Squirrels love HBO

Two days ago, I get a call from my wife. Nothing unusual about that - we talk frequently. I'd probably talk to her a lot even if we weren't married, although I imagine we'd talk about different things.

I may be getting off topic here.

Anyway, as happens every once in awhile, the internet at the house had gone out. So adopting my best Apple Care/Charter Cable rep voice, I walked her through the reseting everything process that always gets it back up and running.

Well, almost always. Not this time.

Of course, the moment that the internet went down just happened to be the exact moment when she needed it to get some important work done. Joking, she said, "I guess the squirrels have been eating the cable line."

I think you see where this is going.

We called Charter, and scheduled a service call for the next day. When the guy came out, he realized that the problem wasn't in the house, but on the line coming into the house.

Come to find out three other houses on the block lost cable service. The reason? Squirrels eating the cable lines.

Apparently squirrels chomping on basic cable is a common problem that just took a while for us to experience. I know from my German Shepherd going crazy and barking out the window that the squirrels use the power and cable lines in the neighborhood for their personal freeway to get around.

I just didn't know they also used them for dinner.

Anyway, they - the cable company, not the squirrels - had one of the main streets blocked off for about four hours while they replaced the damaged cable and got everybody their Daily Show and Food Channel again.

There's a joke here somewhere about how nuts it is that squirrels would eat cable. It's right there in front of me, but I'm not going for it.

Guess I'm not that cheeky.

Dog tired

If you’ve been keeping up with this blog – and if you have, you really should investigate getting a library card and reading something more worthwhile – you may already know we recently brought home a new addition to the family.

Her name is Lucy. And since she’s obviously not a German Shepherd, it’s pretty apparent I had no choice or say in the matter. The fact is I never saw Lucy until my wife and daughter walked in the door with her.

Let’s talk about what I like to refer to as “the real dog” for a moment. When we got our German Shepherd Max, the world’s greatest dog, we got him at a breeder. He is a pure bred long-haired German Shepherd. And he’s a German German Shepherd. He was actually imported from Germany, and because of that has more frequent flyer miles on Lufthansa than I do. He responds to commands in German. And when people hear us give him a command, they all ask the same question: “Does he speak German?”

It never gets old.

Since my wife and I are both working, we ponied up the money to have Max trained by the breeder before we brought him home. We figured the smart play was to make sure we didn't have a dog that big that we couldn't control. For six weeks, we drove out to the breeder in Corona on the weekends to work with him.

On the seventh weekend, we brought him home.

The reason I'm explaining what we did with Max is because we're not doing it with Lucy. She's a mutt, with some terrier in her blood. My daughter's friend's dog had puppies, and that's where she came from. No fancy kennels. No imports. No breeders. We're training her ourselves.

And while I'm perfectly capable, it is exhausting in a way I haven't felt in a long time.

Puppies like to sleep for a few hours at a time, then run around like Tasmanian devils for short bursts in between naps. And they have to be watched as they're spinning out of control, to make sure they don't hurt themselves or anyone else. Or break something. Or get so excited they have to express it in the only way they know how. Peeing in the house.

Then there's the part about teething. What you don't notice at first glance - because you're so taken by how cute Lucy is -are the three rows of puppy shark teeth. Fortunately, once she bites that fleshy part of your hand between your thumb and index finger, you never forget.

Everything is a game to Lucy. When she's out in the back yard and done doing her business, my idea is to get her back inside. In her mind, the chase is on. She makes sure I have to chase her all over the yard and work up a good sweat before she decides to go back in the house. This is especially pleasant on mornings when I have to get to work.

The good news is now she's better about sleeping in her crate, and at least she doesn't decide to cry like she's being murdered until about five in the morning.

I was spoiled by Max, the world's greatest dog. And I'll be the first to admit I'm not so good or patient with the puppy stuff.

Even though she'll only weigh about a third of what Max does, and be less than half his height when she's fully grown, I'm hoping I'll grow to love her as much as I do my big old German Shepherd.

For right now, my favorite part is when she doesn't do what she's supposed to, and I get to say "Lucy, you got some 'splainin' to do."

