A Little Slice of Heaven

Every morning, hot or cold, rain or shine, J, K, or JK take me for a walk.  Usually Buzz goes along, unless it’s very cold or rainy.  On those days he burrows into his lair and shuts his eyes until breakfast time, when he miraculously awakes Oh is it that time already? Breakfast? Oh I guess. 

They both have to drink their coffee and J has to do her exercises before we go.  So exasperating. While she’s busy doing pointless movements (she could be walking!!),  I dig around in the laundry basket for  dirty socks and drop them near her. Just a few tiny hints.  Thanks but not those socks Maxie.  I’ll get some clean ones when I’m ready to go downstairs.  Sometimes she has as many as three or four dirty socks ringing her sit-up routine.  She says it is hard to do sit ups while laughing, but she doesn't stop, even when I lick her cheek.

Finally, finally!   I pound the fastest staccato beat on the way downstairs, carrying one of her clean socks. Maybe it's a little slobbery.  K is done with his coffee and we leash up.  I race around the garage and stand up by the counter several times to remind them to take the Chuck-it, with my beloved blue and orange ball. 

By this point I’m wound to full capacity. Heel Maxwell!  Oh how many times have I heard that.  Thousands.  

JK have this way of talking their own language.  For instance, a regular recliner  is a narco-lounger to them because they tend to fall asleep in them (K says "they"= J).  Or let’s say K is out – he will call J and say cheerily but cryptically, Chick extra pick?  And J will say Yes! And sure enough, just from those four words, K will show up with Chick Fil-A sandwiches with extra pickles and a side of cole slaw (Buzz says put in here that they don’t share any of it).  How’s your sushi-Q means what’s your sushi quotient, are you in the mood for sushi (which they always are).  If K says to J, It's your turn to drive, I've been driving all night,  they're not in the car. They are sort of watching TV, arguing over who has to hold the remote and find something less inane than the program that is on. Since that is usually really hard work, neither of them wants  to do it.  You get the idea.

So on the walk, naturally, somewhere along the line, the Chuck-It morphed into a golf club, and the top of the Pine Cove Lane hill turned into the tee box, and my beloved blue and orange ball became a golf ball.  Here's the great part:  I am the caddy that finds the ball!  Think it feel it trust it K will say.  Something he read.  Then they take turns flinging that ball as absolutely hard and straight as they can, down the sloping dead-end road.  And just like in real golf, sometimes it slices right, sometimes hooks left, and sometimes it is that heavenly shot, right down the faded center line of the asphalt road, which they call the “fairway”.  If it rolls to Lucy the little black poodle's mailbox before I can get to it, it's extra great.  The shrubs and thistles on either side are “the rough”. 

Straight shots make them pump their fists and say YESSSS!  And slap a high five to one another or whatever. Maybe J does a little happy dance.  Well, Buzz tells me this is what they do, since I, the caddy, am busy finding the ball.  So the cars driving by see them high five each other, Buzz tells me.  It’s pretty embarrassing. He copes by sniffing every blade of grass while they are taking their tee shots. 

Sometimes the bad shots are really, really bad. I pay the price.  Burrs, thistles, what have you.  Chuck-it golfer caddies are hard workers.

All the way to the cul-de-sac,  they go on throwing the ball, flinging second and third “baffler shots” or whatever.

At the end of Pine Cove Lane, the halfway mark, suddenly the “golf club” turns into a “baton” when KJ switch dogs and leashes.  They try to do a smooth handoff, (not hard when you are walking 3 mph, Buzz sniffs to me.)  They should try grabbing a ball out of thin air after it bounces ten feet on the asphalt.  But I don't say anything.

Back up the hill we go.  Golf club replaces baton, but they both look like the Chuck-it to me. At the top, they test their driving skills again. I chase the ball, up and down, back and forth.  No matter what, the slices, the hooks, or the perfect shots, rain or shine, I know I am so lucky to be outside, doing what I love best. 

K and I head back up the Pine Cove "fairway" on a rainy morning.
See the Chuck-it golf club?

