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I have often wondered about the world’s complainers. How do they have the time to write, call, email their dissatisfaction with things?
Now I know. When something really pisses you off, you make the time.
Tonight, I am the complainer. And I am fired up.
For much of the summer I have been watching the CBS program “Greatest American Dog.” It’s your basic reality program, but each contestant is there with a dog. As a dog lover, I had found it adorable. The bond between dog and owner was wonderful to watch.
Each week the contestants run through two challenges, and at the end they are judged by three dog experts. At the end of each episode, a person and their dog gets sent home.
After this week I question whether Victoria Stilwell, Allan Reznik and Wendy Diamond really are experts and whether they actually care about the dogs or animals in general. As far as the program’s producers, well, there is no question about their love and caring for animals. They have none.
In the first contest this week, each dog had to sit down in a marked area, and stay still while… ok, I’m not kidding here… an ELEPHANT walked towards it in a menacing way. The dog that let the elephant get the closest was the winner.
You could see the terror on the faces of several of the dogs. All they wanted to do was run, but their owners, to win the challenge, had to yell “Stay, Stay” the entire time. The dogs were faced with the horrible choice of watching an ELEPHANT stomp towards them or disappointing their beloved owners.
And then there’s the issue of how you control an elephant to keep it from charging or stomping or doing any of the other things an elephant can do. There was an elephant trainer who had a big rod, that looked like it was made for poking or whacking.
That was the night’s first challenge.
Challenge number two was a giant jungle gym/obstacle course thing. The dogs had to run up a steep ramp, traverse a balance beam and then, using a body harness and at the urging of their owners, jump from a 10 foot ledge and slide down a zip line.
Again, you could see the terror in each dog’s eyes.
Question: How do you tell a dog it’s ok to jump off of a wall because the harness around its body will let it glide to safety.
Answer: YOU CAN’T!
And tonight, the owner who throughout the season has shown the greatest bond with his dog was sent home. Because his sweet dog was too scared to jump off of the wall.
His dog couldn’t be convinced to do something that a dog should never be trained to do.
The judges said he failed at the task. It is worth noting that these are the same judges who, just the week before, chastised him for pushing his dog too hard while trying to win a race through a maze.
This week he failed because he didn’t push his dog enough to get it to jump off a wall.
Shame on the judges and shame on CBS.
Now that I have returned to the world of blogging it has occurred to me that I am not sure that I have anything interesting to write about. It’s not that my life is more boring that it used to be. I just am struggling for that inspiration… my muse.
It used to be that I would come home from work and take Cosmo out for a walk. We would stroll around town for a bit and something would come to me, a rant, a story, an incident, even an emotion. And on those occasions when nothing came to me, I would look at him and he would become the subject of that night’s blog. A 150 pound bull mastiff is always funny and interesting.
But, now Cosmo is gone, he has been gone for 10 months, and those walks with him are now just solo walks through the city at night. They are good for me, but, in the absence of inspiration, there are no funny stories about the solo walk.
And then there is Juliet. The cat. She is a great pet and as dog-like as a cat can be. She comes when I call her, she guards the apartment well (from mice, but still), and she plays fetch better than Cosmo ever did.
Yet she is a cat.
A single 37-year-old man can tell lots of stories about his giant dog. They’re manly tales, and they show that manly, slap-on-the-ass-during-a-sporting-event, cry-at-Brian’s-Song sensitive side.
Once that same 37-year-old starts writing about his cat… well, that’s when it’s time to get 5 more cats, a home-knit blanket and just resign.
So unless she does something… no, forget it.
I will just skip a day or two.
Sorry Juliet.
We had to put Cosmo to sleep today. His health declined dramatically over the past 72 hours. Mary Beth hugged and kissed him goodbye, and then I held him and whispered my final words of praise as the doctor performed the procedure.
It ended quickly and peacefully.
I could write volumes filled with his stories. They would be hysterical, heroic and heartbreaking. Many have written such tales of their beloved animals. Not to take away from their writing, but the fact is, coming up with those stories is like shooting fish in a barrel.
When you have a dog that you love, that loves you back, that dog is the greatest dog in the world.
Cosmo was our dog. We loved him and he loved us back. Because of that, he was the greatest dog in the world. We wouldn’t trade those nine-and-a-half years for anything. I don’t think he would have either.
Our animals are our family. Cosmo grew from a ridiculous looking puppy, the size of a loaf of bread, to my friend, my protector, my food-scrap collector, and my crossword puzzle helper (I’d use his back as a table when he sat on the couch).
