Why I Shop At Walmart

    At this time last year, our house was very different. Harp had offered the spare room to an acquaintance of hers. It was awkward, and the young lady's friend was here a lot, and Harp though it was just temporary, but as the weeks rolled on, it appeared it was not. So I had to be The Boss of the house and deal with it. So we concluded, all in all, to sum up, that she would move out right after Christmas. The more I learned about the situation the more I began to feel that Harp's tender heart was being taken advantage of, as this girl's dad lived in Wyoming, her mom lived in Littleton and her boyfriend had his own apartment. None of this matched the "Mom, my friend from school is going to be homeless, can she stay for us for a month or so?" She also adopted a dog, and brought it to my house and I immediately said "Nope".  When you are staying  rent free in someone else's home, you do not adopt a dog and expect them to be OK with it. This was one of many clues that something was very wrong with this woman. I put down my foot, and the dog left to live with her friend.

  At Thanksgiving, Genoa arrived back home with her rescue bear, who was masquerading as a dog. He is now two years old and over 100 pounds and thinks he's the size of a poodle. Within what seemed like seconds, the young lady's friend was also suddenly "homeless", and for some reason she came to our house---with the dog and her cat. At this point it was obvious we were being taken advantage of as, again, the young lady had two divorced parents to choose from. I threw the cat out that night, it returned to her mom's house. As the drama unfolded and we worked toward getting both women out of the house, the dog became an issue. His name is Indy, and he was being kept in the room, no walks, and as far as we could tell, no food. We kindly offered to pay the young lady the adoption fee and keep him. And that is the Reader's Digest version of how I ended up with three dogs, none of them mine.

  "Zeppelin", whose nickname has become "Zippy", is the 100 pound bear masquerading as a dog. G adopted him in Durango, he was surrendered by a family who had to move and couldn't keep him. He was  a year old, about 75 pounds, and resembled a black lab more than anything. His personality is also lab, as he loves everyone all of the time and needs to prove it by sitting on them or chewing lovingly on their head.  The best guesses of two vets, the Durango rescue and everyone we meet at walks and at the dog park,  are that he is black lab, tosu inu (mastiff) and possibly chow or pit bull. But mostly lab. Mostly social, needy, loving, chewing lab. Chewing is our topic of discussion.

  We had a lab for thirteen years, a great old man.  He was a pure bred-he had papers and everything that we never cared about. We adopted him from a family who wanted him to be an outside dog, and he was not having any of that. Black lab. Needs to be with humans, dude. We had so many issues getting him adapted to his crate, to walking on a leash, to not crying when we were not home. Sundown Macaroni was his full Christian name, and he is a blog unto himself. The point is we know lab behavior pretty intimately, and this bear is mostly lab in nature and personality and ears and tail. The size is mastiff. Sundown chewed through our house for three years before growing out of it. He ate furniture, mostly, and rugs. Shoes. Lotsa shoes. But he outgrew it in a few years, and our lives returned to normal.

  We now have Zippy chewing, but he's more creative and selective. He likes foam or anything with padding or stuffing and thick fabrics. Also Indy, he likes to chew on Indy. His favorite chew toys are the ropey ones, because he can lie down and concentrate on dismantling them. If I bring him a chewy home from the store after school, it's been dismantled by bed time. Unfortunately, he cannot differentiate between a chewy and a bra, a chewy and Jim's slippers, a chewy and everybody's shoes...he has expensive tastes, as well. So we have taken to just buying cheap shoes and underwear at Walmart, knowing he's going to to eat it any way.

  Which is why I shop at Walmart. I can't have nice things.