A Brief Video Message from Fred

I have wwwaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyy too much time on my hands.

Ouchies

2 weeks ago Fred developed a horrible growth on her left eyelid. She didn't seem to notice it but it was truly horrific (the pic is from its first day so you can't see the full swelling and pus which pinnacled a few days later).
She saw the vet last Monday- she took a scraping for testing as it could have been a dozen different things from a dozen different causes, gave Fred an antibiotics shot, and gave me a smelly ointment to put on the growth 3 times a day. Over the course of the week, the growth's reduced in size but not nastiness. Today, the vet called and wanted me to bring Fred in as soon as possible- which did not bode well. Turns out Fred was bitten and was having a hard time processing the spider venom. The vet opened up the growth and drained it (it's as nasty as it sounds), gave Fred more antibiotics and me more ointment. The vet said the reduction in size is a good sign but due to the injury, its placement, and how long Fred's suffered it that there's a chance of necrosis.


Fingers crossed for a full recovery.

Tough Love

Early this morning (or late last night, depending on your own internal clock), I was rough-housing with Fred. As the weather's been craptacular, she's been getting cabin fever. So to relieve it (and 'cause it's fun), we rough-house a bit each night. Burns a bit of her energy off.

So last night, right afterwards, I decide to race her up the stairs. Nearly at the top and I'm winning, Fred (apparently still pumped up from playing) swipes my legs out from underneath me. I hit the landing from the waist up, crushing my right wrist beneath me and let out a loud enough "ouch" to cause my roomie to get up to check on me.

What cracked me up, is that after knocking me to the ground and hearing me shout in pain, Fred steps over me and slowly saunters to the bed and hops in.

Happy BDay!!!

The 15th was Fred's big 0-5 birthday. Among other activities, we took her to the park (the first time since we moved). She really enjoyed it, although her bum leg started bothering her after about 30 minutes of serious playtime.







Happy Birthday, Fred!!

Add It To The List

I was playing with Fred this morning, as is my want. We were engaged in one of her favorite games "Ghost", where one of us is under a blanket on the bed and the other play-attacks.
So I was the one under the blanket this morning with Fred prancing around me. She reared up, paws waving around madly and (because I know it would make her happy) I did the same.

When I first got the house, I made some changes before I began moving in. One of those changes was to have a friend install a new light fixture in my bedroom, for which I owed her a vegetarian pizza (come to think of it- I still owe her that pizza). The new fixture is a hanging pagoda on a strong metal pole coming down from the ceiling.

When I reared up, mirroring Fred, the back of my left hand connected with the edge of the pagoda. Very, very hard. So hard in fact that I broke the pagoda. According to the x-ray (can you see where this is going?), I also broke the middle metacarpal in my hand. Not a full break, just a healthy length-wise crack.
Hurts like a sonovabitch, even typing is uncomfortable (although my pain meds have really taken the edge off). Not cast-worthy, but I have to wear a brace for a coupla weeks.


Go'head- laugh it up, folks!!

She's Dumb In Smart Ways

Fred does not like to see me go.
She's seen me get ready for a journey many times before and somehow in the depths of her fuzzy little brain remembers that she will be left behind. Given- she's left behind at a highly rated pet hotel with a heated indoor pool and loads of other dogs to play with, but as I'm not there with her- to her, she's being abandoned.

So last night, she set about to sabotage me:
1) Fred did something very unusual for her: she went up on a counter and snatched all the snacks I had laid out for my trip. I caught her with her snout halfway through my beef jerky. Still smelt it on her breathe this morning.
2) Fred went to my suitcase (packed full but not zipped close yet), tossed out everything, laid down in it, and took a nap. I couldn't help thinking she was trying to pack herself. I mentioned to her that it would have been a more successful attempt if maybe she had covered herself with a shirt.



Merry X-Mas!

Strange Dreams

I don’t typically remember my dreams- only snippets or vague recollections remain. But this one stuck with me:



