New Reviews For The Gyre Mission

I have waited quite some time to hear what people think of my debut novel The Gyre Mission, and it is with great joy that I see the reviews are not only good, but totally freakin’ great! Check out http://www.kirkusreviews.com to read the praise they heaped upon my disgusting disasterpiece, as well as http://www.bibliobabes.ca to read what the illustrious (and ever amusing) kat thought of it (see photo above of the very lovely and talented kat). In a saturated market where everyone and anyone is publishing a book, there are actually GOOD ones out there. Mine is one of them! For a measly $4.99 you can own the book (ebook) that will be a bestseller by this time next year, and for a lousy $19 you can have the JUMBO paperback. Come on people, I know you can get free ebooks from Kindle but if you have any taste whatsoever you will realize you get what you pay for. As soon as Stephen King tells you to buy my book you’ll do it, won’t you? And then you’ll say to yourself: “Damn, this book is freakin’ awesome! Thanks for cluing me in Stephen!”
I understand it takes a lot of convincing to make a purchase, especially from some jerk-ass you’ve never heard of before with an author photo that looks like a mug shot, but simply read the free preview and see for your self if the writing is any good. And leave me some feedback. Tell me what you don’t like about it and I’ll send you something free (like a bag of burning shit!). Tell me you like it and I’ll autograph the cup I used to wear in football and send you that (limit one per household). As casual readers you have choices, millions and millions of choices. Do you want to continue giving your hard earned money to writers who’ve sold their souls for the corporate dollar (please contact me if you know who to sell my soul to) or do you want to take a chance on an unknown who might someday be seen in your town, wearing an orange jumpsuit and picking up trash alongside the road? Don’t answer too quickly, take your time. And remember, strangers are simply friends you haven’t made yet, but don’t trust them with your children or the keys to your car! Peace!

 