Speaking of golf and heaven and sunshine. JK just got another member of the pack!!  This time it’s an adorable little cub named Darby. His dad is in golf school and his mom is J’s girl and they live in Florida.  I’ve met them before. Wow!  Great news! Another person for me to herd.  J is down in Florida, soooo happy to meet this little guy. She says that having this angelic new grandbaby to visit is the best time ever. JK just love visiting all 4 of their grand little cubs. 

Every morning in Florida these days, even without us,  J goes for a walk in a movie-set-like town called Celebration, and she calls K on the way there. I like to listen in.  Florida in January is like heaven, she says.  It’s 75 degrees out here!  She walks around a lake which is ringed with houses and shops and a hotel and a park and a Starbucks, not that she noticed it. She has seen some really pretty birds.  And her girl told her about this place: Oh Man.

J visited the store. These kind of things are inside!

The other day J sent K a picture and a text.  I saw it.

So exciting!  I can’t tell what’s inside that pink bag! And I wish I could sniff that green hydrant on the right! Buzz and I just cannot wait.

In the meantime, I'm having a great time with K. Yesterday we went exploring, looking for fishing streams.  I love hiking! Another type of heaven. 

I’m OK with J being gone for a while, even though I'm lonely for her, because it’s so important for her to help with this little Darby guy, who I just cannot wait to meet. J says in the meantime, a soft dawg is checking in on baby Darby for Buzz and me.

I think that all of life is pretty much a slice of heaven.  Even the hard times and the bad shots and the burrs and thistles and the waiting, waiting, waiting for a sweet little human.  Because without the waiting, the baby would never appear.  And we would never find out what's in the pink bag. Or find the fishing stream. Or experience the joy of reunions when J comes back.  And without the slices and hooks, how would we know to do a high five or a happy dance when the shot is straight down the middle? 

PB & J(ack Juice)

J got an email the other day.

J looked over her computer screen at me. I can’t believe it’s rolled around already, seems like I just took you.  I was very relaxed, stretched out in the sunny spot on the living room rug, but I opened one eye and stared back at her.  If it wasn’t going to happen right that second (and she looked pretty comfy in her narco-lounger), I thought I would continue dozing. 

J read the email again. What’s this? We recommend a stool check.  Oh, good times.  Stool. What a weird word. J mulled it over for a minute, then tippity tap, she was back at the keyboard.

Apparently J and a red football helmet named Brian share the same perky curiousity, and someone named hermione was right there with an answer.

J called the vet to make my appointment. It was set for Friday at 4.  So,  for that, uh, stool check, do you need a specimen, or…?

Well, if he does go that morning and you want to bring it in, that would be great.

I’m sure Maxwell will oblige.  They laughed.

Well. I wasn’t that excited about my most personal bodily functions being discussed but we dogs have learned to live with the strange and undignified ways that humans treat our poop.   We would just as soon leave it lay to disintegrate, but no, they pick it up and carry it in little bags.  I don’t get it but whatever. 

Buzz says that a Jack Russell such as himself prefers the more proper term, “spoor”.  And when his business is being bagged, he refuses to get anywhere near it and pulls as hard as he can on the leash the other way, nearly gagging.   You can tell he’s repulsed by JK’s actions.  I would never touch that. Are they nuts? He has said this to me more than once.

So anyway, last Friday we went for our usual walk and I sat at stool (thanks hermione) sooner than usual.  J collected it in a Wal-Mart bag.  Normally she would have tossed it in the trash barrel by the church path, but this time she put it alongside a tree, right off the sidewalk. 

We can pick it up on the way home she said to K. 

Oh, that’s classy, Buzz murmured to me. 

Near the end of our walk, just after the cemetery, we ran into Macy!!  And her lady! We were all very happy to see them because it had been a few weeks, since before Christmas.  So we stopped to talk.  K went on ahead to get going on work and J remembered after a minute and called to him through the line of trees separating them, Hey darlin’-- don’t forget Maxwell’s bag of poop by that tree. The neighbors were sure to appreciate her melodic trilling.  Buzz rolled his eyes.

