Tuesday, May 31, 2005

PETS ARE PEOPLE TOO

I've heard that having pets can lower your blood pressure and make you a healthier, happier person. I must be doing something wrong. I have a Golden Retriever named Beau, two cats named Bob and Derek and an ever changing amount of fish with names only my two daughters know.

The amount of fish is currently dropping. We're having a problem. The whole thing is a bit complicated with bacterial blooms and messed up cycles. I'm still in the desperately-trying-to-save-them stage, but the I-give-up stage is drawing near. For some unknown reason I seem to go into the rescue mode in the late night hours. I was up until 1:00 am last night researching on the internet and doing a 25% water change in my fish tank.

Over the weekend I decided I could save some money by purchasing a $67 dog shaver and shaving my dog myself. The dog groomer would have done it for $50. I spent part of one day and all of the next torturing that poor dog. In between our little "sessions" together, he got to run around the yard in varying stages of baldness. I tend to do things like that in a haphazard way so you can imagine how he must have looked most of the time. Now he is completely bald except for his tail, his butt and his you know what! I didn't want to make any mistakes in those areas! We've labeled him cute and I'm done! People have been nice enough not to laugh.

That's the thing about dogs, if you laughed at him, he would look as if you had hurt his feelings. That really gets to me, they are so emotionally needy. At least those eyes seem to be needy. The only time he doesn't have a pleading, forlorn look is when he is eating, sleeping or pooping. Oops, I take that back, he does have some weird look when he's pooping. I actually couldn't tell you what it means, but its definitely not a happy, feeling good kind of look that you would expect during his moment of relief.

Now cats on the otherhand are totally different. They do need us humans, but they have more of an attitude that we owe them. Stop patting me and I'll hurt you! Do you want the damage done with the teeth or the claws? Or shall I just wait until later and pee on your favorite sweater? I could eat some grass and puke on your bed (that happened to me two nights ago). And when exactly is my blood pressure supposed to go down?

I do love my pets in a love-hate relationship kind of way. I really like what the pets do for my children. They really love their animals. At least they love them when the cats aren't scratching and the dog isn't farting. Now back to saving those fish!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

we stopped at cat and fish. I blogged about the death of many fish, it took quite a few before the bacterial balance was right. And here I though fish were easy. Turned out to be somewhat traumatic for my son. That reminds me, I should really change some water, it's been two weeks and there's green stuff growing on the glass...

Elise said...

In the past day and a half my fish tank seems to be stable and not getting that white cloudiness so I have my fingers crossed. I did a few things to try to help it so now I have to keep up all things since I don't know what actually helped! My youngest loves the fish tank but doesn't seem to get emotional about dead or dying fish.

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