I'm Bad

 

          I’m so bad.

          I feel like a rotten friend. Unless I’m your sister. Then I feel like a rotten sister. Unless I’m your mother. Then I feel like a rotten mother.

          “What’s up?” you wanna know.

          I wasn’t very good about keeping my camera with me this week —

          “GASP!!”

          I know, right! I can hardly believe it myself! So this week there will be stories and you’ll have to make your own pictures.

          The picture I feel the worse about missing was when I turned Bird loose.

          “You turned Bird loose‽” you say.

          I did!

          I wasn’t trying to make a pet out of her per se. I kept her in a cat carrier for most of the first week and every day when I changed her papers, she’d panic flutter. I didn’t know if she had a broken wing or not so I didn’t want her to do that. When I knew she was going to live, we got her a cage. I had hoped that pulling a tray out to change her paper would cause her less fluster. It didn’t. She’d still panic when I got close to the cage. The last few days I had her she was calming down, not as panicky when I’d approach.

          Wednesday, when I said good morning to her, I could tell that her wing beats were much stronger and I told Mike so.

          “Are you going to let her go?” he asked.

          “Yeah.”

It took me another day before I did it though.

          Mike was on the patio with me when I decided to test Bird. I kenneled Raini and Mike held Bondi so they couldn’t get her if she couldn’t fly. I took the cage off its hook, set it on the ground, opened the door, and stood back. Bird hopped up to the open door and stood there looking around. That was the moment I knew I’d forgotten my camera. Then she launched into the air, out, over the dog run fence, and into a tree.

          I smiled. I was glad to see her go, even if it did make me a little sad. I liked having Bird to take care of. I guess that’s the mother in me.

          Later that day, when I took Raini out for a game of catch, there was a dove sitting on the wire above the roof. Me throwing the ball in her direction didn’t bother her a bit. She just sat there and watched.

           I ran back in for my camera.

          “Mike!” I called. “There’s a dove sitting on the wire watching me throw the ball on the roof. Do you think it could be Bird?”

          “Wait a minute, I can’t hear you.”

          I hear that at least five times a day. Mike muted the TV he was watching and I repeated my question.

          “I don’t know,” he said.

          I put the long lens on my camera and went out.

          Bird never moved. She would’ve seen me playing with Raini several times a day every day that she was with us.

          After our game, I got some water and sat on the patio. Bird came down, landed on the awning, and looked over the edge at me.

          “Leave her cage door open,” Mike suggested. “Maybe she’ll go back in.”

          Bird’s cage is hanging where I put her every day that she was with us, but she’s not tried to go into it.

The next day our handsome neighbor Tux and his person Lamar stopped for a visit. While we sat on the patio and chatted, Bird landed on the ground a few feet away.

“How do you know it’s the same bird?”

A good question, since all doves look mostly alike.

Do you remember the first picture of Bird I showed you? Look at her back, right between her wings. The feathers have been skun off.

I know! I know, beautiful Editor Jenn. Skun makes your left eye twitch!

Jenn lets me have my own voice when I write. She just tells me the proper way to write something and I’m free to change it or leave it. She’s also great at picking up misspelled words, things that spell check might not necessarily get. Sometimes I write were instead of where, or sheer when I meant shear, or I’ll miss a word altogether. She’s just fabulous and I’m thankful that’s she’s willing to edit for me.

“Peg, I’ve read your blog and seen misspelled or missed words,” you say.

Yeah. I know, right! Jenn isn’t always able to edit when I’m ready to post. I’ll post and she’ll edit when she can. And for what I pay her (in love and hugs) I can live with that.

While we were sitting there visiting with Lamar and Tux, we could see the mark on Bird’s back. And that’s the second time I realized I didn’t have my camera nearby. If I’d’ve gotten up to get it, Bird would’ve left.

Saturday morning, I went out to fill the bird feeders and noticed Raini staring up at the roof. Is Bird up there? I wondered. I walked out far enough to look and she was!

All day long I could look out and see Bird. She’d be on the ground under the feeders or up on the roof. It seems like she’s hanging close by. I was surprised, though, when I saw her in the feeder. I know it’s her because I can see the bare patch on her back. In my experience, doves feed on the seeds that fall to the ground. I’ve never seen a dove in a feeder before. It doesn’t mean they won’t, it just means I’ve not seen it. Bird’s cage hung directly in front of this hanging open feeder. She’s seen other birds in it every day all day for two weeks. Do you think she learned? Are doves smart or just motived by food?

