My dog hates me

Misty hates me.

No, no, don't try to make me feel better. It's true. She thinks I'm the Ted Bundy of Dog-Killers. As for me, I can see beyond her seven pounds of cuteness. I know there's a sullen, manipulative, bacon-hungry bitch behind those dazzling bug eyes.

Obviously we spend too much time together. She knows I waste too much of my life playing the jellies. I know she pees under the chesterfield. We're like opposing generals and every day we face each other across the household abyss.

See, she has breath like a garbage dump. Like a corpse crawled up her panting tongue and died between her bicuspids. She has bad teeth – it's a common condition amongst small dogs – and we've spent thousands at the vet having her teeth cleaned and pulled.

So I brush her teeth. I have to, or she'll have no teeth left.

Every time I brush her teeth she acts like she's being killed. I brushed them last night, as a matter of fact, and she studiously avoided me all evening and all day today. I would actually call her and she'd go hide behind someone else.

So today I was cutting up sausages for chili and the fabulous aroma of pig-in-stomach-skin sent her skittering into the kitchen. I tossed her a piece and she lapped it up, then assumed her best mooching position, hoping for more.

That's when I got the brilliant idea of making her come directly to me for the sausage. I thought she would gladly come over to the Ted Bundy of Dog-Killers, aka the Sausage Chef, for a tasty morsel and forget all about the previous night's toofie brushing.

She wanted to get the sausage but she didn't want to approach me. I could see the fear in her eyes as she approached me, sideways. It was like she was in four wheel drive, only her stomach was ruling her back feet, ordering "GET THE SAUSAGE" and her front feet were firmly locked in the "DOG KILLER AT THREE O'CLOCK" position.

As she was skittling sideways, she was also peeing on the floor.

Isn't that nice? I scare the piss out of my own dog.

A few weeks ago I was merely trying to help my mom get comfortable in her chair, which she was sharing with Misty. My plan was to pick up the dog, put her on the floor, help Mom, then put the dog back in Mom's lap. Right? Except she thought she was in trouble – because Ted Bundy picked her up – so she started to slink away. I called her back, she slunk faster, I called with more authority, she started to run, so I lost my temper and yelled, "SIT," which made her pee.

Now I'm afraid to look at her, in case she pees in fright. I try to be nice. I really do. But honestly it's depressing to be an ogre in my dog's eyes.

What kind of a human being am I if my own dog hates me?

A Sunny Day

Just now, sitting on the back stoop, arms resting on my knees, dog snug against my leg, on a bright day that is now waning into late afternoon.

It's warm compared to yesterday, but anything's warm compared to that: -13C (8.6F). I had refused to turn up the thermostat (because it's October, damnit) and so spent the day shivering. We hooked up the electric blanket and went to bed at 9 o'clock, blocks of ice shaped like feet bumping into each other, yelps to "get over on your own side" in a bed the size of a football field. I don't like complaining about the cold because local folks can hardly wait to see how "the new people from Ontario" will cope with north Alberta's aptly named Cold Lake. We know cold, though. Both of us are hardy crops. The thing is, we're used to a woodstove, where you ignite a few sticks of maple and bake yourself down to your summer underwear faster than it takes to make porridge. The furnace here heats the air, not the house, and, the minute it shuts off, cold gels all feeling left in those icicles we once called toes.

The fighter jets drone overhead. Sleek bees with needlepoint noses. Incessantly practising to save the world.

Inside, I hear my coffee's ready.

What Does This Remind You Of?

I was watching Dave build a fenced run for the Misty-dog today, you know so bigger dogs won't come along and eat her while she's trying to poo, and also so I won't have to stare at her bum hole all day.

This is a good thing, although I fear the lack of bum hole observation will mean I will have nothing left to blog about. You know, besides my BOOK and I'm darned sure you're sick to absolute fecking DEATH of hearing about THAT.

So anyway, I was sitting on my double-wide arse watching my man work (as I am wont to do) and I noticed the fencing material lying in the grass and I thought, huh, that reminds me of something. I thought about it for a few minutes and then realized what it was.

You know how you haven't shaved your legs for a month and you put on pantyhose and the hair sticks out?

Yeah. Just like that.

A to Z Honesty - V is for Vital Stove

OK CLASS, listen up! This here is an INFORMATIVE post, which means you will come away having lurnt something. I so rarely do "INFORMATIVE" posts that I thought you deserved fair warning. Those who have no room for new stuff in their brains can leave, now. *watching entire blogaverse unceremoniously leave* (And yes, I spelled lurnt like that on porpoise.)

