Rain

Another older picture.
Ink + Corel Painter

Please do not claim, alter, distribute, etc.

Friday dogs: the ghost of Rufus past

Part of me wishes that I had a working camera around. The apartment building we live in is the designated "dog building" in the complex, so every time I step outside the door there's a new dog to meet and greet. There's even a person on the third floor whose miniature pinscher just had a litter of puppies.

But while we wait for the advent of a new camera, I hope you can get your puppy fix with this snap from my archives:

(Photo by Karen Hollish)

This is Rufus at 8 weeks old, the very night that I brought him home. (This photo, incidentally, was not taken at home, but at my former workplace, by my former coworker — that's her bichon, Scoops, sniffing Rufus' butt in the background.)

Cataracts

Sorry for the streak of depressing content. This picture was pure therapy. Click for full image complete with words.

Click for larger image.
Please do not use, alter, reproduce, distribute, claim, etc.

What's best for you

Slightly disturbing doodle I made a few years ago, nothing fancy. I believe at the time I was reading "For Your Own Good" by Alice Miller while simultaneously working through some childhood traumas. I did a whole series like these, but this one always stuck out to me.

After a long conversation with my friend Julia, during which I showed her this picture and some others, she took a drag of her cigarette and shrugged. "That's what adulthood is for, right?" she said. "Getting over childhood trauma." We both laughed.

Relocation

Evan and I moved last week to the Minneapolis area. Neither of us has a job yet, so we're both busy scouting out our options, unpacking, opening bank accounts, building up our mental maps of the surrounding area, getting acquainted with the different pace of life...

We're in the midst of suburbia, but it's considerably more urban than the town where I've been living for the past six years. Most of the local establishments aren't local at all, but are chains. I have yet to find a good place to let Rufus run around off-leash. And there's an oxymoronic aura of both isolation and significant lack of privacy.

We have no internet at home yet (and I still lack a working camera), so I can't make any promises as to the regularity of updates or the timeliness of answered e-mails. I can promise, however, that I will try. At the very least I'll queue up some entries to post automatically.


Here's a pattern I made. My experience with making patterns is... well, you're looking at the sum total of it right now. Sized for widescreen desktops (full size 1280x800) for your downloading pleasure (for personal use only).

Click for larger image.

Friday Dogs: Artie

This one is special (fit for Friday the 13th, I guess). There's a story, but the photo is more important.



This is my late dog Artie, and me at age 17 or 18. This photo is a perfect representation of our relationship.

Artie was a yellow lab/German shepherd mix. He was born at the wildlife rehab sanctuary where I used to volunteer all through my teenage years. There were nine puppies in the litter, and the mother neglected them horribly. One of the puppies died after she stepped on it. Colleen, my dear friend and the owner of the sanctuary, asked if I could foster some of the puppies — she barely had enough time in a day to go to the bathroom, much less bottle-feed eight puppies every 2 to 4 hours. With my mother's permission, I took home four of them, one of whom was destined to become Artie.

Two of our neighbors adopted two of the puppies, and my parents decided to keep the chubby little blonde male, whom my sister named Artie, after a character from the old Nickelodeon show "Pete & Pete".

He had the worst hip displaysia that the orthopedic vet had ever seen. At less than a year old, he had a hip replaced; while he was recovering from that, he slipped on the kitchen floor and busted his knee on the same leg; after another surgery to correct that problem, he knocked the same knee on the doorway as he was going outside. By this point, the vet only charged us for the anesthesia and did the surgery for free.

He proceeded to become the happiest, most tender-hearted dog on the face of the planet, and he flat-out worshipped our older golden retriever, Katie. Tug-of-war was his favorite game, and he had very well-toned shoulder muscles because of it. He was a gorgeous dog. His nickname was "Handsome" and he answered to it.

I cried when I left him to go to college.

That first Christmas when I came home for break, on the first night, Artie stood at the door to be let outside. I let him out, and he immediately asked to come back inside. He looked at me oddly, then stood at the door again. This repeated multiple times, until finally I understood that he wanted us to be outside together. It was a full moon (I can't make this stuff up), and we romped in the yard together, just him and me. This is one of my fondest memories of my life so far.

Twenty-four hours later, he was dead of gastric torsion (bloat). He was six.

Occasionally I think that Rufus might be his reincarnation (and my mother agrees, despite her not being entirely certain whether she believes in reincarnation at all). While I very much love Rufus just for being Rufus, it's a comfort to think — even to just wonder if — there's a little piece of Artie in him.

Friday Dogs: George

This is George, and it might be considered cheating to use her for a Friday Dogs post, since no one is entirely certain whether she is, in fact, a dog, or just using some clever disguise to further her plans for global conquest.




She is the leader of the local transgender dogs (see also: Charlie). Perhaps she could best be described by relaying the story of her origin, as told to me by her owner, Leslie:

In rural southern Illinois, where the most exciting feature is a single tree amidst the endless acres of cornfields, there was a rather high-end breeder of bichon frises. A few miles down the road was another breeder of moderate repute, one of Jack Russell terriers.

Jack Russells are famous for their ability to defy gravity. One of the stud Jack Russells jumped (or possibly flew) over the fence, booked it across town, and flew over another fence, which contained the prize bichon bitches. The bichon breeder was about 30 seconds too late in discovering this.

If you're unfamiliar with the way dog breeding works (among reputable breeders, anyway), you ought to know that a breeder relies upon their reputation above all else. For a bitch whose grandmother won at Westminster, to be impregnated by a dog of another breed — her first litter, no less — could ruin that dog's career and spoil many, many years of careful planning on the part of the breeder. HUGE faux pas.

So the breeders were desperate to shuffle the puppies quietly off into good homes with owners who had never set foot in a show ring. My friend Leslie heard about this debacle, and stopped by to have a look at the puppies.

When she arrived, a wave of cute, fluffy, white, bouncy little puppies came tumbling toward her, with big puppy smiles and wagging little puppy tails.

...And then there was this one.

This undersized little female puppy who sort of stumbled out of the whelping box with a perpetually confused expression on her face. When Leslie picked her up, the pup didn't try to lick her face, instead going stiff and sticking all four legs straight out, like one of those suction-cup Garfields you see in minivan windows.

Leslie took this puppy solely on the basis that no one else would want her. And named her George, because gosh darnit, she just looked like a George.

[For the record, George (despite being in every sense an oddball) is a relatively healthy dog, with more quirks than I can count but no real behavior problems.]