. . . and occasionally he rhymes.

Cocktails with Bean

My dog, Bean, continues to grow more civilized as time passes. So it is with me too, I suppose. We both look to cultural conventions to help knock off our rough edges. Bean's latest nod to sophistication is the preprandial cocktail.

 My usual dinner-time routine is to feed Bean, start dinner for us humans, and after I've got things simmering, to build myself a martini. Regular readers will know that I prefer mine shaken vigorously with ice until my hand hurts from the cold. When I'm finished with the shaking and the martini is poured into a chilled glass, the cocktail shaker is full of melty ice cubes infused with a bit of gin and vermouth. Several weeks ago I started giving a few of these to Bean to enjoy while I'm sipping my drink. He loves ice cubes - always has - but this ritual sharing of well-chilled martini juice has apparently elevated his enjoyment to a whole new level.

My long passed cat, Russeau, who lived to be twenty, used to lick the olives in the bottom of my empty martini glass. I thought this curious when he first did it, but over time it became a bonding thing between us. I love olives myself, but I was willing to forego the pleasure of eating them in order to provide Russeau his own modest enjoyment. It's sad that Russeau and Bean never met. I think they would have enjoyed one another's company.

Anyway, the thing about Bean and the ice in the cocktail shaker is that now he is refusing to eat his dinner until he's had his cube-tini. He'll nibble around a bit, biding his time and checking on my progress, but he won't commit to the food in his bowl until I give him his ice. If he gets tired of waiting, he will go have a lie down until he hears the cocktail shaker rattling the call to mess. Then he gallops into the kitchen for his wee taste. Who'da thunk this possible? I don't know, but I gotta tell ya, it's just one more reason to love my dog.

More Conversations with Bean: Dogging Healthcare

We've had our greyhound, Bean, for a year now. Every day he grows in wisdom and grace. He is a good dog, eager to please and eager to learn. We have begun to engage one another in conversation with some frequency. He seems to enjoy our little talks, and I find, as his powers of observation grow, so do I. Here is another recent exchange.

BEAN: You remember when you took me to the Vet last week?

ME: Yes. Sorry. It was time for your annual shots.

BEAN: Oh, I don't mind going to the Vet. I mean once they took my nuts, I figured it couldn't get any worse.

ME: Not my fault, Buddy. They did that before I got you.

BEAN: Yeah, I know. Still it seems like a cruel fate. You don't have any idea what's about to happen. They give you a lovely nap, and when you wake up you're carrying an empty sack around. It's embarrassing. I'm mostly over it now, but every once in a while, when I think about it, it gets my back up. You might want to reconsider sleeping in the nude...you know, for your own safety. I'm just sayin'.

ME: Yeah. Okay. Thanks for the warning. We were talking about the Vet.

BEAN: Yeah. What I was wondering is, how come it's so much cheaper for me to go to the Vet than it is for you to go to the Doctor?

ME: I don't know, Bean. I haven't thought about it much.

BEAN: It's not like the Doctor is smarter than the Vet. In fact it's probably the opposite. The Doctor only needs to know how to fix people. The Vet has to know how to fix dogs, cats, hamsters, boa constrictors, guinea hens, cows, horses, giraffes, and hippopotami—just to name a few.

ME: You make a good point.

BEAN: So what's the difference then? Are people more valuable than dogs?

ME: I don't think anyone I know would make an argument like that.

BEAN: Me either. Clearly that would be ludicrous. So what is the difference then?

ME: Well I think it might be the insurance companies. Insurance companies are in charge of most of the healthcare system for people. They decide who gets covered and how much it costs to get covered on the one side, then, on the other side, they determine who gets paid, what services get paid for, and, to a large extent, how much gets paid. They have a significant say in every aspect of the money flow for healthcare in humans, but very little say about healthcare for animals.

BEAN: So you think insurance companies have bid up the cost of healthcare for humans?

ME: I don't know. It's very complicated. If you think about it though, the insurance companies are handling all the money and taking a piece of the action on everything, so the more healthcare costs, they more money they will make. They really don't have a vested interest in keeping medical costs down - only their own costs. They keep their own costs down by limiting coverage to people who are not likely to get sick and then denying the claims of the people they do cover.

BEAN: Sounds to me like you guys need to get the insurance companies out of healthcare.

ME: Maybe so, but that's way easier said than done.

