In Broad Daylight

Crime victim, in happier days

On Saturday night, after we got back from Owen Sound, the neighbouring English Foxhound and her daddies came for supper. Roast leg of lamb, mashed potatoes and gravy, peas with mint, rosemary focaccia, apple pie with vanilla ice cream. Mmmmmmm.  

Since Murdoch and Niall will be keeping our Cardi while we’re on vacation, we all wanted our furchildren to get better acquainted. My partner and I have been to our neighbours’ apartment, sans Cardi, a couple of times, but it was the first time that our neighbours had been to our place.

At one point, Murdoch stepped out onto the balcony for a smoke. Would he notice? Would he say anything? Possessing Celtic blood myself, I feared our neighbour might have as little natural English diplomacy as I do. My fears were not unfounded. Re-entering the apartment, Murdoch addressed the elephant in the room: “Hey, when are you guys gonna get rid of your Christmas tree?”

Lucas the street kitty fled in horror. The dogs cowered. Even the elephant hung its trunk in shame.

In this city, for a few days in January, garbage collection includes pick-up of Christmas trees which are then shredded in a wood chipper and used as mulch in public parks. The workers may simply drive the chipper truck along the route; I don’t remember. Trouble is, we had missed those days, but were loath to have the tree carted off to the dump. 

Fortunately, Murdoch’s wit matched his wag. His solution was to drag the Christmas carcass around to the parkette in front of our building. Several large maple limbs, broken off during the winter storms, were already waiting there for the public workers to collect them and chip them, so why not an innocent little balsam fir as well?

I knew it was cheating. I knew it was against the rules. I thought it was brilliant. Now to wait for a rainy night to sneak the tree away.

Three days later, while making stew with the leftover lamb, I remembered the tree. I also remembered a news story that I’d heard in grade school. It seems two guys stole a canoe from a department store, during open hours, in broad daylight. They simply donned white lab coats and combed their hair nicely. Then they entered the sporting goods section, picked up the canoe, and walked it out to a waiting truck.

So. Once the stew was simmering, I donned my coat and tuque, attached the pupster’s leash to his collar, dragged the tree off the balcony and through the apartment and down two flights of stairs and along the side of the building to the parkette to the fence to the pile of waiting limbs, and tossed it. Then poggles and I went for a nice hour’s walk. When we returned at 3 pm, we found half a dozen sparrows sheltered under the fir, using the maple brush as a clubhouse.

Going to Blazes

The Bruce Trail runs along the Niagara Escarpment in Ontario from Queenston to Tobermory. Back in 1967 when it was officially opened, before Canada went metric, it was about 500 miles long; now it’s 845 kilometres (plus half again as much in side trails). We like hiking bits of it on sunny days.

At Inglis Falls on Friday, doggles and I walked a few yards of Bruce on our way around a loop trail. Yesterday at the Pottawatomi Conservation Area, we strolled or struggled along another 2.2 km — about a mile and-a-third — to the town line before retracing our steps.

Up we went along the edge of the cliff, from Jones Falls through cedar scrub into the birch woods at the top. The line of hard-packed snow was mostly level or gently sloped, but occasionally we had to clamber up a steeper spot. Two or three times I dropped the leash so that my kneeless fox and I could find our way over the tricky bits at our own pace, and not jerk each other off balance. Each time, he waited for me to catch up and take the leash again.

And a good thing, too. There was plenty of great sniffing to be had for the discerning nose, and the little herding dog could have taken off to round up red squirrels, mice, fox, chipmunks, cottontails, deer, or grouse. And he could have tangled with a coyote or fisher, and come out the loser. And he could have been sprayed by a skunk. And he could have been killed by a dose of porcupine quills. And he could have been bitten by a rabid raccoon. And he could have slipped on the snow right over the edge of the cliff.

Instead, my canine companion and I enjoyed a carefree hike, connected together by six feet of purple nylon strapping. We stayed on the trail, going from blaze to blaze, ignoring the impromptu paths to the precipice that other humans had made. He sniffed, and I saw, tracks of all kinds. We noticed the grouse droppings, the porcupine browsings, the pileated woodpecker chippings. We also noticed that I had left my bookbag and water bottle in the car.

Since dehydration can cause carelessness, I phoned my partner, who was down by Jones Falls near the parking lot, and she brought the bottle up to us. Meanwhile, I used a mossy outcropping beside the trail as a misericord, and Poggles scrambled up to sit beside me. The outcropping was on the inside, not the cliffside, of the trail, so that we faced towards the view. I gave my dog teeny chunks of cheese. We relaxed. There were no birds except a few chickadees calling “Yoo-hoo!” and some Canada Geese scrutinizing the cornfield down below. The only other sound was the far-off swish of traffic.

