I'm getting to an age now where people look at me weird when I tell them that I still haven't settled down. Despite this, I get even weirder looks when I reveal I also don't own a pet. Maybe it's a Portland thing, given the local humane society's ongoing, creepy and apparently successful "END PETLESSNESS!" ad campaign.

I still have yet to come up with an appropriately snarky response for the "no marriage, no dependents" inquiries and the "where's the grandkids?" guilt trips from certain family members but I've got a good one for the pet question: I know plenty of people who'll happily lend me theirs for an afternoon, week, or even several months at a time if I let them. There's something about pet ownership, especially dog-ownership, that really brings out a sense of charity in those foolhardy enough to voluntarily share their living quarters with a furry slobber/poop monster.

Meet Zoe, my parents' German Shepard/shiba/husky/who knows what else. This pooch has enough energy coursing through her to power a nuclear submarine with enough left over for a 747. Dog parks, day trips to doggy daycare centers, long walks and chew toys are incapable of wearing her out. As such, I have an open invitation to "borrow the dog" whenever the mood strikes. Last week I had a day off with nothing better to do so I took Zoe on her first trip to the beach.

Despite her rough and tumble attitude, the dog has some odd prima donna quirks. She jumps over puddles, hates the rain and can't stand the thought of mud. I once watched Zoe elaborately circumnavigate a small trail bog in Forest Park because she didn't want to get her feet dirty. Would she be able to handle things like sand between her toes and a gigantic body of salt water?

She took to the sand on Cannon Beach like a champ and, after flashing an impish smile worthy of, well, an imp, she proceeded to get into as much trouble as possible. She interrupted a passionate kiss between two lovers, chased a flock of seagulls, tried to jump on a teenager's skim board and failed to steal a small child's sand bucket. Like a surf nazi in an surf nazi movie, she seemed determined to rule the beach with an iron fist, er, paw.

Why didn't I stop Zoe from engaging in full-scale and wanton bad dog behavior? Because she blasted off down the beach once she lost interest in fetch and managed to pull off all of these acts of doggy mischief in the space of 45-seconds flat. The mutt is quite multi-tasker.

But the ocean calmed her down a bit. Mesmerized, she observed it carefully and dipped her feet in. As a small wave approached, she decided to turn back to look at the shore. Not realizing this wouldn't magically stop the wave, she took off like a rocket once it reached her back legs. Later on, after learning the "never turn your back on the ocean" rule the hard way, she hopped back in, making a point of getting as much of herself covered in salt water as possible, probably as an act of revenge against my thwarting of her sand bucket heist.

Cannon Beach proved capable of doing what nothing else can, getting her to sit still for longer than five seconds. She slept at least 45% of the way back to Portland.

Labels: dogs

The NBC Nightly News ran a segment tonight on how the rest of the country should take a tip from Portland and become bike-friendly to help off-set rising gas prices and other woes. This left me all covered in guilt when I reached for my car keys in order to make a run down to my neighborhood Market of Choice for a few odds and ends. How could I possibly *drive* down there in a city so gosh darn bike friendly? I don't own a bike so I decide to hoof it and, yeah, my SW Portland neighborhood is more interesting while traveling without the aid of a fossil-fuel powered automo-contraption. Things I encountered on the way to the grocery store and back:

Two girls in search of a lost chihuahua. More on this later.

A very large SUV with a very large fog (?) horn attached to the hood.

A very bored dog tied to a garage door by an orange electric cord.

A free TV.

A mailbox with a flying saucer sculpture on the side.

On the way back, what did I find hanging around outside of a Subway, effectively exposing the myth surrounding this nearly forgotten fast food ad campaign? The lost chihuahua, of course. With a gallon of milk in one hand and a large bottle of Orangina in the other, I wasn't sure what to do about this. I could have dropped my groceries and chased down the dog but, before I could do anything, it decided to go running off down the bike path alongside heavy traffic on SW Terwilliger, stopping every few feet to bark at me. Assuming that darting after him would only encourage the pooch to freak out and get squished, I kept walking. He kept running and barking but, collectively, we were making steady progress towards a calm side street away from cars moving 35+ MPH.

Around this time, the girls started yelling "Freckles! Freckles!" (I'm pretty sure it was Freckles) from around the corner. My cynical Spidey senses immediately assumed that this was not going to end well but instead of darting into traffic, the siren calls of his owners led the pooch back to safety. He was greeted with open arms and the relief of one very stressed-out mother.

And so the day was saved by me. Or dumb luck. Or that bike lane. Or Freckle's delayed common sense. Or his owners. Or perhaps even Orangina. Or, maybe, some combination of all of these.

Thanks, Portland. Your pedestrian and bike friendly streets help turn the most mundane of chores into an adventure on the level of one of the lesser Babysitter Twins installments.

