The invalid resting on the dogs' couch. The dark spots on top of and below his 'cast' are not blood, they are dirt. I was not planning to perform any additional medical aid at the time I took this photograph: the wary expression is the result of a certain commotion on the other end of the couch. He barely gets settled into his nap when Annie bounces along for another bout of kissy/bitey-face. Now that he has received full validation for the near-fatal injury he sustained in the squirrel wars, he props his damaged limb just so on the edge of the couch and snarls at her harshly for coming near it. Until, of course, the game heats up and requires his full attention.

  A rare contemplative moment from the other end of the couch. She received a new purple collar (planned purchase) to match her new purple leash (unplanned purchase) when Cheryl and Annie went to our Saturday morning obedience lessons and discovered neither one of us had brought a string. (The other half of the class forgot to come, so we did relatively well.) We are also taking an evening class called 'Control Unleashed'. Our first night we spent exploring ways to help our reactive dogs settle down and relax. Annie took issue with Belu because he was 'looking' at her and launched an assault. Fortunately Belu (who must out-weigh her by 20 pounds) was relaxing and Cheryl had a firm grip on the leash.

Today is Sunday after Friday of the Rains. Nancy and the dogs have gone to Vicksburg to our CSA to pick up the weeks vegetables. Tomorrow is writers group. I should clean the carpets again next week. I have a book called 'the missing manual' for Photoshop Elements which I should read because I have asked my partner the same question way too many times. I am surprisingly awkward and self-defeating in the trial-and-error approach to PE and none of it seems even remotely intuitive. I do occasionally make wonderful discoveries, but I never seem to really just say, 'what the hell...?' and launch off on my own. Ironically, for a writer and a reader, it becomes clearer an clearer to me as I get older that I do not learn by reading. But I have the book and I have the program and I need to produce the photographs, so perhaps I should try my first solo flight.

Oh,yes, speaking of first flights: Annie killed a baby robin yesterday. It did cause me to question the universe, in all of its glory. I am not quite sure how cheeping loudly and hopping around in circles when a big, black Thing approaches you becomes a life-saving technique. And in this case, it failed miserably. Adventures like these are entirely natural, if a little hard on my heart.

Anyway. What do you think of this? It's not done the way it should be done (because apparently I discovered an easier way to do something which, according to the manual, should be harder for me to do (????) but anyway: photography into graphic arts.

 The original photograph was over-exposed and the cat was old and tired of self-grooming, so he looked a little tacky. And I have 500,000 photographs of him sitting on the tool box in the window behind my left shoulder. I like the fact that it looks like a drawing. Nancy is not a fan of photoshopped prints.

Also a flawed photograph (the dog is never in much better focus than he is here) but again, I kind of like the drawn look of it.

Or not. This is not complex work. It's possible I allowed my friend to appeal to my ego rather than to my common sense when I agreed to participate in her show.

And now I have a year to come up with something amazing.

Our Beloved Golden Hound is sporting a leg cast these days.

About a week ago he jumped to nail a taunting squirrel, came down on top of a trellis, got his foot caught, knocked the trellis over and screamed loud enough to call the people across the street over to find out who was killing our dog. We managed to free him (it took about five of us) from the killer trellis, and he trotted away (notice the absence of the verb 'to limp') a free dog.

We examined his wound. He had a scratch. We treated it with antibiotic cream and let him go.

We high-fived each other on our extraordinary luck at getting such a wonderful ending to what started as such a horrific story.

Riley grew a scab on his scratch. We covered it with triple antibiotic ointment and sighed with relief.

A week later Riley had a naked patch of leg about three inches long and an inch wide, in the center of which was a weal of what my mother would call 'proud flesh'.

I should insert the recurring paragraph that begins, "I was raised by a cat..." right about here. When a cat sports a visible wound which it licks repeatedly, favors when it remembers to do so and growls with its co-cat comes near it, there is about a 50-50 chance your cat is already half-dead. In fact, if you even suspect there is something wrong with your cat, grab your credit card and you and the cat should RUN to the nearest vet. 

I thought, "Absess. Blood poisoning. His leg is broken and he has been gamely walking on the splinters all of this time." I described his injury to a dog person.

