Name Tags

The other day I noticed myself doing something odd. Before putting away a fresh box of Muzzy's heart worm preventative, I found myself writing her name on the box with a green Sharpie. Next, I looked at the calendar and saw that the reminder sticker also was marked "M," as opposed to "R" for Roma. As you know, Roma shuffled off this mortal coil, leaving Muzzy an "only dog" and me an only-dog owner, eight months ago, but there are reminders of her everywhere. Her name is still on her food bucket. Her meds haven't expired and still sit in the cupboard. Her leash still hangs by the door. I feel weird about using it to walk the Muzz. Because it's not a spare; it's Roma's.

While I was on vacation in Maine, Roma appeared in a dream. She just walked through a door, and I leaned over and thumped her gently on her rib cage, feeling a surge of joy. "You came back!" was my first thought. The next was, "Oh, wait . . ."  The dream continued, but that moment with Roma is the only part I remember. Frankie's Diane says that next time Roma appears in my dreams, I need to tell her that it's okay to move on, so that she can "move on and come back for real." Roma never needed me to tell her anything important. I think she'll figure out how and when—and if—she wants to return to a plane of existence that is home to so many idiots. Since then, though, I've been thinking that I see her around the house. The big yellow bag of dog food in the kitchen corner has been making me do a double-take every time I walk by it.  So has that nightgown hanging on the bedroom doorknob. I know that Roma is not coming back, certainly not in the same form in which she left. At the same time, though, I'll continue to write Muzzy's name on Muzzy's stuff—because I am pretty sure that we won't be on our own forever. Someone else is bound to come along. And when he or she does, I have a red Sharpie for writing a new name on stuff.
-z

More Muzzy Movie

Action! I said "Action!" Alas, there's not much going on in this video of a dramatic post-rainstorm sky over Dog Park and Muzzy grazing. The fun—for me—was all in production.  My camera's audio recorder is shot, and it makes every video sound like a bowl of cereal after the milk hits it. So for this clip (52 seconds, for those of you who are in a hurry), I reconstructed an ambient sound track. I scavenged the sound library on my computer and fiddled with audio levels in order to recreate the aural delights of Dog Park. I think it sounds pretty authentic. Enjoy. -z

She Can't Hardly Contain Herself

Every afternoon, I take Muzzy for a short walk around the block before I feed her some dinner. It's usually pretty hot outside and there's nobody around, so I often let her walk off-leash. Lately, one of our neighbors has been out in her yard at the same time. Each time Muzzy sees this neighbor, she gallops up her, her tail spinning, as if this woman were her long-lost mama.  Muzzy soaks up some goo-goo talk then dashes back to the sidewalk, races past me, and, a few yards down, takes an enormous dump.

The first time this happened, the neighbor was amazed. She had gotten into her car and was driving past just as Muzzy was getting to work. The woman rolled down her window and said, "I didn't know I had that effect on her." Apparently it was quite a stimulating effect. I laughed it off at first. But this greet-n-poop dynamic has occurred twice in the past week. I'm getting kind of embarrassed about it. When I told the woman's daughter this story, she said, "That's okay. My mother has that effect on me, too."

The idea that certain people make other people want to poop is an old joke. In fact, I came across this anecdote in Lincoln, a biography of the U.S. President written by David Herbert Donald (Simon & Schuster, 1995). According to Donald, Lincoln liked to tell this story when there were no ladies in the room.

[Lincoln] recounted an anecdote he attributed to Colonel Ethan Allen, famed for his role in the American Revolution. Allegedly making a visit to England after the war, Allen found his hosts took great pleasure in ridiculing Americans, and George Washington in particular, and, to irritate their guest, hung a picture of the first President in the toilet. (In telling the story, Lincoln called it 'the Back House.') Allen announced that they had found a very appropriate place for the picture, because 'there is nothing that will Make an Englishman Shit so quick as the sight of Genl Washington.'"

