Perfect Dog Training

A few weeks ago my husband and kids were at the local farmer's market enjoying their healthy lunch ("there were bananas on my Nutella crepe, Mom!") when they ran into a neighbor with his new puppy. They came home breathless with admiration. "Ron's dog is so well trained already!" the girls clamored. "He told her to sit down, and she DID! And when he told her to stop staring at Dad's food, she did that too!"

I immediately took offense on our dog's behalf. "Achilles is a great dog," I insisted. "And so smart that he's had us trained for years."

It's true. Through consistent rewards and punishments, the dog has us carry out tricks all day long. It starts with the early wake-up call for breakfast; he only needs to do his high pitched nasal whine twice before one of the adults gets out of bed to let him out and feed him. To ignore it any longer just invites it to get louder and more persistent.

That nasal whine - maybe it's only German Shorthaired Pointers who do this?- is as effective on his people as a dog whistle is on less refined members of his species. One blast, issued from the front hall foyer, buys him entry into the backyard for a bathroom break and a nice bracing run at the squirrels. Another, wafting up the stairs at precisely 3:40 pm every day, announces that his workday is done; no more sleeping on his bed next to Mom's desk in the office, he'd like the bed moved into the family room where the children are now hanging out, and make it snappy please. At 5:55 pm the same whine is a dinner bell call telling the children to feed him.

One sharp, short bark is the cue that there is a piece of dog kibble somewhere just out of Achilles' reach - under the couch, behind a chair, on the other side of a closed door. In that instance we are trained to immediately help locate the kibble and free a path for him to pursue it; failing to do so just piles the short, sharp barks one upon the next.

The scrape of the water dish across the kitchen tiles is his cue for some biped in the house to refill said dish, or risk him heading into the bathroom for the other large ceramic water receptacle within his reach. We come running to fill the bowl and he stands, all noblesse oblige, forgiving of our lapse.

For each human family member, there was one incident, and one only, that trained us to clear the kitchen counter of every scrap of food. Mine was the famous "Corned Beef/St. Patty's Day/2009" debacle, wherein I underestimated his countersurfing reach; for my husband it was the top layer of a Christmas cake cooling on a rack that drove the lesson home. Achilles even trains visitors on this one, like our young friend Ben who has finally learned to walk with the slice of pizza over his head rather than gesticulate with it while eating at our house, or my mother in law whose punishment for not knowing the rule was a rotisserie chicken in the middle of the living room carpet.

At night, like trained circus monkeys, we move swiftly through the house flipping up couch cushions into a vertical position, and locking the door to the empty guest bedroom. The price of forgetting this daily chore is to find Achilles curled happily into a ball on the living room couch or on the guest bed in the morning, his little white and brown hairs providing additional texture and scents no one ever wanted there.

Fine, Ron's dog may be well trained. But can she make her owner hide his shoes at night?

The pull of going home

I'm going home this weekend - to see my mom and dad, catch up with my sister and brother, and see neighbors and friends in the town where I spent my first 18 years. I'll eat some bagels, visit the the local tavern with my brother, take my aunt out for a belated birthday lunch, and go to a big Family Camp reunion. I can't wait.

I'm leaving home this weekend - leaving Andrew and the girls, my own bed, my spazzy dog, and some  overdue warm California weather after a long winter. I'm missing a dinner party, neglecting my poor drowned garden again, worrying about leaving the kids who have been sniffling and coughing for a week straight. I'm dreading leaving.

Here's something about being a grown up that no one ever told me. As much as I adore being with my husband and children in the home we've made: it's pretty much the same amount that I miss being with my parents and siblings 3,000 miles away. It's not a deficit but a surfeit of love and longing. Maybe it's different if you live in the same area code as your parents, but maybe not; for people like me who were blessed to grow up in a close and loving family, there is always a pull to return, no matter how happy our adult lives are.

So my song for this week is a melancholy Teddy Thompson ballad called "Home" in which he has the whole situation nailed. As he explains in his lyrics, you go home to see your parents who will feed you, do your laundry, and fuss over you, and you love it. Right up until the minute when you're ready to go home again. I'll be heartsick missing my family while I'm home visiting my family this weekend, and just as soon as I'm back in Cali, I'll be wishing I could spend more time in New York.

