...are when I'm sick. I'm a big baby.
Every once in a blue moon, my sciatic nerve get irritated and I'm just no good. I wouldn't say that it's a chronic problem, as the last time I suffered an episode was about 13 years ago. The damn nerve is acting up again and like the last time, there was no heavy lifting involved. The last time I tossed a newspaper into the back of my SUV; this time, I tossed a piece of cardboard into the back of my baby brother's SUV. The last time, it really hurt; this time it did too - it is the kind of pain that makes you nauseaus. The last time I rested and did stretching exercies, which I've been doing now. Ada, my beloved German Shorthaired Pointer, cuddled next to me the last time. This time, I'm all alone.
I miss having a dog. I miss the comfort. I miss the reassurance they return. How do they do that?
...and Monroe, Dietrich and DiMaggio...
This greyhound found right here on Dogtime.Com's categories menu to the left [see Home & Daycare] gives good face.
Garbo, if you ask me.
...for a pretty face. Even if [sigh] it is on a terrier.
And with all pretty faces, there's a bit of madness, isn't there?
Meet Rex. He's a bit of a Shia LeBeouf, isn't he?
When I was in my twenties, I had a friend who's Jack Russell terriers (she had 2) ganged up on a puppy she introduced and killed the poor thing. Tore it to shreds, practically. We were all shocked. Until this pair came into our lives, all we knew about the breed was that it was that cute pooch on Frazier. For a time the friend was the bomb - not only was she rich and thin - she had the dog of the moment. In stereo. But then...the incident.
Needless to say the collective gasp was immediately followed the uninanimously newfound interest in the Visla. Previously dog-only persons were considering cats.
I hadn't thought much about the breed, really, until I moved to New York where my good friend, Georgina, mothers a pair of Jacks...well, Jills really, Maggie and Indie. I adore Indie - she's a bloodhound in a terrier's body if you ask me. She's an independent, sleepy sort who is content to snooze and look up every now and then. Maggie, on the other hand, as her mother put it in her most proper Aussie accent, is "the sort a sheep farmer puts down, isn't she?" Horrible. Maggie attacks anything that moves, me included. Even though she lives in a swanky pad in Chelsea, I'm always hesitatant to dog sit the girls when Georgi goes away which is often.
This bears repeating. I am a single male who thinks twice about dog sitting 25 pounds of pooch who live in a fab crib in the middle of Chelsea because of Maggie, the crazed Jack Russell.
Rex is cute though. I'm gonna arrange with the shelter for an outing to see just how crazy his pretty is. I'm wearing boots to be safe.
...is my obsession as of late. Or maybe it's the other way around. He seems to like me, this magnificent beast in a...cage.
What does that do to a dog?
Just what kind of emotional damage has this guy suffered? (Emotional nothing - Just thinking about life in a cage makes my back, neck and wrists ache.) And is it permanent? I had a friend who would only adopt mature (5+ years), severely abused dogs hoping beyond hope she'd rehabilitate them, but could never get them past house training nevermind, in one case, biting.
I also have a human friend who calls the half-way house "boyfriend store." In fact, the father of her bundle of joy spent much of the baby's childhood behind bars. I mention this because maybe there is a divine happiness that redeems any strife that accompanies adopting a previously caged dog.
I dunno. He's mad cute and friendly. But looks aren't everything - certainly not to dogs. (Hmmm...maybe I should ease up on the weight training and have a slice of velvet cake or three.)
Shepherd indeed.
...meaning I've been eye-ing strays.
Marine Drive here on the island is the main north-to-south artery. Its southern-most spot is where Magellan landed on March 5, 1521, not far from where I grew up. As the road stretches northward on the west, it winds across the verdant valleys of the southern villages through the marshes of the central coast never venturing far from the seaside. In the north, it traverses the villages built on the flatness that was once a part of a great reef.
Marine Drive never quite skirts the island's edge on the north and eastern shores; in fact, as a tail between a dog's hindlegs, it sheepishly loops itself southward avoiding what most would argue might be a natural thing in the realm of road building - to hug the clifflines. (You know, if they did it on the Amalfi Coast...) I supppose the bravest Marines must know when death is not part of the adventure they call life and so we'll forgive the drive's anticlimatic genuflection to the Marianas Trench. Like something from both outer and deep space, it looms precariously close to this rocky coast, insinuating its unchallenged blue-black depth. It is much deeper than Everest is high and on the surface is, quite simply, just damn scary. No person or road, however well he, she or it might be travelled, wants to get too close to that part of our ocean.
Neither do stray dogs. No regular supply of food to forage in these parts.
The strays I am speaking of are west-end dogs. There must be a strain that got to the island that is part fox - these are really foxy guys. I think maybe I'll take a run along Marine Drive sometime soon to check them out, see if I get some petting action.
You know, it worked on the Amalfi coast once.
