I'm slacking off already, I guess.

Classes start tomorrow. I wish I felt more anticipation than dread, but I don't. I'm getting bogged down in the financial mire again, too. I need to not let it get to me--with my loans and everything I will be OK. Still, it worries me. I would really prefer not to have to live hand-to-mouth all semester (though I know that what I am thinking of as I type "hand-to-mouth" is a really rich white Westerners version thereof and I should be ashamed to complain about it).

Today is a very exciting day in the Mitchell-Harnett household. We just got our dog, Chance. His name was Champ at the rescue, but we figured a small change would be OK. He seems to be doing OK with being here so far, though he's only been here for about an hour. He is already asleep on the office floor while both Mark and I click away at our computers. That can't possibly be a bad sign.

All the federales say
We could have had him any day
We only let him slip away
Out of kindness I suppose
-"Pancho and Lefty"

I am so fucking thrilled. I have discovered that I can download all my mom's old-time country music from Kazaa and listen to it. It's making me homesick in a bittersweet way, but it's nice. It's really nice. I hear this stuff and I'm home again and I know exactly who I am. Nothing to reconcile, nothing to worry about. Just a small town Western girl.

Which is totally untrue, of course, but it's still nice to be in that place for awhile.

Another brilliant idea of the day? Buy Chance stuffed animals to play with from the Goodwill. They are cheap enough that way that I won't freak out when he rips them up. Hopefully Mark won't either. I can't believe how uptight Mark is about the damn dog. We're in the opposite roles I expected. That's probably good.

Oooh, I love this song!

Mmmmm...it's Sunday night and my life is just good. I love my Mark, I love my dog, I love what I'm doing (school and work). I love that I made lentil soup today and it's cheap, it's good and it's nutritious. I love that even though I am tired, I am tired from actually doing school work and chores and playing with the dog. I love that the TV hasn't been on all day and isn't on now.

It's hard to just be content. I don't trust it for very long, and it worries me when things get too quiet and seem too good. But I am content with this. This is what I want. Mark and were sitting on the couch and Chance came up and sat between us (on both of our legs) and we petted him and he just stayed there for several minutes. This is my family, I thought. And it is. I love my family of origin, but this is the family I am creating--the family we are creating. There isn't anything better than that.

OK, I should go get some more reading done before I melt completely into a puddle of gooey romantic nonsense.

It is getting a little old that cleaning up dog vomit is apparently part of my morning routine. Chance really need to stop eating things that make him vomit.

I walked Chance into an amazing golden sunrise this morning. It almost made being up at 7:30 when I don't have class until 2 worth it. Almost.

I have a stupid group project meeting at the massively inconvenient hour of 9am this morning. Then I'm coming back here and working (read: coming back here and taking a nap) before 2 o'clock class.

So far, having my schedule split into work week and school week seems to take a lot of pressure off.

I am trying to decide if I want to submit a paper/which paper I want to submit to the Women's Studies Colloquium thing. I am tempted to submit an abstract of the paper I am going to write for PD on HPV, since I would like to get more into women's health policy work, and presenting some would be good for the resume. However, I feel weird about signing up to present a paper I haven't written yet. Hrm...The deadline for abstracts is Nov. 14, so the chances of me writing it before then are pretty low, too.

Still, I think that's what I will do.

I am going to try to have grits for breakfast. We'll see how that goes.

So there is something wrong with my shoulder. It's like the pain that I had when Chancey pulled my shoulder out that one time, but a bit less. And it's persistant. Taking a shirt off over my head just about makes me cry.

Great. A health problem. Just what I don't have time for.

So you tell me if this is stupid...

I was sitting on the couch this morning, waiting for Mark to be ready to drive me to work, petting Chancey. And I got to thinking--why are we so much more comfortable with physical contact with animals than with other people? I would pet anyone's dog, but to even shake hands with the person freaks me out, and I certainly wouldn't touch them, or want them to touch me, in the intimate sense that petting implies. Does it have something to do with the power differential between us and animals? Or is it even simpler than that--would we all pet each other if we were all covered in fur?

Sometimes the "no touching" thing bothers me. I wish I could be more physically affectionate. Other than with Mark, I have a really hard time with it. Even hugging friends or my parents or whatever feels strange and stifling to me. And that definitely makes me feel like I'm missing something, because I like petting Chance, and Chance obviously likes to be petted.