Mis-diagnosis of a man already on the edge

It has been several weeks (maybe a month) since I have posted a blog; for all practical purposes it seems I have fallen off the face of the earth. In fact, I have done just that. In March I posted a blog entitled ‘To sleep, perchance to dream’ in which I described a sleep disorder that had been plaguing me. The disorder, as I’d explained it, was right as I am about to fall sleep one of my hands, feet, arms, legs, elbow, neck, whole body, etc. twitches, awakening me. This goes on all night. Seriously, when I try to go to sleep, the moment my body relaxes, I twitch and am fully awakened. To say ‘this sucks’ is truly an understatement, but what’s worse is/was the treatment I received from my primary care physician, a doctor I’d seen only twice previously for an unrelated matter. This self-important asshole didn’t listen to me; I told him what I was experiencing and he concluded (after a brief, basic neurological assessment) that I was bi-polar. This was all in my head, he told me. Possibly I needed a medication called Seroquel, something to even me out. I probably ran around like a maniac for several days, he postulated, excited and hyper, and then I’d crash and become slow and unresponsive for the next few days. No, I told him, that was not the case. Sure it is, he said, ignoring me.
Now, I’d already been prescribed trazadone and lorazapam from an urgent care facility, meds I was taking for sleep at the time of that visit. I’d gone to them, desperate, after four nights without sleeping, and they were kind enough to listen and give me something. I took the meds, slept, and made the appointment for a week later with my doctor (the soonest I could get in). The disappointment I felt when he told me it was psychological was profound, but by that point the efficacy of the two drugs were vastly reduced so I wasn’t thinking as clearly as I should have. In other words, I believed him. Two days later, after having not slept at all, I decided I needed some tests. I called an MRI center and made an appointment. I couldn’t get in without my doctors referral, of course, so I then called his office and asked to be referred. I admit I was doing things backward, but what the hell, I didn’t know the procedure. I’ve been gifted with having good health the majority of my life. There was a definite learning curve going on. After waiting all day, a game of cat and mouse (me chasing after them, they answering my questions elusively, implying that it was all right, that they would fax over my info but not doing so) I called the clinic and they told me to come in, that my doctor’s office promised to send the records. I was on the table when the doctor’s office called and said they refused to refer me. Crestfallen I left, and his male nurse called me. He told me that we all get twitches right before sleep and I just had to learn how to relax. He recommended I do deepbreathing excercises, acupuncture treatments and take medical marijuana. I was so distressed and muddled that I took him up on all three. I made an appointment for acupuncture (not knowing if my health insurance would cover it or not-they don’t, it turns out) and went there the next day and got my medical marijuana card to the tune of $50. I then purchased $180 worth of liquid THC, edibles and a smokable that was supposed to knock you out cold. After one application I discovered smoking was out of the question; it made the twitches 100 times worse. The liquid THC was no better; it made me drowsy but couldn’t get me past the twitches like a prescription sleep aid. At my own best judgment I decided not to eat the brownie. Disappointed anew, I found another doctor online and made an appointment to get a second opinion. I picked a doctor based on how quickly he could see me, not on his credentials, and for this I paid dearly. It turned out he was an even bigger ass. Without anything other than a brief physical assessment he decided I was suffering from depression. The twitches were all in my head, he told me, and I should seek the care of a psychiatrist. I left his office with mixed feelings; I’d been doing everything the doctors told me to do: I’d done the MMJ, I’d had the acupuncture (only one treatment, all together I;d do two) but still nothing worked. I still had the trazadone (I’d stopped taking the lorazapam when I got down to ten pills because I didn’t want to get addicted and then run out, having read that even two weeks use could cause dependency. Whether that’s right or not is irrelevant; my doctor and the other doctor made it clear they wouldn’t prescribe it to me again, in fact most likely thought I was there seeking more of that particular drug) but it was only working sporadically. I mixed it with benadryl, liquid THC and melatonin, and some nights it still didn’t work. So I went home, got online again, and found a psychiatrist nearby that had availability within the week. Meanwhile, my primary care physician offered a service to his patients that was quite convenient, an email service through his website. Utilizing it, I contacted him and told him I’d gotten a second opinion and that the other doctor didn’t think I was bi-polar, that he thought I was depressed, and I’d made an appointment to see a psychiatrist. In the meantime, I ventured, was there anything he could prescribe for me to help me sleep because the trazadone was wreaking havoc on my system, giving me monstrous diarrhea. He got back to me, said he wasn’t surprised about the other diagnosis, said there was no need to see the psychiatrist, that he could handle my psyche meds himself, and proceeded to prescribed mirtzapine, another anti-depressant in the same class as trazadone but much easier on the digestive tract. I looked up the drug, read all the information about what a wonderful aid it was to sleeping, and was briefly excited…until I tried it. He prescribed a 30mg dose, one I’d find was quite heavy for what I needed. Throughout the entire ordeal I’d researched every diagnosis, every drug. Mirtzapine, I found, was more active for insomnia at lower doses, a quarter of what he recommended. At lower