BEAN: Why's that?

ME: Well for one thing, the insurance companies have a lot of money left over from collecting big premiums, limiting coverage, and denying claims. They use that money to make campaign contributions and to pay lobbyists in Washington to make sure that no one in Congress messes with the system. They pay good money, in other words, to keep things as they are.

BEAN: And people put up with this nonsense?

ME: So it would seem.

BEAN: I think someone needs to take this system out on the back porch and chew it up like a rawhide bone.

ME: As usual, you make a lot of sense, my friend.

BEAN: Yeah, and meanwhile you ought to consider just getting your work done at the Vet.

MORE CONVERSATIONS WITH BEAN: Inbreeding the Banks

We've had our greyhound, Bean, for a year now. He's adapting well to life off the track, and he seems happy to have traded his racing days for a life of reflection. Every day he grows in wisdom and grace. He is a good dog, eager to please and quick to learn. We have begun to engage one another in conversation with some frequency. Here is one such exchange.

BEAN: Did you see that thing that's going around the Internet about all the bank mergers?

ME: Yes I did, Bean. Very interesting, don't you think?

BEAN: Interesting?! Frightening is what it is.

ME: How so?

BEAN: I've been watching this for a long time, ever since the news started talking about banks being too big to fail.

ME: And?

BEAN: Seems like merging is the wrong way to go about fixing the problem.

ME: You make a good point. If they're already too big, mergers just make them bigger.

BEAN: Yeah, but that's not the half of it. Think what's involved in the merger. You got a bad bank, full up with toxic assets, about to go under, and you merge it with another bank where all the same problems haven't come to light yet. You haven't solved anything. I mean, you palm Merril and Countrywide off on Bank of America, Wachovia off on Wells Fargo, Bear Sterns and Washington Mutual off on JP Morgan, you just made yourself a ticking time bomb. There are only four commercial banks left at the top. You're running out of places to bury the crap, if you know what I mean.

ME: You seem to have a pretty good handle on this for a dog.

BEAN: Well it's not exactly rocket science.

ME: A lot of people find this all very complicated.

BEAN: That's because they don't know how to think like dogs. Look at it like this. Suppose you had a really bad pit bull. He's aggressive, unmanageable, and anti-social. He's already done serious injury to a lot of innocent bystanders. What do you do with a dog like that? Do you neuter him? Rehabilitate him? Put him down? ...Or do you breed him to a bigger, stronger dog?  

Conversations with Bean: Sorting the Bitches

We've had our greyhound, Bean, for a year now. Every day he grows in wisdom and grace. He is a good dog, eager to please and eager to learn. We have begun to engage one another in conversation with some frequency. He seems to enjoy our little talks, and I find, as his powers of observation grow, so do I. Here is one such exchange.

BEAN: Have you ever tried to sort out the neighbor's bitches?

ME: We call them women.

BEAN: I know you do, usually, but I think your neighbor's women are probably bitches.

ME: What makes you say that?

BEAN: Well, for one thing, he calls them bitches when he is talking to the friends that he calls dogs. You know the ones I mean. They drive cars with big shiny rims that I like to pee on when no one is looking. None of these dog friends ever talk about women...only bitches. They stand around smoking the cigarettes, looking at their cars, and talking about bitches. Then they throw their cigarettes on the ground, and drive away in a pack. I like these guys. I think they all would like to be dogs. I think that shows good taste even though they all have to use their forepaws to hold up their pants.

ME: You may have a point.

BEAN: Anyway, have you been able to sort them out, the bitches I mean. Because I don't understand them. They confuse me.

ME: Well women can be like th­at sometimes. Aren't you glad you live over here where it's easier to figure out.

BEAN: I do like it over here. Everybody over here knows their place. It's me, then you, then Sandy, then Mommy. Mommy's not so good when you're not here. Sometimes she forgets her place, but since you're here almost all the time, it hasn't been much of a problem.

ME: One of the benefits of me not having a job I suppose.

BEAN: What is job?

ME: A job is where you go someplace else and do stuff that somebody else tells you to do.

BEAN: Why would you do that?

ME: Well every couple of weeks they give you treats for doing it.

BEAN: Is it the good treats? The chewy ones that taste like the stuff the cats leave in the sand box?

ME: No, not really. I guess you would say that the job treats are not that good.

