It's not Door Dash for noms, it's Dog Dash for puppies.
This week, wife kitteh and I grabbed the very unique hound pictured below, a Korean Mastiff - Pit Bull mix, and sprinted to Seattle to deliver him to our son who lives up here. Our son couldn't get a break from work to get the dog himself.
Originally, wife kitteh had intended to take him on a plane, but even at 7 weeks, he was too big for the largest crate you can take on board. That made me her driver and we blasted up here in a day and a half. After working almost a full day, we had 6 hours of driving on Thursday. Friday was a 13-hour marathon, 15 hours including stops, that started around 0330.
Ugh.
Anyway, the little brute, soon to be a huge brute, has been delivered and today we start the trip back.
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| His name is Bandit because he looks like the dog from Johnny Quest. JQ's dog was compact and convenient. This guy is going to end up the size of a warehouse. |
On the way up, we took I-5 the whole way, which brought us through Portland. From the freeway at least, Portland is a pit. It's filthy, run down and saturated with homeless encampments. We saw several significant ones from the car as we zipped through.
Given the rioting in Portland, we're not going home that way. You have no idea when BLM is going to decide to close off the freeway and while I'm more than ready to drive our SUV straight through the protesters to save wife kitteh, I'm not ready to go to prison for life just yet. Instead, we'll go through the sane states of Idaho and Nevada.
It's early in the morning right now and I woke up at my regular hour of 0400. I'm watching the hyperactive little dude while the other two get some sleep. That means there's no time for thinking and writing. I've got to run and check to see what he's destroying now with his Jaws of Doom™.
As a closing request, please, please, please don't ask me to bring you a dog from more than a thousand miles away. For the love of Pete, just go to your local animal shelter and get one there.
4 comments:
Every time Mrs Ohioan and I have driven up north on I-5 we’ve spent one night on our way North or on the way back South (or maybe two nights, one each way) at Harris Ranch. It’s kind of a nice halfway point between here and the Bay Area. The smell of the cows is a bit off-putting, but their restaurant has the best steaks in CA. Sounds like you will be taking 395 on your way south, so stopping there will be impossible unless you decide to take the scenic route and drive over Tioga Pass and go through Yosemite (I hear the upper meadows, the valley, and the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias calling you). If you do that then you can go south on I-5 and miss Portland in exchange for a longer and spectacularly more beautiful route.
Your description of the drive through Portland reminds me of the time Mrs Ohioan and I took an Amtrak from Washington DC to New York. It went through Baltimore and took a stop at the Baltimore train station. The city was such a pit of old decrepit rundown houses we were stunned. You could not have paid me enough to get off the train there. Since then the stories from there have been one nightmare after another. On behalf of the people of Baltimore I really hope they wise up and elect Kim Klacik (watch her ad: https://youtu.be/wBebl5fqzCA )
The things we put ourselves through for family. That was quite a trip. I've just spent two years and three months living in Hamilton, a one hour or so drive south from here, renovating my son's house. Back in Toronto now not quite believing it's actually finished!
Instead, we'll go through the sane states of Idaho and Nevada.
Oh, good-- as much as I miss that drive (no, really, I miss San Diego to Seattle), we went through Bend, Oregon and hit Weed on the way. (The sign was there TWICE! In like 8 trips!) the fires are still an issue right now, and Medford might be getting an AntiFa resurgence. Their shopkeepers have been getting punished by the mayor for calling in their friends and opening their stores when the mob came through to raid the first time. The mob wasn't interested in facing down armed, packed stores....
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For the love of Pete, just go to your local animal shelter and get one there.
Too many local shelters are more interested in preventing animals from being euthanized than in preventing my kids and our existing pets from being savaged by known violent dogs.
The local shelter is fairly honest-- if they see the dogs behaving poorly they'll label it.
But if I'm going to pay $200 for an animal, I'm going to get a puppy where I am not trying to tell the poor thing that everything it has learned up to this point is wrong, rather than getting a puppy that doesn't know anything yet. (Adopting a puppy is $400-$500 to subsidize the care of the harder to adopt dogs, and they can be very squishy about what they call a puppy.)
Wow, that's some serious love, ligneus. Congrats on your work!
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