Mick, all 40lbs of him, just dragged a 10' tree branch out of the woods for me to throw

Anne V - 01:01 pm PDT - Sep 9, 1999 - Okay - I know how to take meat away from a dog. How do I take a dog away from meat? This is not, unfortunately, a joke.

AmyC - 01:02 pm PDT - Sep 9, 1999 - Um, can you give us a few more specifics here?

Anne V - 01:12 pm PDT - Sep 9, 1999 - They're inside of it. They crawled inside, and now I have a giant incredibly heavy piece of carcass in my yard, with 2 dogs inside of it, and they are NOT getting bored of it and coming out. One of them is snoring. I have company arriving in three hours, and my current plan is to 1. put up a tent over said carcass and 2. hang thousands of fly strips inside it. This has been going on since about 6:40 this morning.

AmyC - 01:19 pm PDT - Sep 9, 1999 - Oh. My. God. What sort of carcass is big enough to hold a couple of dogs inside? Given the situation, I'm afraid you're not going to be create enough of a diversion to get the dogs out of the carrion, unless they like greeting company as much as they like rolling around in dead stuff. Which seems unlikely. Can you turn a hose on the festivities?

Ase Innes-Ker - 01:31 pm PDT - Sep 9, 1999 - N I'm sorry Anne. I know this is a problem (and it would have driven me crazy), but it is also incredibly funny.

Anne V - 01:31 pm PDT - Sep 9, 1999 - Elk. Elk are very big this year, because of the rain and good grazing and so forth. They aren't rolling. They are alternately napping and eating. They each have a ribcage. Other dogs are working on them from the outside. It's all way too primal in my yard right now. We tried the hose trick. At someone elses house, which is where they climbed in and began to refuse to come out. Many hours ago. I think that the hose mostly helps keep them cool and dislodges little moist snacks for them. hose failed. My new hope is that if they all continue to eat at this rate, they will be finished before the houseguests arrive. The very urban houseguests. Oh, ghod - I know it's funny. It's appalling, and funny, and completely entirely representative of life with dogs.

Anne V - 02:44 pm PDT - Sep 9, 1999 - I did call my vet. He laughed until he was gagging and breathless. He says a lot of things, which can be summed as *what did you expect?* and *no, there is no such thing as too much elk meat for a dog.* He is planning to stop over and take a look on his way home. Thanks, Lori. I am almost surrendered to the absurdity of it.

Lori Shiraishi - 02:49 pm PDT - Sep 9, 1999 - He is planning to stop over and take a look on his way home. So he can fall down laughing in person?

Anne V - 02:50 pm PDT - Sep 9, 1999 - Basically, yeah. That would be about it.

AmyC - 02:56 pm PDT - Sep 9, 1999 - no, there is no such thing as too much elk meat for a dog. Oh, sweet lord, Anne. You have my deepest sympathies in this, perhaps the most peculiar of the Gus Pong Adventures. You are truly a woman of superhuman patience. wait -- you carried the carcass down from the mountains with the dogs inside?

Anne V - 02:59 pm PDT - Sep 9, 1999 - the carcass down from the mountains with the dogs inside? no, well, sort of. My part in the whole thing was to get really stressed about a meeting that I had to go to, and say *yeah, ok, whatever* when it was suggested that the ribcages, since we couldn't get the dogs out of them and the dogs couldn't be left there, be brought to my house. Because, you know - I just thought they would get bored of it sooner or later. But it appears to be later, in the misty uncertain future, that they will get bored. Now, they are still interested. And very loud, one singing, one snoring.

Lori Shiraishi - 03:04 pm PDT - Sep 9, 1999 - And very loud, one singing, one snoring. wow. I can't even begin to imagine the acoustics involved with singing from the inside of an elk.

Danielle Duperre - 07:25 am PDT - Sep 13, 1999 - Ok, Anne, holiday weekend's over. Talk to us!

Linda Hewitt - 08:34 am PDT - Sep 13, 1999 - The world is waiting Anne to hear the latest on Dogs 'N Elk.

Anne V - 08:37 am PDT - Sep 13, 1999 - So what we did was put the ribcages (containing dogs) on tarps and drag them around to the side yard, where I figured they would at least be harder to see, and then opened my bedroom window so that the dogs could let me know when they were ready to be plunged into a de-elking solution and let in the house. Then I went to the airport. Came home, no visible elk, no visible dogs. Peeked around the shrubs, and there they were, still in the elk. By this time, they had gnawed out some little portholes between some of the ribs, and you got the occasional very frightening glimpse of something moving around in there if you watched long enough. After a lot of agonizing, I went to bed. I closed the back door, made sure my window was open, talked to the dogs out of it until I was sure they knew it was open, and then I fell asleep. Sometimes, sleep is a mistake, no matter how tired you are. And especially if you are very very tired, and some of your dogs are outside, inside some elks. Because when you are that tired, you sleep through bumping kind of noises, or you kind of think that it's just the house guests. It was't the house guests. It was my dogs, having an attack of teamwork unprecedented in our domestic history. When I finally woke all the way up, it was to a horrible vision. Somehow, 3 dogs with a combined weight of about 90 pounds, managed to hoist one of the ribcages (the meatier one, of course) up 3 feet to rest on top of the swamp cooler outside the window, and push out the screen. What woke me was Gus Pong, howling in frustration from inside the ribcage, very close to my head, combined with feverish little grunts from Jake, who was standing on the nightstand, bracing himself against the curtains with remarkably bloody little feet. Here are some things I have learned, this Rosh Hashanah weekend: 1. almond milk removes elk blood from curtains and pillowcases, 2. We can all exercise superhuman strength when it comes to getting elk carcasses out of our yard, 3. The sight of elk ribcages hurtling over the fence really frightens the nice deputy sheriff who lives across the street, and 4. the dogs can pop the screens out of the windows, without damaging them, from either side.

ChristiPeters - 08:42 am PDT - Sep 13, 1999 - ROTFLMAO Annie, you should write a book of your dog-adventures! I know it probably wasn't funny to live through and, really, you have my sympathies, but it is hilarious reading!

AmyC - 09:53 am PDT - Sep 13, 1999 - Oh, Anne! What a way to ring in the new year! If you ever want to expose the Gus Pong Adventures to a wider audience, I will give you free space on my web site (holistichound.com -- but don't look yet! I'm almost done with the new redesign!). You could put in pictures and sound files and all manner of nifty things! The world needs Gus Pong!

Anne V - 09:58 am PDT - Sep 13, 1999 - What I am is really grateful that they didn't actually get the damn thing in the window, which is clearly the direction they were going in. And that the nice deputy didn't arrest me for terrifying her with elk parts before dawn.