2002-03-27

Holden's biting, ready for spring break, posted at 12:35 p.m.

My mood isn't quite as sour as the above quotation states, but I'm definitely ready for spring break. Only one more day. Woo-hoo!

Last night, I took the shoebox I've been carrying around for about a week now - full of a five-inch stack of papers yet to be graded - to a coffeehouse and tried to catch up. I got through about an inch. It's a never-ending stack! I had no idea I assign this much work. It doesn't help that they're almost all essays, and I feel the need to write comments (even though I bet only half of the students read them).

Oh well. Only one more day. I haven't worked out all week yet, because I feel like I can't until I get this massive stack of papers done. I even missed my beloved 24 last night. Ugh. I've got to get them done by the end of the week, though, or else I'll just go insane. There's nothing worse than coming back from a vacation with piles of work from before you left. Plus, the marking period ends in just a few days after I get back, so I don't want it all piled on me.

I'm mulling over an offer from a friend to watch Holden for the week. Mike made the offer when he was drunk on Saturday night (so drunk, in fact, that he prank-called Berty, who we both went to middle school with back in Pierce Junior High, and asked her why she hasn't called in eleven years), so I'm going to call tonight again and make sure it was for real.

Another distressing piece of news occurred with Holden over the weekend, and I haven't written about it yet. It was the introduction of HELL-don, Holden's evil twin. Okay, so I got him a rawhide bone as big as his head from Target. I gave it to him, and he was freaking loving it. I bent down to pet the top of his head. Growl, growl, snap. He'd never done anything like that before! It freaked me out. I took it away from him immediately, got angry, put him outside, and then we tried it over again. This time, I wore an oven mitt because I was afraid of getting bit. I bent down, speaking coaxingly and trying to be nice. Growl, growl, snap! If I wasn't wearing my oven mitt, I might have lost a finger. It was that vicious. I couldn't believe it. I'm still in shock. He doesn't care if you tell him to drop it, call him, and then go and get it. It's taking it from his jaws that pisses him off. But what am I supposed to do? Let him viciously try to bite at anyone who tries to take a bone away from him? He's never done it with any other sort of food item, treat, or even the little rawhide chews I've given him before. Just this big bone. It freaked me out, as well as Jeremy. We're now giving him the big bone only for a few minutes at a time, and tie a string around it and pull it away from him when we tell him to drop it. He doesn't mind that. Neither of us is excited about taking it out of his mouth again.

If anyone has any advice about this, though, I'd be glad to hear it. Holden, in every other aspect, has been a sweet dog - curling up in the crook of my knee to sleep, putting his hand on you when you pet him. I keep trying to tell myself that the snapping was just an instinctual gaffe by Holden, and that I shouldn't hold it against him. It's the sort of "Gosh, I really guess he is an animal and not some sort of little furry person" moment that I haven't really had with my previous dogs, all of which we had since I was a puppy so we could unlearn them of bad habits like this. Maybe I can still unlearn Holden of this habit, but right now my inclination is just to never get him a big rawhide bone ever again.

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