House Hunters International

 Karen and I like to watch House Hunters International ("HHI") for a variety of reasons.  We get to see virtual tours of places we may someday like to visit, or that we'll never get to visit.  We like to see if we can pick out the best of the options for the couple.  And we get to kibbitz.

For those who aren't familiar with the show, it involves a couple, usually American but not always, who is moving to a foreign country to relocate or to buy a vacation home.  They hook up with a local realtor who shows them three properties.  Before the search begins, the realtor meets with the couple (although sometimes it's a single person with a friend in tow) to find out what they're looking for, what their budget is and sundry other information regarding their search.  That's where the fun begins.

Then the realtor shows them three places, whether they're renting or buying, and the couple tags along to see the places.  That's when the fun gets a turbo boost.

At the end, the couple sits together at a bar or some quiet location, acts like it's discussing what they've seen and what they really want and then make a decision.  What has been leaked about this is that by the time this is filmed, the couple has already been living in whichever location it's chosen, so this is all for the show.  Then the episode ends with a retrospective of sorts anywhere from two to six months later where the couple speaks glowingly about how they love their choice and how it was the best for them.

An added bonus to the set up is the unseen narrator who moves the action along.  Her name is Andromeda Dunker.  This stuff just can't be made up...unlike the show.

Anyhoo, there are several aspects that seem to recur no matter how old the couple, what country they're in, if they're buying or renting, if they speak the language, whether they're young or old...in short, one of the following is bound to appear in every episode.

--  Local Charm:  This drives me absolutely insane.  If someone's moving to a foreign country, why is there so much insistence that the residence have local charm?????  Why isn't the locality itself charming enough?  We've seen so many couples piss and moan about how this location doesn't have the requisite charm that they overlook the obvious advantages to the place...not to mention how cheaply they can add local charm with artwork, furniture, kitchenware, etc.  What's more, half the time they don't even know what true local charm is and are relying on ersatz charm they've seen in the U.S.  Ugh....

-- "It's too far from my work":  As people whose work commutes average anywhere from two to three hours daily, to and from work, it's enervating in the extreme to listen to these people whine about how their prospective commutes are thirty minutes or less.  Seriously?  What's more, what happened to wanting all the local charm?  Isn't taking the time to go to work an opportunity to soak in the local charm?  

--  "It's not as X as we had in America":  News flash:  You've moved to a foreign country.  There's a reason it's called a foreign country.  Although they may speak English in the foreign country, they also speak a foreign language in the foreign country.  No, their rooms aren't as large as ours, their refrigerators aren't as large as ours, their bathrooms aren't as nice as ours...did you do no research before you decided to move to Country X?  It flabbergasts me to see how little some people know about the country to which they're moving.

--  "We can only spend X since one of us won't have a job here":  Yes, he/she will.  Every time someone complains about their budget due to the fact that one of the couple doesn't have a job yet, and they go looking at possible sites, make their choice and come back in two or three months...voila! The other spouse has a job.  So for all the gnashing of teeth, rending of garments and tearing of hair, eventually any economic concern the couple has is resolved.

--  The Couples Themselves:  It is rare to find a couple where both people are likeable.  It doesn't matter which spouse, but usually one or the other spouses is obnoxious and unlikeable.  Nothing's good enough for them, or he cares too much about spending $1 more than their planned budget, or she complains about how she's giving up everything to make the move with him...enough already.  It's a wonder why some of these couples even married.

-- Extra Rooms For Guests:  It never fails.  A couple has to have extra rooms for guests.  Do they not know there are hotels overseas?  Can't their guests get a room?  On one level, where there's an elderly parent that may visit, I can understand the need and perhaps the desire to have a room in the new location for that guest.  But where it's a young couple, or even an older couple, visiting that can easily afford to rent a room at a hotel nearby, why all the angst?  While these folks were looking for a place to stay in their new country...where were they staying?  I doubt they pitched a tent in the local park.

-- The Realtors:  If one watches the show enough, certain realtors in certain countries seem to be the go-to real estate agent for the show.  Britain has a bald guy with a full beard who is slightly affected.  Watching him try to shoot a basketball was...painful.  Then there's a guy in Germany and Belgium who's fond of unbuttoning his shirt down as far as he can to show off his hairless chest.  A real estate agent in Holland wears long skirts that are about as wild and mismatched as the wild and mismatching blouses she wears.  And it's painful to listen to some of the Asian real estate agents speak if for no other reason than they are about as humorless as a person can still be and call oneself a person.  The best part of listening to the real estate agents is their asides to the camera about the couples when they're separated, although by far the best moment occurred in Australia with a bizarre tree-hugging pair -- just friends, apparently -- who were mesmerized by the tree they were hugging in the front yard and ignoring the broker's suggestion they go inside to look at the house.

