The View from a Drawbridge

Tag: dog

  • Accepting the Things I Cannot Change

    I think my dog is dying. I feel so helpless. All I can do is fidget and pace, and that changes nothing. This morning I cuddled him and said, “There are tears in my future.” I take him to the vet this afternoon. I suspect it won’t go well. One of the downsides to owning…

  • The Pitt Bull Question

    I hear it all the time. “Pit Bulls get a bum rap. I have one. They’re really sweet.” Believe me, I know what it’s like to love a dog beyond all reason. I prefer most dogs to most humans. At the risk of sounding horribly cliché, my dogs are, indeed, my best friends. And there’s…

  • Good Old Dog

    Have you ever noticed that dogs don’t slowly age? The transition always seems to be startlingly abrupt. One day they’re zooming around the yard, chasing squirrels, and the next day it’s as if they’ve been beaten with the aging stick overnight. That’s what appears to have happened to my dog Devo this past month. Once…

  • The Secret Lives of my Dogs

    I came home from work today to the smell of pee and saw a look of utter shame on both my dogs’ faces. The worst part about it is I can’t find where they did it. I’ve been crawling around on my hands and knees sniffing away, with no luck. Disgusting. I wish I could…

  • Musing on Fragrance

    My kitchen smells like onions and garlic. There are all kinds of cleaning products out there that would remove that smell or at the very least mask it. But I happen to like that smell, and I live alone. Case closed. My house in general probably smells doggy. Which is embarrassing when I have visitors,…

  • Ways to Increase Your Safety

    I take the issue of safety very seriously, perhaps more so than the average person. Due to some abuse I experienced in my childhood, I have been diagnosed with PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). It gets triggered when I feel as if people in positions of authority don’t have my best interests at heart, or…

  • A Moral Thought Experiment

    The other night around 11 pm I was driving to work. I was on a dark, deserted commercial street, and I had stupidly left my cell phone on my night stand at home. I was preoccupied with my current predicament, which is how on earth I’m going to make next month’s rent. (I still haven’t…

  • “Ja, das ist der Platz”

    Standing in line on a dock in Croatia, waiting for the hydrofoil to Venice, I noticed a German tourist with her dog in tow. I hadn’t seen my dogs in weeks and missed them terribly. Using hand signals to break the language barrier, I asked if I could pet her dog. She nodded. I began…

  • Zzzzzzzzz….

    There’s nothing more luxurious, in my opinion, than a long nap on a rainy Saturday afternoon. I revel in turning off the phone, unhooking my bra, kicking off my shoes, putting on something made of flannel, and allowing the mattress to embrace me like a long lost lover. Pure bliss. Rain is hypnotic. Ocean waves…

  • Lying Down with Dogs

    Here’s another one of my theories. There are two types of dog owners: those who allow their dogs to sleep in their beds and those who do not. Well, technically, that part is a fact. But here comes the theory part: you can tell a lot about a person by which of these two groups…