Here's hoping that you feel at home wherever you are in the world this weekend, friends -

The Price of Silence

My daughter and her friend from elementary school attend different middle schools, but they’ve sustained a close friendship in part, I think, due to our Monday homework club. Every Monday, Rachel rides the city bus to our house so that the two girls can spend 90 minutes complaining to each other about their school workload, wheedling me for sweets, and talking in voices low enough so I can’t hear even if I place a cup against the wall to listen, not that I would ever stoop to that. Loud giggling is their regular soundtrack.

And every Monday, without fail, I greet Rachel at the door with, “I am so sorry I look like this. I intended to shower today before you came, really I did.”

“Like this” means: black sweatpants spattered in mud, a shapeless grey sweatshirt with either Penn (my alma mater) or Wisconsin (husband’s) printed on the front, my hair puffy where it should be flat and flat where it should be puffy. The only trace of makeup on my face is some sparkly pink mango flavored lip gloss from a cupcake-shaped container that I excavated from the well of the car while waiting to pick the kids up from school.

Mondays are hard.

I’m not going to insult you by pretending that I bound out of bed Monday mornings and head to the shower to get ready for my day. I stay in bed until the last possible second that will still leave me time to read my beloved print newspaper from front to back before it’s time to wake up the kids. Besides, my husband actually leaves the house to go to work in an office, where other people are. He gets priority access to the bathroom.

So I pull on the black sweats and sweatshirt and make a mental note to walk the dog at 10, giving me plenty of time to shower before I have to pick the kids up at 3:00.

At 10, the dog is snoring contentedly so I figure I’ll just keep plowing away on my to-do list, answering emails, researching stories, calling sources. I can still fit in a shower if I leave by 11.

At noon I realize the dog is holding his legs together and groaning, so we head off for the hills for a hike. It’s been raining non-stop all winter, and Achilles’ default gait is “hurtle.” So as soon as we step off the street and onto the trail head, he zigs this way and zags that way through muddy glop until I have spots of mud all over my legs, on my glasses, and sometimes my hair. Inevitably we meet a dog named Sierra or Bailey or Lucy whose owner says, “Sorry! My dog jumps!” just as the pooch leaps up and lays two muddy paws on my midsection, right under the “P” and the first “N” or the “W” and “S.”

Coming through the front door I think, ok, do NOT go check email before you get in the shower, you’re never going to have time to…oh hey! That guy I wanted to quote in the feature I’m writing finally got back to me, better respond right away. And I meant to send a query letter to another publication and they’re on the East Coast, so I should probably get that taken care of before they leave for the day. The phone rings, and it’s my friend who is adopting a baby. A metallic buzz from the laundry room startles me; I have to get the ballet clothes into the wash if they’re going to be clean for the kids’ rehearsal this week.

It’s 2:49 and I still have mudprints on my midsection. I jump into the car and race to pick up my youngest child, remembering that I need to drop off copies of the yearbook order form for the teachers to jam into backpacks. I will have to walk through school looking like Dawn of the Dead, but it’s not like they haven’t seen that in the halls of suburban education before. Once that’s done, I have only enough time to pick up the other child and race home to await Rachel’s arrival for homework club, and ponder why once again, Monday has gotten away from me.

I make my apologies to Rachel in the front hall as she unhoists her giant backpack. I make a silent pledge that I'll at least get a shower in before Andrew gets home from work, maybe just as soon as I finish up the 15 work emails that came in while I was out driving carpool.(After 19 years together, is it naive to hope that the sight of me wearing his mud-stained college sweatshirt and what looks like a fright wig is still a turn-on?)

“It’s ok, Nancy,” she says, a wry smile on her freckled face. "Can I have a Jolly Rancher?"

I think this is why Homework Club has always worked so well; for the price of a piece of hard candy, Rachel always keeps her opinion to herself.

Laughing Out Loud

I got an email the other day from a neighbor who said - and I'll paraphrase - "I was driving down the street and saw the snarly doberman yanking his owner's chain...when I turned to see what had him so riled up, it was you and your sweet pup headed in the opposite direction."

Yes, we're still driving Clarice crazy what with the breathing and the tail wagging, but the good news is that we're keeping people entertained. In fact, if you missed the original post, I'm honored that it is today's featured story on LOL - a blog devoted to "the best of the sit-down comedians" at http://livingwithlaughter.com/. Skip on over there and check it out, along with some truly funny stuff from bloggers all over the Interwebs - my favorite is the futile attempt by moog to make Mario Lopez ugly. That dude would probably still look good as he fled in terror from Clarice.