doses it wasn’t an anti-depressant, it was an antihistamine. But the drug was hit or miss; one night it would work, the next it wouldn’t. And the way it made me feel the next day made it entirely worthless. I felt washed out, dizzy, depressed. After four days I contacted him via the website again and told him it didn’t work, that I needed something to fight my symptoms (the twitches), not the side-effect (sleep loss) and he pulled Restless Leg Syndrome out of the hat this time. Gone was the bi-polar, out with the depression, now I had RLS! Ordering no tests to confirm, telling me we could do a sleep study but it would be a terrible inconvenience, he prescribed ropinerole, a medication used for Parkinson’s and RLS. Desperate for anything to work, I decided I’d give it a shot. This decision was made on a Friday, and I couldn’t get the medication until Monday, so I had the weekend to research it. Long story short, by the end of the weekend I was convinced that this was not the right medication, not only because I had none of the symptoms of RLS, but that the side-effects (it would take a week to start working, I couldn’t take any other sleep aids with it, Omeprazole contradicted its efficacy, and it could potentially cause ‘sudden sleep onset’) weren’t worth it. I drive over forty miles a day for my job; the last thing I needed was to fall asleep behind the wheel while doing seventy on the freeway. As it turned out, getting this medication and seeing the psychiatrist fell on the same day, and for that I am entirely grateful. She did a psychiatric evaluation, to which I answered the questions as honestly as I could; I left out how utterly depressed I was simply because the reason for it was the sleep loss and the mis-management of my care. By the end of all her questions she determined I definitely was not bi-polar and that I was not merely suffering from depression. She actually did what the other doctors didn’t: she Googled my symptoms and found links for ‘hypnic jerks’, ‘sleep starts’ and ‘myoclonic twitches’. Reading some of the posts that described in detail what I was telling her, she decided that she would prescribe Lunesta. To say that I was thrilled is being trite; I was nothing short of ecstatic. Finally, a REAL sleeping pill, not a fucking anti-depressant with somnolent properties. I almost kissed her. She gave me some samples and it worked like a charm. At the risk of this blog post being waaaayyyy too long, that unfortunately is not the end of my story. Turns out my health insurance wouldn’t cover Lunesta because it wasn’t available as a generic so I had to get Ambien. For some reason she’d prescribed Lunesta in a 3mg dose (the highest) but Ambien in a 5mg dose (the lowest). The Ambien didn’t work for sour apples. I needed to take four Ambiens, two benadryls, two droppers of liquid THC, and two melatonin to get about four hours of sleep, and sometimes I even added a trazadone. By this time I was truly at the end of my rope. I was suicidal (don’t tell the shrink, she’d have me committed). I was faced with a very tough question: call my parents and ask for their help or kill myself. In the end the choice wasn’t that hard; I called my folks. Anyone who has read this blog knows I am a pet-sitter/dog walker. I’d been carrying on throughout this whole ordeal and none of my clients were aware of the difficulties I was going through, yet meanwhile I was growing more and more despondent. When I was overnight pet-sitting I felt as if I was drowning, trapped. I was anxious, panicked, unable to think what I was going to do next. One morning I was walking a dog I’d been pet-sitting over the course of the week and I found myself plotting my suicide, my method, the note, the day…and that was when I started making phone calls. First I cancelled all of my up coming overnight pet-sitting jobs, then I cancelled all the up-coming visits, and next I cancelled with all of my regulars. I then looked up my health insurance, checked on my out of state coverage, then called my Mom and Dad. Within two hours they had a flight home for me (California to Wisconsin) for the following week. My clients were bummed, but understood that it was for my health, for my own good. Before I left I saw the psychiatrist and she was kind enough to prescribe Ambien CR (12.5mg strength) and a client of mine gave me two weeks of 3mg Lunesta. Between the two I figured I could hold on for a while longer.
As I am writing this I’ve seen a doctor in Madison, Wisconsin, and he was quite surprised at what my primary care physician had done (diagnosing me via emails with no tests, as well as the dose of the ropinerole: 2mg’s when the drug starts at .25mg’s). With his help I have an appointment with a neurologist that specializes in sleep movement disorders and will hopefully be recommended for a sleep study in which they will do a polysomnagraph (a sleep EEG). Via this test it will prove conclusively that the twitches are real, that this hasn’t all been in my head. Hopefully from there they will offer a solution, a treatment that won’t just mask the symptoms. Throughout all of this I’ve realized that the sleep medication suppresses my central nervous system, stopping the twitches. When the medication wears off, they come back. At first I thought the medication was just knocking me out, getting me past them. I’ve had this for so long I’ve been able to study it, to see how it works, and what works on it.
This has been a long ordeal, and presently I am losing money (in more ways than one: I have to pay out of pocket for the acupuncture, probably for some of the tests, I am not working, I’m paying rent for my place and I’m not there etc. etc. etc.) but at last I finally have some hope. My family has been very supportive and with their help I’ve been doing much better as I while away the time until my appointment in three weeks (yes, the neurologist can’t see me until May 20th). I’ve also been doing nothing to promote my novel The Gyre Mission: Journey to the *sshole of the World and I haven’t posted a blog in a month. So, if anyone reads this, please buy my book. I really need the freakin’ dough! Peace!

