If the answer is yes, quit peepin’ in my windows, dude!

So this is Lily, my father-in-law’s new dog.  If you think she looks a lot like Abby, it’s because they are the same kind of dog.  Lily came from a shelter in a nearby town.  From what we can piece together, she was definitely bred, kept outside most of the time (she has such rough paws), and was never taught a damn thing.  She’s six years old and not in the least bit housebroken (we’re working on it) and I had to teach her how to sit.  She kept peeing on the bricks, which is something a dog has to be taught to do (gross, then your patio/whatever smells like dog pee!).  Despite all of that, she is incredibly cheerful and likes everyone and everything, even the cats, which is all that really matters.  She is supposedly six years old but she acts like a puppy.  She doesn’t know what toys are but thinks your hand is there to slobber all over.

She REALLY likes to lay on my bed and stare out of all of the windows (which is what she’s doing in the photo above), and since this is a sun room she has a pretty good view of squirrels, birds, and the people in the parking lot behind us.

Most of the time she actually looks like this:

Doofus.

Finally, after a few teases of nice weather followed by sudden bouts of cold/rain, summer is here.  We barely had any spring days, I pretty much went from wearing long underwear to sweating myself to sleep in a week.  We’ve had some highs and lows in the past few weeks:

First, I went down to Carbondale to kidnap Brian and bring him home with me.  Since he’s no longer in the flight program, there’s no point in him going to school down there.  So we get to live together like normal married people (weird) and we will save a lot of money since we won’t be paying for his rent and bills.  Yay!  Before we left we ate one last meal at Longbranch, where I had the Lemon Garlic Fettucine:

I brought home some beautiful strawberries from the co-op (which I will miss so much), which we immediately turned into a strawberry rhubarb pie.

I planted my garden, and now I can admire it from my bedroom window:

Last weekend, we had some big boos.  On Friday night, my father-in-law was walking his two dogs and one of our neighbors, as they frequently do, let their dogs run out of the house unleashed and one of them immediately attacked Coco.  Yes, this is a totally different dog than the one that killed Bonny.  When he came in and told us what happened, I almost threw up on the spot.  Luckily, Coco was smiling like an idiot and just had to get a lot of staples in her leg and wear a Cone of Shame until we were sure she wouldn’t pull the staples out.  Fun fact:  did you know that as long as a dog is in their own yard, even if it’s the unfenced front yard, they can attack whomever they damn well please and animal control will not give a shit?  I also find it kind of funny (in the horrible awful way) that they attacked the dog who spent most of her early life in a cage cranking out dogs for a puppy mill, so she has the defensive instincts of a turnip.  She doesn’t even understand that she’s supposed to chew her toys up.  Abby would’ve fucked that dog’s ankles up.

Then two days later, as Brian and I were about to head out to the art fair, Abby started coughing in a weird way.  When we got home and she wasn’t there, my stomach dropped and I immediately called my father-in-law to ask what was wrong.  Brian and I drove to the emergency vet clinic just in time to say goodbye to her.  Apparently she had a growth in her throat that was making it hard for her to breathe, so it was best for her to be put to sleep.  This house has had a rough year pet-wise, in less than a year we’ve gone from five dogs and four cats, to two dogs (Harley went to live in Maine) and three cats (not to mention that my sister-in-laws dog died).  Some people might think we’re better off, but somehow we managed to combine two households of animals and make it work, and it is very quiet in here now.

This post is getting kind of long and it feels weird to go, “Dead dog, anyway, art pictures!” so I will make a second post tomorrow.

If you can’t guess by the title, this post is going to be about Bonny.  I was working on writing a new page on the site just for the animals, and 1.  I realized that I forgot her birthday last month, as in I didn’t even think about it so I felt terrible, and 2.  Trying to recount her story had me bawling just a few sentences in.  Now, I don’t spend every waking minute crying, i’m not vying for for sympathy or concern, but I just need to get some things out that have been bothering me for the last few months.

Bonny’s death was absolutely devastating for our immediate family.  I saw my husband react with emotions that i’ve never seen in him in the eleven years we’ve been together.  Both of my in-laws were hysterical.  Chester had to be pried off of our bed to eat and go to the bathroom for a few days, and he was still obviously bummed for a few weeks.  Bonny was the baby of our family, not just mine, although we were very co-dependent.  The first person I called was my friend Andria, her mom is the one who gave me Bonny and I felt they needed to know right away.  She was supportive and texted jokes to me later to make me feel better.  Her mom, and Megan, immediately emailed me to tell me how sorry they were.  I posted about it on the internet and so many people said so many nice things to me, some people even told me they were crying because they had come to love Bonny just through seeing her pictures and my stories.  I couldn’t respond to most of it because I didn’t know what to say back, but all of it was amazing.  Some other people gave me hugs or condolences, even my boss, who said nothing when I mentioned it was birthday, told me he was really sorry.  I took Bonny to work one day last summer and she was a big hit.

And some people, said absolutely nothing.

That’s the thing that’s been eating me up.  I can’t remember how it got brought up, but I was talking to my father-in-law a week afterwards and for whatever reason, I was recounting the people I had received condolences from, and not counting the internet, it was a painfully short list.  Now, I had turned my facebook account off in November so people who didn’t have my number, I understand.  Some people I only see every couple of months, and after awhile I doubt their first thought is about my dead dog.  However, people who I have known for years, family members, no calls.  No texts.  Nothing.  Hell, the day after, some people didn’t say anything!  That was, and still is, really painful.  Some people don’t put pets on the same level as others, but anyone who knows me knew that Bonny was pretty much the light of my life.  Are there reasons?  Did they forget?  Did they think I didn’t want to be bothered?  I’m sure there are some good reasons, but i’m entitled to say how it makes me feel, and it makes me feel like they didn’t/don’t care.  It’s a pretty shitty feeling.  And what am I supposed to do, bring that shit up?  I don’t think so.

I don’t think any (okay, maybe one) of the people i’m talking about are monsters, I just really wanted to get that out of my system.  Catharsis.  The end.  Over and done with, let’s all move on.

Other than that, I think I am doing okay with things.  I still have Chester (the Barbara Hershey to Bonny’s Bette Midler), and the cats, and I also love them very much.  There are certain holes they can’t fill, like I can’t carry Chester into social situations that i’m nervous about, and one time I tried to flip Fatty into the cradle position out of habit and she squeaked and bit my hand.  I look at dogs on Petfinder, but we are by no means getting another dog any time soon.  Not just because of emotional reasons, but Chester has some as-of-yet undiagnosed (and expensive to rule things out) liver problems, and thyroid issues.  He was the best big brother to Bonny, but he is also older and crankier now and I don’t want to make him get used to another new dog.  So unless he is magically cured of his pricey ailments or up and dies, a new dog is not in our future.