Yes, We Have 3 Dogs.....And?

A house full of dogs can sometimes give people reason to pause - reason to wonder what is going on behind those doors.  Reasons to think the house must be filled with dog hair, dog pee, dog poop, food all over the floor, drool hanging off of door knobs, and an existence where life is all about taking care of dogs, and doing nothing else that one may enjoy.

Nothing.  Can.  Be.  Further.  From.  The.   Truth.

Dogs enhance our lives - don't take away from it.  If dogs made our lives worse, we probably would have concluded long ago that we aren't meant to be "dog people".  And that would have been OK - not everyone in this world is a dog lover, just like not everyone is a cat lover, or a turtle lover (how can you not love a turtle?  They did nothing to you!).  We all have our likes, our dislikes, and how we wish to live in this crazy world.

I am most definitely not one of those dog lovers who doesn't understand people who dislike the canine species (How can you possibly dislike it though?  For shame!).   If you don't like dogs and/or don't like the thought of having dogs, that is your choice - a valid choice.  A choice up there with whether or not you want children, whether or not you want to eat meat on Good Friday (or at all), and whether or not you are going to have a healthy apple today or a piece of apple pie.   There is no right or wrong answers to any of it - everyone is different in how they choose to live their lives, and as long as they aren't harming society as a whole and are obeying the laws, there really isn't much to criticize about it.

In this particular house, we have dog toys literally all over the place - mostly the work of our new baby dog who simply cannot resist trying out every toy we have accumulated through the years.  We have Golden Retrievers, so there is going to be some hair on the floor.  There is going to be multiple leashes - sometimes hanging up, sometimes thrown on the kitchen table.  There are food bowls you can trip over, possibly some spilled water you may slip on.   There might be a ball laying around with doggie drool on it, bedding and couch covers  with more dog DNA than human DNA on it.   Since I am training our latest addition to be a better member of society, you may even see a few treats in areas you would not otherwise expect to see a dog treat.  

That's the real life of a dog lover - we don't feel handcuffed by our furry friends, we don't feel that feeding them is a chore, or that taking them for a walk is a waste of our time.   If we need to spend an extra 30 minutes a day to play outside with them, we find that to be worthwhile time spent, not time wasted.    If we panic when our dogs don't "look right", it isn't because we are paranoid (OK, sometimes I am - but that's when I call my sister!) - it is because we know how our dogs act every single day - and anything that goes against we are used to is seen as a potential problem.   

We aren't looking to judge the "non-dog" society, and certainly aren't looking to be judged by them.  We aren't doing anything wrong - since when is giving love and a home to a living, breathing creature something that isn't "right"?  Or something we shall not be doing?   

Yes, in this house, dogs outnumber people.  That wasn't always by design, but it is our calling.  If you saw the love they give my wife (and the love she returns back), you wouldn't question our intentions or wonder why we should stick to one or two - you would wonder why we don't move to the country somewhere and get even more (No, we will likely never own four dogs - unless we did fall into millions and could indeed buy that big country home).   If you saw how I act around them, and how I play with them, you would have a smile on your face - not a look of bewilderment.

We live in a neighborhood of dogs - two of my neighbors have two each.  I have seen other houses in my travels that have at least two, if not more.  

So, yes - we have three dogs.  Not one.  Not two.  But three.  And they are big dogs.   And we don't live in a mansion with a huge property (not even close!)   They can get into trouble from time to time, and can even annoy us when they (Horrors!) decide to act like dogs.

But you know what?  We wouldn't want it any other way.

How Alanis Morissette Added a Member to Our Pack

About a month ago or so, my computer started showing signs that a crash was imminent.  It started to  shut itself down out of nowhere, displaying weird error messages, and would take four or five tries to get it to boot up in Regular Windows mode.    To keep this paragraph as short as possible, it eventually crashed and I no longer had a computer.

After a good week of researching (because that is what I do), I decided to buy an ASUS mini PC.   Everything is built into this small box, from wifi to speakers.  It fits right on top of my desk, with very few plugs running in and out of it.   But the one thing it doesn't have is a CD/DVD drive, which is a minor trade off because how often does one really use one nowadays anyway?

About a week ago, Colleen was trying to sync up all of the music she has on iTunes to her iPad, which Apple doesn't exactly make a simple task.    I did some research online, and found a relatively new service called iTunes Match, which allows you to put thousands of songs into the Cloud, accessible to any device in the house.   At $25 a year, it seemed like a good deal - so I went for it.  So far, so good there.

Being perhaps the biggest Alanis Morissette fan in the world, I decided that I wanted to put my entire Alanis collection into the Cloud, so that I can listen to it every night when riding my exercise bike.  Of course, to do that, I needed to load all of her CDs into iTunes.   That required me to use Colleen's computer.

