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Wednesday, March 23, 2005
Big, Scary Chihuahua
Yesterday as Pork Chop and I did our daily reconaissance of the neighborhood, I spied the mailman coming our way. I shortened the leash so that Pork Chop wouldn't be able to reach him. Not good enough. He stopped several houses away from us and stood watching our approach. So, I called to him, "Would you feel better if I picked her up?" He was relieved, "Ma'am, that little dawg, this whole street HER territory and I gonna let her have it."
One day last week as we were coming in the home stretch, a young lady came up from behind us. I had not heard her and so was not prepared for Pork Chop's furious rush. With a growly snarly roar of small dog noise, she charged at the girl's ankles. I quickly picked Pork Chop up and smacked her, but that little dog was still cussing under her breath all the way back into the house, "I almost had'er, I coulda took her out, I coulda been a contendah."
The other day we saw a man working in his yard a few houses from mine and across the street. This is a neighbor whom I had not as yet met. He called out in a friendly way and began to cross the street, a smile on his face, "Well, neighbuh! I ain' mechoo yet." About then Pork Chop decided he was close enough and started yelling at him. He kind of jumped back, took a good look at her, and returned to his side of the street from which safe haven he called, "I gonna lechoo have all that side-uh-the street. No way I gonna mess me wif no chihuahua. No way. That one ver' big little chihuahua." So true, so true.
It's All About Incentive
At first with Pork Chop, I was discouraged regarding her prospects as a learner of social skills and tricks. For one thing, I am not a good dog trainer, more like disastrously bad. Additionally, she seemed to have the intelligence of a cabbage. The first time I worked with her re. "SIT", she not only did not sit, I could not force her to sit without fearing to break her little back legs. She stiffened up like a board. That was a week and a half ago. Now she sits right away when told to do so. What made the difference? Sara Lee thin-sliced roast beef. Before the Sara Lee, I got indifferent results using cheese, turkey, or ham. I spread a third of a slice over each training session. A teeny little bite each time she does soemthing right.
Besides SIT, she now can do UP..which means stand on her back legs and walk a couple of steps. This is the preliminary to learning to dance. So there's hope for the little dog. I would love to have her learn to do everything Lydia's dog Bugscuffle used to do. Bugs could dance, beg, "sing", do "shamey, shamey" with her paws over her eyes, sit, hold a treat on her nose until told OK, and then toss it up and catch it, roll over, heel, go get in her naughty box, down, stay, come, fetch, jump through a hoop, and take the top off a Tupperware container if it held a treat for her. Bugs was so well-trained that if she was doing something wrong, all you had to do was clear your throat, and look at her, and she fixed herself. All of that seems like too much to ask of Pork Chop, starting her education at age five. Too, Bugs was trained by the great Nancy who could teach a cow to rhumba. However, the progress Pork Chop made in a week and a half under the influence of Sara Lee urges me forward.
One more thought about Sara Lee...today the kids were here at lunch time. Sadie and Benny wanted hot dogs. Sadie ate hers holding it in her hand and waving it at the dog, letting the dog have a lick now and then, and finally tossing it on the floor for the dog to have it all. I grabbed it, thinking about Pork Chop's diet. Then I reconsidered and broke it into small pieces. I tried using these as training incentives and was mostly ignored. This dog has a discriminating palate. She wants only the best and most expensive incentives.
The cutest thing about her is that she talks all the time...I don't mean bark...I mean she makes little sounds as she sits beside me or on my lap, itty bitty grunts and squeaks. I think I'm becoming attached to Pork Chop. I decided to get her, intended to treat her well, thought she was cute, but none of that meant I liked her. She's talking me into liking her. She's only been here for a week and a half, and if she were taken away I would miss her terribly. Right now she is on my lap, nose tucked under my elbow, asleep, emitting barely audible dogisms.
Monday, March 21, 2005
Small Dog Makes Big Disturbance
Having moved to the ghetto, I, of course, contracted with ADT, the world's biggest alarm company, to protect my lovely domicile. Since the end of Oct., 2004, I have set and unset the alarm again and again without ever setting it off. That was then. This is today.
This afternoon I saw that I am a slice away from no loaf of bread and decided on a quick trip to the store. Thinking to myself that this would be just a five+ minute excursion, I did not take Pork Chop. I quickly locked her in, used my portable keypad to activate the alarm, and beat it for the ghetto grocery before they closed.
I scampered around the grocery, joshed with my usual check out guys, hot-footed it to the car, then peeled out for home.
