In other news, Bella got a dog.

We have been fostering dogs for a few years now. This was how Bella tricked us into kinda having dogs. But it turned out to be a pretty nice setup. We got the experience of having dogs, we got to help out some dogs in need and be part of them finding permanent homes, and we got breaks from dogs when we needed them. Leta came to us when we were on one of our fostering breaks. The rescue we work with called and asked if we could help them out as the local operations got overrun by a situation that unexpectedly brought in over forty dogs at once. Leta had just had surgery and needed a quiet place to recover. We are this rescue's go-to "quiet" place.

When we first got her, she acted more like a deer than a dog. This was for a couple of reasons. First, she looked a lot like a miniature deer. Second, the situation she came from had some semi-feral qualities so she wasn't accustomed to a proper home situation. This meant when we let her out, she would look for quiet hidden places and essentially bed-down like a young deer. She was super uncertain about people but took to other animals quite well. Whatever her story, she was a unique animal for us (most of ours were puppy-mill recoveries). And her quiet and gentle ways had Bella pretty done for, pretty quickly.

We got her just before the 2019 holidays and adopted her on Bella's 19th birthday (in March). This coincided with the covid spool-up so in that regard it could not have been more perfectly timed. We slowly gained her trust and she is now a comfortable member of the family. The greatest evidence of this is she even likes Marty and more telling is, Marty even likes her.

Meet Leta

Last Christmas, I got a piece of sand art as a gift. It is a twelve-inch disc that rests in a plastic base. Half of it is filled with grains of sand of varying colors, sizes, and weights. The other half is filled with a liquid, which I assume is water. When you flip it over, the sand on the top half will slowly and unpredictably fall towards the base. This is the art part, watching the sand slowly...

bella does a good amount of house and dog sitting. she has for years. just about anytime she sees someone walking a dog she approaches them, asks if she can pet it, and strikes up a conversation. most of those talks end with the following sentence -- "if you ever need someone to watch your dog and you hire bella's bright dog-sitting business, the future will be bright for you and your pets!"
<...

PART 5 - the one that almost didn't get away
shortly after getting keisha and baker's paperwork finalized, the rescue lady said, "so, are you ready for your next challenge?". before she finished her sentence my hands were in the air crying uncle. i confessed after fourteen months with keisha, i needed a break. a long one. she said ok but assured me this one would be super fast...

PART 4 - bella saves the day
after the front-porch moment, i told the family that even though keisha and baker weren't turning out the way we hoped they might, they did think of our home as their home and we shouldn't give up on them just yet. i sensed the others in the family weren't as moved by keisha's voluntary return as i was, even after my dramatic re-telling of the morn...

PART 3 - keisha earns a second chance.
working with keisha was tough sledding from minute one. we saw gains but they were infinitesimal and the kids zeal for the true rehab work at hand was waning given the small returns they were seeing in return. after several months, the guy who placed dog with us, andy, brought us a second dog that was part of the same rescue. he apologize...

PART 2 - bella finds a loop hole
bella missed her curfew. i was never destined to be one of those parents who world ignore these adolescent mis-steps. i had the wrong mother for that. so when she was three minutes in default i texted her asking why she wasn't home. her reply came immediately. "sorry dad but i can't come home right now because i'm holding sleeping, day-old pupp...

PART 1 - mom hates dogs
i have been quite happy about the childhood i was able to make for my kids with one exception--pets. having pets in the home is one thing i always imagined for my children but was never able to make happen. readers of the site know the main road-block here has been marty. fact is, marty and all six of her siblings are famous pet-haters. granted, it is h...

bella does a lot of house and pet sitting these days. this summer she spent more nights sleeping in other people's homes than she did in ours. and their homes have pools, multimedia systems and lavish bathrooms which is a bit of a bonus, particularly when you are being paid to be there. through this work and her other pursuits, she has become a competent manager of her time and juggling multiple r...

like many neighborhoods, ours is tied into a community website. i don't follow it myself, but bella keeps an eye on it in case people ask about house or dog sitting jobs. the other day she sent me this a post someone in the neighborhood made.


