The Dogs and I Need Time Apart!

[Laurie, Fudge, and Vern]

I hate to keep beating a dead horse, but this winter has taken over my life, my thoughts, and my moods.  I don’t ever remember a winter when the snow would not melt and stayed around for such a long period of time.  We live in the boondocks and I drive to different locations to walk my dogs.  We go twice a day, but there is nowhere to walk that has been plowed, unless I want to walk them over deep snow covered ice.  On top of that, our township thought it would be fun to only plow one and a half lanes on our two lane roads making it very hard to get around. This means as you try and navigate your car into some of the places I go to walk the dogs and you have the misfortune to meet another car coming towards you, you have two choices 1) engage in a vehicular version of chicken 2) flash one of my STAR credit cards and yell, “Police business! Back your car up!" and hope no one asks for a closer look. 

 

When you have two dogs that don’t do “nothing” well and nowhere to go to walk them, this can make for extremely long days and nights.  Oh, and for those people who say their dogs entertain each other, I would like to say to you, “nobody likes a braggart.”  My dogs entertain themselves for about ten minutes by wrestling right on top of me and then they spend the other 23 hours, 50 minutes looking at me like “what are we going to do next?”

Fudge isn’t the problem as much as Vern and he reminds me of my youngest daughter when she used to have a friend spend the night.  My oldest would invite a friend over and they would hole up in her room for hours.  For all I knew they escaped out of the bedroom window by tying together all of the clothes that Megan kept strewn all around her room and went bar hopping, but they were quiet and left me alone.  Hayley, on the other hand, would have a friend over and I would have to turn myself into the Activity Director on a cruise ship to keep them happy.  Many times after I sat exhausted in a chair after numerous activities, she and her friend would look at me and say, “What else is there to do?”   A couple of times I said, “how about you do the laundry and your little friend run the vacuum,” and when that didn’t shut them up, I often times offered to drop the friend back at her house. I did have my own “little black book” of sorts and any friend that got five stars (five being extremely high maintenance) meant that if Hayley and the friend wanted another sleepover, it would have to be done at the friend’s house.

 

Yesterday, I had to walk the dogs around and around in a parking lot. We were like three hamsters on a wheel, except our wheel was covered with ice in some spots.  I can’t tell you how exciting it was to have Vern surge forward just as I realized my feet were slipping and sliding underneath me.  I swear Vern thinks his new name is “EASY, VERN!” because he just turns and looks at me like “hey, what’s up?” as I scream it over and over. 

Hey Fudge, do you hear somebody yelling, "EASY, VERN"?

In the afternoon, I opted to forgo the walk and take them up to the tennis courts and let then run.  The roads had not been plowed at that park, but it was obvious other cars had been there, probably in a desperate attempt to find somewhere to walk, and I was able to get far enough into the park to find a parking spot.  My feeling of victory was short lived as we plowed through knee high snow and ice to get to the tennis court only to find the gate frozen shut.  I knew I could open it wide enough to squeeze Fudge in, but Vern and I would be a problem.  I have been soothing myself all winter with junk food and we have all heard the old saying “you are what you eat” which seems apropos because prior to going to the park I ate a Chunky bar.  Anyways, I was determined to get us into that tennis court and managed to force it open enough to get both dogs inside.  I tried yelling from the other side, “go play,” but they just stood inside eating snow.  Well, I knew that wasn’t going to make them tired, so I squeezed through the opening, which was no small feat and tried to work them into a frenzy with my sing songy voice to get them to chase each other.

So far this week I have tossed a frozen ball 953 times, buried a frozen ball 867 times and encouraged them to find it, ran around my car for a fun game of chase about 57 times, taken approximately 1820 photos of one dog fetching and two dogs un-burying frozen balls, done sit/down/stay exercises with Vern in the driveway 953 times because Fudge won’t let Vern retrieve the frozen ball, and screamed “leave it….stop eating sticks…put the stick down…Vern, give me that damn stick…Fudge, stop teasing Vern with the stick,” more times than I can count. 

Oh, and let's not forget this fun part of having two Doodles that love snow!

or this (although this does make me smile)

Why do I do all this, you ask? I do it so Vern sleeps at night and so both my dogs don’t end up sprouting a tree limb out his/her rectum before winter is over.  It got so bad yesterday with the sticks, I started pelting them with snowballs when I saw them pick up a stick and I am pretty sure “correction by snowballs” is not an approved dog training method in any state.

I will admit, when Vern pulled me down in the field and got all tangled up in his leash, I didn't mind giving him a wedgie correction!

The snowballs finally made me realize I had gone over the edge and I might need an intervention.  I beg of the interventioners NOT to tell me to tether the stick-eating dogs to me, because we need a break from each other, and I would much prefer to tether them to John as he leaves for work each day.  I have asked John to take some vacation days and the last time I did he said, “It’s almost like you don’t want me to go to work.”  All I could think was I needed to find a more obvious way to say “stay home or kill me before you leave.”