K yelled something back, J thought it was, Already got it.

Macy’s lady looked at J.  You call him darlin’ pretty much all the time, don’t you? I got the impression she didn’t often hear “darlin’” and “bag of poop” in the same sentence. 

Pretty much, J said.

We all strolled back to our house and then said goodbye and they headed back up the street.  Those two ladies never run out of things to say! 

When we came in, K opened his office door and said down over the railing to J, That bag of poop was gone.

Gone!?  What in the world, who…I thought you said you got it?

No, I said it’s gone.

So who in the heck would have picked it up?  It’s not like it was in front of anyone’s house.

I don’t know. But it wasn’t there. 

Oh my word.  OK, so now who thinks we are these total lazy slobs who would bag up a load of dung and then leave it forty feet from the barrel for someone else to pick up. Sheesh. 

I  know.  Crazy.  But what about your sample for the vet?

I’ll tell them someone stole our stool sample. I’m not that worried about it. Oh well. I didn’t want to store it around here all day anyway.

And that was that.

At 3:30 J put my collar and leash on me, and told me to hop into K’s car.  Here Maxie, take your ball. You can play with it while we wait.  My ball AND the car! What a great surprise! 

Until I saw our destination.  I have to say, I do like the people in this building but it is very hard to go there. Bring in the noise, bring in the funk.  The smells, the barking, the anxious energy, the way they examine every inch of me, stick needles in me … -it’s very worrisome.  At least I think so. Buzz says he doesn’t mind it at all – but I happen to know that when he’s on that examining table, he sheds about forty pounds of fur.

J made me drop my ball once we were inside, then told me to jump up on the scale. I hopped on. Sit, Maxie, SIT.   Good boy.  Fifty-seven point six pounds.  You’re a big boy. 

After they recorded my weight, we were escorted into a big examination room with a bench around two sides of the walls.  An examining table extending into the middle of the room separated us from a sink and some cabinets. I chewed on my ball and looked around, but there wasn’t much to see. Just a little yard through the window and a picture of a naked dog on the wall.

The picture on the wall creeped me out. The dog was naked!!

On another wall were about a dozen brochures.  WHAT TO EXPECT AS YOUR PET AGES.  IMPROVING YOUR DOG’S SOCIAL SKILLS. TEACHING FIDO TO STAY HOME. Things like that. Nothing we needed.

J let go of my leash while she talked to the girl taking notes. I sniffed in the corners.  There were a lot of sharp smells that I didn’t like. Soapy and animal-ish, with a lot of fear at the same time.  Mostly dog, some cat, some I didn’t know at all. Buzz asked me later, Flying squirrel? Mole?  How would I know? 

Let’s just get out of here. I tried to tell J but she was busy talking.

She told the note-taking girl about the stolen spoor. Not a problem the girl said, we can get it. Well. I didn’t like the sound of THAT at all.

Then they started discussing my feet.  I have a problem with red feet. They get hot and itchy, and sometimes I just have to bite at them.  Hot spot spray doesn’t help – actually, nothing really helps. It comes and goes.  If I get to worrying at my feet, JK will say nicely but warningly, Maxie. Uh-uh.  Leave your feet alone. I get embarrassed then and usually get up and walk into another room.   I hate it that they are unhappy with me, but sometimes I have to scratch my feet. And the easiest way to do it is with my teeth.

J said to me, Drop your ball, Maxie. DROP.  I dropped it.  The girl picked up my leash and took me into another room.  They poked me and prodded me and checked me out.  I felt very lost and exposed in there. I hated being separated from J, and really, all I wanted was to be back in my familiar house with the smells I knew and understood.  But sometimes you have to endure being uncomfortable-- and this was one of those times.  I knew JK would want me to behave. So I did. 

He was so good.  The girl opened the door and I bounded through. J was still there! I was extremely happy to see her.

