Taffy the Laffy Samoyed Stories
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7. Taff and the Big Big meat sale.
Well I took Taff to the BIG BIG meat sale the other day, what a fiasco. Now first of all I am not used to having a dog and second of all, I have been trying to take the dog to numerous places so he learns to travel well.
I drive a little older model sub compact car. The whole car is only 4 foot wide and 8 foot long, the back seat folds down to make a flat spot where I can then load cargo. I now use this cargo area to haul the dog. I always use the dog's harness attached to a 6 foot leash which is looped through my front seat belt buckle so he can't leap out of the car, sounds like a plan.
Off we go to the local store which is an IGA, now the dog has learned that the phrase IGA means he is going to the store and he always gets a pig ear for being good in the car while I shop. I figure he is learning patience, what a joke. He always has a chew toy and his favorite blanket in the back of the car and since the store is small, I can usually shop in less than 10 to 15 minutes. Up till now it has been cool so leaving him in the locked car with the back windows cracked open has not been a problem, plus I park in the shade. He loves to just lay in the back watching all the people go in and out, he is a "Nosy Parker" and enjoys the same activity on our cast iron fenced small front porch, just laying around and watching people go by.
Now on this particular day the store was having a BIG BIG meat sale. As I only needed a few items on my list, I gathered them up first and then decided to veer over to the meat case. I could not believe the prices of some of the roasts and steaks and decided to just grab up a few of them for our freezer. It did not dawn on me till I got to the checkout that, one I had the dog and, two there was no place to put the food but in the car front seat, which is reachable from the back by the dog. Well too late now! I shove the hugely loaded cart out to the car, open the door and hand the dog his pig ear treat, he was not the least interested as a millimeter of plastic can not disguise the smell of REAL MEAT! OH OH!
Well now I got no choice but to try and separate the bags, hoping to get all the meat up front and the rest in back......meanwhile the dog starts yipping and lunging at the bags....this is not going well. I finally packed all the meat bags up front and decided to take a chance on the snacks and paper in the back, the problem was the meat bags were stacked clear up to the roof of the car on the front seat, wedged together. In the back was only three bags. Now the dogs goes ballistic, trying to lunge over the front seat and I decided to go straight home which is 6 miles away. I pull out of the parking lot, glance down to the dash and realize my gas tank is on empty. NOW I got to stop up the hill and get gas, luckily it is a station that still has clerks to pump your gas and you do not have to do it yourself, otherwise my big big buys would have been a goner. well I can handle this I kiddingly tell myself. I pull out of the store parking lot and get stopped at the only single red light in town, and the dog is now trying to lunge over the front seat and/or yipping in my ear. What a sight we made at the red light, a small white car with a big white dog and white food bags wedged up to the roof on the passenger side. He is jumping so hard in the back the car is rocking. As the light turns green the dog looses his patience and tries to get up front by placing his paw on my right shoulder for leverage, this results in me almost loosing control of the car while making a left turn. He is still barking and now lunging harder. I head up the hill out of town and keep trying to straighten up with his big paw pushing me down on one side. At this point I decided a speeding ticket is cheaper than loosing 100 lbs of meat, so I put the pedal to the metal, oh sure my car is a 4 cylinder and we are now going up a steep grade. The dog has now managed to rear up on his back legs and has both paws over both my shoulders and he is STILL barking. I am slowly being pushed down in the seat until my eyes are level with the center of the steering wheel, but I keep the pedal down as I can see the tops of the trees on both sides of the road so I figured if I use them as a guide how can I go wrong? I am only praying no cops are out.
We top the hill doing 65mph ( in a 45 zone) when it dawns on me the gas station is just ahead and I NEED gas BAD. I whip in the station and luckily up to an empty pump, I shut off the car and peek over the bottom of the window frame and see the gas attendant coming out of the store, oh good. Well not exactly. The pump attendant takes one look at the car and all he sees is what appears to be a large white dog behind the wheel with 40 bags of groceries wedged up to the roof in the passenger seat, the man is frozen in wonderment, meanwhile I am choking to death on the seat belt. In desperation , I open my fanny pack purse, take out a 20$ bill, crank down the window a hair and wave it around, the dog is still barking his head off and pushing on me. The attendant starts walking slowly over to the car, thank goodness. Now nothing excites the Taff ( other than 100lbs of raw meat almost in his grasp) more than meeting new people. Once the attendant got to the side of the car he realized there actually was a driver and it was not the dog as by this time the Taff had turned his attention to the attendant and had removed his paws off my shoulders. I screamed to the poor guy-GIVE ME TWO DOLLARS WORTH OF GAS FAST-the car gets 40miles per gallon, I only got to go 4 more miles, how long can it take to pump one gallon of gas?.
