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dogs that like walks
Thursday, March 31 2016
I got up early this morning to take the new dog Neville for a poop walk. He seemed stiff and sore, so, to great disappointment of Eleanor and Ramona, the walk was a short one. Later, Gretchen came home from Susan & David's place so she could be here when Ray arrived with Jack. They wanted to met Neville and go for a walk. But the kind of walk Ramona, Jack, and Eleanor like would be to taxing for Neville, so I walked with the others for most of the way down the Farm Road and then turned around and took Neville home. He initially didn't want to go home, so I had to carry him until the others disappeared from view and could no longer be heard.
Later, after Ray and Gretchen and the other dogs returned, I made a french press of coffee and Ray got a chance to socialize with Neville. He was being just as sweet and adorable as always, though by now I was growing concerned with his low levels of energy (something that, to most others, came across as just more adorability). Gretchen picked up on it, and at one point I blurted out, "Maybe he's not a good fit for our household." Our dogs need to be able to go on hikes, whereas Neville seems like he'd be a perfect dog for an urban apartment (or people like Eva & Sandor, who place a great deal of importance on a prospective dog being mellow around their four cats). Still, I've adopted a wait-and-see attitude and I'm okay with him being a permanent part of the household even if he never improves. Perhaps he'll eventually build up the muscle mass necessary to walk more comfortably. And even if he never does, he might just end up being a dog who only goes on part of a walk or stays home for the longer ones. This has its own problems; Gretchen wants there to be two dogs on her morning walks, and once Eleanor dies (and her undiminished lymph nodes suggest this is coming sooner rather than later), we'll only have one dog with any walking range. This led Gretchen to float the idea of us also adopting Willie from Animal Farm Foundation. If I'd had my druthers, he would've been the one we adopted to begin with. But he looked too much like a sheep dog for Gretchen.
Towards the end of his visit, Jack kept getting excited about Celeste (aka "the Baby") out in front of the house (our front door was wide open by then due to the balmy nature of the day). Initially Celeste was trying to play it cool and even avoided several opportunities to go into the house to get away. But then she decided to run around the north end of the house, and Jack gave chase. I didn't see her for hours after that and began to worry that she'd climbed up into one of the tall pine trees just east of the house. I went searching for her several times, calling for her repeatedly. Eventually Gretchen joined me to search as well. And then, just the way it usually is with cats, she turned up. She was nervous at first that maybe we'd adopted Jack too, but when she realized that the only new dog was Neville, she settled back into her old routine. I should mention that by now all the cats have come to accept Neville as completely harmless.
This afternoon Jeremy came over with his "helper," his girlfriend Sarah the Vegan. The two spent a couple hours fixing little imperfections in the paint job in the living room and dining room as well as painting some things that hadn't been painted at all, such as window frames and molding. Given all the time the two have spent on the project and how little Jeremy had charged (a figure Gretchen had insisted on augmenting), it's doubtful they've made even minimum wage. But the money isn't really what Jeremy is about. He seems to see it all as an excuse to chit chat and drink coffee, so I made my second french press of the day.
This afternoon, I drove over to the Wall Street house to accept the keys from the last of the old tenants. I then gave him the two security deposit refund checks for him and his housemate. Soon thereafter, the new tenants arrived, and while the old tenant showed them a barbecue and an air conditioner they might want, I began the process of fixing the one thing I'd come to fix: some cracked paint on a bedroom door. The female half of the new tenant couple asked me if they should lock their doors in this neighborhood and I said that it was probably a good idea, but that it wasn't a bad neighborhood. But then I wasn't sure if that was the right answer; the problem was that I didn't know under what circumstances she was referring to. Obviously in the middle of the day that wouldn't be necessary, but when one is gone for days it would be foolish for anyone in such a neighborhood to leave their doors unlocked.
This evening it was my turn to dog sit over at Susan & David's place. I brought three laptops so I could continue tweaking the mentorship game code in a real live networked scenario. As I worked, I sipped a variety of alcoholic beverages. It was so warm that I left the front door open so the dogs Darla and Olive could come and go as they wanted into and out of the front yard (which is fenced).
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