The account executive of bodily organs

Here's how my Saturday went.

In the morning when I woke up, I found my dog Max on his pillow in our bedroom. Now, Max comes and goes in and out of our room during the night, but he's never there in the morning when we wake up. But I decided to just accept it for what it was: he finally realized he couldn't tear himself away from me.

When I left the room and called him though, he didn't come. He just stayed on his pillow, looking up at me with those big, brown eyes.

Something wasn't right in dogtown.

We wound up taking him to our dog-walker's vet since our local vet's office was closed. After an X-ray, we discovered why Max was being so sluggish: a grapefruit-sized tumor on his spleen.

It sounds awful, but it's apparently quite common in larger breeds - like German Shepherds - and usually around the eight-year mark. Max is eight and a half.

We were in shock how fast this came on him. Just the day before, we were playing with him in the yard, and he was chasing, jumping, barking and just generally trying to kill us (not literally - we love to play rough with him). The day before, the World's Greatest Dog was the World's Happiest Dog.

David Feldman, a close friend of ours for over 25 years, and the world's greatest vet, explained it like this: the problem is the spleen. If it were the heart, you'd notice his troubled breathing much earlier. If it were his brain, we'd see him unsteady on his feet. But in a dog, much like in a human, the spleen is pretty much a useless organ that does nothing, which is why as the tumor grows on it you don't notice it until it's almost too late.

My wife called it "the account executive of organs." Before you get all over me for that, she was an account person in her former life.

We wound up driving Max up to David's office in West Hollywood around eleven last night, and by midnight he was in surgery. Yes there are vets and emergency clinics closer to us, but when it comes to the big stuff, David and his staff are the only ones we trust. After we dropped Max off, we were able to breathe for the first time that evening.

About 2a.m., we got a call from the doctor at David's practice who did the surgery, saying the words we were hoping to hear, "It couldn't have gone better."

Now there are a few ways this can go. The tumor they removed along with the spleen is either malignant or benign. If it's benign, Max heals up and life goes on. If it's malignant, we have maybe two to four months if we do nothing, and maybe six to twelve if he goes through chemo. And of course, chemo brings its own set of pleasantries with it.

So we'll wait for the pathology report and then we'll have some decisions to make. But while we're waiting, we'll do what we've always done: love Max as unconditionally and fully as he's always loved us.

There are four of us in this house. Max's magic is that each of us thinks he loves us the most.

Don't call me Toto

While I love my German Shepherd more than any reasonable person – even a dog person - should, the truth is he’s not the only dog that’s fetched my heart and not given it back.

There was Fred, the one before Max.

Fred actually belonged to my wife. Having grown up with dogs as she did, I would've expected her to research the breed thoroughly, talk to breeders, get medical checks before she bought one. She did none of that. Instead, she let her heart do the window shopping and got Fred at a pet store years ago at Beverly Center.

When she held him, he spoke to her and said he needed to come home and live with her. Which coincidentally is the same way I wound up here.

I'd always been more of a big dog person. But the thing about Fred was he had no concept whatsoever that he wasn’t a big dog. He’d take on anything: Great Danes, Dobermans, Pit Bulls, FedEx drivers. Fear just wasn’t anything he knew about it. He was a great burglar alarm. Nothing got near the house without us knowing about it. And since Cairn terriers were bred to be ratters, we never had any trace of vermin anywhere near the house (not that we do now, but when Fred was around they didn’t even think about it).

The one downside to having a Cairn terrier was the way people reacted to him. As if it was the most original comment in the world and they were the very. first. person. EVER. to think of it, they’d inevitably say, “Oh look, Toto.”

Toto my ass.

Fred was a fighter, a lover, a guardian angel. He had a sense of humor. As he got older, he was also a cranky old man. He’d lay at the foot of the bed, and when you’d touch him, like a squeeze-toy he’d emit a “grrrrrrrr” letting you know exactly how happy he was about being touched while trying to sleep.

Fred's time to go came two weeks shy of his 17th birthday. Truthfully it probably came sooner, but none of us, especially my wife, were ready to let him go.

