Hound’s Tooth Optical

You have met our newest family member: Kelbi the young hound-dog. Yes, I realize that hound is adequate without adding -dog; however, Kelbi definitely needs the entire thing: hound-dog.

Kelbi has learned a lot since coming to live with us. He knows sit, down, stay (which he obeys only when he feels it appropriate), heel (which he obeys so infrequently that it almost doesn’t count), and wait. He took to house-training immediately. Kelbi knows his bed, his bowl, his harness and seems to respect Lacey’s stuff.

He has big aspirations. Kelbi seems to want to become an optometrist. Apparently, he knows that he isn’t cut out for becoming an ophthalmologist, which requires too much schooling and would be very heavy lift for a long-legged, skinny-bodied, not-yet-a-year-old hound-dog. He has; however, already started learning some of the intricacies of eye-glasses, spectacles.

I sense your disbelief.

This little hound-dog has already modified 3-pair of Sharon’s reading glasses and 2 of my specs. He has altered the fit of the frames, removed the lenses and one ear-piece, and changed them all in some more or less permanent way.

And, he is diligent in his pursuit of spectacles with which to practice. Kelbi has climbed a chair to get to a pair of my reading glasses. These were a pair which he had modified once before and I returned to their (almost) original configuration. He has twice reached well beyond the distance we thought possible to acquire the specs that Sharon wears to solve crosswords. And in furtherance of his quest, Kelbi walked over the keyboard of this laptop and onto our printer to reach the glasses that I had (with some difficulty) placed on a shelf that is nearly six-feet from the floor.

Neither Sharon nor I own any designer glasses. I do have a 32-year-old pair of Ray-Bans, which are as yet unmodified.

As a result to Kelbi’s having walked across this keyboard, he had pressed some combination of keys that blanked the screen. My attempts to put things back to normal resulted in a pop-up which told me that the battery was 100% and that the charger was plugged into the mains; both of which I knew but neither of which helped get my display back. As he wouldn’t or couldn’t tell me what he had done, my getting it undone was a matter of blind luck (yes, there may have been a pun of sorts in that statement).

None of Kelbi’s self-taught optometry interferes with his normal duties, which include barking at each and every being (human, dog, cat, baby being pushed in a pram, whatever) that walks past our house, going ballistic at the neighbors’ cats when they get into Sharon’s shrub-bed, and working in concert with the Miniature-Schnauzer next-door to tear boards from the wreck of a fence separating our yards. He maintains a fairly strict schedule on his day-to-day chores. Kelbi’s eye-glass work only occurs when Sharon and I leave the dogs on their own. That is on-their-own for what Kelbi considers too long at a time.

Two-hours isn’t over-long and two-hours 30-minutes also seem to be acceptable. But (yes, that BUT) woe be unto us if we are foolish enough to expect Kelbi to ignore his pursuit of knowledge for three or more hours. Not happening. Don’t go there. No available — or even barely accessible — specs are safe.  

We hope that Kelbi will eventually satisfy himself that there are no cheap-spectacles that he can’t conquer. Until then, only cannabis, doors with latches, and being aware of the time we’re away will keep us sighted.

For now, I’m here most all the time except when I’m walking a dog or two. Come back soon and if you’re so inclined, mine’s Guinness.