She said, "He's obsessing'." She referred to something she called 'the cone of shame'.

I went home and looked at Riley's leg. It looked like...well, it looked like a dog-leg that had been licked obsessively, but I thought, "There's a reason why he's doing that..."

I told Nancy I would take him to the vet the next day.

She called her daughter, who is Murphy's person. Murphy was the shared dog who convinced me my life was incomplete without a full-time dog.

Ranee said, "he's obsessing. Is it hot?"

It's the same temperature as his other leg.

"Does he limp?"

"Not unless he remembers to."

"It's not broken, Cheryl," Ranee said over the phone, because in order to stop sharing her dog, she moved to Florida where I can't get to her. "Wrap it up so he can't get to it and keep it wrapped for a few days."

Soooo... *smirk, smirk* It turns out there IS a use for Cheryl's ability to bandage a pin prick in such a way that the person needs crutches to haul around the bandaging. It's to keep the dog from repeatedly pulling the bandaging off. We have it down to a science, now: hydrogen peroxide wash, triple antibiotic cream, waterproof gauze, the plastic tape the doctor sent home to keep my eye patch on when I had my cataract removed. I threatened to tape his leg to his body and make him hop on three legs for a week, just as a prelude to what would happen if he kept screwing with it, but Nancy felt I was being too harsh.

When he's not sitting between my knees muttering, "I'm sorry, Cheryl, I'm really sorry," he avoids me.

"You are NOT a cat," I have lectured him more than once.

He seems not quite sure what to do with that information. 

We begin a new dog class tonight. I say that as I sit here next to my window where the perpetual drizzle of the rain is modified only by the tire sprays of cars going by. The class is outside in what Annie consistently refers to as 'the wet/bad.' The dog won't pee outside when it's raining: the chances of her sitting patiently in the rain to learn anything seem unlikely.

I went outside, camera in hand, to visit The Ladies yesterday. They swarmed me. They stabbed me in the toes. One tried to stab my lens cap. Three of the four Henriettas are isa browns, which are a cross between...two breeds of chickens I've actually heard of...and they are aggressive. For instance, we cannot just recklessly add another chicken to the hen pack now because they have a reputation for being assaultive on newcomers. Apparently (although I merely went in to photograph them) they perceived me as a newcomer. I should be less of a sissy here and admit that they were...curious, I believe the word is. What bothered me is that most of the chickens I have known are flighty by nature and run away if you  raise your arms or move too quickly. I vaguely remember being taught, as a child, how to move in the hen yard so I would not frighten the hens. Good luck trying to frighten these women.

Every so often Nancy puts the dogs in the house and  lets the hens loose in the back yard. They cluck and explore, often gathered around her as if she their leader. I don't get to go out and play with them then because my job is to deal with the dogs, one of who sullenly ignores the whole event, and the other who is convinced that if only she could get outside, she could solve the whole problem in minutes.  Let me out, Cheryl, come on, let me out. Nancy's in danger--really, Cheryl, I know these hens and they're vicious! If you don't let me outside to correct this situation, anything that happens to Nancy's is YOUR FAULT! Don't even TRY to say I didn't warn you...

The only thing worse is when Nancy rides her bike. She's GONE, Cheryl--we've looked everywhere...

Lord, I am tired today. I could go right back to bed. It's tempting....

Annie passed her Intermediate Obedience class.

Annie.

These were the tests: sit/stay, sit/stay with distraction, heel, park it...there was another one. I was worried about 'stay' because we haven't really practiced that in any regular way and she doesn't stay for me (largely because I only use it to go out of the door without her or other highly charged and inappropriate times.) Also there were two other dogs in the class which we have not seen in two weeks and we wanted to eat them, so I wasn't convinced I had her total attention.

She stayed! She released! I must have looked shocked!

Our next class begins...well, our next two classes begin Wednesday evening (July 31) and Saturday, August 3. Yes. Two classes. Control Unleashed and Advanced Obedience. Control Unleashed is specifically designed for reactive dogs, but there will be 6 of them in the class, counting Annie. I've read part of the book. I called the woman organizing the class and said, 'Um--I'm not sure my dog doesn't need the class before this one, in order to get into this class...' So we'll see. I may end up taking Riley, who is not 'reactive', but who has gotten the short end of the training stick here and who could certainly help me learn my end of the lessons.