 

Welcome To Southern California; Love It Or Leave It Douchebags!

I moved to San Diego from the Midwest a decade ago, and I still can’t get over some of the things I’ve experienced over the years. I live north of SD, in the burbs, and up here the folks are very well off. Let’s put it this way: up here, you’re either rich or you’re poor, poor being anyone who makes less than $40,000 a year. Anyone who makes a pitiable $35,000 is eligible for heat assistance! So you are either rich or you work for the rich people. I suppose it could be worse. By working for them I was able to write my debut novel The Gyre Mission: Journey to the *sshole of the World. Yet with money there is a natural breakdown of what ‘normal’ folks would call civilized behavior. These wealthy douchebags own leased Beamers, Mercedes, Porches, Audi’s, Corvettes, Hummer’s etc. and drive like they own the road and they’ve written the traffic laws themselves. Red lights? Pish-posh. Speed limits? Not here my friend. I’ve lived all over the U.S. and I’ve never seen so many effed-up auto wrecks in my life. Seriously! You know those cars chases in Hollywood movies that seem so unrealistic? Well, they get all their ideas by watching these buttholes drive. First month I was here I saw a woman drive her car off of a twelve-foot embankment and land upside down in a (fortunately) low-tide lagoon. What happened next? People stopped their cars, got out…and took pictures with their phones! I think I’m the only one who called 911. Honestly, one morning I’m driving along El Camino Real and I see a waterspout gushing a hundred feet in the air. Some dillhole took out a fire hydrant! Every morning on Interstate 5 there is a major, five-car pile-up in which at least three people are seriously hurt. How could this happen? Well cheese and crackers it don’t take a genius to know that you gotta let off the gas and use the brake once in a while. I could go on and on but what the hell would it matter…
And where else could I start and profitably maintain a pet sitting/dog walking business in which the majority of my clients treat their pets better than children in third world countries? While little kids with bloated stomachs are eating grubs and being swarmed by flies in some faraway craphole, I’m opening up can after can of cat food for some overweight feline who can’t decide if he wants the tuna or the salmon delight. He’ll then eat half (or a third) and I’ll throw the rest away, thinking about all the hungry kitties in China. The gardeners and the cleaning ladies who commute from Tijuana just can’t get over the fact that my clients and I make such a fuss when one of the spoiled pets has the runs or vomits and is rushed off to the veterinarian. Hell, in their country, the dogs are covered in ticks and fleas and are walking around half-starved, eating out of garbage cans. They’re lucky if they can bring their freakin’ children to the doctor if they’ve been throwing up or have diarrhea, much less their pets.
As an example: I was walking a dog that had been attacked by another dog and suffered severe nerve damage in one rear leg. Hence, when she walked she dragged the limb (until her owners got her a brace). A gardener I walked by commiserated. He said: “Is broken, yes?”
I tried to explain that it was nerve damage but we had a language barrier. No matter what I said, he didn’t understand. So finally I agreed. “Yeah, it’s broken.”
“You get splint,” he advised and I nodded, nodded as I slowly backed away from him. But I understood full well how he thought: in Tijuana their dogs would walk around with broken legs and no one would give it a second thought. Eventually the limb would become necrotic or septic or succumb to gangrene and would need to be amputated. In most cases the dog would simply be put down. He probably thought he was being really kind, offering me the advice. And he was, in his own way. Should I have been angered that he thought I was so stupid I’d let my dog walk around on a broken leg? No, there’s no point. I actually had a client (a white couple) who did just that. Their cat broke a limb and the night before I showed up to pet sit they called me and told me Junior had a limp but it was nothing to worry about. Yeah, it was broken, had been for two weeks. Yes, it was necrotic. Yes, it had to be amputated. These people were white and rich and incredibly stupid. Sh*t happens.
So come on out to sunny Southern California! If you make less than $50,000 a year there’s a good trailer park I’ll point you in the direction of, and places where you can get food stamps and discount clothing. Don’t worry that a gallon of milk is $9.00 or gas is $6.66 for regular unleaded. You got the sun, the beach, and the palm trees. Find yourself in California my friends!