I think this counts as my first official guest post, or something in that arena anyway...onward and upward!

From Puppets to Mary Onettes

It happens in a flash. One day you're helping your best friend's son play with fire trucks and set up Lego castles on a braided rug in her family room, the next day he is a deep-voiced high school junior handing over a CD he's burned and saying "Nancy, I think you'd like this band. Check it out."

I spent half my earlier life reading music magazines, album reviews, and listening to the radio - back when it had some variety - hungry for insider tips on worthwhile new music and always, as the same young man once described me to his mom, "In the know. In the now." But times have changed; mostly there's less of it, and now I take my music tips wherever I can.

In 2008 I bought all the albums on the Time Magazine Album of the Year list, officially ceding my credibility as a hanger-on to the leading edge. Pandora's been a godsend, because I can play it in the background while I'm doing six other things and then prick up my ears like Achilles when something good pierces my nonstop internal monologue: "Ruh roh! Who's this band?"

Shazam's another great iPhone app - point it towards the source of a song you don't know, click the big "Shazam" button, and the technology spits out the name, rank, and serial number of the song in question. I could, but will not, reveal the names of friends who have a family game which involves taking the Shazam app into the closet, singing a song into it and seeing if they can pass as the original artist. (They can't.) Another friend almost got into a road rage incident when she Shazamed her iPhone at a van blasting some classic Def Leppard.

I just have to make peace with the fact that one of my prime sources for discovering new music these days is now someone who used to attend the Puppets and Pie summer camp with my daughter.

I bring you: the Mary Onettes, which was included on my Christmas mix CD from him. That's pronounced Marionettes, not Mary Won-ettes as I originally thought (and was frankly much more impressed by.) At any rate: every one of their songs sounds like they took one '80s band from Column A and another from Column B and wrote a little mashup thereof.

Here's a track, the formula for which is (the Cure)  +  (Joy Division) = Slow. So simple, a child could do it.

An Open Letter to the Lady on My Street With The Doberman

Hi! I’m your neighbor from a few blocks down the street, but I don’t think you know me by name. I’m the one who flees into my house whenever you and your large black Doberman Pinscher with the improbably feminine name of Clarice are trotting by on your thrice daily walk, accompanied by your Segway-riding husband. Of course, the fleeing routine is standard procedure for most of the neighborhood residents you must see, so let me be a bit more specific: I’m about 5’8”, have shoulder-length hair, and am usually pushing two children and a dog into the house ahead of me while screaming, “run, for the love of god RUN, Clarice is coming!” as you pass by.

Look, it was really noble of you to bring Clarice home when you found her roaming free on the ridge trail in the Oakland hills a few years ago, I totally get it. And I know you've worked hard to socialize her, because every time I see you in the grocery store you start a conversation with "I'm so sorry about Clarice, I've hired another trainer…" You, in fact, may be personally responsible for the buoyant employment statistics for the dog training industry in our neck of the woods. And like you, I am hopeful that one of these days, one of these trainers will know what he or she is doing.

But at some point, perhaps when Clarice tried to break the safety glass in the back of your car to pounce at my dog and I as you drove past us, or when she lunged two city blocks towards us with you dangling from the end of the leash with about as much utility as a cell phone charm, has it not occurred to you that perhaps she would be happier in another environment? Say, protecting a Russian oligarch’s property, where she could really let loose with the homicidal tendencies? Everyone deserves a chance to reach her true potential.

At any rate, I noticed that Christmas must have come early to your house this year, since Clarice has been sporting a trim new coat since November. Its black stripes match the muscular black of her haunches, and the orange complements the yellow undertones of her bared teeth.

But you know what? Like a streetwalker wearing stilettos AND a miniskirt AND a tube top on a winter's day, the tiger print on Clarice is overkill. Lose the coat. We'll still be scared of your dog.

Respectfully,
Nancy Kho

Developing Dog Fluency

Are you going to drop some food, or not?

When my dog Achilles looks at someone else who doesn't know him as well as I do, I find myself translating. "Hey Neil, down here! Just saying hello," I say to my friend, the guy who has never met a dog he didn't disdain. "Girls! I need some water!" I yell to my kids as the dog sticks his paw into his water bowl and whips it past me along the kitchen floor like he's on the Norwegian curling team. "I just wanna play, I'm friendly!" I assure a suspicious elderly yellow lab we meet on the trail, as my German Shorthaired Pointer does his spastic dance of invitation in a widening spiral around him.

