The year of Sarge

Sarge turned out to be a great dog after the poo incident. He is quirky and docile and affectionate.  His positive sides are many, but he is, in a good dog way, a bad dog.  He used to be a champion runner. An open front door was an invitation to explore the sights and smells of the world .  I once chased him down at a neighbor's barbeque.  Another time, Eli and the Peapod grocery delivery guy chased him around the block. They returned, throwing up their hand in defeat, thinking he was lost, while I watched Sarge chasing behind them!  We got him an ID chip after that.

Sarge settled into the household.  He slept at the foot of Eli's bed and spent the rest of the time on the couch or in the crate.  Dogs can, apparently, sleep 20 hours a day, which Sarge did.  But in those four houses of wakefulness, he was a joyful, sausage shaped log-of-fur and activity.  He chewed up every toys we gave him, dug for grubs in the yard, and begged for table scraps. Eli did get to be kid of the week and Sarge was kind of well behaved at the school for a few minutes.

Then the darnedest thing started happening.  After the first rhyme about poo, I started to hear rhymes about everything Sarge related.  I wrote down two more little rhymes, the three and four, and pretty soon I had about sixteen little verses with no signs of slowing.  I figured Sarge was a dog rhyme channeling genius, so I got him his own Facebook page and started posting.  Since I already had so many rhymes and there seemed to be no end, I started posting one of Sarges poems every day.

At first it was fun and pretty easy to write in Sarges voice.  Eli asked me how long I planned to post Sarge's poems.  "I dunno..for a year?"  I replied.  He said "You won't be able to do that!  Just do one a week." Challenge!   "I'll show you!"  I thought.  Oh my...

After the first two months, thing started to be a tad harder.  There are only so many interesting thing to write about a dog.  Here is a sampling of a few of the originals:

I'm Sarge the dog.
 I frequently whine.
 I whine at your feet while you are trying to dine.
 I look at your food and think "isn't that mine?" 
I wrinkle my forehead and look like I'm cryin'. 
(I know I look cute, there is no denyin'. )
 Sometimes you feed me. Sometimes you decline. 
But that's intermittent reinforcement so you blame ME for tryin'!

I’m Sarge, the dog.

I like to sleep.

I sleep in blankets in a heap. 

When I’m asleep in my blanket heap,

Sometimes a fart from me will creep.

And when it does, it will make you weep! 

I’m Sarge the dog.

I like my boys.

They feed me things and buy me toys.

My mom’s a bore.

She makes no noise, and licking her brings her no joys.

So if you had to make a choice,

Don’t you think you choose the boys?

So think of that ties 365 (It was leap year!)

I got stuck many times.  There are rhymes specific to day.  fourth of July , Eli's birthday, Christmas. There were a few guest spot.  Sarge wrote poems about other people's pets a few times.  He wrote two about the Cardinal's winning the world series.  He experimented with different formats-haiku, limericks.  I ended up buying two rhyming dictionaries. (I think there is a poem about that).  

Despite the writer's blocks and some technical difficulties, I made it through the whole year!  I am sure that there are not very many pets that can boast that they have an entire year of poetry devoted to them.  As great as Sarge is, and as much as I enjoyed the challenge,  I will never ever do that again!

For awhile, I switched to Sarge's tip of the week with a picture and life lesson, but Sarge and his channel (me) are both sort of old and tired. You can still enjoy Sarges's page and even "Like" it.  Just don't expect too much ore activity there!

I am starting in a whole new direction next post, but I hope you keep reading.  I am sure there will be more memories and pets along the way!

Here is a link to Sarge's Facebook page if you want to read the whole series (Sorry about the typos along the way!)

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Sarge-the-dog/249325348417598

Cat person or dog person?

All along I have always thought I was a cat person. I felt more pulled to them and I was sure that my destiny was to be a crazy cat lady someday.  But then, my kid begged for a dog.

When Eli was in third grade, his teacher had a "kid of the Week"  This was really just a couple of minutes in the morning to talk about your favorite things and share you favorite snack.  One of the thing that other kids had done, was have their parents bring in his or her pet for the class to meet.  Eli really wanted to be "Kid of the Week" and have a pet to show off.  I suggested that he could put the spider that hung out in the bathtub in a box and take that, but that was a no go, so we started to look for dogs.

There were some specifiers.  No puppies.  Cute as they are, no way was anyone in my household was  housebreaking a dog.  Secondly, it had to be fixed already.  Adopting a pre-housebroken pre-neutered dog was cheaper and easier than a do-it-yourself variety.  I really wanted a pug dog or other dog that looked as if they were running too fast too keep from smashing into into a wall face first.  Eli, however wanted a dog with an actual nose.  Also, no long hairs, no yippee barks and nothing big enough to ride on.  I highly recommend Petfinders.com.  We were able to find a dog that seemed ideal. I contacted the shelter and they invited a to a "meet and greet" event

 I honestly thought we were just going to check out some dogs and come back later to decide.  Instead, we left with Sarge.  He met the criteria.  Real nose (check), not a puppy (check), not too big (check), not too much hair (check), housebroken and neutered (check).  The only thing we didn't get,was a chance to check the sound of his bark.  Eli met Sarge and  was not going to part with this dog, whether or not he had a yippee bark. I just figured we'd have to get a dog voice box replacement or something if his bark  was too high.  Lucky for us, on the drive home, he saw another dog out of the window and we were delighted to hear him explode into a low, boofy sounding bark.  After we recovered from the ringing in our ears, we slapped a high five and finished the trip.  We were now official dog-people.

There are two things you can do to a dog to see how calm and docile it is.  You can poke your finger between the pads on it's feet, and you can grab it's lips and move it around.  Not only will Sarge (who came with that name) let you do those things, he will look bored about it, wag his tail, and roll over so you can scratch his tummy while you do them. He barks ferociously at dogs, squirrels, birds and people who walk within a foot of the house, but if an actually close encounter occurs, Sarge will wag his tail and beg for food.  He is not a good watchdog.

The doggie adoption agency told us that Sarge was crate trained and would prefer to stay locked in while we were gone for the day.  But as I was leaving him alone for the first time, I felt guilty and worried.  What if he got hungry or thirsty?  What if the crate was uncomfortable or he just wanted to stretch his short little legs? So I left him sleeping on the couch and closed the door and went to work.

I was the last out and the first home, so I was able to look around to see how he had fared out of the crate all day.  Sarge greeted me at the door ran to the master bedroom, where he sat and wagged his tail  Was he showing me something?  Was that (hideous, blue shag) carpet more comfortable for him?  Was he confused about how to get to the yard to do his business?  I looked around, but things seemed to be in order, so I breathed a sigh and waited for my husband to get home.

When he got there, I excitedly told him how well the dog did. We were happy that things were going so well. Dana went into the bedroom to change and several minutes later, he yelled out, "Hey!  If the dog did so well out of his crate, how come there's dog poop in my shoes?!!"  So that's what Sarge wanted to show me!   Later we would also discover a chewed up pencil and some other randomly shredded papers and unidentifiable destroyed piles of dog fodder.  It does not need to be said that Sarge spent his days locked i his crate after that.


This incident inspired me to compose a short verse:

Sarge the dog.  He eats and chews
and then he poos on Daddy's shoes.
If Sarge the dog would choose your shoes,
which would you choose?
Chews or poos?

Unfortunately for you, dear blog, I not only composed that silly couplet, I continued to find short rhyming verses about Sarge.  I think he may have channeled them to me somehow.  This led to something I'll tell you about in the next post.