Saturday, May 5, 2007

The Return of Mr. Kittenheads

You may be wondering why I have not waxed poetic about the joyful reunion I had heading back east when I stopped at Dr. Virago's to pick up my dog Wiley. Dr. Virago and her s/o Bulloch had been minding Wiley while I was in Vegas and, while I missed him terribly, it seemed the feeling was not mutual.

As you can see from the above photo, taken in their living room, Wiley was more than happy there, enjoying himself tremendously and enjoying Bulloch's masterful cooking (see photo below) even more.

When I pulled up to their house, Wiley didn't even recognize me. Or maybe he just wasn't letting on. In any case, I know, he's 12 and he's a dog and whatever, but to be honest I was pretty hurt.

It was only on the last day of my stopover, when I started packing and getting ready to go, that he started following me everywhere. When we got home, he hopped out of the car, walked a perimeter of the apartment and then plopped down as if he'd never left.

He's come around to me in the past few days, though to be honest I'm not sure if he remembered me or if he decided I was a convenient biped whose cooking was acceptable. He definitely did remember the routes we drive to his favorite long walkies spots, and started barking his head off on the approach.



So, yeah, the dog I rescued from the mean streets of Moscow, for whom I hired a dog nanny when he was a puppy, the dog I brought back to the States at no small expense and fed and cared for and loved, and for whom I purchased "intellectually stimulating" toys and wake up early to ensure sufficient walkie times, yes, that dog seems to remember favorite trees more than me. Sigh.

5 comments:

Dr. Virago said...

Oh come on! Bullock said he started doing his over-excited seal-bark soon after you arrive -- it was just a delayed reaction. Maybe he couldn't believe it was you at first -- like he was seeing a ghost or something. And he seemed really happy and eager to jump into your car with you. And I think the ease with which he returned to his routines says he's happy to be home.

On this end, every day Bullock says, "I bet Wiley doesn't even remember us anymore."

By the way, go over to my blog. I posted two of the same photos (and of course, also cut off Bullock's head -- thanks for doing the same). They look better on your blog, though, and I'm not sure why. Just because you e-mailed them to me shouldn't make their digital rendering less crisp, should it?

I haven't uploaded mine, but when I do, I'll send you copies.

Dr. Virago said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Dr. Virago said...

PS - Apropos of nothing in this post: remember how you were asking how to do links in a post, and to link to your own posts? Well the icon in the "new post" page of Blogger is a *globe* plus a little image of two links in a chain. And if you want to get the "permalink" for a post in your own blog -- i.e., the unique URL for a single post, as opposed to the whole blog -- click on the time stamp at the end of a given post. You'll see then that the URL has more than the blog URL, but also year and month info and part of the post title.

On my blog, I changed the template so that there's a permalink link called -- shockingly! -- permalink, and on other Blogger blogs it might be a # sign. Just so you know. And if you go over to this entry of my blog -- click here -- you'll see I linked to this post of yours and to your blog in general, as well as to a specific comment on a previous post of mine, which also has its own unique permalink.

Now how I did that nifty link in this comment is another story.

Tommy said...

Sometimes dogs are just stupid (yes, even border collies). It's not their fault, they're born with small and inadequate dog brains. I'm sure Wiley is pefectly glad you're back.

The Pastry Pirate said...

teehee... Chunks is napping in the back seat of my car as I sit in Stabucks catching up on emails. We did another three-mile romp through the woods this morning, followed by a trip to the laundromat where I was offered a job (not at the laundromat... one of the woman doing her dirties there is the s/o of the chef at a local massive new age/organic/sustainable compound and said they're always looking for "skilled people." Heehee! Someone thinks of me as "skilled"...)

Anyway, I just wanted to say: Wiley does the seal-bark whenever he's excited and/or anxious, and I've seen it directed at everything from random postal carriers to pieces of fish, so I don't think him doing it was a sign he was remembering me.

Re: the photos... before putting mine online, I always resize them to make them smaller and then use a sharpness filter, both with Paint Shop 4. I just got into the habit of doing that on my old website for the best resolution. The pix I sent you were the raw files, which were much larger. Blogger tends to compress larger files, which is probably why they look different.

Tommy: two words. Buster Cube. Are you familiar with this? I just got one for Wiley as part of my plan to be a typical American parent and win over my "child" by being him stuff. I'm going to post about it, but I think you need this "intellectually stimulating" toy for your quadroped!