blogpaige.com

Posted by Paige on March 20th, 2005, 9:14 pm

Okay, you’re never going to believe THIS—I now have a hugely pregnant dog in my apartment!!!!

I must be out of my mind. It’s bad enough that I took in a dog. Breaking one of my rules, btw—I mean, I not only have a rule against taking them in, I try not to even THINK about taking them in. But I did it. Argh!!!!!! And not just any dog – oh no!!!! I pick one who is a walking population explosion. Who’s going to turn my apartment into the lab-cross remake of Trouble with Tribbles.

I have one hope. Don’t get attached. I’m involved, yes. Obviously. But I’m not attached, and as long as I stay unattached, this can work. I’ll take care of them until I find them all homes.

Speaking of which—email me, please please please, if you want a puppy!!!!

Or better yet, take two!!!

lol

No Comments »

Posted by Paige on March 18th, 2005, 7:03 pm

When you decide on a career in animals, you might think you’ve found a way to make a living and escape people while you’re at it. You’d be wrong .Unless you’re a Jane Goodall, and even she was in a television commercial and has an Institute. I don’t suppose you can be in commercials and have an Institute without being around people an awful lot.

The rest of us can’t even get away from humans for a few restful weeks of field work. In fact, we barely escape humans at all. There are times, maybe when I’m working to coax a stray dog to come to me, or tromping around in someone’s back yard because they’re sure the fox they saw 20 minutes ago had to be rabid, when it’s just me and nature—yes, nature in the contorted form it takes in the modern suburb, but nature all the same, sprinkling our yards with dandelions and Creeping Charley, lacing our hedgerows with poison ivy and buckthorn, lulling us with cute little chickadees and then slipping in those dens of coyotes all smacking their predatory lips for a taste of Domestic Cat—in those moments, I know why I took this job, why I wanted to “work with animals” for a living—because it’s both immediate and yet so . . . otherworldly. There is nothing in a stray dog, or any dog, for that matter, that insists he play a part in my life. It’s completely up to me. I toss a treat, I adopt body language that I hope the dog will read a certain way—if I play it right, the dog will calm, will let me approach, put a collar on him, take a small step or two to reuniting him with his family, his normal daily routine. But ultimately, the dog doesn’t care if I succeed or not—his soul lies in other hands than mine . . .

Whereas people expect things of you. People expect you to fix things for them. Somebody thinks a neighbor has stolen his cat, and he expects you to get his cat, and more—to exact a tribute, to execute justice—to arrange an atonement. It makes things so complicated.

The thing is, when you decide to work with animals, you find that animals have leashes, and at the other end of the leashes are people, with all their peoply stuff and peoply problems.

I bet there are folks in jobs like bookkeeping or software development, who have pets at home, who have a higher ratio of animal-to-people time in their lives than I do . . .

No Comments »

Posted by Paige on March 17th, 2005, 10:17 pm

Happy St. Pat’s Day!

No parade for me, tho! And not just because it’s a weekday, ha ha ha. I’m actually burrowed in my apartment with my latest obsession. Rearranging furniture!!! Did my bedroom tonight after work. It’s where my computer is, so I was just looking at it again now. I like it. My desk was near the window. Never really worked, there. It’s okay at night but during the day, the glare from the window bothers me. Now it’s back in the corner by my closet. My dresser is where my desk was. Side benefit: the plants are now on my dresser, not my desk. No more hacking my way through foliage to get to my keyboard, ha ha ha.

I’ve been cleaning my apartment like mad over the past few days. Pulled everything out of my closet yesterday, sorted it. Found some old pictures but I didn’t let myself get trapped into looking at them. Yeah, I know, I shouldn’t be squeamish about it. By this time, I should be over not being over him. Well, maybe now that my apartment’s pretty much done, I could devote a couple of hours to photo sorting. One shoebox for Gil, one for everything else. Hey, is that compartmentalization? :-)

No Comments »

Posted by Paige on March 16th, 2005, 4:58 pm

Okay. So about my job.