Colleen is one of the biggest dog lovers you will ever meet.   She treats them all as her children, giving them as much love as they give to her.   My two male Goldens rarely leave her side, and even bark at me sometimes when I approach the room she is in.    Suffice to say, if someone broke into this house, Colleen's life would be well-gaurded.  Mine?  Not so much.  She subscribes to dog rescue sites to get alerted whenever a Golden becomes available.   We weren't seriously looking - she would forward one to me from time to time, and I would decide whether to inquire.   The few times I did, I rarely got a response - or got one a week later telling me the dog was adopted.  No big deal - we already had two, after all.

On Monday, I had a break in my work day and decided to load in yet another Alanis CD into my collection.   I walked over to Colleen's computer and started loading in songs from Flavors of Entanglement, which isn't too well known outside the world of Alanis fandom.   As I was sitting at the desk waiting for the CD to load, a new e-mail came through on her computer from a pet rescue site, so I decided to open it.  The dog being featured was a 7-month old female Golden Retriever (my sister suggested to me that if we ever got another dog to get a female this time instead of adding more males to the mix).  Not expecting much of anything, I quickly sent an e-mail response to the ad, figuring I would be lucky to get a response, never mind actually getting the dog.

Much to my surprise, about 5 minutes after sending the email, I got a reply from the woman who needed to give up the dog - her son had severe allergies to the dog and she needed to find her a home as soon as possible.   After several back and forth emails. I decided to meet her (with our dogs) at a dog park near her house.   Colleen was sleeping during most of this exchange, and I only woke her up to ask her if she wanted the third Golden.   She said yes without hesitation, of course.

Going in, I knew what was going to happen:  Our oldest Golden (Josh) would sniff her a few times and walk away, while our youngest (Jeter) would probably be a bit defensive towards her.  My prediction came true, as Josh didn't care while Jeter was a little more excited and a bit snippy.

After we decided to take them into the park and put them off leash, things changed in a hurry.   Jeter and Milky Way started to get along, and Josh...well, he still decided to just run around the park without a care in the world, oblivious to the dogs running around him.   As an aside, the dog park was completely empty other than us, which was a good thing.

After 30 minutes or so of play time and getting to know each other time, the woman asked what I was thinking - the only words that I could come up with was "I want her".   No more than five minutes later, I was in my blue Honda Civic with three golden retrievers in the back seat.   You will be amazed how dogs find ways to get comfortable in that situation.   And what better way to truly test this new dog than by being in the back seat together for a 40-minute drive home?   Since I had no room for anything else in my car, the woman offered to bring it all down to Toms River for us.  I told her I would email her when I got home - much to my surprise, when I got home (taking a bunch of back roads), she had already made it into the Toms River area. She came over, dropped off Milky's stuff, said good bye, and that was the end.   It was about as fast of a dog adoption as you could ever even imagine.    Milky's first night and day here have gone smoothly and Colleen has a nice early 6th anniversary gift.

And that is how Alanis Morissette, who Colleen likely thinks I think can walk on water, lead us to our newest family addition.  More to come on her adventures.

Scratching Something Off My Bucket List: Alanis Morissette

A few months ago, Colleen's friend alerted us to a new tour Alanis was embarking on.  A tour that would take her to smaller, more intimate theaters, a few of which were in New Jersey.    After some back and forth in my own mind, I decided to purchase tickets for the Red Bank event.  At the time, Colleen made sure to tell me on more than one occasion to make sure I had a backup plan in case she couldn't make it.  (For those reading this who do not really know me, my wife has been chronically ill for three years now).  Being the procrastinator that I am (and secretly praying she would be OK to go), I didn't make those backup plans.    I just rolled with it, figuring that everything would work out in the end.  Of course, Colleen would have a miserable health day, which made me have to think about whether I would go at it alone or swallow the price of both tickets.  As of 6:00PM, I still hadn't made up my mind, but my wife convinced me I must go, so I did.   Thankfully, Red Bank is only 40 minutes from here.