Thankfully, my salvation came today in the form of a text from my dog sitter.  She has not been available for my dogs (blog to follow) because she got another job, but she wrote me and said if I wanted her to take the dogs to her house today to play with her dogs, she could!  I am sure the text I sent back scared her a little, because it read a bit like the diner scene in When Harry Met Sally when Meg Ryan fakes an orgasm and screams, “YES, YES, YES, OH YES!”  When she came to get them, the dogs went ballistic and then stood at the door, tails wagging, and attempted to telekinetically open the front door and get in her car.  It has been six blissful hours without my dogs and absence really does make the heart grow fonder.  We’ll see how the dogs feel when they get home.

[Nancy, Ned, Clancy, and Charlie]

Oh, what fabulous pictures you got.  I see "C" entries from this stressful time. . . . .

[F, Calla & Luca]

Oh Cheryl, you sound like me. But my disgusting basement is out of the question. And soon it will have water because the sump pump outlet is buried in ice and snow. I am so tired of worrying about all this. Maybe I can take drugs too : )

[Cheryl and Finnegan]

OMD!! This may be my favorite of all your blogs because MISERY LOVES COMPANY!  I need those mountain climbing ice thing-ees to climb off my deck, walk through my yard, or get to my car.  Once I get to my car, still standing, I'm as excited as if I'd won a gold medal.  There's no place to walk that isn't icy or so salt crusted that it's hard to keep your balance.  That is until, they ran low on salt and now it's just all icy. If I buy Finn some boots, it won't snow again for years (which might be a good move). Poor Finn doesn't have a playmate except for me.  He reminds me of a 2 year old --what can we do now??? He sits there and barks at me! I hadn't thought of snowballs or water bottles LOL Yesterday he tried to run for a bit but my poor boy ended up so sore I had to give him drugs.  Drugs are better than snowballs or empty water bottles!  He blissfully nodded off to sleep. Today I discovered something!  My basement! Seriously! Why did I not think of this before?  Because I hate the basement!  I forget it's there.  It's big and empty…and full of cobwebs. This weekend I'm going to put on a hazmat suit and clean the basement.  Finn will have a new place to run around inside. For sure, it won't snow again when I'm done. Thanks for letting me vent too.      

[Laurie, Fudge, and Vern]

Donna, LOL about the plastic water bottle....at least it was empty :) I went to the movies. It was wonderful. I hope you get a break in your weather soon. I am sure by the end of the week with the higher temps. I will be complaining about mud :)

F, It just goes to show that you put a lot of thought into your replies :)

Camilla, LOL...you need to team up with Hayley on the weekends. Thank you about the photos. You have been here..judge for yourself :) LOL

[Camilla and Darwin]

Ha ha ha, this was a favorite of mine! I think you must lead one of the craziest most entertaining lives ever! Your photos of the dogs keep getting cuter and cuter too. I think that we are experiencing this type of thing at our house to, except it's Darwin and Jacob putting up with me. I'm constantly like "I'm bored, can we go to Target? Can we go see a movie? Can we fly to California? Why aren't you two entertaining me???"

[F, Calla & Luca]

Ha Donna, I always write a blog in response to Laurie's blogs and then laugh at myself.

[Donna K & Quincy]

Laurie, Last week I couldn't have said I feel your pain but this week, oh boy, do I feel your pain. I started a really long reply and realized I was writing a blog in response to your blog so I'll save that for later. I'll just say for the moment that throwing an empty plastic water bottle at your dog is probably not a part of an accepted training method either. A snowball would have come in really handy. :>)  I really hope things get better for you soon, for us, there is no end in sight as far as rotten weather is concerned. Enjoy your six hours, put your feet up and don't do a damned thing.

[F, Calla & Luca]

Yes tropical weather, 40s to 50s coming. Hooray.

[Laurie, Fudge, and Vern]

Lynda, That does sound lovely....a long train ride with a book :) Peaceful and nice!! Glad you had such a good time.

Lonnie, That sounds wonderful :)

F, Well, after all of that, I do feel better :) I can at least get out of my house and down the driveway. I even went to a movie today. Life is good again. I like my dogs again :) It is supposed to be almost 60 here on Friday. I can't wait. I hope you get some warm weather too. I am glad you are sleeping fine. I am playing musical rooms if John starts snoring. LOL

[F, Calla & Luca]

You have such an easy life. I can't get around to the side of my house to try to do a bungee cord fix where the fence is down. Luckily the deer seem to be either trained not to go there or they can't get around either. I did see Luca on that side of the house but he probably had his nose or mind elsewhere. Each exit from the house is a debate about which door will lead to less peril. The garage can get you from two directions, the deadly icicles above and the sheet of ice below. I only go out that way in the car. Maneuvering the car to get out of the driveway makes luge and bobsled runs look easy. Some doors got stuck for a while.
We have tried different strip malls and parking lots on a rotating basis. Which is partially covered and may have less salt? Where can we buy a treat for a desperate woman? Where did I lose my glove, but that's a long story. Today we encountered some gravelly, cinders stuff cause everyone has run out of salt due to an archaic federal law. I have no dog sitter. The only good news is we have all been sleeping fine, it's a great escape. OK I'm done : )