It makes me smile to think that our sixteenth President liked to tell a story like that one, but Muzzy and I are definitely taking a new route on our afternoon walk for a while.
-z

A Song About Treats

Well, sort of. It's kind of a stretch to turn this song, performed by the Jerry Sires Band at Botticelli's earlier this month, into a song about dogs. The song could be sung from the point of view of a dog who wants its owner to "scratch my back and run your pretty fingers through my hair." Muzzy is all for that. There's also talk of behaving and treats, as you'll discover when you click below. Actually, the real connection to Dog Park is the band's able bass player, Dean (standing, center stage, not in cowboy hat or Hawaiian shirt), owner of Bindi, Muzzy's best dog park friend. Rock on, Dean! Enjoy. -z

Muzzy in the Movies

The right music can make even the most mundane video seem exciting. A case in point:




Enjoy. -z

Out of the Office

Muzzy and I will be away from our desks for the next little while. We'll start posting again after the 27th. Stay well and (try to) stay cool. -z

Muzzy's Secret Garden

Most of the flora at the Dog Park are past their prime and begging to be mowed. Muzzy, though, presides over a secret garden of sorts--our back yard. My approach to gardening is pretty haphazard. I like the laissez-faire approach. Half the things I've planted have died, but if a volunteer sunflower or tomato or lemon balm springs to life in an uncultivated spot, I leave it be. The exception: The neighbor's invasive bamboo. I whack it with a shovel, but we are still under siege.

The previous owner of my house planted wild garlic. I used to fight it. Now I admire its big puffy heads. Fennel grows behind it. I only saw a handful of monarch butterfly caterpillars munching on the fennel this year. Fennel is a monarch's favorite snack.

This sand plum tree is producing fruit for the first time, after seven years in my front yard. Likewise, the peach tree that grew up from a discarded HEB peach pit is weighed down with green fuzzy fruits. Muzzy is doing her best to keep the squirrels from eating them before they are ripe.

Sand plums are too tiny and sour to eat fresh. They need to be made into jelly. See my friend Colleen's thoughts about making sand plum jam here . (My trees are from her yard.)

This winter was terrible for all the prickly pear cactus plants in Austin, but I am all amazement at these blooms. This is the first time the one in my yard has actually flowered. This plant must be ancient. (When I moved into the house, it was the only thing planted in the backyard.)  My wildflower book says that prickly pears rarely grow taller than 14 inches. Mine is taller than I am (63," on a good day).

The tomato plants that I bought and put in the ground are not particularly fecund  this year. Yet I've got volunteers all around the yard. They sprang up from my compost pile.

A future zucchini. The heat is already making my cucumber and zucchini plants wilt midday. If we don't get rain soon, I may have to give up on these water-hogging vegetables. But the basil plants are inches high already (started from seed just a month ago). It will be a good year for pesto, if for nothing else.

Bon appetit. -z

Red State Update: Notes from Muzzy's Homeland

There are still times when I wonder what is wrong with Muzzy; for example, the days when she horks up undigestible grackle feathers or gnaws for hours on the recently recovered chuck-it ball that had been decomposing under the back porch for more than a year. And then, I remember, she is from Oklahoma, the land where dinosaurs still roam the earth. Don't believe me?

Michael, uncle to our young friend Lydia and brother to Metacranky Colleen, sent us these photos of a creature from the land that time forgot. Sheesh. Uncle Michael spends busy days fixing broken machinery, hauling cattle, and driving to the dump but still has time to e-mail us scary pictures. (UM says that his new friend really stinks, too.) Thanks for the red state update, Michael!

-z

Muzzy: An Unguarded Moment

My Muzzy learned a lot of things from old Roma, like begging for treats and chasing cats, but she never really picked up on Roma's superior guard-dog skills. Even deaf and half blind, Roma knew whenever someone walked by the house day or night and made sure I heard about it. Muzzy, on the other hand, tends to only bark when a small, unarmed creature is skittering around the yard at night. I always said, "Great, you saved me from the possum, but what about the man with the knife?" Well, this morning Muzzy proved herself an able alarmist when a man, without a knife but still quite big and scary, did try to get into our house at 5:30 in the morning. 

