OMG Lupita what did you just eat??

Lupita has entered the stage of lets-eat-everything-and-run-away-from-people-when-they-try-to-take-it-from-you. Everything is wonderful: cat shit, other people's used Cheetos lying on the ground from days hence, little poisonous berries that grow on bushes, wilted flowers, small chips of lead paint, well, you get the idea. Esperando thinks she has learned this from her association with Sweet Pickle, but I tell you all dogs learn this from their owners who want to take evil things away from them. 

This morning after I took my shower I noticed Lupita rooting around the bathroom floor looking like a little piglet (the curly tail doesn't help) in her quest for something to eat. Then I realized she was eating something. I thought maybe it was a small piece of caulking but it was very round. It looked like a little round white piece of paper, the kind a hole punch makes but smaller. I leaned over and saw the remains of half a pillow. ‘Oh my God!’ I thought,‘what has she eaten?’ I snatched the remaining half up. It could only have come from Esperando’s bathroom drawer, and must have fallen when he was taking his pills this morning before he took Sweet Pickle off for a walk. Was it medicine for blood pressure or cholesterol or something else, and what kind of harm would it do to a little 5-pound dog’s body and soul? I frantically pawed through his pill bottles until I found the matching culprit to be low dosage aspirin.

Hmm, I remembered my vet telling me some time ago that I could give Sweet Pickle aspirin for his arthritis, but only Ascriptin. And he weighs 60 pounds to Lupita's 5. I couldn’t remember what he said about why regular aspirin was bad for dogs. I thought about everything I knew about poison control—I was supposed to overdose her with water to flush out her system. It seemed so drastic and unpleasant for both of us until I knew if her eating this pill would kill her. On the other hand, she was a tiny little thing and how long would it take for the whole thing to dissolve and be ingested? So instead I gave her a really big portion of a favorite food hoping that a very full tummy would diminish some of these issues. Then I ran to the computer to look up ‘Chihuahua eating aspirin’. Yet one more time: how did we ever survive without the internet? Just about then Esperando returned from his walk.

He: “What are you doing?”

Me: “Looking to see if Lupita is going to die from the pill of yours she found on the floor and ate.”

He: “Oh, I looked everywhere for it and couldn’t find it. Where was it?”

Me: “I don’t know but she found it and was eating it.”

He: “When I couldn’t find it I finally decided it had fallen down the sink.”

Connecting to Yahoo seemed painfully slow, twice the screen froze up and I had to reboot. Finally I connected. There were several entries about giving a hurt Chihuahua puppy half of a low dosage aspirin tablet—exactly what Lupita had just eaten. Just be sure to give it to the puppy on a full stomach it said, so she won’t ulcerate her stomach. Unwittingly I had done just the right thing. It was a very scary moment with a very happy outcome.While all this was going on Lupita disappeared into our closet. Esperando got out of the shower, squeaky clean, and went into the closet to get dressed. He was leaving on a flight to Mexico City in an hour.

He, screaming: “On NOOOO! Arrrggggghh!”

Me, thinking he’s forgotten something important he needed to do before he leaving town: “What?”

He: “I just stepped in dog poop”.

Me: “Oh dear, I’m so sorry.”

This has happened before because our little darling is not properly housebroken yet. I've never seen a dog be so nonchalant about toilet matters. I haven't had the pleasure yet, but I am beginning to think Esperando needs to be looking down more when he's walking around in our house and not so caught up in the clouds with work issues. There's a message here somewhere. Who can say if just this one time she wasn’t getting even for a subconscious threat against her life had she had consumed a different sort of pill? I don’t really believe that, but it did have a sort of ring of justice to it; a little aromatic reminder of a small dog to wear on your person while you are on the road, just so you can remember your fabulous home life and your precious little beastie.

Cat Baiting

Back in the days of the Christians and the Romans, we know that the Romans liked their bread and circuses, liked hand-to-hand combat with gladiators, liked to watch people being torn to pieces by wild animals, liked to watch animals tearing one another apart and expected that kind of entertainment. Although Italy might have been the center of the Roman Empire, nonetheless the Spanish are descendents of these self-same Romans (hence the term ‘romance language’ when referring to Spanish, French and Italian languages). As representatives of that same Roman tradition, today here in Santa Rosalia we have still have cockfighting and dog fighting (and bull fighting elsewhere in Mexico). Moving right along to Casa Abeja with the advent of Lupita’s arrival, our house has sadly become a center for blood, well, fur sports, namely—cat baiting.



