Notes of a Nervous Harpist

Suzy

Find yourself a dog short? Go to readlarrypowell.com. He'll be writing soon about this dog, Suzy, who needs a home.

Hambone in Autumn

I ask you: what is better than a big old black dog on a red sofa?

The Faithful Cocker

Here is what I have waiting for me when I get home. He's not the only one, but he's the lap dog.

Momo Scratches

This is Cosmo, who loves and loves to be loved. And a little lettuce or a carrot now and then is also appreciated. His new trick is to go over to the laser printer that sits under the computer desk and extract a warm piece of printed paper from the tray. He then finds a quiet corner to enjoy a good chew. We found him about eight years ago wandering on a busy 6-lane city loop road, headed for Interstate 35 just down the hill. We opened the door of the car, said, "Come on!" and he jumped in. He came into our house as a perfect gentleman and remains to this day. Now why would anyone throw away a perfectly good dog?

Bizzy

I have been off posting this week. I'm having some insomnia at night, then running 80 miles an hour through the work day, and coming home and collapsing into near coma for about an hour, then up until 1 or 2 or 3 in the morning and back up at 6 or 7 to go to work.

Anyway, one thing I did do was to mail off to Lion Brand Yarn Company my entry in a contest to design something using Lion Boucle and Lion Fun Fur. So of course you know me, I sent in a pattern for fancy dog collars. Here is Rosie wearing one of the samples I made. She's got her blue contact lenses in to match the collar...

Generally unassuming, pretty far down in the household pack order, Rosie livens up and goes all Cheryl Tiegs on you when you put a fancy collar on her.

This is the little girl that Au Contraire found in the park when the mange ridden little thing dived into some guy's Corvette looking for a safe haven. The guy was horrified, but Au Contraire knows a hefty vet bill when he sees it, so he snapped her up. And here she is years later: fat and happy and quite the poseur.

Dog Days of Summer: AC Helper

It hit 100 degrees again here today, and 100 degree days are scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday, too.

This brings to mind some questions:

Is your air conditioner just too efficient? Do you find that you are NOT sweating as much as you like? Which is higher: your mortgage payment or your electric bill? Can you remember the definition to these words: cool, chilly, comfortable?

No?

Oh, well, then you don't need our patent-pending device: Annie the AC Helper.

She is on call to cover air conditioning vents twenty four hours a day. She will also snuggle up to wall vents near the floor, but floor vents are her speciality.

We have not tried her out on any vents near the ceiling or on the ceiling, because we do not have any of those in our house -- only return air vents, and she does not see the point in wasting her time and insulating talents on those.

She specializes, and that's probably why she won the TXU (Texas Electric Utility) AC Helper of the Month Award for August. She has Reddy Kilowatt on speed dial.

Well, if it gets too cool in your house, call us.

We'll miss her, but you'll never need to suffer through a cool house in the summer again.

D.A.W.G.

Today we went to Fort Worth's Will Rogers Coliseum Watt Arena for the (D)allas (A)gility (W)orking (G)roup regionals. There were great dogs there from all over the southwest. This is not an AKC outfit, so some of them were mixed breeds. Love to see that.

Important Information: Noah's Wish

These folks at Noah's Wish are no doubt busy working the hurricane struck areas now:

http://www.noahswish.org

It's a great group. Sometimes they conduct training around the country. They'll be in Texas next February.

Martha: It's a Good Thing

So far, I cannot find anything to post today that rises above the level of Martha, a lab mix pup at the Forney Road Animal Shelter in Dallas. (Forney Road is a city shelter, by the way, and that means they kill the ones they can't adopt out.)

You can see Martha's Petfinder info here.

It's not just that this dog is named Martha, which is also my name, but she has a serious face and beautiful markings, and does not deserve the needle or the gas box, you know?

Hey! Go get Martha! Here's a map.

Please do not make me go get her! I have eight other dogs!

R.I.P. Vera

Death visited our house early this morning and today he chose a small, ancient Chihuahua mix. Things may have been getting too quiet in heaven, or maybe there were killer postmen slipping through the gates occasionally. I'll guarantee you it's not quiet there any longer.

Her name was Belle Star Carmelita del Vera Cruz, but we called her "Hush, Vera!" 

She came to us a decade ago as an adult dog of 6 or 7 who had been discarded in a suburban town and rescued by a humane society. They called her Star. Right away we could see that she was more of a Vera.

She was the sentinel, the choir director of barking, and a bit of a correctional officer for the younger dogs and the cats. Once, she stuck her head under a sofa to try to correct the Maine Coon cat Lucy and got a scratched cornea for her trouble. Theirs was an uneasy relationship thereafter. And an educational note here for you: Chihuahuas do not like eye drops.

Not long after we got her, she began to mysteriously put on weight, despite being served exactly the same amount of food every day. We had to endure cries of "What are you doing to this dog?" from our humane society friends. But we weren't doing anything and she was getting fatter and fatter. (Photo at left is Vera in her fat period while doing a publicity shot with dad, Au Contraire. Photo by Jonnie England, a luminous, lovely Democrat who endorses nothing on this blog, understand?)

Then one day we heard her barking indignantly from the back of the house. She was trapped in the sun room where the cats' food and facilities are kept. There's a set of iron "burglar bar" doors that separate the room from the rest of the house. Vera had been slipping through the bars of the door and partaking of the cat food. On that day, she had reached exactly the point where she was too fat to fit back through the burglar bar openings and get back into the house, and it was her bad luck to be caught on the wrong side of the door. Busted!

Even after she lost that weight, I don't think she ever went through those burglar bars again. That was too humiliating. Although this summer she did venture through similar burglar bar doors that lead from the back yard to the garage. She was visiting Johnny Domino, the foster dog who was having his heartworm treatment cage rest in our garage. By this time, she was ancient and nearly toothless but always the coquette. He was charmed.

There were years and years when, too chubby to jump, she yapped until you lifted her onto the bed. In the last couple of years she had dropped the weight and was quite trim. But sometimes she still thought she ought to be lifted rather than jumping, just in case anyone was taking her cooperation and efforts for granted.

You can see from these other pictures that (a) she didn't mind napping with a giant, overgrown cat, and (b) she was teaching our pup Annie to watch for the mailman/suspected serial killer who visits our house every afternoon. The mailman picture was taken only recently, and it makes me wonder if Vera was grooming Annie to take over mailman duty. 

I doubt Annie will be up to it, at least not with Vera's vigilant flair. She yipped at every movement in the house, real or imagined, and her specialty was a firm belief in the doorbell sounds that occasionally emanated from the television set. Those would really set her off.

She would bark her head off at anyone approaching the house and then be the first one up in their laps, a worshipful, angelic, silent movie star look on her face as she burrowed in and unleashed her mighty kiss-up act upon the unsuspecting guest. She seldom minded instructions. She was exasperating, touchy and alarmist. She was irresistable at all times.

Well, old girl, it's going to be quiet around our house. One voice missing, no silky big ears to pause and rub, one less set of paws and nails tapping around on the floor. Dad will have to teach another one of the dogs to growl when he says, "Richard Nixon," but I doubt any of them will be able to do it with the grave, sinister seriousness with which Vera infused that particular growl.

She was another example of all the interesting possibilities that people miss out on when they throw away a perfectly good dog.

Good girl, Vera.