Muzzy had charged down the hall and barked in her deepest voice. I tried to ignore her, assuming the problem was a cat or a possum, until I heard the distinctive scraping-squeaking noise of my screen doors--both of them. I flipped on all the lights and when I pulled back the curtain on my carport door, there was a strange man in a dark t-shirt leaning into my door, telling me to let him in. The carport light was behind him, I only saw that he was enormous—he filled the entire doorframe—and muscular. The only thing between us, really, was a thin pane of window glass. I was so frightened that I could not actually make my lips form words--only choke out sounds--like in my worst nightmares. I sounded deranged, and by this time, the Muzz was hovering in the living room, utterly silent. No help at all! Finally, adrenalin helped me find my angry Dog Park voice, the one I use to scream at Crazy Guy. "Go away!" "I don't know you!" "I am calling the police." The guy's response? "Why?" 

I did call 911, and the dispatcher was unimpressed by my plea for help. She asked me a series of questions that helped me realize that the guy was drunk. She promised to send someone and, before hanging up, told me to call back if the guy actually got into the house or, if he went away, to watch and see what direction he went. Are you kidding me? The guy started moving back and forth between my front and my carport doors, banging on each and rattling the knobs. "Why are you such a tree hugger? You shouldn't be a tree hugger. I need to talk to you!" he said, unfazed by my yelling. (I'm still hoarse.) Finally, after ten long minutes, the guy went away. 

A cop showed up an hour later, after daylight. He did most of the talking. He told me that the law was a gray area here. At most, had the guy been apprehended, he might have been charged with public intoxication or a trespassing--both usually dismissed. What's more, he said, the guy probably had no bad intentions. He was just drunk and confused. It happens in a town with college students. Apparently, it is not against the law for great big dudes to scare the shit out of tiny, single, middle-aged women asleep in their beds. The cop also suggested a more reliable alarm system than my dog. The conversation was deeply unsatisfying. The officer did tell me, however, to call the police if the guy were still hanging around the neighborhood. Cut to 20 minutes later . . . 

Muzzy and I were taking our morning walk, and lo', there was the Dude, the guy who terrorized me in my own home, snoring on his back in a neighbor's driveway. My impulse was to kick him or to leave a steaming bag of dog poo on his chest, but I took the high road. I decided to bust him properly. I called 311 this time, and I talked to two concerned dispatchers. Ultimately four cops arrived in two cars. Muzzy, again, stood mutely by my side as we watched the men in blue deal with the still-drunk Dude. "You have a good day, ma'am," said one of the cops to me as they scraped Dude up off the curb. I would try, and knowing that the Dude would have a pretty shitty day might help make that happen. 

Lock your doors! Be careful out there! -z

Saturday in the Park with Lydia

Here are some photos from a Saturday jaunt through Dog "Park" with my young friend Lydia, who just turned 13. Happy Birthday, Lydia. (You can read about Lydia's exploits with her Mama and younger sister  on their Oklahoma ranch here, or click on the Cranky Girls' Farm link in the Blogs I Follow sidebar to your right.) Lydia took all the photos you see here today.

                                                                                    Moo!

Come on. All together now, AWWWW!

Thanks, Lydia, for your great photos and for putting the blog together today! -z

Muzzy in Bluebonnets: The Movie

Hi, all. Please indulge me. Below is my first effort at movie-making. I used my new Mac to paste together photos of Muzzy in bluebonnets, along with a snippet of video. The "movie" lasts only a minute and a half, but at worst you can close your eyes and listen to Glenn Gould playing Scarlatti, which is always a treat. The bluebonnets won't last forever, but thanks to the power of YouTube, this little slideshow will dwell eternally on the Internet. Enjoy. -z

Why We Still Love Texas

-z

The Frozen North: Tony Update

Everybody is complaining about the cold today and rightly so, but here are a few pictures to help put our Texas weather into perspective—photos of our friend Tony, who moved with Sarah only a week ago to Omaha, Nebraska. It's Tony's first experience of snow. Here in Texas, we have only one word for snow, and it's not printable in a family blog.

