But It's a Dry Heat

Archive for the ‘Greyhounds’ Category

Don’t Know Much About Geology

In which I try to teach the greyhound geology.

The lesson is precipitated by our new granite countertops and because I have nothing better to do (other than laundry, yard work, writing, taxes, etc.).

I’m in the kitchen, having a healthy snack of baby carrots and the greyhound is watching in that bright-eyed, super intelligent way that dogs have been watching humans with food since the dawn of time. I crunch a carrot, chew, swallow and consider the hound.

“See this?” I point at a reddish smudge on the counter. The greyhound, a very tall dog, shoves his skinny nose where I’m pointing. “That’s garnet. My birthstone. Can you say, ‘garnet?'”

Finding no food where I’ve indicated, he flares his ears out like a bat and stares at me in a way that says, “Carrot!”

“No, not ‘carrot.’ ‘Garnet.'”

“Carrot?”

I try again, finger on a black streak. “This here is biotite, a mica. Can you say, ‘biotite?'” ‘Mica?'”

“Carrot!”

Because I’m stupid that way, I try with feldspar and quartz. I go back to garnet, because it sounds like carrot.

“Carrot?”

I give the hound the damned carrot.

 

Horse Eats Hound

Yes, the vacuum is running.

And, no, the greyhound isn’t budging from his spot on the carpet.

In fact, his head is up is because he saw me with the camera and wondered what was going on.  In the absence of the camera, the end result would have been a roughly greyhound-shaped dirty spot on the carpet.

He also does this with the lawn mower, so he isn’t allowed outside when I’m cutting the grass.

On the other hand, he’s wary to wet-himself-afraid of nearly everything with a heartbeat. Even rabbits, yes rabbits.

Of course, Wonder Horse was quick to exploit the hound’s neurosis.

Once upon a time, before heading out for a mid-afternoon walk, the hound and I would stop by the barn to visit the horse. I’d bring along carrots for both critters. We’d meet the horse at the gate and there I’d give a carrot to the equine and one to the canine, then another to the equine, and so on.  The greyhound would eye the horse very warily, but tempted by the carrots, stay at my side.

Then one day, the horse, in one of his Professor Snottypants moods, banged his hoof on the metal gate, making a delightful racket. The hound leaped back, startled. At this point, you could see the wheels turning in the Wonder Horse’s brain. After a pause, he banged again. Dog leaped in the air, and strained on his leash, trying to get as far from the horse as possible. Horse smirked and banged again. And thus was the demise of carrot sharing at the gate.

To this day, when the horse sees the hound approaching, he lifts a foot, poised to start hammering on the gate. I have to drag the hound, his long legs braced and feet sliding through the sand, to get anywhere near the barn.

The hound, the predator, is deathly afraid of the horse, the prey animal.

Slaughterhouse Kirby

Saturday morning at Casa de Kirby. At the obscenely early hour of 6:30, the greyhound hops up from his pile of bedding on my husband’s side of the bed and starts making slobbery snorting noises. A few minutes later, my husband crawls out of bed and feeds the early morning chow hound.

I stay in bed until around seven, when it becomes impossible to ignore the sound of the shrieking Wonder Horse. (If I could understand horse, I’m sure his ranting would be R-rated.) Get up; put on whatever’s on the floor and head out to the barn to feed the horse and clean up his paddock. The day has begun.

While I’m doing the morning garden chores, my husband walks the greyhound. They’ve returned by the time I come back in the house.

“What’s that?” I say, bending down over a red streak on the (more…)

Regarding Greyhounds, and WIP Excerpts

It’s an absolutely lovely day here in sunny New Mexico. Blue sky, a light breeze, and 74 degrees.

My muse, however, has been very persistent and I spent most of the morning writing. By about noon, the greyhound decided I totally sucked because I hadn’t taken him for a walk. Never mind that the backdoor had been open and he’d been free to sun on the lawn all morning. (This, because, the flies haven’t come out of hibernation or back from Florida or whatever it is that flies do when they aren’t tormenting horses or loitering on dog shit.)

At one o’clock, I’d run out of words and it was time to get up and move and stop growing my ass. I put on the hound’s harness and out we went into the warm sunlight.

Halfway down the block, the greyhound’s tongue is a pink, wet ribbon, flopped out of his long snout, his head is down and he’s drooping like an orchid in the desert. My delicate little flower. “You’re trying to kill me,” he seems to say.

“Puh-lease. There’s no point in killing you. It’s not like you’d make good eating.”

Tomorrow? We’ll go through the exact same routine.

Here’s my response to a Lucky Seven tag on Facebook, via Maureen O. Betita. Supposed to post 7 lines, from 7th paragraph, on 7th page from current WIP. As usual, I cheated. This comes from chapter one, even though there is a prologue, but I’m so appalled that I’ve written a prologue, I can’t bear to make it more real by posting excerpts. And it’s more than seven sentences, because…I can’t follow instructions. Neener-neener-neener.

***working title, Lost in Paradise***

“Some help here, huh?” said Eowyn, Kelly’s seventeen-year-old niece.

Kelly grabbed the garbage bags, noting the contents–more coffee filters and cups–and hefted them into the dumpster.

“You’re late,” noted Eowyn.

“Nonsense. A bookseller is never late. She arrives precisely when she means to.”

“Ugh.” Eowyn marched ahead of her and opened the door. “You know the Lord of the Rings movies are the bane of my existence. Before them, only real nerds teased me about my name.”

