Wimsey's Blog: Diary of a Manhattan Bloodhound #291

Entry #291

January 11, 2013

Hello Everyone, Wimsey here, coming to you from Manhattan’s Upper West Side where the balmy temperatures have made for some oddly Spring-like conditions leading me to hope that my winter wardrobe has been banished for the season. My human Maria and her friend Elizabeth keep reminding me that it is only the second week of January and that there is ample time for them to caparison me in my winter finery.  I’m hoping for more global warming.

And speaking of it being the second week in January, I will be taking two Fridays off from blogging to protest Elizabeth’s absconding to Istanbul and London for her birthday (although visiting a country called Turkey sounds delightful but it would be better if its capital was called Sautéed Liver).

I severely disapprove of either of my humans leaving me and Maria is not looking forward to using her lunch hour to run home and walk a grumpy Hound who will try incessantly to drag her to Elizabeth’s apartment.  She is considering bringing my monstrously large and ever-growing toy pile from Elizabeth’s abode to our own so I will not feel so deprived.  Those of you who read this blog know that I spend my days with Elizabeth who picks me up at midday for a lovely, fun filled walk (not) that frequently involves me dragging her to pet stores on urgent toy pile augmentation missions.  And generally the first thing I do when I enter her apartment is to charge over to my toy pile, inventory it and squeak its latest addition in her face while she tries to remove my harness.

As you may imagine I always enjoy being out and about in the afternoons with Elizabeth and yesterday an entire family was happily petting me until I gave one mighty shake of my head and managed to slime every one of them.  I fortunately had just demanded a supply of cookies from Elizabeth’s treat pouch so my flews were well provisioned with an exceptional quantity of drool.  Standing in close proximity to a prodigiously drool producing Hound is always a precarious position but standing in close proximity to one who has been recently consuming snacks is asking for some serious dry cleaning bills.  Fortunately Elizabeth did warn the family that I drool, but saying that I drool is like saying that Hurricane Sandy was moist.   

Anyway, I apologize for the paucity of pictures —I was in fact ill at the beginning of the week and so in no mood to pose—or more accurately, in less of a mood to pose than I usually am when a camera appears. And I’m afraid that the position in which I was most likely to be found on those days was not exactly one that my humans or I wanted preserved for posterity.  I managed to overindulge on Sunday in my version of dumpster diving.  It turns out that Central Park is chock a block with lovely leaf piles that conceal all manner of delectable comestibles (rotting food, non-rotting food, the poop of miscellaneous animals, etc.)  Which are invisible to the human eye but not fortunately (or unfortunately) to the bloodhound nose.  I repeatedly dove enthusiastically into these leaf piles and emerged chewing and swallowing amid squeals of dismay from my humans.

My humans find my garbage hunting proclivities especially egregious because not only do I free
feed and thus have access to large, nutritious bowls of premium kibble 24/7 but I also have access to assorted other goodies such as yams, turkey, salmon, eggs chicken, etc. that find their way into my food bowl.  And this doesn’t even account for the fact that my humans carry a minimum of 3 kinds of cookies on our walks in addition to a quantity of turkey.  So   I am not exactly on short rations.  But I consider garbage hunting a sport and like most sports it is essentially pointless but a lot of fun – at least until the consequences set in.

And owing to those consequences I pretty much spent Monday and Tuesday with my backside in a bush. I was feeling better by Wednesday but a quiet day was thought best, hence the lack of photos and antics this week.  But Elizabeth has been having so much fun with her language translation app that her phone can now scream  ‘Wimsey get your head out of there!” at me in Turkish. I’m sure she’ll find that very useful.

Anyway, I will be back with you in a couple of weeks—meanwhile I am off to plot my leaving me for vacation revenge.

Until next time,

Wimsey, Muhteşem Hound (The Magnificent Hound—unless the translation software knows me and substituted the annoying, horrible Hound instead)

Wimsey's Blog: Diary of a Manhattam Bloodhound #290

 

Entry #290

January 4, 2013

Hello Everyone, Wimsey here, coming to you from the Upper West Side of Manhattan where the holidays are finally over and I can get back to the serious business of being a hatless, antlerless Hound whose magnificent occipital point is no longer obscured by obnoxious, seasonal headwear.

 

On Sunday my human Maria had her friend Elizabeth over for a pre-2013 wine and cheese evening that turned into more of a whine and cheese event courtesy of yours truly.  Although I did not actually have a chair I creatively compensated by resting my head on the table so that my human could not ignore the fact that she had an additional guest.  And of course no selection of cheeses would be complete without Morbier, the cheese with which I kept up my strength during my post surgical recuperation nearly two years ago.  Morbier and Maria’s mother’s Hungarian honey cookies have remarkable recuperative powers when applied at frequent, regular intervals.  Anyway, I really, really like cheese to which my puddles of drool and the miasma of noxious fumes that I produce readily attest. Maria always hopes that I sleep with my tush pointing away from her head on cheese nights.

 

Well winter has officially arrived and the neighborhood dogs are out and about in their cold weather finery.  I myself feel profoundly underdressed in my chartreuse fleece in the face of down puffy coats, hand knit wool sweaters and (weather permitting) elegant, fully fashioned booties.  But as the thermometer drops into the 20s and 30s a single layer no longer suffices for these jaunty canines and the trend is to use a sweater (preferably a snappy turtleneck) as a base layer and then a coat as an outer layer.  And lest you picture small, frou frou dogs arrayed in this sartorial splendor let me assure you that it is we large working and sporting breeds that are the major recipients of this human fashion largesse.  No one seems to see anything incongruous about a parade of animals bred to be outdoors all day hunting, trailing or herding who are instead swanning around the burg in Ralph Lauren.  I’m told that Elizabeth has been checking out head muffs on chillydogs.ca so it’s probably only a matter of time before I see West Side dogs strolling along (or in my case it would be chewing along—putting clothing on my ears is taboo) in these head warmers as well.