When we went to the vet for the final time, my daughter held him while he got the shot. We all cried - sad that he was gone, happy he'd live such an outstanding life for so long (17 is 119 in dog years).

The one thing I've learned is it doesn't matter whether I own a small dog or a big one.

They all seem to have the same giant heart.

Unseeing things

As a parent, you always wish you could control everything your children see. It's the part of you that wants to protect them from the images of ugliness and hurt in the world that once seen, will affect them deeply as they involuntarily replay them over and over.

My daughter saw a dog get hit by a car today. Not that there was anyway it could be good, but it was particularly bad in its violence and suddenness.

We'd just picked her up from winter camp. She'd had an awesome weekend, and was riding high on the fresh memory of it. The one thing she wanted to do when we picked her up was visit her grandmother, and her grandmother's new dog Buddy. (It's been a bad week for dogs: grandma had to put down her 14-year old Andrew earlier in the week. My daughter loved him and was with him at the end.)

After that visit, as we were leaving grandma's house, we saw a smaller - and we thought younger - German Shepherd wandering grandma's block. It had apparently been tied to something, because trailing behind it was a rope that had either been broken or chewed off. We tried to get the dog to come over to us, but it was scared and looked lost. We called grandma, and asked if the neighbors had a German Shepherd. Two of them did, but the dog we saw wasn't either of theirs.

The dog was heading towards a busy main street that borders grandma's neighborhood. We tried to head it off but couldn't.

It managed to cross the street, and we thought it would stay over there. We called Animal Control and the police department to let them know.

Unfortunately, the dog decided to go back across the street. As it walked to the other side, a car in the left lane slowed to let it pass. But a car in the right lane, that was going about 50, didn't. From the opposite side of the street where the dog had just come from, my daughter and I both saw it get hit and pinned under the car.

Many, many cars stopped to help, and the police received several calls. My daughter was hysterical, with full waterworks that would not be stopped.

I'd do anything to turn back time so she didn't have to have that image in her head.

It's times like these you come face to face with the adult hypocrisies you have no choice but to perpetrate. We told my daughter help was already on the way, explained how they would lift the car off the dog and then people who knew how to move injured animals would take him to be cared for.

Sadly and cruelly, the dog was still alive when we left. I have no doubt the first thing Animal Control did is put him down when they got there. Those weren't injuries he was coming back from.

Because we have a 7-year old German Shepherd we're beyond crazy about, we got emotionally invested in this lost dog almost instantly. I can't honestly say we would've made the same effort had it been a different breed (apologies to chihuahuas, but you're on your own).

So tonight, knowing this too shall pass, our daughter will sleep with us, feeling safe in the big bed while her mind works against her and her broken heart tries to mend.

And instead of celebrating her great weekend, we'll be saying prayers hoping the dog didn't suffer long and has found peace wherever he is. We'll also be saying prayers for the driver.

Although I have to admit I might be praying for something a little different for her.

Flush with pride

This isn't an actual picture of my house. But it might as well be.

When I woke up this morning, the trees on my front lawn and the street-side parkway were green, and the toilet paper was in full bloom.

For the second time in three weeks, one of my son's or daughter's friends thought highly enough of them to get together with even more of their friends, find someone with a driver's license and drive over here at 2:30 in the morning to TP our house.

I know it was 2:30 because before they sped off, one of the little f..darlings came up and rang our doorbell a half dozen times.

Is there a higher compliment? Apparently not.

I keep being told by my wife, and neighbors who don't have to clean up the aftermath, that it's a sign of fun and affection. They don't do it to houses of kids they don't know or like. That wasn't the case when I was growing up on the mean streets of west L.A. (north of Wilshire).

Where I lived, when a house got TP'd it was because people didn't like you. It was a "let's get 'em!" kind of thing.

A junior high lynch mob with Charmin instead of torches.

I keep getting told it'll probably happen again, usually runs through the school football season and I should just lighten up about it and ride it out.

I'll try to remember that in the coming Friday and Saturday nights, when I'm sleeping on the living room couch with baseball bat in hand, German Shepherd at my side, and the garden hose unkinked and set on jet spray just outside the door.