Cosmo’s cancer was unusual, in an unusual place, and it grew in an unusual way. We donated his body to the hospital’s oncology research department. If they can learn anything about the disease that took the greatest dog in the world away from us, perhaps your greatest dog in the world will be able to give you extra weeks or months of joy.
Even though he’s gone, he has given us more joy than we can use up in our lives.
That is the gift that the greatest dogs in the world give us all.
I was walking Cosmo the Cancer Dog tonight for his evening tour when we came across two couples heading into a house.
The women took a long loving look at Cosmo.
One looked at me, holding his leash, on this street at 12:30 am and asked “Is that your dog?” The tone was the same she’d use if she’d seen him alone and lost.
“No,” I replied, “I took him from a stranger.”
“Oh… he’s so big. How did he get so big?”
Remember, he’s a bullmastiff. They’re all big.
“Fertilizer.”
“Wow, because they don’t usually get so big do they?”
“No, it took special chemicals to get him to grow like this. But he’s sweet, he just drools a lot.”
“Yeah, he’s just like the cat I had as a kid.”
Cosmo is more like himself today. The doctor prescribed a heavy duty NSAID and maybe it’s working. Tomorrow he goes to his regular vet for a more detailed examination, and then he’s going to stay with MB for a bit. He’s happy and not at all uncomfortable.
Who takes a 5-year-old to the animal ER? Actually, that’s not a fair question because I know that sometimes you have no choice in child care. But, to take the little boy into the consult with the vet seems cruel. Everyone in the waiting room heard him scream and yell that he didn’t want Lucky to die. I’m not a fan of glossing over life for kids, but is it so bad to tell the little boy that Lucky has to go to a farm?
MB and her partner are having, or getting a baby. They’re adopting from overseas and are far along in the process. I had been expecting them to ask me for a sample. All of that practice for nothing.
Some college students around here are in hot water for hiring a hooker, a hooker who is HIV positive. Lots of things to touch on here, but my first question is why college kids need to hire a hooker. Is there any period of life when sex is more available than in college?
And this gets me to my final topic which came up over the weekend. When I’m President of the World, one of my first decrees will be that every school have barrels of condoms by every door. The students will learn sex-ed, and be told that they probably aren’t ready to have sex, and they really should wait. But we all know better, and on their way out the door they should be able to fill their pockets with rubbers, with no embarrassment. Teens have sex, and that will never stop. Teen pregnancy and STD’s can be prevented though. And while we’re at it, get the girls to line up for the HPV vaccine. It’s not going to make them have sex, it’s not going to tell them it’s ok to have sex, but it’s going to protect the ones who were going to have sex anyway from a tough price to pay, cancer. I have many female friends who have a little extra angst when they get their annual pap’s, all because of an easily transmitted virus they got in their younger days. Imagine how much easier they might sleep if they’d had a vaccine.
Cosmo is sick… and we don’t know why. It started yesterday with an odd limp. This morning when he woke up, he had trouble walking. It was like he was drunk.
I called my ex-wife, MB, and we took him to the doggie emergency room.
MB and I were married for 5 years, we’ve been divorced for the same amount of time. For the first year or so after we split up, we didn’t speak, There was a lot of hurt and anger. Our joint custody of Cosmo is one of the reasons we reestablished our friendship. Then we remembered that we do actually like each other.
It’s sort of like a brotherly/sisterly affection now. I have zero romantic feelings towards her and I have no doubt that she lacks that same feeling towards me, but it is still a lot of fun hanging out .
Back when we were married, we had just finished a phone conversation while I was at work. A coworker walked up to me and said she knew I’d been talking to my wife. She knew, because she said she never saw me smile or laugh as much as I did when I was talking to MB.
That remains true today. As we sat in the ER, waiting for a couple of hours, we cracked each other up.
We talked about the hard issue too, of what to do with a 9-year-old bullmastiff who might have a serious problem. That wasn’t fun, but it wasn’t terrible. It was comforting dealing with it together.
At the end of it all, there was no official diagnosis on Cosmo. It could be something simple like a neck injury or something not so simple like a brain tumor. Or it could be anything in between.
Quite a range.
Right now he’s sleeping on his bed and he seems comfortable.
My animals and I have a very basic living agreement. They each take care of certain responsibilities and in return get eternal love, food, shelter, Cosmo gets a couch and Juliet gets her Egyptian cotton sheets.
Juliet’s sole job is to keep the apartment critter free. She does it well. Other apartments in my little building have reported mice. One once made a wrong turn and came into my kitchen. Juliet got him, chopped his head off and put it on a spike as a warning to all other mice. That was 4 years ago and no other mouse has ever ventured into apartment 1F.
