Bitchy McBitcherson's Blog

Tag: pets

  • In Search of a Punk Rock Chicken Toy

    Indy came to live with us in the fall of 1995. She is an unusual dog in many ways, and I have no idea if she was born that way or whether the unfortunate occurrences of her early life caused it, or it is a mixture of both.

    We got her from a rescue when she was a puppy. She had been turned over because the landlord had told them, either she went or they would be evicted. If you are going to ignore a NO PETS rule, it is best to do it with a quieter animal that will not grow to be 50 lbs. Once we had her it was obvious there was more to her story than that.

    In January of 1996 I bought a net bag shaped like a stocking (on clearance) that had dog treats and toys in it. One of those toys was a squeaky toy cat that was the same coloration as our real cat. We decided that would be a better kid toy than a dog toy and gave it to baby KFZ. The second of those toys was something we dubbed the Punk Rock Chicken. It was made from soft, but not limp rubber, the body like a paper towel tube, two feet merged into one at the bottom, and a bird head on top with hollow spiky “hair”. It squeaked. Indy loved that toy. She carried it around. She squeaked it. She would play fetch with it. She was not one to destroy things, so the toy just went on and on.

    In the fall of 1999 London came to live with us.

    London destroys things. That is what he does. He loves toys, all toys, and he loves them to a rapid death.

    He killed Punk Rock Chicken. It was a dog toy, so I didn’t think to keep it away from him. Hindsight is 20/20. It turns out that was the ONLY toy that Indy would play with. She would not take a replacement. She has never carried around another toy. She has never chased another toy. Nothing. If I want her to chase something, I have to throw treats.

    In 2004 we moved. During the packing we found the squeaky cat that came from the same package. We gave it a squeeze and it squeaked. Indy came running into the room, totally excited, tail wagging like crazy. She looked expectantly at us. We squeaked it again. She cocked her head to one side, looking at what was in our hand. She stopped wagging. We offered her the cat. She put her head down and just wandered out of the room. This was more than four years after the damn Punk Rock Chicken met his doom. The cat had the exact same squeaker, but was not the same thing.

    I have tried barbell toys based on their similar shape to the Punk Rock Chicken. I have tried other chicken and bird shaped toys. I have tried and tried. No go.

    Anyway, here is a photo of the dogs with the toy. If anybody ever sees this toy for sale, please tell me ASAP. We’ll see if the power of the internet can be harnessed to make Indy wag.
    Searching for a Punk Rock Chicken Toy

  • Will the Real Fuck Up Please Stand Up

    To elaborate:

    The Dogs – The dogs have recently crossed that line from little bad behaviors on occasion to being willfully defiant of long standing rules. This is my fault. I know how to raise dogs and live with them. You have to be consistent, and you have to nip the little things in the bud and not let them grow into big things. You have to make time to deal with it. It is your responsibility to help them be the companions that you want them to be. By “you”, I mean ME. These are my dogs. They are my responsibility. The husband is a cat person. That is not to say that he does not love the dogs, however they would not live in this house if not for me. I am the one who wanted to get dogs. Also, I am the one who works from home and spends the most time with them. I am not unaware. I knew that they were developing little bad behaviors. I knew. I had it on my list to put in the time to work on it. I just never got around to it. Every single time they would do something wrong, take too long to come when called, every time, a million times a day, when things were not quite as they should be… I knew that they needed some time and attention to just nudge things back into place. However I never managed to make the time. Now, they are NOT completely unruly terrors, but they have crossed over the line where I can really tolerate it, and who is to blame? Yeah, that would be me.

    The Printer – A couple of years back HP decided change their practices. It used to be that their ink cartridges and print heads were one piece. Every time you replaced an ink cartridge, you replaced the print heads. They decided to make them separate parts. The ink cartridges stayed the exact same price (which is already too damned expensive) but the print heads are atrociously expensive, and now that they are not regularly replaced they are a weak point and quite prone to clogging.

