I’m just about ready to kiss pound #17 goodbye. Yeah, just when I thought I wouldn’t lose any more, down goes another pound. Since running in quick spread-out bursts, I haven’t done any straight 20-minute jogging in about a week. The slightest variation in routine can cause you to work different muscles, so I decided to jog today up and down the place just to see if the new routine was pulling me out of shape in other ways, but nope. If anything, I’m in better shape and the quick, stationary bursts of running are working even more muscles. Or the same ones harder. This is good to know cuz once it finally warms up, I’m not going to be able to run 20 minutes straight. We’re still having rain for the most part, but I’m hoping things are going to warm up soon. Not around here, but in town, the leaves are starting to bud on those that lost them.

Tom talked to Jesse for almost 5 minutes today and now we know why there’s been more barking. First, though, Jesse’s not only still okay with us having to split the rent, but he too, is on unemployment! We figured he was out of work.

He said he wasn’t aware that the dogs were going off whenever he leaves (we figured this, too), but that he’s been leaving them behind more lately because of the rain, and apparently, they’d like to go with him.

Another thing he says he’s trying to do is to breed them. My first thought was, oh, that’s just great. Just what we need around here; to triple the dog count. But Tom said he clearly said one litter, and we’re pretty sure he’s not going to keep the puppies. Usually, when you breed your dogs it’s to give puppies to friends and family members. Unfortunately, he didn’t say anything about getting rid of one of the parents after the dating game ends. Who knows, this might be an opportunity for us. I did say that if I was going to be forced to listen to barking wherever we go we might as well make some of it ours, and I did say that I wished I could have a pet that lived a hell of a lot longer than rats, so maybe we can see about getting one. It’d be easier to get one from him than to go to the pound, and this way, if it didn’t work out for some reason, we could give it back to him. I don’t know what kind of dogs these are. They’re not the same, whatever they are, but they’d be a good size. Not too little that you gotta worry about stepping on them, but not too big either.

He said that the female is older and that he thinks they haven’t bred yet because the male hasn’t quite gotten the hang of what to do yet. He said he caged them while she was in heat.

He also appears to be getting really sick of being home, asking if there was anything we needed done down here. That’s what I was afraid of. Not of him being a pest. He got that out of his system a while back. What worries me is what’s going to happen when he goes back to work. Tom thinks that for now, he’ll probably start taking them with him more often, but when he goes back to work, then what? Do we just have to sit and take it on and off all day?

Tom said he likes my idea of using the barking as sort of an ultimatum once he gets a job himself, as to whether or not we’re going to move. We both don’t think Jesse would want to give up good renters like us and risk getting a repeat of the last people he had in here. We can still get the stop-barking device, but I don’t know if it’ll work. I wonder if he’d let us use it up there.

Well, our problems don’t usually get fixed that easily, so my guess is things will be the same or eventually get worse until we figure out what to do next. For now, I’m glad Tom laid the foundation down for whatever has to come next to shut them up. All Jesse has to do is pull them indoors when he takes off, but for some reason, most people in the West simply won’t do that.