The Fruit King

It's sum, sum, summertime and I should have fruits a'plenty.

But I don't. I have to buy my fruit at the store like everyone else, because I have a Chester.

Chester, King of the Fruits, eats the strawberries as soon as they emerge. They're supposed to be everbearing, for which he is grateful. Me? I have no idea. Then Ches moved on to the green blueberries, so I got bupkis there, and now he's busy in the raspberries on a daily basis. He's such a heathen, he eats the green ones, and stands there with a thoughtful expression on his face, "Mmm, piquant."

So I have no fruit. He hasn't discovered the three cute bunches of Gewurtztraminer yet. Tiny little green beads so far. Since I've never so much as given him a grocery store grape (grapes are bad for dogs in a mighty big way), I'm hoping he doesn't really know what they are. Keep your fingers crossed.

Oh, and there would be pictures, but there's no fruit to take pictures OF.

When the Apprentice Surpasses the Master

Wednesday, a woman who reads this blog came by my shop. She asked where Bugsy and Erwin were, and I said, "Oh, they're at home." She asked, "Loose in the house?" and I crowed, "Yes. Those two are totally good dogs, not like Chester at all."

Then I arrived home to this:



"This" is what happens when you brag about your "good" dogs. You arrive home to... something.

Before I get into the explanation of that bit of evidence, I must say: Chester has an alibi -- he was with me and Marley all day, five miles away at the shop. Nope, this was the doing of the Wee apprentice, Erwin, and his pal Bugsy who apparently took notes on Chester's parkour escapades around the house and decided to have one of their own. Bugsy is NOT blameless in all this, -- was in on it, too. Don't ask how I know.

Erwin, all 16 pounds of enthusiasm, managed (with Bugsy) to retrieve and eat almost an entire cantaloupe. Not a dinky little melon, either -- this baby was from Costco. Judging from how covered in cataloupe his face and paws were, I'm thinking Erwin was large and in charge on this one. But I don't know. Bugsy does know how to pop a tennis ball, and he did have some on his paws. He didn't look like he'd taken up residence inside the melon, like Wee did (as you can see by the photo there on the left). By weighing the leftover bit and a "sister" melon of similar size, I think they got about 3 pounds of fruit (rind and all).

The only things that I know for certain are that the floor was sticky and I had to mop it, and that Chester didn't do it (for once).

The vet said to expect diarrhea (after he stopped laughing) but luckily, it didn't happen. However, there may be canteloupes springing up in the back yard. Fertilized canteloupe, if you know what I mean. Just for grins, here are the two heathens as I attempted to get them to pose next to the sister melon. Wee wasn't buying what I was selling.

In other news of the ridiculous pugs that I call my own, Marley was outside and something bad happened to her. I was weeding and am only guilty of noting that she wasn't in distress, and SPRINTING in to the house to get the camera. Of course then I got the stink eye from her.

What happened is she was out doing her "dog stuff" which means she is sniffing around the yard. Besides sleeping and eating, sniffing around is one of her favorite activities.

When I looked up, she had her head stuck in the "bucket" and Chester was briskly trotting away.

Marley is a bit top heavy, so what I think happened was she was sniffing the bucket, and Chester decided to dominance mount her, knocking her in. Then he beat a hasty retreat. For her part, Marley just thought, "Who turned out the lights?" and started blundering around blindly while I raced for the camera. After that single picture was taken, I removed the bucket from her head (which she could have easily done herself with a shake or a paw, it was NOT stuck) and got the stink eye because she knew I took her picture. It's embarassing for an elderly, retired supermodel and official shop dog to be caught this way. Poor dear. After a treat, all was well.

Heavens, it has been a while!

One guess as to who this is:

I know, I'm not keeping up. Chester has been up to no good, but then he's supremely the best dog ever, Bugsy is very very good, but has been bad, and Erwin is... Erwin. And Marley lives to go to the shop with me where she has attempted to train me, but I'm a slow learner. She walks into the kitchenette and expects a treat. She doesn't always get one, and it degenerates into the war of the wills, with her making a single "YARK!" every 2 minutes until either I cave in, or she forgets what she was talking about. We're running 50/50.

What I really wanted to post about

Rescuing a pug (or any dog, for that matter) is really fun because you get to discover things about them. Odd little behaviors, like the way Bugsy "kills" a tennis ball -- I have to put that on YouTube and I'll link it here. Or the way Chester's tail had been pulled by a little kid, so he's sensitive and one day chased his tail and caught it. Or how both of them will stand on the table at the cafe, humiliating me.

So the other day I made a discovery about Wee Erwin. It makes me doubt his claim that he is actually a pug. Either that or he's a really good pug in that he's a supreme hedonist. You see, Erwin likes a little foot massage. Seriously. He likes you to handle and gently massage his feet, and it will put him to sleep. I have a witness. I would try to video that, however I'm fairly sure it won't work. Or Wee will prove me wrong. Who knows.

When I mow the lawn, Erwin follows me around to make sure I'm OK. The other pugs just hang out, so only Wee gets greenfeet. It's hysterical.

Parkour Chester

It's a long story.

It started out with a missing knitting needle point protector -- those rubber doo-dads you put on your knitting needle points to keep the stitches from slipping off during transport. Well, I found the point protector. In the yard. I have photos (people are clamoring for them).

I know to whom it belongs, and they will NOT be getting it back.

The good news is, it means Chester has digestive motility. But for how long?

