Dog Days

So after work on Friday I got home at almost the exact same time as Ali did.  She had just picked up Sadie from the Humane Society.  She said that Sadie was good in the car and slept most of the way. Sadie was happy to see me but she is happy to see almost any human being for that matter.  We decided to take her in the side gate to the back yard and then let Nicki out to see her.

Like I said before, when we were at the Humane Society with both dogs the interaction was rather mundane, neither dog took a huge interest in the other.  When I let Nicki out the back door we didn’t know what to expect.  Well our concerns were immediately lessened when within a minute or two Sadie and Nicki were playing and chasing each other around the yard.  We were a bit concerned about Sadie running only two days after getting fixed.  She is a little rocket, much faster than Nicki and able to change directions on a dime.  She would give my dad’s dogs a run for their money in the speed department.

Ali and I both were all smiles to see Nicki at least initially be happy to have another dog around.  After letting them run around for a few minutes we brought them both inside so Sadie could check out her new home.  She was all over the place smelling and investigating.  She also was very interested in being wherever Ali and I were at.  The rest of the night went ok.  Sadie made herself right at home, happy to snuggle up to me on the sofa or Ali on the recliner.  You could tell Nicki wasn’t thrilled with sharing the attention but she tolerated it.  At bed time Sadie again had no problems jumping right into the action.  She hopped up on the bed and planted herself between us and stayed there all night long. 

Sadie was very restless during the night, both Ali and I were awakened multiple times.  At one point I remember saying to Ali, “THIS has to change”  I couldn’t exist on a daily basis having poor, fragmented sleep every night. Ali said she was probably just excited and confused by her new arrangements.  I hoped this was the case.

So Saturday morning I drug my still very tired body out of bed and started on my normal routine of cat maintenance that is typically done before letting Nicki out.  I was near the end of the process, standing at the sink washing my hands when I saw Sadie in my peripheral vision, she looked to be very still.  I turn and see her in full pissing position with a huge wet spot under her.  “Sadie NO!” I yelled.  She took of for the bedroom.  Of course Ali heard the scream and came out.  I already had the Spot Bot in hand.  I tried to not be furious but I encouraged Ali to take the dogs out. I was not a happy camper. 

The Spot Bot ran through 4 cycles.  I wanted to try my best to make sure to pull up as much of the urine as possible.  I followed up the robotic cleaning with a generous application of Nature’s Miracle.  When Sadie came back in she knew she did a NO NO.  I was logical enough to know that there is no way a new animal can come into your house and not have some sort of incident.  It certainly didn’t do much though to make me feel more secure in the decision we made to adopt another dog.

I had to go into work for a good chunk of the day Saturday.  As I was working in the server room I was feeling a lot of anxiety about the adoption.  “What have we done?” ran through my head a few times.  Nicki and we had a good thing going. I wasn’t sure that we needed to overturn the apple cart by adding another dog into the mix. It was on my mind quite a bit.  The weekend work was mostly successful.  We installed a new digital KVM switch and cleaned up the wiring behind our second server rack.  The third part of the work had to be scuttled, a server migration, because the back up I performed the night before had some errors in it.  I headed home after 3 wondering what sort of environment I would come back to.

Ali said things had gone fine.  Nicki and Sadie played quite a bit.  Nicki appeared to like having a playmate but wasn’t thrilled with sharing her amenities inside.  Sadie was definitely higher energy than I realized from our interactions at the shelter.  In a way she reminded me of our neighbor’s Jack Russel, Zoe who is very much in your face at all times.  It made me think that Sadie is part terrier. 

One of the biggest concerns we had was Nicki letting herself be dominated by another dog since it is in her nature to be generally submissive.  Sadie demonstrated some dominant behavior at times.  When I open the slider or a door to the outside Sadie always has to be the first one out.  She will plow through Nicki to get ahead of her.  She is not shy to be first in line for food, treats or a spot on the sofa or ottoman either.  Ali and I encouraged Nicki to be more assertive.  There were times when Sadie would try to be the aggressor but there was a line that Nicki would not tolerate which is good.  When Nicki growled and took an aggressive stance Sadie would immediately drop down and be submissive, that is what we want.

Sadie has a number of funny traits.  She drinks a ton more water than Nicki does and she does it in a very messy way.  When she leaves the water bowl she leaves with a stream of water falling out of her mouth.  Thank goodness the water is on the ceramic tile.  She is an avid grass eater.  We constantly catch her grazing on tall grass in the yard.  She is very itchy.  She had horrible fleas when she was rescued and as a result has dermatitis in several areas.  Her belly is also shaved from the spay so the hair growing back in itches as well.  She is constantly scratching, licking or chewing on some area of her body it seems.  It appears that Sadie came from a home where she was regularly hit.  When you bring a hand up to pet her she winces instinctively like she is ready to get whacked. I think she has had a less than ideal existence up to this point.

