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Dad had Rambo put down today. Rambo was almost 14 years old, and in the past year he was diagnosed with laryngeal paralysis, which made it harder and harder for him to breathe. Apparently the hot August air was the last straw.

Rambo in better times.

I always lead these dog obituary posts with the cause of death, but that's not how I remember any of them. What I'll remember Rambo for is his single-minded determination to do whatever it was that he wanted to do.

Rambo was appropriately named. He bit his dad on several occasions, and bit me once or twice when he didn't want to do what we wanted him to do (or as fast as we wanted him to do it). While living on a ranch in Florida, he went toe-to-toe with bulls who were standing in the wrong places. I wouldn't say that Rambo won any of those encounters, but he might have said so.

Yeah, he could be sweet. He liked to sit beside me on the sofa while we watched football games, and he was a total bed hog. But what I'll remember is his orneriness. I think he'd be happy with that, too.

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Less than a week after walking out, Dad's back in the hospital under orders of his new kidney doctor. Looks like he'll be there a while, too, which means I'm responsible for taking care of his poodle, Rambo, for the duration.

That's not too bad. Rambo is an old boy who spends most of his time napping, and Henry and Louis are appropriately cautious of Rambo's ill-temper. The most I really have to worry about here is whether my back can sustain carrying 65-pound Rambo up and down the stairs from my bedroom to the door outside a few times a day.

The bigger problem is that this also happens to be the week my mother and her sister have gone out of town to a veterinarian conference in Orlando. (No, neither one is a vet. This is just what passes for a vacation opportunity in post-COVID America.) So I, who am also not a vet, am also tending to Audrey and Kelley's 3 dogs and 4 cats (and to a lesser extent, 2 goats and a Shetland pony, though that mostly just means trips to Tractor Supply for Neigh Nibblers and Saddle Snacks).

Splitting my time between my house, Kelley's house, and the hospital has proven challenging. I may have bitten off more than I can chew. Some of these dogs are just going to have to take care of themselves.

Fortunately for all of us, I think they're more up to the task than I am.

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I drew this with my left hand!

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And the first dog to bite me in 2022 is not the puppy but Dad's Rambo. Admittedly, it was partially my fault for having the temerity to attempt drying off his back legs after a long walk on a damp afternoon. He was probably sore. He *is* 12 years old.

I could be mad, I suppose. He bit down hard, leaving pretty good puncture wounds on both sides of my right forearm. It certainly hurts. (Honestly, it hurts a lot.)

I wish he had politely said, "please don't do that, it hurts," but he's never been much for manners. Dad did name him Rambo for a reason. The warning is in the name.

But there's no point in kicking the dog, literally or figuratively. What's done is done: lesson learned, muzzle ordered. And frankly, given the choice, I'd rather have a dog bite puncture wound than COVID.

That said, it's not the great start to 2022 I was hoping for. (And I sure hope it didn't give Henry any ideas!)

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What? I skipped a post again? Dammit.

In my defense, I've been busy these past few days. As you know, I've been supervising Dad's medications and dog-sitting Rambo and Scarlett (and trying to make July not jealous). Also, there have been issues with our commercial rental property, including an AC failure and an (unrelated) fallen tree that damaged the roof and destroyed the gutter over the back door that has a bad tendency to flood. Add to those that I have an end-of-July deadline on a coding project. And I helped one friend build some shelves and another fix her cable system. And my own ISP was down for most of Friday and Saturday. And I've been trying to find time to write more. And and and and.

But that's all just excuses.

On the up side, I did just recently discover that my phone takes great panoramic photos, a feature which I have been using exclusively to take photos of clouds.

So that's good. And that's enough.

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On Monday, May 13, I took in Rambo while his daddy was in Florida.

Rambo is a good dog, but he's significantly younger than the girls. He loves to play. All. The. Time. It can be a bit draining.

Rambo wasn't any trouble for me or the girls (he never is), but he doesn't get along with Teddy. Too bad that I had already promised to keep Teddy while his daddy was in Florida! There wasn't supposed to be any overlap, but Rambo's dad was delayed temporarily with a broken transmission.

Teddy is generally docile, but he hates to share "his" territory with Rambo. I think that the problem is that both boys still have all of their original parts (if you know what I mean). Rambo and Teddy have gotten into a fight before, sending Teddy to the animal hospital with puncture wounds. It was readily apparent when Teddy arrived that he hadn't learned from the experience.

Fortunately, I only had to keep the two in separate rooms for 12 hours before Rambo went home. Unlike Rambo, Teddy could generally care less about the girls. This is both good, in that he isn't always pestering them to play, and bad, in that he takes their spaces and destroys their routines without any consideration for the fact that it really is their house.

Well, Teddy has finally gone home, too, and the girls finally got their house back. They wasted little time before starting their celebration.

I bet they sleep for a week.

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I was really hoping that 2011 would be better than 2010, but that looks less and less likely. I sadly announce the death of Marquessa, my father's Black and Tan Coonhound.

Always afflicted with an insatiable wanderlust, Marquessa apparently escaped from my father's yard while he was out of town on New Year's Day and was struck by a car. She died on the side of the road, like her father and brother before her. My father found out when he returned home yesterday.

Marquessa would have turned 6 this year. She spent her first year with Chere before her death. That was just long enough for Chere to teach Marquessa all of her bad habits. Rambo has spent his first year with Marquessa. So thanks to Marquessa, Chere's bad habits live on in Rambo.

She was a good dog, and I loved her.

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