I have become a person who narrates for her dog.

I never saw this multi-species language fluency coming. This dog is the first I've had since childhood. I treated my old dog Sandy with the swings of ardent affection and utter disengagement that characterize most children's interactions with the family pet, and expected to maintain a similar level of polite distance when finally we broke down and gave into our daughters' incessant begging for a dog.

And at first, when Achilles joined our family four years ago, I remained aloof, unswayed by his winsome dog smiles and acrobatic glee whenever I returned to a room I’d left fifteen seconds earlier. This was the children’s dog, after all.  All I could see were the harsh realities of dog ownership: the insistent paw on my foot just as I was settling down to read the paper, the early morning trips to the yard and the long off leash runs during my lunch hour, the trips to the vet, and tug-of-war he demanded every night as I was starting to cook dinner. His brown eyes bespoke nothing more than another demand on my already-scant free time, and his barks were an annoyance that I was constantly shushing.

Then one day, when we’d had Achilles about six months, I took him out running with me in the Oakland hills. Just before we got back to the car, a bee darted out of a bush and dove straight down onto my dog’s back, stinging him right above the tail.  Luckily I was able to get the stinger out using my fingernail, but Achilles was shaking and whimpering. There was fear in his eyes as I loaded him into the car. Even an idiot could see that.

I drove home down the twisty narrow streets and brought him inside, hoping against hope that he might go off to his bed and spend the afternoon in some sort of uncharacteristic canine repose. Instead he followed me, wrapping himself around my knees so I couldn't walk without tripping over him, and staring up at me hard. Suddenly there was a distinct dog voice in my head saying, "Lady, what the heck? Why does my tail hurt so bad? Help me!"

I sank down onto his lumpy dog bed in the hallway, intending to examine the sting site. Within seconds Achilles had twisted all of his 57 pounds into a tight ball nestled in my lap and I knew beyond doubt what he was asking of me. 

"Quick, someone look up dog bee sting on the computer," I yelled. The kids were off and running. "Bring me an ice cube," I said to my husband, and the look of relief in the dog's eyes as soon as I held it onto the spot was unmistakable. A couple of teaspoons of children's Benadryl and a melted ice cube later, I could feel the dog relaxing and the fear dissipating. I looked up at one point as my husband strolled by the dog bed and said, "Remember how I said we would never have a third child? I was wrong."

The dog licked my hand and snuggled a bit deeper. "Hey, thanks for hanging out on my bed, lady. This is kind of cozy."

From that point on, I could hear his dog voice in my head, and it didn't take much longer for it to come out into the open. When I narrate for him, it's not just the words that are important; the faux dog voice is what drives the meaning home. The one that I assumed, with virtually no forethought,  is somewhere between Huckleberry Hound and a person who's been hit in the head by a shovel, full of sighs and dips. For some reason he altho lithpth.

If I'd written out a list of Things I Won't Do When I Get A Dog before we adopted him, “Narrate for him” would have certainly been near the top. It's been crossed off, along with “Hand feed him food when he’s acting balky,” “Refer to him as ‘my baby boy,’" and "Buy him an orthopedic bed." But how can I deny him when he’s so good at letting me know what he needs?

About the only thing left on that list, in fact, is “Let him sleep on my bed.” But last night I could swear I heard Achilles say, "Lady? It's kinda cold down here. Mind if I come up?"

Rules for Playdates - Elementary School Edition

Yes, back in the olden days of my youth, kids got together to play without needing a special name for doing so. But "playdate" seems here to stay,  so let's accept it and move on. With the school year underway, it's time for an update of the guiding principles of playdates in our home, as applied to the K-5 set.

