High Saturation

As a school teacher, I have plenty of children right at hand. Watermelon wine doesn’t sound too appealing; I tried pomegranate wine once and it was unmemorable. But…old dogs is my specialty. Boy, do we ever have old dogs! Two goofy golden retrievers, each with nagging physical problems.

Lester is 11, and Earl (the girl) is 10. Lester came to us first. He’s named for Lester Flatt. Earl was next, and we overlooked, as much as we could, the fact that she’s a girl! She’s named for Earl Scruggs. Yes, bluegrass is, or used to be a huge part of our collective lives. Her name was obvious to us even before we bought her.

Lester has a very strange skin problem, called granuloma. Granuloma happens when a neurotic dog licks himself incessantly…usually in the middle of the night, preferably while he’s lying on your bed. If you want to be enlightened, do a google search of granuloma. It’s not a cause, but rather,  an affectation. A bad one. Poor Lester used to have the best fur in town. Now he has very little,  and parts of him look like hamburger. It isn’t pretty.

Earl is way too fat. In the summer she’s a total jock, and will swim for hours on end. Last summer, she lost 6 pounds just through athletic pursuits. This winter she’s bulked up with our frozen environment here in North Carolina, and from finishing Lester’s food, which he abandons in preference to licking himself. Earl has $900 designer dog fur. After listening to her pant at night from under her furry self- blanket (while Lester was licking) we decided a week ago to have her shorn, so she now looks like a lab, not a golden. Then we noticed that she had a giant bulge on her under side, a scary sight. A trip to the vet assured us that she isn’t dying, just has a fatty area. The vet said she could have liposuction, for $500, and then a tummy tuck! It isn’t likely. Seriously.

A week ago I had a big photography assignment, and I had lofty ideas of going out and photographing a beautiful red barn in the snow. Problem was, I was tired after Lester’s licking all night and there were accumulated snowflakes. Driving was more treacherous than I could have imagined. All those years living in Buffalo gave me an inflated ego about my snow driving capabilities. It was a day off from school, and I had an idea that the red barn would be perfect with that new blanket of snow. Bad idea. I got stuck at a busy intersection and after 10 minutes of trying to free myself, I crept home, feeling humiliated. It was only 7 AM.

A Family Portrait

For the next 2 days I took pictures of Lester and Earl. Here are just a few. Notice their wonderful masks of white on their muzzles. A man who replaces watch batteries at the mall told me  never to bring all my watches in at the same time. Seems that the batteries will all expire again at about the same time two years later. I worry that both dogs are ageing out at the same rate, and I am already getting sad, but both dogs have had a momentary reprieve. Let summer come!