Getting out of the car at home I thought disapprovingly, "It is so annoying when people allow an alarm to screach unattended." For sure some alarm was going way, way off. Oh, MY!!! That was one loud alarm. Then it hit me. I was criticising MY OWN alarm which just about rocked the street. Great Scott! I rushed into the house, using my key. The alarm continued until I manually turned it off at the box.
Finally Pork Chop emerged from wherever, shivering and terrified. I picked her up, went to the phone and called ADT. The woman there said, "Yes, police are on their way. Your motion sensor went off a few moments ago." Here came the police. As they approached the porch, I set the dog down, thinking that I'd speak to the officer outside. Unfortunately as I opened the door, she darted out.
The near lane of street was filled with cars of policemen...thank goodness for a fine return on my tax dollars. I rushed out screaming to a policeman, "Grab that dog. She'll be killed in traffic!!!!!"
I raced my fat self after Pork Chop and so did a policeman. He was faster than I but each time he nearly caught Pork Chop, he'd change his mind and jump back as though he were afraid of her. Then he'd sort of herd her toward me with his foot. Eventually I thought to quit chasing and just call her.
"Pork Chop! Here, baby." She came instantly. Duh.
Holding the trembling Pork Chop firmly to my heart, I said to the nice policeman, "This is confusing. I had to key myself in, so how could someone have broken into my house. However ADT said that the motion sensor went off ........and it is aimed at the hall and stairwell....and only Pork Chop......oh, my gracious. This little dog set off the alarm."
With a beautiful white-toothed smile, the officer said...in a really sweet voice, "Forget about it, Ma'am. Every single alarm call that has come into the station since I have been a member of the Norfolk Police...it was the dog's fault. Don't you worry. Next time, we'll come just as fast, in case there's a really original situation where the criminal is not the family dog," and he winked.
The Vernal Equinox Arrives On 38th Street
Well, of course there are flowers...a row of jonquils across the front of the porch, and pansies. Then, too, it's nice and warm...and birds are cheeping and beeping. All of that. However, 38th Street celebrates the Vernal Equinox in it's own special way. The festivities kicked off as I sat on the sofa finally reading yesterday's paper. There it was, screaming and yelling from across the street, nothing so outrageous as to trigger my get-up-and-look alarm, just noise. Then it suddenly escalated right up and off the chart. Woooo! I mean some screaming, and the screamer was a man. I jumped up to look. Upstairs on her balcony one of the whores fought the pimp. He gripped her wrist, trying to hold her at arm's length and I thought, "What a knucklehead to scream like that. My goodness; he's twice her size." Then I saw the knife. She had a great big butcher knife and struggled to free her hand in order to stab the guy. Eventually he managed to reach the door and jumped inside, slamming the door behind him. Now she was screaming...on and on and on and on and on.....pounding on the door and screaming.
Meanwhile, below them on the sidewalk in a row of kitchen chairs, sat all the usual suspects. During the fracas with the knife, not one of the chair sitters even bothered to turn a head and look. They just stared lazily into the street, doing nothing, slumped in their chairs, arms hanging down, all of them slowly chewing gum with their mouths open. The screaming woman, however, finally got on one fellow's nerves. With no show of emotion, without even looking, he reached into his pocket, pulled out a short gun, aimed it up and back, generally toward the loud woman...and pulled the trigger, then calmly repocketed his piece. The gun noise was deafening, just one shot, but loud. She shut up.
Yes indeed, sounds of spring on 38th Street; a ho knife-fighting a screaming pimp and then gunfire.
Sunday, March 20, 2005
Different
Yesterday someone left a flyer on my porch about an Easter service to be held at the amphitheater at Old Dominion University a few blocks from here. The flyer suggested a website for further information. Two hours later I was still reading the huge website about this church's school 'system', it's home for pregnant girls, programs for every age and every problem. The black pastor has a B.S. from M.I.T. of all places...then some more degrees from other places having to do with religious studies. I guess that one fact intrigued me. What kind of person would be smart enough to earn a degree from the top technical/scientific school in the USA and would then leave that behind and become a minister? Another website listed this church as one of the megachurches in the US. 15 years ago it was 20 people meeting in a rented room.
Obviously, I thought, someone very dynamic was at the top of this organization. I called the church and was told there are three services each Sunday A.M....7/9/11:30. So Lydia and I took the kids and visited the place. I will be all week getting over it. It was astonishing. The sanctuary holds 3,000 and it was packed for the third time in one morning. The joint jumped. Explosively rythmic music, dancing, rapping, comedy, a drama presentation, a story for the kids. Benny loved it. He beamed from ear to ear, clapped and sang. Sadie did little baby dances out in the aisleway and no one minded a bit.
