10 posts tagged “dogs”

So Christmas is over. We had a good holiday...some years, it seems like the family time is exhausting, the commitments are overwhelming, the pressure to buy buy buy for everyone is crazy, etc., etc. But this year worked out just fine.

Thanks to my buddy LaidOutInLavender, we made our gifts this year instead of buying for everyone. Patrick and I made bars of soap (honey almond oat, jasmine chamomile and peach apricot) and then two pans of the most decadent brownies ever created (loaded with chocolate chips, marshmallows and nuts). Making the soap was a lot of fun, although it did make my allergies and asthma kick into overdrive from all the scents. I ended up in a heap on the couch for the rest of the day after we made the soap because I couldn't breathe. The brownies were a bit of an adventure too, because I had issues with the eggs from my girls; they're smaller eggs than you get in the grocery store, but their weight is identical to large grocery-store eggs, and it caused all sorts of confusion for me with conversion. But it worked out okay in the end, and the brownies were a hit. Thanks, Lydia!!

My mom and sort-of-stepdad (mom's boyfriend) came down on Sunday and stayed with us; they're very easy houseguests and don't require much, so we had a wonderful time. My mom helped me collect eggs on Sunday, which just amused her to no end. We had brunch on Christmas Eve and then they stayed for the rest of the day, until Patrick and I had to leave for his family's house around dinnertime. Once we got there, we opened gifts before dinner, and my SIL (mother of Big Head) bought me the game CatchPhrase, and we all played after dinner...what a scream! If you haven't played this game, you must get it...it's great for big family gatherings or parties. My MIL made a heavenly pan of vegetable lasagne, just for me (everyone else ate regular lasagne with meat in it), and I even got to take some home for lunch on Christmas. My little nephew, Big Head, had fun playing in his wrapping paper; he wasn't really interested in the gifts, but he sure did like the boxes and the tissue paper and plastered them over his head and rolled them into tight balls. My other SIL (hubby's sister) gave us a book of photos from their wedding in October, and also a subscription to Mother Earth News (yeah!!!). My in-laws gave me a great cookbook by the vegetarian cooking guru Deborah Madison. We had a wonderful time.

Christmas was just for hubby and me and the dogs; it was wonderful to relax and do absolutely nothing all day. Patrick put together his new TV, a gift from his parents. I didn't really want to use our Christmas money for a TV, but our old television was in pretty rough shape...the plastic casing was falling off the front and the screen was blurry and unfocused. In our ten years of being married, we've never bought a TV, instead using the one he had in college and then eventually his grandma's after she passed away, so I guess we were due. The picture is so crystal-clear; I thought HD was a scam until I saw this. It's like a movie theater! It also has some special audio leveling thing that keeps commercials at the same volume as whatever show you're watching, so the commercials don't scream at you. It's great! 

The dogs got new chewies and two stuffed pigs for Christmas, and they had fun fighting over those all day. We took them to our favorite metropark late in the afternoon and hiked on the trail; it was beautiful, sunny and 40 degrees, and it felt good to walk after eating so much bad food for days on end. It was a little muddy and the dogs ended up with a bunch of burrs on their feet, but it was still worth it. 

I spent the afternoon reading this, a gift from my sister:

This is a great book of quotes and sentiments by famous thinkers, politicians, scientists, etc. on the ridiculousness of religion and God. The book freaked my mom out and even when I shared some of the more innocuous quotes she felt inclined to argue, so I saved it for reading on Christmas Day (no irony there, huh?).

So that was our Christmas. Nothing too eventful or wild, just a relaxing time with family and food.

I love winter.

I do. I love the chill air, the snow, the gray skies, the bare trees, the stark landscape. I love it all. I am a winter personality.

We got our first measurable snow today, and it's still coming down. We've probably got somewhere between two and three inches on the ground right now, and we're due for somewhere in the neighborhood of four total inches. The birds are flocking to my feeders, the pines and spruces are drooping low under the weight of the snow, and I'm sitting here with a mug of cinnamon-orange tea. In a little while, after I have breakfast, I'm going to take the dogs out and we're going to play in the snow. The temperature is hovering just around 26 degrees.

