In Memoriam

Rosie, Lily and Poppy were settling into their new home quite nicely. Jason’s chiropractor, Cliff, had agreed to take them, adding them to his original herd of five chickens.

“What’s three more?” he said when Jason asked if he could provide a foster home for the ladies.

Cliff had had problems with predators attacking his chickens before (dogs, vultures) so his coop was a veritable bunker, fortified to protect the ladies from land and air attacks.

What he didn’t anticipate was a subterranean strike.

After about a week of peaceful cohabitation, a raccoon dug its way under the coop and killed the chickens. All eight of them.

Rest in peace, Rosie, Lily and Poppy. May you graze and poop to your hearts' content in the green pastures of heaven.

What Comes First?

There’s an urban chicken-raising craze sweeping the nation. I know this to be true because so many of our neighbors have installed coops and chickens in their backyards, and there’s a “For Dummies” book on raising chickens. Once something has a “For Dummies” book dedicated to it, you know it’s gone mainstream.

When our friends Jason and Chris bought baby chicks back in February, I was happy to meet the girls. Rosie, Lily and Poppy were fluffy and cute, as baby chicks are. When Jason built them a chicken coop—the most elaborate coop you’ve ever seen with multiple doors and windows and a ladder to a loft area with cedar chips and hay for cozy nesting—I marveled at the quality of the construction. “It’s a chicken condo. No, a chicken penthouse!” I declared.

When Jason and Chris sold their house in April and found themselves moving into an apartment, I was happy to provide the chickens with a new home. After all, I had entertained the idea of getting chickens myself. How nice would it be to just step outside, into your own backyard, and grab an egg or two for breakfast? I may call myself a vegetarian, but I do love my eggs. Let’s sing together now:
“I love eggs
From my head down to my legs.”

Blame it on Michael Pollan, but after reading “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” I had high expectations for what an egg from a home-raised chicken would taste like. Michael said the yolk would be a rich, radiant sunny yellow, the likes of which I had never seen. And the taste? Well. It would bring me to my knees. “I’ve been eating eggs all my life but only now have I truly tasted what an egg can be!” I would declare, my fist raised to the heavens.

Visions of fluffy omelets laced with herbs and goat cheese, over-easy fried eggs oozing into hash browns, and delicately poached eggs quivering atop golden toasted English muffins danced in my head. This chicken raising business was going to be dee-licious.

But I failed to take into account a few things.

It took the strength of three men to move the chicken penthouse to our backyard. Once it was placed, the ladies were released and given a moment to stretch their legs and get acquainted with their new surroundings.

Then it was time for Leo to get acquainted with his new neighbors. Jason rounded up the ladies and secured them back in the coop. “Release the hound,” I said. Leo stepped out the door, did his usual all over body shake, making his tags clang and rattle as if to announce, “I’m here now,” and milled around a bit, sniffing. He sniffed his way over to the chicken coop and was momentarily a bit puzzled. Then he peered inside. Then all hell broke loose.

He turned into a stark raving mad dog. Biting and clawing at the screened windows and doors of the chicken penthouse, he barked his most menacing bark. When Lily, Rosie and Poppy rushed to the other side of the coop for protection, Leo followed, delivering his attack from a new angle. We all watched this for about a minute, and then my husband dragged Leo—who protested mightily—into the house by his collar.

Oy. Why didn’t I see this coming? “Being a Chow, Leo is very prey-driven,” I remembered one of the Oregon Humane Society staffers telling me when I adopted him. “He can’t live with cats,” she told me. Nor squirrels, I thought; he loves to chase them when we see them in the park. Nor bugs of any kind; he stalks them and eats them. Having the chicken penthouse in his backyard was like having a box of squealing cats or squirrels in his backyard. This was not going to work. Why had I failed to anticipate this?

My husband assured Jason and Chris that he would work with Leo and desensitize him and that everything would be fine. I didn’t see it that way. I threw a hissy fit and took Leo out for his evening walk.