1. Don't expect me to report back on your child's every action for the time they spent under my roof.  Half the reason your kid was invited over in the first place was so they could distract mine while I hide in my office, finishing a story on deadline. Unless I hear screams and/or dishes shattering, I tend to stay out of sight. That way I’m as surprised by the baking soda volcano in the kitchen as you are!
2. If my kids aren't allowed to say it, neither are yours while they're in my care. Be advised: “sucks,” “hella,” “crappy,” and “shut up” will be called out and shut down.
3. Snacks will be provided, with a ratio of 1:1 healthy to unhealthy content. It just doesn't seem fair to offer carrot sticks by themselves when there are perfectly good Newman-Os in the cookie jar. On the other hand, if they happen to walk through the kitchen as I'm wolfing down a brownie and I have to pretend that I was actually just about to serve it as snack, I pledge to force feed them some blueberries too.
4. Recognize that we have a dog, and expect that he will jump around in excitement for the first two minutes of the playdate before retiring to his bed to sleep for the remainder of it. If you are the parent of a child who is terrified of dogs, and yet like a moth to a flame can't restrain herself from saying, "Here Achilles! Come here! Come!" and then screaming as said dog approaches, let's just agree not to do this.
5. Spontaneous kitchen dance parties do break out in our home, particularly when the iPod hits a spate of Black Eyed Peas songs. Send your child in stretchy clothing.
6. We are a no-video-game-console family. (Why do you think my kids always want to come to your house?) The default setting for the TV is “off” during a playdate, but if the kids have finished homework, kicked a ball around outside in a game that resembles Quidditch for Muggles, played a round of Dream Date (pick the nerd, trust me!), built a Lego fort, and eaten two snacks, I may break down and let them fire up a video. Tell me seriously: would you not?
7. Grounds for immediate termination of the playdate include:  physical violence, swearing, bullying, or saying “Shut up, your crappy music hella sucks."
8. Grounds for my begging to extend the playdate into an overnight or to have your child return the next day include: jokes I haven't heard before, unprompted placement of dirty dishes into the dishwasher, good sportsmanship (especially as directed to a younger sibling,) a request to play with the dog in the back yard, incisive book recommendations, and a bear hug as they say goodbye.
9. We abide by the 50/50 rule here. I will only believe fifty per cent of what your child says about you if you'll only believe fifty percent of what he or she say about me.
10. I trust and expect you to hold my children to a similar set of guidelines in your own home, the stricter the better. Anything to help make us look good by comparison is appreciated.

Dog Walking and the Möbius Strip

The walk ends, technically speaking, once we reach the mailbox. For the past hour I've picked my way along a narrow ravine trail in the Oakland hills, three and a half miles through redwood, oak, and bay trees, poison oak peeking through here and there. The dog, on the other hand, has covered about three times that, racing from the trail bed to the creek trickling at the bottom of the ravine, hurtling back upwards past the path into the underbrush above it and scaring the squirrels, birds, snake and deer. He chases sticks, dirt clods, pine cones, and the shadows of butterflies with equal vigor. The goal with all of this effort is  to ease him down a notch or two from Spaz Alert Level 5 Crimson.

Not so fast.

Who needs a backscratcher?

First there is the struggle at the top of the stairs while I attempt to slip his collar off him so that he can run into the yard. Usually in his mouth he’s carrying something he picked up along the way – a saliva-coated pinecone, an apple that rolled into the road from a neighbor’s tree, a couple of green acorns. If they protrude from his mouth, slipping off the chain collar becomes like one of those metal magic puzzles, where you have to move the individual pieces in just the right way to get the loop off the sticks or the triangle off the ring. Even after approximately a thousand walks, it’s still a challenge.

Once freed from the tyranny of the collar, the dog bolts into the yard to start the self-administered backrub; he’s a shorthaired hunting dog and, just like his people, suffers from dry skin. He hurls himself onto his back on the lawn and convulses around like he’s a Holy Roller. A few hearty sneezes and one full body wiggle later, he meets me on the front porch where I wait with the towel.

If you had told me when we adopted this dog three years ago that I would be rubbing him down like a Thai masseuse every day, I’d have glibly laughed you off. Now I know exactly where the dirt is hiding on the undercarriage and I can either deal with it here on the front porch or watch it get tracked through the rooms of the house all week. There’s no pride in being a dog owner; if a job requires you to pick up poop and carry it around in bags, there’s not a lot you can refuse to do in the name of protecting your delicate sensibilities.

The dog is clean and now the portion of the program called “I’m Home! I’m Really Home!” begins. This is the requisite ten minute period in which the dog skids through the house, banking into walls and sinking black claws into hardwood veneer like grappling hooks, as he races through the house to see if anything has changed. This routine is identical whether he has been gone one hour or two weeks, and from it we can conclude that our dog and Dorothy Gale share some common beliefs.

A long stop at the water bowl follows; when the dog looks up and long strands of saliva reach nearly to the floor, he’s finally ready to slow down. The saliva leaves water puddles throughout the kitchen as he wanders around next to me, trying to predict exactly where I’m planning to stand next and then getting there first.

