Anne V - 01:01pm Sep 9, 1999 PDT: Okay - I know how to
take meat away from a dog. How do I take a dog away from meat? This is not,
unfortunately, a joke.
Amy C - 01:02pm Sep 9, 1999 PDT: Um, can you give us a
few more specifics here?
Anne V - 01:12pm Sep 9, 1999 PDT: They are inside of
it. They crawled inside, and now I have a giant incredibly heavy piece of
carcass in my yard, with 2 dogs inside of it, and they are NOT getting bored of
it and coming out. One of them is snoring. I have company arriving in three
hours, and my current plan is to 1. put up a tent over said carcass and 2. hang
thousands of fly strips inside it. This has been going on since about 6:40 this
morning.
Amy C - 01:19pm Sep 9, 1999 PDT: Oh. My. God. What
sort of carcass is big enough to hold a couple of dogs inside? Given the
situation, I'm afraid you are not going to be creating enough of a diversion to
get the dogs out of the carrion, unless they like greeting company as much as
they like rolling around in dead stuff. Which seems unlikely. Can you turn a
hose on the festivities?
Ase Innes-Ker - 01:31pm Sep 9, 1999 PDT: I'm sorry Anne. I
know this is a problem (and it would have driven me crazy), but it is also
incredibly funny.
Anne V - 01:31pm Sep 9, 1999 PDT: Elk. Elk are very big
this year, because of the rain and good grazing and so forth. They aren't
rolling. They are alternately napping and eating. They each have a ribcage.
Other dogs are working on them from the outside. It's all way too primal in my
yard right now. We tried the hose trick. At someone elseÕs house, this is where
they climbed in and began to refuse to come out. Many hours ago. I think that
the hose mostly helps keep them cool and dislodges little moist snacks for
them. Hose failed. My new hope is that if they all continue to eat at
this rate, they will be finished before the
houseguests arrive. The very urban houseguests. Oh, god - I know it's funny.
It's appalling, and funny, & completely entirely representative of life
with dogs.
Kristen R. - 01:37pm Sep 9, 1999 PDT:
I'm so glad I read this thread, dogless as I am. Dogs in elk. Dogs in elk.
Anne V - 01:41pm Sep 9, 1999 PDT: It's like that
childrenÕs book out there - dogs in elk, dogs on elk, dogs around elk, dogs
outside elk. And there is some elk inside of, as well as on, each dog at this
point.
Elizabeth K - 01:57pm Sep 9, 1999 PDT: Anne, aren't you in
Arizona or Nevada? There are elk there? I'm so confused! We definitely need to
see pics of Gus Pong and Jake in the elk carcass.
Anne V - 02:03pm Sep 9, 1999: I am in New Mexico,
but there are elk in both Arizona and Nevada, yes. There are elk all over the
da*n place. They don't look out very often. If you stand the ribcage on end,
they scramble to the top and look out, all red. Otherwise, you kinda have to
get in there a little bit yourself to really see them. So I think there will
not be pictures.
CoseyMo - 02:06pm Sep 9, 1999 PDT: "All red;"
I'm not sure the deeper horror of all this was fully borne in upon me until I
saw that little phrase.
Anne V - 02:10pm Sep 9, 1999 PDT: Well, you know, the Basenji (that
would be Jake) is a desert dog, naturally, and infamous for it's aversion to
water. And then, Gus Pong (who is coming to us, live, unamplified and with a
terrific reverb which is making me a little dizzy) really doesn't mind water,
but hates to be cold. Or soapy. And both of them can really run. Sprints of up
to 35 mph have been clocked. So.
If ever they come out, catching them and returning them to a condition
where they can be considered house pets is not going to be, shall we say,
pleasant.
CoseyMo - 02:15pm Sep 9, 1999 PDT: What if you stand the
ribcage on end, wait for them to look out, grab them when they do and pull?
Anne V - 02:18pm Sep 9, 1999 PDT: They wedge their toes
between the ribs. And scream. We tried that before we brought the elk home from
the mountain with dogs inside. Jake nearly took my friends arm off. He's
already short a toe, so he cherishes the 15 that remain.
Linda Hewitt - 02:30pm Sep 9, 1999 PDT: Have you thought
about calling your friendly vet and paying him to come pick up the dogs, elk
and letting the dogs stay at the vets overnight. If anyone would know what to
do, it would be your vet. It might cost some money, but it would solve the
immediate crisis. Keep us posted.
ChristiPeters - 02:37pm Sep 9, 1999 PDT:
Yikes! My sympathy! When I lived in New
Mexico, my best friend's dog (the escape artist) was continually bringing home
road kill. When there was no road kill convenient, he would visit the
neighbor's house. Said neighbor slaughtered his own beef. The dog found all
kinds of impossibly gross toys in the neighbor's trash pit. I have always had
medium to large dogs. The smallest dog I ever had was a mutt from the SPCA who
matured out at just above knee high and about 55 pounds. Our current dog
(daughter's choice) is a Pomeranian. A very small Pomeranian. She's 8 months
old now and not quite 4 pounds. I'm afraid I'll break her.