    The last time I bought a printer, I did not know this. I had always had good luck with HP, so I bought HP again. However I found out soon enough about the problem. When my ink gets low, I tend to just keep running things until the pages are totally unacceptable. What is unacceptable of course varies depending on what it is I need to be printing out. Also once it becomes unacceptable, I don’t usually replace the cartridge until the next time I need to print. I let the cartridge stay there. Now with the new print head situation, that is very bad. You let it dry out and it clogs up. Actually just not using all the colors on the printer regularly enough will cause clogs.

    I found all this out the hard way last year. I had to do research to find a way to fix the print head problem because if I was going to spend the money to replace the damn things, I was just buying a new printer. I researched, found the various codes I needed to clear things out. Got instructions on how to physically clean things. Had to go through many steps for more in depth cleanings in order to finally get it working again.

    A few weeks back the printer was very low on color ink and I made a mental note to change the cartridges, and then failed to do so. There is a definite downside to making mental notes if you are losing your mind. I did not change the cartridges until I needed to print something and couldn’t. Once I changed them, I could not print because the print heads were bad. Yes, I had let it go on too long and had fucked things up. Also, I apparently lost the piece of my mind where I noted where I had saved off the information I researched last year so now I need to do the research again in order to get the printer working. Of course there was no way I could get that done prior to printing out the thing I needed right that minute.

    It is still blinking angrily at me because I still have not dealt with it.

    My To Do List – With each passing day it gets longer. I never make any progress. If I finish something on it, ten new things have appeared in the meantime. I am so damn tired. How can anyone be this tired? It is totally fucking ridiculous. I can work my ass off and accomplish nothing because I can’t think straight, or sideways or at all. Also, I am easily distracted by the internet, but of course I work on my damn computer. The number of things on MTDL that I don’t even gain anything from doing is mind boggling. I should take a class in how to say “No, I really don’t have the time.” I’ll put that on the list.

    Me – See above and add a few hundred thousand other reasons.

  • Things which are driving me completely batshit crazy today.

    The Dogs
    The Printer
    My To Do List
    Me

    I resent the last one the most.

  • Two New Bitches

    My friend adopted two abused dogs last week, and today I got to go meet them for the first time. They are female, and about ten months old and were taken from an owner that was both physically abusive and neglectful. They were apparently skeletons with fur when the foster family got hold of them and have put on a lot of weight, which is frightening because they are both still so very skinny, although these photos don’t show it too much.

    Both dogs were interested in me if I was looking the other way, but any sign that I was aware of them sent them running away terrified. The first night at my friend’s house they were a mess but have settled in and absolutely adore her now. She is retired and has the time to devote to them that they are going to need. Their life started out very rough, but they have found a good home now.

    My post is really meant to be about my friend though, rather than about these two dogs.

    Last night I got an email from her which I will share here.

    I just went to get on the computer and one of the new cuties has chewed through the wire to the charger and the battery is almost dead. I don’t even know if I can get back on but if you can suggest the fastest and best way to get a charger I would be very very happy.
    Miss and love you

    She is incredibly patient, kind and generous and I absolutely love her. These dogs are lucky to have found a home with her and I consider it a great honor and a privilege that she is my friend.

    To all those people who are always taking advantage of her and treating her like crap, I think just about as highly of you as I do the original owner of these dogs.

    Pepper (name subject to change)

    Bonnie (name subject to change)

    Below is the original lady of the house who is doing very well with the two new interlopers.

    April

  • Turn Around Bright Eyes

    We rented Karaoke Revolution: American Idol and tried it out tonight.

    The American Idol aspect is totally R-Tarted. However the rest is very KR, and I do love KR.

    First let me just take the time to complain one more time, why the fuck does Harmonix keep making these games without any saved player or character carryover. I am so sick of everybody needing to reenter their info every time we get a new game. It is dumb. DUMB. If anybody from Harmonix ever happens by to read this, FIX THIS. Of course now that you were bought by MTV you will probably only become more suckful.

    Alright, so we are all sick, so KR is not really the game of choice, but Gamefly sent it, so there it was. The kid and I made new characters but we didn’t bother to use the EyeToy to put our own “Cameo Face” on the characters. For one thing, we already have been there, done that and they won’t let us move our fucking characters over. For another it is late and we feel like crap.