gotta say, if more of the neighborhood updates were this entertaining i might actually look in from time to time. and i think it would have been a little better and smarter if he had done the legwork first of finding out who this person was, exacted his revenge, and then made this post. this fellow doesn't seem like he'd be shy about sharing the name of the thoughtless ass-hat. my fear here is that he's giving the person a heads up that he'll be watching now and may have spoiled his chance of catching him/her (and i do hope he catches him/her). although, there's a decent chance the person is like me and doesn't read the site so there's a bit of hope.

another thing. how new are all of these approaches to pet-care and did something specifically usher them in? i mean, when exactly did people start picking up after their dogs. and crating dogs, when the heck did that start? i don't remember any of this when i was a kid. dogs slept all over the house and shit all over town. let's be clear, now that i own a home, i'm glad grown people tend to their creatures almost like they were children. but i do feel bad that dogs can't sleep at the foot of the owner's beds warming their feet on cold nights. i have warm memories of our family-dogs snuggling into me for warmth and comfort on those cold colorado nights. and when i hear people defend the crate-business, it sounds mildly akin to the explanations made for giving young kids phones/ipads--they make it sound like it is for the dog's/kid's benefit but in the end they, the owner/parent, seem to be the main beneficiary. i mean dog houses have been around super-forever, and dogs used them, i get that. the difference between a dog house and a crate is one doesn't have a jail door on the front.

and before you have any chastising thoughts and say well, of course, people have always picked up after their dogs and crated their dogs. to that, i would first say that, well, that is most definitely not the case that people have ALWAYS been doing those things and that the uber-practice had to start sometime and i think that time has been since i was a kid. and secondly, i saw a new/next level of first-world pet-care at target the other day. and that discovery may have marked the precise moment i became a sour old man. at the end of an aisle stood a large, glass-paned, interior-lit fridge that held PET-food. prominently, or rather loudly, displayed as it was, it looked like it contained the cure to pimples, old-age and herpes all in one convenient spot. but it did not hold the cures to all human ills. it held chilled food for peoples' animals. the furrows in my brow surely grew deeper at that moment as i stared at those privelege-lined shelves. i don't remember exactly what i muttered under my breath, but i promise you it was not fit to share.

all of this said, there has been many i time when i had pets, i'd pour another scoop from a giant bag of food into my pet's bowl and thought, sucks to be you bud, as i would hate if i had to eat the same thing everyday. the saving grace--i knew my pet, like many american pets, would have his dish peppered with table scraps later in the evening which he would quakingly engulf at the end of each day and digest while curled up against my back or on my feet as we warmed each other literally and emotionally through the night.

we recently learned that one of bella's dogs (from her dog-sitting business) had taken ill, ill to the point that the vets told the family they probably had a week left with him before it would become unbearable for all concerned. of all the dogs bella has cared for this one, Guinness, held the top-spot with our family. whenever bella watched Guinness he would stay at our house, sometimes for weeks at a time, sleeping in our beds, walking laps around our dinner table and standing guard at the french door windows for joggers and dog walkers.

marty and i held off telling the kids as long as able due of the holiday break but given the short window we had to work with—as we had to go down to say our goodbyes—we called the kids down to the living room just days before christmas and explained the situation. bella was, predictably, leveled by the news. marty held bella's quaking frame, tears streaming down her own face at seeing her daughter rocked so. i sat with alex who leaned into me silent and staring. we hushed anthony's questions telling him we'd explain better later.

alex and i then left for a lunch we had planned, leaving marty still holding a now quiet isabella. after a few silent miles in the car, i asked my ten year old how he felt. following a longish pause he softly said, "i think i'm a little bit devastated."

if there is one who makes the most of his words in our family, the safe and accurate bet would point to alex.

for such a happy go-lucky guy, his style of math to word problems are a bit on the morose/morbid side.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. beatdown

a dog is in our future. the first time i seriously raised the topic marty stopped what she was doing, turned towards me giving me her full arms-folded, hip-on-counter attention. surprised by her intentness, i moved forward a little uncertainly with things like:

i think the kids are getting older and more mature

and

they surely don't seem to go in and out of wanting a dog.

