Tag Archives: Dogs

Black is Beautiful, March 10, 2023

Click on photos to enlarge.

Oops.. I got mixed up and thought “Paint it Black” was a photo prompt. When I tried to link it, I found it was a short short writing prompt. I couldn’t find a comments section to link it to anyway, and since it is clear I was not meant to complete the link,  here is my response to “Paint it Black” in pictures.

Life with Dogs, Déjà Vu for Sunday Whirl Wordle 589

Déjà vu. For some reason these prompt words for the Sunday Whirl Wordle 589 led me into a restatement of a blog I wrote 14 hours ago in what felt like the late hours of yesterday but what were really the early hours of today. It was to me as though I’d only thought it before and not written it down. It was only after I’d written this and reread the earlier blog that I realized I’d told the same story twice in different words. These are the prompt words you’ll find repeated below in the story:  lockdown watch danger hunt challenge glass flesh gathering disrupt murder craft cut

Life with Dogs

Well after lockdown, my sentinels are watchful for any signs of danger. Even after their eyes close and their flesh surrenders to sleep, their ears hunt for signs of murder, mayhem or possums. I am fully awake minutes after their last return from a wild charge out the space left by the sliding glass door which I have left open the width of the security bars so they can exit as needed, not to meet the challenge of intruders, but rather to execute those calls of nature which I am most sympathetic with, being of that age when at the least one or two calls of nature disrupt my sleep nightly.

Darkness gathers me into its arms as I close my eyes once more and finally find a position comfortable enough to remain in for the remainder of the night when once again, Zoe’s loud high sliding crescendo of a bark cuts through the darkness, her claws cutting into my stomach as she uses it for a launching pad off the bed and out the door. These are the movements of a gymnast performing her high leaps with seemingly no effort—more an art than a craft—and my ears strain to hear any noise of combat, any running feet or crashing through the bushes and over the wall. Instead I hear one high keening scream, quickly cut off. It is a sound I’ve never heard before and I imagine some small creature giving voice to its death protest or a possum giving a squeal of warning , but the dog is back again so quickly that I can’t imagine any combat has occurred.

Another past-midnight mystery of life with dogs. I roll over on my left side to reach over the side of the bed and lift Zoe up for the third time this evening, and when I do, Coco crawls into the warm spot I have left. Rolling back to the right again, I push hard against her to reclaim my space and Zoe moves into the space that I make on the left side as I do so, then walks with no guilt over my breast an stomach to settle herself into the cleft between my legs. I move them apart slightly to settle some of her weight onto the mattress and try to settle myself back to sleep.

Sleeping With Dogs

Sleeping With Dogs

It is exactly 3 a.m., Sunday morning, January 22, 2023.  Coco just leapt out of bed to deal with some intruder in the yard or on the terrace and came back to bed with hiccups. Zoe, who is too little to leap back up on the bed under her own power, is crying to be boosted up for the second time in 15 minutes, having barely settled herself before following along in her sister’s panic.

I, on the other hand, had just settled into a comfortable position on the small section of bed I’d claimed from the dogs and started the first few steps into my dreamworld when a possum or cat or skunk or mouse or squirrel or the ghost of some former possum or cat or skunk or mouse or squirrel  had deigned to enter the dogs’ domain.

Now all is right in the world and the dogs have settled. I, on the other hand, have again entered the addictive realm of the internet and here I am again, doing that tapdance of fingers on the keys. As though I don’t have enough file cabinets, boxes and folders and blog entries full of words.  What is going to happen to all these words when I die? And why is it even important to me what happens to them? In the world of words, they are also-rans. No one will hear in my words much that they have not heard before. But they are the story of my life, my world, and although it is inevitable that I will vanish, I don’t want them to. My art has gone out into the world and perhaps will continue to once I have left it in the hands of its inheritors, but my words will float back into that great lexicon of the universe to perhaps be given birth in the minds of some future soul who will sort them into a different order and make them their own.

3:14. Lights out, settled again…..and Zoe is off again, high-pitched barks LOUDLY punctuating the night air as she leaps from the bed in an arc, landing on the floor and out the gap between the security bars on the door to search out some other intruder. Once again, I leave my bed to cajole her to come back to bed.  When she finally complies, I shut the glass slider so her next protestations will at least be muffled from the neighbors. She settles herself on my lap which means I am again the prisoner  that I had been previous to rolling Coco off my lap and assuming a more comfortable position. I’ll awaken with a backache from being frozen into one position for the rest of the night, but finallly all seems to be settled. Sleeping with dogs––a bit like living with a newborn. Or two newborns. But the alternative is utter seclusion which can bring other night terrors and certainly different thoughts before finally, blessedly, falling to sleep.

Bad Holiday Attitudes

I unfortunately didn’t take photos of most of the Christmas ornament devastation described in the below poem, except for the one unfortunate angel found in the yard today, so I will make do with  more of today’s latest.  The pieces of the cushion shown , now collected, were spread over the entire lawn and patio. My day’s exercise was collecting them all and stuffing them back into their cushion, then throwing it away. Luckily the garbage had not been collected so I unstuffed a bit for photo purposes. She also chewed the ties off most of the chair cushions in the garden and the corner off the cushion for the lounge chair.The bedroom duvet is my newest. This is a very recent thing, destroying bedding. Trying to decide what to do. To be fair to Coco, I think most of this devastation is created by Zoe. Pasiano says it is because she’s the smallest and trying to prove her moxie. In that case, she has succeeded.

Bad Holiday Attitudes

My energetic puppies are meddlesome at best.
They seek to alter their milieu with destructive zest.
They create a fizzy ambience on patio and lawn
by spreading lawn chair cushion stuffing all hither and yon.

They parade my Christmas banner throughout my lower yard,
sowing its bits and shreds between the onions and the chard.
No matter at what altitude we hang the decorations,

they seem able to reach them to appease their mastications.

They shred what ornaments they find on tabletop and trees.
climbing up and leaping at whatever they can seize.
A dismembered Santa Claus lies nestled in the hay
where once slept baby Jesus, who’s securely tucked away

beneath the new poinsettia, sadly unidentifiable.
His restoration is, I fear, now totally unviable.
So, unless my naughty canine friends speed up their maturations,
Next year I think that I’ll attempt way fewer decorations.

Prompt words today are fizzy, meddlesome, altitude, milieu, onion and banner.

Zoe’s Choice: FOTD Dec 9, 2022

 

Click on photos to enlarge.

Bigger and brighter and more exotic flowers abound in the garden, but this is Zoe’s choice. Actually, she was starting to eat it when I caught her and she quickly shifted to pretending she was smelling it.

For Cee’s FOTD

The Chase: Last on the Card

For Brian’s Last on the Card prompt we are to share the last photo we took in the month.  I thought I was taking a video of Zoe and Coco rushing around the yard in a frenetic 10 minute chase, but alas, I took a photo instead. They are a bit of a blur, which they were for 10 minutes. Wish I’d captured it.

Warm Heart

Warm Heart

The small dogs are still warm from their day’s exertion
curled into balls—one at my feet above the covers,
the other, too small or timid to leap up to the bed,
a tight knot in her cushy denim bed just a yard away.

For the dVerse Poets Quadrille prompt, the subject this week is warmth.

To see the prompt and to read some wonderful poems on the subject of warmth, go here:https://dversepoets.com/2022/11/28/dverse-quadrille-165-warmly/

Where You May Find Us Napping!!!

 


Click on photos to enlarge and read captions.

For the Six Word Saturday prompt