The rest of the appointment was typical – I stood on the table section and the vet (a nice lady) looked in my ears and then gave me a shot (NOT happy about that) and talked to J about my feet and told her it was allergies and gave her some pills for me, and some special shampoo.

He needs to take the pills till they’re gone. They’ll probably make him hungrier but don’t feed him any more than normal. And he should be bathed with this shampoo two to three times a week.  I could see J’s excitement over the thought of bathing me three times a week.    

 Can we just get out of here!

Later at home (I was so happy to be there!), Buzz gave me a good sniffing.

Vet, huh.  Glad it wasn’t me. 

J gave me the first three pills. They were light blue.  She tried to disguise them in some canned dog food but I rolled them around in my mouth, got the dog food off them, and spit them out.  Buzz stood by and watched with great interest while J tried a couple more times. She finally opened my mouth and put them in and said swallow, Maxie. These are steroids that will help your feet get better.  I swallowed.  The pills went down.  But I didn’t like it.

Buzz sniffed at me again.  Steroids, huh? So what’s your pleasure? Jack juice? 

I was confused. Jack juice? What?

Russell roids?  

What are Russell roids?

He got impatient.  The pills! What’re you taking? Russell roids? Jack juice? JRT Sauce?

I’m not…I don’t…

Oh man.  Buzz rolled his eyes.  I forget you’re still a pup. OK.  It’s like this. We Russells have naturally occurring steroids that other dogs have to take.  Like for instance, me, I am ripped, with these pipes – he gestured at his gut – because I’m a JRT.  You probably have some JRT blood in you but not enough to pump you up to juice standards. Those pills will help some, but, well…he coughed in his most purebred manner and toddled off to his bed.

J looked the steroids up online.  These aren’t anabolic steroids, Maxie, they are cortisone, to suppress the allergies. The two kinds are totally different.  Later she said to K,  I’m doing this whole thing with a major grain of salt; I hope it works but I just don’t know. 

After a couple of trial and errors in getting me to take my pills, JK hit on the idea of using peanut butter, and now I can hardly wait to take them.  A spoonful of peanut butter definitely makes the medicine go down. 

And the vet was right about one thing for sure.  My appetite is enormous. I can never get enough to eat. I feel like I’m never full.  I’m inhaling my food.  But JK don’t feed me any more than normal, except for the peanut butter. It’s very frustrating!  Buzz isn't very sympathetic, he says now you understand what it’s like to be a juiced-up Jack! Who wouldn’t be hungry under all that muscle.

I can't lick this peanut butter fast enough.

A week has gone by since I started the pills.

And today is K’s birthday!! Happy birthday to our favorite man in the whole world!!! We dogs have a great day planned for him. First we’re going to take him for a walk to the lake. Then we’re going to celebrate with a big breakfast and some biscuits later. We do all this to celebrate K! J says she better make K a crow-shaped cake because since my feet are getting better, she’s got some to eat. 

I have another week to go on the pills, another week of starvation.  Believe me, if she doesn’t eat the crow, I will. 

Do You Hoard What I Herd?

J is in her January mode.  This is only my second January here, but Buzz has about 15 of them under his belt, and he says that in January after she gets the Christmas decorations put away, J typically gets all OCD about “not being a hoarder”. 

There is this show on TV called Hoarding Buried Alive.  Oh, J will start out to watch it.  She is fascinated with all kinds of personality disorders, at least that is what K says when he looks at the things she watches (disappearances, murders, mayhem, hoarding, random crazies and such. J says she is very picky about WHICH murders she likes. No gangs or drug dealers or prostitutes – no- her favorites are the average white bread American couple who veers off the straight and narrow…  K says Point Proven- but I am getting off topic). 