Trouble was, Leo didn’t want to take a walk. Where he usually drags me around town for a half hour to a full hour, sniffing and peeing on everything in his path, this time I had to drag him away from our house. He peed around the block and then headed for home. Nothing could deter him from getting back to those chickens.

The week passed and Leo failed to become desensitized. Every time I let him out for our walks, he made a beeline to the chicken penthouse and resumed attack mode. I would wrestle him as he made one of his passes around the coop and drag him out of the yard for a meager two-minute walk around the block. No more afternoons spent lounging on the back deck for Leo; he was a shut-in now.

The chickens, meanwhile, had to be released from the penthouse every day for some exercise and grazing. I typically let them out while I was making dinner, keeping an eye out the window every now and then to see what they were up to. At first, they stuck close to the penthouse but with each passing day, they ventured farther afield.

Aside from Leo's reaction, I had failed to take into account a few other things before welcoming the ladies into my world. Blinded as I was with Michael’s promise of an egg beyond perfection, I had failed to remember that age-old riddle: What comes first, the chicken or the egg? In this case, the chicken.

And chickens, it turns out, shit a lot. On everything. They fluttered up on top of our garbage cans and shit on them. They shit on the back deck. They made their way to the front yard and shit on our front steps. They even shit on their own water jar and feed trough.

Chickens also root around like pigs. When I let them out for their exercise and grazing period, they uprooted the primroses my husband had just planted, tossed dirt onto the sidewalk, pecked my prized Bleeding Heart to a shriveled shadow of its former self and ate a Hosta down to the ground.

The chickens had to go.

One more week passed and Jason found a new home for the ladies. He took them away in box, leaving the chicken penthouse behind.

“Don’t let the door hit your little chicken asses on the way out,” I said under my breath.

As Jason’s car pulled away from the curb, I let Leo out to inspect the coop. He spent about an hour investigating the penthouse, sniffing every inch from every angle. I left the main entrance open so he could go inside and convince himself that they were really, really gone. He squeezed himself inside, looking rather comical: a large, black furry beast straining inside a too-small structure. The scale was all wrong, and I had to laugh. He swept his muzzle back and forth along the loft area, vacuuming up the chicken poops left behind among the feathers and cedar chips.

When he had his fill, he lay down inside the penthouse, as though it was his doghouse, and took a little nap.

With the chickens gone, life is back to normal. Leo is eager for his long walks again, and can lounge on the deck all day. A quick blast with the hose has washed away the chicken poops. The primroses are dead but hopefully the Bleeding Heart and the Hosta will recover and bloom again next year.

As for me, I’ll leave the chicken-raising to the “For Dummies” crowd and buy my eggs at the farmer’s market. We’ll see if eggs from grass-fed, pastured hens are all that Michael says they are.

A New Pup

“I suck at being a woman,” I told my husband one day as we drove by the Richard Bloom Tot Park (otherwise known as the Tater Tot Park) near our house. The park was filled with its usual afternoon congregation of toddlers and moms—the Mom Club, I call it. The Mom Club is always there about the same time I take Leo out for a walk, and the moms either ignore me, or give me sidelong glances as Leo drags me down the street.

“You don’t suck at being a woman,” my husband responded.

“Yeah, I do. I’m not cheerful like women are suppose to be, or chit chatty. Instead I’m quiet and sullen most of the time. I hate small talk. And I don’t look feminine like other women do, in their little cropped yoga pants and bouncy ponytails. I look like shit every day. I look like a rural lesbian,” I said, gesturing to myself (hiking boots, knit hit and layers of thermal underwear; the damp Oregon climate doesn’t agree with me).

These were just the externals, though. What was really making me feel like a failure as a woman was my inability to get pregnant. I was 40 years old and unable to conceive. Month after month was a disappointment and a reminder that my female body—uniquely built to create life and give birth—wasn’t functioning properly. This, more than anything, made me feel like a lousy excuse for a woman.

And then, out of nowhere, when I had given up all hope of ever being a mom, I realized I was pregnant. “It can’t be,” I thought. “It won’t last,” I worried. “Something awful is going to happen,” I was convinced.