First. I spend most of my work day in my truck.

People are sometimes surprised by that. But part of what I do is keep an eye on things, which you can’t do holed up behind a desk. Plus being out in my truck gives me a chance to talk to people. I get flagged down a lot. Someone wants to complain about a neighbor’s pet, or ask a question about a wild animal they’ve seen. If there’s ever a story in the paper about a coyote or a fox, next thing you know, everyone has seen one. My working theory is that newspaper articles about coyotes somehow trigger instantaneous coyote clones. One day, we’ve got a dozen or so in the entire county. The next day— thousands.

I get a lot of questions about the laws, too. Leash laws, barking laws.

And dog poop laws. Phew. That’s a big one this time of year—spring. People in my town are supposed to clean up after their dogs, but a lot of them don’t bother. In the warm months, dog poop tends to break down and get washed away when it rains. But during the winter, forget it. The stuff is cryogenically preserved. Then come March, the snow all melts, and Presto, you have two or three months’ worth of fabulous parting gifts greasing the sidewalks.

The sidewalks in the parks, and the sidewalks that converge on the parks, are the worst, since that’s where a lot of people head to walk their dogs. And man, do people gripe about it. Not that I blame them.

Anyway, in theory my driving around helps, because when people think I might come by, they’ll be more conscientious about picking up. So I try to hit the neighborhoods around the parks first thing and again at the end of my shift, right when people get home from work and a lot of the dog walks go down.

It’s a quality of life thing. So I don’t mind it. Quality of life and public education. That’s my middle name. Heh. My six middle names.

No Comments »

Posted by Paige on March 14th, 2005, 8:38 pm

Hi again.

I still haven’t figured out how to get my name to show up!!!

I’ve been in a funky mood all day. :-(

Char once told me I was going to meet my special someone through work. “Your soul mate,” she says. That was the psychic thing. And crapola! I’d love to believe her! Who wouldn’t? “Paige,” she told me, “take the job, it’s part of The Plan for you.”

Yeah, right. The “job,” by the way, is dog catcher—yup, that’s what I am, or “Animal Control Officer” if you prefer your PC lingo. And oh, by the way, I started the job when I was 28, which it turns out, was my Saturn Return—which, it also turns out, has nothing to do with a car lease expiring. Nooooooo, nothing that simple! It’s an astrological period when you rearrange your entire life so you can finally be an adult or something. Or that’s how Char explained it to me, more or less (right? Char, did I get it right????)

The thing is, I’ve already met my soul mate, or anyway a reasonable facsimile, and he dumped me. Big time. About three weeks after he proposed to me. And if you’re saying to yourself, “ooh, that’s gotta hurt!”—good one. You get a medal for empathy, because you’re right, it did hurt.

But don’t worry! I’m over it. I’m over it!

And speaking of being over it, I guess I’d better call this quits for now, too. It’s late and I’m getting sleepy. Maybe I’ll write some more about Gil some other time . . . or maybe not. But I’ll definitely write more about my job! That’ll be fun. How many blogs do you know that are written by grrl dog catchers? Lol

No Comments »

Posted by Paige on March 12th, 2005, 3:44 pm

Well, as you can see, my first post didn’t disappear :-)

Now, if I can just figure out how to get my name to appear!!!

No Comments »

Posted by Paige on March 12th, 2005, 10:04 am

Well, here it is. My first blog entry . . . helloooooooooo!!!!! Echooooooooooo!!!!

This is going to be fun! lol

I am still trying to figure out how all this stuff works too, though. So it may be when I hit “publish” or whatever I hit this is going to all disappear. Hmmmmm, maybe I ought to keep this one short?

No Comments »

Start here

Posted by Kirsten on March 11th, 2005, 9:53 am

I created this post to enable readers to begin at the beginning of Paige’s blog. The next post in the blog is by Paige. Enjoy, and come back often to read her updates!

No Comments »