BEAN: I don't think I would like this job then. We should talk more about this later. Right now I want to finish sorting out the bitches.

ME: Okay. Tell me what it is that confuses you, and I will try to help you sort it out.

BEAN: Well the neighbor has the two bitches, just like you, only they both walk around on their hind legs like Mommy instead of on all four legs like Sandy, so it's harder to figure out who is alpha. It would be good to see them together. If I could see how they interact when they are together, I would know how they rank in the pack. They are never together though. Sometimes the skinny one with the face like a doberman with worms is there, and sometimes the bouncy one with the pictures on her legs is there, but they are never there at the same time. I can't figure out how they arrange to never be there at the same time. It is a mystery.

ME: Well, Bean, I have to say that I have noticed the same thing.

BEAN: It is almost like magic. The skinny one will be there for three or four weeks, and then one day she will get in the round car and drive away, and then five minutes later the bouncy bitch will come up the driveway in her square car and she will stay for a week. Then, as soon as the bouncy one leaves the other bitch comes back. They don't miss each other by much, but they always miss. I think that maybe these bitches cannot get along with each other like Mommy and Sandy, so the neighbor has to keep them apart. I don't know how he does it though.

ME: I'm not sure how he does it either, my friend, but I think maybe it has something to do with his cell phone.

BEAN: What is cell phone?

ME: A cell phone is that little box that he holds up to his ear when he is standing in his driveway and it seems as though he is talking to himself. He is actually talking into the cell phone, and someone someplace else can hear what he is saying and can talk back to him.

BEAN: I have seen him do that often. It is a relief to know that he is not talking to himself. I was beginning to worry about him. I thought that maybe not knowing when his bitches were coming and going was making him a little mad.

ME: I can see where you might think that.

BEAN: That still doesn't sort out his bitches though. Why do you think they behave in this strange manner?

ME: Well here is what I think, but I am only guessing. I would ask him, but in addition to the cell phone and the car with the big rims he also has some guns, so I don't want to sniff around in his business until he lets me know that it is okay, if you know what I mean. I think the bitch that looks like a doberman with worms is the wife bitch, and the one that bounces is the girlfriend bitch, and that the neighbor uses his cell phone to manage his bitch's comings and goings because if they are in the same place together they will tear each other to bits.

BEAN: Why doesn't he just tell them to behave?

ME: Well the thing about wives and girlfriends is that they do not really behave like proper bitches, at least not when they are aware of one another. Wife and girlfriend bitches are more like cats. They are very difficult to manage.

BEAN: If not impossible. Thank you. That really clears things up.

ME: You are welcome.

BEAN: Do you think that I could have one of these cell phones? I would like to be able to manage Mommy better when you are gone. It seems like a cell phone could be very useful in this regard since the neighbor is able to use his to make what seems like magic.

ME: Well first I think you need to understand that having a cell phone is a lot like chasing your tail. It seems like a good idea until you catch it. When you have a cell phone you can tell people what to do, sure, but you also have to listen to them when they talk to you.

BEAN: Do you mean that Mommy would be talking into the cell phone from someplace else, and I would have to listen to her?

ME: Exactly.

BEAN: Well...never mind then.

Privacy Issues

First, let me apologize for the low light level of this video. If we'd had any idea we were going to get something worth sharing out of this little venture, we would have left the lights on. We set up the laptop with a webcam to record what our hounds were doing while we were out. We did this because we worry about the new hound, Bean, getting into some mischief now that we are letting him roam free instead of putting him in his crate. When we got home we discovered that the video had stopped. We had to watch to the end to see what happened.

Turn your sound up so you can hear the snuffling and the key clicks. I love this dog.

Somehow Bean discovered the key to toggle the record function off. Hell, I don't even know where that is. I use the mouse. Now I have to believe that the dog is a technical genius - at least by canine standards. Guess we'll have to put the keyboard up higher next time, out of his reach...or not.

Maybe I should just respect his privacy issues.

Naming the New Dog Blues

der Beanerschnitzel

The Bloggess has a very funny post up about a new kitten they just got named Bob Barker...or Anderson Cooper...or Pterodactyl. I'm not quite sure which at this point because the cat's name seems to be in a state of flux, and understandably so, as they are letting the cat have some say in the matter.