And I can be dense, I assure you. I understand cats. I understand cat body language, I understand cat expressions. Dogs are a foreign language. This is how bad it is: I was sitting on my stool after class, talking to the instructor, and Annie was standing in front of me--literally a body block, had I ever looked at what she was doing--and I was fussing about the next class and how well we might do and how she still attacks other dogs and she said,

DUH

"when she's standing in front of you, she's protecting you. If you don't want her to protect you--if you have the situation under control--put her behind or beside you."

Which our regular trainer has told me to do 1,000 times, it just never clicked. She's protecting me.

You're helpless and clearly don't see this coming threat, but I'll protect you, Cheryl

 at the dog, who was standing at full alert, her body literally sideways to block me, and I thought, How did you miss that? What did you think she was doing?

Murphy worked very hard to school me in dog-speak, but there is only so much a little dog can do.

This was also an interesting revelation, although I'm still not sure what it means. Riley loves to be rubbed. Anywhere, he doesn't care: you start rubbing Riley and he puddles at your feet and sighs in delight. Annie is a little more guarded about being touched. She doesn't like having the top of her head patted. She reminds me of that daily because I am a habitual head-patter, and because when she wants something, she rests her chin on my knee which puts her head in prime patting location. Anyway, she decided to eliminate one of the co-dogs from the class for being excessively irritating, and I hauled her up to face me with her body pretty much between my knees and I started massaging her jaws (because I read in a   book that dogs carry tension in their jaws.) I ended up massaging the top of her head. She nearly fell asleep standing up. Her jaws are about the size and consistency of small chicken breasts, which I find impressive. She does indeed seem to like to have them rubbed. 

This is a terrible picture, but it is also one of a kind. In the 11 months Annie has lived with us, this is the first time Ihave ever seen her relax this much. (Nancy had been rubbing her belly.)

This a more normal Annie:

Sadly the dog couch is over-due for its trip to the dump. It was a good couch. What damage the dogs didn't do to it, the steam cleaner did.

It is surprisingly difficult to take pictures of the Ladies.

For one, they associate humans with food and flock directly to the gate whenever we come outside, which makes me a little nervous about stepping into the hen yard with them.

For two, they peck. Just standing next to the fence, every now and again I have heard the distinct *clunk* as the fence shivers from the impact of a curious (or punishing?) chicken beak. Annie gets beaked nightly.

For three, they turn their heads to anew angle every 15 seconds, which is faster than I can teach my camera to ignore the wire and focus on the chicken.  

So I went out to take pictures of them playing on their gym.

Problem one: they weren't playing on their gym.

I'm not sure what the command is for that.

The classic chicken-through-the-wire shot. But also a great shot of the gym. (It's the boxy wooden thing behind the pole.)

One of the Henriettas through the fence, farther away from me. Don't know what the flares are.)

Foraging.

And then I figured it out. I got all four of them back against the fence, clucking and have a great time as they posed. Guess what I did.

Yup.

I flashed a lens reflection against their back wall. They chased it, pecked at it, danced under it...unfortunately, I still didn't get the shot (although it was fun to play with them.)

So, I leave you with this:

Yup. Squash blossoms. Stationary. Try to ignore the anti-Annie fence.

Miss Annie went to work today, as did Riley. He is fine, by the way. His leg was a little swollen yesterday, and for a while he would lay on the couch with his bad leg propped out and supported on a pillow, which I assume meant it was tender. Annie struggled with her Bad Thing in the Back Yard anxiety all yesterday morning. Nancy and I went out and removed the tower trellis, Nancy dug up the clematis and moved out to the front yard where it can no longer attack the dogs, and filled the hole with dirt. She came back later and discovered Annie had placed a social commentary on the scene of the crime. Squat, poop, there.

Someone in the neighborhood is running an electric saw, like a table saw (it could be circular, I can hear it but I can't see it.) Home improvements are being made. I know this because it is remarkably cool this morning, the AC is inactive and I opened my window. Dogs bark. The Ladies cluck softly in the background.  

