I wrote about dumpster diving and buying pallets of returns from stores last week. This week I spent more time watching videos of those same 2 things. I’ve gone from being really pissed off to being horrified. Could it possibly be true that Amazon doesn’t stock any of the returns they get? They put them on pallets and sell them to the highest bidder? And the shit that stores throw away? It’s illegal to dumpster dive but it’s not illegal to throw brand new shit that people could use away? Including food?!? 10% of the people in the world (and yes, the US is in the world) go hungry every day. I really don’t know what to do about this, but I’m going to start finding out.
I spent 1 week (7 whole days) snowed in with 7 dogs. Five dogs whose owners could not make it to my house to pick up their dogs. It was so weird. I have worked professionally with dogs for over 30 years, and I will tell you I felt like a foreigner in a land where I didn’t speak the language.
I have a bit of a groove going with one of my dogs. S/he will come and bark or paw at me, bring me something or go back and forth between me and something. And I know what s/he means, she wants to go outside, she wants to be petted, she wants to play, she wants a snack, etc.
My other dogs and I don’t communicate as well. No matter what he wants he barks 2 times repeatedly. I don’t often know what he wants but if he keeps up the barking I do know that he wants a change of scenery. He wants to go to the den to watch TV or he wants to go to his crate, or whatever.
Now these are my dogs, I’ve lived with them for over a year and a half, they turned 2 yesterday. If I can’t understand my own dogs, how will I fare with the other 5. To give myself credit, 1 of the 5 is a deaf lab who I’ve had coming here since she was a baby. We understand each other. One is a cavalier that has been here for a month and we quickly grew to understand each other, she is a dog through and through.
I realized as I was writing this, that the other 3 (who live together) don’t know they are dogs and don’t speak dog at all. No wonder I couldn’t understand them, they were waiting for me to read their minds and peeing on my floor until I learned how to.
Seems the solution to that problem is to teach the owner to let her dogs be dogs.
I have another problem tonight. I forgot that I offered to take my neighbor to Gilda’s Club for an orientation meeting. His wife died of cancer 6 months ago and he is really lost. He said he comes home from work and can’t sit in the house for more than 10 minutes because of memories of his wife so he jumps up and drives around for hours.
I suggested we move the furniture. Absolutely not he said, he wants everything to stay the way it was when his wife was there. Then I suggested a support group which he was very open to. The meeting starts at 6pm and I don’t know when it will be over, but I’ll be online as soon as I get home.