Hapi is better and other news

While Hapi had a bit of a slow start yesterday, she was her old self on our walks, morning and afternoon. However, she did not poop and I was concerned about her gut being not quite up to snuff so I withheld her food. By early evening she was beside herself trying to communicate how hungry she was, dancing around on the deck, making playful lunges at me and twirling around on the spot, all the while making pointed glances at where her food bowl should be. Quite comical.

I kept telling her that until I saw her doing a healthy poop, I was very reluctant to feed her. Finally I relented and gave her one cup of food (she normally gets four cups). She gobbled it down and continued with her demonstrations of hunger, I had to go inside and try not to look out the window at her, she was being so relentless. But finally she went out into the backyard and did a little poop. I immediately gave her another cup of food as a reward.

It was kind of funny, the malamute website I had been consulting mentioned malamute humour, how they maintain it right up to the very end, and I think I just saw a demonstration of that. Her efforts to communicate her feelings to me made me laugh, not at her hunger but at her good-humoured method of showing me what she wanted.

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We were walking down the street yesterday and I stopped to chat with a woman I am 'nodding friends' with. She still has a job but is feeling the stress of isolation. This was by far our longest chat ever. I kind of relate to her because she is the single parent of five boys, most of whom have grown up and moved out. We talked about the second oldest who is planning his wedding for next year. I know him because he used to do snow shovelling for me and I am happy for him, a sweet boy.

She told me a bit of street gossip—I'm always the last to hear that sort of thing—about a resident of one of the low-rent apartment buildings who allegedly has been diagnosed with 'the corona'. It was a particularly nasty story, and it brought home to me the shame involved in being diagnosed with 'the corona', like being diagnosed with a venereal disease due to 'promiscuity'. She also talked about her struggle with smoking and how it was particularly difficult at this time. She figures it costs her close to twenty bucks a day, which she can ill afford. Boy I'm glad I quit that habit when it was still relatively cheap!

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I made a round of calls to friends as a kind of check-in, one friend owns one of Hapi's oldest and best friends Ava, a Formosan Mountain Dog ('Taiwan Dog' or 'tugou'). We decided to get together for a dog walk on a trail that was wide enough for physical distancing so that the two dogs could get together. We are relaxing the rules a bit to let the dogs have some social time together, they can't very well call each other on the phone.

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There are two blue jay parents that come to my bird feeder now and just hoover up the seeds. They don't stop to crack them open, they just fill their gullets and fly away. Watching the two of them is like watching a couple of jack hammer operators drilling through concrete sidewalks. They look frantic. I had a bit of a conversation with one of them the other day, it was looking in the window at me and started doing the head bobbing thing that birds do when they are courting. I bobbed back and we did that a couple of times before it went at the birdfeeder. Maybe it was making sure I was okay with its jackhammer routine?

The street is very quiet now that the blue jays are too busy feeding youngsters to stop and call and the crows have temporarily vacated. There are a couple of singles still around but all the couples are busy with nests at their roost in the next town over.