The Day I Poisoned My Miniature Dachsund

Anyone that knows me would know that I do not like my dachshund very much. He has never really been a dog- more like a potted plant that moves to eat and crap. He is 11 years old now, stubborn, barks more than I'd like (but never at intruders, just things he shouldn't bark at), and when I try to pick him up he bites me. He is an AKC purebred, which means that he and his lineage have been inbred so much that he is a sickly little thing that has an autoimmune disease that requires him to have - no shit- human immunosuppressant HIV/AIDS meds daily (read "real expensive") or he starts itching and his hair falls out and he looks like he has mange. He has never fetched a ball, newspaper, or a slipper. He never seeks attention or greets us at the door after a long day. He never wants to be in our laps. He looks uncomfortable when I get the leash out and he hates walks, swimming and snow. See? A potted plant that craps. Since day 2, I have lost interest in him and simply done the right thing to support him until he goes onto potted plant heaven. I made the commitment when I bought hte purebred for large sums of money, and now I shall live with that commitment.

Things in the past regarding the dog that my wife has said to me include: "We do not bite the dogs" (when he bit me the first time many years ago, I bit him back). "We do not strangle our puppies" (when I attempted to keep him from biting me when I was trying to get him to go outside to do his business). "He's afraid of you, that is why he is cowering", and my favorite "we do not hit our dogs with sticks" (when I have repeatedly tried to get him to do his business in the area he has been trained to go in,  I guide him to the area with the poop scooper handle like a cattle rustler by tapping his sides to steer him in.) I have never abused this dog, but you'd sure think so by our relationship.

Well, I thought my prayers would be answered the other evening; I poisoned him.

Every summer, insects try to use our house for their homes because we back a nature preserve in a pretty serious hardwood forest. Every summer, I find natural ways to make them seek residence elsewhere (sometimes in insect heaven). Well this year was another carpenter ant year, and they are especially nasty when they set up shop in your house. I did not want that to happen and after a couple of more natural ways to make them move, I felt it prudent to go the unnatural chemical bait route. See where this is headed? I ordered the stuff from an exterminator supply house after researching its effectiveness. This was the big gun of carpenter ant extermination bait.

I was careful putting it out to keep it away from the kid and the pets - but I didn't count my best friend because he never gets out of his bed. I put a dish of carpenter ant bait within easy reach of him, and for some reason known only in the stars, he actually got out of bed, he walked up the stairs, entered the kitchen and smelled his way to the bait and cleaned it out, leaving foaming chunks of the stuff on his eyelids and jowls. He ate a double helping of an amount that should have taken out a couple hundred thousand of our 1/2 inch long ants.

It took a full minute of him standing in the kitchen licking his lips for me to realize what had happened. Then, despite three very stout Gin & Tonics, I made very sober calls to our vet, a transfer to the after hours emergency vet, then another transfer to the ASPCA where they coached me through making the dog vomit, but the dog never did. I think everyone in the house assumed that he was a goner. We waited, but no throw up came He digested vast doses of hydrogen peroxide along with the poison (Hydrogen Peroxide makes dogs throws up with the foamyness). No puking. Specialists with the ASPCA were called and the bottom line became that I would need to take him to the vet to have another chemical used that would make him throw up the poison. They said that the ant bait had immediate gastric and nervous system issues, including paralysis and stroke in small doses. Yet no vet in my area could get him in since it was now pretty late in the day. Even my own vet backed out, saying that there was probably no use - too much of the chemicals had already entered his blood. We waited for death to consume our dog.

Parked outside as the sun went down, my wife covered him, thinking that it would be the last time she ever gave him a blanket. In case he needed to throw up, or worse, we kept him on our deck until bedtime. We then sent him to do his business outside in the area, said our goodbyes and covered him for the night. I gave all I had to try and rescue the little guy, because my daughter loves the little thing, and I love my daughter. I would have spent any amount of money to fix the problem, driven anywhere, but it was no use. We all went to bed with heavy hearts (I only had a heavy heart for my daughter, let's make that abundantly clear.).

We wake every day at 6 am. The first thing that my daughter wants to do is to check on our dog. I have to admit that I am curious myself to see how much pain then thing went through in his final hours. Like always, the dog is in his dog bed, covered up completely just like we left him, and we have to dig to uncover him from under his blankets (potted plant). I tell my girl that I better check first, in case there are things too yucky for her 4 year old eyes.

I pull the covers back gingerly, searching for the body of the dog, and I feel what seems to be his tail and butt. The dog is perfectly fine and thinks I am there to bother him and he spins and latches his teeth into my hand. The little sonofabitch never showed any signs of poisoning, despite consuming 5 times the dosage used to decimate several colonies of ants, and he remains fine. The ant problem appears to have been solved, however.