We just took Chancey for his nightly walk, and I had the brilliant idea to let him off-leash for a few minutes in the schoolyard. His recall is so good at home, I figured he'd run around a bit and then come right back when we called him.

I was wrong. We chased him all over. He was practically in the highway. But he eventually allowed himself to be caught (once he was tired, I think), so all is well.

Except Mark is having a fit and says he is never allowed off-leash again.

Chancey and I just had an encounter where he lunged and barked at a 2 or 3 year-old little girl.

I can't deal with this. I just called Mark and told him we need to give Chance back. I'm second-thinking that now, of course, but...this is just too awful. I don't know how to make him behave the way he needs to in order for us to be able to trust him, and if we can't trust him, we can't keep him. It's really that simple. We spend a ton of time with him, he gets all of the love and affection any dog could want, we work with him as far as training and stuff goes...and he still does this every once in awhile. And it only takes once. So far we've been lucky, but...

Fuck. I can't even believe I am considering letting him go. I love him to pieces. I would feel awful if he weren't here. I would feel like my family was broken apart. There has to be another way.

Once upon a time, not long ago, there was a dog named Chance. Chance lived with a very loving couple. He had some behavioral problems early on, but he was a very good boy. Chancey was also a very big boy, weighing 113 lbs.

One day on his walk, Chance met Dottie in a yard just a few blocks away. Dottie was a Carin Terrier puppy some nice folks had rescued from the pound. Unlike big Chance, Baby Dottie was very small. She weighed about 8 lbs. She was roughly the size of Chance's snout, definitely smaller than his head.

On my way home from work, I often see a group of homeless people on the side of the street, particularly at one busy intersection. Sometimes there are only one or two, sometimes there are several spread out for several blocks. One of them, a man, nearly always has a dog with him. I have admired the dog, who looks to be a black Lab, before. I hadn't seen them in a couple of weeks at least, though, because I'd been taking a different route home due to my stop at the gym.

Y'all, I am exhausted. I should be OK today, as the little monsters let us sleep from about midnight to 7 am (time they apparently spent shitting and rolling around in it), but it's all catching up and I can barely keep my eyes open today.

Everybody is doing well, eating a ton and playing and showing beginning signs of being paper trained (OK, very beginning signs--that might just be wishful thinking).

The whole herd of them got their first shots and heartworm pills Saturday morning (complete with 2+ hour wait at the cheap vet clinic). Monday, the tiny one, only weighs 7 lbs, but the rest of them are between 10-12.5 lbs., and all are healthy. We were quite the sight trying to haul them to the vet in two carriers and a leash.

Gee, didn't exactly leave the blog in good spirits, did I?

Things are better, I think, than they were upon my last post. There are worse things to be than 20-30 lbs overweight. Lots of worse things. So...I've started keeping a food journal for a bit, just to get a sense of what I am eating, and my main focus is on exercise. Or was on exercise. I tore my pectoral muscle, so all exercise is suspended until I can breathe without Vicodin.

Mainly, I've just re-entered the zone in which I am tired of thinking about my weight. There is too much else going on to focus on it. We're closing on the house in just over a week. There is paint to pick out, there are boxes to pack. There is work drama that never ends, which may or may not turn out good for me. It is really and truly spring here, with green trees and blue sky and tank top and flip flop weather. Who wants to waste all that fixating on her fat ass?

We had a truly fantastic experience last weekend. The dog rescue we work with had a picnic, and three of our former puppies and their families came! I say former puppies because at not-quite-seven-months, they are HUGE! All about 60 lbs. And they are obviously all great dogs, and dogs that are integral parts of the families who adopted them. I don't think I've ever felt quite so proud as I did watching them play, watching their families mingle and thinking that yes, I made this happen. It is because of me that these dogs are alive and happy and healthy, and because of me that these people have these dogs to enrich their lives. How could I not be proud of that?

You know, the best friend I ever had was a dog
It sounds like a cliche unless it's happened to you
Some days that dog was the only reason I even got out of bed
-Dan Bern, "Estelle"

Tonight, I am moved to share my feelings about dogs.

