Friday, February 26, 2010

Flight of the bumble bee

We have a little dog & we call her breed Schnitzel de Hua Hua & we call her Janiac (rhymes with maniac).  The thinking is she is some mix of dachshund & chihuahua, but we are not quite sure what mix.  Or why.  She has teeny-tiny feet at the end of short narrow stalks & a sturdy, powerful body behind a pin-head.  My dog is a pin-head.

Weighing in around 12-14 pounds, we estimate she has a brain roughly the size of a walnut & we do not mean a particularly large walnut.  It can pump the heart, inflate the lungs & anything else is maybe a bridge too far.

She has A LOT of energy & a surprising amount of lift.  She jumps easily from the floor to a bench  from the bench to a the examining table in the vets office.  No running, no pulling just two straight vertical leaps.  The tech watching her laughed & said it was like the bumblebee; no reason she should get off the ground but she does, every time, with ease.

She does not have a lot of brains.  I do not just mean a lack of the concept Sit Stay, I mean a complete refusal to understand that the horses running around are not playing with her, they are not afraid of her, they are not even aware of her.  & they will not be aware when they squash her like a pancake (I spend too much time unsuccessfully trying to making sure she does not go out there).  She was once sprayed by a skunk, full in the face, with all that entails (burning eyes followed by multiple cold chemical baths) & went right back at that skunk the next morning.  Heart of a lion, brain of a roll of paper towels.

On Tuesday I heard a strained barking from the side yard (where the emus live) & went out to find this:


 

I called & called & could not get her to jump down & run to me (this picture was taken from the other side of the fence; the distance is maybe 6 feet & she could clear three of it with the jump itself).  The reason she would not jump?  This:


In the end, I went in & lifted her down, over the fence.  She ran right back under the gate & tried crawl up my body while Antonelle slowly advanced.  The good news is Janiac has been much better about staying in the yard.  & it only took six years.  & a near death experience.

//for your troubles I give you the flight of the bumble bee & the flight of the bumble bee

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