I think we may be having a rat problem soon, or a raccoon infestation...

Hands out for more handouts.

Richard Gerry Reporting from college:

I graduated with my undergrad degree from the University of Utah a million years ago. One year ago, I graduated from Cleveland State University with my Master's. That's right, I am awesome. But this post is not about that.

They keep hounding me for alumni money - both of them.

I went to the University of Utah for nearly 10 years and spent in the neighborhood of $40,000 to do so. I had no scholarships, grants or subsidies beyond what the state pays for all students (and that is sort of like a sale at a mall store - jacked up 50% so that a 50% sale seems like a lot of discount). I never really did well with grades until I found my major and did very well, but my GPA was so low from my younger years that I ended up with only a fair to good cumulative. Other graduates in the year I graduated could expect to earn around $20,000 a year in entry level jobs. No, I didn't get an engineering degree. That is why I can spell.

Cleveland State University cost $20,000 for a two-year degree ten years later. I also was given no financial support, despite applying for teaching stipends and research assistant positions. In this degree I was firmly at the top of my class. I graduated "high honors" with a 3.97 GPA (one A-....that bastard professor cheated me and if I ever see him again...Bam!!). Regardless, I was in the top 1% of my cohort and delivered a fucking stellar end project. At the defense I was asked to join the Urban PhD program and offered to work with the best and brightest that CSU had to offer (yea, it sounds wrong to me too, 'cause how bright are they?). I was at the top of the game. Still, No help; no free career placement services, no tuition kickbacks, no free books, key lanyards or a free pot of coffee in the hallway between classes. Nothing but opportunities to spend more of my money every time I turned around; Parking, bus/train passes, lab fees, field work fees, real-professor fees, computer fees, technology fees, recreation fees, student government fees, and $12 burritos in the food court...like money vacuums from all directions - and all sanctioned by the state legislatures, boards of regents, and the very student government that charge the fees.

It's not like this.

As soon as I graduated each, I started to get weekly glossy mailers, booklets and daily emails from the schools asking for alumni donations. The brochures show people proudly wearing knit sweaters in school hues, cheering on the team, smiling with friends, staring into the eyes of a romantic flame, or completely engaged in the professor's lecture (who rocks a tweed jacket with leather elbow patches and sports a graying beard). This could not be further from the truth of what these colleges are like now days. Did alumnus that attended this school really have it like that? Did anyone at any time? If so, I would like to know where I went wrong. My college days were mostly disgusting as an undergrad.

It's like this.

Both the University of Utah and Cleveland State are filled with nineteen-year-olds that have no idea what life is like, and they're either blowing unconscionable amounts of easy student loan monies on Beats by Dre headphones and iPods/iPhones and liquor or they are working three jobs and look like they have not slept or eaten well in weeks. They all are having sex with each other. They do any drugs they can get. In short, they are figuring out how to be humans in the real world, which is a social function of college. A lecture by a real professor in undergrad classes is growing more and more rare as grad students take over teaching beginning courses to offset tuition expenses. None of the students could give two shits about the content of the lectures; they repeatedly ask "Is this on the test?" because that is all they know from attending public schools. They do not respect their teachers. If the professor dances around the question, you can see the student completely tune out and send a text message to whomever boffed them the night before (that are asking the same questions to their professors down the halls). The only bond the students have is similar to one that coworkers in the same company have. Because they all go there at the same time, they are on the same team. The team could be the Nevada Naked Nothings, and sure enough, they'd all be wearing N3 hoodies while they crowded around passing the pipe before a basketball game, getting their lungs full of school spirit. I hope that this is not the normal, but I have attended 6 colleges, observed classes in a few more and it was sadly the same in every one.

90% of the people around that desk are asking about extra credit because they were having sex instead of studying for  the test they just got back. The other 10 are trying to have sex with the 90% before the next test.

Our society in general has lost the ability to conserve, cut excess and restrict in lean times. We are used to things getting tacked on to our bills, and paying for things after we consume them on credit. This is why we as adults look at an alumni letter and consider it for a second, and think on those times when we were still drunk in our 9am class from the night before. We think of our youth, when we did not have responsibility and bills, slept around without consequence and lived life for real. We want that back and will pay now for what we spent before. We forget how shitty we usually felt, how socially awkward we were, how broke we were all the time and we forget that there is more to life than "what is on the test".

The alumni associations get from me what they gave to me when I was there. You can never go back.