A Dog's Life and The Ides of December

It's a Dog's Life

Please Don't Make Me Go Out in The Snow Again!

I'll Be Good, I Promise!

I'm giving December the boot!  What a month.  It started with my husband getting the flu, which lasted for well over a week.  His ended, then I promptly came down with the same stuffed head with aches, fever and chills.  Then the tumult of the holidays set in, and our daughter and son-in-law arrived 3 days before Christmas with their 95 pound over-sized pooch.

On Christmas Eve we went to a family gathering which because of logistics, we had catered for the first time this year.  Right after the party and with a blizzard fast approaching, we drove daughter and hubby to the airport for their long-awaited trip to Galapagos. The long-anticipated trip was to be their joyous, albeit-late honeymoon, coming a few months after their July wedding.

No sooner did my husband and I arrive home after the round-trip to JFK in Christmas Day traffic, but the first of several phone calls came in.  The flight was leaving at midnight, without them!  To make a long story short, the airline had overbooked their flight.  So they spent the night in the airport, and flew out around 4:00 in the morning.

They arrived on their tour a day late, after four or five unscheduled plane changes, no sleep at all, carrying heavy LONG backpacks that I couldn't have managed for even five minutes.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, we had all gotten food poisoning! At least 12 people who had assembled from different households, took ill a few hours after the family Christmas party.  And  to confirm my worst expectations, daughter and her hubby puked their way across South America, all the way to the Galapagos. It was Gatorade and Pepto-Bismol, all the way. On top of all that stress and exhaustion.

I was sick for the second time in a month, the blizzard was thick around us, we had to push their hyperactive Rhodesian Ridgeback hound  out the door by her butt because she did not want to go out into the snow, and we worried all week about the kids being sick and strung out on their travels.

Gran'dogger is adorable but totally ornery.  She commanded all our attention for the week they were gone; it was all we could do to keep up with her antics.  When she had properly anointed every inch of our hitherto pristine yard with abundant pee and poop and given us the run-around several times, refusing to come in when called while we watched helplessly from the deck with empty leash in hand, we knew we were outwitted by the willful canine.

She wouldn't come in from the yard even when bribed with teaspoonsful of her favorite peanut butter, but managed to lick just enough off the spoon to taunt us before she whirled out of reach. We stood and watched in awe as she tore across the yard 30-40 times without tiring, flying like a Greyhound and leaving new track marks around a few choice trees and shrubs, tossing the outdoor mat with a vengeance, and even trying to pull a mature Yew out of the ground by its roots!

So goodbye, December!  Glad to see you go....  And goodbye, Gran'dogger, and please don't come back to stay with us again for at least a year!

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