It is one thing when I fail to maintain my own weight through diet and exercise. At 5’ 10”, I can carry an extra ten pounds with little more than a strained waistline (and an occasional flying button). Goose, on the other hand, is officially fat. Since his last visit to the vet he has gained 9 pounds. He is 61 pounds. I can’t feel his ribs. His fur coat is looking a little tight. I don’t know how this happened. He doesn’t get all sorts of treats, just a cookie here and a bit of lamb trachea (larynx?) there.  We only feed him one cup of dry food twice a day. I am beside myself. I have a child that could be considered obese. Do dogs have a BMI?

So, now what? I have to reduce his food by one third. Great, that won’t feel like deprivation. I suppose more exercise is in order too. I have seen doggie treadmills in the catalogs that clog my mailbox. What do you think it would take to get Bob Harper to go all “Biggest Doggie Loser” on Goose’s ass? Does Jenny Craig have a canine program, because damn that Sarah Rue looks awesome? My husband, Bob, even had me ask the vet if it could be a thyroid disorder (too much Oprah?). It wasn’t.

We have to guard Goose’s feelings. I don’t want to do anything that might damage his self-esteem or cause an eating disorder. What might that look like? Milk bone wrappers hidden in the couch and Beggin’ Strips boxes strewn about. And the purging, well I can’t begin to imagine. Lets not even get into the cost of therapy.

I have never had a chubby pooch before.

Larry was tall and skinny.

Mike is svelte and athletic.

In their old age our Golden Retrievers, Casey and Lucas, had some weight issues, but Goose is not even two.

Somehow Goose has moved into the portly zone without our notice – it happens, right? No need to panic and start inquiring about doggie gastric bypass yet. We’ll just begin the eat less, move more program and by we, I mean both Goose and I. Who knows, maybe in my efforts to whip him back into shape I’ll find inspiration. I can still feel my ribs, but my equivalent of his”fur coat” is a little tight these days too.

Goose does not have that type of identity crisis. He knows he is a dog. The issue is Goose thinks I am a dog as well.

Sometimes this misconception manifests itself in really cute ways. Goose almost always sleeps with his head touching some part of my body. The other morning he curled up around my head and actually rested his little head across my neck and went back to sleep, much like the piling puppies do when they are new.

The problem arises when he tries to engage me in some kind of play as if I were another dog. When he is amped up, and Mike is out of reach, he will paw at me to get my attention. It isn’t a gentle action; it actually leaves marks and hurts. When I don’t react, he begins to whine and make all sorts of noises. If I still don’t engage, then the yelling begins. OK, technically I guess it is barking, but it sounds an awful lot like yelling to me. See for yourself:

I don’t know who is more frustrated in this clip, me because I don’t know what his deal is or Goose because he is being very articulate about his desires….. just in DOG.

Last year a family of squirrels took up occupancy in our attic. Our attic is essentially a crawl space and because their residence was above the guest room, it took some time before we realized that we had squatters. I actually didn’t believe Bob until he showed me a squirrel head sticking out of the house. It seems they just moved in and began to remodel. They needed to add some additional entrances to their new place to bring it up to squirrel code so they began with a sliding glass door here and some French doors there (without the actual doors of course). The upside was that we hired some hunky young men to humanely evict our deadbeat tenants and relocate them to some subsidized squirrel housing otherwise known as a forest preserve. The downside was that the perimeter of our attic had to be sealed and the whole process cost a hunky arm and a leg.

Squirrels in the city aren’t unusual, you say. No, they aren’t, but how about rabbits? Yes, we have a small community of bunnies living in and around our yard. They don’t live exclusively in our yard, but they spend an inordinate amount of time in our yards given that we have dogs. Dogs, I might add, who are decidedly anti-bunny. If I were a city rabbit, I might chose to spend my time in a dog free zone, but not these rabbits. They not only hop around our yard, they have discovered where in the yard they are safe from, but not out of sight of, the canines. The result is a bark-fest that would make one think the canine world as we know it is coming to an end. Mike begins with a deep menacing repetitive bark and Goose chimes in with a squeak/bark that sounds a bit like he is being stabbed. The only solution is to run outside with my wet hair in a towel turban and chase the bunny off. The rabbits are apparently (and rightfully so) frightened of a crazy, yelling lady in her bathrobe flailing after them, but not barking dogs.

Lastly, there is our field mouse issue. Every year, although there isn’t a field around for miles, we have field mice that come to visit. They must take the train. After the first mouse came years ago we hired an extermination company to come and put out little crawl-thru restaurants that serve canine safe poison. We have also purchased traps that “humanely” execute mice by electrocution when they stop by for some peanut butter. Both methods have worked in the past to rid us of our unwanted house guests. Our dogs are both uninterested and ineffective in this endeavor, by the way. Apparently our current version of Stuart Little is too refined to dine at the crawl-thru restaurants because the tell tale trail he leaves behind is not green which would indicate a shorter life expectancy. And he may have a peanut allergy or at least an aversion because he hasn’t touched our “humane” traps, though he has left a trail around them as well. This mouse (and I need to believe there is just one – so shut up) is starting to get on my last humane nerve, but I have no idea what to do about it.

Squirrels, rabbits and field mice may seem like cute helpless little creatures, but you’ll change your tune when they have moved in, damaged your property and/or disrupted your life. Then you will believe, as I do, that they belong exclusively in the suburbs and Disney movies.

As you may have heard, it is a visually amazing film. The technology used in this film boggles the mind and the 3D effects are astounding. The creativity and imagination that conceived of a universe like Pandora is at once admirable and a little frightening.

While I totally enjoyed the story, it wasn’t exactly groundbreaking. It was kind of Dances with Wolves meets Lion King with a touch of Top Gun – in space. Fantastic futuristic land aside, it was all a little predictable. The bad guys were really bad, with no redeeming qualities at all and the good guys were pretty obviously good from the get go.

That being said, I really enjoyed the film, but I did run into a couple of unforeseen issues. The first of these issues is my fear of heights. The main characters spend almost all their time making their way from one moss covered tree limb to another moss covered tree limb waaay above the ground, in 3D. When they aren’t doing this balance beam act, they are flying on horse/bird animals waaay above the ground, in 3D. Did I mention that I can’t look out an airplane window? Yeah, there was excessive squirming and clammy palms.

I am not a big fan of violence nor do I react well when animals get hurt in movies. To add to my predisposition was the fact that the Navi tribe (the fictional space people in the film) based their spiritual beliefs on their connection to the earth and its creatures. So when the story line progressed to some war related violence, I realized that even in cartoon form it upsets me. The level of my reaction, however, to the animals that were casualties of the violence really surprised me. These were not only animated animals, but completely fictitious (although I did see canine resemblances in some) and I was inconsolable. It had me in tears for a full five minutes after the film ended. It is a testament to the film that I was that drawn in enough to feel for these animals, though that may or may not have been James Cameron’s intent.

Bob made me watch the credits for the disclaimer that said “No computer generated animals were injured in the making of this film”. I must have missed it, but he assured me it was there.