The pastor's message was re. parenting; funny and original, but very sternly old fashioned at the same time. You could probably summarize it by saying, "Be what you want your children to become." No, I'm not going to attend the Easter service they plan to hold at the University. Just one time of a service like that and I'm exhausted.
However, I was impressed.
The congregation was so big that it filled the parking lot and also filled the parking lot of the mall across the street...several city policemen were on hand to get worshippers across the street from the mall parking lot to the church. A great big church dedicated, according to their slogan, to "Changing the world one life at a time". Some time this week they will hold an outdoor service at one of the worst local housing projects with a big team of rappers, dancers, comedians, dramatists, singers, instrumentalists...all pushing a positive message of forgiveness and hope for people with ruined lives. Nothing wrong with that. Darn, if every church went right at bad things in that way, this would be a better world. I wish they'd choose the yellow apartment area of 38th Street as one of their targets for a good influence. As far as I could tell, they are doing God's work in the world, and I wish them well.
At the end of the service, the pastor asked all young parents among the congregants who had been raised in a home with drugs/violence/alcohol dependency/crime to stand while he said a special prayer over them. At least half the church stood up. He prayed that they would be strengthened to take a new direction from their pasts, to break the vicious circle of bad parenting behaviors. I thought it a very good thing.
One awkward note from their website. The pastor stated that the constitutional principal of separation of church and state has never met with much agreement in the black community, that black churches believe in doing all they can to push politics in their direction. Give him credit for saying what he really thinks, but I wonder about the continued tax-exempt status of a "white" church making such a claim. I do recall the case of a white Presbyterian Church somewhere in New Jersey where the pastor took strong public positions on all the issues, told his congregation how to vote, etc...and the church DID lose its tax exempt status at least for a while.
Personally I think a minister should be able to tell people to vote for chihuahuas if he wants to. Government should stay out of religion, but the religion in people's lives requires them to act in certain ways and voting in support of certain positions would be a logical extension of religious belief, I think.
Anyway, this was a different kind of Sunday. Pork Chop and I are going to take a nap.
Saturday, March 19, 2005
La Porky Du Choppe
As you can see, if my hand were postitioned on the dog from front to back, the hand would be longer than the mutt. This is the newest member of my family, Pork Chop.
Friday, March 18, 2005
From The Sidewalk
I thought I knew what this neighborhood looked like but what I knew I saw from a car. Now, walking Pork Chop, I find how the place appears from the sidewalk. We turn away from the yellow apartments and go left, then turn left again and are in Colonial Place. Each house there differs from its neighbors, the mark of an area not all built by a 'developer' but accumulating over several hundred years. Lots of landscaping variety. Some homes are Better Homes and Gardens Showplace quality and some seem pretty run down, but all are interesting. Today my favorite was the house with a 6' high red camellia hedge on three sides. To a recently ex northerner, those flowers were so beautiful as to seem fake. How could there be such a profusion of huge, fabulous blooms the day after St. Patrick's Day?
It's nice to see great big porches with really good furniture; chairs, rockers, tables, swings, enormous urns of flowers, scattered toys and newspapers. Not just stuck on the front of the house like a pin on a jacket, these porches are used. Most yards have one or two dogs screaming abuse at Pork Chop and she gives back as good as she gets. Most have a cat snoozing on a sunny spot, ignoring the dog noise. All the homes are big by modern urban standards, houses with three stories, lots of windows, a wing here, a garage extension there. Every home prominantly displays an alarm company sign; ADT, the most common... some GE...some Honeywell...others I forget. On a few houses I saw grill work over downstairs windows and doors. Everything looks old fashioned. Colonial Place like Ghent where Lydia lives is designated 'historic'. My side of 38th Street backs onto Colonial Place, so I'm at the edge of the "good area". Between Ghent and Colonial Place are Park Place and Kensington..no-kidding ghetto, with drugs, prostitution, child molestation, domestic violence, welfare fraud, poverty, laziness, gangs, and every other kind of human failure. The houses, though, are old and interesting. Supposedly within the next five years, Kensington will begin to look like the historic areas. Already, in the last year, property values, in spite of the character of the community, have risen by 13.5% at least, and average 22%. So I guess I just have to be patient. Last week I had a long talk with a policeman standing outside the hardware store. He told me that 20 years ago Ghent was as bad as Kensington is now, that change may be slow, but it's happening. I must admit that on every block around here is at least one house undergoing some kind of rehab. As a matter of fact, the only really horrible situation is those yellow apartments. Apparently this has been true for a long time.
