Dog people

There are dog people, and then there are the rest.  My brother, my son-in-law, and my daughter are dog people.  We can easily be distinguished from the rest of the world by our homes, and I don't mean the rousing greeting offered by our hairy pals.

Our houses are different.  From the minute you step into my house via the front door, you notice two dog beds placed around the entrance, one of which is in a huge dog crate--Lusso and TootSweet vie for crate space, since TootSweet loves a crate.  It doesn't matter to me that these are the first things people notice.  The beds are only moved if we are having some kind of major event with a cast of thousands, such as Beto's birthday party, mainly to protect the dogs, not the guests.

Sometimes our houses smell, too, although not often--usually only when a wet dog has come in from outdoors. 

In the kitchen, under the bar/countertop, two sets of raised bowls for food and water and two bins for dogfood grace the area.  As a dog person, I don't find anything repulsive in sharing my kitchen with my four-legged friends.  The bowls and the bins are kept clean (no mean feat with a Spinone) and the dogs like to eat breakfast when we are having coffee. 

And of course, the permanent presence of four-footed friends who are thrilled to see you.

I have come to understand how some people in my family, whose names will forever remain unmentioned because I love them in spite of their failings, have difficulty dealing with a Spinone puppy that drools occasionally; I can understand that it isn't the greatest experience to get soaked even if the puppy is looking at you with adoration.  But it irritates me anyway.  I am willing to crate the puppy under these circumstances (although I am going to use a trainer to see if I can get him to calm down when visitors come and obey in spite of being mindlessly ecstatic), but it irritates me.  I was a dog in a former life (some would say I still am...) and somehow can't imagine life in an empty house--empty, as in occupied solely by humans.

Dog people are not elegant.  Those pictures you may have seen showing a highly fashionable lovely young woman walking down a Paris street with a show-clipped, perfectly groomed poodle at the end of a leash are a sham.  No one like that would ever go on poop patrol in the back yard, recovering Tootsie Rolls with two plastic bags, one for your hand and the other as a receptacle. Dog people have dirty back seats in their vehicles, we wear jeans and grungy hats, and our clothes are often covered with dog hair seconds after putting them on.  Only a dog person, in fact, would take a shower with her dog in order to relieve his itching skin.

And it isn't thinking a dog is a person that is so entrancing; that is just neurosis and people like that need professional help or perhaps they should just get a life.  It is sharing one's days with a different species that is so much fun, a species that retains the ability to have fun and to play, to feel, to communicate.

Maybe it isn't true that there are dog people and then the others; there are animal people and the others.  Even though my very dearest and most beloved friend is one of those "others", I don't understand her when it comes to animals.  Doubtless she feels the same way about me when she sees me dash around the back yard with Lusso and TootSweet, when she sees them eat in my kitchen or sleep inside my house.  Hey, my immune system can take it!  So can yours, that isn't really the problem or the difference. 

If I am to be totally honest, I think non-animal people have a part of their souls missing.  But then, that's just my opinion.

Kind of a red-letter day...

After weeks and weeks of a tiredness seeped into the bone, and after months of being sick to the point of vomiting at the idea of going back yet again to see my rheumatologist (supposedly every three months, but I hadn't seen him in almost a year), I went.  Told him I got up in the morning wishing it was night and time to go back to bed, so he gave me a muscle relaxant that has enabled me to sleep and not feel like the aftermath of some kind of train wreck when I get up.

The upshot is that I can now take both dogs out most mornings for a nice 5k walk/trot (I walk, they trot), and we manage to trot, all of us, about two kilometers. 

Lusso is growing up to be the sweetest dog on the face of the earth, although not everyone enjoys his worshipful, pink-nosed, drooling attention.  He doesn't drool all the time, but his beard soaks up water when he drinks and spreads it around the floor, your lap, legs, and shoes. 

The only problem we have with him is his allergy to flea bites.  Systemic flea treatment for both dogs means fleas don't reproduce in the house, but it can't keep fleas off the dog if they are picked up from the birds, 'possums, and stray cats that enter the yard.

It has been an incredible amount of work; Lusso needs to be bathed with a soothing shampoo that reduces his need to scratch.  Otherwise he might have to have cortisone, which has potentially severe side effects over time.  So I opt for the bath deal.  Lusso finally will get into the tub I have in the laundry room with a modicum of cooperation, but once in, he is resigned.  I have a telephone-type shower head that makes things easier, but this weekend we were at the quinta, which has no tub of any kind at all, not even a tin washtub.  The dogs adore the quinta because they can run and run forever, find fascinating smells, hunt to their hearts' content--and Lusso gets dirtier than any dog I have ever seen or heard of. 

Not only that, after his bath and before he hits the hunting trail at the quinta, he has to be sprinkled with flea powder in an effort to keep fleas off him, or sprayed with cedar oil which acts as a repellent. 

When we were ready to think about coming back to town, Lusso was so dirty that it was unthinkable getting him into the car.  So, in a definite first for me, I took a shower with my dog.  Lusso is a water retriever, and he doesn't hate the water even though I have yet to get him into the swimming pool, so the shower was a success and I managed to get him thoroughly clean with his special shampoo.  Not only that, it was SO much easier getting him into the shower than over the edge of the laundry room tub.  Nevertheless, it isn't something I plan to do routinely.  There is something slightly disconcerting about standing naked under the shower with a wet dog watching you.  Makes you feel kinda fat, flabby, drooping, and very out of shape...