Ready on the Firing Line

Our dog Freckles ate some rat poison and has been ill. We’re only “pretty sure” about the poison because we never exposed her to any kind of poison. We do not use poison.

However, she is a dog who eats ANYTHING she finds laying in the road that seems edible, and even though we actually keep her on a leash at all times and never let her roam around, it is still impossible to avoid having her chomp down on a dead mouse and not give up said mouse, even upon pain of pain, because she likes to eat carrion and that’s that. If some ignorant big monkey who doesn’t understand tries to stop natural dog-eatin’-dead-stuff then that big monkey will just have to buzz off.

Dog gotta eat dead rat. Even though we have owned dogs in the past, and they were chow hounds, I had NO IDEA how man dead things are laying on the boulevard until I got Freckles.

So, having fought with her to stop her from eating dead stuff, we still ended up with poisoned dog. The culprit was probably the nasty stuff called “Tomcat” that uses a neuro-toxin kill mice/rats with “one dose.”

It’s like nerve gas.

So…

We… I mean I… have to work on maintaining good mental health. This concept was foreign to me when I was growing up as a young peckerwood in deep southern Oregon, where men were men and sheep were (and are) traumatized.

Since I married an adult and she taught me a lot about how to be an adult myself, I learned that looking after one’s own mental health is a serious job and not something like the movie The Alamo starring John Wayne.

You have to work at it. You steer clear of cheap and easy “solutions” (like alcohol) and you focus on doing the next right thing. You eat right and get some exercise and so on.

And, for me. it’s about manning-up and building some models. No more lazy-ass plunking it down in front of the Covid Box and watching Youtube on Roku.

Oh no.

I put away trainish things and started in on an MPM P-40F– a model I have wanted to make for about fifty years, ever since I saw that photo in the Landmark book– Great American Fighter Pilots.

Mental health. In these times, at this point in history, we all have to work at it– or we end up dying on the freeway, beer foaming up out of our mouths and Big Gulp cups, our last breath wondering how we ended up dead.

2 Replies to “Ready on the Firing Line”

  1. We have a great Dog, an original Australian Black Kelpie. He has serious separation anxiety cause he was left tied to the door of a high kill shelter in Indiana at about 9-10 months old. Luckily he was rescued and shuttled eventually up here to Wisconsin. My Wife found him on the Webs and fell for him. He (Riley), is 8 years old now and in Prime of life. There are enough folks who bring sketchy dogs like Pit Bulls etc to dog parks that I worried constantly, cause Riley will not take guff off anyone and we have been in a few fights. I avoided the Park for a year after one incident. Fortunately there are two nearby woods/fields where I can let him off leash to run. I would not hesitate to risk my life to help him. Strange things have been left in the Park that could injure dogs, that seems to have gone away thank goodness. Anyhow he loves us and we him no matter what.

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