I left the boy pugs home today for 5 hours. Belly bands were placed on Chester and Wee Erwin . Unfortunately, as I was at work, I recalled that I hadn't properly barricaded the chair at the dining room table. Sure enough, when I got home, Chester the Traceur had performed some sort of Parkour event that included removing all my knitting needles from the tall latte mug they were in atop a low bookcase without disturbing the mug. He managed to get on top of EVERYTHING in the living room. I can see right now how he envisioned his path -- I wish I'd had the Webcam on. There was one loss: an African violet was uprooted and flung on the floor.

Oh, and there was poo consumption. Not just ANY poo consumption, though, as in he didn't just produce or find a turd. Nope, he got at my jacket, that had the forgotten ziplock bag of poo in the pocket. The jacket was hanging on a coat rack, and I would have paid good money to see how that was done.

On to a nicer subject (and a nicer dog!)
I am quite glad I kept the Bugs. He is such a nice boy. He has his moments, because after all he is a dog, but 99 and 44/100ths of the time, he's a darling. The other day he had The Best Day Ever. We got up, had breakfast, then home for a brief nap while I worked on the computer. Then we hiked on the nature trail and went down to the lake where Bugs ambled in and stuck his head under water and came up with a rock. Wee got brave and got his toes wet, but Chester stayed back on dry land giving the "are you nuts?" look to the rest of us.

Back home we went, and then I took Bugsy with me to do errands. He got nicely blow-dried in the milk crate on the back of my scooter. Bugsy truly loves riding the scooter. I know this because, well, he showed me earlier this spring when I was trying to start the darn thing. He jumped up, sat on the seat and, um, was excited. In a boy sort of way.

During our ride, I stopped at Bella Rose for lunch, and Bugsy saved the outdoor table for us and was rewarded with a couple of Tim's potato chips (I don't like 'em) while I had a sandwich. Then it was back to the shop where he had a brief nap, then home for another walk and some dinner. Then TV time with mom because it wasn't Dog Whisperer night. On DW night (Friday), they all have to stay in their dog beds while I fantasize about actually being their pack leader. Marley laughs at me.

Sasha
She was adopted by a veterinarian in Seattle, who used to be my neighbor here. He'd had pugs. When they came to get Sash, I showed him Chester's dried-out hairball. He was mightily impressed.

Oddly, even though Sasha wasn't a bad dog or a running amok dog or anything, the dynamic (as DW would say, the energy) has changed around here and things are much more peaceful and relaxed. Well, as much as they can be with a Parkour dog who eats poop. Thank God he's not a licker. I like the low energy bunch.

Sewer saga
Runaround. Builder blames excavator. So I have no reimbursement of my $5500 I spent to have it fixed, and now I have a $450 lawyer bill because the builder wouldn't return my calls. That can be taken care of through small claims court, but not the big one as the limit is $5000.

Love life
I was pictured in the Spokane paper (the Spokesman Review) on April 12 in an article about my shop. So I decided to email the link to the guy in Florida. The guy in Florida? He was my boyfriend 26 years ago, and a while back, he contacted my mother (yikes), who gave him my sister's phone number, and my sister passed HIS number on to me. So I called him. And we talk now and then. But he's in Florida and I'm in Idaho and I have several pugs, including one Chester, plus a giant yarn-and-fiber explosion, so it's best that I not live with another human being. Not that we were having phone sex or anything but every time I talk to the guy I have stupid happy daydreams that annoy me -- he sent me a picture and he's plenty cute.

Someone I know once said the ideal living situation would be a duplex. You have your half and he has his half, and when you're sick of each other, you just "go home". I kind of like that idea.

Tomorrow, Chester gets the crate.

For the love of PETE!

So I'm pondering the state of affairs that is my sewer. Well not so much the sewer, as it was fixed, but the fact that I'm out a large pile of money that was supposed to go to other stuff. The builder's insurance sloughed responsibility to the backhoe guy, and his insurance which is supposedly Maryland somethingorother.

The other day, I tried to run that down and got noplace. So today, I got the bright idea of looking the guy up on the Web. There's a site called Mantra or something that has business information and there was the address for Kus Co Backhoe. I put it in Google Maps, and lo and behold, there's an actual view of the guy's decrepit garage, and a SIDE VIEW which shows a sign "Excavating, call 555-1212" and a backhoe sitting in the weeds. I decide to look the guy up on the Idaho Department of Occupational Licensing web site, and discover

HIS IDAHO LICENSE EXPIRED JANUARY 2007!

He was not a duly licensed excavator/backhoe operator when he dug the holes for my foundation and creamed the sewer line without mentioning it! FOR THE LOVE OF PETE! Insurance? I bet there isn't any.

Tomorrow, I am going to call the builder's insurance adjuster and tell her this and offer to settle for $500 more than I paid the plumbers, and I will say that will cover the cost of cleanup and fixing my irrigation and patio. Should be interesting.

In the meantime, Sasha was placed and returned. I violated my one simple rule -- never place a pug out-of-area. They were out of area, but had a rescued pug and the other rescue loved them. I checked. After a couple-hour road trip to Montana, apparently Sasha was "too hyper" and the husband needed quiet because he worked from home, so they brought her back. She dominance-mounted their pug, which alarmed them, even though the description of Sasha says that 1. she's young and 2. she wants to be dominant. I don't know what they thought all that meant. And who doesn't want to run amok after a road trip, for heaven's sake?

So Sasha came back. Bugsy was happy, as was Chester. She's their cuddle buddy. She's so very hyper she's lying in a dog bed staring at me across the room. Pretty hyper. She did the pug run yesterday, but I was chasing her around.

The more I know people, the better I like the pugs, even Admiral Barky Erwin.