It is easier to find a tennis ball in the snow, isn't it, Tony?

Stay warm everybody! Hey, Sarah. It's going to be 70 degrees tomorrow!

By the way, Muzzy had her tooth pulled yesterday. She's cranky but fine. She can't eat her regular food, and she was starved on the day of the surgery. The message is clear, "I have a gaping hole in my head, but I'm all right. Now feed me!" Then the thunderstorm rolled in last night, so big scary noises and then no Dog Park today. It has been a rough couple of days for the Muzz, but all will be well.
-z

She Feels My Pain

Last week was one of those weeks where things just kept going wrong. Sinks got plugged up, heads got bonked, paws got hurt, laundry hung out to dry got rained on. I actually had some work (though with killer deadlines), but for some mysterious reason, the fingers on one hand swelled up and turned itchy, painful, and blotchy like those fancy aubergines I saw at Central Market today. I went to doctors, frantically scribbling edits on prints-out while listening to BeeGees on overhead speakers in waiting rooms. (I guess "Staying Alive" is an appropriate tune for a doctor's office.) The doctors would examine my sausage-shaped fingers, wrinkle their brows, and say, "Huh. I have no idea what that is." And so on to the next specialist.

Since my fingers were barely working, I thought it might help to take apart my ancient computer's keyboard. One afternoon I gently pried off the keys and used a can of compressed air to blow out all the dog hair and dust.  Of course, in putting everything back together, I inadvertently reversed two keys, the s and the d. I thought I was going mad when I'd hit the apple + s keys to save and something else happened. And I was too busy to stop and fix the keys. I simply had to remind myself that s was d and d was s. I know what you're thinking. "What a sipdhit." It was really no different from the time I drove a crappy old Buick that had a clock so difficult to adjust that for six months of the year it was five minutes slow. After Daylight Savings Time kicked in, it was then 55 minutes fast. Or maybe it was the other way around. As if life isn't complicated enough.

Always sympathetic, Muzzy developed a sore paw, too. Her front right one--just like mine. I took her to the vet, who diagnosed a dislocated a toe and recommended pain meds and moderate levels of activity. At the same time, however, the vet also discovered that Muzzy has a broken tooth. It just so happens to be in the same place in her mouth as the tooth in mine that I need to have extracted. Estimated cost? Nearly $600 bucks. Same as mine. Good thing I'm working. Fingers don't fail me now.

They say that over time people grow to look like their dogs. I never was lovely and regal like my Roma. I'll never be as cute as the Muzz, who still sends the vet techs swooning, but I will feel her pain, and, unfortunately, she'll feel mine, too.
-z

And Now, For Something Completely Cute

Thanks, all, for your kind words and thoughtful gestures. I am really touched by your response to my Roma's passing. She was a good dog, and she had good friends at Dog Park. Muzzy has big paws to fill in her absence.

Now, we'd like to introduce a new member of the Dog Park club who has yet to make her debut there. Murphy is Doug's youngest Ridgeback, the third in his pack. Click on the video below to see how she participates in the reindeer games. Max is on the right, on the bed. Mesi is laying down the law.  Enjoy. -z

Ready for Their Close-Ups

I hope you will indulge me today. A sunny and cool New Year's Day offered an ideal opportunity to take some photos of the dogs and create some documentation parity. (I have boxes of photos of Roma; of Muzzy, alas, like any second child, I have very few shots.)

First, a proper head shot—

–which was obtained only by holding this object in the same hand as the camera (that's why her ears are a little cropped*):

Muzzy has some unusual markings on her head and feet. I like how the shadows play on them in these shots:

Did you notice how M's tail "sprouts" out of the back of her head. It looks like she has a little handle, like a mug or a teapot.