    Make characters, enter player names. Get started.

    I didn’t look up all the new song options, but I sang “Total Eclipse of the Heart” and “Just the Way You Are”. I sang them both on easy, because I am in a bad mood and don’t want to be rated harshly. Scored Platinum on both of them.

    The kid sang “Unwritten” and “Sugar We’re Going Down” also on easy, she does have a cold. I usually make her get rated at a harder level than me so it is more “fair” because in KR, I like to falsify a sense of fairness. She scored Diamond on both of them. Yeah, she kicked my ass, even with her snotty nose and froggy voice.

    It is mostly like KR except that if you choose the AI option the three dorks babble at you after you finish singing. Also at the end the winner sings an encore of the song they won with. I left and did not listen to the kid reprise her song. Not I was tired of listening to her, but because Indy hadn’t stopped farting the entire time we had been playing, and I couldn’t take it anymore. Nothing like playing karaoke with a dog fogging up the air.

    Anyhow, we bought it. I don’t think I will ever play the AI option again. It just made it take longer and wasn’t any fun. The rest of it was fine and it will be cool to have new songs to mess with. Now we just have to add in all our friends names again. We should be done by the time they come out with the next version.

  • another shitty day in paradise

    I am not a fan of Richard Dawkins. This is not to say that I dislike him, I haven’t familiarized myself enough with him to develop an opinion. I am aware of his name and have a general concept of who he is, but I have never read a single one of his books. I’ve never seen him interviewed. He is a shadow in my peripheral vision.

    I ran across this shortened transcript of an interview with him. One of the questions was “How do you explain its prevalence?” (it being the belief in a supernatural god). His response has been kicking around in my brain as vaguely interesting.

    When you ask a Darwinian like me, how we explain something, we usually take that to mean, “What is the Darwinian survival value of it?”

    Quite often, when you ask what is the survival value of “X”, it turns out that you shouldn’t be asking the question about “X” at all, but that “X” is a by-product of something else that does have survival value. In this case, the suggestion I put forward as only one of many possible suggestions, is that religious faith is a by-product of the childhood tendency to believe what your parents tell you.

    It’s a very good idea for children to believe what parents tell them. A child who dis-believes what his parents tell him would probably die, by not heeding the parent’s advice not to get into the fire, for example. So child brains, on this theory, are born with a rule of thumb, “believe what your parents tell you.” Now, the problem with that — where the by-product idea comes in — is that it’s not possible to design a brain that believes what its parents tell it, without believing bad things along with good things. Ideally we might like the child brain to filter good advice like, “Don’t jump in the fire,” from bad advice like, “Worship the tribal gods.” But the child-brain has no way of discriminating those two kinds of advice. So, inevitably, a child-brain that is pre-programmed to believe and obey what his parents tell it, is automatically vulnerable to bad advice like, “Worship the tribal juju.”

    I think that’s one part of the answer, but then, you need another part of the answer: Why do some kinds of bad advice, like, “Worship the tribal juju,” survive and others not?

    Beliefs like “life-after-death” spread because they are appealing. A lot of people don’t like the idea of dying and rather do like the idea that they’ll survive their own death. So the meme, if you like, spreads like a virus because people want to believe it.

    It brought to mind the whole Santa Claus thing.

    Of course, on days like today, it sure would be easier to pick my sobbing daughter up off the floor and try to cheer her up with an elaborate story of how her bird is now enjoying flying around in heaven and she’ll see it again one day. I don’t think it is just a matter of it sticking and spreading because people want to believe it, I imagine the telling of it is a comfort too, for the speaker. Even if the speaker does not firmly believe it themselves, it is an easier, and on the surface perhaps a seemingly kinder response than “That sucks.“

  • Eating Disorder

    I love Xander. He fits in well with the family. He has issues.

     

  • Thursday Trio


    The Three Stooges
    Originally uploaded by mstori.