* Note: Freckles is only roughly 67% as adorable as the chihuahua pictured above.

Labels: bikes, dogs

I spent part of the weekend camping alongside a creek somewhere outside of the unincoperated town of Carson, Washington. As we crossed the Bridge of the Gods, either myself or my traveling companion remarked, "We've reached Twin Peaks country." Sure, the real Twin Peaks is upstate somewhere but something about the area screamed, "watch your step or you're going to find yourself bickering over rent control with the owner of the Black Lodge."

The weather was hit or miss and the billion or so people we were camping with rendered our site a mud pit by Saturday afternoon. Besides all that, we were able to engage in activities not limited to eating undercooked bratwursts, building a makeshift beer cooler in a creek, learning how to cook corn-on-the-cob over a campfire, walking on logs over a river, ducking BB pellets and watching this dog eat a live mouse.

Meet Moose. He and a mouse jumped into a bush. Only one of them returned. I'll spare you the details. Here he is actin' all like Daniel Day Lewis in Last of the Mohicans. According to his owner, this is the least of Moose's gastrointestinal accomplishments. Apparently, there's nothing he can't ingest up to and including an entire squirrel.

On Saturday we all went on a hike along Falls Creek. I strongly recommend giving it a shot, if you're into this sort of thing. Trail # 152A is possibly one of the most majestic I've hiked around here, although it could use more out-of-sight spots for pee breaks. Some of us packed beer instead of water and this led to a substantial amount of "awkwardness" involving two middle-aged women and a full bladder.

Nothing my camera can capture does the trail justice.

This snail showed up around the time we decided to abandon camp on Sunday.

An early morning rain shower turned our campsite into what I'm pretty sure would qualify as a bog. Heading back to town seemed like the right thing to do when even Moose seemed more content to hide in a tent than give this French culinary delight a shot.

Labels: dogs, nature, the weather

I spent the weekend in a three bedroom beach house with fifteen people and three dogs.

It rained the entire time but we didn't let that get us down. We had ample amounts of booze on hand, a foosball table at our disposal and a copy of Arnold Schwarzenegger's immortal 1985 classic, Commando.

If you've never seen Commando, get thee to a video store. It's easily the best of Arnold's cheeseball '80s films. No, not Total Recall, Predator or anything of that caliber. I'm taking about movies like Conan the Destroyer, Raw Deal and that movie he costarred in with the fatter, unfunnier member of the Belushi brothers. Commando is no less than 50 million times better than all of those movies combined. Do they have any combination of the following? Alyssa Milano, an out-of-place calypso soundtrack, a unintentionally fey henchman or any scenes where Arnold takes out two guys with flung buzzsaws and/or his kidnap victim turned co-conspirator busts him out of police custody by firing a rocket launcher at the vehicle he's sitting in?

Nope.

Anyway, this post is supposed to be about dachshunds and what happens when you take them to the beach on rainy, cold afternoons. On Saturday, as storm clouds engulfed the northern Oregon coast and the temperature dived into the mid-50s and while everyone else was hiding out at the Moe's in Cannon Beach, someone came up with a great idea: let's go swimming. In the ocean.

So we hit the sand with the dogs in tow. Three of us covered ourselves in Columbia Sportswear, two others went in swim trunks. Between us: no less than five undergraduate degrees, a doctorate, a law degree and absolutely no wetsuits. With all of that higher education lodged in our skulls, someone should have had the common sense to talk the participants out of an activity practically guaranteed to result in hypothermia. Unfortunately, Common Sense isn't a major offered at any university that springs to mind.

They lasted 45 minutes out there among the waves and seaweed. Two of the dogs concerned themselves with the chasing of sticks and seagulls, barely noticing the weather. Lil' Egon wasn't so lucky. This was his first trip to a coastline and, with good reason, the year-old Daschund hated it.

After running away from the waterline, he did what he could to avoid the sand entirely, at times standing on three legs. Back in the car, he gave us all a look of pure disdain and fury. That morning, he had woken up everyone at a too-early hour by running around in circles while barking and jumping on the heads of people camped out on the floor.

An example of precog-puppy revenge? Probably. Egon would also make a later attempt to steal my sandwich back at the house. He failed but continued to throw down his Ultimate Stare O' Guilt (see below) anytime any humans made the mistake of making eye contact with him throughout the rest of the weekend.

I'm glad to report that we didn't spend the rest of the afternoon at any area hospitals. A blazing hot shower off-set any hypothermia and they were back out there again on Sunday. Regardless of the weather, sneaker waves, logs, jellyfish, Jaws etc., some people just can't resist the siren call of wave jumping.

Labels: beach, dogs