That weird looking thing in the photo is a Vital Stove. Dave saw it online and ordered it from my ex's Home Hardware store in Haliburton but you can find it online or ask about it at your local outdoors store, like Algonquin Outfitters. In case you couldn't tell by the ginormous green canoe on my banner, Dave and I are rabid outdoorsy type people. One of the highlights of our outdoorsy year is our spring fishing trip to Kiosk, Ontario - part of Algonquin Park. In fact, we're going on Friday (CAN'T WAIT! WOOT!) and thus won't be online for five days because there is no interweeb in the great outdoors. I am going to pre-post the end of A to Z because I feel obligated to finish what I started but unfortunately won't be around to go blog-hopping or add comments. Forgive me!

We won't be taking the Vital Stove this weekend, however, because we will have our outrageously luxurious trailer with amenities like a microwave and a furnace (I know, crazy right?) but we won't have any fancy stuff when we go on our canoe trip into Algonquin Park this summer. It'll be just us, our canoe and enough freeze dried grub to send the astronauts into orbit. When you're packing everything on your back, the last thing you want is extra weight. A traditional camp stove is a heavy thing all by itself, but then you have to cart around either camp fuel or bottles of propane. All of it has to be carried in and all of it has to be carried out. You can get to resent things like camp stoves on long portages, trust me.

That's why this Vital Stove thing is SO COOL. First of all, it's tiny and weighs practically nothing. Plus it folds up to about the size of a Kindle. To use it, you unfold it, put a battery in the blower-thing, and load up the teeny fuel reservoir with bits of kindling and tiny chunks of wood. You just need a handful and it can be scavenged from dead stuff lying on the ground. You light it and then turn on the blower. (In the picture, above, Dave is adjusting the blower.) The blower pushes oxygen into the teeny tiny fire and suddenly you have a goldurned blast furnace! The heat coming from this ridiculously small stove can boil a pot of water in a few minutes!

So that's the Vital Stove. You can imagine how happy I was that Dave bought a new contraption that started with a V. That's him, by the way, under Misty's close supervision. Misty doesn't really care about the Vital Stove. All she cares about is if it cooks bacon. Honestly, that's all I care about, too.

A to Z Honesty - P is for pooch licking

We have a tall table and chairs. Like bar chairs. I don't know whose stupid idea it was to get tall chairs. (Mine.) But they're so tall that my feet don't touch the ground. They dangle, like they're trolling, like they're fat white worms waiting for something to come by and LICK them.

My dog (OK, my POOCH - that's my P word, OK, are you satisfied Laura Eno???? sheesh... :), who is about six inches tall and is the breed known as Lickemus Anythingus, licks my toes every chance she gets. Like, right now, I just became aware that my big toe is wet.

Which freaks me out. Is it wet because she sashayed by when I wasn't paying attention (blogging) and did a drive-by licking? Or did I step in cat barf on the way to the coffee pot and am only noticing it now because the dog was licking off the cat barf?

I can't look because my toes are too far away. Stupid bar chairs. I certainly can't lift my foot that high for closer inspection. My only recourse is to reach down, blindly, and feel my big wet toe with my bare dry fingers.

What if it really is cat barf? Worse, what if it's a pooch turd? What if it's moldering dead mouse guts, or a squished chipmunk? Did I tell you I once found a chipmunk head in my bedroom and the disemboweled body in the living room? Speaking of chipmunks, a couple of years ago one drowned in our rain barrel. Nobody noticed it for two weeks. It was swollen up the size of a football. I went to get some water for my garden, saw that and to this day I can't go near a rain barrel without hearing the theme from Psycho, that reet-reet sound when the knife plunges into Janet Leigh through the shower curtain.

Stupid Dog

I am ruled by my stupid dog.

This morning I got out of bed and there was Misty, spinning around like a malformed water bug. I looked down at her with disdain.

"You've already been outside," I said. Only one of my eyeballs were open. The other was crusted shut. My bladder was fully loaded and bumped up to the loading dock ready to hand-bombed into the great white porcelain bus.

The dog ran to the front door and spun there. If she could talk she would be saying

"gotta go, gotta go, gotta go right now 

or I'm gonna pee on the floor, on the floor, right now" 

and it would be in a high-squeaky voice, not unlike American Idol's latest long-haired Bob Marley wannabe Deandre Brackensick. (Brackensick? Are you kidding me?)

Brackensick

I sighed. Heavily. "Really?" I asked.

The dog spun and looked sincere.

"Fine," I grumbled, "but you better get out there and go pee."