Suddenly, I heard a whistling. It was the wingbeats of a crow, who flew up the escarpment face, over the treetops, and away. Pupster didn’t care about the bird; he did, however, crane his neck in astonishment as a chipmunk crossed the trail and proceeded up a log about two feet from his wide eyes and flaring snout.

My partner arrived a few minutes later with the water and her camera. On our return, she took lots of photos; we admired the grouse droppings and the tree chewings and the various animal tracks; and back down at the river, we watched a chestnut- coloured weaselly minkish thing galumphing along the far bank.

We were safe, we were sated, and we were starving. A few miles down the road at the Chatsworth Coffee Time we sat in the car, lunching on burgers and the fattest, hottest, crispest onion rings I’ve ever eaten. Poggles had a couple of bickies in the back seat, and then settled down for the two-hour ride home.

Rain, Rain, Come Again!

A few days ago I put in a request to Melbourne, Australia, to fan a bit of their 40- degree heat wave towards Ontario. It’s working! It’s working! THANK YOU!!!!!

Long Winter’s Journey into Spring

Poggles is poorly. And being a Cardigan Welsh Corgi, a very intelligent dog, he managed to display all his poorlies at once.

Like most of the dogs around the neighbourhood, he’s loved the piles of snow we’ve been getting all winter. He’s ploughed into it up to his neck, he’s dolphined among the drifts, he’s skidded on the slippy bits, he’s crunched through the crusts. Unfortunately, the snow hasn’t loved him back.

So, um, gee, he’s limping.

Not that he gives a hoot. Where’s the throw toy? Bring it on! But on Monday we said no, not today. When not today became not yesterday and he was still limping, I made an appointment at the pet clinic for that same afternoon.

On the hobble over to the vet’s , pupster decided the doctor could use a stool sample. Not pretty. Unsure if vanilla-scented poopy bags counted as specimen containers, I placed the bag strategically in the trash outside the clinic. When I told the vet what it contained, he had me retrieve it.

Final stats: poggles has a clostridium infection and a pulled string of letters, like ACL or ALT or NHL or something. The clostridium’s in his belly and the pulled thingy is in his right hind leg. In order to confirm and remedy these two problems, the vet ordered a blood test, a stool test, five tabs of flagyl, 14 caps of amoxicillin, one bottle of metacam, and two weeks’ house arrest.

Doggikins starts the metacam (an anti-inflammatory) tomorrow night; the belly bacteria needed to be zapped first. Since then, we’ve been going outside almost twice as often, but only for about ten minutes. He hasn’t played ball now for four days, and hasn’t been off leash for two. Usually indifferent, polite, or friendly with strangers, tonight he spoke to two passersby in a row, something that sounded like:

WHAT ARE YOU LOOKIN’ AT? BY GOLLY, YOU’RE ASKIN’ FOR IT! JUST LEMME CATCH YOU! YOU PUT ONE TOE ON MY PARKETTE, I’LL LEARN YA FOR SURE! I WILL! I WILL! WILL! WILL!

I sure hope metacam induces drowsiness. Don’t worry, I won’t let poggles drive.

Party Cardi

We didn’t get the threatened 15 cm of ice pellets after all. Some of that hard stuff came down between 11 pm and 2 am, but I never noticed. By 6 this morning, when the cat got me up, there was a thick layer of fluff covering anything untoward that had fallen in the dead of night.

At  7 am, puppy and I went out into perfect dog snow. The hard crust had softened, and the slushy bottom had frozen again, and our Cardi frapped all over the parkette in front of our building. (I learned the term frap from other corgi owners; it stands for “frenetic random activity period”, or in other words, tearing around in circles in sheer exuberance.)

At 10:30 and at 3 pm we went out for more play.  Each time, my little kneeless fox wrestled or played tug-toy with one of the biggest dogs in the neigbourhood. I’m borrowing the phrase “fake fight” from Checkers’s blog. The growling! The rolling! The jumping! The opponent of the afternoon, the biggest, strongest nice dog of them all, is only 14 months old and doesn’t know his own strength. But that’s okay, because neither does my dog. Usually he’s much more interested in playing fetch (see above photo) than in socializing, but today he just had to tell his playmates, “Didja see the snow? Didja? Eh? Isn’t it great?”