May 12, 2013
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Mother’s Day
It’s
mother’s day. Nancy is in the kitchen cooking. I can hear her (literally, I can) murmuring, I love to cook. It’s like my mother’s day gift to myself–I’m going to cook. It works out poorly for me: I have not been conscripted to slice, dice or ‘blend’ anything, but I have been called to the kitchen to test the filling for tiramisu, the cheese for the salad and some sort of fancy olive I have not yet placed in the menu. Poor me. Experimental taster. So in truth, it’s a wonderful mother’s day for both of us and I’m not even a mother.Peace continues to reign. Annie is horning in on my experimental taster job, but otherwise has remained fairly low key and calm. Right now she’s taking a spit bath in the kitchen doorway.
Riley, as usual, is outside lounging in his hole. This is his kind of weather.
I read an article written by a vet on Yahoo! this morning titled, “Why Does My Dog Lean Against Me?”
?
When we were very young and dogless and semi-Murphy trained (Murphy was give or take 10 when we met her and an extremely well-trained dog) we missed her when she went back to live with Ranee and we went dog-searching for the perfect Murphy-like companion. We drove all the way to Cloverfield or something like that Indiana, which is west of Indy, to answer an ad for the perfect dog. He was released into the run so we could interact with him, and he emptied his entire bladder on my left leg. And then he took off running and ran for forty-five minutes. We could not get the time of day from this dog. In the meantime the shelter woman was introducing us to every other dog she had there (although in truth, the dog we fell in love with was hers) and finally Riley had completed his run and he came up to me, wagged his tail, positioned himself between my knees and leaned against me.
We paid his bail, attached a leash and brought him home.
According to the article on Yahoo!, ‘…some trainer will tell you it’s a sign of dominance, some will tell you it has something to do with social skills and boundaries…” The vet himself concluded, “I think it means he likes you and wants to be close to you.”
If I have any objections to Annie, it is that she only cuddles with me when she asleep in bed, or she wants to rub off her Gentle Leader. If I grab her and start playing with her, she mouths me. Or she flea-bites, which is a quick little pinch that collects only the tiniest amount of skin. Hurts. Just a little, and certainly there is no pain intended, but still.
Watch this, Riley says, and he comes up to me, self-positions himself between my legs or up against the side of my chair and he leans against me and I am putty in his paws. He can do no wrong.
The six-inch forest is wilting. What is that? They are all (I’m going to make a wild guess here) maples, and because they are volunteers and because no one wants them where they are, I’m just going to assume further they are Norway maples, which in English means ‘tall weeds’. What could they possibly have to wilt about?
Nancy is still cooking in the kitchen. I believe we are having grilled ribs, mac and cheese, and a kicky salad with tiramisu as dessert. Perhaps the ribs are for a different meal.
“I hate cleaning up after myself,” she mutters, but I offered to do it and she laughed. “I’m fine,” she says, “I just don’t like it as much.”
I varnished my gourds, which I have neglected of late. I discovered you really can varnish over metallic wax. Surprised me, but hey.
And I ordered another Chet and Bernie mystery from Amazon.
Annie is growing hair on her throat. (She’s never had any throat hair for as long as we’ve had her. When we first got her her throat was all scratches and scabs.) She has more hair everywhere than she’s ever had before. Last winter we had to put her in her coat to take her outside because she was half-naked. However, lessons learned from the laundry: the first time I washed her blanket, I found this tiny forest of little black hairs floating on top of the water, every one of them shorter than my eye lashes, and I had to call her to see if she had any lashes left. They are her coat. The hairs on her coat are shorter than my eyelashes. (Why yes, I do have long, lush lashes.) Her coat shines, but it is the shortest dog coat I’ve ever seen. Riley, by comparison, not only has a longer coat,he appears to have an underforest and then apparently even a coat below that. (This is why she plays rougher, harder and with more teeth than he ever has, but she’s the one with the regularly recurring holes, gashes and lesions. It would take a serious bite to take a gouge out of Riley.)
Riley and his coat of many layers playing possum in a game with Annie. His hindquarters are in one of his resting holes. Riley did not dig holes until Annie came along, so the exact ownership of the hole may be more a matter of possession than of creation. She starts them, he nests in them.
When she first came to live with us, she reminded me of a tank. Or a hippo. Now I’m so used to her she seems normal and other dogs looks kind of spindly to me.
Happy Mother’s Day.
