If a cow ever got the chance...

Well, the big news from Wisconsin is that my parents have suddenly and mysteriously acquired another dog, whom they have unfortunately named "Poochie." I can't complain too much, since the name is a direct reference to this classic Simpsons meta-episode, but I suspect that it was one of those throwaway names you give to an animal you have few intentions of keeping, and that you later come to regret once you realize that the damn dog is an ugly little mutt who's tough as nails and many times smarter, and here to stay--and you've named him Poochie.

Anyway, he's very young (can't be over six months), and looks to be half blue heeler and half anybody's guess--The Engineer thinks he's part wirehair and I think he's part German shepherd. My mom found him in the woods behind our house a week ago, looking all starved and whimpering and with a piece of baler twine around his neck for a collar. So of course she brought him back to the house and fed him, and later my parents drove around with him in the pickup, looking for anyone who had lost a dog, but no one would claim him. By that point they weren't too keen on returning him to the rightful owner anyway, since tying your puppy up with a piece of baler twine is not the kindest thing to do, and it was pretty clear that he'd been abused (when you reach down to pet him, he just cowers, and if you try to put any sort of leash around his neck he flops to the ground and looks at you with abject terror).

However, he was fighting with Mira, the other dog (a respectably middle-aged Chesapeake Bay retriever), and winning despite being outweighed by about sixty pounds. That disturbed the parents a little, since Mira has absolute authority over new-pet acquisitions, so they tried to take Poochie to the local no-kill animal shelter. The woman there said that before she would take him, she needed a forty-dollar fee and a signed letter from the "town councillor." I suspect this was code for a bribe of some sort (plus, the shelter was horribly overcrowded), but luckily my parents are clean-living and honest people to whom this would never occur. So they took him back home. They discovered that he and Mira don't fight if equal attention is paid to them both (meaning, if you pick a wood tick off Mira, you have to pretend to pick one off of Poochie, and if you let Poochie out of his "doghouse," god help you if you don't also free Mira).

When I came home on Friday, they were still talking about not keeping him, but I think the deal was closed when my dad made him a house. My parents live on a big, old farm with lots of granaries and sheds that are empty or no longer being used for their original purpose (such as storing grain or housing cattle), so keeping the dogs in the house is basically unthinkable. Mira sleeps in a section of an old slatted corncrib that's about fifteen feet by three feet--at night she's locked in and during the day she's let out and free to go wherever she wants, as long as someone's on the property to keep an eye on her. Poochie was sleeping in the front yard during his trial period and crying a lot because it was really, really cold in Wisconsin last week. So eventually my dad caved in and put straw and food/water dishes in one end of a disused cattle loading chute (basically a cement ramp in one corner of the cattle shed, so calves can go from the trailer to the feedlot and vice versa), and they started putting him in there at night, just like with Mira. (Amazingly, this has solved 90% of the inter-canine jealousy.) The parents are talking about taking him to the vet soon to be neutered and have his shots. He and Mira are playing together quite happily now--they only fight when they think one of us is playing favorites, or when table scraps appear.

Now I am sad because I'm back in Chicago and all I want to do is hang out with the stupid dogs. Poochie is just a neat puppy, very bouncy and not at all mean, despite everything that must have happened to him. You can see his little face light up when he realizes you're not going to hurt him, and he's smart enough to have learned "sit" already. I can't believe anyone would abuse him.

I don't have a digital camera so you won't be seeing Poochie and Mira pictures anytime soon, but we're going back for a wedding in three weeks so maybe I'll work something out with my ancient 35mm camera and this scanner that C claims to have "lying around." This diary is now leaving the zone of "aw, lookit the cute puppy" and returning to its normal tone of sardonic whine...

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