“Go to bed, dog!” I say, exasperated. “Aren’t you tired yet?”

Not even hardly. From within one of the children’s bedrooms he must claim a stuffed animal, and then bring it straight to me so I can scold him. He is either too dumb to go hide with it in a corner somewhere and chew it up in peace, or a very smart masochist who enjoys being punished. I prefer not to ponder.

Finally the dog goes to his bed in my office where he begins to turn. The exact number of circuits appears to involves an algorithm using prime numbers, pi, and the date on the Gregorian calendar, but it is never fewer than six. He finally collapses, groans, and begins to whistle-snore.

He's begun gathering his strength to do it all again tomorrow.

Back to school: not just for the kids this fall

Yeah, new blog, new direction, blah blah blah. I was all promises last spring, but haven't quite delivered...which is not to say I haven't been thinking about it. In fact I signed up for a class with Adair Lara for the fall. Adair is one of the doyennes of San Francisco's writing scene and has taught just about everyone I've ever taken a class with, not to mention coached some of my favorite Bay Area authors. So I've been looking forward to the 10-week class all summer, hoping that her expertise in memoir and personal essay will help shed some light on where my writing should be going.

Apropos of that, Adair is making the twelve people in the class WORK - as in five assignments per week turned over to a writing partner, plus 5 weeks in which we have to turn in an extra piece for her to critique. For me, that's a dream - feedback on my writing from someone who isn't me? AWESOME.

It occurred to me that my homework might actually make some good blog fodder. So when it's a fit, I'm going to post it here. Please keep in mind this is pretty unpolished, hot off the presses stuff - but it's better than no stuff at all.

To get things started: we were told to take an everyday event and write instructions for it. This one came to me at (you guessed it) 5:07 this morning. Herewith:

How to Wake Up Early
(revised 9/10/10)

Splurge on a new gas grill. You'll need it, to replace the one that the dog ran into, headfirst, overcome with the joy of spring and the smell of squirrels and the ecstasy of being a dog. It cracked - the grill, not the dog - and has never really worked right since.

Post the old grill for free on Craigslist, and after five people say they'll come and then don't, find a guy who seems like he actually might show up. It's Labor Day and he has meat marinating.

Have a husband who decides to clean the old grill up, even if it is being given away free. He should get a long scraper and work all the nasty, blackened, charcoal -like bits of meat fat off the bottom of the grill into a bent aluminum pan. Have the husband take the pan and overturn the big pile of cancer chips over the back fence. Not the chain link fence that marks the property line, mind you, but the decorative picket fence that separates the flat yard where the kids play from the ivy-choked no man's land that is the dog's territory.

Let the dog out to pee. See him sniff the air, all aquiver, and then race like a bullet shot from a gun to the pile of blackened meat fat. Scream. Wave your arms. Threaten. Promise dog treats. Get no reaction until the dog looks up, half drunk on meat residue, a shard of it hanging from his nose. Drag him into the house.

Repeat two or three times, forgetting about the grill leftovers each time and panicking anew as the dog runs to his now-favorite spot in the yard.

At 5:07 the next morning, you will be woken up by the dulcet tones of the dog licking his lips frantically from his spot on his bed in the corner of your room, followed by a diabolical gurgling and gagging. The noise will bring you to your feet and have you fully conscious, grabbing the dog by his hind quarters and propelling him before you out of the bedroom, down the hallway and through the front door in no time at all. Standing in the front yard shivering in your pajamas, your glasses dangling from your ear, as the dog expels his previous day's treats on the lawn, it hits you:

You're awake!

If he wore pants, they would be on fire

So as you may have seen in the news, or experienced directly, California is in the middle of a deluge. We've been hit by four major storms in a row since Monday, absolutely drenching the region and resulting in power outages, porches falling into the ocean, wet socks, all of it.

Even more miraculously, it resulted in meteorologists saying that our drought might be over. One of my pet peeves in the last three years is that every time there's been a big rainstorm, some meteorologist gets quoted saying, "Well, it doesn't really help." Of COURSE it helps. It's better to have some rain than no rain, right? Can't you just look on the bright side for once, Mr. Pessimism?

But I digress.