Kelly strolled through the doorway, ahead of her niece. “I can’t help it. I was compelled by–”

“Wisconsin called. They want their genre cheese back.” Before Kelly could reply, Eowyn asked, “So how was the booksellers’ conference?”

****

Mischief managed. Have a great Friday.

Bet Your eBook Can’t Do This!

I’m utterly obsessed with my current WIP. Writing anything else when these damn pushy characters keep demanding time is about impossible. They did let me take a break and do some sketching….

I was thinking about my earlier post regarding my new Kindle and how much I like reading on it. (I do. In fact, I think I would have bailed on the book I’m currently reading–‘nother Twilight clone–if it were in print.) It’s just easier to skim slog through a really bad book on my Kindle.

But then I started thinking about the many uses of print books. Several immediately came to mind, but given my limited drawing skills, I went with four. It’s getting easier to draw people, but it still took at least 30-minutes to draw the ‘toons with people, vs. two-minutes to draw the greyhound.

Middle panel features Regan O’Connell smacking Breas Montrose (The Music of Chaos). I assure you, he deserved it.

Click the image for a full-sized view!

Love Isn’t a Breed

Yesterday morning, the local TV station played a segment about the Albuquerque Animal shelter. Once again, they are nearly at capacity and it can only get worse as spring arrives and more puppies are born. (Spay/neuter your animals, dammit!)

The same day, I came across this threat from the Iowa Greyhound Association, the Midwest’s favorite purveyor of brainless entertainment at the expense of greyhounds’ blood and bones. It’s a sad ploy that attempts to generate a sense of entitlement in greyhound aficionados; the false notion that not only are you entitled to a purebred dog, you should get it cheap.

Look at your pet. Now look ahead to the future and your current pet is gone. You want another greyhound. But all there are to choose from are AKC registered greyhounds and they are like $2,000 for a puppy! They still have some racing in Ireland and Australia, but whoa … JetPets is expensive.

If you aren’t hauling your jaw off the ground, then let me explain why that should be your reaction.

First, the author of this dire warning must have (more…)

Boycott Skechers

What do Skechers and a lamprey have in common?

They both suck.

Here’s my greyhound, weighing in on the controversy (with a little help from me and Photoshop).

In case you don’t know, Skechers is airing a Super Bowl ad that features the loathsome Tucson, Arizona dog track. Using “loathsome” to describe any dog track is, admittedly, like saying shit stinks. All excrement, like all dog tracks, reeks.

But Tucson is one of the worst of the worst. My poor hound came from Tucson, skinny, poorly socialized and with intestinal problems and epilepsy.

In response to protests from concerned citizens, Skechers claims that the ad was meant to be humorous. Hmmm. What next, Skechers? A “funny” advert about dog fighting? Or child abuse?

To get a better look at the hound’s opinion on the matter, click on the image for a larger view.

My earlier rant on greyhound racing.

Murder Most Foul

Today, on the very day that my Cyber Monday purchase–two gopher traps–shipped, I find my nemesis in the yard, D.E.A.D, dead. Yes, ding-dong, the wicked rodent’s dead.

Friends know that as a rule, my garden is a welcoming place to wildlife. Heck, this year I even called off hostilities against the paper wasps. (It turns out they are great allies in the war against tomato worms, which, as a rule, I also don’t kill. I just pluck ’em off the plants and chuck ’em over the fence.)

But my garden is my life, in darkest times the bright spot that keeps me going. (And my dark spots are abysmal, think Laurentian Trench.) There is no coexistence with an animal, no matter how cute, that is laying waste to my organic Prozac.

As this is war, I first dug trenches and (more…)

Greyhound Racing, Still Full of The Suck

Thanksgiving, about a month away at this point, is coming at the speed of … a greyhound.  The Corrales Society of Artists’ Holiday show will take place over the three days after Thanksgiving. After a whole season of doing next to nothing, “artz-wise,” I’ve got to get my ass in gear and make some inventory.

I was also working on edits for my upcoming release, The Canvas Thief. I think, maybe, that’s out of the way for a while. (Editor sent the final version onto where ever final versions go.) And I’m doing a book signing–The Music of Chaos–in Corrales the same weekend as the Holiday Art Show.

In the interest of appearing to have an online pulse, I give you mo’ anti-greyhound racing propaganda. Greyhound racing is a sleezy and cruel business, which, like the carton of curdled milk in the back of your fridge, has long since passed its expiration date.

The accompanying graphic is a preliminary sketch that hasn’t gone anywhere. It has problems with perspective and the race car looks like a Beetle. Does anyone race Beetles? But I got nothin’ else, so I went ahead and inked it in Photoshop.

For information on how you can help end the cruel greyhound racing industry, go to Grey2K USA.

Race Cars, Not Dogs

In which I ensure that I never sell any books to anyone in the greyhound racing industry.* (*No, I’m not calling it a “sport.”) Like I give three shits.

You would think, given the proliferation of casinos and other forms of gambling, that greyhound racing wouldn’t exist at all anymore. Sadly, there are still a few pathetic fools who spent their money at the dog track, meaning there are still thousands of dogs being bred and fed to the gristmill of racing, every year. Obviously, people who work directly in the industry will defend its practices, claiming that reports of cruelty aren’t typical (they are) and that their dogs are feed caviar and steak every night.

More distressing are the turncoats in rescue groups who support and apologize for this corrupt and inhumane industry. They are the ideological equivalent of (more…)