On Wednesday I met my over-the-back-fence neighbor for the first time...I was out with Pork Chop. Like me, he and his wife are retired. He enthusiastically invited me to join the local homeowners' association in order to 'help bring about positive change as fast as we can'. When I asked what a homeowners' meeting is like, he said, "Uh, well, one item on the agenda is always those yellow apartments across from you."
Me: "Seriously!? Since how far back?"
Him: "As long as I can remember, at least 40 years."
Maybe I'll give the Homeowners' Association a miss. They don't seem very speedy change enablers.
Thursday, March 17, 2005
Whining Anyway
Really I have nothing to whine about, but I'm going to whine anyway. It's raining and I'm tired of it. Also, it's chilly and I'm tired of that. I don't have to appreciate this weather and I'm darn well not going to.
The other day a friend e-mailed to tell me that in her opinion, I have everything. That may be true, but it's raining.
This afternoon Lydia and the kids were here for a while. They are wonderful, just great. Nothing could be better than to see those precious little children. And Lydia is a fabulous person. I am extremely fortunate to have them so close and to see them so often but every time I looked away from these fine people and looked out a window, there was all that wretched rain.
I really like my house in the ghetto. As houses go, it's crazy but interesting. It's a perfect house for me but at the moment rain is falling all over it.
I have this way-too-cute chihuahua on my lap but she wants to go for a walk and it's raining.
I think the problem stems from the fact that this is St. Patrick's Day and the weather is celebrating by making like Ireland where rains falls pretty much all the time.
Monday, March 14, 2005
Pork Chop Moves In
While determined not to be ruled by this liitle scrap of mutt, I am, on the other hand, trying to accommodate her habits and likes as much as possible. Does that sound like a long way around telling on myself that the dog already runs the house? Uh-huh. The first rule I made was that the dog sleeps on the floor. Didn't happen. The dog squirrelled out a comfortable nest on the bed and I had to sleep on the periphery. Why didn't I yell, "Hey! Get on the floor!" ? I didn't because...I don't know why. Then I went to sleep and woke up in the middle of the night and found that Pork Chop was snuggly weaselled in next to me with her nose on my elbow. I laid there for a minute thinking, "This has got to stop now," and then Pork Chop began to emit tiny sounds and tremble a little bit. I thought, "Gosh, the dog is having nightmares, can't kick it to the curb while that's going on," so I decided to put up with the status quo. The second I made that decision, Pork Chop stopped trembling and making noises. It's like she was listening to me think.
The only good thing I can say is that she is really housebroke and didn't make me get up and take her out during the night. Well, alright. The other good thing is that this is a very cute-looking dog.
Pork chop seems to think I'm either a chair or a dogmobile. The second I sit anywhere, like now, she's up on my lap turns three times, and lies down in a little circle, seemingly asleep. When I take her out to go potty, the instant she's finished, she tries to get me to pick her up.
Have I been tough about anything? Yes. Food. Pork Chop has been on a diet,but she weighs eight pounds still and needs to go down about three more pounds. The foster care person told me to strictly limit her to one fourth cup of dry kibbles twice/day and no treats. Yesterday on the way home, we stopped for burgers and fries. She sat on my lap power-staring at my fries and almost had a heart attack while I ate my burger, finally...in despair...tragically burying her nose under my elbow. I didn't even give her a crumb of fry/burger. She WILL lose the lard. Lydia cried and begged for the dog to get some McDonalds, but I was tough.
Also, I haven't carried her. When we go out, she walks, and that's that. In the house, too.
Saturday, March 12, 2005
Going To The Dogs
I have not had a dog in the house since Lydia was still in school and her little dog Bugscuffle died of cancer. Why not? Well, after a perfect dog dies and is buried in the yard wrapped in its favorite blanket, no dog would be an adequate replacement. Nothing could replace Bugsy. I said, "That's it. No more dogs." Then the rules were changed in my town house complex and dogs were banned. I could have had a dog, but in order to do that, I'd have had to move.
Now it's been about 15 years of doglessness and tomorrow we're all going down to North Carolina to pick up a new dog. A chihuahua is moving in. Is this a good idea? Probably not. Soon find out. The only dogs in this block are pit bulls used in illegal dog fights over behind the yellow apartments. If you had to bet which type of dog would prevail in a sidewalk confrontation...chihuahua or pit bull...which would you back to win? I have been told that 'Pork Chop" is a doggy diva with outrageous attitude. She will, I hear, rule my home with an itty bitty paw of iron. We'll see, we'll see.
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