Oh no......he has to reach in the car and start to pet the "pretty doggie", this of course has the effect of making the dog jump up and down, which has the effect of rocking the car, which has the effect of making my carefully wedged stack of meat collapse, and low and behold the Sirloin bag is flung in the back seat, instantly Taff turns into CUJO, leaping for the bag. I open the car door, race around the other side, fling open the hatch and grab the sirloin bag, meanwhile I had inadvertently body slammed the gas attendant up against the pumps with the car door. He is now watching a 125lb woman wrestle a 60lb dog for a bag of fresh meat. I finally lost my temper, grabbed the dogs upper and lower jaws in both hands and pried his mouth open to remove the plastic bag handles from his fangs, the whole time growling at him like a Pitt Bull with rabies myself. The dog lets go the bag, the attendant leaps into action to pump my gallon of gas and make my change, which he flung in the front seat of the car, I shortened the dog's leash to 4 inches, pinning his head to the back seat floor and drove off.
Never take a Samoyed to a BIG BIG meat sale!
On the up side, whenever I stop to get gas the attendant now races out to my car, ignoring other customers, and fills my tank FAST! hahahaha.
lol mfb
8. It's all about the F.
If you have a dish on your TV you may get the channel that often has a commercial for a famous store that goes " it's all about the- insert alphabet letter here". Well I am just finding out that Samoyeds are all about one letter too-"F" for FUR.
If you have been following the story of our Taff, he was a foundling with a coat that came out of a horror movie. The groomer actually suspected he had been confined in a small space with no place to use the bathroom as his fur was filthy beyond belief, flea riddled and twisted into 10,000 little, feces encrusted cocoons that she said could only be caused by being forced to lay in a small area. She informed me he needed shaved buck naked, which we did. She then tried to instruct me as to what to expect when his hair grew back, it went something like this, Groomer: Taff is a double coated dog and should be white, Mary: double coated, and how can he be white he is brown? Groomer: Yes sort of lambs wool underneath and bear fur on top, Mary: Well that is interesting. No, she says, it is a nightmare. Mary: well how bad can a double coat be?, Groomer: hahahahaha, bring him back I can arrange financing. That should have tipped me off. DA
This morning I returned from buying the largest shop sweeper that money can buy shy of a commercial unit, which I may go back and put in lay away. For months I have been hovering over the dog's coat. I have bought combs, rakes, brushes and what not. I have faithfully rubbed, brushed and "slickered". I even massaged the naked boy in the hopes his hair would grow in faster, what in the world was I thinking???
About a week and a half ago I noticed something stuck to my coffee cup, it appeared to be a dog hair....YUCCCCCAAAA!. I also noticed when I brushed him the teeth of the comb did not seem big enough to get through the top coat. Now Taff has a beautiful coat and we get him groomed every three months, as mother hen here, is psycho about this coat and fear of fears MATTING.
Now to me, money is no object, Charlie however has actually winced when I have picked up yet another chrome or rosewood handled funky looking grooming tool on sale for only- insert double digit here! Guaranteed to make your dog look like Lassie. Lassie does not have a double coat I have since found out. Double coats also shed BIG TIME and there are DIRE warnings of what happens if you do not deal with a double coater when they start to shed-OH GREAT more pressure from a dog who is going to put me in a mental hospital!!!
Well the Taff-boy is shedding now!!!!!! I am telling you I got fuzz bunnies that go 5 lbs. I got a brown rug in the hallway looks like an alpaca coat. I got a chair looks like it is covered in rabbit fur, I got a yard covered in what looks like dandelion tops on steroids, I got vultures chasing the dog for nesting material! I am becoming paranoid of this fur and it is still coming out. This fur is like a living thing, remember the movie The Blob? I am telling you this stuff is breeding at night!
