Annie is in the dining room sneak-boofing at something in the window. She can't bark because the gray machine slams her eardrums, so she boofs. Sometimes she growls. What she does not do is bark hysterically over and over again until she works herself into such a fit that she's wired and growly all day.

I have, however, learned something else about the gray anti-bark machine: it is completely ineffective on Riley, who is a mere 10 pounds heavier. He weighs 52 pounds, so he is not a large dog by most standards. Apparently the larger the dog, the less effective the machine is. I learned this from our trainer last night. I am trying to process this information, but I am failing. What possible relationship is there between size and sound? This processing is complicated by the fact that when Annie barks loudly in the Conservatory, I get a blast to one ear. It's...uncomfortable. Startling, I think is the most accurate assessment. Once I thought I heard a sound, but for the most part she barks and this blast of pressure hits my right ear. One could make a case for hysterical hearing, I suppose. The sound is supposed to be too high for human ears to hear, and I don't have any reason to believe my hearing is any more acute or  has a higher range than anyone else's. (Well: Nancy's or Ilah's, certainly.)  And I have only experienced this phenomenon in my chair in the Conservatory, which is some distance (probably not 25 feet) from the machine. It doesn't happen all of the time. I suppose it's possible that it's a delayed response to Annie's bark itself, except I never experienced it before the machine came... Anyway. My point is, I weigh considerably more that 52 pounds and it affects me. It has NO EFFECT WHATSOEVER on Riley. If he ran into the dining room to bark the mailman away he barks. And barks, and barks. Get thee to your little red, white and blue truck and drive away, you infidel  The machine was firing red bolts of light at him all of the time.

On the other hand, Riley doesn't bark all that much. He hardly ever barked at all before Annie came. We are hoping he will adjust back to his pre-Annie level of barking and all will be well.

Annie is the star of her class. (I still can't process that.) She is very smart and she adores our trainer and she picks up commands almost immediately. We are working on one that doesn't really give her that little jolt of happiness previous commands have supplied--we're working on 'wait', which runs contrary to Annie's basic nature--but she picked it up quickly when Holly worked with her. We have three dogs in our class, Blue, who is a big bubba of a pit bull, happy, happy dog, still struggling with puppymind, and a black lab-mix puppy named Diesel. Diesel is a beautiful dog, but he has anxiety issues. And then there's our little black rhino-butt, Annie. Hi hi hi, let's go, let's do this!  

And this is the thing. Annie is less reactive around other dogs. We were walking through PetSmart last night to get to our class and this young couple was walking their half-grown cat on a leash. (Really.) Annie saw it first: her tail started wagging furiously, Come on, come, let's go meet this cat But for all intents and purposes, Annie likes cats. I averted the meeting, not having any idea how the cat felt about meeting a dog. We watched a min pin get loose in the store, but we just watched. And Blue took off at a dead run to greet Annie and she just...greeted him. He's been in several of her classes and she's greeted him before, so I didn't panic (I didn't have time) but it went very smoothly. We generally avoid other dogs in PetSmart, but she has definitely calmed down.

And she has no obvious holes in her body, which mean she has finally mastered playing with Riley. (Or to rephrase that, she has finally learned when to quit playing with Riley: that when he says, 'stop, I'm tired of this', it's actually time to stop. There are very few dog commands I intuitively understand, but being an older sister, I recognized that one right away.)

We are actually going to go for the Good Citizenship Certificate. With Annie.

Right now, however, the hysterical barking kick dog down the street is regaling us with some sort of concert of dissatisfaction. We are trying, trying to be good, but it is SO HARD to be calm when right down the street one of our kind has completely lost it!

Now someone else has joined the chorus. Some hound, perhaps.

Boof. 

Now that I have sparked a spike in the sale of the Indoor Bark Control machine... Further reports:

Annie still barks at the window. She does not bark as much. She rarely escalates. She often abandons her barking and comes back to chew on something in the Conservatory where we are. It does not stop the behavior: it inhibits it.

This is remarkably untrue for Riley. Someone walked past our home today with a shorn Pomeranian, which is against all rules known to man AND dog, and he ran into the dining room and barked and barked and barked. The red light flashed: he barked. He didn't even appear to notice. 

So: worth a try? Definitely.

100% effective: apparently not.

