Brokeback Bed

A long-time friend passed away last Saturday, and his funeral was Wednesday, down in Corpus Christi. The plan was for Mom and me to go down to Corpus Tuesday night, making the visitation if possible, then attend the funeral on Wednesday before coming back home.

Except that I didn't get off work till after 8, making attending the visitation in Corpus, which lasted from 5 to 8, impossible.

I have several rescue dogs. I can leave some with my housemates for a day or two, but Thumper is a special case. Thumper is vision-impaired and comes from a bad background, and has aggression issues with people he doesn't know well. In fact, he's got aggression issues with just about everyone but Jerry and me. So there are few people who I can ask to watch him while I'm away.

The plan was that Jerry was going to download some stuff onto a laptop while I went home and packed. I would take the laptop and work on some work that needed to get done. I would then bring Thumper to Jerry's, get the laptop, meet Mom in Pleasanton, and drive down to Corpus.

Thumper and I got back to Jerry's around midnight. I was tired. No, exhausted. I had bags under my bloodshot eyes and I was dragging my right leg---a sure sign of exhaustion (my right side was partially paralyzed due to a head injury as a child; one of the few residual signs is that I drag my right leg when I get very tired.) So I called Mom and said that driving to Corpus Christi (by the time I met up with Mom and got going, a good 3 hours or more) that night was not in the cards.

Now, 2 years ago, Jerry adopted Cleo from me. Cleo is a teacup Dane whom I got off of death row at Huntsville. She is extremely shy---for the first 10 months Jerry had her, her tail was kept tucked firmly between her legs. ZuZu taught her how to play; she likes playing with Dana as well, and the dog park was fun even though she kept close to our side.

Buddy came to me a few weeks ago. Buddy is another teacup Dane who had been through 2 or 3 homes in his 2 or 3 years. Buddy has irritable bowel disease, which causes him to have bad diarrhea unless he's on a special diet. Jerry offered to foster him, as it's easier for him to keep Buddy on his diet than it is for me with all my dogs here. We have him on a herring and sweet potato diet, which makes him smell a bit fishy. To make things easier, Jerry is feeding both Cleo and Buddy the diet.

So Thumper and I went over to Cleo and Buddy's house. Cleo and Thumper have met before, but Thumper has never met Buddy, and we were a bit uncertain as to how the two neutered males would take to each other.

When Thumper came to me, he didn't have a name. His owners had moved and abandoned him; the neighbors fed him for a few weeks until they were moving, at which time they gave him to me. Like many dogs I get from bad situations, Thumper was not neutered, and was, well, rather amorous towards anyone and everyone. He got his name because he humped everything in sight. Mark (then-housemate) called him Humper; I wasn't going to call him Humper but decided Thumper was okay. Since he's been neutered, he's kept his ardor in check.

Until he met Buddy. I mentioned we weren't sure how Buddy and Thumper would get along. Well, we needn't have worried about fighting. No, fighting wasn't the issue. Now, both male and female dogs will engage in mounting behavior as a sign of dominance, but they usually work things out and figure out the pack order, and after initial dominance displays, there's not a lot of humping amongst altered dogs. Well. I'm not sure that all of Thumper's humping behavior was dominance-related. I think Buddy was quite willing to cede Top Dog status to Thumper. But Thumper was, er, well, _intent_ on Buddy. Being so tired, I lay down on one side of Jerry's bed. For the next several hours, Cleo tried to sleep quietly in her spot in the middle of the bed, while Buddy kept jumping up on the bed to escape Thumper, with Thumper jumping up after him, not wanting to let his new boyfriend get away. Now, a queen bed is plenty big for one person, big enough for 2 people, and even tolerable for a Great Dane and 2 people (except that Cleo likes to stretch out across the bed). But a queen size bed just isn't meant for 2 humans and 3 Great Danes, 2 of whom are spending the night in sexual passion. I didn't get much sleep, and at one point I woke to find Jerry on the couch. He had tired of the dogs jumping on him, especially on areas that guys don't like to be jumped on.

I left the next morning for Corpus. I didn't get back to the ranch until midnight Wednesday and, being too tired to drive back to San Antonio, spent the night and helped Mom the next morning. When I came back to Jerry's late Thursday, Thumper's desire for Buddy's backside had not abated.

Thursday night was another lovely experience, but I'll save that for a different post.