Adventures in Dogsitting

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

My sister and brother-in-law (you know them as Green Bean and Overengineer) are going away this weekend and asked me
they asked me to dogsit for them. My sister brought Spot over yesterday afternoon. (Here’s a short MPG video of Spot from last weekend’s brunch.)

After feeding him dinner last night, I went out with some friends. When I got back a bit late, I found that it was too late for Spot and he had made a small mess on the floor.

I thought that I should take him out immediately, in case he had further business to do, so I got his leash and left the apartment. As I pushed the elevator button and heard my apartment door close behind me, I realized that when I came in I had done what I normally do on entering the apartment, which is to drop my keys on the dining table. I also realized that I had neglected to pick them up as I took Spot out.

Well we went for a little walk as I tried to figure out how to get out of this situation. I buzzed my Super, but he did not answer. Fortunately, I had my cell phone in my jacket pocket. I called a friend who lives at the other end of my street who I had given a spare set of keys to, but he didn’t answer. I remembered that another friend who has my keys that lives near me was out of town. I kicked myself because I had discussed exchanging keys with another friend who lives in the neighborhood, but never got around to doing it.

Finally, I called yet another friend, who said that she thought she had a set of keys, but wondered if they were for this apartment or my prior apartment. She checks, and it turns out, of course, they were for my old place.

Since I was out of options, she invited us to crash at her place, and I accepted. The only problem is that she lives in Chelsea, and I live on the Upper West Side.

Well, Spot and I have a nice long (2-1/2 mile) walk down to her place, and we get there by 1:30 or so. I go to sack out on the futon she has laid out, but Spot is still pretty active, and gets really into licking my feet (licking feet is a favorite of his). Eventually, I bury my feet under the blanket, and after a while he settles down.

Well, at about 3:30 he starts getting noodgy, sitting by her door and whining. Now he has just peed on every fire hydrant and trash bag along Ninth Avenue, but he did have a big bowl of water when we got there, so I get up, get dressed, find my friend’s keys in her bag, and take him out. We walk a half a block and he has a nice long pee. We walk a bit more, turn around, and go back in.

Well, at about 5:30 he again starts getting noodgy, sitting by her door and whining. Now he just went out two hours ago so I try to ignore him. He keeps whining, in a very urgent whine, and I realize that in the whole walk downtown, and in the short walk at 3:30, he hasn’t pooped. Figuring this must be the problem, I get up, get dressed, go downstairs and walk him again. He does his business, and we go back up. When I lay back down, he lies down next to me, curled up and quite contented.

My friend gets up for work at 8, and we get up and take the walk back home. By the time we get there, the maintenance guy has come on duty, and gets me my spare keys. I finally get to clean up the mess and give Spot breakfast. Spot, of course, curls up in in a ball at the foot of my bed sleeping, while I have to shower and face the rest of the day.

2

Um, forget what I said about Spot being so well-behaved and all that…

You probably don’t think this is terribly funny (yet) but thanks for a good laugh, Billdo.

3

In which Spot takes a walk in Central Park:

Spot’s sworn enemy is the squirrel. On seeing a squirrel, Spot transforms from playful domestic canine into the great black-and-white-spotted instinctive hunter. His mission is to attack and eliminate any of the bushy-tailed critters that he may encounter.

Spot wears on his collar three little metal tags, one for his license, one for vaccination, and one with his identification. Normally when he walks, these tags jingle together. However when chasing squirrel, he goes into stealth mode, in which he can creep silently, with no noise from the tags.

What he will do when he sees a squirrel is to slink silently toward it, stop and stand stock still for a moment, and then pounce.

When walking Spot in the park, I have him on a retractable leash, which is a spring-loaded spool of nylon webbing that lets him run about 15 feet away from me, but automatically rewinds the webbing when he comes closer. Normally, when he goes after a squirrel he’ll have about half of the spool remaining before he pounces, hoping to get the squirrel before he runs out of leash. Fortunately for the squirrel population, they almost always scatter out of range (or up a tree) before Spot can get at them.

At one point, I was walking Spot on a bridle path that was covered with sheet ice. He saw a squirrel, snuck toward it and stopped. At this point I realized that the squirrel was just a little too close to Spot for comfort.

On the retractable leash spool there is a button that I can press which will stop the webbing from running out any farther than it is at that point. Seeing what was about to happen, I pressed the button. Not realizing I had, Spot pounced.

Spot was very surprised because in mid-pounce the little bit of slack in the leash had been taken up, and no more leash was issuing from the spool. When this happened, the forward half of his body stopped abruptly. However, despite his front half stopping, his back legs, which were on very slippery ice, continued to move forward. Because of this, he picked up rotational momentum and did almost a complete 360-degree turn before coming to rest.

When Spot regained his bearings, he turned around toward me with a very strange look on his face. He then looked back around for the squirrel, but it was long gone. Done with that little bit of fun, we continued on.

Turnabout, however, is fair play. Later, when I was carefully making my way across a particularly treacherous patch of ice, Spot saw another squirrel. This time, instead of going into stealth and pounce mode, he simply took off after the critter at full speed.

By the time he reached the end of his leash, he had built up full momentum, and I still had no traction. As the leash jerked on reaching the end of the spool, I found myself ass over teakettle on the path.

Fortunately, I managed to hold on to the leash, and another squirrel was saved from the ravages of the great spotted hunter.

4

billdo, i expect to see you on america’s funniest videos soon. your adventures with spot are quite something. i wonder what spot would do with…say…a squirrel puppet…

keep these adventures coming, they are great.

5

In which Spot further explores Central Park

In our next foray into Central Park, I thought I would take Spot to see the Balto Statue, which is: “Dedicated to the indomitable spirit of the sled dogs that relayed Antitoxin 600 miles over rough ice across treacherous waters through artic blizzards from Nenana to the relief of stricken Nome in the winter of 1925.”

The statue is a large bronze sled dog, standing atop a rock outcropping, looking proudly northward. As I brought Spot toward the statue, he looked at it, scampered up the rock, and immediately started sniffing Balto’s butt. Balto, however, did not respond in kind.

One popular tourist attraction in Central Park and the vicinity is horse-drawn carriage rides. As it was a beautiful sunny day, there were a whole series of them riding along the South Park Drive.

When we approached, I discovered that Spot has some sort of objection to cart horses. As each one passed, he would lunge at it, snarling and barking, darting in front of joggers and bicyclists. Once I saw what was happeing, I shortened his leach when each horse approached, so there were no untoward incidents.

Fortunately, New York City carriage horses are placid beasts, and the took no notice of this creature one-tenth their size growling and hissing at them. Nonetheless, I thought it would be a good idea to move on before something happened.

At about this time I heard the faint sounds of calliope music, and thought that I’d take him to see the Central Park Carousel. We approached the fence surrounding the ride, and peered in, where I saw happy parents and children going up and down and round and round.

Spot, however, instead of focusing on the family fun, only saw more of those accursed horses. He proceeded to start at the railing, snapping and barking. A tug at the leash, and off we went.

6

i do hope you took a picture of spot sniffing balto.