-- The Money:  Where do some of these young couples get the money to spend on houses or apartments?  This is more of a question for the younger couples and ones on other shows, but occasionally a young couple will be moving abroad and have gazillions to spend on a place.  They look like they've been out of high school for about five years.  Did they win the lottery?  Are they descended from old money?

-- Balconies:  Everyone wants a balcony.  Why?  Can't you just look out the window?  And when they'e presented with a balcony, sometimes the balconies are laughable.  Open the door, step out a foot to the railing and then shuffle down to the end of the one-foot wide balcony, then shuffle to the other end.  Why?

-- Inside/Outside the Locale:  Invariably, one partner wants to live in the city center, while the other person wants to live outside the city.  Usually, this is where the complaint about how the one partner gave up everything to move overseas with the other partner (see, The Couples Themselves, supra) whines about how they don't want to live inside or outside the city.  How on earth did these people ever marry?

--  A View:  This cracks me up.  When one of the main requirements is a view, and the couple is shown a place that has a view -- say, of the ocean -- they ooh and aah about being able to see a sliver of the ocean through other buildings.  That's a view?  Or if it's mountains, they can see the distant mountains -- or a portion of them -- through the utility wires and rooftops of adjacent buildings.  I must have a different understanding of what constitutes a view.  I would readily agree that looking at the apartment building nextdoor isn't a view, but what people accept as a view mystifies me.

--  Outdoor Space...For the Pet: Now, as a proud owner of two bulldogs whose scatalogical habits are demanding, to say the least, I can appreciate the need for an outdoor facility for pets.  But what's wrong with walking them across the street, or down the block to the park?  Bring a poop bag, put on your coat and shoes, and walk the pet to do its business.  Why is it a requirement that Fluffy has an outdoor bathroom with the house?  Unless it's Lassie who's also footing part of the bill, make it go to the park and bring a poop bag.

We love the show.  We try to see which of the three choices the couples will choose, then determine which one is in their best interest.  

Considering what Andromeda Dunker likes in houses, though, we shouldn't be surprised by the always eclectic nature of HHI's couples' wants:

(c) 2021 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Goodbye, Son of the Morning Star

Endings can be either good or bad.  For losing streaks, bad luck or a bad marriage, the ending can be good.  For relationships, long flights or bad marriages, the ending can be bad.  Sometimes, there is no question that the ending is neither desirable nor good.

Such is the case of losing a pet.

Custer was a rescue bulldog Karen and I adopted nearly eleven years ago.  He was the goofiest, most playful and loyal pet I've ever known.  Karen says that when we went to get him, he glommed on to me immediately and never looked back.  I wish I could say the feeling was mutual at the time, but what I may have lacked in intensity at the start I more than made up for at the end.

My buddy was beaten so badly that he had dents in his skull.  Not surprisingly, when we first brought him home, if we opened aluminum foil or put on our coat, Cus would cower in fear that he was going to be hit.  I never hit him, of course, but he didn't know that I wouldn't do that, such was his fear.  

He certainly pushed our buttons at times, from the familiar-to-pet-owners use of the house as a toilet to his infamous destruction of a feather bolster.  At the time of his latter escapade, I remember being both angry because I had to clean it up -- which I did using a snow shovel, such was the destruction -- and bemused by the absurdity of our bulldog tearing apart the threateningly dangerous feather bolster and then sitting in the corner proudly awaiting our return so he could show us his handiwork.

Custer wasn't the most beautiful of bulldogs; that laurel would fall to his future brother, Mosby, with whom he was engaged in a love-hate relationship:  They loved to hate each other.  But Cus had some great and unusual features.  Most notably, he had the softest coat of any bulldog I've ever met.  He had a somewhat elongated body, which made him look like a large white cigar from the profile.  Karen loved his speckled ear.  Karen also felt he was gorgeous no matter what.  I felt that way once he smiled or got excited; otherwise, he was a doppelganger for my late maternal grandfather.  Even Karen admitted the resemblance.