As much as I love winter, I have always hated summer. I hate the humidity, the bugs, and the heat...oh God, the heat. My loathing for summer only got worse when I was diagnosed with asthma a few years ago and the July and August humidity prompted asthma attacks by sucking every last breath out of my lungs and filling them with the syrup of Ohio air. The only good thing about summer is gardening and vacation. That's it.

I will sit here, mug of tea in hand, and watch the birds come to my feeders for a while. I'm glad I can feed them in this harsh weather. I'll sprinkle some seed on top of the snow shortly, for the ground-feeders, and maybe I'll indulge in another mug of tea.

I love winter.

I do.

Edited to add: I've taken a snow day! Woo hoo! I had two client appointments scheduled today, but there's no getting around in this snow right now (hubby spent two hours getting to work for what is normally a twenty-minute drive), and they each live a minimum of 25 minutes away in normal traffic. I shouldn't be so happy, because rescheduling appointments means I lose money today, but I can't help it...SNOW DAY!!! It's just as exciting as it was when I was ten... 

 

Peach, my 12 m/o puppy, has always been a doofus. She is sweet and silly and a complete dipstick, and I've always wondered if she has a brain in her head. I even worried a little bit that I might not be able to work with her in competitive obedience. After what she did today, I won't ever say any of those things again!

Yesterday, I started working with the older dogs to teach a brand new behavior, which is pawing a wall with one paw (this is eventually going to be used in the competitive obedience ring: dog runs away from me on command in a straight line, about fifty feet out, and paws the wall or ring gating before being asked to turn around and sit. This is the hardest behavior in competitive obedience to teach, in my opinion and in the opinion of most other competitors). I start by teaching the dog to paw a book flat on the floor, and then slowly move the book to vertical; I teach this sitting on the floor so I can see easily. I was able to get rid of the book today and Basil and Teagan are both pawing the wall, and I was laughing a lot, watching them stretch those short legs to paw the wall. Peach was hanging around on the periphery, trying to filch stray treats and weasel her way into the training spot. I kept pushing her back, but when I finished with the big dogs I thought it might be fun to teach her this behavior too, even though she's a very long way from this level of competition.

So I put the book on the floor, and Peach ignored it, trying to offer me other behaviors that she knows like eye contact and lying down. Then, very very deliberately, she reached out with one paw and pawed my arm! I gasped! I clicked and treated, and then she did it again! She had been watching the entire time, and was just repeating what her big brother and sister were doing. Dogs are extremely poor at mimicking another dog's behavior, especially something this discrete...which is why I was so shocked. In five years of training dogs professionally and almost twelve years of owning and training my own, I have never seen this. So now Peach is pawing me over and over, just like she watched the big dogs do. She's brilliant!

I turned in my final essay for my last class today, so I am officially FREE from school until January. Yaaaahoooo! My life is my own again!!

I took the Scotties to school with me (about a 35-minute drive), intending to go to a new metropark and walk a trail with them after dropping off my paper and library books. But then I decided instead to take them for a walk around the college campus, which is situated in a very cute, old-fashioned suburb with trees in breathtaking autumnal foliage. We walked everywhere: all over campus, through the little downtown, through the bordering residential neighborhoods. This was very good for Peach, who is never exposed to this kind of noise and is subsequently very frightened at dog shows; one of the few downsides to living in the country is just how quiet it is. The silence and peace is something I cherish, but it's very bad for socializing puppies to the hustle and bustle of life. Peach was panicked by the noise in the downtown area with all the cars and clanging and beeping of crosswalk signals. She did get better as we continued to walk, though, and instead of scurrying around like a frightened little mouse, tripping me from weaving around me, she got a little braver and even chased some squirrels at the end of her leash. Teagan and Basil had a great time, attempting to pee on everything while also trying to race ahead to the next adventure. I wish Stuart could have been with us. We used to walk like this every single day when we lived in the city, but when we moved to the country in 2004, there was no place to walk the dogs but on our property. Which is nice, but I miss those walks. A lot.