So anyway, the other night, J crawled into bed and decided to try watching Hoarding Buried Alive.  No luck. She couldn’t do it. After about fifteen minutes of saying things to the TV like, just get rid of that empty toothpaste tube!  and  oh my word, can’t you just throw it away, she started scratching her neck and muttering – then clicked the TV off and  leaped out of bed. She raced to the closet in the spare bedroom and began tearing things out of it – shoes from 1996, dresses she hasn’t worn for five years, half-burned Christmas candles, etc etc -  and throwing them in boxes.   I raced to help  by sniffing the boxes while J said things to me like, I refuse to be buried alive, Maxie even though that closet looks NOTHING like those hoarding houses.  But that doesn’t stop J.   Just seeing the hoarding houses on TV is enough to send her into her buried alive panic mode. 

The boxes go into the “garage sale” room, and J is satisfied for the time being that she’s not a hoarder, which is kind of ironic considering that of all the rooms in the house, this one is crowded enough to question her hoarder tendencies. 

But here’s what I don’t get.  JK are big into antiques and going to antique stores and coming home with things.

No no Maxie, those are antiques. We collect those.  Not hoard. 

So I think what it means is, if you like it, it’s collecting. If you don’t understand the other person’s proclivities for saving that miniature shampoo bottle, or empty jars, or all the Charlie Brown cartoons for 40 years, that is hoarding.  Buzz says the JK affinity for antiques  is fortunate for him at his advanced age; apparently pets can be antiques.   

I have known about hoarding all my life; just like those people on TV, I was born with the hoarding gene.  But in my bloodlines, it’s called herding. The other day I dug a bunch of my babies out of the basket and herded them into a ring around the kitchen rug and into the living room. I can’t explain why I do it; I just like to hang out with them.  J lets me do it for a while, then she scratches her neck and picks them all up. 

About a week ago, JK took their showers and I moped around, depressed. I knew I wasn’t going.  I don’t CARE if they give me a rawhide candy cane, I want to GO.  Oh, FINE,  I’ll have a rawhide.  Buzz takes his and says to me,  This doesn’t happen nearly often enough and skulks it off to his lair.

 I hate the sound of the garage door going up and then back down.  They are gone.

When they got back several hours later, I did my Overjoyed Dance. But it didn’t last long.  The smells on them!!  So abnormal! I dropped back a few feet and circled around them, letting my nose do the sorting.  Musty,  metallic, wooden, muddy, dry, old, junky, rusty.  Dust. So much dust!  And another dog?  Pit bull, maybe?  And Buzz, from his bed, asked me - is that a hint of Lancaster’s BBQ? Nothing antique about his nose.

I saw a pit bull at the unbelievable acres of antiques and junk we walked through, Maxie, J said as she set a little bag on the table. Her name was Piper. Cute dog.  So I COULD have gone.  So unfair – but it’s over and they are home.

The next day was New Year’s Day.  After breakfast K said to J, Well, you ready to get that thing out of the car?  Car??  Car!  I jumped up. 

Yep.  Let me just put on my work clothes.  J went upstairs.

K opened the back door and let me out.  I went, but I didn’t like it that he shut the door and then went to the garage. I raced to the back gate to see what he did next.  He brought the car out of the garage and backed it up to the fence.  Oh man. I hate it when that fence keeps me from checking things out! I barked at them and jumped as high as I could.

Maxwell,  honestly.  You’re going to impale yourself one day. J opened the gate and I catapulted onto the driveway.  K had opened the back of his car.  There was something in there! I jumped in to see what it was.

Whatever it was, it was huge. And old.  It took up the entire back of the car.

It’s a sink, Maxie, J told me. Jump down.  We need to get the frame out of the car. They lifted a big wooden frame out of the car and set it on the driveway.

An old sink. I jumped back into the car and sniffed at it. And she thinks it’s weird when people keep shampoo bottles and old toothpaste tubes?  I felt itchy just looking at the thing,  but  JK seemed excited about it.  K got out some tools and did some man stuff to the  wooden frame with drills and hammers, then he and J carried it to the back deck. 

K got the hand truck and wheeled it over to the car and said to J, you ready for this?  This thing is a beast.   J held up her hands. They had leather gloves on them. Ready, she told him.  Move back, Maxie. Move!  I moved.