I totally understand how this works as we also had some difficulty coming up with an appropriate name for our new dog, Bean, although after two months time Bean's name is mostly stabilized. Bean is a 5-year-old greyhound that just came off the track. When we got him his name was Blue, and therein lies the story.

Blue was supposed to be a blue fawn in color. He's registered that way. I've always wanted a blue fawn hound. Blue fawn is an unusual and striking color. In my mind anyone who has ever seen a blue fawn hound forever after covets a blue fawn hound. Blue fawn is a designer color—opulent, velveteen, subtle. It is comprised of fawn hair shafts tipped with gray. Gray greyhounds are called blue. Blue greyhounds are rare. Blue fawn greyhounds are rarer still. On balance the color of blue fawn is taupe, but there is an almost iridescent quality to it. It changes with the background and the lighting. It is silvery or bronze according to the necessity of its surroundings. It is what it needs to be. It is magical. It goes with everything.

Going with everything is a useful quality in a greyhound's coat. An adopted greyhound it is going to spend a great deal of the rest of its life curled up on your furniture in iconic repose. Once you realize that the hound has become part of your décor, you are going to have to work it into your color scheme. There are only two possible ways to do this: change the color of your dog or change the color of your rooms.

Notwithstanding the existence of neon hued poodles, you cannot change the color of a greyhound. Greyhounds are too naturally regal to tolerate this kind of foolishness. That means you are going to have to paint your walls, replace your carpeting, and buy new furniture. That means, once you have a hound, you are limited to a design palette that matches your dog. What a happy circumstance then to be blessed with a dog that goes with everything. It is for this reason that whenever a blue fawn hound comes available for adoption, it is snapped up within minutes by people in the know. This is what was supposed to happen to us.

We were in the know. We were first to find out that a blue fawn hound was coming off the track. We weren't in a very good position to take on another dog. We already had a sweet little brindle girl in our tiny house, and I was still unemployed. On the other hand we might never get another chance at a blue fawn. Most people have never even seen a blue fawn hound. We were getting first crack at taking one home. We decided to go have a look.

We took the brindle to meet the blue. She would have the final vote. If she didn't like him, he'd just have to go elsewhere. If she did, well that would just ice the cake. I already knew how it was going to go for me. I'm a sucker for greyhounds. Besides the brindle we've had for 8 years now, we've tried to foster two other greyhounds. Fostering is taking care of them in your home while the agency tries to place them in a permanent home.

I say we tried to foster because I didn't get either dog all the way home before I decided we were going to adopt them ourselves. They were just that charming. So fostering didn't work out so well for me. I needed a deeper commitment, so I made one. I figured the same thing was going to happen with Blue. Once I saw him, I was going to want to keep him. But I was really only going to look because he was a blue fawn. I may be a sucker for greyhounds, but I am a slave to fashion.

When we got to the kennel, the director came running out to meet us as we were getting out of the car.

“I'm so sorry,” she said. “You're going to hate me.”

I didn't really think so at that point, but I've learned over the years never to underestimate people's capacity to piss me off.

“Why is that?” I asked.

“He's not a blue fawn.”

“What is he then?”

“Fawn. Plain old fawn.”

“How did that happen?”

“I don't know. All his paperwork, all the way back to his initial registration, says he's a blue fawn. He's not though. There's not a blue hair on him.”

“It must be the wrong dog then,” I ventured.

“No. I checked his tattoos. He's Blue, but he's not blue.”

I was thinking just then that I might be a little blue. I'd just driven two hours on the promise that I could have a blue fawn dog. I couldn't. However it came about, the promise was a sham—a trap to suck me in and dash my hopes. This was all beginning to sound familiar. It was beginning to sound just like the rest of my life. Expect one thing...get less. I knew the drill. I was going to have to figure out how to settle for what I actually had coming to me. I know how to do this. It's one of the things that makes me too wonderful to deserve the 'slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.'

They had some other dogs we could look at. I tried several. There was a big black and white spotted boy that looked like a holstein. He was missing half his tail, and he pulled on his leash like an ox. I didn't need that. We had a labrador/chow mix once that pulled on his leash. He pulled my wife's shoulder out of joint. I had to twist her arm back into its socket. I learned two things doing that. One, I can do a lot of disagreeable stuff if I really have to, and two, orthopedics can be really disagreeable.