Also the packaging says not the run the machine all of the time. I have no idea why. We haven't taken the battery out since we got it because the battery is a pain in the ass to install (this could easily be a quirk of our particular machine.) Maybe intermittent use has some value we are unaware of.

Ilah is having a bad morning. She's "got it in the neck", her legs are weak and she's feeling puny. She needed an emergency Tylenol. I was malingering in bed when I heard, "Nan-ceee..."

Nancy was in the kitchen. Nancy doesn't hear all that well and Ilah is 95, nearly 96. Her projection is puny.

So I rolled out of bed and was grabbing for some clothes when Nancy's phone rang. It was me.

("Why am I calling Nancy?" I asked myself. "I'm a little busy, here..." Because the phone in Ilah's room is in my name.)

So half-dressed I raced to Ilah's room (9 steps down the hall, limping) and she had colapsed in her chair.

"I've got it in the neck, my legs don't work. I need a Tylenol. Where's Nancy?"

"She's in the kitchen."

"I can't hear you." She waves her hand regally, helplessly toward her bed. "Could you get me my hearing aids--they're in a box. Bring the whole box."

I fetch her hearing aids, which are in the box right beside her bed and which she almost never puts in until after she's had her morning bath, which renders every conversation we have before 11:30 useless: she asks a question, I answer, she blinks and then points to her ear and shakes her head.

I have a thought: put them in in the morning when you get up, like I put on my glasses. There is some kind of issue with her hearing aids. It changes periodically, but there is always an issue. I suspect, if I were being fair about it, that hearing aids are problematic for everyone. 

So I fetch the hearing aids and wait patiently while she installs the batteries, puts on her glasses and says, "Where's Nancy?"

"She's in the kitchen."

"I called and called and nobody come..."

"She can't hear you." But I can. You called once, and I came. I'm standing right here.

I go and get her a glass of water and two Tylenol. I am muttering in my head about pain that is so excruciating that it could be resolved with two Tylenol, but I am never a fountain of pure joy first thing in the morning. I catch Nancy up on the adventures in the bed room.

Ilah takes her pills. She needs to 'rest'.

About fifteen minutes later Nancy and I hear this weak, tired old lady's voice say, "I've got to go to the bathroom..."

It is hard to determine how much of what Ilah says out loud is intended for a listening audience and how much is personal rumination.

One morning, sitting alone in the kitchen eating her breakfast, she said, "I wished I'd have died."

"What?" I called.

She blinked and pointed to her ears.

At lunch she told me an amusing story about something that happened 50 years ago, when she embarrassed herself so badly she wished she had died. "I was thinking about that this morning," she said. 

She's had her breakfast, now. She's going back to her room. "I'm feeling better, now," she says. Actually her report was more detailed than that--her neck is still stiff, but her legs don't hurt as much, and she doesn't know what caused any of it.

"Prob'ly old age," Nancy says.

She has her door open still. Either her room is too warm (I'm not sure there is a 'too warm' in her world) or she anticipates needing to send further updates on her condition in the near future. 

I record all of this with one singular thought, which is the thought I continue to repeat, like a mantra, whenever I deal with Ilah. The thought is, I'm sixty-four. 

I am unlikely to survive to the age of ninety-five--almost everything I have done with my life has pretty much guaranteed I won't--but I have hereditary access to long-lived genes, and nothing is more abhorent to me than the thought of transitioning through the end-of-life in the care of someone who resents taking care of me. I want her to feel welcome here in our home--her home. I want her to feel safe and secure and well-cared for. It's not even a deal--I'll take good care of her if you'll find someone to take good care of me--it's a personal value. She deserves to feel loved and well-cared-for.

Thank you for absorbing a little personal steam.

Spring should be along now any time. Even in Michigan. It is a bright, sunny day today. According to the back fence it is about 57 degrees out there, which is warmer than the forecast predicted. Both dogs are in the house this afternoon, although they come and go. Like the pots, which were recently de-shedded in preparation for the chickens, we are all waiting for the frost date.

Ilah announced this morning that she's been seeing white 'snow' falling all morning. I suggested they might be petals from the ornamental pear, and she agreed they were petals: the ornamental pear, however, is naked of blooms and has been since Saturday. And she outlined all of the blooming white trees in the surrounding neighborhood, calculated against wind velocity and distance, and it appears there is no apparent source for these petals that are still falling down upon us. I guess we'll have to move.