When you touch the dog he leaves white fur all over your hand, when he walks it rains down off his back, when he shakes it rains down from the sky. If he jumps up on someone when he gets down they look like an abominable snowman, now I know why they can't find him- he was just a regular tall guy after a shedding Samoyed visit. Brushing has now become a joke, I bought a tool that looks like a garden rake with 6 inch prongs, one swipe it was clogged solid with fur, in near hysteria I chased the dog all over the house with the vacuum hose. I finally connected with his tail and it took two seconds to clog the bag solid, end of that vacuum cleaner. I actually tried rubbing the dog down briskly with a chunk of rough burlap, works to polish chrome.
I have fur balls in every nook and cranny of my house, when you walk they rise up gently on the air currents and settle back down to the floor, on the up side the dog can now not hear my husband get to the fridge, great footstep sound dead-ner. I have never seen so much fur in my life and worse yet the dog does not look any thinner for the loss??? He is STILL a giant white fur ball. I hit on the idea of a "natural" fur thinner, I took Taff down the road where the giant wild rose and blackberry thicket is and yelled RABBIT, off he went into the brambles, he came back out on the end of his 20 foot tie out cable and looked at me like I was stupid as there was no rabbit in there. WELLLL I thought I saw one, I told him maybe it got away? Meanwhile there is now 15 lbs of fur in that bramble bush and he still does not look any nakeder??? OH OH I think we are in trouble here!
Every single day I sweep here, hence the large garage sweeper I just bought, and every single morning when I get up I am still surrounded by fuzzies. We had to turn down the heater on the waterbed cause the temp shot way up with all the fun on the cover. You can take your life in your hands using the toaster, looked like something out of a Frankenstein movie lab. bbbbzzzzztttttt, so I made a cover for it out of leather.
We have eliminated any food sitting out for more than 2 seconds and our friends have informed us they are tired of coconut treats.....ummmm I never buy coconut treats, shut up Charlie! This stuff can be a safety hazard too, like a 10 lb fuzz ball on the bare steps is just a lawsuit waiting to happen. Worse yet the dog chases and eats them, now I got to worry about fur balls in his gut, but Charlie says he is passing them and I did not ask how he knew that, cause I could not handle the answer...! I don't know a lot about science, but if you keep shedding fur shouldn't you look bald at some point? My Charlie does!
At my wits end I called a sheep shearer to ask about tools, he said something about a license, this was followed by a call to the zoo to ask what they groom Polar bears with, they hung up on me......well you just wait till your next fund raiser smarty pants. No amount of brushing seems to be getting us over the shedding hump here, so I have turned to my tool kit for the answer, I got a big dinner party here tomorrow and I plan to wrap him head to tail in DUCT TAPE it comes in white now! I will not be defeated by this dog's DNA, it is me against the DOG GOD! Stay tuned lol mfb
9. Chef Taff.
Well on our daily morning and evening walks the Taff has suddenly started eating the lower leaves of some odd looking weed. Now I am much more concerned about his eating habits lately, so I have gradually switched him to a premium dog food and added some raw stuff into his diet too. I am reading up on what his breed needs in nutrition, and it does mentions veggies. Chef's on the cooking channel use exotic stuff in food all the time so maybe it is safe. Now I don't exactly trust the Taff to pick something edible that is good for him as he prefers hats, gloves, boots, anything plastic and paper when he can get them. I don't think they provide a whole lot of nutrition. So I set out to identify this particular weed.
I first had to find a site that had lots of pictures of common weeds growing in our area here and then work my way down the alphabet, picture by picture, as I had no idea what family this weed belonged too. Another problem was the common name verses the Latin name, once you found the "family", then there is the local area version of this weed. HOW HARD can it be to identify a weed for heavens sake, read on! Next I went out and took a digital photo of the weed, some bigger specimens and some smaller as the weed has not gone to flower yet, if it ever does. Now I am doing all this as time allows, and in the mean time me are Taff are walking and he is still munching, not just one or two but I would guess stripping the leaves off maybe 6 or 8 plants every walk. As I get closer to identifying this weed, I look up additional pictures on the internet and look for "medicinal uses". Now I have found some alarming properties of some of the weeds growing right across the road from us here, some are toxic even. Now I am concerned and try to keep the Taff from consuming somewhere under a bushel a day till I can track down this one. Meanwhile I have photographed about 1/2 mile of road weeds so I can eliminate the common ones. It is a picture by picture hunt, I should have paid more attention in science class I only remember something about chlorine or something "clorie" makes plants turn green, oh man I am in trouble.