These incessant rains have also uncovered my dog for the faker he is. Since we got him exactly three years ago, Achilles stands somewhere in the house and whines at 6 am every day. He cannot possibly hold it ONE SECOND LONGER. Someone better get him out the front door and off the porch and onto some grass, pronto, or he's not going to be responsible for what happens to the living room rug. I'll raise this leg, I swear to God!!!

Cut to Monday when I opened the front door, bleary eyed, and Achilles and I saw a sheet of water pouring off the roof of the front porch. The dog raised his eyebrows, turned around, and slunk back inside. Not even putting him on a leash and holding an umbrella over his delicate frame while rain trickled down my bathrobe helped - he was not going to go, not in those conditions.

And he proceeded to not go until there was finally a break in the weather, 6 hours later. Apparently he is just a big drama queen about his morning ritual and I for one will no longer be fooled. I just need to install a hose on a timer over the front windows so at 6, he can look out, see the "rain," and put himself back to bed until a more reasonable hour.

Ode to Gallipoli

My favorite movie of all time, bar none, is Gallipoli. Yes Mel Gibson is in it, but it was back before he was a crazy right winger. It's about war, sacrifice, friendship, and very fast running, all told with Australian accents.

Uncle Jack: What are your legs?
Archy Hamilton: Springs. Steel springs.
Jack: What are they going to do?
Archy : Hurl me down the track.
Jack: How fast can you run?
Archy : As fast as a leopard.
Jack: How fast are you going to run?
Archy : As fast as a leopard!
Jack: Then let's see you do it!

Here is Achilles, demonstrating.

You say repellant, I say eau de parfum

I've written about my fabulous new flower garden that was the birthday present from my green-thumbed friend Andrea. It's filling in so nicely, I'll post another picture in a week or two or when the sun comes out, whatever comes first.

There is actually another garden that I'm cultivating too, a raised bed at the front of the house that was filled with flowering bushes when we first moved in. About three years ago the girls and I made our first tentative attempt at vegetable gardening, ripping out a bush and putting in a tomato plant, and voila! Maddy's love of tomatoes was born. Anxious to underpin ANY broadening of her palate, we have added a few things each year.

Finally this year enough was enough, and we ripped out EVERYTHING from the bed, including daffodil bulbs, that wasn't vegetables. I amended the soil a bunch and by the end of April we had a nice neat bed going: tomatoes, beans, carrots, basil, artichokes, sunflower, strawberries, and squash, plus a bunch of other random pretty herbs.

Things were going along swimmingly until Saturday morning, when we awoke to find that some creature had eaten: tomatoes, beans, and squash. All gone, down to their little stubs. Agh! Ran up to Thornhill Nursery and described the damage, and the diagnosis was deer. We may live in the mean streets of Oakland, but it's deer paradise as any rose grower will tell you.

Rather than buying the 8-foot long "lodge poles" and deer netting which would have required a whole lot of money and talent we don't have, we went for "Deer Scram." This is a powdery substance that looks like dirt but contains blood, bone meal, garlic and cloves. Stinky and gross, the theory is that it activates the deer's instinct to not eat in an area where something has died. We shook a huge border of the stuff around the garden and so far, the deer have stayed away.

The problem is, of course, the dog. He is entirely unable to resist it..if the front door is open even a crack he races to the garden and starts gobbling as fast as he can, and then sneezing as the garlic and cloves hit him. So in order to keep the veggies safe from deer, we are basically supplying our dog with free crack cocaine.

Anyone have any bright ideas on a happy medium?

I'll scratch your back if...

Sometimes after a long romp in the Oakland Hills, what you really need is a good long roll in some scratchy grass.

Achilles suffered through our absence

NOT.

Here he is lounging on his bed with his friend Nico. This is how he spent his two week Kho-free vacation, although the dog sitter tells me that more often than not Achilles slept in Nico's tiny bed and Nico got the big bed to himself.
















For our part, the girls missed him terribly and made me take this picture of a building in downtown Auckland to show him.

















I will say that it is nice to be back in the office with the dog snoring on his bed across the room. Seems all is right with the world.

A dog with no conscience

Having a hard time getting to the posting this week, between time spent migrating to a new computer and getting ready for some out of town visitors. I'm keeping up with my Creative Caffeine commitments, though. Only three days to go and no, I don't seem to be particularly inspired in the a.m. Next week it's back to coffee and the newspaper in the dark morning hours.

But today I had a prompt that made me think of the dog, and I think my 10 minutes of writing turned up something vaguely Marley-and-meish, so I'm sharing. We had to start with the sentence "He did not want any consequences."