We took Custer and his sidekick Sherman on trips with us.  When we were out with the pair, people almost always stopped, laughed and asked to pet them.  We took them on vacations without incident.  One time, when were at a gas station and had let them out to do their business, a van pulled, the passenger window was rolled down and one simple question was asked:  How much?  

Custer's playful goofiness manifested itself in various forms.  Whether it was being paddleboarded on one of the Great Lakes, or chasing the beam of a flashlight, or barking and dancing around when he had to go out to do his business, Custer's enduring trait was personality.  He would photobomb others' pictures; I never knew if he was oblivious to his lack of etiquette, just happy to be included or happy he was free to roam without fear of sanction that led to this, but countless people have some unnamed bulldog in their family albums thanks to Custer's generosity.  

He would also try to chase our quicksilver fast cat Bupkes, but his loping strides didn't quite match that brash bark that accompanied them.  He had the hearing of an eavesdropper when a bag of food or the refrigerator door was opened.  He was stone deaf when you told him he had to do something he didn't like doing, like going outside just because we wanted him to get a little fresh air or getting a bath.  Custer made it clear that his tolerance of water stopped at the lake or a pool; bathtubs just didn't do it for him.  He also loathed getting his nails trimmed.  Each and every visit was like a convict being dragged to the gallows.

Custer never met a treat he didn't like.  I don't think I ever saw him turn up his nose at any offering.  He would wolf it down with relish and then look for seconds.  He made begging an art form, causing the famous statement that Custer is looking at me with kind eyes to be uttered.

Sherman and Custer were brothers who had few disagreements.  The only one that I remember being concerned about took place right above my face one day.  But the two of them were kith and kin otherwise.  When Sherm died on October 4, 2016, Custer seemed to take it hard.  He was despondent beyond out expectations.  The bulldog that loved to run on the beach barely walked down the strand a few weeks after Sherman's passing.  The only remedy we could think of was to get him a partner.

We found Maisie, another rescue, but she had been kenneled so long that she didn't know how to be a dog.  She and Custer shared beds during the day, but what little interaction there was between them resulted from Custer getting perturbed when his visually-impaired sister would inadvertently run into him.  Like a chiding parent, he would snap his jaws and snarl at her until she meekly walked away, unaware of what she had done.  Still, there was one adorable moment where I caught the two of them in bed, with Custer's front leg around her, unintended or not.

Custer never met a person he didn't like.  And he shed all over everything and everyone. As Karen always warned people who wanted to pet him:  Be careful.  He only sheds on people he likes and he likes everyone.  Truer words were never spoken.  If given the chance he would sit in people's laps.  When I would lie on the floor to pet him, he would sometimes get distracted by a chewbone and then use me as a platform to chew his bone.

Most often, however, when I laid on the floor I could get him to let me rub his belly.  It would start with me rubbing his belly from behind his back as he laid on his side, then I'd scratch his armpits until he would pivot onto his back and let me get his chest and his belly.  This could go on for minutes at a time.  If I was really good on a particular day, I could put him to sleep doing this.

But of all Custer's antics, the two that I will forever remember, and the two whose absence will cause me the most sadness and tears, involve the basement and the refrigerator freezer.  For some reason, while he was still able to do so, Custer would follow me downstairs and wait for me at the bottom of the stairs.  When I'd tell him we had to go upstairs, he would bark and twirl around, then dash up the seven stairs to the landing, where he would wait for me.  I wasn't allowed to pass until he nibbled on the pad of my palm.  When he was satisfied with his tribute, he'd ascend the remaining three stairs and enter the living room.

Getting a drink was always a two-person affair.  Custer could be dead to the world in his bed, but once I opened the freezer component to the refrigerator, he'd jump up and wait by the side of the opened door. I'd pop a couple of ice cubes in his mouth and he'd happily chomp away.  When he was done I'd give him another pair of cubes.  This made him tremendously happy.

Age and infirmity wore Cus down.  His happy-go-lucky self morphed into the canine equivalent to a couch potato.  He'd have occasional spurts of energy, but more often than not he was happiest in his bed, on a tile floor or the garage floor, lying down on his belly to cool himself off.  He would struggle to his paws and then shuffle outside to do his business.  When he was younger, he would sprint back in the house after pooping, as if he was celebrating a great feat.  Toward the end of his life, he walked so slowly his age was all too apparent.

