Good for you, Jane!
So glad the dog took your cheese without nipping. I’m censusing Up North, and the biggest chunk of our safety training was what to do when a dog bites you (hey, how come postal workers get to carry mace and we don’t?). Luckily, I AM a dog person, and have been able to charm the dogs I’ve met.
One dog was barking up a storm and I just gave him a raised eyebrow, said “Look, you’re doing your job guarding, and I’m doing my job, going up to the door.” Walked right by him. Whew…
That’s what I’ve seen most of on social media- people who are “outraged” that the news media hadn’t covered it, when in fact the day they heard about it and did all their frenetic posting, it was covered by Fox, CNN, NBC, etc…
Their narrative I suppose is outrage and disgust that all the George Floyd and BLM protests get tons of media coverage, and the murder of one white child doesn’t. And further anger that this apparently proves some sort of media bias.
It’s a convenient sort of manufactured outrage; never mind that single murders of people of all color happen ALL the time without any national news coverage at any point- the fact that this boy’s murder was covered on national news IS proof that it was newsworthy. They just don’t seem to understand that stuff like this doesn’t make it to the national news overnight.
Thank you all for the very unexpected kind words. I’m great at second guessing myself, so spent some time beating myself up for leaving VGD there overnight. Its pretty surprising she lasted that long in the heat and without becoming a coyote snack. My only excuse is that her attitude of “my human told me to wait right here until he/she comes back. I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing” convinced me that everything was all right.
I’m still angry about it. There are so many options for folks who no longer want or can’t care for a pet. Leaving one to die a slow and probably painful death is cruel and stupid and probably against a law or two. Dogs don’t come with the good manners VGD displayed without a lot of interaction with their human. How could someone have spent that much time with an animal just to deliberately try to kill it?
I called the shelter to ask if they would rather have a cash or food donation (When I realized there was a problem, it became my problem. The shelter was willing to make it their problem. Of course I am going to reward them for taking over.), I brought up my concerns about VGD being adopted because I didn’t think she was very attractive and I know that many people find appearances important when adopting a pet.
It appears I know nothing about what is an attractive dog, because the shelter lady said she already has 2 people on her waiting list. She’s a short haired brindle, with HUGE perky ears and her head only came to my knee. VGD will stay there in the lost and found section for 3 days and then will move on to a real home. I wish her well. I wish many horrible and vile things for the asshole who left her.
I always thought Heinlein had the right idea: people like that should be put into a scenario where they’re the size of a tiny kitten, they’re cold, they’re hungry, and there are huge vehicles whizzing by. See how long they last.
You did a very good thing for the VGD. Whoever did this to her deserves nothing but pain and torment.
Thanks for adding this update! I was hoping the tale of the Very Good Dog would have a happy ending. You are a kind, thoughtful person, and the world needs many more like you.
I’m coming very close to making myself an orphan.
Thursday night, around 845, my mother calls. Ten minutes of general chitchat, convo winding down, she asks if I would be willing to take her to the ER as she is feeling pretty miserable. Explain? “Well, it’s how I felt before I had the stents put in”. You mean when you had a heart attack? “I suppose so…”
We’re at the hospital. She’s fussing that I should’ve just dropped her off, I shouldn’t be there, I should go home. If that’s what you had wanted, you would have called your oldest child. Around 115am the Doctor came in, ruled out heart attack and stroke, but they wanted to do another heart test to be sure and an MRI as she mentioned she has been falling a bit more than normal (first time I heard about that!), would take a few hours. I did take that opportunity to come home and sleep for about 90 minutes, before heading back to pick her up and deliver her home.
Doctor strongly told her to contact her PCP to have her blood pressure meds adjusted, as her BP remained 190ish/110ish the entire time she was there.
Friday night. Surprise tornado a block over from me. An EF0, winds 75-80 mph. Other than branches down in my yard, I lucked out greatly.
Fast forward to this morning: “You need to call your insurance agent to have someone come look at your roof!” You’ve suggested that four times since Friday mom, I got it.
Have you called your doctor about your blood pressure? “No, I need a COVID test first.” WOMAN. Where do you think you get the COVID test? You had all Friday and Saturday to call your PCP about your ridiculously high blood pressure and you’re worried about my roof? Priorities, lady, priorities!
I sure get the frustration MissTake. There are times when I look at my husband that same way!
VGD is the second dog in the second row
VGD is now called Milly, and looks as though someone has brushed her.
Hello fellow Enumerator digs! I won’t go into yards with dogs cause I don’t think its my job to risk getting bit. However, I finished interviewing a gentleman who had a small dog barking in the house. When we were done, he asked if he could let her out so she could chase me off. I suggested that I get closer to the gate first, but he assured me that she wasn’t going to get that far. He let out an old fat dog who ran as fast as her pudgy legs would propel her for about 6 feet, then barked and growled at me between gasps for air. I of course, screamed in fear and hustled right out the gate while loudly exclaiming how scared I was.
So, yeah. Someone set their dog on me, LOL!