I awoke in bed, one Sunday morning. I could hear some birds outside, as I had let the bedroom window open for the fresh, cool air. Closing my eyes, my head cocked to one side as I picked out screams, hollering, and sirens in the distance. As I wondered what was up, I stretched out my hand to scratch Fred- my dog-’s ears. I felt her hair and searched, still facing the window, for her ears.
When my hand found them, they were hairless… and round. My hand stopped, and my eyes popped open. My head sprang up from my neck like a Jack-in-the-box.
There was a naked red-headed woman curled up on the foot on the bed, asleep.
I was absolutely still as my mind raced along with my heartbeat. Who the hell was this? I didn’t remember getting drunk last night, nor going out. After staring at this unknown woman’s bare back in complete puzzlement for some time, I coughed slighty, trying to get her attention. Nothing. I tried again, nudging her gently with my right foot. To this, she yawned widely, smacked her mouth a few times, and moved her head onto my leg- still with her eyes shut.
Enough of this, I thought. “Hey!”
Her head jerked up, and she pivoted her face to look at mine. With a wide, warm smile, she said “morning.”
I stopped again as her eyes locked into mine. I recognized those eyes- the same light chocolate eyes that had looked at me every morning for the past several years. They were Fred’s eyes.
Panic. Shock. “Who are you,” I exclaimed.
This woman with my dog’s eyes, stretched her limbs, and looked at me with a confused look. “I’m Fred,” she stated matter-of-factly.
“Fred who?”
“Fred. Fredders? I’m your dog…?”
“Uhhhh, no. No, you’re not. You’re neither a dog nor my dog.” Panic again. “Fred? FRED?!? Come here, girl!”
“I’m already here. Will you walk me now?”
Enough of this, I thought. Tossing the sheets over the woman, I jolted from bed and dashed for the living room and the TV.
“STAY,” I yelled- just to be on the safe side.

What had occurred was all over every channel, every show was pre-empted with the news. Some were calling it a miracle, some- terrorism, some- alien invasion. Like normal- no one seemed to know the why’s. All they, and I, could gleam was that at once all the world’s pets had become human.
Only the pets, wild animals still remained wild animals. And no matter what kind of pet it was- cat, dog, hamster, turtle, horse, goldfish, whatever- all had turned into people. No livestock either (thank G*d), only pets.
Not just newly formed people but, as my brief experience had already taught me, newly formed people with basic understanding and ability of speech- appropriate to whatever their owners spoke. If you lived in Japan, your pet cricket was suddenly a person who spoke basic Japanese.
Not only that, but the pets had turned age-appropriate. Fred, as an example, was 3.5 in human years so she now appeared 28 (1 human year = 8 dog years). This was confirmed a little later when my sister called, wildly upset when she and her husband were woken by her cat- now a naked, 80 year-old man with calico hair who was scratching on their comforter.

While I sat stunned and watching these events of hysteria on the news, Fred came out- walking upright like a normal human, went to the door, took her leash in her mouth, and knelt next to me. My eyes couldn’t help but be diverted from the TV.
“Uhhh, yeah?”
“Ah needth ta go,” she mumbled, leash still in her mouth.
“Go where?
“Gooooo!”
It sank in. This nude chick wanted me to put a leash on her and take her outside so she could piss on the lawn. I couldn’t stop my mind from its automatic sarcastic thought of “it’s a pervert’s wetdream”.
As I took the leash from her mouth, I noticed for the first time she was wearing Fred’s collar and tags around her neck.
“Can it wait?”
She whined, “not long,” and began bouncing slightly.
I won’t go into the details but we managed get her situated in the bathroom and everything taken care of. Needless to say, it was not the most comfortable thing for either of us.

Once done there, I handed her some sweats and a tshirt. She looked at these for a moment until I mimed putting them on. She got the idea.
We sat on the couch. Well, I sat- she curled up very Fred-like.
At this point, some of the initial shock had worn off and I took stock of what this “new Fred” was like:
Same eyes. Same eyebrows. Short red hair- more the length of dog-Fred’s shoulder hair but the same color. Caucasian (I recalled Fred’s tummy as a puppy was as pink as they came) about 5’7”/5’8”. Kind of a long nose. Ears very close to her head. I had already noted she had the body of a runner- not thin but lithe (hey, she was naked in my bed and I didn’t know she was my dog). Medium length nails- white though, not dog-Fred’s brown.
I reached out slowly and felt the top of her head. The odd skull-fin dog-Fred had was missing. As my hand retracted, human-Fred’s head followed it, sniffing.

“What do you remember,” I asked.
“You said we were going to the park to play catch today.”
“No- when you went to bed last night.”
“You said I had stinky breath, kissed me on the top of my head, and told me to sleep at the foot of the bed. I wanted a pillow," she said with a pout.
This was true. “Nothing after that?”
“Oh, I had a dream about rabbits. Chasing rabbits!” As she said this, her butt started shaking. I thought she might be trying to wag.
“So you know nothing about this?”
“About what?”
“Why you’re suddenly human,” I shouted, getting aggravated.
She shrank back at my tone. “No,” she said softly, eyes down.
I sighed. This was not her fault. Couldn’t have been. “Sorry,” I said sheepishly. Sheepishly. I wondered if somewhere, somebody’s pet sheep had just awoken as a human with a white afro-perm of hair.
She smiled and inched closer. “That’s OK. What now?”
I sighed again. “I don’t know. I guess we should watch the news and see if there’s anything useful on it about this.”
OK,” she said again, stretching out from her side of the couch to rest her chin on my thigh- just like dog-Fred. It made me… uncomfortable.