There was another fawn boy, besides Blue, and a dark brindle girl. I considered the girl for a while. She was a pretty little thing, but she also was a little churlish to my taste. I'm the designated churl in our family. I don't need any help, and I don't need any competition. The fawn boy, the one who was neither blue nor Blue, was skittish and slovenly. I knew he would clean up, but I really didn't want a timid, fearful dog. You just never know what to expect from them, and I don't have the patience or the expertise to rehabilitate one.

the very cool scar with stitch tracks!

The best of the lot then turned out to be Blue...even though he wasn't blue. He was a little ratty looking too, and he was sporting a fresh 6 inch scar on his left flank. The stitch marks were still raw and pink. I was concerned that he might have been in a fight, but it turned out that he had torn his side on a fence at the track compound.

Greyhounds are notoriously thin-skinned. It is unusual to get one off the track that doesn't have scars or other signs of a strenuous and hazardous existence. Blue's scar was an impressive one in scale and shape. It gave him an air of danger and mystery, when in fact it was born of sheer clumsiness. It was kind of like the eye patch on that guy in the old Hathaway shirt commercials. Blue might have been a pirate in a former existence. His disposition was friendly and genteel, but the scar made him look a little dangerous. I liked him. Our brindle seemed to like him too, and that clinched the deal for me. We took Blue home.

We started thinking of new names for Blue on the way home. He'd been called Blue for five years, but near as I could tell he had never actually been blue except on paper. The obvious misnomer did not sit well with me. There was no way I was going to call a golden dog blue. The very notion offended me.

We came up with a few notable names including Old Yeller and Scarface, but neither of those was very satisfying. Old Yeller ended up sadly, and Scarface was just wrong on several levels. I thought of Schweppes, and kind of liked it, before I realized that the Schweppes tonic guy was not the guy with the eye patch. He may have had a pirate kind of look and feel, but schweppervescence is not the equal of an eye patch when it comes to commanding admiration.

Hathaway would have made a classy name, but it may have been too classy. You can't shorten Hathaway up very well, and you certainly can't call a dog by a three syllable name when you are trying to get him to stop eating your shoes or the TV remote. That's when you need a short, distinctive name that gets his attention without making him feel like he is more distinguished and better looking than you are—no matter how much he may in fact be. No, Hathaway wouldn't do either. (Besides I didn't remember that the eye patch guy was from Hathaway until I just Googled it 10 minutes ago.)

Nothing else really tripped my trigger. I was going over stuff to say about the dog in my mind, hoping that something about him would suggest a name. That's when I was suddenly overwhelmed with a foul odor from the back of the car. A green cloud of noxious gas settled over my ruminations. I knew it couldn't be our brindle because I had never fed her road kill or swamp sludge. That's when it came to me.

“How about Beano?” I asked my wife.

“Beano? What's that got to do with anything?”

“Well, we drove down there to see a blue dog. When we saw him, we looked all over his hide and hair very carefully, and saw that there be no blue.”

“That's it,” she said. “You're going to make his name a bad pun with bad grammar?”

“You have a problem with that?”

“I have a problem with Beano. It sounds like that gas pill.”

“I know. Isn't that great?”

We started out calling him Beno, and spelling it B-E instead of B-E-A, but we were always thinking of B-E-A, so we changed the spelling to what everyone was thinking anyway, and then we shortened it to just Bean because there's so much more that you can do with Bean in terms of derivative endearments, and so far that's stuck on him pretty well. He seems to like it, and so does everyone else. Bean is a good name for a dog. It's one you don't hear very often—ever in my case—but it seems to roll off the tongue and convey a sense of casual conviviality that matches up well with our non-blue dog.

Now that we are settled on Bean for a name, we have started to expand on the theme of it. We call him Bean and Beano mostly, but also Beanie, Beanie Baby, Beanie Weenie, Mr. Bean, Beaner, and my personal favorite, der Beanerschnitzel, all interchangeably and as circumstances warrant. He answers to them all because, well, he's not blue. He's just bubbling over with schweppervescence.

Day 124 - Slouching toward Decrepitude

          I miss Bud a lot. I’m not really sure why this is. I haven’t really known him a very long time, and most of the time I have known him I’ve also known that he was sick and not likely to survive his illness. I had plenty of time, in other words, to prepare for his death. So here in the realization I ought to find resignation, acceptance, closure, and peace in the finality of it, but I don’t.