    Most Thursday nights we go on a special dog walk. The special aspect is that we have an extra dog (and his person) along with us. This causes London and Indy boundless spastic excitement. The thing that really strikes me though, is that they get completely hyper on Thursday nights even when the guests do not show up. Every Thursday night, they freak out.

    If we skip for more than two weeks in a row, the Thursday night freak outs die off, but as soon as the regular schedule is reestablished, Thursday evening behavior amps right up again.

    There are an unfortunate number of instances when I can’t keep track what day of the week it is, but the dogs…

  • IT

    There is a certain art to feeling sorry for oneself, and I definitely have an aptitude for it.

    There is a simple test to determine if you have an aptitude for this art too. Consider the following two statements.

    If things are going badly and something else bad happens, it goes to show that the universe is committed to kicking your ass and pissing on you while you are down.

    If things are going well and something bad happens, it just proves that you can’t even get enough time to enjoy the good before you are slammed with more problems.

    Do these statements both sound true to you? If so, you may already be an artist. Please draw Tippy or Cubby and send it to me for a full assessment.

    “Woe is me.” It isn’t pretty, but it sure does come easily to me.

    On Saturday we had two cute little zebra finches. On Sunday one fell suddenly ill. I made an attempt to save him, but while we did manage some improvement, in the end it was not enough. I failed. By afternoon, we only had one cute little zebra finch.

    This morning that sense of failure was still hanging on pretty strongly. As good as I am at feeling sorry for myself, I am much much better at feeling guilty. The Sunday guilt made way for the Monday guilt. I didn’t sleep well Monday night, probably the result of an over consumption of caffeine during the day. This morning I woke up “LATE”. I wasn’t actually late. It was 7am and I didn’t have anyplace I needed to be. I just woke up in the midst of that “oh crap I am so late” panic and started my day with the accompanying big dose of adrenaline. By around 9:45 I was seriously crashing and having an adrenaline hangover.

    However, I was determined to pretend to stay focused and get a little more caught up on one or two of the many things I am very far behind on. Then Indy started barking her fool head off, and the echo started London howling. Soon it became apparent that the cacophony was in need of some intervention. I went to the top of the stairs to call Indy up and let her know that while it was great she was protecting us from some horrible nasty, that the threat had passed and she could settle down.

    She came upstairs wondering if she might score a treat. I grabbed her around her middle and gave her some rough bouncy squeezes that cause her to make funny little grunting sounds. London is all about belly rubs, he will stay on his back for long stretches at a time as long as somebody will pay attention to his belly. Indy, she is a bit ticklish and prefers rougher treatment. She especially likes feet. She’ll lie down near where you are sitting and push her way under your feet to encourage you to step on her. She likes that. Apparently, the smellier the feet, the more she likes it. We’ve never had an in depth conversation about why, so don’t ask me. The point is, that she does not ask for, or often get, a lot of hands on attention to her belly.

    So here I am, making her squirm, and I find it. It. Not the Stephen King sewer clown. It. The thing I feel incapable of dealing with today. It. A lump on her abdomen. Now I am smart enough to know that I wouldn’t actually be any more enthusiastic about the discovery on any other day, but I have sufficient self-pity skills, so that I am able feel like it is happening at precisely the wrong instant.

    My immediate inclination is to go hide in a closet and just stay there, maybe until 2007. Instead I allowed myself a contained nervous breakdown and then pulled my shit a little bit together. I made a choice about which vet to take her to (I picked the one I have the least overall confidence in because a) she has the closest and least busy office b) all I need today are some basics, and that she should be able to do c) closest, quietest and least busy=the least trauma to myself and Indy d) I can always go see a preferred vet after I have the test results). I scheduled an appointment for this evening and then took some time to let my daughter know what was up.

    ETA: Biopsy says it is not cancer. This is good.

  • WTF?

    We saw a sign yesterday.

    It was a custom made full color permanent sign (not home made) posted in a front yard. It said “Caution Drive Slowly Blind Dog Wanders” and had a large photo of the dog.

    Why the hell do you let your dog wander around the neighborhood at all, especially if it is blind?