DogBlog...what is this, Monday?

Just because.

Those are M's fingertips. Wouldn't it be cool if Steve's ears did that on their own? When he was a puppy he had so much loose skin around his noggin region that you could do this and stretch his ears about two feet in either direction. You could grab fistfuls of skin on his back and pick him up and rock him around. He even liked it. (Freak dog.) He's grown into his skin some finally though.

I think we're going to start calling him scarface. One of the girls put that nice dent in his face right between his eyes there. He probably did something to deserve it. Knowing him. The charmer.


Here's Nancy looking all cute and happy and smiley. She pretty much just walks around smiling all the time, except when she's trying to kick something's ass. Then her mouth makes this "o" shape of doom and you'd better not touch her because she makes a sound that warns of her unsafeness for man and beast alike. I don't know what her previous owners did to her; both her eyes are scarred on their surfaces right in the centers, so when she wants to see something she kind of looks at it sideways, as she's demonstrating here. She's definitely got some pit bull in her, a lot of Staffordshire terrier. It's possible she might have been used for fighting. She came from a shelter that had her labeled as an Australian cattle dog, I'm guessing since Cincinnati has lots of mean nasty laws about bully breeds (because stupid fuckers like to fight their dogs and train them to attack people) and someone wanted to save her from immediate euthanization. She had been living in a cage at the shelter for five months when we went there looking for another dog to rescue and found her. M always wanted a Staffordshire and Nancy fits the bill pretty well. She seems happy to have made her way to us.

Deeper in my bag of tricks...here's Kiva in a contemplative moment, staking her claim on M's chest. Her paw looks really dirty and her nails need cut. But she's happy, and that's what matters. Her ear seems to have made a good recovery from the claw incident; it's still doesn't stay perked when she's running around being a hooligan, or when she swims and it gets wet, but at least it doesn't seem to hurt her. That's good enough for me. I sure do hate it when my dawgs have any problems. They all come from the shelter, they've had enough suffering.

Four days till I turn 28 and we leave for our vacation. I slept through last night without having the wake-up-and-think-oh-shit-I'm-scared thing, which was a nice change. Maybe writing about it scared it off.

There are some uber-interesting comments on my last post, so if you haven't read them or if you left one early, they're worth going back and reading. You all sure have some interesting things to say about death. I meant to answer my own question tonight, about what I think happens to you after your body dies, but it seemed a heaver subject than I wanted to take on at the moment. I'll write about it soon though--maybe before vacation, maybe after, depending on how much of my honkin' to-do-before-we-leave list gets done. Also, E wrote a fascinating post today about her son's former life, which is more than worth the read. Luckily I got to pick her brain via IM about it, after leaving a mostly incoherent and overexcited comment on her blog. Thanks to all who responded; I feel honored as well that so many of you complimented me on my writing. I am frequently humbled by the number of people who identify with what I have to say...it's so good to have such great readers as y'all...

When I go on trips, I really like to write postcards, and so I'm extending an offer to anyone who wants one. If you'd like a postcard from the wilds of the wicked-cool South Dakota Badlands, email me your snail mail address and I'll make every effort to send you one. Email is j_star_katamari at yahoo dot com. I'll post this again in the next couple days before I leave on my trip.

Time for bed. A big tall sleeping dude and a pile of dogs awaits me.