 

To Sleep, Perchance To Dream (I Need Some F’in Sleep!)

Ah, to sleep, perchance to dream…
That is a very famous quote by the illustrious (and quite venerable) William Shakespeare. And that dude knew what he was talking about, I’ll tell you what. Now, I’m only using that quote as a great opening line. All similarities end there. This post isn’t about him or any relation to that quote. Anyway…
You never know just how great sleep is until that day when, for some reason, you simply can’t get it. Some people suffer from insomnia, others from pain that keeps them from sleeping, but there is another condition that can rob you of sleep, one that really sucks because if it didn’t exist exhaustion would simply carry you away.
I’m talking about ‘Hypnic Jerks’, and when they become severe enough they are known as ‘Myoclonic Jerks’. The first is a seemingly innocuous series of muscle spasms that happen as you are about to fall asleep. Just as you are crossing the threshold into slumber land one of your body parts twitches, awakening you. This happens to a lot of people, maybe a couple times a night before they finally fall asleep. The second is a serious disorder that can cause real problems. Treatment involves tranquilizers or anticonvulsants. Bummer? Yeah.
Two weeks ago I developed these symptoms. One night (after a weekend of heavy partying-please, don’t ask. I’m not very proud of myself) I was kept awake all night long because of these Hypnic jerks. When I got out of bed the next day I realized I’d slept maybe an hour tops. This went on for three more nights until I sought medical help. I simply had to. With each passing night and no sleep I felt as if I was having an out of body experience. I didn’t trust myself to drive (yet I did, I had to) and I thought about Christian Bale’s character from the Machinist, about how he claimed to have not slept for a year. If I had to go a year without sleep I’d be dead fifty-one weeks prior to that, no f-in’ shite. It really sucked the big one. You know it’s bad when, at around three in the morning, you are thinking about what you might take the next night to get to sleep. Since the Benadryl didn’t work that night, I’d think, tomorrow I’ll try Nightquil.
The doctor at urgent care was kind enough to prescribe some strong tranquilizers, and at last I’ve been able to sleep, but here it is 14 days later and the Hypnic jerks haven’t gone away. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t scared. I went to my regular doctor today and he said to stay on the med’s I’d been prescribed and in two weeks we’d reevaluate. The next step, if they don’t go away, is to get an MRI. Then we can see what is going haywire in my brain. Oh yeah, and I’m sure my health care provider is going to deny me coverage for the test; last year it was recommended that I get a CAT scan and my doctor’s office had to practically put a gun to their head to okay it. If I need an MRI, I’ll probably have to pay for it myself.
What, you ask yourself, does this have to do with pet sitting or promoting my novel? Well, I was pet sitting through the whole thing, so one of the houses I was staying at (the week I didn’t sleep for four nights) became a house of horrors to me. Each night I sat and listened to the same sounds; the rustle of the blinds from the ceiling fan, the breathing of the dogs, the newspapers slapping the pavement when they arrived around four a.m…Jesus, it was awful. I kept it together pretty well though, I have to say; I don’t think the dogs noticed anything unusual about me (except that I paced around and talked to myself a lot).
I am now at the point where I’ve had sleep almost every night for about a week (I say ‘almost’ because one night I tried to cut the medication dosage; didn’t work, I didn’t sleep), and I am feeling back to ‘normal’. Unfortunately, the sleep is ‘drug sleep’ so I feel sort of spacey throughout the day. I guess I am writing this because it just helps to write, to concentrate. I haven’t worked on my new novel in three weeks (since before this started) and I’ve only recently continued my promotional efforts.
To sleep, perchance to dream…I have another great quote, but the source isn’t as well-regarded as the first: ‘You don’t know what you got until it’s gone…gone…gone…
(Yeah, I still have a sense of humor buried in here somewhere. It’s stuck between the folds of a brain I am trying to call out of early retirement.) Peace.