After typing the address into my GPS and securing my tickets, I began my journey, with the fear hanging over me that I would either not find the place or I would get caught in one of the fierce thunderstorms being predicted for the area.  I found the place just fine, but given that I know little about Red Bank, I didn't realize the theater was smack in the middle of a main road, with no parking other than for those who get there 150 hours or so before the concert.  Anyone who knows me will tell you that this is the kind of thing that flusters me:  Where the heck do I park, and will I even remember where I parked if I find a spot?   I literally drove around for at least a half an hour, with the concert time quickly approaching.    At one point, I saw signs for Route 35 and almost jumped on it to come home instead of continuously driving around in circles aimlessly.   Eventually, I saw a group of cars driving slowly towards some side road, and decided to follow them.  They could have been leading me to Charles Manson's NJ Chapter for all I knew, but I didn't care.   Death by trying to find a parking spot at an Alanis concert would be strangely poetic for me.   However, they were heading towards the train station parking lot, which offered free Sunday parking for people who likely are just as clueless as I am.  The parking lot was actually only two blocks from the theater.  I had driven around so much that I thought I must be 15 miles away.

Of course, it did dawn on me as I was walking towards the venue just how many males were going to this concert alone.   I figured I likely was the only one, but at least I wasn't at a New Kids on the Block or Backstreet Boys show.    During the concert, a guy in the row in front of me was singing along to every song.  At the end of the show, I noticed a high school aged boy get up and give a standing ovation.   The ratio of estrogen to testosterone was high, don't get me wrong.  But I was a bit surprised to see so many men there who weren't just dragged there by their wives or girlfriends.  Also, since Alanis is not exactly an artist who is often in the spotlight, the youth of the crowd also surprised me.   I am sure the majority of the crowd was the 35-45 demographic, but college aged kids singing along to her stuff did still surprise me.  (Note that I sang along to nothing; nobody but America's worst criminals deserve to be subject to that torture...oh, and also my sweet wife who has to listen to it during my nightly exercise bike rides)

The tour is her Intimate and Acoustic tour, and it definitely lives up to that name.  The theater was relatively small without a bad seat in the house.  A person shouting from the top was just as easily heard by Alanis as a person in the front row.   It began with a performance by Lynx, who is a pretty good leadin for Alanis.  She is also a singer-songwriter type, but has more of a "folky" (not a word anywhere else but Words with Friends) vibe about her.    Although her singing came over loud and clear, you could barely understand her when she talked.  I felt like I was sitting in Charlie Brown's classroom.  

It look a long time for Alanis to hit the stage when Lynx was done.   I figured that if she arrived there not long before me, that she too was driving around town looking for a parking spot.   She didn't actually officially start until around 9:15pm or so, which was about 45 minutes or so after Lynx finished her performance.  It didn't really matter, as she was on stage beyond 11:00pm.

The setting was pretty cool:  It was Alanis perched up in this high chair with two guitar players on either side of her.  That was it:  The entire performance was going to be all about her voice.  (and occasional harmonica playing).   No jumping around, no fires blowing up into the sky, and no microphone laced with auto tune buttons.   As I was listening to her, you couldn't help but think how impossible it would be for most of today's "artists" to pull something like this off.    She didn't dress like a tramp, didn't wear crazy makeup, didn't rely on live animals, and there wasn't a swing to be found for her to fly off of.   One has to wonder how a Kesha, a JLo, or a Demi Lovato would even attempt such a thing; of course, they wouldn't.  Because they can't.  Katy Perry?   There is a reason why her concerts get rave reviews for being spectacles over pure singing displays.  But hey, find me one person who doesn't get at least one Katy Perry song stuck in their heads from time to time.  Pure genius.   But I digress.

The performance itself consisted of most of Alanis' hits with a few of her more obscure songs mixed in.    She sang most of the songs off of Jagged Little Pill, while mixing in songs from her various albums.  She did not accept an audience request to sing one of her Canadian pop tart songs, however.    She spoke about inspirations behind her songs, engaged with the crowd, and gave off this vibe that she was a struggling artist sitting in a bar looking  for tips in a jar (sorry, Billy Joel).   Of course, it was much more than that.   Alanis' live voice is simply incredible.  There is no other way to describe it than that.   One of those artists who probably sings live even better than she does on a radio-packaged tune.   She put herself out there without any margin for error and delivered to an extreme.  I can't imagine anyone coming out of this show without the impression that they saw something truly special...even if they aren't fans of Alanis overall. (The horrors!)

I am far from a music critic since my musical taste is very much limited.  To be exact, perhaps I am a bit weird as I tend to gravitate towards the female singer-songwriter types who often are writing autobiographical songs from a female perspective.   Now that I type that out, I must wonder what is wrong with me.     The bottom line is that this performance gets a huge thumbs up, and I am happy to say that not only did I find my car after the concert, I was able to rush home before the storms I was fearing actually hit.  

The set list,and I am doing this from memory....so something may be left out:

You Learn

You Oughta Know
Hand in my Pocket

Right Through You
Head over Feet

All I Really Want

Mary Jane

Not the Doctor
Ironic

Thank You

So Pure

Hands Clean

Everything

Guardian
Havoc

Uninvited