No, you can't play with that

In general, Ray is a good dog. But whenever Tucker comes over to play, Ray becomes like every other kid that wants to show his stuff to his friend.
"See this? This is my dad's shoe. Isn't it HUGE?
"See this? This is my mom's yarn. It's really fun to play with but I'm not supposed to."
"See this? This is a Chinese fan. Hey! This tastes good!"
"HEY LOOK, a ball of roving. I wonder if I can sneak this out of the room so that we can play with it?"
You gotta watch him like a hawk.

Wanna Walk?

I was sittin', talking to my dad on the phone. Ray was standing in front of me, whining.
I knew he wanted to take a walk, but it's been 90 degrees here and impossible to get him all the way around without a five or ten minute flop.
I ignored the blind hound and continued to talk to my dad.
"meeeeeeeeeeeeeeee," said Ray.
POKE. A big paw hit my arm.
I ignored the dog and continued to talk to my dad.
"meeeeeeeeeeeeeeee," said Ray again.
POKE POKE. The big paw missed me and hit the arm of the chair.
I ignored it.
'MEEEEEEEEEEE," Ray got louder.
POKE POKE POKE.
I ignored it all.
Ray walked away and picked up a sandal that I had casually dropped under the coffee table. He flapped it up and down a few times, then dropped it and 'looked' in my direction.
I laughed. My dog still knows how to push my buttons. He just doesn't carry through anymore.
What a good dog.

Fashion Police?

"You look like Indian Corn," said Gregg.
"What?" he exclaimed chagrined as I started laughing. "I mean that only in the best possible way."

I guess maybe I'll have to rethink these shorts. That's the second questionable 'compliment' I've received on this particular choice of summerwear.

Nobody's looking, are they?

Thanks, Ray

[Note: Click on any of the links in blue to view the person or thing I'm talking about. You may have to scroll through the blog post to get to the photos but they will be there somewhere. The photos I've included here have never appeared in the blog before]

Yesterday I went to lunch with my BFF, Joanne. We were discussing Artomatic which had appeared in an article in the Washington Post.


"Do you realize," said Joanne, "that you would not be on the cutting edge of knowing about this if you didn't have Ray?"

Joanne was talking about the fact that I had told her about Artomatic a couple of weeks previously, even before it had opened. I had gone with Ray's girlfriend Halle's grandma, Deborah, to help her hang her artwork to display at Artomatic (if you click on the link, her paintings appear in the photos after those of the mosaic skull and the pink bottles - you'll know them when you see them). And it got me to thinking. How many people have I met, that I NEVER would have met, without Ray.

The first person would have to be Ray's foster mother, Amber, in South Carolina. Although I didn't physically meet her first, I think I talked to her first. We became friends over the phone when I adopted  Ray, brought him home, and was so totally in over my head. We have since met when I went to SC to visit my folks.

Sam, Halle's mom, with Ray and Halle

Then there was Todd, Sasha's dad; Deborah, Halle's grandma (and Sam, Halle's mom); Brenda, Roxie's mom; Rachel, Josh (who appears briefly in the linked video), and Marva - Murphy's parents and grandma (I've also met Rachel's sister, brother-in-law, step-father, father, and father's girlfriend); Ken, Miko's dad; and Darlene, Tucker's mom. And these are just the people that live (or lived) around my block. (I can't count Sandra and Maddie because I already knew them). There's also Ray's favorite baby that lives at the end of the street. I know his whole family now. I know practically every kid all the way around the block. I don't know any of their names but they all know Ray's.

Tucker

Once I start thinking outside of the block (as it were), there are all those nice young people at the doggy daycare; and the owner of the daycare and her husband who just happen to live in my neighborhood and with whom we have shared dinner a couple of times.

And what about all those women and men at the dogpark? Legions. One of them an artist who painted Ray's portrait (and is also going to be displaying at Artomatic).

And how 'bout the people that I've met walking around the lake? I've probably walked 50 miles with one  woman and I don't even know her first name. Her dog's name is Rex.

I've corresponded with Tina, mother to blind Liam and a passel of other dogs, who is going to retire and raise Alpacas. She sent me an email because she knows that I knit and that Ray is a yarn hound. I've never met her but I think I'd like to someday.

Ditto for Alice, who blogs about Tonka, a blind Great Pyrenees. Wouldn't know her to pass her on the street, but I know she's a good person that takes such great care of her dog that I feel like a total slouch letting my blind dog walk off a cliff.

And, of course there's Niki and Jez from over the pond, parents of blind Conor the Greyhound. I now have friends in England, for God's sake. All because of Ray.

So, Ray, thanks for making my life SO much more interesting and fun. And for getting me lots and lots of exercise. And for helping me make new friends every day.

