My Life Flows On

It's starting to get cool enough to go for a walk in the morning. Almost a year has passed since this was part of my daily routine. Mungo has gotten fat loafing around the house all day. The whelp likes being outside, too. When we approach the door while carrying him, he does a happy little bounce. This morning I walked the dog for about half an hour, with the whelp on my back. By the time we got back, he was too tired to want his breakfast (oatmeal and pureed prunes). Maybe the breakfast should come first and the walk after.

Mungo is doing fine. In fact, I wasn't going to make an update for him this month, as there's not much to tell. His seasonal shed seems to have tapered off, thank goodness. He has started marking almost like a normal dog — I say almost because at least once I've seen him lift his leg against a tree and nothing came out, and then he put his leg down and leaned forward to empty his bladder in the way he has done previously. Not trying to be crude, but he still has his quirks.

There's a dog park about ten minutes' drive from our house that he enjoys visiting. He doesn't necessarily play with other dogs there. He does sometimes, but he seems to like just sniffing around the large enclosure even more. We've also taken him to "doggy day care" at a popular kennel, but we aren't sure how much he likes that, since he always acts scared when we drop him off with the staff, and we don't stick around to watch how he behaves when released into the enclosure. The kennel was recommended to us by staff at the vet clinic, and I'm sure they take proper care of the animals, but I suspect he's simply happier in our company any time.

What really prompted me to make this post was an article in this month's electronic newsletter from the microchip company. It talked about how black dogs often get passed over at shelters. The day we adopted Mungo, one of the shelter staff there remarked on this same tendency. I did a Google search just now and turned up more links than I expected: here's a whole website devoted to getting dark-colored dogs adopted, and here's a recent New York Times opinion piece defining "black dog syndrome." Apparently, despite not being documented in any statistical study, it has been noticed by a lot of people, and it applies to black cats, too.

Any acquisition of a pet should of course be thought through very carefully, but if you are planning to adopt an animal, please consider getting a dark-colored one, or at least don't rule them out!

The past few days have been busier than last week. The trucker with our household goods arrived Monday morning, and he and the local helper working with him spent pretty much all day unloading our goods — and I spent pretty much all day keeping watch on them and checking off box numbers from the list. At the end of the day, we were lacking a few boxes and an overstuffed armchair. The truck driver decided to use Tuesday to search his truck again, since he also carried the possessions of two other households, but he found only one box of our books.

I really can't understand how or why the chair would go missing. It's not expensive or glamorous, it's a hand-me-down from aristeros' family, and it's big. How could people loading our goods fail to see it? Or, if it was on purpose, who would steal such a thing? The main issue with the boxes is our music CDs; nothing else valuable is missing. Our nice wooden dining table that we bought last spring is a bit damaged, though: two of the corner joints have come loose. aristeros thinks it can be fixed with careful application of glue and clamps. We made note of the missing and damaged items on the official paperwork. The trucker asked us to wait to file a claim until he delivers the other households' items, hoping that our stuff will turn up, but if it doesn't, we'll be reimbursed. In any case, we're inclined not to use movers next time but to pack, load and unload everything ourselves. The lack of control over our goods was frustrating.

Since we found out about the problems, I've been going back and forth between being sad over the loss and damage and not caring much. I think I'm starting to settle toward the not-minding-much end of the spectrum. In the end, these are only things, and they don't even impact our day to day living our lives. What does impact our daily life are the boxes everywhere. I think this house is half the size of the house we were in previously, and it's suddenly become difficult to walk around. We've unpacked maybe a quarter of the boxes since Monday.

( Mention of canine bodily fluids ) As I type this, he is looking very cute napping on his side in his regular wire crate (newly unpacked), with a squeaky rubber ball at his nose.

A beagle and a basset hound live next door to us, and, as hounds do, they like to bay. We're used to hearing them. I've thought more than once that Mungo might have fun running around with them if we were friendlier with our neighbors (not that there's any trouble, we simply don't interact much). Well, this evening I took Mungo out for a rare evening walk, and as we were coming home, my hands full with leash, three days' worth of mail, and a package, we met my neighbor coming out his front door with his two hounds. They barked. Mungo retreated, tail tucked. He continued to avoid the hounds to the extent the leash permitted and did not respond positively to their advances for the whole three or four minutes I spent chatting with their owner. Oh well, so much for that idea.

I was a little surprised, because usually when we're out walking and he sees a dog, he pulls toward it. However, if he actually gets close enough to meet the other dog, and it greets him excitedly and enthusiastically, he usually withdraws a bit. Yesterday I brought him with me to the house of a friend who has two dogs. He was scared to meet them, but after five minutes running loose in the back yard together, he looked much happier, and he seemed to enjoy the afternoon of playing as much as I did talking with my friend. I know more socialization with both other dogs and people would be good for him.

We're hanging on to our sit/down/stand/stay/come training, just barely. Between aristeros and myself, we generally practice with the dog once on most days. He comes in from outside more readily to aristeros than to me, now, even though I was the one who took him to class. I've been lax.

We were tipped off to a cheap chew toy: the crushed water bottle. At first, Mungo paid little attention to a crushed Aquafina bottle unless it had food in it. The first evening we gave him a bottle with a piece of cooked chicken inside, he chewed on it for hours; we let him keep it overnight. The bottle was utterly mangled, and the chicken was mashed to a pulp. Now he's had enough fun with bottles that he went after the empty one I had set on the window sill to use for watering my plants. Aquafina bottles, with their ecologically-friendly, reduced-plastic design, do run the risk of being torn open, although I don't think he's quite managed it yet &mdash it just looks as if he might. Gatorade bottles are sturdier.

I came home from a study session at school, and I ate an apple. Mungo is always interested in his humans' food, so I bit off a chunk and set it on the floor for him. He sniffed it and left it alone. When I finished my apple, I picked up the piece on the floor to throw it away, and that was when he decided to take it from my hand. He trotted off to his mat in the other room with his prize. As I was logging on to the computer, Mungo would mouth the piece of apple, spit it out, pick it up again and chew on it some more. There are now three small fragments of apple on the mat. I don't think he swallowed any.

Obedience class has been... well, educational for me. ( More doggy stuff )

"Mungo, what is best in life?"
Good: Chewing on his rawhide bone.
Better: Getting petted. A roll in the warm grass on a sunny afternoon.
Bliss: Getting petted while lying in the warm grass, chewing on rawhide. (Actually, I think he would stop chewing if I started petting him.)

Our new family member seems to be settling in fairly well. We haven't had a house training accident since Sunday. We bought him a furry squeak toy, and after initial puzzlement, he seems to have accepted it as something else he may chew on. He's not impressed with the squeaker, though.

Crate training hasn't turned out the way we had in mind. ( Mungo runs loose )

Mungo is making progress. ( Read more... )

We brought home a dog from the Humane Society today. My poll from before unanimously recommended a cat, but aristeros' physical reaction to pets we met over the holidays lead us to think that getting a cat would probably result in sneezing and tears.

We asked the staff to recommend a laid back, mellow dog. They directed us to a medium-sized, flop-eared male of about two or three years of age. He's mostly black with a narrow blaze of white on his chest and brown eyes. He was labeled a cocker spaniel mix, but he looks like he has a lot of black Labrador retriever in him. The only things spaniel-like about him that I can kind of see are the shape of his muzzle and the curl and fluff of his tail.

( Our first afternoon with dog )

As for the name, the shelter called him Jerry. We don't especially like that. We are thinking of naming him Mungo, after Mungojerrie.