I want Bud back. Bud and I had an affinity that I can’t explain…or maybe can, but don’t want to admit. I find the things that I miss most about him are his least redeeming qualities. I miss his stinking breath. I miss his messy eating habits. I miss the tortuous way he got up off the floor to go do his business. I miss his general slovenliness and his abiding uselessness. When I think of all the things I miss about Bud I realize that, except for (hopefully) the bad breath, these are all attributes that I possess in equal measure.

I haven’t eaten a meal in recent memory that I didn’t get part of on my shirt. I’ve taken to telling people that at my age and with my history of colon cancer it’s important to keep an accurate record of what I eat. I keep mine on my shirt.

It takes me forever to get up out of a chair. It takes me an average of 28 seconds to get out of our car. I know this because my grandson times me. He got tired of waiting for me. He’s usually out of the car and inside our destination before I even get my seatbelt off. Putting a stopwatch on my torpor seems to him like a good way to occupy otherwise wasted time just waiting. He takes a lot of pleasure in announcing my times to the general amusement of the rest of the family. If I had anything to leave I would consider writing him out of my will.  

Now that I’m unemployed I just putter around getting in other people’s way. My wife often has to park me in a corner when we go shopping together so that I don’t impede the flow of traffic up and down the aisles of the stores. Bud and I were images of one another. We were old men sliding inexorably into decrepitude, and both grown useless as the tits on a boar hog. This is why I mourn Bud so much. It’s as if a big part of me has gone missing.

*****

There was a point in the midst of all the turmoil at Albatross where it seemed as though my star was in its ascendency. It was short lived. This happened when the new CFO, let’s call him Quentin Parks, asked me to assume the duties of the Operations Controller in addition to my own. This was to be a short term assignment that would be made permanent if I acquitted myself well. I planned to acquit myself well. There was, of course, a monkey wrench waiting in the wings for the opportunity to hurl itself into the mechanics of my forward progress. Let’s call him Rod Chandler.

Rod was a nemesis of monumental proportions, although I didn’t realize that at first. Rod was the new controller of the North Alabama plant. Rod had a career track in mind, and that track intersected mine. My problem was that where my career track was a passive thing that went where I thought the company needed it to go, Rod was actively engaged in mapping his track to take him where he wanted to be.

Where he wanted to be was where I thought I was going to end up if I acquitted myself well. So while we were both headed for the same destination, I remained blissfully unaware that I was in a competition. I had a huge amount of work and responsibility to take care of in order to acquit myself well. Rod on the other hand, less blissful and infinitely more aware, arranged to have nothing to do but lay track.

I know this because the old controller of the North Alabama plant complained to me about it. The old controller was trying to retire. He had announced his retirement, and the company had hired Rod to replace him. The old controller agreed to stay on and train Rod in the particulars of the job.

Even in the worst circumstances, this shouldn’t have taken more than a couple of months. Rod was, after all, a degreed accountant with years of experience in manufacturing as an assistant controller and controller. He didn’t need to be trained. He only needed to be shown where things were.

It took way more than just a couple of months though. This is what the old controller complained to me about. It was taking forever because Rod never got to the point where he was actually taking over the work. The old controller continued to do all the things he had been doing all along while Rod engaged full time in managing his career.

Now I don’t mean to suggest that Rod wasn’t doing any useful work. He probably was. At least he was doing work that seemed useful to the plant manager at North Alabama and to the CFO at the corporate offices because the work he did was deliberately tailored by Rod to appeal to their particular management sensibilities.

It was not, however, the work he had been hired to do. It would have been nice if the rest of us finance and accounting stiffs had the same luxury—to have some poor slob who was trying to retire do our jobs while we cherry picked tasks and projects calculated to make us look like geniuses to senior management.

Day 57 - Bud is My Hero

          Yesterday’s ridiculous interview exercise notwithstanding, I found much to be hopeful about on the job hunt front today. I applied for seven positions, and two of them were here in town. Most of the jobs I’m seeing, in the Southeast at least, mention that they will consider local candidates only or that no relocation assistance will be provided. That’s one good way for hiring companies to save a considerable amount of money on new hires, and, since there are a growing number of job seekers chasing a shrinking number of jobs, plenty of talent is available without having to import it from far off places. I don’t want to move myself if I don’t have to, and I certainly don’t want to pay to move myself. I’m too old to be schlepping furniture and boxes of stuff in and out of rented trucks. I need to hire it done, and I need relocation assistance from a new employer to do that. Without relo, I'm pretty much stuck with the local job market.