Any cat is good bait, but especially Winnie who is more active and more tolerant. We can boldly lick a cat on the face in the morning to show our Good Will and turn around and chase and bite the same cat boldly on the tail or other parts a mere 10 minutes later. When we really get into proper form, the mouth is full of cat fur, sufficient enough to look like a beard. The puppy knows that this is not acceptable, she has been told ‘no’, which generally lasts about 3 minutes until the puppy brain forgets, as it also forgets what housetraining is all about most of the time.

During the baiting the puppy approaches the cat, grappling it with the paws, trying to knock it on its side. Although the cat is twice as large, it is taken aback, falls over on its side from the onslaught and starts kicking the puppy with its hind legs. The puppy backs off and the cat bats it around with its front paws. The puppy then turns its rump to the cat, protecting its eyes from claws and making a strange puffing sounds. When we hear this puffing sound from another room we race in saying 'no, no, bad dog'. The cat takes off running at the interruption, the puppy gives chase.

The cat runs and jumps on the bed and watches the puppy leaping about making puffing noises, probably not unlike the sound a killer whale emits when hunting. The puppy can now jump up on the couch by herself, but still not the bed. At some point the cat races out of the bedroom, the puppy in full pursuit. The cat jumps up on the cat perch to get away. As the cat leaps it generally loses a chunk of fur that is left behind in the puppy’s mouth.

Sometimes the cat encourages this chasing. Bad cat. Can't help cats that encourage this kind of errant behavior.

She's got the devil in her heart; No, no, this I can't believe--The Beatles

Lupita is a handful. She chases the cats and is starting to nip at them now. The cats are alternately horrified and fascinated. Winnie is still kind and bats her gently, but Frida hisses and growls. Dash helps me out when I ask him to, trying to corral her outside when she is racing around, but she leaps at him and grabs mouthfuls of his fur and yanks it. She is still just a little puppy. To her credit when I say no she will generally stop tormenting the bigger animals. We just had a major zoomie action outside racing around in circles for about 30 minutes and now she has cratered. It took three of us humans and one big dog to corner her and grab her.

Then all of us, cats and dogs and me, went to the bedroom for a nap. I crawled under the covers and turned the electric blanket on. It is cold in the house since we do not have heating, and today I am wearing two sweaters and long underwear. I put Lupita under the covers and Frida immediately jumped off her perch to come lie on top of me too. This was fine, but after a while I woke up and wanted out. I had to re-arrange everyone. I left Lupita under the covers and Frida on top of the covers. In about 5 minutes Lupita emerged and walked over to Frida. Frida got an ‘oh brother, what’s going to happen now?’ expression on her face, but stayed put. Lupita stretched and fell down next to Frida and started licking her fur. When the bath was over I went and fetched Lupita off the bed. I apologized to Frida as her fur had been licked the wrong direction and was all standing up on end. However, I think it was a good start on befriending Frida.

The last three nights the caterwauls and screams of fighting of cats has come across the ether from outside our window. The first night Dash woke up from a dead sleep and went baying to the door, ready to settle any arguments all by himself. My cats were plastered to the window trying to catch a glimpse of the enemy combatants. Bruiser has vanished and it seems we have two new male cats trying to take his place and vying for the attention of Mrs. Moustache, that hussy. Although she has been spayed, apparently both she and they are unaware of it as they are partying all over the front yard. She's going to give us a reputation for running a cathouse.

Mrs. Moustache was absent at feeding time today and yesterday so Carmen is getting to eat all the food. She has matured into a beautiful animal, funny tail and all. Her face, once too small for her body, has filled out and she is much friendlier now. Maybe some day she will even let me pet her again.

Puppy power

I just put Esperando on the airplane to Korea where he will be working for the rest of the week. I was so happy when he was here this past weekend to catch up and have some help taking care of the new doglet. We keep wondering how the rest of our menagerie will adapt to Lupita, we are sure Sweet Pickle will be jealous, at least at first, but what will the cats do? We have been told that Chihuahuas want to be the dominant dog. As for the cats, Sour Pickle is not intimidated by much and is a pretty curious guy. I see photos of this but--do Chihuahuas and cats really get along well? I guess we will find out in a couple of weeks when we head back to Mexico.

