Back From Nowhere in Particular

Well, gosh.  I haven’t been here in a while.  I’d like to say, “I’ve been busy.”  But no busier than usual.   In fact, less busy in the past month.  Well, that’s not entirely true.  I retired on April 25^th.  But I still live by lists, if not by routine. 

Chase and I don’t get on BART very often these days.  Instead, we try to get in at least one walk a day down to Todos Santos Plaza in Concord (about a half mile away) or get on the bus and go up to the hardware store on Clayton Road. 

Chase gets mopey if we don’t get out.  He seems to think sleeping on the dog bed in my home office is okay, as far as it goes.  But that’s just it.  It doesn’t go very far.  He seems to want to be in that harness, going places.  So, we try to get out every day. 

On Patti’s days off, we try to work in a trip to the grocery store where he can sniff the things on the low shelves, even though he knows he’s not supposed to.  Or we walk somewhere to have a bite to eat.  We eat.  Chase sleeps under the table in front of me. 

Sometimes something breaks the routine.  Last week, a neighbor’s dog attacked Chase as we walked him and Cody the Wonder Poodle.  (I call him that because sometimes Cody sits there staring, as if he wonders what’s going on.)  The dog came running from one of the houses and lit into Chase, who went down the way he does when he and Cody play.  The dog’s owner was in hot pursuit and pulled him from Chase, after Patti kicked the attacker in the rear end.  Cody cried and barked as if he were the one who had been attacked.  Chase got up and wagged his tail, apparently unaware of the single hole bleeding from his right ear. 

A trip to the emergency vet followed.  Two surgical staples closed the hole, and a head wrap (see picture) kept the ear clean and in place.  Chase seemed offended by the head wrap, but too polite to say anything.  Instead, he just lay there with (if you’ll excuse the expression) a hangdog look.  We’re now in his second week.  The staples are supposed to come out next Monday.  The neighbor was apologetic and will pay the vet bills. 

I allowed myself to a month to decompress, adjust and reorient.  Now Chase and I are looking for new adventures that DON’T involve other dogs attacking him.  Our dream is still to be – as far as we know – the only TV reporting team in America that includes a guide dog.  So far, no takers.  But we’ll keep trying.  I’ll likely get back to a couple of unfinished novels (writing, not reading).  The Giants play almost daily, so we might jump on BART and catch a day game in the middle of the week if we can find anyone who wants to go along.