Her tail is irrepressible. Here it curves out of her ear.

When Muzzy was a puppy, I was amazed that she'd let me touch her paws. (Roma will never let anyone touch her feet.) I would sit on the floor and stroke them and tell her how tiny they were. Now she's got big ol' paws, as you can see. I still like to pat them.

And now for someone completely different—our Roma, scruffy but still regal.

Thanks for indulging me.
* For an interesting and revisionist take on Vincent Van Gogh and the myth of his severed ear, check out this recent article by Adam Gopnik in The New Yorker. 
-z

Muzzy's Train of Thought

Her name is Muzzy, and she's a siderodromophobic. It has taken me weeks to figure out why she acts restless and anxious in the wee early morning hours, when the rest of us are still asleep. For a couple of weeks, I assumed that the aimless moving around, the licking of her lips, and the yawning were the result of nausea caused by antibiotics. I got her medication and a new diet to deal with the nausea and the puking, but the roaming-and-licky-lips thing has continued. And then, this morning, I figured it out. She seemed so anxious during our morning walk, a usually happy time. She even jumped up, put her paws on my chest, and looked me right in the face, as if to say, "Don't you get it? It's the train!!!!" 


MoPac and the railroad tracks lie just across the street from us. And, indeed, this morning, as we walked a slow moving freight train was rumbling north along with the morning rush hour. The trains don't blow whistles along MoPac—at least not since neighborhood groups complained to the City for years. But even the quietest of the train emits a low but persistent rumble along with just enough vibrations to set the picture frames on our walls askew on a regular basis. I usually sleep right through the trains, but I do notice that I occasionally wake up in the middle of the night for no apparent reason. I get up and go to the bathroom, and it isn't until I get back in bed and try to fall asleep again that I become acutely aware of the low thrumming of a freight engine and the steady beat of hundreds of train wheels against the track. 


Poor Muzzy. I know that dogs are highly associative. She may have developed this fear on a morning when she woke up to puke and got tossed outside to do it. The discomfort of her tummy and her dislike of being outside alone in the dark while a noisy train was passing by may have imprinted her pea-sized brain as a fear of trains. What am I to do for her? Ear plugs? Doggie tranks? A house in a trainless zip code? She's going to have to deal with this, or we'll never get a good night's sleep.


For those of you who are interested, siderodromophobia is, technically, the fear of traveling on a train. Sidero comes from the Greek and means "iron." It is used in chemical names, such as sidero-calcite. Dromo, also from the Greek, means "running." (According to the online version of the Oxford English Dictionary, a dromomaniac is one who is crazy about running or roaming.) The word siderodromophobia was first used in 1897 in an early psychology book describing newly documented fears, such as arachniphobia—fear of spiders. Fear of railways is a particularly nineteenth century phenomenon, as the iron horse made its way across almost every continent in the world during that period. Why couldn't Muzzy become aviophobic—afraid of flying? Or coulrophobic—afraid of clowns. <>  I would be so on board with her then, and we could all get some sleep.
-z

To Justify the Ways of Dog to Man

A few weeks ago, my work required me to reread a short section of Milton's Paradise Lost. My objective was to explain it to high school students who are struggling readers—a daunting task. For those of you who can't remember senior English, Milton's epic poem tells the story of Satan's fall from grace and his temptation of Adam and Eve. It's a slog even for the most ardent admirer of English poetry. Milton's inverted syntax, lofty language, and now obscure allusions to biblical lore and ancient Greek and Roman myth makes the poem an elaborate wedding cake instead of a humble loaf of bread. To illustrate, here's the opening sentence:

Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit

Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste

Brought death into the world, and all our woe,

With loss of Eden, till one greater Man

Restore us, and regain the blissful seat, 

Sing, Heavenly Muse . . . 