After I dropped Esperando off at the airport, I went to physical therapy, and then ran a few errands before coming home. Lupita rode in her travel carrier in the car with me and basked in the sunshine when I went into therapy, and then again when I went into the store for a brief jaunt. It didn’t look as though she slept after I left her because every time I returned she was gnawing on the chewy toy that I left in the carrier with her. When I got home to take a nap she did her little snapping-turtle-under-the-covers routine, spinning around on her back and biting at various parts of my anatomy and clothing. She got more hyper and more hyper and kept trying to climb off the bed. I finally had to crate her in our bedroom to try and take my own nap. I laid there for the next 30 minutes wondering what she was doing. In the end I couldn’t sleep: I got up and released her. She had peed and pooped in the crate and then curled up on some bedding at the other end and was sleeping. I don’t know when this fouling up of her crate will end, at least this time she didn’t make much of a protest being put in there other than the physical evidence she deposited. I keep thinking this is either an anger thing or an anxiety thing and I don’t know how to deal with it.

After the aborted nap attempt, I decided it was time to take her for a walk around the park. Yesterday Esperando and I had a nice time walking with her. It took her about 10 minutes to seemingly understand wearing a harness and leash. One of us would walk in front and she would follow while the other held the leash. The walk we took is about a mile long and she must have walked almost half of it. We were pretty amazed such a little one could go so far. She seemed fairly tuckered out when we were done.

Today I did the same walk, but there was no Esperando to lead her while I walked in front. We had some difficulty moving forward and not fighting or dragging on the leash. A bicycle zoomed by and that freaked her out so badly I had to pick her up and carry her a good ways; more bicycles passed us, several in a row, and even though I was holding her she was terrified trying to climb up into the sleeve of my jacket. Once they passed by I put her down again and she walked fairly responsively for awhile, but she didn’t do as much walking as she had done the previous day. When we finally got near home she seemed to know where she was and had a conniption fit when I wouldn’t let her go up my neighbor's steps. I think she thought they were ours.

Finally she ran through our front door. She began to zoom around in circles and spent the next 3 hours literally racing around the house at 90 mph, upstairs, downstairs, through the living room, dining room and kitchen in circles, every once in a while, concerned she might need to pee I would open the back door and she would race around the backyard in circles. I don’t think I have ever seen so much continuous energy expended in my entire life by such a tiny creature except by hummingbirds. I was exhausted watching her. After she stopped doing circles, I threw the Trash Man doll, which is twice her size, and she must have retrieved him 50 times. If puppy energy could be stored we could solve all our electricity problems better than with oil, gas, wind farms, or hydroelectric power. Of course that would be a lot of puppies!

So, ok— this morning it was a puppy.

I went outside to feed Mrs. Moustache and a stray puppy was sitting on the step by the front door almost like someone had told it to go to our house and stay by the front door and wait for La Duena de la Casa to come out. She was a very dirty little white dog, and looked like a leggy cross between a Scottie and a Miniature Schnauzer. There was a broken bit of filthy white yarn about 6 inches long dangling from her neck, a sort of a collar and leash in one that she had apparently chewed through. I tried to ignore her while I wondered what guard had let her into the yard and shut the gate behind her. Esperando and I both agreed later that she looked too big to get through the gate by herself. I went over to feed Moustache and the puppy politely sat and waited on the step in the same spot, as though it wasn’t polite to introduce herself first.

I went into the house and told Esperando that we had a puppy in our front yard, and then went back out with some food and water for it. She was still rooted to the same spot. Although she looked a little skinny, she had a very sweet personality and once I fed her, she acted like she had never met anyone as nice as me before. She writhed and wiggled all over. Esperando came and looked at her and said, “what a mess—you can’t keep it.” Then he went out to look and see if the guard might know about whose it was. In the process he discovered that his main all-around Lad, Francisco, who is helping with the construction of Casa Abeja, wanted the dog, sight unseen. And 10 minutes later the Favorite Maid wanted the dog for her sister. Uh-oh, a competition.

The cook and the maids whisked the puppy off to the laundry and gave her a bath. Señor Jueves who is married to Favorite Maid’s sister (who I will henceforth call Señora Jueves) just came to take the puppy back to their house. All-in-all it was a pretty painless fostering experience for me, but after all these recent puppies and kittens, I am beginning to wonder if I have animal magnetism.