Category Archives: Dogs

Taking Back The House

Just a pretty picture from a week ago, no relevance to today’s tale…

Today, every time I turned around, there was some little thing that I could do to “take back” our house from the state it had been converted to in order to have Casper with us. So many little things that were minor and necessary in and of themselves at the moment, but in sum had turned our world a bit topsy turvy.

For example, all of the trash cans in the house, ESPECIALLY the one in the kitchen where the food scraps go, were all up on counters or in cabinets or someplace where they were hard to get to. They’re now all back down on the floor where they’re useful.

All of the closet doors are back open so we can come and go as we please, with no fear of “someone” going in to steal (and chew and eat and destroy) shoes, or one of Ronnie’s stuffed animals, or a box of my baseball cards.

Clothes to be sorted and put away as they come out of the laundry are simply…clothes. They can be on the dresser or the bed, no requirement for them to be up hidden next to a trash can.

There are no longer tennis balls or chew toys or squeaky toys everywhere on the floor to trip over.

Backing up to close the refrigerator doors no longer involves tripping over The Beast, who had snuck in behind you to stare at the refrigerator’s contents along with you.

Possibly most importantly, last night we slept normally in our bed. There was no knock-down, drag-out fight at lights out to secure (temporarily) a small portion of mattress and covers free of kicking dog legs.

The transformation is complete. There’s no one here but us boring, quiet, dull, tedious, bland humans.

Just the way we like it. Chaos is a young man’s game.

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Filed under Casper, Dogs, Forever Home, Photography, Ronnie

The Great 2026 Casper Experiment Has Terminated

Dirty Harry once said, “A man’s got to know his limitations!” We found ours.

After trying to make it work for a week, today we had the rescue group we got Casper from take him back.  He was a massive snuggle bug and a beautiful dog.

Unfortunately, he also had about 300% more “puppy energy” than we could handle. In the end, he was faster, wilder, and probably smarter than I was. He was a jumper, and kept going over the back wall and out into all of the empty construction lots behind us. When we worked to make it harder to get over the wall, he went out the front door to roam the neighborhood.

He was smart enough to eventually come back home on his own, more or less, but he was also foolish enough to head out into traffic on the main road trying to extend his “adventure.” It was a debate whether he was going to get hit by a car first, or whether I was going to have a heart attack trying to chase  him down first.

There were other growing incompatibilities. He chewed and destroyed things. He wanted to sleep all night on our bed and kick us out of it. The louder he got told “NO!” or “STOP!” the more he misbehaved.

We’re too old for that shit.

They’ve got a new home for Casper on a farm where he’ll have plenty of room to run. And we’ve got our quiet home back.

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Casper – September 14th

Casper discovers football season in the Willett household. Casper is not impressed.

Casper is not a fan of clothing or shirts, and he’s especially not hapy about having to wear this Chiefs shirt.

Then, with the Monday night game of the Chiefs & Broncos starting about 17:15, right after he’s eaten and wants to take a proper after-dinner nap, every time the Chiefs score a touchdown (and we scored a LOT of touchdowns while opening a 50-gallon drum of whoopass on the Broncos) I scream and wake him and and scare the crap out of him, and THEN I blow the Vuvuzela of Victory. While I may revel in its sweet, sweet music, Casper just hears a really loud and annoying and scary noise. Po-TAY-toe, po-TAH-toe…

Casper hates football.

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Filed under Casper, Dogs, KC Chiefs, Photography

Casper – September 13th

Angel and demon, all rolled into one.

In what I considered to be a bold experiment, we took Casper to the Sunday morning Farmer’s Market at the Victor Valley Museum today. Many, MANY new smells and strangers and experiences, including a stray cat wandering around (he HATES cats) and a rabbit sitting off of the edge of the parking lot.

To his credit, Casper was EXTREMELY well behaved, a little angel! No barking, no lunging, no going berserk. Lots of curiosity and sniffing, but all under control. I was very surprised and pleased.