On the way home, I stopped at the library; my next school-free indulgence is pleasure reading, something I have no time for while I'm in class. I picked up a non-fiction book and a novel, both about horses, by accident!

Finally, I've taken a few days off from NaNoWriMo because of finals and the dog show this past weekend. Today, I'm back in the saddle again!

I had a feeling this day wasn't going to go well early on. My PDA is almost dead, for good; it's been dying a slow death for the past few weeks, and today when I turned it on I noticed the sound is no longer working. Crap. Or carp. Or both. Since I can't work without it--all my client files and histories, as well as appointments and contacts--exist in this one little piece of electronic equipment, I must replace it ASAP.

On the way home from math class, I stop in at the Office Max by my house. I have a $10 off coupon, which isn't much when you're spending $300, but it's still $10. I wait for ten minutes while the guy looks in the back, and then he comes out and tells me he's sold out. DAMN IT. He tells me that the Office Max three exits north has them, and of course I passed right by it on my way home. Oh well, I'm going to have to go tomorrow because I'm now about out of time before I need to get ready for work.

I go home, and the instant I open the door I smell the unmistakable odor of dog diarrhea. Basil and Teagan are loose in the house, as always, and as I progress toward the puppy's crate in my bedroom, the odor is making me gag. There she sits, crammed in the front of her crate, with an enormous puddle of diarrhea in the center of her dog bed. I let her out and she darts out of the bedroom, thrilled to be away from the stinking mess, and I'm at least happy she tried to stay out of it. I rush the dogs outside in case she needs to go again, plus I also notice it's going to rain. Thunder is booming overhead, and that's when I realize the chickens are still out.

Shit.

I run back into the garage, switch shoes (I use only one set of shoes inside the chicken run for sanitary reasons), run back out and toss each of the four girls into the coop and lock them in so that I don't have to later do this in the pouring rain. They're pissed, squawking and whining at me because their outside time has been cut short. Sorry girls, you're out of luck. 

I bring the dogs back inside and peel the crate mat out of Peach's crate, clean it as best I can while trying hard not to vomit all over the damn place, then take it downstairs and start the washer. When I come back upstairs, I step in something. No, it's not new dog diarrhea...it's from the puppy's FEET. Apparently she did step in it, and there are shit paw prints all over the entire godforsaken house. Now I have to mop the floors. For the love of God, when is this going to end???

I throw the puppy in the bathtub and bathe all four feet; she knows I'm pissed and doesn't even think about escaping. I towel her off, let her out, and then proceed to mop the floors while she frolics happily, flinging toys all over the place because she has been de-stinked. I light candles in every room of the house, but the stench of dog shit has permeated every nook and cranny in the house. I was starving but my appetite has disappeared with the fresh air. I can't even open the windows because my husband put the last of the storm windows up this past weekend. I am trapped in this hellhole for the time being, until I can escape to go teach classes tonight. 

Oh, and for the record, the storm blew over. It could have at least rained. 

...was a perfect autumn day.

My husband and I started our morning by going to our favorite tea salon; we each had our own pot of pudding milk tea, the most heavenly concoction ever created. We nursed it for as long as we could, and I also picked up two boxes for my at-home tea supply: masala chai and cinnamon orange. After we polished off our tea, we drove north to browse through A Proper Garden, an English garden and nursery center that I've always wanted to check out. It's located on a scenic highway that runs along the river, and the drive was breathtaking! Shades of mustard and lemon and flaming oranges and reds, all radiant in the sunlight. The temperature was perfect, too: about 55 degrees. Just cool enough to put a snap in the air, but not so chilly that it required a coat. Sweatshirts were ideal.

After going through the garden center, we came home and I meandered around the yard taking pictures. Here's some of what I saw:

 

Some of my perennials are real champs, still blooming even after our first good frost last night...and the sun was very bright today, so it almost made them look like they were glowing!

 

 

 

 

The flagpole next to our driveway, complete with Ohio State flag. I loved the way it curled when the wind left.

