ngo13

Tonka is Home

To whom this may concern,

We have your dog.

We found him wandering around in traffic a couple weeks ago. When we pulled over and got out he ran right up to us. Smiling, tail wagging, happy to see people. He didn't hesitate to get into our van. We spent a fair amount of time driving the neighborhoods near where we found him, asking every person and group of kids if they recognized the dog. No one did. So we brought him home. We already had six dogs so we had to keep him isolated for a little while, but he didn't seem to mind the crate all that much. He ate well and slept hard.

Since we have been involved in animal rescue for well over a decade we know the drill. That night we put ads up on CraigsList, and Pets911, and read all of the lost dog sites. Over the next few days we kept looking for signs, for flyers in grocery stores and convenience markets, and kept waiting for you to call us. Two or three times a day we'd check the online lists looking for your ad, but never found a thing. We checked with animal control, and all the vets around here, but it seemed no one was looking for Tonka. Through the many days of looking for you we learned a few things about Tonka.

Right off the bat we found that you never had him fixed, and you never had him chipped. I believe that anyone who actually cares about their animals has this done as soon as they adopt a pet. But, maybe you had your reasons. Then we discovered that he was afraid of entering the house. That, along with the fact that Tonka is absolutely not house broken, and positively filthy, led us to believe he was an "outside dog". The dog is two years old, how the hell can he not be house broken? And as I often say, particularly here in Arizona, there is no such thing as an "outside dog", just irresponsible and uncaring pet owners. Okay, usually when I say that my language is far less diplomatic.

Far more disturbing was discovering that Tonka is hand-shy. That means that if you look at him and move your hand toward him, he ducks and cowers. Sometimes, if you really startle him, he'll pee a little. That can only mean one thing; Tonka has been beaten. Maybe you lost your cool when you couldn't muster the patience and understanding it takes to housebreak a dog, I don't know. But the reflex is too ingrained in him to believe that was the only occasion he had been struck. This seems to have been a long term thing.

And then there was play time. Or actually the lack of play time. We tried tossing a few balls. We tried the little stuffed toys that ALL the other dogs love. We tried frisbee and tug-o-war. It's not that he didn't want to play, it seemed he just didn't know how. It was amazing, and actually pretty sad. In all my life, I've never been around a dog that wouldn't chase a tennis ball. Tonka is always happy to see us, and seems very anxious to please us, he just doesn't know how. All in all, the picture that developed over the days we waited for you to call was not a good one.

Wednesday, after Tonka had been here five days, was the day we decided that we should take him to Animal Control. If you were in fact looking for him that would be the last chance for you to find him. The problem was there are only three possible outcomes from that. First, he could be adopted, but the pound is so overrun with unwanted animals that the odds were stacked very heavily against that. Second, you might find him there. But since you were not willing to part with $30 to have him chipped, I figured it was unlikely that you'd be willing to pay the fine, registration, and rabies shot it would have taken for you to get him back. And even if you did I really can't see Tonka returning to your home as being a positive thing. And third, absolutely the most likely outcome, after 3 or 4 days in the pound he would be put to sleep.


But, Animal Control was the "right" thing to do. So after lunch I got ready to take him down to the pound. I let him out to go potty and run around the back yard for a while. Then I got the leash and walked toward him in the back yard. He saw me, ran up at a full gallop and flopped over on his back; big stupid-happy grin and tail wagging a mile a minute. *sigh*.  I clicked the leash onto his ratty collar and walked him out front to the van. Lisa came out to say goodbye. We both knew the probable outcome. It was a quiet, tearful moment.

There's a thing that sometimes happens when you are in a great relationship with someone you love. You're both in a bad situation, your eyes connect, and you have an hour long conversation in a silent fraction of a second. The verbal part of the conversation took less than a minute. I put Tonka back in the yard.

I got up at 5:00am the next morning to get him to the vet on time. When I picked him up at 4:00pm that afternoon he had been fixed and had received all his shots. He gets a booster shot in a couple weeks and he'll get his chip then. I moved his crate into the living room, bought a bunch of dog treats, and a gallon of PineSol. Since you failed so miserably at house breaking him, if you even tried, I'm sure the significance of those three items eludes you. I figure it'll only take a couple weeks to have him house trained. Maybe more, but I don't really care.

