Heart Like a Dog

The Good, the Bad, and the Oh My God of living with dogs!

Murphy’s Law of Dog Walking

By

Murphy’s law is an adage or epigram that is typically stated as: Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. Source

I observe a lot of things when I’m out walking my dogs. Truly if you read this blog at all, you know our walks are usually pretty entertaining.

Some general things I observe are what I like to refer to as, “The Murphy’s Law of Dog Walking.”

Sometimes ya just gotta laugh.

Sometimes ya just gotta laugh.

Your dog will more than likely go where no man has gone before – example: if they can squish themselves under a bush or between two rocks, yup, that’s the place to do their ‘doody.’ (Yeah thanks, and I thought squeezing into some dressing rooms was hard.)

The softest, loosest poop will be in the yard with the longest grass, making it next to impossible to remove from your neighbor’s lawn without removing a good bit of their grass. (You’re welcome for trimming that bit of yard you lazy ass.)

You don’t look at your dog before bending down to scoop and wind up with a mouth or face full of dirt and leaves, when they decide to ‘cover’ it up. If it’s your lucky day, there’s no poop, rocks or sticks in it.

The day you don’t see that squirrel? Your dog will, requiring a trip to the emergency room to have your dislocated shoulder painfully snapped back in place. (Where did ALL the damn squirrels come from anyway?) A few years back we had practically no squirrels at all, now our neighborhood looks like there’s a fire sale at the peanut factory. You better run, Squirrel.

That light and gentle rain that began when you first started your walk, will turn into a deluge when and only when, you’re at the half-way mark of your walk. Shoulda grabbed a hat.

Trying to swat bugs with a bag of dog shit in your hand will result with you knocking yourself in the head or face with said bag. (Thank dog for lavender scented bags.)

You will walk past house after house and your dog will decide to poop at the only house where the owner is outside. Or they will stop to squat, right as the person opens their door to step outside. “Hi, how you doing? I’ll just pick this up and be on my way.”

That one morning you decide to walk on the side of the street with the e-fence dog, that is the day that the door opens and the dog comes charging out at you. Well that picked up my heart rate, probably burned 100 calories right there.

I’m sure there’s more and I’ll jot them down as I think of them. What about you, do you have any Murphy’s Laws of Dog Walking to add?

What the Hell Was That?

By

I’m going to tell you three things straight up:

  1. This post is not about dogs, although they do have cameo roles in the story I’m about to tell you.
  2. I will leave you hanging at the end of this post. Only because:
  3. I will tell you what the hell it was in Follow-Up Friday’s post. There will be a prize (a bag of treats) for the person who guesses correctly just exactly, What the Hell it was. (Hang with me, you’ll understand shortly.)
Wait? WHAT? That's a treat right there! A Frankenwoofer by JONES!

I hope it doesn’t take her as long to tell this story as it took her to let me have this Jones Frankenwoofer.

Hubby was out of town this past weekend. He left on Thursday and returned Sunday evening. I never sleep GREAT when he’s gone, I always worry about someone breaking in. SO, I sleep with my pepper blaster on my nightstand and put a tea kettle in front of the door. (Don’t judge.) My thought is this, if someone tries to get in they will knock the tea kettle with the door, which will wake me up enough to shoot them in the face with my pepper blaster and then Delilah can eat them. Perfectly sensible, right?

Well Saturday night Sampson didn’t come to bed. Which meant I couldn’t booby trap my door. Despite this, I fell asleep and slept fairly well until about 2:30. Around that time my bladder intruded into my sleep suggesting I might want to get up and make a trip to the bathroom.

Sometimes this happens and I ignore the bladder, but not this night. This night I appeased my bladder and got up to empty it.

I climbed back in bed, bleary eyed, ready to get my sleep on. I flipped this way and turned that way to get comfortable and then I was startled by a flash just above my curtain. You know when you’re using the flash on your camera and you get that quick little flash, just before it blinds you? Yeah that one. Well that’s what it looked like.

You’re dreaming, I told myself staring at the window.

Flash!

There it was again.

I swiveled my head around to check the shelves on the other side of the room, thinking there might be something up there that was causing it.

