, and she, naturally, wondered what he could be barking at for so long. By chance, she looked out our front window first, and there he was: Dryfuss, in the front yard, standing in the walkway and barking at the mailman, who was a few houses down the street.
Mom was worried about how to get him back in the yard, fearing he would bolt if she went out front, but then she remembered he is a 120-pound dog with two replaced knees and was going nowhere. He simply came to her when he was called.
And, in fact, when she went to get him, she found the gate shut. She thinks the mailman did it as a courtesy, knowing we have two dogs.
(Sofia was on the deck the whole time. She would have been gone forever if she’d discovered the open gate. And because both of the dogs were still home, safe and sound, this story and the image of Dryfuss barking his ass off in the front yard shall forever be hilarious.)
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Bonus story from ages ago, related to the previous one. I don’t remember when exactly this happened, but it was before Yoshi went blind and we may not have even had Dryfuss at the time, so it was around eight years ago.
Dad had a different motorcycle back then (he built his current one), and one nice day in the spring, he and my sister took it out for a ride. They happened to leave the gate open, and neither my mom nor I noticed.
When they got back, Yoshi was sitting in the back yard, about ten feet behind the gate, just waiting for someone to walk through. When Dad and Emily showed up, he cocked his head as if to say, “Why would you disrupt my universe by leaving the gate open? HOW DARE YOU.” He was a very particular dog and didn’t like change, you see.
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(Footnote: we have had dogs since I was very small. In nineteen years, across five dogs, we’ve only had three other escapes. Shadow got out twice and immediately became terrified by her unfamiliar surroundings, desperate to get back in the yard, and Pepper just took off down our street one day when she’d happily been walking around the front yard. She only did it once as a puppy and never again, oddly, even though we let her out front all the time.)
In better news, this guy is eight years old today. Happy birthday, Dryfuss!
