Buster Can Be a Real Dick Sometimes

If anyone has read this blog for any amount of time, they would have read about my dog Buster. Buster and I go for walks together where he gets to smell all sorts of interesting things, sometimes if I am not watching he will skarf down something dead and or rotting by the sidewalk. We both manage to get some exercise and I think he likes it when I have to pick up his shit on a corner of a busy intersection. He can be a real disk sometimes.

The rest of his day is spent either sleeping or sitting at the window keeping an eye on the neighbourhood. He missed the guy across the street getting all of his tools stolen from his garage, so I question just what he is looking at. There is this high school girl that he just hates and will bark at until she is well out of sight. He also barks at other dogs, birds (he hates birds), some cars that drive by and the guy that drops off the flyers once a week. Oh, and he barks at the wind, ghosts, hallucinations, airplanes, his reflection in the window, odd shaped clouds, time travellers and me if I appear to have dozed off on the couch. He can be a real dick sometimes.

Last fall I replace the old screen door that had a doggy door with one that actually kept the winter wind out. This impacted on Busters ability to run outside so that he could bark when the urge came upon him. The house was much warmer this year and the heating bill was a trifle less than previous years which made me happy. Buster not so much. However, the little jerk continued to bark and I would have to get up and open the door so that he could bark when he really ...really....really needed to. Thankfully we have a PVR so that I could pause my show no matter what mind numbing TV trash I happened to be watching.

Well, this spring we took a vacation for a couple of weeks and there was a wedding to go to which caused Buster to be pawned off on very nice in-laws with an acreage. He loved it up there, running free like his wolf ancestors had. The wolf ancestors probably didn’t have a bowl of food waiting for them when they finished running and when they slept it probably wasn’t on a king sized mattress. Even so, I am sure he missed me.

While we were away, I happened to see a wooden screen door at Norms Deli in Bowmanville. Great perogies, cabbage rolls and Kielbasa. The door was the kind that I remembered from my childhood in cottage country. It was basically just a frame with a very large screen area to let in the maximum breeze and minimum flies. I looked at the door and thought to myself that it wouldn’t take a lot of skill or materials to make a door like that with a doggy door. I could have fun making something I don’t really need and assuage my dog guilt at the same time.

So, that is what I have been doing for the past couple of days. I brought my lack of skills and left over materials into the garage and began constructing. Long story short, I am pretty much finished with the door.

Hopefully tomorrow will see me begin some other useless project. I just have to install a push bar to keep hands from going thru the screen and a little bit of trim work. It isn’t a work of art, but I feel good that I actually built a door and it works!

Buster isn’t as impressed as I thought he would be. It seems that he enjoyed making me get up and letting him outside. He is reluctantly starting to use the door, but it is under protest..

Buster can be a real dick sometimes.