Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

An unpunished coup is a training exercise.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

Don’t expect peaches from an apple tree.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

If you are still in the GOP, you are an extremist.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

Innocent people don’t delay justice.

No Justins, No Peace

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

This blog will pay for itself.

No one could have predicted…

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

You are here: Home / Pet Blogging / Dog Blogging / Early Morning Open Thread: Dog Daze

Early Morning Open Thread: Dog Daze

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From commentor Jacy:

This is Wilson, sleeping on Nick.
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We just passed our one-year anniversary of adopting Wilson on August 28th. I wasn’t looking for another dog. We already had two who are old and set in their ways, and a cat who does not suffer fools gladly. But my daughter’s friend volunteers at the local shelter and she called to let me know there was a Boston Terrier who had just come in, so I went down to take a look. I felt no connection with the little Boston, and knew she’d be adopted almost immediately anyway. But as I was walking out, I saw a little dog at the back of one of the runs. He couldn’t get to the front, because the three larger dogs in front were all crowding the gate. He looked pathetic, and as I walked past, he just laid down and put his head on his paws.
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He was in terrible shape. He had a punctured cornea, was missing patches of hair from mange, and was about a third underweight. They had found him running on the highway. When I picked him up, he put his head on my shoulder and just sighed. Well, that was that. A year later he is glossy and fat, and his eye (much to the amazement of the vet, who thought it might have to come out) has healed with just a tiny, cloudy scar.
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Wilson is a terrible little dog. He jumps on the counters when you’re not looking and eats anything he can find. He once ate two pounds of beef jerky, followed by an entire box of snack cakes. That was a fun weekend. He must be constantly touching you, which means he must sleep under the covers with you, with his head on your pillow. If he hears something in the middle the night, like, say, the ice maker, he’s up with a fusillade of barks that would wake the dead. We’ve had to install a permanent baby gate to the living room, because we can’t convince him that that room is NOT OUTSIDE, and he insists on peeing on anything in there.
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But, also, Wilson is 17 pounds of sheer joy in living. Every bowl of kibble is a banquet. Every word of praise a sonnet. Every ride in the car a Caribbean cruise. The boys can carry him around like a dolly all day long and he loves it. If you go out to get the mail and don’t take him, the minute you come back it’s all, “OH, BOY, OH BOY, YOU WERE GONE SO LONG AND NOW YOU’RE BACK, IT’S THE BESTEST DAY EVER!” We are much richer for having him our lives.

Reader Interactions

30Comments

  10. 10.

    El Cid

    I’m sure that discussing this means you hate the troops and love Saddam and bin Laden.

    WASHINGTON {McClatchy} — When Lt. Col. Dave Wilson took command of a battalion of the 4th Brigade of the 1st Armored Division, the unit had just returned to Texas from 14 months traveling some of Iraq’s most dangerous roads as part of a logistics mission.
    __
    What he found, he said, was a unit far more damaged than the single death it had suffered in its two deployments to Iraq.
    __
    Nearly 70 soldiers in his 1,163-member battalion had tested positive for drugs: methamphetamine, cocaine and marijuana. Others were abusing prescription drugs. Troops were passing around a tape of a female lieutenant having sex with five soldiers from the unit. Seven soldiers in the brigade died from drug overdoses and traffic accidents when they returned to Fort Bliss, near El Paso, after their first deployment.
    __
    “The inmates were running the prison,” Wilson said.
    __
    What Wilson had to deal with, however, was hardly an isolated instance.
    __
    With the U.S. drawdown in Iraq, the Army is finally confronting an epidemic of drug abuse and criminal behavior that many commanders acknowledge has been made worse because they’d largely ignored it during nearly a decade of wars on two fronts.
    __
    The Army concedes that it faces a mammoth problem.
    __
    A 350-page report issued in July after a 15-month investigation into the Army’s rising suicide rate found that levels of illegal drug use and criminal activity have reached record highs, while the number of disciplinary actions and forced discharges were at record lows.

    People who don’t think we should look the other way at such minor things as rampant sexual assaults and DUI’s are a bunch of America-hating hippies.-

  13. 13.

    Kristine

    I love these adoption stories.

    He looked pathetic, and as I walked past, he just laid down and put his head on his paws.

    Yup, that would have killed me. The sigh as he lay his head on my shoulder would have been the final nail.