and

it's not about us, it's something we do for the kids.

the first thing marty said was ...

i won't do anything to help.

in reply, i asked her to elaborate on what exactly she meant by "anything". she said ...

when you go on your annual weeklong ski trip and the children forget to feed the dog and it is laid out, dehydrated in front of its water bowl and just needs me to pour a glass, a tiny glass, of water into it ... i won't. and the first thing you'll have to do after walking in the door after your annual weeklong ski trip is carry a dead dog into the backyard to bury it.

to this bit of insight, i said ...

oh. i see.

given that marty didn't appear to be "on the fence" about the matter, the getting a dog initiative kinda stalled, indefinitely. a few days ago marty told me about a girlfriend of hers who asked her husband about the family getting a dog. in response, her husband said:

i'd rather you had an affair than brought a dog home.

in the end, it turns out marty is near cuddly on the matter.

i was talking with neighbor on the sidewalk in front of my house. she was walking her dog. a woman approached on the other side of the street. she was also walking a dog. when the dogs saw one another they started whimpering and making lunges against their leashes towards the other dog. the other-side-of-the-street woman seeing the dog near me, crossed the street directly for us. when she arrived the dogs began twisting and sniffing and jumbling up together mixing and crossing the two leashes crazily. no one said anything. then the woman extricated her leash from the mix, said good day, and continued on her walk.

the woman i was talking to me looked at me and asked if i knew the woman. i said i did not and that i assumed she must have. the woman scrunched her face, turned to look at the departing woman, turned back to me and derisively said, "who does that?"

the phrase "who does that?" and the intonation it was delivered with at that moment became my favorite quip and i've used in no less than five times since hearing it.

last week i talked about our time dog-sitting. there was an oscar detail i forgot to share.

in our current games of musical beds in the night, most days puts me and alex waking up together on a futon in the ping-pong room (anthony having made my usual and expected spot his place of choice). one morning when i woke up alex was staring at me with bright eyes. this was my first conversation of the day:

ALEX
good morning dad.

TROY
good morning alex.

ALEX
dad.

TROY
yes.

ALEX
one time oscar was licking his nuts and then i saw a red thing come out of his privates and it was shiny and it was soooo gross ... and he was licking it.

people often comment on how calm and passive i come off at work. when your day begins with colorful, and wide-eyed descriptions of aroused, self-stimulated male organs, there ain't a lot life can throw at you that will sound alarming or disturbing.

we've been dog sitting for the last five weeks. he is a small, light-shedding, black and white terrier of some sort named oscar. he was obtained from a shelter by the family of a friend of marty's. he is very mellow and easy going which can be mostly seen in how he shoulders the unpredictable life of sharing living quarters with anthony.

the first week oscar was with us alex kept a small supply of dog food in an R2-D2 toy clipped to his belt-loop. every time alex would pass oscar he'd stop the dog, hunch himself over, pat the dog on the head, and ask if he wanted a treat. the first few times oscar would sit there jittery with excitement, his tail swishing erratically behind him. alex would then fight to open the small toy given it's awkward position at his waist. once open, alex would pluck a few pieces of dog food out and lovingly say, "here you go oscar-boy" holding his palm out to oscar who would nudge and push the small bits around with his nose before tentatively pulling them into his mouth with a lapping tongue. after oscar discovered these seemingly sacred and hard to get to treats were no different than the dry food he was already neglecting downstairs, oscar's body language emanated an "are you kidding me" affect and the impromptu R2-D2 snack breaks waned.

a few weeks in, the dog's owner, marty's friend, called to check on things. alex was the one to answer the phone. before marty became aware the call was for her, alex had told the lady that oscar threw up on a rug and pooped in the basement and that these things made his mom yell. by the time marty intervened, alex had the poor woman on the brink of packing up her family and returning home early in attempt to salvage this maimed relationship. marty, using all of her skills and grace, demoted alex's apocalyptic descriptions as mere transition pains and said everything was good and fine.