Instead of being filled with joy and excitement, like I imagine most women are when they discover they’re pregnant, and want to be pregnant, I was filled with worry and dread. But one week rolled into the next and I was still pregnant.

Then the nausea and exhaustion set in. I felt like I was on the verge of vomiting every minute of every day. When I felt hungry (which was every two hours), the nausea would get 10 times worse. So I ate every two hours. I couldn’t even sleep through the night without getting up to eat. Leo and I soon fell into an easy routine: at 3 or 4 a.m., I would get up for a bowl of cereal and Leo would join me in the kitchen for a dog biscuit.

I was constantly exhausted, constantly hungry and nauseous, and an emotional wreck. Everything made me cry. Watching the Canadian figure skater whose mom died a day or two before her Olympic performance made me cry like a baby. (Scott Hamilton and I should have been sharing tissues.) Hearing the song “Tin Man” by the band America in the grocery store (“Oz never did give nothin’ to the Tin Man, that he didn’t, didn’t already have”) also brought me to tears.

I thought of all the women over the years who had told me, “I loved being pregnant! I loved seeing how my body was changing week after week! I loved having this tiny creature alive inside of me!” I thought of the pregnancy “glow” that women are supposed to have and how beautiful pregnant women can be.

“I suck at being pregnant!” I told my husband. I was tired, nauseous, cranky and teary. He didn’t contradict me.

When we had our second ultrasound done, I showed the picture to Leo. “Look Leo,” I said. “I’m gonna have a pup… Or maybe it’s a bear cub; it’s hard to tell from this picture.”

But I'm pretty sure Leo already knew I was pregnant. One day I was standing in front of the full length mirror in our hallway, inspecting my growing belly, scratching it (it’s always itchy), wondering how things were going in there. I felt someone watching me and looked up to find Leo staring at me with the strangest, most intent look in his eyes.

"I know you're gonna be a mom," his look seemed to say. "Now don't suck at it!"

Leo Gets Another 15 Minutes

I wrote an update about Leo for the Oregon Humane Society magazine about a year ago, and finally got around to submitting it a couple of months ago. I enjoy writing about him so much; he inspires me, and makes me laugh.

The article came out nicely (though they made it more about me than I intended), and will make a nice addition to Leo's "portfolio." He already appears in a book ("Tails from Katrina") and I have a fat folder filled with the literature that was posted on his crate at the Humane Society when I adopted him, his grooming reports and his medical records. I guess you could call it his scrapbook. My scrapbook for him.

Yes, I truly am a crazy dog lady.

Archive of Leo’s Nicknames

Big Head Leo (courtesy of a volunteer at the Oregon Humane Society)
Boogie Bear
Leo Bear
Bubba (courtesy of his groomer)
Bear Dog
Bear Bear
Bear Man
Leo Mosquito (courtesy of my husband)
Leo Mosquito Burrito (sung to the tune of “Strawberry Fields Forever”)
Stinky Bear Face Bear Bear
Death Breath
Grouchy Old Man
Fat Head
Stubborn Bear
Musk Bear (courtesy of our friend, Kevin)
Leo Booty
Leo Boo-tay
Sweet Bear
Leo Butt
Leo Boots
Handsome Bear
Silly Bear
Stinker

Time to Trim the Whiskers

It's gotten downright embarrassing, this poor, neglected blog has. It hasn't been updated in a year (a casual reader pointed that out in an e-mail today). One year and one day, to be exact.

I used to have a manager, a stuffy English lady, who did lots of little things to annoy me but had one saying that stuck with me. Anytime something--some piece of marketing collateral--became sorely out of date she would say, in her stuffy English accent, "It's grown whiskas, I'm afraid."

Cha Cha Chow has indeed grown whiskers.

It's not like I didn't know it was out of date. The knowing that it was out of date made it harder to come back. Like a long-ago friend that you've lost contact with, it becomes ever more difficult to take the plunge and make that first contact.

"So," you might say to that friend, "how the hell have you been the last 20 years?"