 

Official Kirkus Review of The Gyre Mission or Who Do I Blow To Show My Thanks?

You tell yourself that whatever they say it doesn’t matter; whomever they assigned to read your book just didn’t ‘get’ it. Fuck ‘em. Who are they to judge my talent?
‘They’ of course, is Kirkus Indie Reviews. You pay them $$$ and they’ll give you an unbiased opinion of your novel. Don’t like it? No problem, they’ll bury it as if it never happened. Find a line in there that you can use? Example: ‘Although it seems as if the author sincerely tried, this isn’t the most interesting book I’ve ever read.’ Translates into: ‘…most interesting…’ All you have to do is agree to it being published on their site and you can use some or all of it.
So, with baited breath, I awaited my fate. I wrote the review in my head many times. Sometimes it was fair, other times it slandered me, my book and my mother in one fell swoop. I was simultaneously anxious/enraged. ‘No one gets me!’ I’d rage to myself. ‘No one understands!’
And then one day it came, my review from Kirkus. I didn’t have the guts to look at it for a couple of days, certain that I was going to be enraged. One morning, after a refreshing night of sleep plagued by myriad nightmares, I thought ‘to hell with it, let’s get this over with.’ I clicked on the link, opened it, read it very slowly…
And found out it was GREAT! The reviewer not only ‘got’ it, they really must have enjoyed it as well. I danced around my trailer like a man who owned the world, swinging my arms in the air, shaking my fist, yelling ‘I told you mother fuckers! I told you!’ I was simply bursting out of my skin. The tag line they gave me at the end to use is: ‘A visually engaging, irrefutably intoxicating adventure.’ They compared me to H.P. Lovecraft, said my writing had the ability to make even the most steadfast readers squirm. For the whole thing go to this link: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/edgar-swamp/the-gyre-mission-journey-to-the-sshole-of-the-worl/ and see for yourself that the reviewers at Kirkus are absolutely the best at what they do! Thanks guys (and gals)! You really made my day even if it doesn’t help me sell a single copy and I’m sucking cock for crack money behind the Greyhound bus terminal on 55th (right behind the dumpster, you can’t miss me. I’ll bring my own chapstick). Peace!

 