Yesterday the across-the-street neighbor (one of them) parked his motorcycle in front of his house. Oh, the reports that were filed over THAT! Motorcycle in the yard, motorcycle in the yard, Annie shouted, running through the house. Since Riley was so ruthlessly attacked by the garden, she has been on high alert. EVERY anomaly must be reported.

She has made another change recently. For the longest time when she came up to see what I was doing she would just ever-so-lightly touch me, a little fairy touch, with her nose. I tend to be dense and fairly unaware of my surroundings, so she would have given up and wandered away before I realized she was there. Then I started the treat campaign. And while she is not 'cured' of barking (nor will she ever be) we have managed to cut down the incessant, hysterical, running-from-window-to-window Devil at the Door mayhem that had previously plagued us (or the AC came on, the windows closed, and right about tonight we will see for sure how effective our program has been.) However. I became a reliable treat source. This is good. Then because the behavior I was trying to curb slowed down, so slowed the treats. And I noticed a change. When Annie comes to check on me now (which she does about 40 times a day more often than Riley does) she nudges me. It's a regular nose-bam. Cheryl! I'm here! God, you're dense.

I did something awful the other day, what was it... Oh. I cleaned carpets yesterday. Steam-cleaning the carpets is really not all that, but it takes a couple of hours, it's hard on some of my whinier joints and it's work, which I try to do as little of as possible. I was working on my last room and I was hot and I was tired and I was anxious to get it DONE and Annie Bananie banged the back door open and came trotting across my fresh clean--wet--carpet. The thing she had been doing before that involved all four of her feet and some very rich, black dirt. And I screamed at her. "You get the hell out of here..."

So I was suspect all last night. Cheryl can turn on you on a dime, you know. No, no, no, you can't pet me, you'll kill me  Help, Nancy, she's crazy again

Until dinner time, of course, when I sat down in my chair, put my food on my plate and a little black head leaned firmly on my knee, soft, loving brown eyes pleading Please Cheryl, they never feed me here...

It's an extraordinary performance, all the more impressive if you happen to be the person who put a cup of dog food in a dish and set it on the floor all of thirty second before, and the empty dish is now less than a foot and a half from the same pressured knee.

I could die without a bite of your chicken, Cheryl, really, I could...

When she is begging for food is the only time I can pat her on the top of her head. Otherwise she chirps, hate that, have to check windows now...

We had a terrible scare last night.

Every night Nancy takes the dogs outside to give them their Greenies. I believe the tradition started years ago with Murphy because she had bad breath, but Murphy also had excellent house manners. When Riley came to us the dispensation of the Greenies was more firmly tied to the final trip outside simply because we were not sure of his manners (they're excellent.) Annie's final trips outside involve definitely going outside, having the door closed to prevent lack of interest, encouraging chirps ("pee, Annie",) the giving of the Greenie, the eating of the Greenie, more outdoor time to encourage good house manners... 

So last night Nancy and the dogs went outside for Greenies, I was watching something on TV, and a dog screamed.

I assumed Riley had schooled Annie again.

But the dog screamed again, a car-hit, caught-in-a-bear-trap scream that just went on and on while I am assembling my bulk and leaning encouragingly toward the back door.

It was dark, the dog was screaming, Annie was running in hysterical circles, Nancy was doing something to her fences in the garden...

What happened was the squirrel's fault. We hate the squirrel. He lives in a tree at the end of the six-inch forest and he taunts us. He come down from his house, sits on the fence and gloats. Last night was so brazen and ill-mannered he forced Riley to jump up at the fence at him.

As Riley came down he slipped his left leg though a hole in the decorative plant tower: he continued to fall, causing the tower itself to fall and his leg became jammed against the end of a decorative metal swirl. As the tower fell sideway, the pressure it applied to his leg changed, driving the end of the decorative metal swirl into the meat of his leg.

So we have a 52 pound dog caught in the lattice work of a plant tower which is attached to the ground by 57 tendrils of clematis vines. I couldn't budge his leg, I couldn't budge the tower. I told Nancy to hold the dog, to keep him from thrashing and I ran into the house for pliers to bend the tower. (I don't know that this was my idea, it just makes a more heroic narrative this way.)