Lori Shiraishi - 02:38pm Sep 9, 1999 PDT:
Bet you could fit a whole lot of Pomeranians
in that there elk carcass! Anne - my condolences on what must be an
unbelievable situation!
Anne V - 02:44pm Sep 9, 1999 PDT: I did call my vet. He
laughed until he was gagging and breathless. He says a lot of things, which can
be summed as *what did you expect? * and *no,
there is no such thing as too much elk meat for a dog. *
He is planning to stop over and take a look on his way home. Thanks, Lori. I am
almost
surrendered to the absurdity of it.
Lori Shiraishi - 02:49pm Sep 9, 1999 PDT:
"He is planning to stop over and take a
look on his way home." So he can fall down laughing in person?
Anne V - 02:50pm Sep 9, 1999 PDT: Basically, yes. That
would be about it.
AmyC - 02:56pm Sep 9, 1999 PDT: No, there is no such thing as too much
elk meat for a dog." Oh, sweet lo*d, Anne. You have my deepest sympathies
in this, perhaps the most peculiar of the Gus Pong Adventures. You are truly a
woman of superhuman patience. Wait -- you carried the carcass down from the
mountains with the dogs inside?
Anne V - 02:59pm Sep 9, 1999 PDT: The carcass down from the mountains with the
dogs inside? No, well, sort of. My
part in the whole thing was to get really stressed about a meeting that I had
to go to, and say *yeah, ok, whatever* when it was suggested that the ribcages,
since we couldn't get the dogs out of them and the dogs couldn't be left there,
be brought to my house. Because, you know - I just thought they would get bored
of it sooner or later. But it appears to be later, in the misty uncertain
future, that they will get bored. Now, they are still interested. And very
loud, one singing, one snoring.
Lori Shiraishi - 03:04pm Sep 9, 1999
PDT:
And very loud, one singing, one snoring. Wow.
I can't even begin to imagine the acoustics involved with singing from the
inside of an elk.
Anne V - 03:04pm Sep 9, 1999:
Reverb. Lots and lots of reverb.
Anne V - 03:15pm Sep 9, 1999 PDT: I'll tell you the
thing that is causing me to lose it again and again, and then I have to go back
outside and stay there for a while. After the meeting, I said to my
(extraordinary) boss, "look, I've gotta go home for the rest of the day, I
think. Jake and Gus Pong are inside some elk ribcages, and my dad is coming
tonight, so I've got to get them out somehow." And he said, pale and
huge-eyed, "Annie, how did
you explain the elk to the clients?" The
poor, poor man thought I had the carcasses brought to work with me. For some
reason, I find this deeply funny.
(Weekend pause)
Anne V - 08:37am Sep 13, 1999 PDT: So what we did was
put the ribcages (containing dogs) on tarps and drag them around to the side
yard, where I figured they would at least be harder to see, and then opened my
bedroom window so that the dogs could let me know when they were ready to be
plunged into a de-elking solution and let in the house. Then I went to the
airport. Came home, no visible elk, no visible dogs. Peeked around the shrubs,
and there they were, still in the elk. By this time, they had gnawed out some
little portholes between some of the ribs, and you got the occasional very
frightening glimpse of something moving around in there if you watched long
enough. After a lot of agonizing, I went to bed. I closed the back door, made
sure my window was open, talked to the dogs out of it until I as sure they knew
it was open, and then I fell asleep.
Sometimes, sleep is a mistake, no matter how
tired you are. And especially if you are very very tired, and some of your dogs
are outside, inside some elks. Because when you are that tired, you sleep
through bumping kind of noises, or you kind of think that it's just the
houseguests. It wasnÕt the houseguests. It was my dogs, having an attack of
teamwork unprecedented in our domestic history. When I finally woke all the way
up, it was to a horrible vision. Somehow, 3 dogs with a combined weight of
about 90 pounds, managed to hoist one of the ribcages (the meatier one, of
course) up 3 feet to rest on top of the swamp cooler outside the window, and
push out the screen. What woke me was Gus Pong, howling in frustration from
inside the ribcage, very close to my head, combined with feverish little grunts
from Jake, who was standing on the nightstand, bracing himself against the
curtains with remarkably bloody little feet.
Here are some things I have learned,
this Rosh Hashanah weekend:
1.
Almond milk removes elk blood from curtains and pillowcases,
2.
We can all exercise superhuman strength when it comes to getting elk
carcasses out of our yard,
3.
The sight of elk ribcages hurtling over the fence really frightens the
nice deputy sheriff who lives across the street, and
4.
The dogs can pop the screens out of the windows, without damaging them,
from either side.
Anne V - 09:58am Sep 13, 1999 PDT: What I am is really
grateful that they didn't actually get the damn thing in the window, which is
clearly the direction they were going in. And that the nice deputy didn't
arrest me for terrifying her with elk parts before dawn.
AmyC - 09:59am Sep 13, 1999 PDT: Imagine waking up
with a gnawed elk carcass in your bed, like a real-life "Godfather"
with an all-dog cast.
Anne V - 10:01am Sep 13, 1999 PDT: There is not enough
almond milk in the world to solve an event of that kind.