The end came suddenly, although Karen and I had been discussing its eventuality for nearly a year.  Cus had been having dry heaves followed by what seemed to be a throat clearing.  This would go on for about a minute and then he'd be fine.  While I was on a phone call, Custer threw up.  He hadn't been visibly sick, so this came as a surprise.  Karen cleaned up his mess and he laid back down.  Later in the afternoon I got down on the floor to rub his belly.  He rewarded me, as was his wont, with licks on my face and nibbles on my palm's pad.  I got up to watch a movie with Karen before dinner and while we were watching the movie, Custer vomited yet again.  Not once, but three times, with plenty of substance as well as bile.  As he was standing to retch, he fell over, as if he'd been pushed over from the side.  We knew then that he was beyond seriously ill.  I jumped down immediately and cradled Custer, reassuring him, senselessly, that everything would be all right.  Karen quickly called the veterinarian.  We threw paper towels on the piles of vomit and bile and I carried Custer by his mortal enemy Mosby, who was too startled by the events to move.   I put Cus in the back of the car and we sped off.

Along the way Karen and I discussed various scenarios, probably in an attempt to buoy our spirits, although we both knew, in our hearts, that this was Custer's final car ride.  I dreaded the thought.  A few months back we'd watched the movie The Art of Driving in the Rain, and after it ended I absented myself to bawl, thinking about how I would handle Custer's end.   

________________________________________

It's been over four months since my buddy left us.  I'm still heartbroken.  I don't make a public spectacle of my grief; I don't claim he went over the Rainbow Bridge or anything of the sort.  For those people that do that is their business.  All I know is that my buddy's gone and I miss him dearly.

I miss him when I go to the basement and he doesn't come down with me, wait until we're going upstairs where he can whirl like a dervish and then race up the stairs to wait for me, where he'll nibble on the pad of my palm without breaking the skin.  I miss him when I get ice out of the freezer for my drink, waiting and drooling until I give him a piece.  I miss him when I get down on the floor where he'd sidle up to me and lie down for a belly rub.  I miss him when I'd ask him whether he'd need to go out to do his business and he'd whirl again like a dervish and bark that loud, stentorian bark of his.  I miss him going out to do his business and then sprinting back into the house.  I miss loading him into the car for a trip, when he'd jump up to help me get him in the car.  I miss him when I'd give him a bath and he'd look glumly at me as if to ask if it was really necessary.  I miss pointing the flashlight's beam on the floor and make myself silly laughing at his imitation of cat chasing the light on the floor.  I even miss his insouciance when asked to take a walk or go outside with us and he'd quietly demonstrate his defiance by lying down on the ground, refusing to move.

The end was far too quick and sudden for me.  We got him to the vet and because of Covid restrictions, he was taken in without us.  After a few minutes the tech came to get us; our greatest fears were realized.  We went into the room for the last minutes I'd ever have with him and I quickly laid down on the floor.  Cus, as if oblivious to what was about to happen, licked my face all over as was his wont.  It was as if, as Karen said, he knew and was telling me it was OK.  If that was so, I disagreed mightily.  I questioned whether I was doing the right thing, whether I should be fighting harder for him to stay with us.  Yet, in my heart of hearts, such a decision would be a selfish one that would only prolong his agony.  Custer was the best pet I'd ever known and he deserved my selfless compassion.  

The vet walked us through the steps and administered the drug.  Slowly, Custer's heart stopped beating as I held him.  I didn't want to let him go, even though I knew he was gone.  As I released my embrace, his tongue quivered gently.   A post-mortem electrical impulse, but a last flicker of his spirit.  My goofy, loyal buddy was gone, gone to play with Sherman and wait for Karen and me.

We somehow made it home.  I wasn't sure I'd be composed enough to drive but somehow I was.  The house, still filled with two other dogs, seemed empty.  I felt a large chunk separating from the rest of it and falling through my chest, hitting every rib on the way down.  

Over the next few days, I beat myself up over the most trivial of things.  I was too taken up with my own grief to do what I should have done.  I should have asked the vets for a piece of ice, one last piece of ice for my buddy.  It's something I still have trouble with to this day.  It would have been a fitting way to say goodbye.

Custer's photograph, the only good one I ever took of him, graces my bookcase.  I can still feel his soft fur, smell his stink, sense his wet tongue on my face.  

I will miss that boy until the day I die.  

Until then, I hope Custer is having fun with Sherman as they both get heaven ready for me and Karen.

(c) 2021 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles