Cold bones and bandanas

Music for the moment: "Swing Life Away" by Rise Against

Rise Against - Swing Life Away
Uploaded by Rise-Against-officiel

We live on front porches and swing life away
We get by just fine here on minimum wage
If love is a labor I'll slave 'til the end
I won't cross these streets until you hold my hand...

This song reminds me of summers in Ferndale, and how much fun I have just going places with no reason other than to see friends and have fun.

I've been here so long; think that its time to move
The winter's so cold summer's over too soon
so let's pack our bags and settle down where palm trees grow.

Now the days are getting short and cold, and we turned on the heat the other night. It seems like it's time to put another summer to bed. All things considered, it was a really good one. Broken ribs and stitches aside, it was well-lived. We managed to pack a lot into the summer for sure.

I've got some friends, some that I hardly know
But we've had some times I wouldn't trade for the world
We chase these days down with talks of the places that we will go...

Tonight, I have tickets to the Wings home opener. I am soooo excited. Unlike the recent lame night where we decided not to go, tonight is the next best thing to being there to see them win the cup. They'll bring the cup out, and hoist the championship banner. It's an incredible opportunity and a good way to welcome the fall, and I won't lame out this time.

Shane
Originally uploaded by alpharat

We had a little scare with the Shane yesterday. We went to to the vet to get his nails "did," and to get his bordatella (kennel cough) vaccination. This is always an unpleasant visit for him, because the kennel cough vaccination is an "intranasal vaccination," meaning they load it up in a syringe and shoot it up his nose. He doesn't like that.

But he took it like a trooper, and came out of the exam room with a fancy new Halloween bandanna that he was very proud of, and all of the girls in the vet's office told him how nice he looks (he always gets really happy when they dote on him). As a last stop, he climbed on the scale before we left.

It turns out, he'd lost five pounds, which adds up to 15 pounds over the past two years. The vet, with that dreaded disclaimer "it's probably nothing," took him back for some bloodwork.

They called me at 8:30 this morning. It turns out, it is nothing. Shane is just getting old, and they said his appetite was probably just decreasing. Still, they said (and I haven't broke this news to him yet), they were giving us the green light to start really spoiling him. This means wet food two or three times a week, and the occasional bits of people food.

This goes along with what a lot of our friends have been saying, actually, only they put it more like this: "Come on! He's old and he's a good dog! If he wants some people food/to tip over the garbage/to go in and and out all day/to beg at the table/to steal food from the table/etc., you let him!"

So yeah, I won't break the news to Shane in exactly this way, but the vet basically said let him be naughty and to eat what he wants.

Honestly, I have started this way already. On a warm evening a few weeks ago, TFN and I grilled steaks, then sat on the deck in the dark, drinking beers and sucking the last bit of warm marrow out of the cooling bones of summer. At some point, I had taken the dishes from dinner in, and Mr. Shane scratched at the door to go inside.

I let him in.

I let him in knowing he didn't want to go to bed. I let him in knowing he wanted to tip over the trash for the bits of steak in there.

Which he did.

And I didn't punish him beyond a "Shane, what did you do?" because, really, I was just happy the old guy still has it in him to be naughty for the sake of a bit of steak.