Miles Officially retired

There was  a ceremony & everything. did you make it? I brought a toaster :-).

He's not doing so well unfortunately. The venerable Miles, the go-everywhere, do-everything dog has finally done all he can do, and has paid the price for it with his mobility. It's saddening to see it happen so fast. I always figured he'd slowly get old, be one of those happy old dogs that's slow and just plain happy that the sun rose again this fine day (a rare occurrence on the North Coast, yes, but still). "Look at me, I'm alive!" he'd say in my visions, but the reality is that I think his hip has slipped out of joint, he can't walk but to his food just barely. Instead of a happy "I'm still alive today, daddy!" glee, he looks at me solemnly, like to say "I wanna go play, but I can't. Poo." And yeah, it sucks, and it's sad, and I wish I could make him young again. Sadly, I'm not as powerful as he thinks I am ("DID YOU SEE THAT!? DADDY JUST MADE FOOD HOT WITH A MAGIC BOX!")

Watched him try to sh*t earlier this morning, and it wasn't really all that fun. I mean of course watching a dog sh*t is not fun, but more specifically, watching a dog struggle to do it, especially when it's your best friend of 13 years, is especially painful.

Here's the gist of how i feel about this: :-(

I'm sincerely hoping that tough decisions do not follow soon. We have a vet appointment tomorrow morning. Wish us luck.

We should all be outraged by this news. OUTRAGED. Mattel had lead-tainted toys being pulled off the shelf left and right a couple of years ago, we throw a “protect the children law at the situation to test children’s toys, and then… they secretly exempt the company responsible for the application of the law from being subject to the law.

Not that I had reason to buy any Mattel toys, but I’m boycotting them. And hell, the government too. This is total HORSESH*T.

Spread the word. holy f-ck.

Random update time: Hunter hit by car (not a joke)

I know it sounds sad, and it is, though let me clarify, this was a long time ago now. Yeah. He's fine. Except for the slashes on his eye, BUT THAT'S A DIFFERENT STORY SO DON'T ASK, OK?! But yeah, about that car incident:

Apparently, living with me/us requires you to pass a test. This test is, can you survive being hit by a car? You have to get hit by a car if you want to live with me, it's the law or something dammit. First was Chase, then a few months later, his brother Hunter (this rule was enacted after Zoey & Miles had lived with us a long while, so they've been grandfathered in – no car tests for them). If we ever have a kid, god help him. 

So. We're packing up to move a couple of months ago, and we decide at some point that a new flat-screen Plasma TV (60"!) has become a necessity, not just a desire for us. No really, it makes sense. You see we had a 52" rear-projection LCD, but since they're larger, we didn't really have a place to put it; it wouldn't fit on the mantle and there wasn't a good wall for it to sit in front of, so we opted for a sleek new Samsung 58-incher to put over the fireplace, the only place we could see to hang a TV in the house. Since we didn't need a 52" TV any longer, we sold it to a friend of The Girl's. And one night after they got off of work, they both came over to load it up and take it to her (the friend's) place. They knock, I open door, hunter sees cat, darts across road to investigate.

Now it was 11pm at night. The streets are normally empty, but it so happened that as Hunter ran across, there was a car going across at that same exact time. Go figure, right? I mean, obviously, otherwise he wouldn't have been hit by a car, thereby making this post insanely irrelevant.

Hunter survived, and though he had the slightest bit of swelling and a scrape or two, he never limped and was at full-speed within two days. However at the time it was a scary situation, as you can imagine. Funny thing though, where chase was scared and ran home yelping and hid from everything, Hunter's A-personality shone through. He gets hit by the car, and starts barking at it. Then he runs around to the back of the rental property, barking at everything because he was pissed off, where he lets me hold him (finally). Then he decides that although The Girl's friend had been over before and been alright, since she wasn't me or The Girl, that she needed some barking too. BARK. "F-ck YOU, BITCH! WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO THAT FOR?!"

So, yeah. The brothers are now a matching set in that regard, too. Found together, live together, both get hit by a car. It's just the way it is here, I guess. Future son of mine? you've been warned.

Seen: Push, the Movie

Well, we all make mistakes. We watched this piece of poo, actors acted in this piece of poo, and a certain writer & director wrote & directed this piece of poo. There was some hope for it, it had some promise, but that promise quickly turned out to be a lie, much like that pony you were told you were getting for your birthday if you were a really really good kid at the grocery store, remember? Kinda like that.

We watched to the end, we just kept hoping, maybe somehow something at the end will make it all make sense. And in a way, that sort of happened, though it was after the credits, buried in the Special Features section – the writer explained that when we began researching for the film, he – and he made sure to tell us all we should do this – typed in “psychic experiments” into google, and says he was blown away that stuff came up.

I am not lying.

So basically, this movie was written because this dumbass hadn’t yet heard of the internet, I guess. Or comic books, because um, it would seem that X-men had sort of blazed this path previously. And better. Maybe he can treat us to a new movie later, called “Pull,” about a man who dresses up in a Bat costume and saves a metropolitan area from itself.

Oh and Dakota, darling? Like you a lot, but you shouldn’t let them dress you in that stuff. I was confused – should I call Child Welfare? Should I put money down your boots? Should I hug you and tell you it’s going to be OK? Is it halloween? Did they REALLY dress a super-skinny pre-teen girl in a hooker outfit in Hong Kong or wherever and expect us to believe she’s not worn-the-F*ck–out, if you’re pickin’ up what I’m throwin’ down?

F*ck; wasted a Netflix queue position. DAMMIT.

Upside to Miles' new Gimpiness

There is an upside to all of this, though, which is that now when I want to cuddle with Miles (OH MY GOD YES I CUDDLE WITH A DOG CALL THE ASPCA OR MAKE A WEBSITE THAT’S GROSS/AWESOME!), he can’t really run away from me. Is that wrong that I am finding a gem in this?

Also: he can’t get away when I’m trying to brush his hair.

Also: he can’t run away when I want to put lotion on his skin.

Also: he can't run away from the fire I set on his tail.

OK I’m a sick individual. Done now. Thanks.

Miles' heyday comes to an end

I can’t believe it. It finally came. I kept thinking that it was going to be sometime “in the future,” but it seems that the future, it haz arrived. Yesterday we took a small walk in the forest reserve. It’s a fairly well-manicured trail, nothing difficult, you don’t need more than tennis shoes or, hell, flip-flops to walk it (at least the first 3 miles out, which is well beyond where we stopped). Miles huffed and puffed since shortly after we hit the pavement walkin’, and last night I noticed him suddenly not putting weight on one of his back legs. This morning, I found him huddled outside sleeping under the truck (which one is not important here, OK? Stop asking these questions of me, people!), and I had to drag him out.

So Miles’ last day as an active puppy dog – it’s here. Only took 13 years, but it’s here. I guess we got this house just in time then: he now has a nice place to retire to. A porch to sit on and talk about how in his day, he had to make the tennis balls before he could chase ‘em, whittle them out of knotted pine, for christ’s sake, OK? Why back in his day, he had to run, uphill, both ways for 10 miles just to get the newspaper. And running away? Don’t get him started. He used to have to scale 20ft tall chain link, with barbed wire. Oh and people walked their dogs around with collars made of hot iron ore, still molten.

I may have gotten off track there. But the important thing to take away is, Miles’ heyday is dead; long live Miles.

:-(