          Bud the greyhound continues to exhibit exuberance for life in general and his walks in particular. It’s obvious that he’s in pain, but it doesn’t seem to slow him down much. The vet told us not to let him run or jump as his shoulder is extremely fragile and could break from the slightest impact. Keeping him still has proved more difficult than we thought. Bud loves a daily romp in the living room. He barks until Sandy agrees to chase him. Most greyhounds don’t bark much, but Bud is a loudmouth and Sandy is a sucker for the barking. She loves an invitation to race. They go at breakneck speed in circles around the sofa. 90 seconds is about their limit, and there’s no stopping them until they are through. Then it’s nap time. It is really funny in a scary kind of way, and it’s hard to give a dog an authoritative command when you are laughing. Bud is my hero.

Day 47 - Mini Me (or Stinky Me) and Me

          I’m feeling better and better, but I continue to medicate myself into a relative stupor at every opportunity. Get a twinge in the back, take a pill. Feel a stinging sensation when I pee, take a pill. It’s no consolation, but I’m now medicating Bad Breath Bud even more than I am myself. The vet has him on a regimen of pills that would choke a horse. That poor goofball gets an anti-inflammatory 4 times a day, an antibiotic for infection, mega vitamins with each meal, zantac to keep him from throwing up, and methadone for pain as often as needed not to exceed every four hours. Some of this stuff is bad for his liver, but we’re not worrying so much about his liver as he is not likely to live more than a couple of months. We’re just going to keep him as comfortable as possible.

          Bud’s problems with his hips—the general weakness in his hindquarters—seemed to be improving with the regular walks, but he suddenly began to favor his left shoulder. He never complained, but it was obvious that he was having a lot of pain there. Bud is not a complainer. Our other hound, Sandy, is a complainer. She will cry and whine at the least provocation. Once she got a twig caught up between the pads of one of her front paws. She screamed like she was being murdered with a dull knife. She is a big baby. Bud…not so much. He winces from the pain in his shoulder, but the discomfort doesn’t seem to diminish his enthusiasm for a walk.

          When it was obvious after a few days that Bud’s pain wasn’t getting any better, we took him to the vet. X-rays showed a lesion involving his left forearm with significant bone loss on the forward side of the humerus. The vet felt that surgery was not a good option for Bud because of the weakness in his hindquarters. If we amputated his left foreleg, he’d only have one good leg left. For Bud at least, the cure, which doesn’t offer a lot of hope anyway, would be worse than the disease. Our best option is to make him as comfortable as possible until even that becomes a cruelty.

I feel pretty badly about all this. I’ve only known Bud a short time, but I feel a real affinity with him. I think of him as the canine me. We’re both old coots, coming to the end of our usefulness. Our spheres of influence are shrinking, and our bodies are in revolt. Maybe the drugs I’m taking are making me too vulnerable and sensitive for my own good, but any way you look at, it Bud is a good old dog. I hate to see him fade away.    

          My wife called Kelly to tell her that Bud was sick. Kelly felt compelled to speculate that the cancer was the direct result of my walking Bud too much for the last several months. If Bud doesn’t offer to bite her next time we see her, I intend to do it myself. 

Day 44 - Bad Breath Bud

          My fever was finally down this morning, and I’m feeling a lot better today—probably because I hardly got out of bed the last two days. After a hot shower and a big breakfast I felt like a new man. Sadly, while I am feeling much better, we found out that our foster greyhound, Bud, has osteosarcoma. Prognosis is the worst.

          We’ve had a greyhound for 8 years. Her name is Sandy. She is a pretty little brindle with a sweet disposition. The foster dog, Bud, was bounced by the couple who had him for 9 years. I don’t know how they could do that, but they did. Bud is eleven. We’ve only had him a few months. The couple bought a big motor home last year, a 45 foot bus conversion with every conceivable bell and whistle. I know those things go for upwards of a million dollars. They want to sell their house and travel full time. According to them Bud didn’t like the bus. He spent all his time aboard cowering in a corner, whimpering. Maybe they were right to give him up under the circumstances. I just don’t think I could have done it, and I don’t consider myself to be a particularly sentimental kind of person.