That sink was very, very heavy.  JK slid it down, off the car, onto the hand truck. Then they wheeled it to the back yard and onto the smaller deck.  I watched as they wrestled it up two steps onto the deck floor.  They were both breathing hard.  Oh my word J said. How much does that thing weigh. 

Probably 200-plus pounds, K said.  They stared at the beast. 

OK, now how do we lift that onto the frame, K asked.  Can you get it up that high? Because we have to go up high enough to set it down correctly. 

J looked doubtful. I don’t think I can hang onto it for that long or get it up that high all at once.

K went and got a bucket and turned it upside down in front of the frame.  OK, we will lift it up onto the bucket, then lift it from there to the frame. Think you can do that?

I can do it.   J pulled her gloves tight. 

I watched as they lifted it in stages onto the frame.  But it wasn’t on straight.  The frame needed a few alterations to make it fit right.  They had to take it off again.

It’s a good thing K hoards    herds   collects tools because by the time they were done getting that sink onto the frame the way they wanted it, there were extension cords, a crowbar, a bucket, a hammer, a drill, a saw, boards, nails, screws, drill bits, a mallet, and a few other items scattered around on the deck.  I stayed away. I know that energy K exudes when he is in the middle of a task that has taken 4 hours when he thought it would take 1.  I know better than to get in the way.  But that is all part of his determined nature and I admire it greatly. 

J was a little help, but not much.  She fixed the faucet and fetched tools and waited for the right moment, then did her part lifting the sink onto the frame. AGAIN.  And AGAIN.  And prayed that her leather gloves would protect her fingers from being snapped off if they were to be caught between the frame and the sink. I know those wimpy leather gloves. I’ve chewed them often enough.  Her fingers would have snapped like dry spaghetti. But  I didn’t tell her that. She is fond of her fingers even though some would say she’s hoarding all ten of them. 

Yes that is mildew. It's a bear to keep off.  Power wash in the spring.
And the white stuff is from the jasmine above, it's not bird poop. =)

And guess what, at the end of the project, the sink was installed exactly how they wanted it and K added some boards for a shelf at the bottom and J is going to paint it and add some other shelves to the area and turn it into a gardening center.  A gardening center! Pots! Even better than gloves! Oh, I can’t wait for spring. 

Thank you so much for all your hard work, J gave K a big hug and a kiss on the cheek. I LOVE it, and I love that I can see this awesome sink outside my kitchen window. It just makes me happy to look at it.  I could tell K was happy too.  It does look really cool.

Except K wasn’t all that happy with me when they were engrossed in lifting the sink for the third time and I sauntered innocently from the back yard through the workshop to go visit the dogs across the street.  Not my best day in the obedience factor. And then it didn’t help when J couldn’t find her other glove and then stared at me accusingly, like I had something to do with it.  Which I did, but she didn’t know that until several days later when I brought it to her, so why the accusatory glares then, is what I say!

I’m glad JK hoard  collect antiques, including Buzz and the kitchen sink. It was a great way to start the new year and when J gets her gardening center all put together, I’ll add another picture. 

J says she could never ask for a better husband than K, so she has no plans to collect more.  =)  And now that she doesn’t watch Hoarding Buried Alive anymore, she isn’t as itchy and the house is getting the usual Januarily organized. But she still watches the mayhem shows.  
I keep a close eye on my babies . I see a fox pelt, she sees a toothpaste tube, I say tomato, you say tomahto. Who knows, I might just add a glove and a pot or two from her gardening center to my collection this spring.

Buzzie Goes All Pop N Stuff

Happy New Year to everyone. Buzz here, filling in for Maxwell on this first day of 2012. He stayed up a little late last night, stressing over the distant booms from the fireworks, and is sleeping it off. Well, that, and I think he downed a few of my glucosamine biscuits in the celebrating.  

Kid's a lightweight.

O-free zone

Seeing that I was named for a major movie star, it’s not surprising I’m seen as something of a pop culture guru. It’s hard in this house, though, because I can’t let J catch me watching “E” or heaven forbid, “O”. Pick an O, she’s got at least two who were banned from TV in '11.  They are instant button pushers – on the remote, too.