I ran inside and dug around through our tools for pliers, found a pair of wire cutters, a pair of pliers and ran back outside.

I can't cut 'wire' that is 1/4" thick.

Hell, I can't ply it.

We tried moving the tower a little to get a better angle and the dog screamed.

He is a very good dog. He was in pain, he was terrified, we were hurting him as much as helping him and he really, really wanted to bite something. He bit Nancy at least 60 times during this ordeal: he broke her skin once. One tooth.

I was sent back to the house for bigger, more effective pliers.

I dug through the tool drawer, found Nancy's plumbing pliers (which are called something else: they have angled handles and you can slip one half into four different settings, allowing for a wider mouth, and they're used in plumbing and come in any variety of sizes, including some I could never even pick up, much less wrench with) and came wheezing back and Nancy said, "there are people at the front door."

Channel locks. They are called 'channel lock pliers.'

So I ran to the front door (wondering how the hell Nancy, in the back yard, knew that) and there were indeed three people standing on my front porch, all looking for a screaming dog.

I ushered them inside, gasped directions to the back yard...by now the combination of COPD, heat, humidity, running, excitement and sheer terror has thrown me into oxygen deficit. I can point, however, and they race outside and they manage to free the dog.

I was convinced his leg was broken. I was convince the end of the decorate curl had buried itself into his leg, probably clear to the bone. He has a scratch, which we treated with hydrogen peroxide and triple antibiotic ointment. He walks with a slight limp some of the time. He was more interested in eating this morning than he usually is. Riley is pretty much over it.

Nancy and I went out this morning and collected the scattered tools, cut off the clematis vine at the root (only to discover what was holding the tower so firmly in place was a metal hoop that came with vine and has apparently become one with the dirt. (I still can't pull it out.)

The clematis was a gift to Ilah, years ago. We planted it for her in the back yard where it has grown with amazing leafy enthusiasm every years since. It never flowers. It never even tries. And then each year the leaves develop something that looks vaguely familiar from the years long ago when I paid serious attention to my garden plants. The symptoms of iron deficiency or something (which is ironic, given the hoop rusting in place around its roots.) The clematis is not doing as well was it was before the accident. I beheaded it. (We may still dig it up and move it. I'll look up the digging specs on the internet--it's either too low or too high or its feet are hot...they're like peonies, that way.)

No, all but one of us is fine.

One of us is worried.

Annie has inspected the killer end of the garden nine times since we got up this morning. Even now, here on the couch in the Conservatory with Nancy, she's having a hard time relaxing. There is something out there that made Riley scream and pain and now it may be coming after her.

We cannot tell you the injustice that has been perpetrated upon this home. Perpetrated! 

This travesty of justice CANNOT be tolerated! (And it should be known, right here and now, that we ARE NOT tolerating it. Oh, hell, no.) We are pacing, we are giving sharp yips of extreme--and we mean EXTREME--disapproval, we are doing our very best to incite Riley to riot for our cause (spineless wimp is lying on the floor beside Cheryl pretending to be deaf) we ARE NOT PUTTING UP WITH THIS.

Nancy (the good one, until this very evening) went outside (where we love to be, we do, we are an outdoor dog even if it is extremely hot and uncomfortable out there and we even stayed inside to pee today) shut ALL OF OUR DOORS and turned free those accursed chickens. All four Henriettas are prowling OUR yard, pecking at OUR plants, pooping on OUR grass, clucking at OUR Nancy

and WE

cannot

get out!

We could solve this problem in about thirty second flat if Cheryl would just open the door. Chase, bite, snap, chase bite snap, chase, bite, snap.... It makes our jowls quiver and drool just to think about it. 

We tried talking to Cheryl about it (she yelled at us.)

We tried even talking to The Old One (but Cheryl yelled at us.)

This has been going on for almost twenty minutes now and even now we are sometimes driven to such outrage that little yips of rage and frustration escape us. (Riley yelled at us.)

We have not stopped trotting since we heard the door close and we thought she can't mean that....

