Rhena Writes

Tag: pets

  • Pet peeves and peeved pets

    Dog owners who allow their dogs off leash or who have no control over their leashed dog are a pet peeve of mine. Of course, pun intended. Last week, I was on a walk in my neighborhood by myself. Some dog walkers an awareness that they are in a public space and not everyone enjoys dogs. These people will take their dogs to an opposite sidewalk or walk into the street when they see me. The woman I encountered last week was not one of these people. She was not walking her dog so much as her small white dog was walking her right down the middle of the sidewalk. Still, for some reason, I thought that maybe this person would move herself and her dog to the side as I approached. But of course she didn’t. She just let her dog do what her dog wanted to do and started to insist to me “He’s friendly! He won’t hurt to you!” Clearly, what she failed to see wasn’t that I was afraid the dog would hurt me but that the dog was right in the path of where I was attempting to walk. Instead of having an encounter with her dog, I walked on to next to the sidewalk over the tree root terrain. She seemed genuinely disappointed that I didn’t what? Stop to pet her dog? Just keep barreling up the sidewalk? What I did do was ignore the woman and the dog. Some people don’t like to be ignored or so I understand.

    In any case, like, I said, for the most part most owners seem to exhibit more awareness than this woman does but I was still wary when I saw a dog off leash on my walk this morning. His owner was a few paces behind him. They both looked familiar but I’m pretty sure that on previous encounters, the dog was on a leash which was now casually tossed over the man’s shoulder.

    As I did before, I just kept walking. If a dog is off leash and doesn’t approach me, I don’t really have a problem with it. I am, after all, a dog owner myself. But I will quietly judge the dog walker and I definitely won’t be friendly.

    Here’s the thing about this dog that I encountered this morning: he’s a bull dog. Bull dogs are a strange mix of intimidating and comic. They look broad and strong like a boxer (the athlete, not the breed) but also like Winston Churchill. So when this dog came walking towards me, all jowls and jaunty stoutness, and then turned his head to give me a quick sniff, I honestly couldn’t contain my laughter. Bulldogs are just so ridiculous.

    I glanced up at the owner and it was clear he’d been clocking this interaction and my reaction. Clearly, he knew that his dog is ridiculous. He had a big smile on his face which, in turn, broadened my smile even more so that we were two people, vaguely familiar to one another, having a moment.

  • I don’t know about the animals, but I know what made me the worst pet owner.

    Daily writing prompt
    What animals make the best/worst pets?
    View all responses

    My sophomore year of college, my three roommates and I went in together on getting a pet. It must have been around thirty or forty bucks each that we each contributed to the tank and the items we thought we needed to keep the chosen animal: a snake.

    I’m not sure what kind it was specifically, just that we named it Oscar and kept it in its tank on a table in the room which was meant to be a dining room.

    In retrospect, I was not well suited to roommate living. Perhaps it’s a by-product of having grown up in a large (my American standards) family of five children or perhaps it’s just who I am, but I later on found that I preferred living by myself. In fact, I enjoy being alone.

    Oscar also would have done better under different circumstances. So much better, that at some point, Oscar took off to be on his own. Was that Oscar 1 or Oscar 2? My memory betrays him. I’m getting ahead of myself.

    At some point, a snake named Oscar grew large enough that he managed to push open the lid of his tank and slither out.

    Where did he go? We had no idea. Even though he was strong enough to push open the lid, he was still quite a small snake. Although, who wants to find a snake, of any size, in their bed? Not me.

    Fortunately, it wasn’t my bed where I found him, some time later. It was under the garbage can when I picked it up to empty it. I screamed. There he was curled up. “Pick him up!” my roommate screamed back at me. Nope. Wasn’t going to be me. This was one of many signs that I was not cracked up to be a keeper of snakes. We learned enough at that point to put a rock on the lid of the cage.

    But now that I’m thinking about it, that must have been Oscar 2 because clearly he had gotten big enough to escape. Oscar 1 (only retroactively named such) didn’t make it to such a size.

    Oscar 1 (and Oscar 2) ate baby mice, called pinkies, which we kept in our freezer. They only at maybe once or twice a week, but part of the appeal (to some of the denizens of our house anyway) of having a snake was watching it unhinge its jaw and then swallow the little pink rodents whole. It was something from a nature program right in our very own living room.

    We kept a heated rock in his tank and it was on this rock where we’d let the frozen mice slowly defrost. The rock was also supposed to provide warmth for this cold blooded animal there in our rental house in frigid Wisconsin. Turns out: one heated surface is not enough for a snake. One day, one of us found in him in his tank, curling himself into an actual knot. We had no idea what to do. It seemed he was sick. Very, very sick. By morning, Oscar was done writhing. He was dead.

    The pet store employee seemed to think that he wasn’t warm enough to properly digest his pinkie, which meant that it rotted inside him.

    So maybe this question, to me, isn’t so much about what makes a good or bad pet, but what makes a good or a bad pet owner.

    I wasn’t a good roommate and this made me a bad snake keeper. I was a go along to get along person, unwilling to say “no” to other people. More importantly, unable to say, “yes” to myself. I would have been much happier living by myself, but I hadn’t yet given myself the self awareness to know that at the time. I was also too worried about being the “weirdo” who lived by herself. And maybe I was also too worried about being the uncool one who said “no” to chipping in to buy a house snake. And then a second. And for that, I’m sorry, Oscar 1.