Wha?? So you can see why I was less than confident of making this poem relevant to kids raised on Hillary Duff. I myself have never been a Milton fan. All the pro-Godness. He was a Puritan after all, and we all know that the Puritans were no fun. His first wife left him after a month. Later, after he went blind, his daughters by a second marriage did the heavy lifting of transcribing and revising his thousands of words. In women's lit classes, he was always the Bad Man. Still, I had to make some money, and so to Milton I turned. 

The part of the poem I had to work with was the opening section of Book 1, in which Milton tells the story of Satan's arrival in Hell after losing an thunderous battle with God for the throne of Heaven. He wakes up with his fellow rebel angel, Beelzebub, in a fiery lake. The two are as sore and grouchy as a pair of hungover frat boys on Ash Wednesday. After much boo-hooing, they haul themselves out of the lake and onto a prime piece of Hell real estate, where they plan their next move. Until they can get back to their proper places in heaven, they will spend their existence ruling in Hell, tormenting the human race, and being a pain in God's ass. It's a classic buddy picture, with two anti-hero schlemiels who think they can regain the upper hand. What they don't know and what Milton is perfectly clear about, though, is that God is totally in control here. It is only by his will that the two bad boys are even still around. He wants them to get their game on. He's waiting to see what they will do. 

As I read this section, I had a new insight. I imagined Satan and B-bub not as devils, but as dogs. Both Roma and Muzzy get their pouts on when I toss them out into the yard while I run the vacuum cleaner around the house or let in the furnace guy. They sit on the grass and look alternately disdainful and desperate to get back inside. (Roma, of course, is Satan, the plotter and instigator; Muzzy is the side-kick who, if truth be told, would prefer to be on God's good side than be a bad doggie.) So then I wondered which character I was. Was I God who booted badly behaving dogs out of Paradise, even for half an hour? In Milton's poem, God is the ultimate puppeteer. He allows Satan and the fallen angels to exist. They are his minions. In my case, however, even on the best of days, I don't have that kind of control over my dogs. Of course, they depend on me for food and love, but their paws are all over the remote control. I spend endless hours trying to figure out how best to serve them. I don't believe that God ever got out of bed in the middle of the night to let a dog outside to pee.

The answer is that I'm their Milton, and they are my muses. I'm the one who who documents the daily efforts of a couple of mutts to be true to their natures. I hope I'm more relevant than our man Milton, however. I also hope I have better hair. You be the judges.

Ta. z

Meet Flat Kitty

Meet Flat Kitty, Muzzy's new and best inanimate friend. FK is the creation of Erica (Joey and Coco). She concocted FK from an old sweater sleeve, a tennis ball, and some thread. I love FK's quirky leetle moustachio and his pink bump of a nose. (I wanted to keep FK for myself, but Erica insisted that I share. Darn.)

As you can see, Muzzy bonded immediately with the Flat Kitty.

"Mmm. Kitty, let me bite on you!" The first thing to go, of course, were the whiskers. Ouch!

Flat Kitty reminded Muzzy and me of her first childhood toy, Mister Poos. Mister Poos was a fuzzy, purple, four-legged octopus (a quatropus?) purchased at a local pet shop. Mr. Poos was excellent for indoor playing. He would soar down the hallway and bounce awkwardly, and an equally awkward Muzzy puppy would fetch him and shake him until her brains rattled in her head. See? Cute, no?

Eventually, Muzzy's puppy teeth were replaced with grown-up chompers, and Mr. Poos (and his successor) quickly lost his legs and his tennis ball head. Flash forward to Flat Kitty:

Mmmmmmm. Munch, munch, munch. Chew, chew, chew. Muzzy is in zombie mode: "Brains. I want Flat Kitty's brains!" You all can guess what happened next. You may want to avert your eyes from the following image. 

Aaaaaaah! Muzzy ate FK's face off entirely and ran off with her tennis ball brain (a brain bigger than Muzzy's by the way, but what good did it do poor Flat Kitty?).

Thank you, Erica, for giving us a few moments of enjoyment. FK was a brilliant, yet short lived creation. We await FK 3.0. Preferably one made from steel mesh. 

-z