Mike Hathaway.com

Amy and I have been arguing over the acquisition of a pet for some time now. She wanted a cute 15lb lap dog and I wanted a 30lb English Springer Spaniel, so naturally when we got the offer of a 97lb Golden Retriever we both jumped on it, thus starting our journey with Riley. Riley Altschuler Hathaway is a large orange furry beast with squirrel issues. He loves people and dislikes all other dogs except a small Jack Russell Terrier named Cody. Riley is not what one would describe as a brave dog. Higgins, our Rumba Robot Vacuum, forever tormented him. No matter where he lay down, Higgins was on his way to bump into a dog that was easily 15 times its size. While most dogs would growl, snap or run upstairs when confronted with a Frisbee sized autonomous vacuum cleaner, Riley came up with a plan to cause the eventual demise of my beloved house cleaner. He shed -- orange tumbleweeds would roll across a just cleaned floor less than a day later. Higgins was helpless in the onslaught, throwing and spinning so much fur that all his sweeping and brushing parts were invisible under the clumps of finely spun orange hair. Thus sending me off for one of many dog accessories the pet store doesn’t carry, The Dyson Animal Vacuum Cleaner. Due to steady employment I am forced to leave my pooch at home during the day, to entertain himself. Questions arose, what is he doing; is he eating that which he is not supposed to; and is the good couch a goner? Arriving home, I am always greeted by a smiling, fast moving, wiggling mass that instantly takes off for the pool house and his favorite stretch of grass. Yet it always bothers me that the smile seems to say, “He’ll never figure out what I did today”. Combine that with the theory that dogs aren’t smart, they just have all day to figure things out and I went off to the store for one of those Internet cameras. Programming a web camera is easy; placing it requires one to deal with the truth. Do I point it at the dog cave under the stairs where Riley has a blanket and all his accoutrements’ or do I point it at the dog bed by the fireplace he enjoys? Neither, it ends up I need to point it at the couch he should not be up on. Proud of my newly installed canine nanny cam, I brought it up on a computer at work and proudly showed my coworkers. Who commented that it was a very cute picture of my dog on the couch. "No", I said it’s a live video feed. They said I was pulling their leg and it was a picture. We watched for an hour… no movement. So I finally picked up the phone and created the first interactive dogcam video game -- Crank call the Retriever. I dialed the number and instantly the head shot up from the couch and looked over towards the wall with the phone. After the answering machine picked up, my voice was on loudspeaker and of course I ordered my well-behaved K9 off the couch. Riley looked around and promptly fell back asleep. Ahh, the cute innocent beast does take a good picture. Amy, an obsessed scapbooker, saw Riley for the fuzzy subject material he is and set off to create a pooch book. Note, we do not have a scrapbook for our wedding which was 4 years prior to Riley's adoption, but the dog has a completed scrapbook all to himself. I have been told one has to have priorities! Riley tested those priorities a few months ago during the stomach flu outbreak. I was already over it, but Amy was well into the worst of it, spending quality time in the alternative reading room. The stomach flu ruined my ability to serve a very well-made slow-cooked pot roast dinner. Which it was necessary to leave in a Pyrex dish pushed to the back of the counter. People often ask how big is my dog? While most people would measure their furry friends, I use comparative measures. Riley stands easily with both front paws on the counter and is capable of licking the backsplash. For those of you doing the math that calculates out to nothing on the counter is safe over pi. On a trip downstairs for water, I noticed that the entire pot roast dinner for 5 was gone. The pot roast, the carrots, the potatoes and the onions (onions being one of the foods on the do not feed your dog poster). A quick call to the animal poison control hotline and they recommended Riley should give up the ill-gotten meal. 2 centiliters of hydrogen peroxide needed to go down his throat. Which bubbled up and I then had Amy sick upstairs and my dog throwing up downstairs… A lot downstairs. Of course, once the H202 had ran its course the dog had to be walked in order to relieve the remaining bubbles. So at 11:00 at night, exhausted from caring for 2 sick family members, I took my dog for a walk in the rain. Oh, that is not all the dog is capable of snatching off the counter. We noticed one evening that Riley was spending a lot of time on the side of the piano. “He’s licking the carpet,” Amy noted. A check of the spot revealed that, carpet is tasty, especially with a 1/2 lb stick of butter cleverly hidden on top of it. We refuse to calculate how many fat grams licking a 1/2 lb stick of butter can net ones physique, but it does explain his fascinating love of Microwave Popcorn. To this day that spot still gets the occasional sniff. My dog’s skills are not limited to couch warming. Part of adopting him was so I could start the . Everyday when I get home, the leash is snapped on and we go for Riley’s favorite activity - walking. Well second favorite activity, squirrel chasing lives at the top of his priority list. It was on one of these walks that Riley assisted me with measuring the depth of the ravine on our favorite hiking trail. I have a 30 foot leash and while standing on slippery soil I gave Riley the go get 'em command to chase after some ducks in the water at the bottom of the 33 foot ravine. I know its 33 feet because 2 feet from the bottom, he yanked me airborn halfway. Luck was with me and some large rocks broke my fall, and a few other body parts. Laying there, considering my injuries and how do I explain on to 911 where exactly I was, I remembered an old TV show and ordered my Lassie to go get Timmy or someone with a winch and medical training. However, the big dog just lay next to me issuing a face lick to make it all better. It’s not all licking butter and falling down ravines in the wilderness. Owning a dog involves learning to train a dog and set boundaries. One of those boundaries was "the dog sleeps downstairs in his doggie bed". Well after the first few nights of a quiet dog having accidents, his bed moved upstairs to the hallway because "the dog should not be in the bedroom". That boundary did not even last the first evening, and the trip hazard was moved from the hall to the front of the closet. The dog slept there quite happily and reset my limits to "the dog never gets on the bed." A good limit that held up for a long time, apparently because we adopted him in the spring. Summer and Fall where spent blissfully sleeping on the floor, often in the doorway on the cold, wood floor when the bed was just too hot for an insulated pooch. Electricity and gas being expensive require the heater to be off when we are not home and at night. One rather cold night, Amy broke the final boundary and invited the dog onto the bed, discovering his true calling in life. The Golden Foot Warmer. To this day, even in the heat, the dog likes to at least start his night of curled up with his head and front paws on Amy’s feet, a picture of happiness and contentment.