I waddled to the door, barely unable to see through my gummy eyelids, and opened the door for Her Royal Pain in the Ass.

"Go pee," I said, because the dog weighs seven pounds soaking wet and her brain is the size of a fava bean and you actually have to tell her to "go pee" or she'll just stand there like a dumb turd and stare at you.

I stood by the door, shifting my weight from one foot to the other, having to pee so bad my back teeth were ordering lifeboats. The dog stood on the front deck and looked at me, not a brain in her ever loving head. The fava bean had left the building.

"Git!" I hollered. "Go pee!"

She gave me a look that said I was torturing her and hopped down the porch steps and sniffed the closest snowbank. After 10 seconds of sniffing, she turned to see if I was still looking, then sniffed for a bit more. That done, she got a happy "I'm done!" look on her face and scampered up to the front door, wanting to be let in.

I was furious. "Get down there and go pee RIGHT NOW."

She got that hurt look on her face, like I was the world's meanest owner, and slunk back down to the snowbank. She didn't even sniff, just stared at me mournfully.

"GO PEE." I ordered, feeling like the evil dictator of a smallish country.

She took a few steps, sniffed half-heartedly at a pine cone and turned a baleful gaze back to me.

"oh please don't torture me anymore missus, i promise to be a good doggie, 

look how cute i am, why you be mean to cute doggie like me?"

Misty is such a creature of habit.

Someone gets out of bed, she has to go to the front door.

Someone shifts their position on the couch, she has to go to the front door.

Someone coughs, sneezes, farts, burps or breathes, she has to go to the front door.

It doesn't matter if she was outside two minutes earlier; if any of these things happen, she has to go outside.

Dave says it's my fault. "Why do you let her run you? She's a dog!"

True. You can't refute logic like that. (Whatever that means – she's a dog? That's supposed to make everything clear? Dave's theory of relativity – she's a dog.) But I am bound to the "what if" of the situation. What if she really has to have a crap? And what if she craps on the floor because I didn't let her out? Who would have to clean that crap up? Me, that's who.

Anyway, feck her. She wanted out so badly, she can stay there. Forever. Who cares if she freezes like a pupsicle? Who cares if she gets eaten by a bear? Bah. Stupid dog.

***

She's still at the front door. Staring at me. Big puppy dog eyes looking like she's the saddest dog of all the saddest dogs. Queen Sad Dog. Staring. I feel like I should let her in, like she has been punished enough.

Or I could make like she's a football and field goal her into the Muskoka River. *cue evil laugh*

Taking pictures in my underwear

You know you live in the boonies when you can go out the front door in your underwear and take a photo. Of the scenery, not your underwear.

The view from my window was particularly pretty this morning so I tried to take a picture from the warm place where I sat then realized my winter-windows are too filthy for that exercise. So I threw a coat on and some boots and wandered bare-legged into the front yard.

The sky was sun-peached and rosy behind the snow-laden trees and the river was as ink black and ice cold as a murderer's soul. A gorgeous morning. The kind of morning you feel so good just to be alive and breathing.

Oh. That reminds me. Somebody online posted a link for a quiz where you can determine how long you're likely to live. I pounced on it, all excited because I quit smoking years ago, I've just lost 58 pounds, I exercise daily – I figured I'd be told I'd live until I was 90.

54.

Apparently I'm going to croak in three years.

I tried not to let this get to me (stupid internet quiz) but I felt the cold finger of death touch my bleating heart. That was two weeks ago and ever since all I can think of is three years.... three years... I wish I could remember whose blog I found this stupid test on so I could share the link and you could try it and be as depressed as me. But I can't remember. Maybe it's a sign of my upcoming demise. I tell you one thing: if I'm going to die in three years you can bet I'll be eating, smoking and drinking every damned thing that isn't nailed down. Self-fulfilling prophecy? Ya think?

On a completely unrelated note, we're babysitting a friend's dog – Charles is his name. He's exactly the same colour and the same size as our own dog, Misty. They're like tiny-dog bookends. Incredibly cute. Diabetes-inducing cute. I tried to take a picture of them but have you ever taken a photo of two jet black dogs in a snowbank? When I got back in the house I blew out the background completely just so you could see their wee faces dusted with snow. They weigh about seven pounds each, soaking wet.

And those flowers? They're mine. A gift from my sweetie on Valentine's Day. Aren't they gorgeous? Aren't I lucky?