Then the late afternoon came, back at home. He decided for reasons unknown to jump the 6′ cinder block wall in the back yard, out into the vacant, graded lots out there for future homes. Needless to say, this caused a certain level of consternation and anxiety and chaos, leaving me to be muttering things like, “STUPID fucking dog!” a lot.

Demon dog!

With construction scheduled to start next year on those vacant, graded lots the developer has the roads fenced off, so you can’t get a vehicle back there. So I grabbed Casper’s leash and headed down the block at full impulse power in order to swing around the end of the block, into the vacant lots, and then back to behind our house. My three big concerns with this escape are 1) Casper would just take off and we would have to find him or track him down. Yes, we have a GPS tag on his collar, assuming it works as advertised. 2) Casper could get hurt jumping over the wall. Not only is it 6′ tall, but on the other side, the lots on the street behind us are 8′ to 10′ lower, so jumping blind could lead to a significant drop, which could break a leg or worse. 3) There’s a lot of brush and bushes back there which could well be cover for unpleasant critters, in particular, rattlesnakes. Again, if he’s stupid enough to jump the wall and run off, he’s stupid enough to mess with a rattlesnake.

So, after running to the end of the block, down the side street to where the empty lots start, and then back across the brush and weeds and dirt to come up behind our house, that’s right about the time that the idiot canine JUMPED BACK across the wall and back into our yard, like nothing had happened. He seemed very impressed with himself, while I was sucking air big time.

Casper, I may be developing some trust issues here!

The only good thing out of all of the chasing and walking and so on was the stunning views of the three-day old Moon (9% illuminated) as a razor-thin crescent with the full disk visible in Earthshine, the reflected light off of the “full Earth” as seen from the Moon, plus Venus to its upper left. They were setting over Old Baldy, the 12,000+ foot mountain to our south, and our houses in the foreground. Amazing view!

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Filed under Dogs, Photography, Forever Home, Casper

Lessons From Casper – September 08th

He loves laying on the turf.

Casper has discovered the feral cat that sometimes hangs out on our back porch. Casper HATES cats with the white hot fire of a thousand suns. Casper had the cat cornered, barking like a maniac, with the cat making demonic hissing and spitting and mewling noises. Fun times!

36 hours and almost $400 later, for food, treats, pup cups, dishes, leads, poop bags, toys, tennis balls, and Greenies – all he wants to do is go full berserker on a feral cat.

Sometime in the middle of the night last night he discovered all of Ronnie’s stuffed bears in the guest room closet and started carrying them out into the living room to behead and disembowel. (The stuffed bears all lived, the closet is now closed. Lesson learned.)

We will never, EVER again eat without being stared at mournfully, brownish-orange eyes brimming with sorrow at the injustices of fate that let food go into our mouths and not his.

He poops like a bull elephant. I need to start breeding an army of dung beetles.

Buy stock in Kleenex, we may be going through an inordinate amount of tissues in the near future. Casper has an irrational fury toward tissues, either used single sheets snagged from the trash, or whole boxes left unattended. He taught THAT box of tissues who’s the boss!

Sunrise is at 06:28 but it starts getting light at about 5:45 – close enough! When’s breakfast?!

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Casper

We didn’t have enough chaos in our lives.

Say hello to Casper, our household’s new Chief Chaos Officer.

One of the reasons we wanted to buy a house instead of continuing to rent was so that we could get a dog again. We had dogs before when we owned our own house, but it had been about ten years. Ronnie had always wanted a harlequin great dane, and she wanted to get an older, rescue dog. Now that Worldcon was over last week and we didn’t have any travel planned for the next several months, it was time to start seriously looking.

She found Casper. He’s younger, a black lab / great dane mix, a rescue, and now he’s ours.

He’s very bright, a snuggle bunny, and very well behaved on a leash for a walk around the block. Good first day grades on his part.