The chickens are free and we are penned up in the house!!!!!!!

No good can come from this.

And when it all goes to hell we will be here, ready to point out the obvious: WE TOLD YOU THIS WOULD HAPPEN...

'Tis hell to be a terrier in this foul place.

We turned on the AC last weekend. We acknowledged that this summer is nothing compared to last summer (or even the summer before.) We bowed to the high lords of heat. We spread out honeycakes and sacred tennis balls to appease the gods. Closed all of the windows and flipped on the comfort machine. In our defense (because I am always defensive about AC) the temperatures were supposed to(and did) soar into the 90s and stick there all week. So we caved. We played the Ilah card ('we are responsible for the healthy and well-being of one of the elderly, now...')

"My room gets a little hot in the afternoon for about an hour or so," she reported yesterday.

Her room has been 86 degrees since the day she moved in.

We noticed (eventually) another change: Annie stopped barking.

Not altogether, of course (she remains a terrier) but mostly. Noticeably. Apparently when you erect a weather barrier around your house (not unlike hermetically sealing yourself in) the evil that lurks on the public sidewalk is no longer worth reporting.

This amazing change in behavior, coming as it did on the wake of my treat campaign to change just exactly that behavior, filled me with an overwhelming sense of pride and accomplishment. I had succeeded! She got the point! She was a changed dog!

Even more amazing, I discovered that I could control what few barking spells that endured with (get this) a dog treat I never would have thought of, by myself: frozen green beans.

I kid you not: the dog will run half-way across the house and wag her tail in anticipation for a frozen green bean.

"I think," I said solemnly to Nancy, "that we've gotten through the worst of it."

Wednesday the doorbell rang.

I gathered dogs by the collars in one hand, opened the door, and found this vaguely familiar-looking man standing on the other side. Ilah's doctor. He seemed to think I knew he was coming (I did not.) further, he is afraid of dogs and not afraid to admit it and asked if I would 'put them up.'

"Oh, they won't hurt you," I said because...well, they won't.

However he said, "I've heard that before, and I've been bitten."

I still had both dogs by the collar in my left hand. Both are leaping and lunging (Riley is choking because he's prone to that) and I said, "Okay, fine," and exactly as I said that Annie gave a twist and I then had three dog collars (Annie wears 2) and one dog in my hand, and a hysterical black streak racing wildly around the house to push her loving little nose directly into this man's crotch. And he's not very big and her aim is really, really good, so as I stand there with three collars, one choking dog and a blank look on my face, my loving little terrier has buried her nose in his most intimate place. 

This appears to have made my point, however: as she is nudging his future children with loving abandon he apparently comes to understand neither he nor they are in any direct danger, and he goes on about the business for which he came.

Annie, however, had a trauma. I said, "Annie, come here," and showed her her collar(s) and she said:

Oh, my God, you're going to beat me. 

I have never beaten this dog.

Truly. I haven't.

There is, unfortunately, some perverse twist in my basic nature that allows me to understand why someone might, and one thing that triggers that understanding (like an adrenalin rush) is a dog cowering in terror because I showed her her own collar.

"Annie," I say firmly, "come."

Because 35 years ago someone told me to be stern with my dog, to issue commands like I mean them because (apparently) 35 years ago dogs were made of sterner stuff. Now I am supposed to issue commands as if they were lovely, charming ideas that just occurred to me and I am wildly excited about following them myself.

So I sternly commanded Annie to 'come' and she bolted into the next room, yelling, you're going to hurt me, I know it, you're going to beat me--run, Riley, she's lost her mind and we're going to die.... 

Which he might or might not have done, had he not still been choking half to death from being held by the collar.

(Yes. I know. You are not supposed to grab your dogs by the collar to let a stranger into your house. You are supposed to make them sit, stay, go to their place or otherwise calm themselves, then calmly let in the stranger who should completely ignore them.  The last time we did that Riley took a runabout and Annie bolted up the street and tried to eat a neighbor dog. So I'm back to grabbing them by the collars.)