Nothing.

Whip my head back around and stare intently at the windows.

Flash!

Shit, I think the aliens are here for our cavity probe, I whispered to Delilah, who never moved.

I got up and cautiously approached the window.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I’m not one to just open my curtains and peer out into the night. I have this fear of something/someone peering back at me. Granted I live in a raised-ranch, but there is a small porch outside my room, it’s unlikely, but not inconceivable that someone who was determined COULD manage to get up on that porch. Which is why I hesitated briefly.

I crept up to the window and carefully grasped one side of each curtain and slowly put one eye to the crack and gently pulled.

Nothing. No eyes peering back at me (thank Dog!) No alien spaceship shining a light in my window or trying to attract my attention by flashing me.

I let my breath out, and climbed back in bed.

I stared again at the window.

Nothing.

You’re still half-asleep, I assured myself as I once again started to close my eyes.

And Flash! There it was again, but this time it was on the chair next to the nightstand.

I grabbed my cell phone, activating the flashlight quickly and trained the light on the chair.

I didn’t see anything.

Someone’s fucking with me, I thought to myself, trying to figure out if this was one of those times where I needed to vacate the house immediately. Because we all know in those damn horror movies, investigating this shit doesn’t work out for anyone but the homicidal maniac.

I closed the flashlight and lay there staring at the chair.

FLASH! There it was again.

Again I grabbed the cell phone and using the flashlight feature, I once again inspected the chair.

And that’s when I saw it.

And this is where I leave you.

Yeah, so this is the cliff hanger portion. What do you think I saw? Leave your answer in the comments and whoever guesses correctly will win a bag of treats. These treats are something I recently found, they are made locally and my guys love them.

If there is more than one correct guess, I will put all correct guesses into a drawing using random.org and pull a winner. All guesses must be received by 9:00 PM eastern standard time Thursday, July 14, 2016.

Friday, July 15, 2016 I will reveal the answer to what the hell was flashing in my bedroom.

Throwback Thursday – Lessons Learned

By

This post was originally published six months into my blogging career.  Looking back I can see I had already started trying to make the blog a humorous one.

To set the background, we had spent the weekend at my sister’s house in New Hampshire.  Usually we stay in my sister’s spare room, but in this instance she had a friend staying with her, so my sister and brother-in-law slept on the bunks in the basement, while Hubby and I stayed in their room.

Apparently there were adjustments all around. 😀

Life is about learning. I like to think I learn something new every day. You don’t always know where the lesson will come from, but it comes none-the-less. Sometimes it comes from the least likely source. I learned some fairly important lessons this weekend, which I would like to share here tonight.

Dogs and Food – A dog who will ignore his kibble and refuse to eat while on vacation approaches raw food differently. He will eat raw food on someone’s deck or even on an access road at a rest area. Lesson learned from Sampson Stone-Golden Lab.

Some things are worth burning your tongue for (like bacon grease.) Lesson learned from Delilah Stone-Chocolate Lab.

Dogs trying new things – A dog that runs an agility course like a champ will refuse to use a ramp outside a doggie door. If you try to force the dog down the ramp by tugging her, you will slip on a dead mouse and slide down the ramp on your ass. Lesson learned from Delilah Stone.

Dogs and sleeping – Dogs know where their beds are; even if their parents have given up their bed for guests, they want to sleep in their bed. Lesson learned from Gordon Kelly-Golden Retriever and J.D. Kelly-Jack Russell Terrier.

If you refuse to let a dog sleep in their bed, they will wait you out in the hall outside the bedroom door, causing you to trip when you get up in the night to use the bathroom. Lesson learned from Gordon Kelly.

When there are dogs sleeping outside your bedroom door; your dogs will not sleep. Lesson learned from Sampson and Delilah Stone.

Dogs that haven’t slept for three nights….

 

delilah-eyemask-July

 

Golden Labrador eye mask

Like to be pampered.

Lesson learned.

When you’ve been blogging for almost seven years, you tend to forget certain things. I’ve been enjoying going through posts for Throw-back Thursday. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I did.

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...