because i nickname everyone and everything, i took to calling the dog osky. one morning when i passed through the kitchen for breakfast and bid osky a good day, anthony told me not to do that and that osky was a bad word. before i could defend myself, bella jumped in, telling anthony that osky wasn't a bad word. after a pause and a reflective grunt from anthony bella added, "that is unless you change the 'aaww' to an 'aahh', and remove the 'skee'. then you had a bad word. and if you added the word 'hole' on the end of that word, then you would have an especially bad word." there is something to be said for getting what you know will be your most terrifying and surprising moment of the day out of the way before you have even have pants on.

two days before oscar was to leave, i asked bella what she thought the best thing about having oscar was. she thought for a moment, just a moment, and said the best thing about having a dog was it brought our family closer together. i asked her to explain why. she went on to say that since oscar needed lots of walks it caused people in the family to go out together; she and mom, she and i, anthony and i, she and alex. and also, there were several times where we'd gather around to see how someone was playing with oscar because it was cute or funny. i will give it to the girl, she can make a solid on-the-fly argument that is more cogent than i've seen grown men make in the heat of debate. in thinking about her observation, i would say that in the last five weeks just about the only one on one time i shared with anthony was while he and i were out walking oscar. although i guess i should also count the numerous times when i was explaining to anthony, one-on-one, that a dog's anus is not its GO button even if it looks like one and pushing it does, without fail, make the dog go.

in the end, we've learned the kids are closer to being ready for a dog than they were a year ago. we've also learned the same could be said of their father even if my progress hasn't been as significant. and we've learned that when all is going well, marty could possibly be caught petting and loving on the dog. that said, we've also learned that when marty's not feeling the life with a dog, the dog and whoever is responsible for bringing the cur into marty's home better sleep lightly until marty's funk passes.

we're dog-sitting this week. the biggest change to our home is that i say the phrase, "anthony, stop eating the dog's food" more often than i would during a week we weren't dog-sitting.

after several weeks of chilly fall temperatures, the weather relented one weekend and dealt the city a beautiful saturday afternoon. we quickly plotted an outside event and invited friends to join us. we ended up going to art hill to fly kites. we for sure weren't the only people to have this idea because the hill was littered with all sorts of folks basking under the warm sun reading and visitin...

it seems the mourning period has passed and we have a replacement hermit crab.

the former crab's name was nate. there is a nate that lives five doors down the street. this crab's name is sebastian. we have one of those four houses away. it seems alex has a thing for naming his pets after kids who live in the neighborhood. while i could jibe his lack of creativity, i prefer it over bella's motif. her monikers tend to more resemble quintessential stripper names (like krystal or cinnamon or pepper). so as it turns out, i'm rabidly supportive of naming pets after kids who live on our street.

after getting sebastian home i thought we should clean the habitat before introducing him to the mix. first impressions and all. we use a large, glass aquarium i found next to a dumpster when the college students were moving out a few years back. looking useful and being close to home i grabbed it up and threw it on a shelf in the basement. one curious thing i've noticed since we started using the aquarium is on the bottom corner of one of the long, front-facing sides there's a retro, red label that reads PLEASE DON'T FEED THE ARTIFACT. when i place the tank in the kids room, i always turn it so the label is on the backside. alex saw it during this recent cleaning and asked what the raised, white letters said. i told him. he asked what that meant. i told him i didn't know and i was reasonably certain it was something we were better off not knowing. being my son, that proved good enough for him.

(for those wondering why i don't just peel the label off removing the need to think about or explain its relevance, it's because then it would have less of a story than it does now.)

below is bella's journal entry regarding nate's demise.

it is important to note that this is not bella's journal entry in her own journal, but this is bella's journal entry in alexander's journal. it seems she has taken up journaling about moments of import in alex's life in alex's journal i guess until he is able to do so himself. a bit more time and she very well may take over publishing content to this site as well. which would make sense enough given forty percent of the content is about her anyway.

click to enlarge


transcript:
THE DAY NATE DIED
nate died may 26, 2009. it was a very weary day. the day nate died he would never move again except in heaven.

everyone came and said their goodbyes. ellie, big ben, molly, me, my dad, cate, and of course the owner of the wonderful pet, my brother alex. we buried him under our favorite place to be, the swing that we all love to swing on. it was a sad, sad day. we all loved nate but we knew that he would die and the very next day he did. that is today.

i was in my office. it was late afternoon. i was talking with my boss on the phone. my cell phone rang. it was a call from home. my cell phone ringing was rare. and a mid-day call from marty even rarer. i said as much to my boss and asked him to hold on.