Back to regular posts next week!

He did not want any consequences. Then again, he was a dog to whom consequences were meaningless. A momentary shadow over the sun, perhaps, but only if it was the big one yelling at him, the one who brought home the big yellow bags of kibble and told the smaller ones to get off him when he was trying to nap on his bed. When those same smaller ones yelled at him, grabbing stuffed animals out of his mouth or holding up those irresistible chewy plastic toys with hair on top, it was no more his worry than a cat crying over a mouse. They were his packmates; if they didn’t want him to have one of their play toys, well, they could sensibly get down on all fours and growl at him. But when the big one yelled, there was no fighting the impulse to put his tail between his legs for a few moments.

The hardest time for him was when the big one was cooking and the dark one came from from wherever he spent his long days. The two humans would meet in the kitchen, from whence the most savory smells issued, and the small ones would be elsewhere in the house, temporarily defending their toys. Food balanced on the edge of counters, and plates set high on the dining table held – what? The dog could smell all manner of deliciousness, but it was only if he made the leap, simple really, to put his front paws on counter or table to stretch out his sinewy body, that he could scope out his target. But to do so invited the immediate wrath of the big one, the dark one, and sometimes the small ones.

The worst of it was that at some point while that human food was being prepared, the big one would always call for one of the small ones while the dog listened for the cue that came buried in her longer bark: “dog dinner.” This resulted in the placement of a chipped red bowl full of dry kibble on the floor and the apparent expectation that the dog be thrilled about it, just as the humans were starting to dip into pots and platters on the table to fill their plates. It was insult on top of injury.

But on this night, the dark one had called the big one outside to show her something. And on the edge of the hot white box was a platter, and on that platter was the biggest piece of corned beef that the dog had ever seen.

For god's sake, roll up your tongue

Once a week Achilles gets to go out with a pack so he can have some good doggy social time and I can have three hours without him staring at me. Glenn, his walker, took this great shot today of Achilles (on the left) and another German Shorthaired Pointer named Maddie at the overlook from Skyline Gate. For once in his canine life, it is my dog who looks regal and composed, a model of his breed, pained by the sloppy comportment of those around him.

So that's why I'm posting this. You'll never see a shot like this again.

All Chipped Up and Nowhere to Go

Achilles gets comfy with a George Bush chew toy while he considers immigration policy


As you may know our dog, Achilles, is a refugee to these shores - he was born in Cyprus and brought to the U.S. with his former owners. When we adopted him last year we went down to register him, and learned that the City of Oakland requires all dogs to be microchipped - where they inject a tiny chip with the owner's contact info under the dog's skin. That way, if a the dog is ever found, Animal Control people just run a scanner over the dog's back to get all the details on where to return him.

Achilles' first owners assured us that they'd 'chipped him in Cyprus so we were all set, just needed to switch the owner info with the company who manufactured the chip. But when we took him for his first checkup at Montclair Vet Hospital last year, the scanner that they had couldn't read the chip at all - the scanner just said "ISO CHIP." Because the chip was a European model it was incompatible with the American scanner, the same model scanner used by Animal Control and everyone else.

Frankly, I let it slide for a year - I put all our info on a dogtag rather than consider putting a second chip under his poor skin. (We also realized over time that our dog will never willingly run away. When he gets out some open door, we always find him sitting right on the front porch barking politely to let us know he's readyto come back inside. After all, the food dish and the chewy Webkinz live here.)

Fast forward to yesterday's annual checkup for Achilles - I was all set to have them insert a second, American chip. But lo and behold - the scanner company has upgraded and now reads European chips. Up popped Achilles' number and a few phone calls and an $18 "registration fee" later, our dog will now be returned to Oakland, not Cyprus, if he is ever found. I'm keeping the dogtags though - like all critical information, I figure it's better to communicate it in a couple of different formats to maximize the chances of it being used!

A Canine Profile Made for the Side of a Doggy Coin

Thanks to our walker Glenn for the photo of Achilles hitting the hot n' dusty Skyline Gate trail yesterday. Achilles is never so happy as when he's just run 36 miles for every mile trod by his human companion.

Follow the Leader

What my dog Achilles lacks in bravery and size, he more than makes up for in speed and exuberance. Here is a shot of Achilles shooting down the trail on his once-a-week pack outing, tongue and ears a' flappin'.