Tag Archives: tallulah the ‘houla

maybe the worst thing

Posted on by

0

Owning a dog while living in a city apartment without a yard means that you spend most of your life walking the dog and picking up poop.  Since I adopted Tallulah in February, this has become part of my daily routine, and something that I do without much thought.  She and I seem forever to be walking through Portland, sometimes stopping in at the (pet-friendly) hotel I used to work at to say hi, or trekking all the way to the Eastern Promenade, or just sitting somewhere in the Old Port watching tourists act weird and overexcited over lobster-themed t-shirts.  This stuff I’d prepared myself for when I decided to become a dog owner.  I knew I’d be spending a lot more time outdoors and I’d need to develop more concrete routines and those were things I was looking forward to.

What I hadn’t prepared myself for was the new influx of human interaction that comes with owning a dog in a city, particularly when owning a beautiful, adorable, striking puppy with just about the friendliest face you’ve ever seen.

It’s rare for me and T to take a walk and not be stopped by a stranger who asks what kind of dog she is, to which I usually just reply, “A mix” because saying that she’s a Catahoula Leopard Dog invites an even longer conversation and I’m not walking my dog to be social–I’m walking her to get some exercise so leave me alone, please.  While sitting with Tallulah, creepy men have used her as an excuse to invite themselves over to leer at me/her.  I’ve had parents of toddlers use the presence of my dog to serve as the launching point of a lesson on “what sound does a dog make?” which, as you can imagine, invariably confuses and upsets Tallulah.  It’s okay, T.  Children shrieking and grabbing at my face always pisses me off, too.

The worst thing, though, that happens while walking my dog are when people start baby-talking at my dog from, like, 20 feet away, which causes T either to become so rambunctious she jumps and cries out and lunges at the person, or she pees herself in the middle of the sidewalk.  The baby-talker then typically uses this as a reason to come and pet my dog without asking, which leads to the baby-talker being jumped up on and mouthed on the arm by the dog they’ve upset.  The baby-talker then says something passive aggressive to me–something like, “Still got a lot of training to do, huh?”  OMG.

What on earth possesses people to behave that way around strange dogs?  I get that they’re cute–believe me, I get it–but when the owner is clearly annoyed and the dog is jumping and yelping in response to you, wouldn’t common sense tell you to cut it out and move along?

So this is my sad, internet plea to the strangers of Portland, tourist and otherwise:  please, please, please stop petting my dog.  Or if you really want to, ask me first and when I say no, don’t call me a bitch (no pun intended–Tallulah is spayed, anyway).  Okay?

C’est chaud!

Posted on by

1

The temperature in Maine the past couple of days has crept past the seventies and well into the upper eighties, which may have been considered standard summer weather back when I was living in southern Indiana, but here in Maine that means catastrophe.  Most public buildings in Maine are equipped with air conditioning, of course, but many residences are not, especially the nineteenth-century buildings that populate downtown Portland.  Not even a ceiling fan in sight!
We don’t whine about cold (too much), but we do whine about heat.

Even my Mississippi dog struggled yesterday during our walk, at one point laying down in the middle of the sidewalk and refusing to move.  Here she is on a happier and cooler day on the Eastern Prom looking out over Casco Bay.
Thankfully the weather is going to cool right down over the weekend.   We can only handle a day or two of this at a time!

Tallulah the ‘Houla

Posted on by

0

A couple months ago, I moved into a new apartment that has a few key features my last apartment did not:  it’s on the first floor, a full-sized bathroom, a full-sized oven, and its own entrance.  The full-sized bathroom and oven were just nice things to have, but the first floor location and private entrance were basically the determining factors in my decision to adopt a dog.  Meaning that I didn’t sit back and look inward, try to analyze my behavior and capabilities–financial and otherwise–and decide, very calmly and adult-ly, that I was finally grown up enough to handle a dog.  No, I just happened to move into an apartment with its own stoop and immediately thought, “That’s it!!!  My time has come.”

I did do a lot of research about breeds and mixes and energy levels and intelligence levels and I came to the conclusion that I wanted an older, lazy, not-quite-stupid-but-not-too-smart dog, but much like the outcome of my cat adopting experience, I ended up with an overly energetic six-month-old puppy who is, like, smarter than me.

Image

This is Tallulah.  She came from Mississippi where she was found living under a trailer with thirty other dogs and cats, and she’s a mix, though probably mostly Catahoula Leopard Dog which is the state dog of Louisiana and a breed I knew nothing about before I looked at this dog’s ridiculous spotted face and decided she must be mine.

Everything about this dog is good for me.  She’s stupidly affectionate, gently demanding, affable, sensitive, forgiving, skeptical of the world around her, and so, so, stubborn.  She’s staunchly afraid of sidewalk grates and mud puddles, fixated on any and all forms of food, determined to be friends with Catrick Dempsey, and she waits for me outside the post office every morning with this calm, clear-eyed look on her face that just floors me because how on earth does this dog trust me enough not to just leave her there?  How does she know I’m coming back?

Image

It’s almost funny how much happier I am since I adopted this puppy.  If things aren’t going well in one area of my life, that’s okay because I have a dog who loves me.  Is that selfish?  Weird?  Unhealthy?  Honestly, I don’t really care because it just feels so good.  My significant other has to cancel plans, it’s no big deal.  I have a bad day at work and I leave it at the door.  I dye my hair a horrifying color, it doesn’t matter.  I have a dog who loves me more than anything else in the world and okay I guess this is why people have children and I’m sure it’s no coincidence that since adopting T., I’ve eliminated any and all traces of baby fever lurking around within me, and I’m pretty confident that fever isn’t going to return anytime soon unless acceptable parenting methods go through some major changes and it suddenly becomes okay to leave a child in a crate for 8 hours a day.

I don’t mean for this post to be a bunch of sentimental Marley and Me bullshit, but when you talk about dogs, you sort of inevitably end up sounding like an asshole.  So I’ll wrap this up by saying this is my dog and I love her and she represents step no. 3,478 on my way to becoming a fully-realized person with a career and a complete novel and a human life partner and a savings account and so on and so on.