    FWIW, my adoptee Gaby claimed a corner of the living room as her emergency toilet area right from the start. I covered the spot in plastic bags and piddle pads, but she often avoids them–I think she thinks they’re a rug–so it’s hit or miss literally as well as figuratively. In her case, the issue is a combo of tiny bladder and IBD. When she has to go, she has to go, and 5-6 hours indoors is about her limit–my vet has the same issue with her chihuahua, so it may be a small dog thing. Big difference compared to King, whose bladder I am convinced has auxiliary tanks. Different situation from a boy dog staking claims to his room, I guess. Or maybe a glimpse into their past, and how they lived before…and perhaps a reason why their previous owners discarded them. Patience can be a scarce commodity.

  14. 14.

    bkny

    @El Cid:

    jesus, shades of vietnam (on so many levels). after years rebuilding the army, idiot son’s golden adventure has ruptured that progress.

    the damage that administration inflicted on this country will haunt us for decades.

  17. 17.

    Athenae

    Aww, kidlet and doglet.

    Animals are just so completely devoted. You are their whole world. The sun rises and sets with you. It’s ridiculous how easily they love.

    A.

  18. 18.

    El Cid

    @bkny: Well, George H. W. Bush did declare after the bombarding and bulldozing of Iraqis in the first Persian Gulf War that we had finally “kicked the Vietnam Syndrome”, meaning that we’d use our military when & where we felt like it and we wouldn’t have to pay attention to the lessons we thought we had learned back then.

  19. 19.

    John Harrold

    So I was reading this thing from the value voters summit which mentioned the following:

    Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) — introduced to the audience as “the man who stopped global warming” (but not, you know, in the good way) — spoke at length about all the “problems that will happen” if “you let open gay activity in the military.” He called on attendees to jam Senate switchboards to shutdown the Defense Appropriations bill vote this week. He’s mad as hell about the end of DADT, and from the applause it seems like the crowd was mostly with him.

    It seems as though repeal of DADT is on a cusp of sorts and it could go either way. I was thinking it might be prudent for Tim F or someone to start doing something for the repeal of DADT like what the blog did for health care reform.

  21. 21.

    quaint irene

    Wow, two pounds of beef jerky. I bet you made sure he didn’t sleep with you that night, huh? ;-)

    Oh, and Nick is pretty damn cute, too.

  23. 23.

    asiangrrlMN

    Awwww! Wilson and Nick are such a cute pair! Such a heart-warming story, too.

    @Yutsano: You forgot obligatory PUPPEH! That is the one movie of his I most want to see (I haven’t seen any) since all my dreams are nightmares.

  24. 24.

    El Cid

    @stuckinred: Yeah, I guess you’re right. You know, if you’re going to drive an army out of Kuwait, you might as well destroy the nation’s electrical grid, water systems, sewer systems, and civilian areas, because, why the fuck not?

  25. 25.

    SIA

    @Jacy, thank you for that beautiful story. I tear up when I read these stories, but I can’t stop reading them. I love your dog/boy pair.

  26. 26.

    txvoodoo

    I love happy rescue stories. My 3 pups are all rescues, and bring me joy every day. This is Catie, our latest. We had recently lost our elder dachshund, and didn’t anticipate getting a new one, but the other 2 had become despondent and lethargic with their friend gone. We had Catie brought over for a home visit, and within 15 minutes, the other 2 were frolicking and playing with her.
    Photo of Catie

    All 3 of my pups

  27. 27.

    jacy

    Ah, now Nicky has seen this, and he wants to know much he gets paid for being famous on the internets. :) Good thing he’s willing to be paid in LEGO. Luckily, as far as I know, Wilson can’t read.

  28. 28.

    Anne Laurie

    @Kristine: Since Gaby is a spayed female (and may have been a mother, before you knew her) she may have the same “weak bladder muscle” problems that plague some older human women. Our late retired showgirl Candy was “incorrigible” about leaving puddles in the house unless she got a supplemental estrogen pill every week. Since Candy was so tiny,only 5lbs, we had to get her very-low-dose estrogen pills compounded at a local pharmacy that still sends us flyers marketing to ‘ladies of a certain age’…

    Don’t know if your vet suggested estrogen supplements for Gaby, but apparently it’s one of those word-of-mouth solutions which hasn’t made the textbooks yet. They made Candy’s life a lot happier, though — she wasn’t a very clueful little dog (if she were a person, she’d have been Goldie Hawn) but it obviously confused her when she found herself standing in a puddle without warning!

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