Anyway. Annie is panic-struck. Her life as she knows it is about to end, her only survival technique is to run. So green beans don't work. Calling her doesn't work. Grabbing for her doesn't work. (In terms of texture, she's like grabbing a greased pig.) Riley can't help me because he's still choking (he probably has some long-term esophageal injury from before we found him.) I am panic struck because the doctor rarely stays long and I have a naked gate-runner bolting around the house and he is trying to discuss Ilah's meds and I am trying to grab Annie and he keeps saying, "She's okay--it's fine."

But it's not because when he wants to leave I need some way to control my dog.

And I'm pissed, which I am trying to ignored. I'm pissed because the dog has lived with us for almost a year now--half of her life--and we have NEVER BEATEN HER. She requires three times the face-to-face time that Riley EVER has and we give it to her, both Nancy and I. We touch her, we feel her, we massage her, we talk calmly to her, we love on her, we feed her damned near the most expensive dog food made just to keep hair on her body, we have taken her to one class or another almost every week we've had her, we have her signed up for not one but TWO classes beginning the end of July, one with Holly to teach her (still) to behave and one with a new trainer who deals with reactive dogs (often describes as those who bolt out the door, run down the street and attack the neighbor's dogs), I have gone through five--FIVE--bags of treats in the past two weeks at $7 a bag PLUS half a bag of frozen peas and a bag of frozen green beans and she can't come on command because suddenly she's afraid of me.

And ultimately I resort to the only thing that ALWAYS works. Peanut butter. In a Kong, because peanut butter on a spoon is still suspect and can't be trusted.

I put a teaspoon of peanut butter inside the Kong and throw the Kong in her crate.

And in goes Annie.  Oh thank God--I have peanut butter. 

I should probably mention that in normal times if I take off Annie's collar she pesters me--literally pesters me--to get it back. Unless, of course, there's someone in my house who is terrified of dogs and I need a way to control her. 

Twenty seconds after the doctor leaves there is a report from the cage in the Conservatory. Cheryl. You forgot me. I'm in the cage. I don't have my collars.  (The books have a rule for that, too: loud, noisy, complaining, barky dogs cannot leave their crates. Silence and good behavior must precede release. And I try to follow that rule, I do, even if it involves my sitting on the couch, collars in hand, and quietly explaining the virtues of silence and good behavior.) As I let her out she is all over me, wriggling, cuddling...and, I realize eventually, looking for her frozen green beans.

I have not been blogging recently. (I've been writing.) But I love to blog, so next week I need to figure out where I'm moving to do it. I'll let you know.  

These are the things that makes us nervous:

--Cheryl never goes to bed when we do. This means Nancy and I are in bed and we don't know WHERE Cheryl is. Sometimes we have to get up and go find her. Cheryl, come to bed, we say.

--Cheryl doesn't get up when we do. Nancy says, "Come on, Annie, let's go," and Cheryl just snores. We get up, go do our outside work, eat our breakfast and Cheryl STILL is not up. We go sit in the hallway and wait for her. Come ON, Cheryl, get up, we think very, very hard. Sometimes we just can't stand it and we throw ourselves at the door.

--Our women are NEVER in the same room. Give us a break, we say, come together, right now. 

--There are two Chows living on the other side of our fence. Cheryl says it's okay, she knows the Chows and she says, "they have a right to live in their own yard." We have our doubts. Sometimes they walk on the sidewalk RIGHT PAST OUR HOUSE. "That's fine, too," Cheryl says. We hate that.

--We go to see Holly on Saturdays, which is fine, but there are OTHER DOGS in our Holly room. We hate that. "It's okay," Cheryl says, "they're here for the same reason we are." We have our doubts.

  We don't need other dogs, Cheryl, we say. Riley is okay because he's our pack leader, but we don't need any other dogs than him. "Hush," Cheryl says. "Sit."

--People walk past our house. We hate that.

--This one particular people walks right up our sidewalk and stuffs papers through our front door. We REALLY hate that.

--Cheryl used to call us and give us treats and call us and give us treats and call us and give us treats and Nancy said, "This dog is getting fat." Now Cheryl calls us and give us little frozen green things. This doesn't make us nervous, but it doesn't seem just right. 

--Then she says, "I can't believe you'll eat those." That's not right at all.