My anxiety about her adoption somewhat lessened as the weekend went on.  I think as more time passes all parties involved will settle in to daily routines that will work.  My biggest concern at this point is Sadie’s unquenchable thirst and the urine that comes as a result.  I am praying that she is able to hold it on days the dogs are home alone when Ali works.  If not she will be taking up residence in the kitchen until she learns the carpet is not a toilet.  Tomorrow will be the first test.

Sunday morning we had to get up at 4:30 to time a race.  After a very unrestful sleep the night before, getting up that early was exactly what I didn’t need.  I took a melatonin before bed to try to get at least some solid uninterrupted sleep. It appeared to work, I slept straight through thank goodness.  Sadie appeared to be less restless.  I learned my lesson and switched my task order.  Task 1, dogs outside, there was no way I had the time or patience for a repeat pee performance.

We loaded both dogs up in the truck and headed to the race.  It was a tight squeeze.  Nicki laid down in the back while Sadie used Ali’s lap as a dog seat the entire way there.  This race is a new race, the first year for it.  We had various issues leading up to it that clued us in that the day was probably not going to go very well.  Unfortunately we were dead on.

The layout of the race was not logistically efficient.  The start, finish and registration areas were all very spread out.  When I arrived at the registration area and started to unload the chips, runners were already starting to show up.  The lady at the desk was yelling that she needed a registration list which I had in the truck.  I snagged the list and continued bringing stuff over.  It didn’t take long until I realized that the people manning the registration desk had little to no idea of what they needed to be doing.  I had to bark out some hurried instructions as I rushed to get the chips and laptop set up.  It was a mess.  When people started coming over for their timing chips I realized that the zip ties we use to attach them were back at the finish line in a container.  Thankfully the race organizer hopped in a golf cart and grabbed them for me.

The hectic scene was made worse by the weather conditions.  There was a thick fog enveloping  the area that was making everything wet including the computer equipment.  It was not good working conditions.  Luckily since the race was 10 miles I had time to set up the finish line after the start.  The race started and Ali, the two dogs and I piled to head to the finish line.  Luckily the dogs seemed content enough to just hang out in the truck while we worked.

The first guy crossing the line came through at in blistering 55 minutes and change.  The second place runner came through about 5 minutes later.  As he did I noticed that the guy looked vary familiar.  I was pretty sure I knew him but I had no idea where from.  I looked at his name in the database, it sounded familiar but when I saw the New York, NY address it threw me off.  How would I know someone from New York?  I sat there and wracked my brains trying to figure out who the guy was.  Then it clicked.  It was Kyle, a co-worker of mine from my Weis Markets days!  Kyle worked in the produce department right next to the meat department I worked in.  He was a very athletic kid that went to Wilson High, he was a couple years younger than me.  I remember we got along well.  Eventually I tracked him down and asked him if he worked at Weis 20 years ago.  Kyle was all smiles and said he saw me earlier and thought he knew me as well.  He said that his fiance’s parents have a place in the area and they were just down visiting.  They heard by word of mouth that there was a race that day and just came down spur of the moment.  I met his fiance and chatted for a brief while.  I had to get back to timing the race.  I congratulated him on his time, obviously he has maintained his fitness level over the years.  What a small world, I could not believe I ran into him.

So anyway, the timing of the runners was going relatively well.  As usual we had several runners cross whose chips did not register.  This is very annoying as it requires us to constantly babysit the system the entire race so we can manually punch in any missed finishers.  I went in and generated my first early result page and posted it.  Shortly thereafter I had someone come up to me and tell me that one of the runners was incorrectly listed as a female instead of a male.  WTF?  I went in and took a look at the result report.  I was in disbelief.  As I looked down the page I saw tons of misgendered runners, men as women and vice versa.  I choked when I realized what happened. 

The race organizer was providing me with entries in an excel file.  I basically import the file into the race database and it populates the race with runners.  I had received several spreadsheets from her during the week that had various issues so I decided to just wait to put in the master list on Saturday from a final spreadsheet she sent me.  Well evidently she must have done a sort on the file at some point but did not expand the sort to cover all columns.  The result, runner names with mismatched genders AND birth dates.  This was pretty much a worse case scenario.  With incorrect genders and birth dates there was no way for me to calculate accurate finish results and awards. WTF are we going to do?

