Jim’s Random Notes

Every time I get to thinking that maybe Charlie’s learned not to mess with the local wildlife, he does something incredibly stupid to set me straight. Last night I let him out just before going to bed. He stood there by the door for a minute and then took off around the corner after something. 30 seconds later he was running across the yard with his face in the grass, and the unmistakable aroma of skunk assaulted my olfactory system.

Yes, Charlie got another skunk. More correctly, the skunk got him. Not only does the dog stink (he’s at the vet now, getting a skunk bath), but the skunk let loose around the side of the house–right next to the air conditioning unit. The house reeks. I’m at home today with the windows open and the whole-house fan pulling in the 95-degree air, hoping to get rid of that smell.

This is Charlie’s second skunk. I had hoped that after the last time he would have learned that the stinky black kitty with the white stripe is strictly hands-off. Sadly, he seems to be a slow learner.

Yesterday was beautiful: calm, sunny, and 80 degrees. I had a few hours of outside work to do, what with rearranging the compost pile and vacuuming dirt out of the pool, and Charlie said he’d come out to help. Some help he was. I took a break after a couple of hours and caught him lounging in the grass:

“Charlie! I thought you were supposed to be helping me work. Or at least patrolling the yard to keep the squirrels and cats out.”

Uh oh. He caught me.

“But, Dad! It’s such a nice day. And I’m cute! Scratch my belly?”

“No, Charlie. You have work to do.”

“Nope. I think I’d rather just lie here and enjoy the sun.”

Hard to argue with that logic, ain’t it?

Little Foot is the neighbor’s cat. For the five years we’ve had Charlie, I’ve been warning the neighbors that if he catches the cat in the yard, I can’t be held responsible for the outcome. My neighbor said, “I know.”

Charlie cornered Little Foot yesterday–in a plastic trash can that had been knocked over by the wind. I won’t go into the whole sequence of events, but I will say that when Charlie’s head came out of the trash can he a very fuzzy growth attached to it.

The picture above doesn’t even come close to showing the damage that cat did to Charlie. The back of one ear is raw, his throat is scratched (apparently from the cat’s back claws), and he even has scratches inside his mouth. The last time I saw the cat, it was up in a tree. I suspect it wasn’t seriously injured.

I’m starting to think that Charlie should stay clear of the neighborhood wildlife. He killed a fawn years ago, and I found a dead bunny once, but mamma deer got the best of him, as did the skunk last year and the cat yesterday. I hate to think what’d happen if he found a raccoon.

Stupid dog.

Tasha the poodle came to us in May of 1997 along with her mom, Tiffany. Tasha was tiny when we got her. I think she weighed all of five pounds. I was always afraid that I’d somehow hurt her.

Timid as she was, and kind of dull personality-wise compared with Tiffany, Tasha still managed to work herself into my heart. She’d come by and look at me with those adoring eyes and there’s no way I couldn’t love her. She wasn’t particularly snuggly towards me, but when she did curl up with me she’d just sprawl out. She’d lie there for as long as I’d pet her. Crazy little poodle.

The thing we’ll remember the most about Tasha, though, is that she always put Charlie in his place. That’s right, our six pound toy poodle kept our 70 pound pit bull in line. If he ran her over, she’d get up and give him a nasty scolding. More than once she ended up literally hanging from his lip, she bit so hard. That was quite a trick, too, considering that she didn’t have a whole lot of teeth left. Charlie always looked properly contrite. He’d shake his head and slink away carefully so as not to incur her wrath again.

Tasha was sick a lot. She had a collapsed trachea, enlarged heart, hip problems, back problems, and undoubtedly other problems of which I know nothing. When we got Charlie five years ago, we thought Tasha was on her last legs. Charlie perked her up, though, and she was quite spry for the next few years. Last summer she got sick and bounced back. Same thing happened again in November. We’d think, “this is it,” but somehow she’d miraculously recover.

But not today. She’d been deterioriating quickly over the last several days, and this morning she wasn’t moving well at all. A few hours at the vet and we determined that she just wasn’t going to get better this time. Something was causing the bones in her vertebrae to deteroriate, making it increasingly difficult for her to walk or stand. There was nothing that the doctors could do for her. They told us that they couldn’t even understand how she’d lasted this long.

We cried. Of course we did. But we couldn’t watch her in pain any longer. We petted her and said goodbye, and held her as the doctor administered the shot. Tasha was a part of our family, a source of amusement and a loyal friend. We will miss her.