We watched TV for a while longer but got nothing out of it. No hard facts, no 800# helplines, nothing from the government as what to do (barring the typical Hitchhiker’s line: “Don’t Panic”)- just theories about how it happened, why it happened, and what it would mean to the economy. Would these new people have rights and the ability to vote in the next election? What would this all mean to welfare and unemployment? And whether spaying and neutering was now such a good idea (my mind “uh-oh”ed at that one as Fred had had her operation several years previously).
Human-Fred rotated her head on my thigh, looking up at me.
“Feed me,” she said.



And my alarm went off.
I've often wondered what would have occured if my dream had continued....
And "no", ya pervs- not in that way.

Fred & I

June 15, 2004.
As the temperature had dropped to the high 60s, I decided to leave the bedroom window of my 2nd floor apartment open. Soon after my head hit the pillow, there came the howling of a dog from somewhere outside.
"Must be a neighbor's," I thought, thinking they would soon shut the thing up.

An hour later, I was getting dressed and more and more pissed off as the howling continued. Determined to find the apartment with the howling dog and beat the owner, I started off down my stairs with clenched fists- stopping when the bushes a floor underneath my bedroom window rustled, parted, and out bounded a small reddish puppy.
She was clearly starving as her ribs could be seen, and she had that spittle dogs get when they're thirsty. She cautiously approached me. Fury forgotten, I sat down on the sidewalk and held out my hand.
Slowly, she came forward. I was silent and unmoving, and did nothing to encourage or frighten her. Eventually, she was near enough to sniff my outstretched hand and licked it.

I played with the pup for about an hour, checking her for injury. She wore no collar, so no indentifying tags. I called her every female name and generic dog name I could think of (including what was her original name= "Princess") to gleam any recognition from her. The only name she responded to was "Stinky". Remembering an old joke, I asked "well, how about Fred?" She licked me and wagged her tail. Smiling, I said "Fred it is."

Not having a pup for some time, I did not know exactly what to do with it. Clearly she was missing from somewhere. I decided to keep her overnight and take her to the apartment manager in the morning to see if she knew about any missing dogs. I started back up my stairs. "Fred" was behind me and started crying when she couldn't haul her tiny body up the first step. Leaning back to pick her up, she snuggled up into the crook of the elbow.

Once inside, I made her a small meal of some deli meat and water- both of which she comsumed with gusto. She sniffed around for a few moments, whizzed on my carpet, then immediately crawed onto my thigh and fell soundly asleep.
"Great," I mused, "I have a dog."


The night was spent with little sleep as Fred would awake every 2 hours and whine until I (literally) rocked her to sleep. In the morning, I took her to Burger King and we split some breakfast sandwiches. Please note this was about 8am and the pet shops don't open until 9am- it was the only thing available. When the pet shop across the street opened, I took her in and bought her a collar and leash and some food. I figured I might as well as I had to drag her around for at least another hour. I explained the situation to the vet there and asked if the pup seemed healthy and the approximate age. The vet said she seemd fine, except for lack of food, and was about 8 weeks old.

After 10am, I walked into Tina's (my apartment manager) office with Fred in tow on her new leash. Being an animal lover, Tina immediatley hopped down from her chair to the floor to play with Fred. I explained the night's events and Tina replied that she knew she knew Fred from somewhere. She picked up the phone and dialed, her face reddening and voice hardening during the conversation.
Turns out Fred was owned by a Russian family in the apartment complex. Their two daughters were responsible for Fred and had been neglecting and torturing her (which explained Fred's fear of little girls that she later grew out of). After one of the girls swung Fred around by her back leg, Fred bit at her.As a result the parents opened the door and literally kicked Fred out.
Tina looked down at Fred (who had curled up on my left shoe) and back up at me. "Do you want to keep her," she asked. I looked down at Fred's sleeping form on my shoe, her mouth smacking in her slumber. And said with conviction:
"Yes."


And that's that. Fred has been my constant companion ever since. Loveable, hyper, good natured, and an oddball- she's a perfect match for me. She has kept me going, keep me focused and (mostly) sane more than anyone else ever in my life. In many ways, she's saved my life.
She's Fred; she's my dog.