          Bud is a big goofy boy with a prodigious overbite—a condition called ‘parrot jaw’ in greyhounds that keeps him from being able to completely close his mouth. That’s not entirely accurate. He can close his mouth, but the front teeth and the roof of his upper jaw are not covered by his lower jaw when his mouth is closed. There is a gap of a little over an inch. The results are twofold. First when Bud chews his food, crumbs spray everywhere. He is the messiest eater I have ever seen. Couple this with the fact that he adores crisp dry treats and kibble, and we are going to have to enclose his food bowl in plywood and plastic sheeting like a construction site. The other and perhaps even less entertaining result is that Bud has breath that would stop an eight day clock. Honestly, if most UFO sightings can actually be attributed to swamp gas, Bud has the capacity to launch an entire alien invasion fleet complete with battle stars.

          When we picked him up at the couple’s house we sat amongst piles of clutter and detritus and discussed Bud’s needs and habits, or at least tried to. The woman, let’s call her Kelly, seemed more interested in talking about the motor home and their pending travels while the man seemed more interested in making sure that I was a good Republican. Presumably Bud would not tolerate any liberal leanings.

Kelly passed the  clutter and detritus off as preparation for the upcoming transition to full time motor homing. I didn’t see anything that I would take on a bus, but I kept my mouth shut. I know a little about boats and I know a little about motor homes, so I also know a little about traveling in cramped spaces. While a 45 foot bus makes a big motor home, when you load it up with two people and the stuff they need for an extended road trip it becomes a small, small space that will elicit homicidal tendencies among the passengers if very much stowage space is given over to useless stuff. This home was packed to the gills with useless stuff that I knew very well was not going to be loaded into their bus.

          Before we left with Bud we took him for a walk. I don’t know why dog people do this. I suppose it’s a good way to get to know a dog on neutral ground. Everyone does it though. When you go to a Greyhound Pets of America facility to arrange to adopt a dog they have you take the dog out for a walk. When you go to PetSmart and they’re having an adoptable pet ‘meet-n-greet’ and you express an interest in one of the available dogs, they have you take it for a walk. When Cesar Millan, the dog whisperer, goes to a house to fix a dog’s aberrant behaviors the first thing he does with the dog is take it for a walk. In this case though, I already knew that we were taking Bud to foster. I also knew that I liked Bud in spite of his breath. The only thing I was going to determine from walking him was whether or not he would pull on the leash.

          He did not pull on the leash. Bud’s hindquarters were so eaten up and atrophied from arthritis and lack of exercise that he would have struggled to pull one of those inchworm toys across the floor. Bud was going to need some attention to keep him from becoming a complete invalid. Near as we could tell he had never been walked on a regular basis. He was turned out into the back yard to do his business and let back into the house when he was finished.
     Greyhounds do not thrive on a lack of regimen. They love to run, but they need room to do it, and even when they have the room they don’t do it very much. Born sprinters, racing greyhounds run full out for about 45 seconds; then they rest up for their next race by sleeping 18 to 20 hours a day.

Confined to a small space and suffering from the discomfort of arthritis a greyhound will not exercise at all. Bud needed to be exercised. Gradually lengthening walks on the leash would build up his strength, stamina, and interest in life.

We started walking Bud the very next day. He was a willing participant. Weak as he was in his hips, I thought he would be reluctant to walk on the leash. Instead he loved it. He took to the neighborhood right away. We have a lot of small children, and they have always been fascinated by our dogs and our dogs by them. Bud loved the little girls especially. He would tolerate their pawing and fawning and hugs as long as they cared to go on. Of course this wasn’t usually very long. Little girls have short attention spans, and Bud is cursed with that egregious breath.

Within a couple of days Bud was showing new signs of exuberance. In the house he would bounce and bark and throw stuffed toys in the air to engage our other hound, Sandy, in play. Outside he was enthused about our walks, and always wanted to go further than we thought it prudent to take him.

After we’d had Bud a couple of weeks we loaded him in the van and took him to meet Kelly. She had a bed and some other of his things that she thought we could use. We met her in the parking lot of a strip mall between her house and ours. When we opened the doors of our van to load the stuff in, Bud didn’t even lift his head to acknowledge the woman who had housed, fed, and cared for him for 9 years. Kelly thought that was extremely unusual, but secretly I had to take Bud’s side in this. I didn’t like her either.