She keeps her skills sharp with the occasional bug on the wall. Her most impressive talent is how she can catch a fly midair between her paws. She likes to stun the insect and play with it for a while, before calling me into the room to show me her handiwork.
Cosmo’s job is to defend the homestead. He’s 150 pounds and his bark rattles the windows. When he hears an odd noise in the hall his ears perk up and he makes enough noise to send any would-be intruders on their way. After a walk, he will stand at the top of my building’s front steps and assess the situation on the street. If there are strangers or shady looking people, he will hold his ground with a ferocious look on his face until the threat has passed.
A few weeks ago he barked at a biker who was cruising down the sidewalk at 2am. The guy was so startled he crashed into a parked car. I pretended to scold Cosmo, but he knew there were extra biscuits for him once the guy was out of sight.
Last night, I got home from work shortly after midnight.
It was 13 degrees out and windy.
The lock on my building’s front door had broken last week, and they replaced it yesterday, apparently with a new lock that would accept the old key.
My old key didn’t work.
My first attempt to get into the building was to ring the bells of some of the neighbors I know. I was disappointed, but I also understood, when not a single one of them trudged downstairs to the front door to see who was a-knocking at 12:10am.
Plan two was a break-in. And one note here, I could be a burglar. I have always been good at forcing entry into locked places.
The problem with the break-in was the fear of being mauled by Cosmo. Like I said, it was cold, I had a hat and a scarf on. I looked like a burglar.
But it was either that or sleep in my car.
So, like Spiderman, I scaled across the front of my building to a window I know I could jimmy. Like Magnum, I forced the screen out of its track and picked the window lock open. It was a very loud process.
Then, like T.J. Hooker, I hurled my body through the window, did a somersault and sprung up behind a couch, ready to defend myself from my massive watchdog.
The only sound was a long, annoyed sigh. Then a weary pair of eyes popped over the top of the couch.
Cosmo took one look at me, snorted, and went back to sleep.
Cosmo and I were walking down the street tonight and passed a younger couple.
As they approached the front steps of her apartment building, she turned and faced him, several feet from the door. She squared her shoulders, kept her hands in her pocket and said:
“That was nice, we should hang out again some time.”
“Yeah,” he said.
“Yeah,” she said. “No, really.”
“Yeah, it was fun… mmm… ok.”
Then she jutted her chin out to the left, opened her arms and lightly hugged the guy.
First date, last date.
Right after my divorce was final, every one of my parents’ friends declared they had found the perfect woman for me. I’d never been on a blind date in my life and it sounded like fun. So many of my parents’ friends had known me for decades, they surely knew what they were doing.
The most interesting of the offers was Woman X. She had been described to me as gorgeous, smart, funny and successful.
Holy crap. That’s the perfect woman. What on earth could go wrong?!
I picked up her up at her office and we went to a quiet restaurant in the city. Perhaps the quiet atmosphere was contagious, because she didn’t talk much. And that’s ok. There is nothing wrong with quiet. I asked a lot of questions, got a lot of one or two word answers, but I figured she was just shy.
As the silence continued we both drank more. And as I drank more through the silence, I guess I started talking more.
I was only aware of my alleged conversation domination when she brought it up over desert. Slurringly she declared, “you sure do talk a lot.”
“I’m sorry. Is there anything you’d like to talk about?”
“Yeah… yeah there is.” She was beginning to sound like the angry drunk at a saloon in a western, right before he tries unsuccessfully to pull a gun on our hero.
“Great… what is it?”
“Let’s talk about masturbation!”
Just a note about me. I am very WASPy. We don’t talk about those things.
I don’t think I answered, but if I did it sounded like the noise Scooby-Do would make when he was surprised.
“You’re a guy. How often do you do it?”
That time I did answer. “Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Mmmmmmmmmmmmm. Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.”
“Well let me ask you this,” she challenged. “Do you ever do it in your car on the way home from work?”
This was a question I could answer quickly and truthfully. “No. No, I never have.”
“Really? It’s a great way to let off steam. Of course, it’s embarrassing when the truckers drive by.”
I drank more wine. Much more. I don’t remember any more of the dinner conversation. How could I? A woman I’d known for 2 hours wanted to know my masturbation habits and told me hers. What else could there be to remember?
Oh… this. I do remember this. We shared a taxi that dropped her off first.
I gave her a light hug.
“That was nice, we should hang out again some time.”
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