TROY
hello. marty? is everything ok?

BELLA
this isn't marty. it's bella.

TROY
oh hey bella. can i call you back in a minute?

BELLA
why?

TROY (pause and smirk at the very fair question)
never mind bell. what is it?

BELLA
it's nate. he's dying. he's mostly out of his shell.

TROY
oh. i'm sorry.

BELLA
we don't think he has much time left. you should come home as soon as you can. alex is quite upset.

TROY
ok. i will. thanks bella. sorry.

nate is alex's hermit crab and our family's first (and test) pet. nate was a real character until about a week ago when something happened and he became much less of a character. no one knows, or is fessing to at least, what happened. in addition to the sadness that comes from losing a pet, the kids are concerned on what this implies towards future pets. i told them we wouldn't be discussing such matters before nate was even in the ground.

as for nate's time with us, he led an attention-heavy life here in our home. one day while reading on the porch i saw alex throwing what i thought was a ball in the front yard. after a moment though i realized i couldn't see a ball and asked alex what he was throwing. he said he was throwing nate. i scolded this choice to which alex immediately replied that he was only doing it because nate liked it and he was throwing him in the grass and not on the sidewalk like anthony did. at this last bit of news my head sagged and all argumentativeness left me. another time nate went missing. when marty and i worked with the kids (with great effort) to reconstruct nate's last whereabouts, his morning journey seemed daunting between rides in a toy car and trips down the slide. the last recollection was he had been given to anthony who threw him on the couch and no one bothered to retrieve him. nate was then found picking his way through some knitted afghan. fact is, every time i'd see nate pop out of his shell and start crawling up my arm or shirt, i was mildly amazed at the spunky crustaceans grit.

when i sank the shovel into the dirt, the boy from down the way started humming what sounded like the ceremonial music playing at the end of the the original star wars movie. i glanced at him to find him standing with his humming head bowed reverently. there was a small and motley group of neighbor kids standing around for our family's first pet burial. alex was holding the plastic container that previously contained the creamy white icing you put on top of freshly cooked cinnamon rolls that come in the cardboard tube. a neighbor girl had lined the bottom with blades of grass and after setting nate and his painted shell onto the grass we covered him with more grass. alex now held this makeshift coffin in his hands and was quietly standing next to the hole i was digging.

when the hole was ready i asked alex to set nate in there. he didn't want to so i took the round container from his tentative hand and balanced it in the dirt hole. i picked up the shovel to cover the hole when another neighbor girl stopped me and said we should say some words first. i set the shovel to the side. i asked alex if he wanted to say anything. he did not. the girl who suggested a prayer then offered several kind sentiments about nate and how lively he always was. the boy humming the star wars music then began,

STAR WARS HUMMER
i knew alex's hermit crab a very long time and thought ... what was his name ?

TROY
nate

STAR WARS HUMMER
and thought nate was a fine hermit crab and good pet.

i then said our family would miss nate and was sorry he couldn't have been with us longer. bella interrupted me accusing anthony of being the reason nate died. alex then said it was my fault because i gave nate a vacation food pellet when we went camping and he didn't like it and starved to death. then the small band of neighbor kids began chiming in with their observations and memories of nate happenings. if there were a full-sized coffin involved i'm pretty sure someone would have thrown their body over it. i sternly quieted the crowd telling them that this was not the place to talk about what happened and that we were here to say our goodbyes to our friend. i then grabbed the shovel and filled the hole with dirt. alex put his face into my side. seeing this the others turned and respectfully walked away. when they were gone alex asked if we could take nate out now to say prayers to him. i explained that we wouldn't be taking nate out again now that he was buried. with this alex began to cry. he said we got to keep seeing grandpa when he died. i guessed that he was talking about the viewing and the wake and i explained that after the burial this did not happen anymore. i then carried alex to the front porch and held him in my lap while he cried, his face buried in my chest.