 

 

 

 

 

 

So after I took all these pictures, I came inside and got started on dinner a little early. I made a delicious creamy herbed potato soup, and then I made a loaf of cheddar scallion quick bread; both recipes came from The Moosewood Restaurant Daily Special, one of my favorite cookbooks. We've already eaten most of the loaf, and you can see why. I mean, look at this!

 

 

The trick when making this is to crumble the cheddar by hand, rather than grating it. This means oozy pockets of cheese throughout the loaf...I can't think of anything I might love more, except maybe chocolate. But this is a close second.

And finally, we carved our pumpkin. We bought this beauty last weekend at the Renick Family Farm, south of Columbus; we'd been meaning to carve it for a week now, but just hadn't had the time. When I set up for the picture, I tried to put a candle in it to set the Jack-O-Scottie aglow, but it was still too light out for the flame inside to show up; if I'd waited much longer, my dark dogs wouldn't have been visible. My dogs stand about ten inches tall at the shoulder, if this gives you any idea how big this pumpkin is. 

Anyway, Happy Halloween everyone!! 

 

Peach, my youngest Scottie and a total doofus, has been chewing a lot lately. I caught her chewing on my husband's Architectural Digest a couple nights ago, and then the same night I caught her chewing on a thumb tack. She's only 11 months old, so she's still very much a puppy.

I had to buy dog food today, so I picked up a Nylabone for her at the store. Since she's the baby of the Scottie clan here, she never gets anything new of her own; she's the proverbial youngest child. She only has old, de-stuffed toys and has to share dog beds with her older brother and older sister. Everything's a hand-me-down. So when I brought this Nylabone home for her today, and the other two dogs didn't get anything, she was SO excited she didn't know what to do...she trotted out of the kitchen and disappeared. This is where I found her, hiding out in her crate in our bedroom and trying very hard to be stealthy so the big dogs don't steal her prize:

Please note the end of the Nylabone peeking from her beard, on the right side of the picture. Little stinker.

Sometimes I forget just how lucky I am to be my own boss. Every once in a while I'll realize just how freaking cool it is that I sleep in every day, do office work and return phone calls in my pajamas, and make my own schedule. If I want a day off, I simply schedule it off. If I don't want to answer the phone because I'm watching Oprah, I let voice mail pick it up. The vast majority of my clients and students are friendly, fun, dog-loving people who appreciate the advice I give them. I can work and go to school at the same time because, that's right, I make my own schedule. I can flit off to dog shows on a Friday afternoon because there's no one to tell me I can't. Of course, I'm not a slacker; I wouldn't get any business if I never answered the phone and took three days off every week. But the cool thing is that when I want or need to, I can. And I make damn good money while I'm doing it. How many people can say that?

I really can't even think of any down sides. I don't miss having co-workers at all; I don't miss the gossip, the ineptitude, the favoritism of bosses, the endless number of stupid meetings. I don't miss any of that. My clients become my co-workers, because we work together to help their dogs, and I've made friends with so many of them. I get the fun social aspect of working with people without any of the bullshit. When I have an irritating client, which happens very rarely, I always know that our relationship will be short-term...they won't be a part of my life forever. Sometimes I find myself answering emails to clients at 10:00 at night, but it doesn't bother me, because I slept in till nine that morning and spent the better part of the day writing in my journal, going to class and training my own dogs.

Oh wait, there is a down side. The federal government charges me a self-employment tax in addition to all my other taxes. Assholes.

 

Little Bebe Marie passed away today.

Bebe was an Airedale I worked with. She wasn't even two years old, a real spitfire of a dog, all legs and wiry hair and attitude. She was owned by two women who love their dogs very much and worked hard to overcome Bebe's issues, which included all the usual naughty puppy stuff and some recent dog aggression issues borne of fear and insecurity. When I teach my group obedience classes, I always try very hard not to show favorites because everyone wants to think their dog is the cutest/smartest/sweetest in the class (and I want every owner to believe that yes, their dog IS the best). Since I own terriers myself, it's especially difficult not to lavish all my attention on the terriers in class. Bebe was one of those dogs: she demanded attention (first inappropriately and then she learned how to sit to get it) and she was smart as a whip. She had a sense of humor and absolutely no sense of how big she was. In other words, she was all terrier.