Going over what I wrote last night, I realize I've barely scratched the surface of what I wanted to say. That is what happens when I try to post with the television on and Mark yammering at me. :)

First, I don't know if I made my feelings about my dog clear. I do not think Chance is a person. He is an entirely different species, with completely different needs and capacities. He does not understand logic, he cannot be reasoned with, he has a prey drive, he will never be able to use a toilet...the list goes on and on. But even though I don't think of Chance as human or humanesque, his life is worth as much to me as a human life. Yes, you read that correctly. My dog's life is worth as much to me as a person's life.

This is Sahara. She is somewhere between 2 and 3. She's half Pit Bull, half Boxer. She was rescued within minutes of being put down.

Cuddly Bow and Chancers

Chance is in at the emergency vet. He had surgery late last night for bloat. His stomach was completely turned and it is not yet 100% sure if parts of it died off or not (they did not think so when the did the surgery, so nothing was removed). If he lives through the next few days without complications, he should be fine (we are currently told the chances of this happening are 80-90%). If there are complications, it likely means that part of his stomach is dead and there could be infection. This would mean another surgery and his chances of living through it would be very decreased (50%, possibly lower depending on the extent of the damage).

This dog is my family. Please, please if you believe at all in praying or sending good vibes or whatever you do for animals, do it.

It all started at 6:30 AM on Thursday, when the alarm went off to wake us up to go to the airport. Actually, it started before that, about six weeks ago, when my job was making me crazy and I was yelling "I need a fucking vacation!" at the top of my lungs every 30 minutes or so. After some discussion and exploration of ticket prices and possibilities, Mark and I decided to take a long weekend vacation in Boston in early July. Some of our favorite people in the world happen to live there, so it seemed a good idea. The tickets were ridiculously expensive, but we decided to do it anyway. Fast forward back to the alarm Thursday morning. We got up and got to the airport alright, and our plane from Austin to Dallas only left about 30 minutes late, which was close enough to on-schedule that we didn't have any connection worries. So far, so good.

My baby is gone. Sudden heart failure this afternoon, after living through surgery #2, to repair a several inch diameter hole in his stomach. They did everything they could do, there was just too much damage. His stomach had been leaking into his abdominal cavity, which caused infection and a fever spike. They went in and fixed what they could with surgery this morning. We saw him briefly before he came out of the anesthesia, but were supposed to go back this afternoon when he was awake. The doctor called a couple of hours ago to tell us that he died in his sleep.

There will never be another dog like this dog.

For those who have been so kind as to email me and ask, this is the rescue who pulled Chance out of the kill shelter, and anyone who wants to donate in his name, we'd be happy if you'd send your money here.

Mark and I have started looking for a new dog. There's a lot of controversy about whether or not that's a good idea at this stage--Chance has only been gone for a week--but it definitely feels right to me, and I think it's beginning to feel right to Mark as well.

We haven't met anyone yet, but I've been in touch with some fosters and rescues and we have some contenders. One is a 1 year-old female Bernese named Cookie. I don't have a picture of her yet, but her personality sounds great, if a bit on the hyper side for us, and I absolutely love Bernese Mountain Dogs. She's at a rescue in Dallas, and I am communicating with someone there to get more information about her.

I just talked to the woman who runs the rescue where Leo is. We are going to adopt him. I am so, so happy. It feels very right, adopting a dog his age (they are now guessing him at closer to 6 than 4). We will be able to give him the spoiled, mellow old age that we weren't able to give Chance.

Like all things, though, there is some sadness in this. Specifically, I also heard back about Cookie, the Bernese (now called Caroline by her rescue, which is a much better name, I think). She sounds delightful as well, and is, as you can see, quite beautiful in a goofy puppy way. I would have loved to have her. Mark and I even taked about taking them both (they both get on well with other dogs), but decided that Leo needs some time to adjust to us and to living inside and everything else before we get another dog, especially a fairly hyper young dog. So someone else will have to make a good home for Caroline. I hope that they do.

When Mark and I first adopted Chance, we considered getting pet insurance. I'm the type who likes to insure things (as well as ensure things, I guess), so I assumed we'd get it, but we'd heard it didn't cover routine stuff (shots, yearly exams, etc.) and Chance was young and healthy, so we decided against it without ever really doing any research.

