Where the Walls are Soft…

On Guard
Taken August 9, 2008 with Canon PowerShot A550

He can
be
a real
arse at times,
and no
one has ever
had to point that
out to my child.I’ll be using a lot less of my little stepper machine in future, I think…

Since I bought the Prissy-Van, “Walking-About” has declined to “walking across the street”. Ky and I (who has yet again been re-named – remind me to tell y’all what and why in another post) both worried this would happen.

And that our bums would suffer for it.

Which they have. Mine started to get flabby, so I bought one of those little stepper things that look like bike pedals. I will attest that they work wonders on flabby bums.

Ky’s bum got big. Er. BiggER. Not big (She’s bigger than me, now. She may read this. I may suffer.). Thankfully, the little stepper-thing works wonders on big. er. bums, too.

Finding time to go on Walk-About disappeared about the same time the snow flew for the first time last fall. We were going to get snowshoes, just like the last five winters, but, just like the last five winters, winter came and went, but we are still snowshoeless. The stepper made us feel a lot less guilty.

But…

We will be walking again. And again… and again… and again… because…

We now own that dog you see up there at the top.

Again.

The Lily-Dawg was ours for her first couple of years, until we moved into a squinchy little apartment that was not dog-conducive. Ky could see Lily whenever she wanted to, though, so she didn’t really get the chance to miss “owning” a dog. The only heartbreak she ever ran into was when the REAL owner, not naming any names here, or anything (The Sire of Turkey- Ahem…*), would threaten to let Lily loose for the dog-catcher to catch, or give her away, or drop her off in the country-side…

And my child would be a basket-case for weeks until whatever-it-was that caused the threat blew over. She learned, over time and many sleepless, teary nights, that The Sire was all bluff. The Lily-Dawg stayed.

Last week, he threatened again. This time, same as the last few times, Ky didn’t bat an eye over it. The Sire is all bluff, right?

Two days ago, when she went over to visit Lily, there was no Lily there. “Her” cat was gone, too. He said they both just up and ran off. Together, apparently.

Between sobs (not to mention, calling The Sire every foul word a teenager can come up with – which amounts to many, many foul words) she tried to figure out what he might have done with her dog. She concluded, despite all of The Sire’s arguments to the contrary, that he’d taken her to the pound in the middle of the night. I, secretly, concluded that she was probably right.

Okay, not so secretly. He can be a real arse at times, and no one has ever had to point that out to my child.

I try to stay out of the nastiness that can happen between Ky and The Sire if at all possible. My interference generally guarantees many sleepless nights for ME, if I don’t mind my own business, but I couldn’t stay out of this one.

I jumped into the Prissy-Van and drove the ten-minute walk to his house.

I demanded to know where the dog was. He didn’t know.

I threatened him. He still didn’t know.

I offered money. He still didn’t know.

I offered to take the dog home with me to my one-room-no-walls-basement-loft shared with a teenager and two incredibly fussy cats, if he would just tell me what he’d done with the F-ing dog, dammit, didn’t he care that his child was hysterical, inconsolable, and really, really hated his guts over this?!

He still didn’t know where the dog was. I came home defeated, wondering what the hell I was going to do about my poor kid.

Yesterday afternoon, after I worked the first of several night-shifts and just got to sleep, the phone woke me up. It was The Sire, of course, calling to tell us that he had “discovered” Lily’s whereabouts.

She was at the pound. Of course.

It would cost $160 to bail her out.

Plus a fine because he hadn’t got her yearly registration.

Plus a fine because he’d let her wander off possibly rabid (“Rabies shots?! I didn’t know I was supposed to get her rabies shots!”), to spread infection throughout the neighbourhood. No, Sire, telling people that “the dog is friendly” does not protect her from rabies.

I knew damned well, too, that they wouldn’t let me take that dog out of there without proof of ownership, fines paid or not, and my name is not The Sire of Turkey, is it? No, it is not. I would have to take him with me to pick Lily up.

Except…

He wouldn’t tell me where he was. Nor would he do more than hum or haw about if or when he might help me out on bail money and fines. Guess that would be a “not”, then.

I took Kyla with me, hoping that her freaky ability to talk anybody (except The Sire) into (or out of) almost anything might spring the dog. And between Ky’s freaky ability and my $160, the dog was sprung.

Between mutterings not printable about The Sire, my child suggested that since he hadn’t registered Lily this year, he probably hadn’t done so ever. Could they go back to 2001 records to find the registered owner of the imprisoned? Yep, they could.

*I* own the dog. Which means *I* own eight years of fines. So said the lady at the pound with a wicked grin, just before telling me that they don’t generally pile fines on top of each other like that. And just after that, she told me that they would waive the non-registration fine altogether and just give me a warning. And if I could find a vet willing to spay a ten-year-old dog within 30 days, she would be happy to give me back $90.

I called around… I can kiss my $90 goodbye.

Ky is painfully aware that we may not be able to keep her dog. We have no room. We have travel plans. I have my Big Dream Fund to continue funding. DOG was not part of my agenda.

We’re going to give it a month and then see where we’re at. If money/space/dog-hair concerns get to be too much, Ky will attempt to find a new owner for her Beloved Lily-Dawg. One that doesn’t put her out the door and then call the dog-catcher out to “pick up a stray off my lawn”.

So it seems that my lucrative days of Ends-Meeting-and-Even-Over-Lapping will temporarily come to a halt until I find out how much this animal is going to cost me in food, shots, fees, vet visits, and allergy meds. The meds are for the allergic kid. I thought cat hair was bad. Holy shit.

Anybody out there want a dog? Please?

Random Song-for-the-Day: “World of Two” – Cake

See Les Becker’s
“Off the Cuff” Gallery!

This entry was posted on Monday, April 20th, 2009 at 10:44 am and is filed under It Never Fails.... You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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