S Is Not For Sarna~

I was making great headway with the puppies until two weeks ago. We had a good schedule. They'd conquered Sit, Come, Off, plus a few other commands.

And they do comply, even now, about ninety percent of the time. Our walks, three times a day, keep them tired. Cross my heart, knock on wood, and fingers crossed, we have not lost any shoes to them. They haven't even stolen the little wooden door stops that Kashie used to like to chew. They are good little dogs.

Then the kitten came. Really, the kitten was our hired man's girlfriend's. Rosa found it in the street a couple of days after Kasha died.

"She'll hunt rats when she grows ups," Rosa said. She named the kitten Perlita, Little Pearl. And she was very cute.

Then José and Rosa went on his annual vacation for most of the month of April. They arranged for José's father to live in the house and take care of their two love birds, José's mangy dog, and the kitten. But, José's father works every day and there was no one at the house most of the time, so after about a week the kitten moved in with us.

My morning feeds became a juggling contest to get the cat off the kitchen counter, the puppies out of the cat's food, the puppies in their crates, and our old dog fed out in the garage.

The Basenjis adorned the kitten. It turned out Bibi was quite right––before, when she gave me the withering look–– when they were roughhousing with the kitten; they weren't doing anything bad, and the cat could easily fend for itself. They became inseparable.

I now had three puppies and the kitten. I refused to let Perlita in the house at night, so she climbed the screens and mewed at us continually while we tried to watch baseball on the TV. If I let her in, the puppies couldn't calm down and raced around the house, up over furniture, and generally caused Alan and me to consider abandoning the living room altogether for our bed room. There was no way I could keep her out of the house during the day, and no way to keep her home.

Then Chacho started to lose his hair. At first, it wasn't anything serious. I just noticed a lot of hair on the floor each night to dust mop. Then we began to see the bumps under his front legs (what do you call dog's armpits, anyway?). After a week of this we took him and Bibi to the vet. The verdict: sarna. Mange. Scabies. You can call it whatever you want, it's still horrible.

Chacho got an injection at the vet's office and the vet sent me home with another to give in two weeks. He also gave me a rinse to bathe him with twice a week. We went home.

That evening I noticed a scratch (from the kitten) on Bibi's nose had blown up into a festering sore. She hadn't lost any hair, but I poked and prodded and found the same bumps Chacho had on Bibi's chest. I gave her the injection meant for Chacho and washed her down with the rinse.

The next day Holly, our little mix, had sores all over her chest and belly. Back to the vet, this time with José's dog, Oso, and Holly. He sold me a whole vial of ivermectin and the syringes and three bottles of the rinse. I began the routine that has become my entire world for the past two weeks.

Every morning I pull out all the dog's bedding and throw it in the wash. Afterwards, I hang them out to dry. I cover the couches with spare towels so the dogs aren't lying directly on them. Then, we do the usual feeding, walking, training, and playing. In the afternoon, about three, I wash the puppies down with the medicated rinse, wash out their kennels, reline their kennels, vacuum the house and the couches. Then I rest.

The other night, while watching the news, I discovered a bump on my ankle. I scrapped it off with a razor blade and scrubbed the bejesus out of it with disinfectant. I was about to cauterize it with a lighter, when Alan pulled me off.

I told José to wash his dog every day and can only hope to hell he is doing it. The only one to escape the scourge so far is Campeón who has snarled and snapped at any puppy coming within three feet of him. I injected him anyway. 

Two weeks later, we are seeing progress. The bumps are minimal on Chacho, although the little guy looks like an old broken down leather coat or suitcase. Alan calls hm Satchel. Holly's coat is looking better and I'm marking progress by how little hair there is on the floor. This is the tropics, though, and things grow here. I think, and the vet said, I may have to battle this for a month or more.

And the kitten, who I took to calling Vector, because we now think she carried the sarna from José's dog to ours in those sharp little claws of hers.? She is gone. Rosa gave her to a friend, and I hope for their sake that she did not carry the mites to their house.  

It's been quite a busy time.

S, which does not stand for sarna!

Elderly Cadet~

My husband is 6 feet 3 inches tall. Most Ticos are short, which is why we bought a certain American Standard toilet. It is called The Elderly Cadet and is a couple inches taller than your average toilet.

I was appalled by the name and almost refused to buy it. I feel about it the way I feel about certain candy bars I refuse to buy because of their names. I don't want to say to the store clerk, for example: "I'd like a Big Daddy, please." I just can't bring myself to do it. And these days it seems a person might get into bit of trouble, depending on the inclinations of the clerk.

In my youth I stuck to Hershey chocolate bars or Hershey with almonds or Fire Stix (those lovely hot cinnamon hard candies with plastic wrap that invariably failed to come off, allowing the purchaser to eat that too). When feeling adventurous I'd have a Mounds or an Almond Joy, (because sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don't). I realize that my world was made all that much smaller by not trying the others but I maintained my dignity.

Now I find myself doing my daily business on something called The Elderly Cadet.

Let us reflect upon the meaning here for a moment, (as I have done while sitting on this throne of ours). The word cadet means, according to my American Oxford: 1) a young trainee in the armed services or police force, or 2) archaic. A younger son or daughter.

We all know what elderly means and some of us are becoming uncomfortably familiar with not only its definition but how it feels on a cellular level.

So here is my question: what exactly is an elderly cadet? Does this imply that we are getting a bit old to call ourselves cadets any longer, or–– what I think it means–– that we are cadets in the ever-growing army of ancients. Recruits, if you will. Not exactly old yet, but still not wanting to bend the knees quite that far to reach the seat.

However, cadet also stems from early 17th Century French and specifically from Gascon dialect capdet, a diminutive based on Latin caput–– ‘head.’ The notion “little head” or “inferior head” gave rise to that of [younger, junior.]

So maybe this is simply humor from a toilet designer at American Standard, and we actually have a toilet called The Elderly Head. If so, the person who named it probably used to have a job naming candy bars. The ones I refused to buy!

There are a lot of them





Some Thoughts on My Father-in-law @ CPR

The Camroc Press Review
We are besotted with microwriting—fiction, nonfiction, poetry, whatever. See the guidelines and submit something that makes us feel real emotions.


A short piece a wrote about my father-in-law is up at The Camroc Press Review. I wrote the micro essay several of years ago and posted it on my blog shortly after he died in 2007. Rewriting it for publication, I decided to leave the piece in present tense because those tough old codgers should be remembered as if still living.

I am pleased to appear at CPR. There are many, many talented writers there. Take a tour, and if you don't find my piece through the above link try this one and read both my pieces in the archives.