In spite of the crisis looming, I am fascinated by the old time "medicinal" use of some of these weeds. I am telling you these weeds were reported to do everything including grow hair, well this is a good thing. In fact one weed was so high in Vitamin C it was practically a cure all, nope that is not the one big Taff is eating. Meanwhile my husband Charlie, always blind to impending crisis, informs me that I am making myself crazy for no reason, the dog knows what is safe to eat he says. OH SURE just like the dog knew it was safe to eat my lower partial plate.....right up there lesson one in puppy school I am sure. I have just seen hundreds of mother dogs and pups hanging out outside my dentists office and pointing to people with new lower partials....see honey you only want the real WHITE ones....give me a break. You have to remember this is the same guy who let his daughter take his credit card to the mall one time, we won't cover that here. I on the other hand, will find out if big Taff has in fact decided to go natural and become health conscious or is in fact sneaking some doggie equivalent of chocolate or beer with every walk. Obviously I have watched his eliminations of these weeds just in case they are not passing through the system, apparently they are.
Now this weed has almost no smell to me and I will be darned if I can see the difference between the individual leaves he is eating, but this dog will go from plant to plant and very specifically rip off individual leaves from one plant and then the next, it is bizarre. Taff is not known for his delicate eating habits, wolfing is more his style. He will also chew and chew like he does with real taffy hahaha.
When we first found the Taff he did eat ground ivy which is a common weed that supposedly can settle your stomach. I can understand him self medicating himself then as he had upset stomach, gas, diarrhea, worms and just about everything else a sick lost dog can have. Since we got him on good dog food he has never touched anything growing outside till now.
With this dog's rep of being contrary, I can just bet you there is something in those weeds he knows he is not supposed to have, bet me. The search continues into the third day, but since it is a holiday there is no answer to the many emails I sent out to weed botanists, but I probably should have skipped the part about my dog eating them, maybe I should have said kids were ripping these endangered species out by the roots, that would have got a response faster probably. HEY we may have a crisis here!
Meanwhile having actually established the wonderful qualities of some of the plants and since we are walking by them anyhow, I decided to introduce the Taff to proper nutrition "weed style" myself. So here is how it went: Taff look mommy has some good green leaves for you, full of vitamins, this will make you big and strong, eat the leaf Taff ,eat it for mom. Taff promptly lifts his leg on the plant in my hand. OK too green? Look over here-this one is a substitute for broccoli yummy yummy...more peeing ( flashbacks to my sons when young)! Now listen Taff you have to spit that one out till we find out if it is safe to eat, picture of woman with arm 1/2 way down frantically struggling big white dog's throat, while passing hikers stare in terror, "no it's ok I'm just getting a leaf out", (bigger rep as crazy now). Starting to loose my patience I switch tactics, I grab a big tall weed and rip the leaves off, this I rub vigorously over the dog's paw...see doesn't that feel good, the Indians used to use this to cure flat feet, these are good for you Taff! Dog is frantically pulling away from me on the leash, not to be deterred I grab yet another species and rub the dogs face in it....look this one is good for dry skin now doesn't your nose feel better? Dog is now backing up with all four paws making 6 inch gouges in the blacktop while I stalk him with a big yellow weed leaf....this one has loads of Vitamin D....., more peeing on hand, this is not going well. End of walk for today, hand getting chemical burns from urine.
This morning we start off and the dog is going 60 miles an hour past the tall weeds, I am swiveling my head right and left dragging up mental tidbits of info gleaned on all the variety of weeds and he is determined to not let me get my hands on any, I am screaming while running at the top of my lungs.....stop TAffffffff this one is good for memory loss, OK then, that one is a substitute for potatoes, look we can make baskets for treats out of that one ( a lame stretch of the imagination), the dog races on. I make a mental note to try and grab a few that were good for muscle aches on the way back if he slows down. Seeing his wife disappear on the horizon Charlie comes running out of the house waving an email, OK OK he shouts!. I swing the dog around like a race horse on a curve at Belmont, we fly back with my lungs exploding and my arm 10 feet ahead of my body. Coming to a halt at the door I grab the email from the local extension office, only to find out the weed is non toxic and the old medicinal purposes listed for this plant: snakebite, pneumonia, female complaints and aphrodisiac!
I just went out with the weed-whacker, both sides of the road for a whole mile looks like scorched earth. Charlie is giving the dog ice cream, so much for nutrition at Chef Taff's house. lol mfb