Thursday, March 22, 2007

Frustration (I'm Whining. You May Want to Skip This)

I'm frustrated. Very. VERY frustrated.

1) Lucky the Wonder Dog is being a major pain in the ass.
2) I've screwed up my bookkeeping.
3) I've been working mega hours at the day job to fix #2.

But right now what I'm frustrated about is Lucky the Wonder Dog.

The other day she slipped her collar, got out of the fence, and wound up in a fight with a (presumed) raccoon. Wound up at the vet getting healed up.

Since we couldn't find the collar we hauled out the harness I use for walking her and have been using it for everyday.

Came home from work today to find she'd chewed through the harness, escaped the fence, and was running loose.

Bought a new collar. Decided to take her for a walk so that she'd be calm inside tonight. She slipped the collar and was not cooperative about coming back. I finally caught her playing with a pair of the neighborhood tomcats. Of course this is at night, after a full day of work, when I'm already tired out of my mind and symptommatic.

I love the dog. Normally she is a good and cooperative dog. She's been responding to training better. But today she was a disobedient little shit. I don't dare leave her outside now when I'm not here because of her Houdini act. You see the streets here are relatively busy (it's a small town, but people drive fast and don't pay much attention. I can't tell you how many dead animals I've seen that have been run over), AND she doesn't like bicyclists. I don't think she'd deliberately hurt anyone, but the kids on bikes don't know that, and she could certainly scare them enough for them to wreck. Which is WHY she is tied, and behind a fence. (Insert vehement swearing!) I also know that there are folks around this area who actually put out poison to kill "stray" animals and/or would use a bb gun or "whatever it takes". They really don't hesitate about it. It makes me crazy and scares the crap out of me. I don't know what I'm going to do.

I'm worried about her. I'm worried about me. I'm frustrated because damn it, I'm trying and she KNOWS better and life is currently SUCKING anyway so I don't need any added frustration.

The only good news--and it is VERY good news, is that we won the Reviewer's Choice (RIO) award for Touch of Evil with incredibly stiff competition (Sherrilyn Kenyon and Katie McAllister among others). I am writing. I am trying not to let everything get me down, and this helps. But tonight, honestly, not as much as it probably should.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dog problems...I can relate to that very well. We have a golden retriever named Lego and in the last two years has gotten out at least 50 times. How he hasn't managed to end up hit or dead is a mystery to us. His very scared of thunder storms, and we found out that dogs can hear them from about 50 miles away. He started climbing over the fence so we put electric wire around the top, that fixed it for a while. He started getting out again, he had chewed thru the chain link and was climbing under, we fixed that and again no problem for a bit. Next he chewed thru the fence gate (we've replace the gate 4 times), finally put 2x4's on bottom, both sides bolted, fixed that. He found other places under the fence to get out, fixed those. He started getting out again. We put him in our workshop. The window in the door was broken, he got out through that and also got the screen door open too. As you can probably figure we were pretty frustrated by this time so we went to the local farm and ranch store and got 16 gage steel cattle panels and went aroung the dog pen with it. That stopped him getting out at all until he discovered he could push the bottom of the gate hard enough to bend the horse shoe metal piece holding the gate and got out again the other day. We now have chain wrapped around the middle and bottom and that seems to have taken care of that...for now anyway! LOL We have 3 dogs and he is the only one that gets out. They are not totally outdoor dogs they come in the house every night. I don't have the problem with walking that you have (thank goodness). I can walk mine off leash even around rabbits etc.

I know half the population in our town thanks to Lego! LOL

Emma Petersen said...

I hope Miss Lucky has settled down a bit and has stopped giving you fits.

Congrats on the award! You guys deserve it! Kate is one of my fav heroines and I am looking forward to TOM!