Dogs and Dust Storms

I admit there are down sides to any place one can choose to live. The coasts can have severe storms, tsunamis and maybe hurricanes. The northern and mountainous places can have wind, blizzards and bitter cold, and even my beloved deserts can be blasted with dust storms! We had one yesterday--a brown-out so intense from mid morning until around sunset that the foothills less than a mile away were totally obscured!

Those are the days to stay indoors and that I did, taking the day to rearrange my room so my computer sits against a solid wall and the glare from outside does not make the screen hard to see. Like most rooms, there are only so many ways to arrange a finite group of objects in a finite space broken by windows and doors. I drew it out on graph paper several ways and finally chose one. It works; not ideal but livable--I think. I woke once in the night a bit disoriented since things were not the same. And in the process I seem to have tweaked my DirecTV link and it was not working last night. If it does not reset itself I will have to call them...and I **hate** going thru a zillion push this for that things before you finally get a real live person, hopefully in the USA. Wish me luck!!

I promised more dogs. Let's talk about Mickey McCu. For those who might not know Gaelic, "Cu" is hound or dog in Irish and Mc of course means son of. So he was Mickey, son of dog. Mick was a Brittany Spaniel and I 'inherited' him along with my two 'house broke' kids when I married my husband. I had a few rules that Mick did not like such as no dogs on beds and once took a broom to him--not in a really mean way but just to 'sweep' him off one of the kid's beds. We had a troubled relationship for some time where he would condescend to let me feed him but little else but finally got to a mutual respect.

Although a bird dog breed and very typical of it --he was red and white, a bit taller and more lanky than the other Spaniels like Cockers and Spingers. Anyway he was deathly afraid of both guns and water due to traumas he'd suffered as a puppy. For some reason the breeder took a dislike to him and tried to drown him by throwing him into the San Pedro River--now the "Sandy Pete" is a river in name only and flows intermittently above ground, only really rolling in very wet seasons or when a heavy rain caused much run-off so I am not sure when Mickey got pitched but he made it out somehow. Then I think the man shot at him trying to run him off. (I gather this guy whom I never met --lucky for him!--was a bit of a nut case from what my hubby and son told me.)

Sadly Mickey got away when we were moving to Colorado and although we searched and advertised we never saw him again.

There were a number of other dogs that came and went for awhile but Angus and Alanna deserve a special telling so I will introduce them tomorrow. Angus was a Siberian Husky--though perhaps mixed--and Alanna was Chow and wolf!