Mistake.

I am so angry about this I can barely type. Seriously. Fuck these people. Fuck anyone who would do this, anyone who would support it, and anyone who thinks it is no big deal.

A slightly more in depth piece on the same subject.

Actual text about our adventures in picking him up to come, but until then, pictures!!

He's absolutely fabulous. He's sweet and gentle (even has an amazing soft mouth). He is warming up to us very quickly. For the first two days, he was almost completely immobile (as in, we had to put a leash on him to get him up off the dog bed for any reason), but now he wanders around and follows us from room to room. He has shown no signs of aggression or fear. We're bonding. Mark and I are both in love with him already.

In the comments to my original post about Atticus, Scand asked me to speak about why I have all-male pets, as feminist. She also asked why I gave Atticus the name I did. So I thought I'd answer those things:

My co-worker brought this ad in to share with me yesterday, and it amused me so much, I have to share it with all of you. Tell me, does this depressed-ass dog make you want to buy his variety of food?

We had a big weekend at my house this weekend. Friday night was the usual laze about, but Saturday was jam packed with activity. First, Mark and I took Atty and Leo to the vet, Atty to get microchipped and Leo to get blood work down. Atty screamed like he was being killed while they were inserting the chip, but was otherwise fine. Leo was a trooper, but we're under strict orders to reduce his food intake, as he's up to 135 lbs, when he'd be healthier at closer to 110. Which is totally my fault, I'll admit it. I just couldn't see how fat he was getting.

The other day, Mark and I caught a show on Animal Planet called "Rocket Dogs." Rocket Dog Rescue is a dog rescue in San Francisco, run by an amazing women named Pali Boucher. The show did not just talk about the rescue, but about Pali's life and how she came to be doing what she's doing. I have rarely admired anyone more. Born a ward of the state with a drug addicted mother who died when she was 10, Pali had a rough, rough childhood and early adulthood. A number of years back, she was homeless and drug addicted. Then she met a dog named Leadbelly (looked to be a hound/Rott mix of some time) and wanted to be able to take care of him so badly that she went into rehab and got clean.

In case anybody was wondering, I am supporting Kinky Friedman for governor my beloved adopted home, the Lone Star State. And yes, I am completely serious. Not only is he the by-far least nauseating of the "candidates," he actually does and has done good things, which is more than I can say for 99.9% of politicians, especially viable ones (let's save the discussion re: whether or not he's viable for another day). Don't believe me? Check out the Utopia Animal Rescue Ranch.

I have been following the discussion over on Fussy with great interest. Mrs. Kennedy posted about the eye health issues her bulldog, Katie, is having, and that started an intense debate on breeders vs. rescues as places which to obtain dogs, neutering and spaying, etc. This is obviously something on which I have an opinion. And quite a strong one. One which is different from Mrs. Kennedy's. So, rather than clog up her fantastic blog with it, I'm going to use my soapbox.

Intrigued by Belinda's comparison of my position on pet breeding and that of PeTA (in the comments to my last dog post), I decided to delve a bit more into things. A good starting place was Belinda's own anti-PeTA post from October. Then I checked out PeTA's website to make sure Belinda was portraying their views correctly, and I think she is. In addition to being against animal research and wearing or eating animals, PeTA is also conceptually against pets (or, if you prefer "companion animals") and believes that they should not be intentionally bred.

A while back, I wrote a post about my new personal hero Pali Boucher, the founder and driving force behind Rocket Dog Rescue. Boucher's story inspired the hell out of me when Mark and I saw the show on Animal Planet about her work, and I've been thinking a lot about her and her rescue ever since. And Mark and I have bandied about the idea of our own rescue some day, but not here, since there are already so many rescue orgs and foster networks and we don't really have the time or the money or the space to dedicate to it.

I have some things to say about responsibility.

Our foster dog, Bridget, is suffering from a tick-borne virus. It's not (usually) fatal. It's being treated with antibiotics. She will most likely be fine, after a lengthy time-and-money intensive treatment.

However, it seems a bit suspicious whenever a dog who has obviously been someone's pet shows up at the pound and isn't claimed. Especially in smaller towns. The likelihood that the dog was dumped seems much higher. And when the dog has an illness that's expensive to treat, it seems even higher.