We got him introduced to the other dogs in our little pack. It was pretty tense there at first, but everyone is getting used to each other. Well, not so much the cats, but that always takes a little longer. Tonka has a shiny new food bowl all his own, a cool brand new collar, and a cushy dog bed. Our whole family lives -inside- our house, so that's where his bowl and bed are. Alex, our teenage Lab seems to have become Tonka's big brother. I take them out back at the same time and throw balls for Alex which he jets after and brings back over and over and over again. Tonka watches for a while, then starts running after Alex as he retrieves. It's slow going, but Tonka is a smart little guy. He has figured out that the stuffed toys are great fun to find and shred. He'll figure out this "play" thing soon enough.

God knows we didn't want a 7th dog. We certainly didn't need to increase the dog food and vet visit budget. But sometimes fate places a being with a challenged life in your path. You can choose to ignore it and move on, or you can choose to have some positive impact on that life. We simply had no option. Call it the Golden Rule, call it Karma, whatever. All I know is that Tonka is having a better life now than he had wandering in traffic, and he's certainly having a better life than he had hiding from you in your back yard. And at the end of a day of good food and happy play, when Tonka comes in and flops down on his bed, has a yawn, then that long, deep, happy sigh, our lives are in some measure enhanced.

So, if you happen to come across one of our postings from when we were looking for you, and you happen to choose to call us, we'll tell you "Sorry, we found that dog's family." And I won't be lying. Tonka's family is now here.

Tonka is home.

John's Pecan Biscotti

posted as a favor to @mareserinitatis


3/4 cup butter
1 cup white sugar
2 eggs
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
2 1/2 cups flour
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups pecans, chopped
1/2 cup pecans, ground (use coffee mill or blender)
2 Tbsp Frangelico

Preheat oven to 350 F
Line cookie sheets with parchment

Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
Beat in eggs, vanilla, ad Frangelico
Separate bowl, sift together flour, baking powder and salt.
Add ground pecans.
Mix dry into the egg mixture
Stir in chopped pecans
Divide dough in half.
Form into a rectangular slab about 1/2" to 3/4" thick.

Bake for 30 minutes or until edges are golden brown and center is firm.
Remove from oven and let cool enough to handle.
Slice baked loaf into 1/2" thick Biscotti.
Arrange slices on a wire rack leaving some space between slices, and bake for an additional 10 minute.

Optional: Let fully cool, the dip ends into chocolate candy "melts" melted in a double boiler. then set out on foil to cool.

Makes about 30 Biscotti.
I have no idea how long they keep. They've always gone within a day and a half.

Amazing Customer Awareness : Just a Candy Bar Away

This may sound silly at first, but last year I wrote an angry email to Russell Stover, the Denver based confectioner that has been making candy since 1923. They make a lot of

really good stuff and one of my favorites, only available around Easter, is the Coconut Nest. It's a nice little coconut and chocolate mixture with three or four little jelly bean "eggs" placed in the center of the "nest".

Now I try to watch my weight and pay attention to what I'm eating, but every year I would buy a few of these over a couple weeks. More a seasonal splurge than a chocolate binge. So last year I noticed them on the shelf at our pharmacy and picked one up. Now granted, it's just a piece of candy, but what a big disappointment.

Lisa's New Home Office

The task at hand was the total remodel of Lisa's home office. It had been Sarah's bedroom and as many teens are want to do, it was painted a VERY deep red. Oh, excuse me, "Merlot" is the color. The dark metallic gold drapes (what color would YOU hang over a merlot wall?), rods, and the swag-chained ceiling fan all went to the Goodwill.

Here's the end of day one. The carpet had been in this room as long as we've been in the house, better than 12 years, so it was kind of gross under there. After sanding down the high spots on the subfloor it got a coating of sealer. The baseboards and chair rail were also torn out. The baseboards had received so many coats of paint over the years they just weren't salvageable. The chair rail? Well, a design edit. :-) The big job here was the total removal of the sprayed popcorn ceiling. Huge mess, but well worth doing. Also, the electrical outlets, switches, and plates were removed and discarded.

First Post

I already have a couple of websites, I'm in a bunch of forums, I'm on Twitter and Google and a bunch of other places. So why start a new blog? Well there are, at times, things I want to get off of my chest that just don't quite fit in with my other channels which are split between family communications and totally geeky pursuits. So this is a repository for those expositions that don't fit. Love it or hate it, I don't care. But I've said it, and I feel better for the expression.