Mike helped hang my decorative shutters this week. That was a bit of a job since they were custom made and only fit together one way. The pins go up, the shutters sit down on them. If you do it backwards the shutters fall off the pins. Certain shutters only fit certain posts. Four shutters had knobs, four didn’t. The hook that holds them closed has to come down on the other knob, not up, or it won’t stay hooked. There’s no glass, just open framework with cloth curtains. There’s no pattern on the back of the curtain so that was one more thing to consider. And I’m just fussy enough that I didn’t want to see the back of the curtains.

True to our name, The Do-it-again Lubys, we had a couple of pieces put up and had to take them down because they were wrong. We were more careful after that.

In crafting news, I finished one side of a commissioned board. I’m not happy with where the knot fell.

“Why didn’t you move STARS up?” Mike asked.

“Because that would mess up my spacing,” I told him.

Flipping the board end for end would not’ve made any difference. The knot on the other end would’ve fallen in the middle of the word BRIGHT. If my client isn’t happy with this, I’ll start over on a new board, one with less character.

          Raini has been both a joy and curse this week.

          We were in TV watching mode for the night when I see Raini stalking Bondi with her hackles up.

          “NO!” I yelled.

          Raini stopped and turned around. I count that as a victory.

          And just when you think things are going right, they go terribly wrong.

          We took Raini to get her nails clipped. The last time Bobbie Jo did them, it was all we could do to get them done. Raini did not cooperate at all. This time — well, it was impossible. I couldn’t hold her.

“Would it be better if I left?” I asked, thinking it was like a kid that behaves when mom isn’t around. I went out.

I heard Bobbie Jo call through the door. “No. It’s worse!”

I called Mike in from the car where he was waiting with Bondi and he couldn’t hold Raini either.

Bobbie Jo called a halt. “Stop! I can’t do her nails. She’s getting really upset and I don’t want anyone to get hurt.”

She suggested a grinder but Raini freaks out when I do Bondi’s nails with the grinder. I can’t keep her in the same room let alone get close to her with it.

“Maybe play with her on the concrete,” was something else Bobbie Jo suggested.

I turned to the Blue Heeler page on Facebook.

“Have you tried a scratch board,” was one of the suggestions.

I went to Amazon and ordered a scratch board. I like this one because it had sliding tiles rather than always having the treats in the same place.

          It came on Saturday. I put treats in and Raini just nosed around the open slot. She wouldn’t scratch at it.

          “Maybe it’ll just take a little time for her to figure it out,” I said and pushed a tile revealing a treat.

          Bondi went for the treat; Raini went for Bondi. They snipped and snarled and rolled halfway across the floor. Bondi submitted, laying on her side, but Raini didn’t quit. Mike grabbed her collar, got her off Bondi, and alpha rolled her.

I put my two cents in the alpha part, getting on top and sternly telling her, “NO!” Then I got up and yelled at Raini, “GIT IN YER KENNEL!” I took her collar from Mike and guided her to the open kennel door.

          These events leave all of us shaken and upset. Bondi most of all.

          After I calmed down, I remembered we’d bought a muzzle. I got Raini out of the kennel and muzzled her for the very first time. She didn’t fight me when I was putting it on and adjusting the straps but she was not happy! She tried to take it off but quickly realized she couldn’t. She looked so sad and dejected and just stood there not knowing what to do. My heart broke a little. She became very meek and submissive. Eventually she laid down and didn’t move — wouldn’t even follow me from room to room like she usually does.

          After a few hours, I don’t know if it was two or three or four, I took it off. It was like a switch was flipped and my bouncy, happy, Raini was back.

          “Wanna play ball?” I asked.

          Raini raced off to find her ball and I went to the door waiting for her. She came back without it. “Go find it,” I told her. She dropped her nose to the floor like she was tracking it and checked all the places where her ball usually is. She came back without it again.

          “Mike, have you seen Raini’s ball?” I called into the other room.

          “Wait a minute, I can’t hear you.”

          When the TV fell silent, I asked again. “Have you seen Raini’s ball?”

          “I think it’s on the bed,” he said.

          “Don’t tell me, tell Raini.” But Raini came back a third time without the ball. “Look on the bed,” I told her. Did I expect her to know what that meant? NO! So I followed her into the bedroom. She’s faster than I am and by the time I got to the bedroom door, Raini was coming down off the bed with the ball in her mouth.

          Back out to the kitchen we go. Bondi jumped down from my desk chair and followed us out. Bondi has her own ball and even though she’s not very good about bringing the ball back to me, she will sometimes. I watched for any signs of aggression from Raini but she ran past Bondi a couple of times and paid her no-never-mind. I breathed a sigh of relief and we played for a while.