Man Whore 101; Just Another Day In Paradise

I sat down to write a blog post about another funny pet-sitting incident and found that, at my current pet-sitting job, it was all but impossible to come up with something because the pets were, in a word, distracting. While pounding away at my laptop the parrot (Pedro, colored a festive red and sporting an extensive vocabulary) kept shrieking “I want to come out! I want to come out!” at the top of his lungs while Henry, a yellow lab, kept blindsiding me with love/lick attacks every ten minutes or so when he got bored with licking his massive, overly-sized, veiny balls. Not to mention Lilly, the little poodle-mix who, whenever the spirit moved her (which was quite often) decided that a good bout of incessant barking was necessary to keep the household vibe flowing smoothly. It was within this chaos that I, the ever-fearless writer extraordinaire, tried in vain to concentrate upon what would merely be a 500-1000 word post that would probably be read by two people. Oh the humanity!
Yes, the trials and tribulations of a writer beset with the occupation of tending to people’s pets is fraught with interruptions; sometimes I wonder why the hell I got into this business in the first place and then I remember: I dropped out of college and went on the road with a grunge/metal band and failed to make any money. After an extensive tour of duty as a fry cook, grill cook, pizza maker, sandwich maker and prep-cook in various restaurants, ultimately leading me to working in a dog kennel and then becoming a veterinary technician, this seemed like a dream job. I stayed in a lot of mansions, swam in a wide variety of saltwater pools, drank gallons of expensive, bottled beer and watched The Simpson’s on TV’s big enough to screen the latest Pixar masterpiece.
But after a while you yearn for your own house (in my case trailer-cue the banjo music maestro, please), and your own bed. Lately I’ve noticed that I dream crazy, vivid, lucid dreams while I’m at my place and hardly dream at while I’m pet-sitting. That can’t be good.
When I think about it, I find it amazing that I was able to write my novel The Gyre Mission: Journey to the *sshole of the World under such conditions. I barely wrote any of it at my trailer. I pet sat so much between 2009 and 2012 that the time I spent at the trailer was mostly consumed by drinking binges and intense masturbation sessions. Good times, yes, very good times…
So, as if to punctuate this entry with a hefty dose of realism, I was just interrupted during the writing of this blog by the house owner’s mother. The dogs started going crazy and, after a quick inspection I found her trying every key on her ring in an attempt to gain entry. She claimed to have sent me a text to inform me that she’d be stopping by but, alas, I never got it. So for almost an hour I entertained this elderly woman as she stumbled around the large house, going from room to room, asking after each pet (I failed to mention there was also a gecko and a beta fish). I assured her that Gecky had enough crickets to eat and that the fish didn’t appear to be suffering from ‘swim bladder’, a condition she was certain the poor little fellow had. I watched with ensuing hilarity as she tried to have a conversation with Pedro, but his vast knowledge of the English language far surpassed hers and he overwhelmed her. Recognizing defeat, she decided to go home.
After letting her out and locking the door behind her I took a deep breath, let it out, and wondered if maybe my old job manning the wing station at Hooters was still available. I recalled that the job left me feeling very conflicted (in between bouts of horniness I was plagued by a terrible, all-consuming depression) and thought that maybe I’d give them a call. What the hell, couldn’t hurt.

 

Are You Questioning My Authority? You Are? Damn!

When you take care of pets professionally, one thing you begin to recognize is the power struggle that exists between the pet and you. As the hired caretaker, their perception of your place in the hierarchy of their household requires some scrutiny. I often used to joke that some pets thought of it like this: 1) themselves 2) their owner 3) the other pets/toys 4) the plants 5) me. Of course this wasn’t always true, but dealing with the pampered pets that I have, I ran into it quite often. Enough to dedicate a blog to it at any rate.
One of my first clients was an elderly woman’s extremely spoiled cocker spaniel. When this dog wanted something, she wanted it NOW. I’d taken her out for a walk before a Packer’s/Vikings game, wanting to make sure I had no distractions. Barely the first quarter had gone by and she wanted to go out again. Since she’d already done her business, I told her to wait until halftime (yes, she understood me, of this I am certain). When I wouldn’t make with the walk she jumped up on the couch, looked me in the eye, squatted, and took a piss. It was a white couch.
Another dog I cared for on a regular basis demanded a certain amount of playtime per day and, if it wasn’t met, would get quite surly. The amount of time he wanted to play? Every waking minute. While I was in his house nothing would do but that I constantly throw a toy or ball for him. The owners would tell me later that he slept for three days straight after I’d taken care of him.
Not all of them were so funny. One dog actually got violent with me if I wouldn’t let her have her way. When I walked her she would get agitated when she saw other dogs, and when I wouldn’t allow her to chase after them she would bite me instead. Fortunately she was a little dog, but the bites still hurt. On one occasion she wanted to go outside and bark at something (squirrels, birds, leaves blowing by) and when I didn’t let her she crept up on me stealthy as a fox (are foxes really that stealthy? For the purposes of this blog let’s say they are) where I was lying on the couch. She jumped on my chest and stood over me, her face in mine. I froze, watching her carefully. Before I could say ‘nice little doggy doggy’ she took my lips in her teeth and bit me so hard I thought I was going to require a visit to the emergency room. Pulling her off must have been a hilarious sight; it’s too bad I don’t have video to post on youtube. To this day I have a small, white, crescent shaped scar on my top lip you can see clearly when I smile.
Yes, the question of authority has been raised by many of my furry friends, and my job first and foremost has always been to let them have their way as much as possible, just so I don’t get hurt.