All this and it's Saturday morning, the best morning of the week. It's a long weekend here in Ontario. Monday is Family Day so we have three long, lovely days with no "must dos" and no plans. No money, either, but that's beside the point. I have a light, happy heart thinking of the time ahead. I hope your weekend is equally light and equally happy :)

THIS JUST IN: I found the link for that depressing "you're gonna die in three years" quiz.
http://gosset.wharton.upenn.edu/mortality/perl/CalcForm.html
Let me know how long you've got, OK?

Happy Birthday, Dave!

This is why I love you.

Because you match the canoe 

and you carry it, too.

At Killarney Provincial Park, George Lake, last summer.

Kiosk Fall 2011 and Bear Poo

Got an e-mail from my friend Alan in Newfoundland who wondered why I've been so quiet lately. I've been fishing, Alan! Dave'll tell you – I haven't been quiet, I've just been noisy in a different, internet-free place.

Kiosk is one of the northernmost camping areas in Algonquin, one of Ontario's most famous and largest provincial parks. The are no roads into its vast interior, just a loose waterway of canoe routes, lonely dark lakes and black forests. The bottom end of the park has a highway and several campgrounds running through it (we go to one of those campgrounds regularly, Lake of Two Rivers), but there are really only two campgrounds in the north part, Brent and Kiosk. Both are at the end of long dirt roads stretching through Crown land. Both are former sawmill and railway villages, now ghost towns with only foundation remnants as clues of once thriving communities. And both are launching points for adventure-seekers looking for true wilderness experiences.

While Dave and I have camped in the interior, our trips to Kiosk are far more comfortable. We bring our trailer and our aluminum motorboat and spend four days every spring and every fall looking to catch and release some big fish, spend some time together and catch our breath. No jobs, no kids, no pressure.

The weather was downright terrible. Grey skies and rain the whole time we were there – except on Sunday, when it was time to pack up and leave. Oh well. We've never let the weather put a crimp in our style. We fished, we rode our bikes, we read our books, we played cards. We celebrated our first wedding anniversary in a place we have both come to love as much as we love each other.

I took this picture to show you the difference between water levels in the spring and in the fall. This past spring we couldn't get under this bridge because the water was so high. Last weekend the water was so low there was barely enough water for our boat – the difference is at least four feet. The bridge, by the way, is part of the abandoned railway line built by lumber baron J.R. Booth in the 1800s. It's the main reason Brent and Kiosk existed, with sawmills cutting up the rich forests of Algonquin and shipping them, via railway, all over the world. Before Algonquin was cut bare of trees, it was mostly giant pines and spruce that grew here. The regrowth has brought maple to the park, making Algonquin a gorgeous place to be in the fall.

Normally you would never be able to perch on a rock in the rushing Amable du Fond, the river that connects Algonquin's northern lakes: Kiosk, Manitou and Tea. We've never seen the river so quiet but took the opportunity to walk up the waterfall and take some photos. Dave brought his line and tried to wangle a brookie onto his line but even the fish thought there wasn't enough water.

This was my fish, a nice 4 pound bass. Dave, of course, did fish holding duties, baiting the hook duties and looking good in his rain suit duties. I did all the real work, wrestling that beauty in, kicking and screaming. We posed him for a pic, than he flicked his tail and disappeared into the water. 

Dave also caught a nice bass - not as nice as mine, though. .. jest saying...

And a trip to Kiosk just isn't complete without a lake trout. Dave was happy to snag this one.

Isn't this ridiculously cute? I know. You should have seen her waddling around in it.

When I was taking this photo I couldn't see Misty in the viewfinder – she completely blended in with the orange leaves and dark water of the Amable du Fond waterfall.

Because my friend Linda requested it, here's the bear poop in our front yard. Yup, we went all the way up north to see wildlife and we come home to see that a bear had ripped down our bird feeder and then crapped in our front yard. Linda, you can see the pitts of the choke cherries the bear had been eating. Judging by the freshness, the bear had been there within the last day. And judging by the size, it was a BIG bear. For ages we were under the false impression that there were no wild animals in our neighbourhood, other than a few foxes, raccoons and skunks – but now we know there are bears so we have to be a little more careful. We did see some wildlife in Kiosk – on our way there we had a rabbit run right towards our vehicle – Dave had to swerve to avoid it. The hare had eyes as big as saucers. A little bit down the road we saw the reason why: a fisher hunting it. "Run, bunny, run!" we shrieked out the window. Dave honked the horn and scared the fisher into the bushes. We hope we gave the bunny enough of a break to survive.

Our busted bird feeder with poo in the background.

The top of the feeder the bear had ripped off.

The wire that had held the feeder until the bear decided to have a closer look.