That is adorable!
Oh, my gosh, look at that smile!
Beautiful!
Ditto. I prefer “VGD” to “Milly” but it doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue!
As for ex-owner, I’m going to try not to believe that the dog was left on purpose. There’s only so much horror and dismay I can take in, and that exceeds it.
The situations I get myself into… 
My mom has a friend (I’ll call her J) who makes most of her money from eBay sales. J recently became the recipient of the remains of an estate, which are delivered to her home two or three boxes at the time. She had very high hopes of being able to sell all of these promised ‘collectibles’ for loads of money; unfortunately, most of what she has received so far looks like it came from an episode of Hoarders, and all of it is packed so poorly that anything remotely fragile gets broken in transit. (Needless to say, J isn’t making nearly what she expected off of this estate stuff. 
) She often sends pictures of the box contents to my mom, who shares them with me.
One of these pictures featured the contents of the bottom of one box, which contained broken bits of ceramic and a small wooden shadowbox with a smashed-in glass door. I recognized the shadowbox as being identical to one that I repurposed a couple of years ago by removing the compartments and adding tiny hooks for jewelry. Even though I don’t really need another jewelry storage box, I knew that J likely wouldn’t be able to sell it online easily, so I asked my mom to find out if J would be willing to sell the shadowbox to me as-is.
As it turns out, the broken bits I was seeing in the picture were from containers of various liquids that had broken open; the shadowbox was saturated, and not salvageable. No big deal…except that J interpreted my offer to buy the shadowbox as a request for a jewelry storage solution. She took it upon herself to go online and purchase a large, expensive, wall-mounted organizer. J told my mom the dimensions of this organizer; there’s nowhere for me to place it in my room without removing something else. What makes me feel especially bad is that I know J doesn’t have money to throw around like this. I didn’t think anything about my offer to purchase the shadowbox indicated that I was in need of a jewelry box; I just saw an opportunity to repurpose a thing that was going to end up in the trash, and to help someone out a bit in the process.
TL,DR: I just wanted to help Mom’s friend J make a little money off a damaged box of stuff, but instead it seems that I prompted J to spend money she probably doesn’t have on a gift for me that I don’t need.
Awwww!!! 
Agreed. Still, she looks a little like Ed, the goofy-looking hyena from The Lion King.
She’s a cutie, and a lot smaller than I expected for some reason. Glad to hear that she’ll have a good home if the “owner” doesn’t show up.
I am a huge dork. Or my laptop is. We’re all eagerly awaiting teacher assignments today for my daughter’s 5th grade class. Well, the district screwed up the notification process and informed every single parent that two teachers were going to be their children’s homeroom teachers in error. Immediately the district walked it back, started emailing corrected teacher assignments and, lo and behold, we never, ever got one. So, I attempted to respond to the original email I’d received and since my laptop is really, really old and very persnickety and sensitive, I wound up sending the teacher in question two very enthusiastic emails reading, “Hi! I’m overly. I have a concern.”
I was finally able to send a third (apologetic) email that actually outlined my concern (that my daughter STILL has no assigned teacher despite having been advised that she would receive the information hours ago). So now I can’t ever show my face to this teacher again.
Thanks for the pic! I was wondering what she looked like, to the point that I was actually browsing the humane society listings in the Phoenix area. She looks like a real sweetie! A bit small for my preferences (my last dog was a large male Bernese Mountain Dog, who tipped the scale at 120 pounds – big even for a Bernese!) but I’m sure there will be many loving homes happy to have her. A dog’s love is not limited by its physical size, and as they say, all dogs go to heaven. You are a great canine Good Samaritan!
It’s unusually cool today and I want to sit outside for a while, but the apartment complex next door is redoing their parking lots, so it’s all noisy machines and backup beepers. I hope it’s done soon, but then it will be hot again and I won’t want to be outside. 
I have still not received my stimulus payment. My gross income for 2019 was well under the limit for a single-filer. While I did file tax returns for both 2018 and 2019, I owed taxes for both years which were paid by check, so the IRS does not directly have direct deposit info for me. When I go the IRS site to get my status I am told that they are unable to give me the status of my payment.
Supposedly, as a retired Federal employee the IRS should be able to send my payment using the direct deposit info from my pension payment. However, there is obviously a problem somewhere. I’ve tried calling the IRS stimulus info number (1-800-919-9835) several times, which is totally useless. Last month I was assured that payment would be sent by the end of July, despite the fact that I was specifically told that the operator cannot access my tax info. When I called again today, the operator said she would transfer me to someone who could look up my file. What I got was a recorded message that “we have gotten so many calls that we are unable to help you today; please call back tomorrow”.
I’m tempted to call my Senator, but Tom Tillis is so busy kissing Trump’s ass that he probably can’t come to the phone either.
That’s frustrating!
I got a tRump campaign letter from the RNC it’s 3 pages long and I corrected every ludicrous paragraph in it with a snarky retort. I stamped it and mailed it back.