In other news, an acquaintance of mine has a lovely pit mix. She's going to give her away, or surrend her to the pound, or have her put down (hopefully not the latter). Why? Because she's "too hard to handle" has "too much energy" and training is "too expensive."

When I was a kid, my dad referred to his and my then-stepmother's dogs--when I was young, a Husky-mix, Sheba and a hound mix, Shiloh, then later a Rottweiler, Khan, and an Akita, Kuma--as my brothers. It always drove me nuts. The dogs were smelly. The dogs were hairy. The dogs drooled. The dogs were...dogs. They were not my brothers. It seemed devaluing to me, as a human child, to be referred to with the same terms as dogs.

What I didn't know then, and I do know now, was that my dad loved those dogs so much that if he'd felt half of what he felt for them for me I'd have had a much better parent. I ought to have been honored to be compared to them. My dad makes no excuses about preferring dogs to people.

And the older I get, the more I see the old man's point.

Last week, a dog hoarder was busted near here. I haven't written about it because I've been too angry to get anything sensical down. The person wasn't just hoarding, I guess, but was breeding intentionally and selling as well, in really despicable conditions. Over 100 dogs (mostly daushunds, with some other small dogs as well) were rescued from her place, and they all went to local rescue, mostly the Humane Society.

It's a sad story, and it's one that happens all the damn time. So I was going to write about it in order to cajole any readers to donate to their local Humane Societies and what have you. And you all should still do that.

BUT, I just went to the website of the Austin Humane Society, and it had this to say: "It was a whirlwind adoption weekend and every Brownwood Dog that was available, got adopted. Even our 'special needs' friends: Prancy, Calvin and Deja! It was so crowded in the adoption center, and many of our longer term dogs like Oreo got adopted too! Congratulations to everyone who took home a new friend this weekend."

Bless you.

I feel sure that pictures of my dogs will improve your day. Or, you know, just improve mine.

As you can see, Ata is really quite tiny.

edited by Megan McMorris
Seal Press, March 28, 2006

This is a book of short pieces from a variety of female writers (mostly journalists), all about dogs. I've been slowly reading it for several weeks now, and just finished it the other night.

A few of the women featured in the book are ones I've read before, most notably Pam Houston and (the late) Caroline Knapp, both of whom have other work I much admire. The dogs featured are a motley bunch, from Pam Houston's herd of Irish Wolfhounds (how I envy that!) to a couple of dauschunds. They are personal pets, dogs of friends and family, or neighborhood menances. Some of them are already gone, but most are still alive. And the essays in the book explore several angles of the human-dog relationship. Or, I guess, more specifically, the woman-dog relationship. There are good dogs and bad dogs, and relationships that are more and less fulfilling. Which is exactly why I liked the book as a whole--it portrays the relationships between women and their dogs as something more than a simple idea of unconditional love or, worse yet, surrogate children. It portrays these relationships as complex, organic entities. Which is what, in my experience, they are. As books about dogs go, I'd rank this one up there with Knapp's full length work, Pack of Two. And that's saying something.

I was asked recently by an acquaintance what precipitated my interest in and love for dogs. I gave her a fairly brief answer, but the question got me to thinking about the long answer, so I thought I'd have a go at it here. An illustrated history of my life in dogs...

Chapter One, the Boston Years

I was born into a dog loving family, though as far as I know, neither of my parents had a dog at the time of my birth. My mom's parents, with whom we lived briefly right after my birth, had a Springer spaniel whose name escapes me now. My dad's parents had a whole passel of Boston terriers. Dad's dad bred them. These Bostons are my first dog memories, and I remember them as vicious, yipping, nasty little things. For a long time, even after I started loving dogs, I really disliked Bostons. He named all the female ones ridiculous things like Beauty and Princess and Darling, but they were still mean and ugly, to my little girl's mind. He even gave one to my mom and me (my parents weren't together), but she ate the furniture and nipped at me, so she didn't last long. Twenty-five plus years later, my grandfather is gone, but my grandmother still raises Boston terriers. And though I've come to have some appreciation for them, they still are not my favorite breed. I'm irrationally scared of them, to be honest. Guess they make me feel like I'm two again.