Tucker Comes Over

We were expecting another day of rain. But it was early and sunny so Ray and I leashed up and hit the pavement for a quick two-miler.
As soon as we got back, Tucker's mom (Darlene) called.
"Do you want to get the dogs together today? Tucker has been driving me crazy." she said.
"Sure," I replied, "Let's do it now before it starts to rain again."
"I'll be right there," she said.
The phone clicked off. I turned to my blind dog and told him that Tucker was coming over to play. As he does when he is listening intently, Ray cocked his head to the side and deployed his ears in Dumbo mode.
He walked to front door and stood 'staring' out the glass. I watched him for a minute then went about my business. Ten minutes later he was still there, lying on the floor Sphinx-like, waiting.
"It'll probably take them a little while to get here Ray, but your friend is coming." I told him.
Ray didn't move.
A few minutes later, Tucker was coming up the walk. There was a frantic greeting between the dogs, then both headed to the back door. Ray shot out the dog door. Tucker, who hasn't quite got the hang of it yet, scratched at the back door. We let him out and watched as he cannonballed into Ray over and over again. Ray was scampering a bit, but the ground was wet and muddy (my poor, struggling grass) and he was having problems gaining purchase. Lower-to-the-ground Tucker wasn't having any such problems.
After 10 minutes, Ray was done. He went back into the house through the dog door. Darlene and I were chatting on the back patio when we realized that Ray wasn't coming back out. We peered in the glass and saw the hound standing, 'looking' our way, waiting for his friend to come inside to play.
I opened the back door. "Come on out, Ray. Come on out to play." I cajoled.
Ray didn't move. I closed the door and waited. The flap of the dog door opened an inch. Tucker ran up and tried to convince the nose that was sticking through the flap to come back out and play. The nose retracted.
I sighed. "I don't think he likes the mud," I said to Darlene. "Let me go get some towels and we'll clean Tucker off and let them play inside."
I went and got said towels. Although Tucker was a bit muddy, he was a breeze to clean compared to Pigpen Murphy.
We turned the dogs lose in the house where they resumed their horseplay (dogplay?). But Ray, after his brisk walk in the morning, was tiring quickly. The Cannonball, however, was not. He nipped Ray's ankles and elbows, grabbed his face, ran under and around him,  all the while doing the body slam. Ray took it all like a man.
By the end of the hour, poor Ray was too tired to stand. He was stretched out on the carpet in the front hall, his mouth open to grab the little dog if Tucker should happen by. Tucker was obligingly throwing himself on Ray's head and into his open maw. It didn't seem like it would be that much fun, but Tucker was having a ball. Ray was a good sport and humored the little guy. (The term 'little' is purely subjective here. Tucker is little compared to Ray. The Cattle Dog may be small but is pure muscle and more closely resembles the Cannonball nickname given above.)
After watching this for awhile, Darlene took pity on the exhausted hound and took her ball of energy home.

What the....?

I was in the garage cleaning the cat boxes (again). Usually, when I do this, I leave the dog gate open so that Ray can follow me into the garage and do some supervised poking around. Most of the time he doesn't make it past the cat-carrier that we use to transport Moonie and Hugo to the vet. (Some mighty interesting smells must emanate from that crate.) Today, however, although the dog gate was open and Ray had followed me through it into the laundry room, he did not follow me into the garage.
I heard rummaging coming from behind me but didn't pay too much attention. Ray is always rummaging through something, but he's gotten to be such a good dog that I don't worry about it so much anymore. I finished up what I was doing and went back into the laundry room. No Ray.
I looked out past the dog gate into the dining room. There was a white thing on the carpet. I looked farther. Another white thing. Through the dining room, into the hall; every couple of feet another white thing.
Puzzled, I exited the laundry room, closed the dog gate behind me and went to investigate.
The white thing was a fabric softener dryer sheet. The next white thing was another one. And then another one.
I followed the trail of dryer sheets through the house. Ray had taken a stack of them (not the whole box) and carried them to where he could comfortably roll in them. But even though he had dropped a bunch as he walked, the taste of a whole stack must have been too much. He had left the rest of them, still neatly stacked, in the front hall.

The After-Murphy Blues

It was a rainy Monday morning. The morose, blind dog was curled up in a chair whining gently to himself.
I knew they were coming - the after-Murphy blues - but I was hoping that Ray would be so tired that I wouldn't have to deal with the sad-dog syndrome.
But there he was; sitting, whining gently, remembering the good times. And the worst part was, it wasn't even a sunny day so that we could go for a nice long walk or invite Tucker over to play to make Ray forget for a minute.
I decided that, like in the movie "About a Boy," (good movie - I give it a thumbs-up), I would try to break Ray's day into little chunks of time where something good would happen.
Morning - For breakfast (which he was initially too sad to eat), he got a squirt of whipped cream on his dog food (whipped cream makes everything better) - 5 minutes.
Mid morning - We squeezed in a walk between the heavy rains - 20 minutes
Later morning - I gave him a fabric softener dryer sheet (while I was doing laundry) so that he could make himself smell fresh (after Murphy left, he smelled like dog-spit) - 5 minutes
Afternoon - I bought him some new toys (while I was running errands) to replace the defaced, destuffed, decapitated ones that he and Murphy tore through. Then we played with them - 30 minutes or so (and off and on again throughout the day)
Mid afternoon - We squeezed in another walk between raindrops - 20 minutes.
Late afternoon - I let him pick a rawhide flip out of the bag of flips. I didn't even object when he chose two at once. Then we played keepaway around the coffee table - 15 minutes (and off and on again for the rest of the afternoon).
Later afternoon - Dinner - 5 minutes.
That brought us right up to bedtime, which on a gloomy, rainy day is about 5:00.
It's 5:30. He's sleeping. We made it through the after-Murphy blues.