about ten minutes later the kids who attended the funeral came out the front door and started walking home. one of the girls a few houses away crouched down on the sidewalk and stood up with something cupped in her hand. she turned and ran back to our house calling out that she found a lightning bug, the first one of the season. hearing this alex sat up, slid off my lap and said, "i'll get the bug box." and that easily life moved forward.

part 2

marty woke up 20 minutes late. i woke up 30 minutes late. what we were waking up late for was sunday brunch. guests were arriving in less than an hour and we were still bleary, un-showered and food-less.

marty made it to the kitchen first but was slowed down because alex wanted to help her make the custard french toast and bran muffins. after getting the fire going, i was soon hobbled by anthony nipping at my heels while working on the bacon. bella was yelling something indecipherable down the stairwell. the phone rang. it was marty's mother calling from florida. marty left her food station to gab ... for twenty minutes .. while i juggled food and humans. bella appeared in front of me seemingly out of thin air. she stretched her hand out forcing on me a full-size sheet of paper. once in hand, she turned on a heel and marched back upstairs. i read enough of the page to see it was a set of demands. i tossed it to the side and continued my circus act. marty hung up the phone minutes before our guests arrived and when she walked them into the kitchen made some crack to the room about how i should be cooking the bacon differently. our new audience was about to get a marital show-down, and i said as much, but comically announcing the point brought enough levity to pull us out of the spousal nose-dive and we went on to have a wonderfully homey and smiley day with friends.

after stomachs were full and the general fervor ebbed, i noticed bella's note on the counter. she was now beyond her funk and running about the house with her visiting playmates. i took the moment to read her text in full.


translated:
i decided that my webkinz is being cramped in their bed so until i can play webkinz again i'm staying in my bed and i will only come out when a movie is in or to play on the computer.

p.s. if you want me to come out you'll have to let me play webkinz again.

i'm hungry.

BREAKFAST ORDER:
oatmeal
mcdonalds
waffles
toast
pancakes
daddy cereal

for mom and troy
from bella

the true source of her angst is apparent given her use of "mom and troy" in the closing. bella lost her computer privileges a few weeks back and has been fretting for the webkin horse she received for christmas. for the uninitiated (read spared), you care for your webkin pet in this online environment, routinely giving it love and food and toys. after meting out the restriction i had a premonition that when bella did again log onto the website, she'd be met by a decaying, fly-covered horse carcass with cartoony fumes coming out of its sunken abdomen. another parent told me this is not possible in that the site is quite liberal with children's oversights and the worst she'd find is a pouty and tearful version of her horse. i think this is just another example of how our society is coddling our children to unhealthy degrees and years from now when bella finds some neglected real-life-pet molding in the bottom of an aquarium she will surely express surprise if not complete shock. and when her crest-fallen face turns to me for answers i'm going to be the one that finally delivers her the truth, "you should have stuck with those bullshit webkinz."

our house has been caring for a one-legged cricket named jumpy. bella found him struggling along while she walked home from school. once home, she and alex prepared vast accommodations housing him in a large glass aquarium (suitable for a guinea pig) with cardboard huts, tunnels, water dish, and vegetable pieces. i dislike these sorts of games because of the kids perfect record in caring for living things. and that is perfect as in mortician-perfect, not hospital-perfect. a few weeks passed and jumpy was doing well. this was for sure a new milestone. he had even moved to the kids room and sat atop a dresser because, i was told, he got lonely at night having to sleep in the breakfast room all alone.

the other night bella and i got into a familiar spat about bedtime, the spat being it was bedtime and she did not want it to be bedtime. as she resistantly headed for the stairs she knocked some coats and backpacks off a coat-rack. i made her stop and hang them back up. she paused from her frustrating task long enough to say to me, "jumpys dead. i wasn't going to tell you because i know you don't like it when life dies, but he did so there."

i silently took this news in. i was silent because as a parent it is the right thing to do with a child's rage and because i was a little sad to hear of jumpy's demise. i was starting to like having him around. but i guess it was either that or the kids' perfect track record which is long enough now you sorta hate to see it get marred.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. you should know