At first, I stood on the patio and threw the ball into the yard. Raini brought it back to me a couple of times, then she took it to The Rock and dropped it, giving me the eye.

“The Rock?” you query.

I can’t tell you how much she loves to play ball. It’s like she’s obsessed! She’ll get the ball and drop it at your feet. It doesn’t matter where you are. Kitchen, pantry, laundry room, hallway, living room, bedroom, or bathroom, it’s all the same to her. “Toss it,” she begs. But walking to the door or across the yard is like walking a mine field. She drops it in front of me and looks up at me. “Out to The Rock,” I tell her and sidestep the ball. Raini dashes behind me, grabs her ball, gets in front, and drops the ball at my feet again. “Out to The Rock,” I repeat. We’ll repeat this dance all the way across the house, out the door, across the patio, and through the yard until we get to The Rock, the place where I can toss the ball on the roof or against the side of the building and feel confident I won’t break another window.

Raini loves, loves, loves to jump. Her tail wags, her tongue lolls, and I swear she smiles at me. I think she’d jump all day long if I let her. When it was so hot out, we couldn’t play very long until she’d be panting heavily. And sometimes she’ll play so long that I’m afraid she’ll have a heart attack. I use a hand signal as well as voice to tell her, “That’s all.” She understands, drops the ball, and goes for the water bucket.

I was feeling pretty good that the spat over the scratching board was behind us. I opened the door and Raini entered first, as is common etiquette for the dominant dog, Bondi following behind. Suddenly, Raini turned back and nailed Bondi again. I don’t know what Bondi did and I doubt Bondi knows either. I didn’t get upset. I didn’t alpha roll her. I grabbed her collar, pulled her off Bondi, and the muzzle went on and stayed on for the rest of the night until bed time.

I turned to the Blue Heeler page again and asked how long is it proper to leave the muzzle on. Days? Weeks? No. I’m just kidding. An hour or three?

One lady says you should not make the muzzle a punishment. Heelers don’t do well with punishment. What she does is squirt some cheese whiz into her Heelers mouth when she puts the muzzle on so the Heeler equates the muzzle with a treat.

I told Mike what this person said. “I think punishment works. I don’t want to hit her but I do want her to equate attacking Bondi with the muzzle. If she doesn’t want to wear it, maybe she’ll leave Bondi alone.”

Someone else suggested a shock collar. “You might only need to do it once.”

Other people suggested different Blue Heeler groups.

Get a trainer.

Keep them separated. Kennel one for a while, then kennel the other.

Feed them separately.

Give treats when they behave in close proximity to each other without fights.

I guess everyone has a different style and I was thankful for the time these people took to try to help with this problem.

          Bondi was just starting to not be afraid of Raini and now she’s terrified of her all over again. She’ll stay with Mike in his chair or behind me in my desk chair. If Bondi goes out, she doesn’t waste any time getting off the floor. She jumps up on the chair, up onto the table, goes across, and down into my desk chair where she’s out of Raini’s reach. That’s not technically true. Raini could jump into the chair after her but she never has.

                                                                               >>>*<<<

          There are only road pictures left in this week’s file.

          Recently, a railcar in Towanda was painted by artist Jonathan Laidacker from Philadelphia. I took the picture as we drove past but I found more photos and descriptions online in a post by Cynthia Brown.

“The first scene is of Native Americans hunting.

          The middle car with all the photos of the area. From left to right: First one with red railing?; next two are of the mining on Barclay Mountain; next two of local factories?; the canal along the Susquehanna River; Wyalusing Rocks; photo above the Wyalusing Rocks is of Stephen Foster; next to the yellow flowers is Harry Davenport, actor from Canton (he was in "Gone With the Wind"); above that photo is David Wilmot of Towanda and the last photo is of "Mr. Sandman" Pat Ballard of Towanda & Troy.

The last mural on the railcar. The cell phone has a scene from the movie "It's a Wonderful Life." The author was born in Wyalusing, Philip Van Doren Stern! The little girl is Cece, the artist's daughter.”

          No one seems to know the significance of the other elements in this third scene.

Let’s finish off with road pictures.

          Let’s call this one do—

          “Wait, Peg!” you say. “How’s Mike?”

          Oh, yeah. After taking that really hard fall last week, he suffered this week. By Tuesday his head hurt worse than the day after he’d cracked it. Now he still has a little bit of a bump and some bruising on his head and Bondi keeps stepping on his sore shin when he’s in the recliner, but he’s doing a lot better.

          “It rattled my brains,” Mike says, then adds, “what little I have left.”

           Done!