Dog gone

 Well, I’m dogless again, and it’s going to stay that way. Shelby isn’t in America yet, but she’s going to catch a ride with a colleague on October 1. The colleague covers Belarus but lives in Vilnius and last week he made his last trip here and took Shelby back. It was pretty hectic down the line to get her ready but we did and she’s gone. At the minute, she has a temporary stepbrother and they’re having a ball.

I miss her but there’s just no way I can get a dog in this lifestyle. Shelby’s mom is paying close to $1k to get her back to America and let’s face it, I’m too cheap for that.

She left me on a Thursday and that night I washed the blanket I kept in the window for her and then Friday I spent several hours cleaning the rug she’d been sick on the previous week. It looks perfectly fine now, but I’m not going to eat off of it, that’s for sure.

And I miss her. For two days, I kept looking for her and it took longer than that to remember I shouldn’t leave a spoonful of food to mix with her kibble. Today I dropped popcorn on the floor and looked around for the canine Hoover before I realized I’d have to pick it up.

But as a result of not having a four-legged dependent, I can take longer and farther walks than I did before. Yeah, I could have technically done them with her but not without carrying her backpack with water and bowls, plus I make better time without her because I don’t stop and sniff every nine inches.

Last Sunday, I took 20k steps before 1 p.m. I went up the river from my house all the way to Victory Park, which is much farther than I’ve been so far, at least on foot. I found a little island in the river that boasted of being a good bird-watching spot. I didn’t see any birds, but I didn’t see any other humans, either. It was entirely peaceful and I’d totally do that walk again, although I’d pack my own water bottle. I was gone much longer than I anticipated.

When I popped back up on the main road, I realized I was about out book fair had been way back when people were allowed to go out in public without masks.  At that point, I decided I’d hit a grocery store and grab a candy bar and then head back, but when I followed the directions from the phone to the grocery store, I found it wasn’t open that day. I wasn’t the only one trying to get in, so I think it might have been a protest game-day decision to close.

At that point, though, I was tired but had talked myself into a candy bar, which at that point I felt I deserved. I headed home by way of another grocery store and got luckier when I ran into a different store that worked out. It had some of the really good Ukrainian chocolate (Roshen) and I got some frozen Thai veggies to mix with my rice at lunch.

So life is fairly boring without a dog, but I’ll adjust. The weather is changing – already – and I am honestly glad to not be walking her at 6:30 in the morning. It’s already pretty chilly outside and I do not look forward to winter.

With Shelby, I was easily able to get in 10k steps a day, but now that’s a challenge. Fortunately, I now have a hand-me-down treadmill and have finished out evenings trying to get in a little workout before bed, which sometimes means walking at a brisk pace in my PJs and slipper feet. I’m vowing to start running again but that doesn’t sound like the best of ideas at put-up-ot-shut-up time. Walking is so much easier, and since it appears the Minsk half-marathon was canceled this year – it was supposed to be last Sunday ... there’s no incentive.

But walking is something I’m pretty faithful to and it’s certainly helped me keep off the COVID-15.Protests continue but the government is shutting down many of the areas where people protest so they’re not walking by my window anymore. I do, however, see various types of trucks and vans parked outside my window on Sundays, where the “OMON” and other enforcers hang out.

People are still being rounded up and detained, but I no longer have a front-row seat for it. I’m not sure how to feel about that.

It's fairly easy to see how Belarusians still feel, though. See the photo taken of a cartoonist's rendition of the "OMAN" enforcers. I saw it on the sidewalk on my way to work one morning this past week. It was thoroughly covered by the time I went home.

Dog days of summer

 

 

 

Summer is winding down buy my loaner canine and I are out making the most of the days that are left, covering at least 10k steps a day but usually more. On weekends, we tend to hit 10k steps by 9 a.m.

I call this park Squirrel Park

 The rain’s come again and between that and the protests, it’s hard to get out much later in the afternoon. It’s raining now. Shelby just asked to go out and I figured she needed to pee but she had me standing in the rain for 10 minutes but she just sniffed.

 She’s quite a sniffer. She’s a Ukrainian street dog and they must be sniffers. She roots out street food constantly and I wonder if that’s what caused her little stomach problems earlier this week. 

 Sunday, with the protests in full swing, she got the runs. I could see riot police out my window but when the dog needs out, she needs out.

 I’d run out of one of her brands of food – I’ve been mixing two – and gotten a Purina kind. She does not like it and stalls eating it. The pieces are bigger than the other food I mix in but I notice that she eats around the Purina to get to the other. I also loaded her Kong with it and she’s ignored that for days.

 Sunday night, we went to bed after a late walk and I hoped she would wake me up in case of emergency. She did not, but when she wasn’t in my room in the morning, I knew something was wrong. Indeed, my embassy-provided rug looked like it lost a paintball game.  The poor baby.

 So this week, in my spare time, I’ve been scrubbing the carpet. We made it through Tuesday, but the same thing happened on Wednesday. I think she is doing better now, though, and she is on and off eating the Purina.

I got her a couple of other treats from the pet shop on Saturday, including this bone that I thought was rawhide but appears to be indestructible. I figured, much like this bacon-looking stuff I also got, that one would last maybe an afternoon so I got two, but a week later she hasn’t even dented the first one.

I have taken up all of my rugs and locked them in the guest room, so the floors are all hardwood. When I throw the bone down the long hall, she just skids down the length of it. We do that over and over, so that’s why I’m thinking she’s all right now. She loves it and it’s a fairly good indoor workout.

She also loves to sit out on my balcony. She came with a lounge chair cushion and that’s where I tossed it; she just loves to sit in the sun, when there is sun. It faces east, and when I finish breakfast and start walking back there in the morning, she runs ahead and dances at the sliding glass door so I can let her out. She lays on the cushion like a queen and allows me to brush her. We do it every morning and normally at least once more during the day. It’s kind of incredible that she still sheds.

We do long walks in the morning and I’ve come to realize that there are some really idiotic dog owners out there. One morning, probably 7 of the 10 other dogs we ran into were not leashed and the dogs just came running up to us. I really try to steer Shelby away from other dogs and it gets annoying when you see another dog and owner and try to avoid them but they see you and come over anyway. But the unleashed ones are the ones that are really annoying because they are unpredictable.

Sunday's reality show

Shelby has made lots of friends, though, and there’s a big area we pass where a lot of people run their dogs. There is a couple that have two dogs, a Lab-ish and some kind of Corgi/terrier-one. We’ve seen them there on weekends at about a certain time, and Shelby has it figured out. Saturday she almost jerked my arm out of the socket trying to get to them. She runs wild after them and tires herself out quickly, which is fortunate for me.

We also met a Great Dane who slobbered all over her. Shelby is very spooky and the Great Dane owner thought she was intimidated by her dog, but in reality, she’s just as spooked by a Yorkie. Recently, she went up and sniffed a fisherman’s bag and jumped back as something in it flapped around. I laughed and laughed, and so did the fisherman.

Other than Shelby, it’s just protests on the weekend. They continue to be peaceful, with people holding hands in a line or carrying flags, flowers and balloons. The president is pulling out the intimidators, who are unloading outside my window, but for the most part, it’s just masked men standing around with shields and sticks. I see the media reports where people are reporting around my neighborhood, but I don’t see it from my window, which is where I’m planted on Sunday afternoons.

Yesterday, the protests went up a road that runs perpendicular to mine a block away. (The president is now having one of the big squares cordoned off early in the mornings, so the crows divert to other places and no longer parade down the main road.) Shelby was still feeling a bit wonky and I had to take her out during the time when the “police” were standing around. I just said “excuse me” and went around them.