A tale of two dogs.
So, I live in Sebastopol on a beautiful property owned by my family. There's 5 acres of Pinot Grapes and a nice sized backyard for our dogs- a Shiba Inu and a German Shorthair Pointer- to run around in. We all love it here; there's a beautiful view of the setting sun out of the West facing windows and Mt. St. Helena and the Sonoma Valley out of the North facing windows, a pool table and grand piano to entertain myself on and I am here by myself most of the time. I have thought about getting my own place but it's just too nice here and not knowing what is going to happen financially with my impending divorce it makes sense to stay here. And, for now, I gotta be here to take care of the dogs so it's all good. Besides, the stigma placed in this country on living with your folks is kinda' lame. Most other countries, when your folks are in their 70's it is expected that at least one of the children will live with them (as opposed to sticking 'em in a nursing home like most of us do in The States).
But, let me tell you about these two dogs; I love 'em to death and they are my most rusted companions and confidantes (esp. after my wife ditched me...). They couldn't be more different in personality and, considering their size difference, it's almost comical (there's a couple pictures of them in my pix file). The Shiba is named Suki and she only weighs about 22lbs. Zoey is the pointer and she weighs about 70lbs. Suki is quite aggressive and Zoey is the most passive lump of dog you will ever meet. To demonstrate this point let me tell you the story of the deer in the vineyard. Must've been about last July, before the harvest, when the vines were abundant with fat juicy Pinot grapes. Well, we had a bunch of deer coming in the vineyard and apparently they can eat their way through a large amount of grapes in a short time so my Dad told me to get the dogs to chase 'em out of the vineyard if I saw 'em in there. So, one day we went out and both the...