Anyway…J’s overuse of the word ‘vapid’ hasn’t stopped me from forming an opinion on several pertinent stories. Who better than the old man of 2011 to share wisdom? What does the baby of 2012 know yet?

So I dug through my mail bag for the best of the best. Let’s get started.

Dear Myst:  Who? Hey, did you know the pup and I have a show in the works. Kuzz & Kaxwell Kake Korth Karolina. We’re pretty pumped.  Look for it on OWN.

                    -buzz

All the tweet I need, right here at the end of my face.

Hey Twit. It's BUZZ. And I gotta ask, why would I take the giant leap backward to birdville?  We dogs have the NOSE. All the info we could ever need – gossip, news, food reviews, moods etc etc… is right there. Nostrils rule. But you humans are cute with your “technology”.  Tweet on.

ROTFLMAO TTYL

               -buzz

Anon:

I see absolutely no problem with this trend.

          -buss

The Jack Russell Peppermint Rawhide Blend MAKES IT!!

Who’s Katy Perry? And what?? The Russell Brand can’t make it? As far as I can tell, the Russell brand is expanding. There’s some serious buzz in this Russell brand, I can tell you that!! Check out our peppermint rawhide blend! Russell brand “can’t make it!” Haha! Thanks for the laugh!

PS – Alexa – JK says thank you VERY MUCH for the wonderful gift.

               -Jack Russell Brand

Word: No. See reply to twit above.

     -Buzz

Dear AARP,

Yeah, there are definitely side effects. Are they adverse? I don't know.  See for yourself.

 Apparently taking Cialis turns you into a short squatty square person with stubs for hands and feet. But who's to say short and squatty isn't very attractive?   And who doesn't want a pill like this to turn you into a stub?  Seems a little counteractive but I'm no scientist.  Good luck with that. 

          -buzz

OK, yeah, got it. But when I hold it up to a mirror, there is ME. And by the way, there is also MEAT in there.  So, um….

          -buzz

Don’t want to discuss this.  It’s a sore topic twice a day in our house.--Buzz

         

Now I’m all grumpy n stuff. Nap time, before they start the first forced march of the year. Happy New Year to one and all. Make up your bucket list, with your number one resolution not to kick it.  That's mine, anyway.

  -Buzz, for the TEAM

Putt Down Dog Park

K, J, and I walked on Christmas Eve morning without Buzz, who opted to stay home and sleep. He was totally sacked.  Never even blinked his eyes open when we vibrated the floor walking past his bed. 

courtesy amazon.com

It felt like any other morning to me, but better-- the best kind, where JK are extra happy because they are free to take their time. J told K about the book Watership Down, which she had just finished reading for the third time in her life.  It is a story about a kind of park with Rabbits. K said it sounded like a book he should read in 2012.  Oh man, I would LOVE to visit that park. It sounded awesome, even better than the church yard, which is pretty cool.   Since there were no rabbits to be seen, I did a lot of ball chasing in the church yard and got to be off the leash on the road part, as long as I stayed in the grass.  I know now that freedom means coming when I’m called, and most of the time I earn my freedom.  J says the Watership Down readers would know what she means when she says Watch for hrududus, Maxie.  She thinks I can speak rabbit. 

We came to the last house before we started down Pine Cove Lane.  The man who lives there was standing outside by his porch with a little white dog.

They got a new puppy, J said to K. Look! He’s adorable. Pretty shy though.

A boxer? asked K.

I’m not sure. It doesn’t look exactly like a boxer.

What happened to their other dog?  K asked J

I don’t know that either.  I haven’t seen him for  a long time. 

Now I remembered the big brown boxer Spike.  We used to run into him and his man once in a while on Pine Cove.  The man always had a smoke stick and a cup of coffee.  And J would say to K, now why don’t we walk with a cup of coffee, that man has the right idea. But they never do it. They leave their coffee home and so far no smoke sticks, either. 