Well our only option was to try to fix it on the spot.  The race organizer was horrified when I told her the error came from her file.  There was added pressure to have accurate results in this race because they were giving out cash prizes, big cash prizes.  We were scrambling.  What we wound up having to do was have EVERY runner (well runners that listened) come up to the timing table and give us their correct DOB.  Thankfully Ali is very good with data entry.  Still with over 150 runners it was a huge undertaking.  I’m sure it looked ridiculous and pissed many runners off to have to stand in line after a race to give their information a second time.  I know I would have been pissed if I was a participant.  We had no choice, it was the only way we could try to fix the mess.

We were quite fortunate that the race was lightly attended.  If this was a 500 person run I don’t know what we would have done.  Eventually we got the results and awards out albeit much later than promised.  Ali and I were very angry initially.  Typically the race club handles the registrations directly instead of letting outside parties do it just for this very reason.  I can pretty much guarantee it will never happen again.  I felt bad for the woman that was organizing the race.  The excel error was an honest mistake, it just happened to be a monumental one.  To be fair, the woman was put in charge of organizing a race and had no experience in doing so.  There was just a lack of communication, someone should have been leading her through the process. Initially one of the big wigs at the YMCA was going around pointing fingers at us, saying we screwed up somehow.  Before we had a chance to rip into her, one of our board members, a former president of the club, stepped in and diffused the situation.  He explained the error was a result of the file we received from the YMCA.  Needless to say if the event is held next year there will be a whole lot of changes going on.

Finally we got the hell out of there around 11. Before we left I decided I would use the port-o-pot.  It was almost appropriate that when I went into the unit there was a 4 or 5 inch long turd sitting in the urinal.  Yea someone decided it would be fun to do a porto-potty version of an upper decker.  I had to take a leak bad so I just turned my head and made sure I aimed above it, f’ing gross.

  After we got home and ate lunch I relented and laid down for a nap, something I hate to do.  I was just exhausted.  After a couple hours I got up and immediately started in on the various things that needed to be attended to.  With Ali’s help we got most everything wrapped up in the span of two or three hours.

Sunday night we watched Burn after Reading, a movie with a good cast including Brad Pitt, George Clooney and John Malkovich.  The best word to describe this movie is bizarre.  It somehow manages to tie together a bunch of people that you would never think would be associated with each other.  There are a lot of funny moments in it.  There are also some unexpected deaths of characters at moments were you expected something funny to happen. Overall I think we enjoyed the movie, I think. B+

Monday Ali decided to go into work so I could stay home with the dogs all day.  I was in my pajamas playing WoW when the doorbell rang.  I stuck my head out and saw an older couple.  WTF? I thought to myself.  I opened the door and asked them how they were doing.  Good they said and they just sort of looked at me.  “What can I do for you?” I politely asked. “I am  Alison’s uncle Dave and this is Betty” Oh shit… Once he said that I knew he looked familiar but I could have never told you his name.  I only have seen him/them a few times in my life and I don’t believe any of  those encounters involved me saying more than a sentence or two to them. I felt like a f’ing idiot.

I told them that they just missed Alison.  They explained that they had been in Florida for a couple weeks and just happened to swing into the Naples area the day before.  They had our address so they punched it into the GPS and just showed up on a whim.  I was sort of at a loss.  Dave started throwing out names of family mamebers that I recognized but I was far from sure on details.  I was mixing up names and situations when I tried to tie them together.  I really felt bad when they explained that they weren’t married and that Dave was married to Ali’s aunt who died of cancer a few years back. 

Well I did my best to hide my embarrassment of the lack of awareness of who these people were.  I invited them inside where we talked for a little while both inside and out on the lanai.  I did the best I could to keep the conversation flowing but it was awkward at best.  After 20 or 25 minutes they said they were heading out to head to Sarasota and after that begin the long trip back to PA.  I thanked them for stopping by and wished them a safe trip.  I really felt bad that I didn’t know who they were at first.

The rest of my day off was quite nice.  I only had two things I wanted to get done, wash the truck and wash the bedding.  After that I spent the day catching up on Hero’s and Battlestar Galactica, playing WoW and spending time in the back yard with Nicki and Sadie.  I also watched the most recent Resident Evil movie.  It wasn’t bad, it wasn’t great.  The animation  realism was pretty good except for the big bad monster at the end with a huge eyeball in it’s shoulder. That thing just looked stupid and very fake. I’d give the flick a C+. 

So I survived the first 3 days of a new dog.  My anxiety I was feeling  so strongly on Saturday has subsided somewhat.  There have been no further accidents inside.  I see certain situations where Nicki obviously feels slighted and that makes me a bit sad.  I think seeing her run wild in the backyard playing with Sadie helps to make up for that.  Sadie is a good dog that just wants love, not so different than most living creatures.  I think it will all work out.