We have tons of intersting birds and critters in the back yard, lots of intersting and comfy places to take naps, and lots of pets and scritches. Apparent good first day grades on our part.

It will, of course, be a process to get used to each other and settle into a routine. We’ll see how well we sleep through the night in a new home…

Expect many of my quick “proof of life” pictures and posts to be of this goofball instead of birds and clouds!

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Filed under Dogs, Forever Home, Photography

The New Tree – Layer Two

New, bigger, better house – new, bigger, better Christmas tree. An array of options for the built in lighting, we chose to go with twinkling white lights.

Next, it’s time to two full strings of colored lights, plus two full strings of bubble lights.

I do love me some of those bubble lights. A fond memory from my childhood, even if they were the very old-fashioned kind that were both highly flammable and poisonous. (Or should that be venomous?)

The modern lights are safer. But they will still break if banged around, and today the algorithm brought me a string of videos of large dogs, particularly great danes, obliterating Christmas trees, and The Long-Suffering Wife dearly wants a great dane, so… Let’s hope this isn’t a foreshadowing comment.

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Filed under Christmas Lights, Dogs, Photography, Ronnie

New Neighbor

No, we didn’t get a dog. (I wish!)

The house next to ours got sold and the new owners are doing some work before moving in. Almost every weekend day, Blanc is out in the yard, and I took the liberty of introducing myself.

As soon as she (I think it’s a “she”…) sees me out in my yard, she runs over to a spot in the fence where she can get through the bushes to the fince, and she hops up to get petted and chin scrinches. She’s a sweetheart and very friendly.

The new human neighbors freaked out at first, thinking that she was jumping the fence, but we’ve all gotten to know each other a bit more so it’s not an issue now.

Even though she’s not the breed that would be our first choice when we can get a dog again (the Long-Suffering Wife looooooves Great Danes and I like black labs and golden retrievers), it’s great to have a big, loveable dog that we can borrow for 30 seconds every now and then.

Makes me want to get The Forever Home even more so that we can get our own pack started.

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Very Good Dogs

I just finished reading Chuck Wendig’s “Wayward,” the sequel to “Wanderers.” They’re both extremely excellent and I give them both my highest recommendation. (I’ve started handing out copies as gifts.)

In “Wayward” one of the most beloved characters is a golden retriever named Gumball, who is A Most Excellent Very Good Dog.

That got me to thinking about our dogs, now long gone. One of the reasons we really want to buy our Forever Home is so we can have dogs again – where we’ve been renting for seven years now, no pets are allowed.

Lucky Puppy was our first dog, and she was A Most Excellent Very Good Dog. She usually looked guilty because she usually was. But A Most Excellent Very Good Dog nonetheless.

We got Jessie when The Long Suffering Wife moved in, and while she was a trouble making scamp and a jumper who wouldn’t stay in the yard and scared the shit out of us every time she went on walkabout, she also was A Most Excellent Very Good Dog. Squirrels were her sworn, mortal enemy.

Once we find The Forever Home, get moved in, get halfway settled, it will be time to visit a shelter or rescue group.

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We Don’t Deserve Dogs

Two days, nine houses toured, another half dozen seen in drivebys, countless miles exploring the new territory, and the highlight for the weekend was the pups.

These  beggars were locked away in a kennel at the side of the house and started carrying on as soon as we pulled up and parked. But it wasn’t barking to protect their property, it was whining wanting attention and licks and scratches and (please!please!please!) treats. (Sadly, I did not have any treats, but I was open to being licked and scratching chins, ears, foreheads, whatever I could reach through the fence.)

At the end of the day there were two humongous Rottweilers named Hansel and Gretel who were loose and a serious danger to drown me in licks and slobber. SUCH GOOD PUPPERS!!!  What a way to go!

Since one of our key motivations for finding a new place and buying our own home is so that we can have dogs again, these two places go high on the list.

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Filed under Dogs, Forever Home, Photography, Travel