KJ said hello then, because there was the man, now standing at the end of his driveway across the street from us. But Spike was nowhere to be seen.   The man had a newspaper, a coffee cup, and some mail in his hands, which he set down on the concrete.  In the background, we saw the white puppy run up onto the front porch.  I could tell he was really shy, like J said, so I didn’t chase him. 

I been waitin’ for a few days for yall to walk by so I can catch you, the man said.

JK were very surprised. For us to walk by? They asked.

Yessir, I see you walk by every day and I’ve been wanting to show yall my new puppy. Ruger. 

He’s darling, J said admiringly.  Hey pup!

Ruger sat and stared out at us from behind the porch railings.  He had two very brown ears but the rest of him was pure white.  I thought he was so cute. I chewed my ball and stared back at him, then did a couple of showoffy (that is what J calls them) prances, dropping my ball and snatching it back up.  Hey pup!  Look what we can do! We can play ball when you’re bigger!!  Ready when you are, Ruge! Anytime!!   He just looked at me. I strolled back to JK and listened while they talked.

Is he a boxer? asked K.

Yep, purebred European boxer, my son got him for me a week or so ago. He’s pretty shy still.

Yeah we can see that.  J told the man she loved Ruger’s brown ears.

Do you still have your other boxer? K asked the man.

The man looked down and swallowed.  I chewed my ball and looked at the man’s face and listened. 

Naw, we had to have him put down in August.  He was just in so much pain. 

We wondered.  We are so sorry to hear that.  JK were very sympathetic. 

Yeah, lost a great friend.  The man cleared his throat.

What the….I have no idea what “putt down” meant but when he said those words, a picture formed instantly in my mind, like a mix of a golf course (where no dogs are allowed so when JK go, I have to stay home, so unfair!!) and Watership Down, that happy place that J was talking about earlier, where the rabbits lived in freedom and friendship; and I couldn’t hear anything else JK and the man said; I just saw this picture. It was so clear.  Like I was looking through a window.

A blue, blue sky.  A whole lake of fresh water.  Green grass, golf course grass,  shady trees, warm sunshine. Smoky blue mountains in the distance. Dirt to dig. Lots of dogs to play with, no color blindness!  Dog houses with names on them: I could see Lucy, Max (not me, not yet!), Theo, Jacob, Cassie, Hank (arrived 12/31/11 - RIP to our dear friend)…I could see Spike now.  Balls that never popped and squirrels that skittered ahead just fast enough, and infinite space to run and run. Naps and biscuits and everyone free and happy, no pain at all, waiting for as long as they needed, for their people to show up.  And right in front, a sign: ALL DOGZ WLCOM.  All dogs.  What a great place to wait!!!  I couldn’t figure out why Spike being at this Putt Down Dog Park would make the man sad.

I wagged around them.  Look!! Can you see this, what I’m seeing?  See where those dogs are? Nope… People can be so blind sometimes!  JK and the man didn’t see the picture.  So I did the best thing I could think of to make him feel better.

I walked over and set my ball carefully between his coffee cup and the newspaper, just close enough that it bumped the cup. The paper kept my ball from rolling down the driveway.  Slobber from my mouth dripped onto the cup and some into the coffee.  Buzz taught me that swapping slobber is the best way to make your friends feel better. That is why we lick faces and hands.  Since I didn’t know this man very well, I didn’t think I should lick him.  But he got my slobber all the same, in his coffee.

Ahhhh…??? the man stared at the ball next to his cup, then at me, then looked at JK with a big question mark on his face.  Go ahead and have a sip, K said to the man, no, go ahead.  All three of them laughed. 

Maxie, go get your ball. J said to me. I got it.  But swapping slobber worked, just like I knew it would. See? Everyone was happy after that. Not as happy as Spike was at the Putt Down Dog Park, waiting for his man.  But the day will come when that man gets to see Spike again. Then they will swap slobber.  We dogs know this.  We just know it. 

I ran some more in the church yard and all the way home, where breakfast and Buzz were waiting. It was such a good Christmas Eve.