 

The holidays not withstanding it has been a quiet week around here so this week’s post is of the quick and dirty variety (of course everything concerning me may not always be quick but it is generally dirty so this should come as no surprise).  The city is very quiet as lots of people took the week off. Even my French bulldog buddy Pluto is away in Vermont with his humans (much to the delight of the neighborhood whose residents have a week off from being awakened by my acoustically exuberant early morning greeting when we run into each other).  But before Pluto left he gave Elizabeth a present for watching him when his humans were out of town—it was a bottle of gin.  I think that speaks volumes about his character and how many restoratives Elizabeth required after trying to manage one small dog and one large dog both of whom want their own way and neither of whose ways is Elizabeth’s way.

But the holidays continue around here well into January as it is now Birthday Season—Maria’s is on the 18^th and Elizabeth’s is on the 21^st.  And as is customary, I will be expecting gifts to celebrate the occasion—I wouldn’t want my large, loud Christmas hedgehog to get lonely.  The bad news is that Elizabeth is once again going away for a week leaving me bereft of her caretaking services during the day. 

Last year she was supposed to go dog sledding in the Arctic (because taking care of a loud, obnoxious sheddy dog during the day clearly lends itself to the desire to be pulled around by a team of them in the Arctic at night) but just ended up going to London after visiting Oslo instead.  This year she is going to Istanbul and whereas last year she spent considerable time doing a tour of Scandinavian pet shops looking for presents for me this year she will be spending considerable time doing a tour of Turkish carpet shops looking for rugs for me.  Apparently the fact that the large oriental carpet upon which I like to sprawl is missing its fringe, has its pile stuck together by drool, is infested with dog hair that resists vacuuming and emits an air of eau d’anal gland in spots is problematic.  I am looking forward to her finding a new rug that I can begin customizing. I hope it’s expensive.

And of course Elizabeth is very organized and has put together a pre-trip list:

Buy clothes that fit, that don’t smell and that don’t come from LL Bean

Buy shoes made of actual leather and not canvas and don’t come from Nike or New Balance

Dry clean the drool, dirt and hair off of clothes, hide them deep in the closet and hope that external Hound hair doesn’t penetrate the closet the way it usually does

Make sure “to do” list is outside of Hound’s shred range at all times

Load pictures of Hound onto all digital devices

Program phone’s language app to say: “Do you want to see a magnificent Hound” in Turkish.

And of course while she’s on “vacation” (buying stuff to replace the stuff I’ve destroyed) perhaps she will have time to work on that novel that she and Maria have been talking about for a while (synopsis below):

50 Shades of Black and Tan

The protagonist, a young foolish woman acquires a bloodhound.

Among a host of daily humiliations so beloved by humans who live with bloodhounds (like the perpetual reminder that the laws of private property do not apply and that everything that you think is yours is really theirs and is theirs to do with as they please when they please) the Hound introduces the young woman to Bondage and Discipline by attaching her to himself via a leash and tying up her legs when he goes around trees or lampposts the wrong way around causing her to fall over and get injured.  In addition the Hound disciplines her severely every time she attempts to go in a different direction (home, for instance) from the one that he has chosen by dislocating her shoulder or pulling her over.  All of this causes onlookers to further humiliate her by jeering, “Who’s walking who.” A stupid question as the answer is obvious (but people who use “who” instead of “whom” are like that).

Also high on Houndly activities is the practice of dominance and submission.  This takes many forms (like having to consult the Hound’s well being before making even the most trivial decision, such as whether to go out to dinner) including forcing the young woman to pick up excrement, making her sit and sleep on the floor whilst the Hound luxuriates on the bed and furniture and forcing her to beg the Hound to release valuable possessions from his mouth or to relieve himself in a timely manner in inclement weather. In all aspects of life the Hound displays mastery (even sending his human out to work while he naps all day or eats a chair) and the human must either display total submission or be punished by the utterly terrifying Look of Disdain and Contempt from her Hound. Also he’ll eat her favorite pair of shoes. Again.

The Hound then introduces the young woman to sadism and masochism.  She demonstrates her masochism merely by her acquiescence to the Hound’s presence in her home and he demonstrates his sadism by making her suffer poverty (he likes going to the vet), loss (he arbitrarily confiscates her possessions, usually choosing the most valuable or irreplaceable items) and lack of freedom (her whole life must revolve around him and his comfort).  He also subjects her to sleep deprivation by snoring, shoving her off the bed, snuffling her face and farting into it all night long. The young woman suffers many bruises occasioned by the Hound’s insistence on pinning her to the couch or furniture and using her as a pillow and remaining entirely deaf to her pained entreaties to move or to stop. He further inflicts injury by thwacking her with his giant paws with their long, never trimmed nails in sensitive portions of her anatomy and smacking her in the face with his exceptionally hard and pointy head. Moreover, by placing himself and his possessions at strategic locations (especially en route to places she walks in the dark at night) the Hound causes falls, bruises and broken bones that require trips to the emergency room and soaring healthcare premiums.

But no matter what he does to her the woman loves him anyway. He’s way cuter than that guy called Christian.

Well you get the idea.  Anyway, I hope to keep you posted on Elizabeth’s Levantine and literary progress via Twitter.

Well I think that’s it for this week.  I hope everyone is enjoying 2013 as much as I am.

Until next time,

Wimsey, 50 shades of it’s all about me and 0 shades of it’s all about you