1:30: A Honda Civic going 65 mph on the New Jersey Turnpike with the windows closed and the A/C on should not feel like a rocket ship blasting through outer space at warp speed. I need some sleep.

5:30: Wake up to a call from Suz wondering where I am. Sadly, the answer is still New Jersey. The sun is shining, so its time to finish my drive back to Baltimore and get showered and changed.

Rob Banz has a weblog now.

I'm going to donate $10 to Balloons Against Bush tonight. You should too.

Adventures with Biscuit

I'm not really sure how I feel about everything that has happened today.

A while back, Donna agreed to get a dog for Alex from the pound that would stay at her house in Dundalk, MD, but that Alex would be able to own and take care of on the weekends when she went to visit. So all three of them went up to the Baltimore County Animal Shelter and brought home Biscuit.

On Friday night, Suz told me that over this weekend, Donna would be leaving for Oklahoma on a family emergency and Alex would be going with her to spend the summer there. The tiny detail was that the dog would be coming to the house so that Suz could take care of it for the two weeks (or more) that her mother would be away.

I didn't appreciate having a dog suddenly arrive in the house, especially since I apparently didn't have a choice. We had a few long discussions about it on Friday night, but didn't really agree on anything. Suz felt the dog was a family responsibility, and I felt that it was unfair to have a dog in the backyard for two weeks barking at the neighbors.

On Saturday morning at 5:00, Suz and Donna dropped Biscuit off in the backyard and drove off to Philadelphia, PA to pick up Alex and catch the flight out. From the moment they left until I left for New Jersey at 10 that morning, Biscuit never stopped barking.

I spent the weekend away so I really don't know how well or poorly Biscuit behaved. I got home early on Monday and went straight to work, and when I came home at 5:30 I found a Cruelty Call Investigation Report stuffed in the door.

I fumed about it for about twenty minutes until Suz got home and we decided that the dog was a responsibility and liability that neither of us could handle. Once I realized that the dog wasn't being forced down my throat, we tried to figure out some way to keep it happy and not have animal control called on us again, but finally realized that we just couldn't reliably be home every eight hours to walk and feed the dog over the next two weeks.

It's weird going from despising the dog for what it represented to realizing that it was a really friendly and adorable puppy that really was a lot of fun to have around. We were both quite sad when at about 21:00 we ushered Biscuit into the overnight cage at the Baltimore County shelter once more.

I'm a bit upset that one of my neighbors would rather call Animal Control than come over to the house and talk to us. I hope that perhaps they tried to stop by over the weekend when one or both of us wasn't home and failing that called the control people.
Otherwise I'm a bit disillusioned at the quality of people I share property lines with.

I feel bad that we had to give Biscuit back, but I'm sure a friendly, cute, intelligent dog like her will have no problem finding a new home in short order. If you have five pit bulls and one adorable little critter like her lined up, a family would be stupid not to pay the $40 and take her home.

If you know anyone that's looking for a nice family dog who loves kids and loves to run (but it small enough to be managable all the time), please call Baltimore County Animal Control at (410) 887-5961 and ask if Biscuit is still available.

Currently listening to: Euro Fantasy Volume 2 on Digitally Imported

June 29, 2003 - July 1, 2003

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