So, how has the blogosphere been since I last wrote? Things are good here. Leo is still kicking. Sure, he's been up to some shenanigans over the past year. Made some quick trips to the vet. Been tossed out of the groomer's. Surprised me with some grand feats of athleticism and daring. Earned some new nicknames. Mostly though, he's still awesome, and he stinks.

I promise to bring the world up to date on his escapades--some other time.

Muzzle it

Last Tuesday, Leo and I were out for our early morning walk. It was a beautiful morning with mild temperatures and a bit of pink sun peeking out from the clouds. We were in the home stretch: He had pooped and we were heading for home.

Thoroughly relaxed and content, I was contemplating what I would have for breakfast (Cereal or bagel? Coffee or tea?) when Leo lunged for a black plastic bag in the grass. I gave him a quick yank but it was too late: The bag was firmly clenched in his mouth, bits of unidentifiable meat poking out, wriggling maggots falling to the ground.

I watched in horror as he chomped and swallowed, chomped and swallowed, unable to summon the bravery to try and grab the bag from his mouth. Those foreboding teeth, that growl, those writhing maggots….no, no, no. All I could do was yell and scream and demand that he drop the bag, to no avail.

Judging by the maggots, and the stench, I knew the meat was well beyond rotten. But that wasn’t what worried me: The plastic bag, about the size of a doggie bag (ironically enough), had been knotted closed. I worried that the bag might get stuck in his intestine somewhere along the line. This was bad, very bad.

I hoped that maybe if I walked him a bit more, maybe he would just vomit the whole mess up. Maybe.

We walked. And walked. He appeared perfectly unfazed by the garbage that must be roiling in his belly. When we got home, he assumed his usual position in the kitchen, by the counter, waiting for me to serve his breakfast.

What to do? What to do? I fretted. And fretted. Should I feed him? No. Would he just throw up all over the rug eventually? Maybe. Should I take him to the vet? Probably.

But I had so much work to do and it would cost so much money and I’d have to drive him in my pickup truck, which was always a disaster (he insists on either lying in my lap, blocking my vision; or sitting up on the passenger seat and flying into the windshield whenever I make a stop). Urg. What to do?

I finally decided to call the vet, explain the situation and ask for their advice. They suggested I bring him in immediately.

“Please don’t cost $400 like last time,” I silently pleaded. (Last time being when he gobbled down some roadkill and pierced the inside of his mouth with a bone, which then formed a huge infected abscess and had to be drained, under anesthesia. Very pricey procedure, that one.)

So I sent a crazy-dog-lady frantic e-mail to work (“Dog emergency! Back later!”), loaded Leo into the truck (who, though excited to be going for a ride, was quite miffed that I had neglected to feed him his breakfast) and sped off.

After a short wait, the vet came in, heard my sad story, and took Leo into the examination room. He came back a few minutes later and led me into the exam room, explaining that he had given Leo some morphine to calm him (Where’s mine?) and an injection that would make him very nauseous.

It was almost comical back there: Dogs were flopped everywhere. To my left, a Husky was on an exam table, under anesthesia, having its teeth cleaned. To Leo’s immediate left, there was a Great Dane passed out on an exam table, a person in scrubs hunched over it.

And there was Leo on the floor, chained to the Great Dane’s exam table, his head hanging over a bowl with a vet tech encouraging him to “Let it up, Leo.” Visions of myself in high school, having had too much to drink, my head hanging over a toilet bowl, came floating back.

“Ewwww,” I said, and returned to sit quietly in the waiting room.

A few more minutes passed and then, bursting forth from the exam room, a chorus of “Oh! Gross! What is it? Gross!” I came back in just in time to see the vet tech hand the bowl to the vet. He shoved it in my direction. “Look familiar?”

The stench was staggering. In the bowl was a slab of gray mystery meat and a very slimy pile of black plastic.

“Yep, that’s it. Bag and all.”

They ushered Leo to a cage so they could keep an eye on him throughout the day, and I rushed home to work. Later that evening, I came back to pick him up. He was fine, his usual wiggle butt self. The bill was $158, not so bad after all. We drove home without incident. I fed him his dinner and put in a couple more hours of work.

Oh, and I bought a muzzle. Leo isn't gonna like this.