25 June. My cousin and her dogs have left to go back home.
This is the story of June, 2023 using my cousin's arrival at my house on 15 June, and the discovery of the Titan Pieces on 23 June as the parameters. While mathematically that does not appear to be the entire month, believe me, it is.
I began to emerge from the Not Covid Bronchial Virus the last week of May, after missing the final week of school and my anniversary with a cough that I thought would kill me. I was coughing so hard one night, I was actually choking. I could not get my breath. As I sat in the bathroom unable to take in any air, watching the spit and drool on the floor I thought "Well this is a crappy way to die." I was astounded my extreme crisis did not wake my husband. But that's another story for some other day.
By the 15th we were all slowly recovering from the nasty cough that I had so generously brought home to share with my husband and adult child staying with us. I had successfully interviewed for and not received a teaching job in Jeffco, and it felt like summer had finally arrived for me-meaning I was no longer sick, I was giving up on job applications and my house was clean and calm.
My aunt passed the last week of school, so my cousin had been down here since then (she lives in the Gunnison/Montrose area) to care for her step father, whose health is failing, and who is emotionally wrought after the loss of my aunt. On the 15th of June, I received a panicked call from my cousin asking if she could stay with me for a bit. Those who know, know; if you're dealing with a second marriage, children from both parties and a Will, things are never smooth. So. She came to stay with me. Her and her two dogs.
This would be an excellent time in the narrative to mention that we had five cats and three dogs of our own in the house at the moment. But I didn't flinch. She's family.
The Dogs
Her dogs are a Scottie, which I kept calling "George" even though his name is Charlie (more on how irrelevant that is later) and Paco, an elderly and mostly deaf Pomeranian mix. Both are cute. Nether one has been raised around cats.
So the first shift in my finally clean and calm household, was the cats realizing they were going to be chased. Relentlessly. George is either not smart enough to understand a cat shredding his nose, or a true generational Cat Hater from back in the days when cats and dogs fought over the same territory, and many Scotties lost their lives, and George must avenge their deaths at all costs. In my head he sounds like Mel Gibson yelling "Freedom!" as he chases the cats into the full length mirror, which is not anchored, and manages to not knock it to the ground.
Togo, Indie, Marty and I had gotten into a summer morning routine. They get to go on walks, but due to Togo's bossiness, they must go separately. Togo, as she is a sled dog, thinks Indie and Marty are on her team, and she must pull and bark them into submission on every walk. We tried that once, my knee shifted like the tectonic plates, and we never went together again. Togo goes first, and I leave the boys behind to cry and dance and wail, because they forgot that yesterday, I came back and took them for their walk, and the day before, etc etc ad nauseum. Then I come home, release Togo into the house (she is 46% Husky and therefore not permitted in the backyard without an escort: she will escape), leash up the boys and do it again. On the boys' walk, Togo is the one wailing and barking in the house. This makes for a stressful morning for my neighbors, who think I am abusing the animals, but is the only way to insure all the canines are calm for the rest of the day.
Enter Charlie and Paco; A Scottie dog I renamed "George", and a deaf elderly Pomeranian.
Togo has no playmates. Indie is old and grumpy, pees in the house and has the general demeanor of a speed bump. Togo will jump over him repeatedly, then get down on her haunches to entice him to play, to no avail. Marty-whose full Christian name is Marty Feldman due to his bulging eyes-is too nervous to play. He'll throw in to chase the cats, and we do have him to thank that nary a Door Dasher or Amazon delivery person has ever entered the house due to his alarm barking.
Turns out, George likes to play. A Lot. So much he will jump on Togo, chase her, let her chase him, etc etc. So I have had two weeks of not needing to walk the dogs, because they are playing. A Lot. So that was nice, wasn't that a nice story?
George, however, will escape out the front door. He runs like a rocket. I think he collapses his skeleton, I swear he got through a door that was open two inches. They have a doggie door at home, but here we have to let them in and out. Which George did not like, and so he bolted out the front door the first chance he had. He tore up the street and hooked a right through the neighbor's driveway and into their backyard without looking back.
He was long gone before I could even get my cousin's attention. She shrugged and said "He's a jerk, he does that. He'll come back."
I hated to be That Cousin, but I asked how will he come back, he has no idea where he lives. He's been here three days. He also defiantly ignores anyone calling for him and/or does not actually know his name. To be clear, when calling for him I did not call him "George".
It took the entire family thirty minutes of calling before we determined that George does not know his name. To be clear, we were not calling him "George", we were using his given name. My cousin walked up the street with me to try and call for him, to no avail. She said again "He'll come back when he's hungry" and I had no choice but to firmly remind here that we live near open space, George has run toward open space, it is going to be dusk in an hour and we have coyotes, fox, raccoons, rattle snakes and bob cats. I am unsure if it was the list of wildlife or the wild tone of my voice that prompted her to get in her car and drive up the street to look for him. When she got to the gate at open space, he simply emerged and jumped into the car.
He's a cute dog. He just has no idea what his name is. He does the same thing in the backyard, when it's time to come in, you can call all afternoon. He will toddle over when he feels like it. I posit that his little brother, Paco the Deaf Pom, is to blame for this behavior. He sees Paco ignoring his name, so why shouldn't he?
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