When I went to her owners' house a few weeks ago to do a private lesson regarding Bebe's dog aggressive behavior, they mentioned in passing that Bebe had a peeing problem. Apparently she guzzled bowl after bowl of water and often peed all night long, sometimes even in her sleep. The owners assumed this was behavioral, a leftover housetraining problem, but something didn't sound right to me. They asked about rationing water and I said no, that something else might be going on. I talked to them about spay incontinence--when female dogs are rendered incontinent by an accident during spaying--and encouraged them to talk to their vet to look for a medical reason. I didn't want to be right, and I certainly didn't expect it to be anything serious. The owners emailed me after my appointment with them and said Bebe had a kidney infection and was doing better on medication.

As it turns out, Bebe had a congenital renal defect that put her into kidney failure. She was euthanized today at 17 months old. It is so heartbreaking and devastating, and I know that her owners must be in a lot of pain. I am crying even as I write this, not just for Bebe but also for the two women she loved. This was a bright, vibrant, inquisitive dog whose life was over way too fast, and who has left an Airedale-sized hole in the hearts of those who knew her.

Bebe, I hope you're in terrier heaven, chasing cats and bossing other dogs and barking out a front window somewhere. You'll be missed.  

I train dogs for a living. I also show and breed Scottish Terriers. Because my plate is so full (taking 10 hours of college classes each quarter doesn't help), I haven't been training my own dogs much lately. They're the proverbial cobbler's kids, and I hate that it's a byproduct of my current lifestyle.

It also doesn't help that EVERYwhere I go, people want dog training tips or they think I want to hear all about their dogs. I try very hard to keep it a secret because otherwise, I'm never off the job. I was recently referred to a neurologist for some strange symptoms I've been having, and here's how the preliminary exam with the nurse went:

Nurse: It says here on your sheet that you're self-employed. What do you do?

Me: I own my own business.

Nurse: Yes, but what kind of work do you do? (insert impatience and raised eyebrow here)

Me: I train dogs.

Nurse (face changes, breaks into a smile): Oooooooh! I have these two dogs"--let me insert here that this is always how it starts out, with this exact line--"and one is great, he just lays around all day, but the other one, he's so bad. He hops the fence and runs away, and we spend all day chasing him down. He won't listen and he thinks it's a game. He's already been hit by a car twice. What do you do for that?"

No shit. That's exactly how it went. And let me just say that this exchange is entirely typical and exactly why I hide my profession. I hate wearing my work shirt anywhere. The nurse's question is sort of like finding out that someone you meet at a party is a child psychologist and saying, "Oooh, my son starts fires and tortures small animals. What do you do for that?" It's so fucking annoying. And presumptuous. Everyone thinks that I can offer them some quick-and-easy tip that will solve their dog's behavior problems. Oh, and they can get that quick-and-easy tip without paying a dime for it. My clients who pay $80/hour get no such free break, so why do these people think not only that there's an easy answer for their dog's long-existing problems, but that I'll also fix it for free in less than 2 minutes?

I also don't want to talk shop when I'm in social settings. I do love my job, and I work with many wonderful people who love their animals and want to make them better pets. But damnit, I do NOT want to talk about work when I'm at a cookout or out to dinner. As soon as people hear that I'm a dog trainer, they think I want to hear all their funny and cute stories about their animals, which are never as funny or as cute as they think they are (very much like people who want to talk about how funny and cute their kids are). Sometimes I just want to be a normal person and leave my office behind, but it seems to follow me everywhere I go. I don't want to hear about Fluffy's favorite toy that she thinks is her baby and how she carries it around and tries to nurse it, or how Jake loves to hump the neighbor kid and it's just soooo funny because he watches the kid through the fence and whines. I know this must sound nasty, but think about it...who wants to live with their job 24/7? I sure as hell don't.

So just remember, if you ever meet a dog trainer, don't get all excited and say, "Oooh, I've got this dog..." or else you might end up getting assaulted.