Muddy Puppy

I let the dog out to enjoy the warm weather for a little while yesterday, and when I let her back in she was completely covered in mud.  I mean, covered.  I had anticipated this problem, and I brought a wet towel with me to the back door and attempted to clean her up, but it was too much mud for the towel I brought, and she quickly broke free of my grasp to run around the house, trailing mud EVERYWHERE.

Jen was here, and we hollered for BJ and took her into the bathroom where we gave her a bath.  Penny did a pretty good job of holding still, although she did drench me by trying to jump out a time or two.  BJ finally came downstairs to help - little did I know that he was on the phone with an important new client while I was screaming for him.  Whoops.  (Who makes important work calls at 6 pm on a Saturday night?)  I didn't have any dog shampoo handy so I used the kids' Suave 3-in-1 shampoo/conditioner/body wash (green apple scent).  The water coming off of her in the tub as I sprayed her with the hand-held shower head was so muddy that it looked like coffee.

I finally managed to get her clean, dried her off a little with a towel, and let her go in the house.  Big mistake.  She went and jumped directly onto my bed to lick her wounds.

The good news, though, was that Jen and I got to go out for dinner and beers to celebrate our victory over mud and 23 years of being Lucy and Ethyl, and Penny's fur feels exceptionally silky today.

Holy Moley!

Wikimedia Commons

Yesterday, Monica and her kids were here, and so was my wonderful neighbor girl who has been entertaining my children all summer.  The kids were playing outside, and Monica and I were inside talking, when the kids started screaming.  Someone came in and said, "Penny's got a mole!!"

"Yeah, right," I thought.

We live near the ravine that runs down to the river, our neighbors' yards back up to it but since we're on the corner ours doesn't.  We have all kinds of wildlife in this neighborhood.  This mole has been screwing up our yard for a couple of years, now.  We tried solar repellers like this, back when we still cared about being humane.  BJ finally got serious and bought a mole guillotine, and we thought we'd killed the little bastard.

Until yesterday.

Penny has dug up half the yard, especially around the edges of the patio and the house, trying to get at the stupid mole, so I was dubious that she had actually managed to catch it as I walked outside (wearing a dress and sandals and with nothing in or on my hands to catch the mole with, because I'm an idiot).  But sure enough, there she was, carrying an enormous mole around in her mouth.

I screamed.  The kids screamed.  Monica screamed, "What do I do?  What do I do?" and I was like, "I don't know!" because no one said anything about this in any of the parenting classes we took at the hospital.  There really are many topics they could cover, including, "How to Not Traumatize Your Kids With Wildlife."

I called BJ, but he had ridden his bike to work that day so it would've taken him 20 minutes to get home.  As I was calling him, Penny was trotting proudly around the yard with the mole hanging out of her mouth.  The kids were still screaming, and I was still hysterical, so it took him a while to figure out what was happening.  He agreed to come home.  I told him I'd try to catch the mole in the meantime.

I went into the garage and got a shovel and a plastic bucket.  These tools were grossly inadequate.  My first idea was to try to get Penny to drop the mole into the bucket.  That didn't work at all.  Then she put it down I tried covering the mole with the bucket, but I quickly realized that the mole would just dig into the ground and continue to destroy our yard if I did that.  I would have just bashed its head in with the shovel, except for the seven kids in the yard who would have thought I was a monster and had nightmares for the rest of their lives if I had.  That, and I was still wearing sandals and I didn't really want mole guts on my feet.  Also, I'm a wimp.

Penny continued to toy with the mole, I think she's part cat, dropping it and picking it back up.  She'd let it start to burrow into the ground and she'd grab it by the butt and trot around some more with it in her mouth.  I kept hoping that she'd shake her head and break its neck.  A couple of times it went stiff and I thought she had killed it, but no such luck.

Finally, after what seemed like hours but was probably only a few minutes, she dropped it near the patio and let it get away.  We spent some time encouraging her to get him back, but no such luck  The mole was gone.

I called BJ to let him know we'd missed the chance to kill the mole.  Then I called the vet to see if I could get a ringworm preventative, because Cinders (the dog we had before kids) had gotten ringworm from sticking his nose in mole holes, but the vet said there was nothing we could do, other than wait and treat it if she comes down with it.  Eeeww.

Of course, the first thing she did when I finally let her back in the house last night was lick me.  Ugh.

I couldn't write about this until now because I went to bed right after dinner last night.  I'd had enough, and I have a sinus infection which makes breathing a lot of work.  I guess I snored like a tractor all night long.  BJ's a lucky guy.

Business Trip

BJ is out of town on business again (he has been traveling a lot this year).  The first day he was there, the client was hinting around that they were going to keep him longer than we had anticipated.  Thankfully, their testing went well today and everything worked, and he should be home tomorrow on schedule.

I get by with a little help from my friends.  We went over to Monica and Craig's for the afternoon and evening.  Craig is a teacher so he's home all summer.  I have to admit, I'm jealous, even though BJ wouldn't know what to do with himself with three months off.  (Craig keeps busy writing books.  He said that he'd kill me in a future book if I finished reading the one I quit reading because it was too scary.  I'm going to wait until BJ gets home to give it another try!)

A couple of nights before BJ left I decided that we ought to try letting Penny sleep in our room.  Max always did, and I miss having a dog in the room (and loose in the house, as opposed to in her crate) when he's gone.  She still eats toys, but she doesn't have accidents anymore.  I thought I could use the gate to keep her in our room, away from the toys.

At first, she refused to sleep on the floor.  Ok, fine, I'll compromise.  Dog is at the foot of the bed.  "No, not at the head of the bed, Penny, the foot.  Down Penny.  Penny.  Down.  Down.  Penny.  Down THERE.  Dammit, Penny..."

After pushing her back to the foot of the bed, only to have her creep back up again six times, I gave up.  I reached up and turned off the light, with the dog half on top of my abdomen.  As soon as the light went off she started barking her fool head off.

The dog is afraid of the dark.

Guess who still sleeps in the crate.