Movin' On Up

When I last had the chance for an update, we were still living on the girlfriend's friend's couch and were getting ready to dogsit in the commune.  That was nearly two weeks ago.  A lot has changed.  First of all, we had the dogsitting.  Now, I like dogs.  I like how much they like being around people, I like that they listen (unlike cats), and I like walking them, because it makes me walk on days when I would be much more likely to sit around on my butt and be lazy.  So I went into this experience expecting to enjoy myself.  However, when we went to actually *meet* the dog, I became a little, teeny, tiny bit worried.  For one thing, the dog (Arty, short for Artemis) is 60 pounds and 18 months old.  That is a pretty big dog with a lot of puppy wiggle left.  For another, Arty is a Rhodesian ridgeback mix.  This is a dog that was bred to HUNT LIONS!  And also, a breed that, as a whole, is known for having a HUGE amount of energy.
So, to recap: big dog with lots of energy + still a PUPPY = super hyper dog.  I mean, this dog needed to be walked 5 or so miles a day, just so she wouldn't be nutty and keep us up all night.  And then there's the fact that she thought she should be fed all the time, including at 6 am.  This is not a time of day that I have ever appreciated.
Then there's the fact that the girlfriend does not like dogs.  Does not see them as nice or cool or fun or anything like that.  She also is a little tiny thing, which is not a good attribute when you're walking a big dog.  I did most of the dog walking.
The dog also apparently usually slept with the people we were housesitting for.  That did not happen with us.  What did happen, however, is that she would come in to the room, any time between 4:30 (I kid you not!) and 6:45 am and pace around the bed, whining and barking at us.  We could attempt to ignore her for as long as we wanted to, but eventually one of us (the girlfriend) got up and went downstairs to feed her and let her out onto the back patio.  She would be calm for a short period of time, but then become more and more obnoxious, until I was up and dressed and took her out for a walk.  One morning, the girlfriend tried to walk Arty alone.  It did not go well.  We actually wised up after the first couple of days and took her to the nearest dog park, which let her run her energy out while having her ears, head, and neck chewed on by other dogs.  This is apparently her favorite thing in the whole world.
It did, however, require us to put her in the back seat of the girlfriend's car.  For some reason, this big, strong dog felt that she could not jump up into the car, no matter how much we tempted her with her favorite treats.  One of us had to lift first her front end and then her rear end onto the back seat.  It didn't matter that we did this three times, so she should have been able to figure out where we were going.  I'm not sure whether she was being nervous or ornery, but there you go.
The only really bad thing about walking her was that every time you passed another dog, she wanted to play with it.  She tried to run over to the other dog, pulling you along like flotsam in her wake, and, as if that wasn't embarrassing enough, barking her head off in joy at seeing another dog.  Once, when we were walking her, we came up on a man with a baby in one of those baby bjorn things on his chest, walking a very small dog. She barked so loud she woke the baby and it started screaming and screaming...
The other really interesting thing about this dogsitting was the place we were staying.  I reported last time that it was a commune, but I had it slightly wrong.  We were staying in a Cohousing community.  What is Cohousing? you may be asking yourself, as I did.
Cohousing is a form of collaborative housing that offers residents an old-fashioned sense of neighborhood. In cohousing, residents know their neighbors very well and there is a strong sense of community that is absent in contemporary cities and suburbs.  Cohousing communities consist of private, fully-equipped dwellings and extensive common amenities including a common house and recreation areas. They are designed and managed by the residents who have chosen to live in a close-knit neighborhood that seeks a healthy blend of privacy and community.
So, yeah.  That's what cohousing is.  The condo we stayed in had two floors and the whole place is designed to be very energy-efficient, staying cool inside even on the hottest days without A/C.  We were very impressed.  It's the community part of the thing that we had a problem with.  We must have met half of the people who lived there when we came to meet the dog and the owners.  We had buddies, J and C, who were responsible for making sure we knew what was going on.  C was actually out of time most of the time we were there, but J and their daughter were very welcoming (well, the daughter is a little over a year old) and invited us to a bunch of stuff.  This included common meals and things like that.  Everyone knew who we were and why we were there and said hi to us all the time.  So kind of the opposite of living in most apartment complexes.  It was interesting.

Next time: Apartments!  Pets!  Furniture!  Jobs?