I shouldn't be sarcastic. I try not to be. I don't know where the petals are coming from either, I just chose not to worry about it. It's a little like the bird feeder we hung at her window. We discussed it. We talked about the price of bird feed versus the invasion of the grackles, which stopped our bird feeding activities years ago... I bought a sock of finch feed on sale and brought it home, Nancy hung it, and we said, "There--something for her to look at when the word-search puzzles get too boring."

She called me a few days ago. Hurry, hurry, come. Oh, sorry--it's gone. And she pointed at the feed sock. There is a bird who comes to see her but she can't tell what bird it is because it comes around 4:30 and lands in the shadows and she can't see it clearly enough to know what it is. So now we have the continuing mystery of the Phantom PM Bird. It has a schedule but no identity. If she gets up out of her self-ejecting chair and races out to get one of us on her walker, the bird flies away.

It's "dark".

There is some sort of ever-darkening birdwork going on here.

I ask myself, just how much effort does it take for you to stand up, walk to her bedroom and look through the window at her bird feeder--which you bought, by the way, and made your partner hang for her mother's amusement. Is that really too much to ask? Really? You gave it to her: why wouldn't she assume you're interested in birds?

I think it's a house finch. Which I have said.  There are enough of them around here. The bird book describes them as 'sparrows dipped in strawberry sauce'. They can appear 'dark'.

But we don't know for sure. Just like we don't know where the white petals are falling from.

And I think to myself, Maybe you should leave that bed room once in a while. Try sitting on the porch. But then, the porch is cold for me, and I can't tolerate the tropical sauna that doubles as her bed room.

From the porch she could keep better watch on the people in the brown house across the street.

The people in the brown house across the street are not the same people who lived in the brown house across the street when she came here in late January. "They moved," she tells me. It's clear she wonders where I've been.

I don't care. I'd never met the people who had just moved in when she came. The only reason I knew the people who lived there for 2 1/2 years before that was because their dog periodically went on a walkabout. Her name was Chloe. She was a beautiful blue pit bull. She nearly stopped my heart cold the first time I met her: I was walking Riley on his leash and I heard toenails on the pavement, turned, and this rock-jawed, muscled gladiator was trotting up to greet us... She out-weighed my dog by 20-30 pounds, and he's a lover, not a fighter.

Hi, hi hi, Riley said.

Hi, hi, hi, Chloe said. You live here, don't you--I live across the street... 

I'm walking my woman right now, Riley said, I have two of them. They put me on a string and I drag them around the block.

Cool, Chloe said, I think I'll sniff her. Hey, she smells good. See you around....

Chloe taught me to temper assumptions about appearance with a little reality. Once again.

The wind is blowing outside the Conservatory window. It seems oddly quiet, since the windows are all closed because it's colder than it looks out there. All manner of tiny leaves and petals and organic matter is fluttering by in the wind. Dandelion seeds, for instance. 

I could get in the car and drive around the neighborhood, looking for shedding white trees.

I could lobby to keep the chickens in the pachysandra patch between Ilah's bedroom window and the neighbor's fence. She could watch the hens all day. They're bigger than house finches, and we could control their schedule. She could keep track of where they lay their eggs. She could come flying out of her room on her walker whenever the dogs start barking at the chickens.

There are four of them. The chickens. Or, there will be four of them. They haven't come to live with us, yet. Nancy's son is brooding them while we figure out how to build a chicken house from a shed, a backyard, a garden, two dogs and and Nancy's mother's word search schedule.

Chickens are, oddly enough, the only creature I know intimately from infancy to plate, including that difficult and unpleasant transition from living to dead, plucked, cleaned, and cooked. All of the women responsible for my continued existence at one time or another raised and killed their own chickens. Now my partner wants to try. Every time I think of it, my mind shifted immediately to the over-sized raccoon living on the stairs in Gray Gardens. 

Yeah, those old women were characters all right.

We found all three of them--and two dogs--buried under these piles of white blossom petals. We have NO idea where those petals came from...

   

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. 

  

 

 

Most of my life I have been a cat person. Cat people nap. When a cat person is caught napping, the cat says, Fine. Here, I'll curl up in your lap and help.

Recently I was dragged into a conversion of sorts. First I spent some time with Murphy, who convinced me dog are wonderful beings (and they love to ride in cars!) and then we got Riley and then--because one of us just really doesn't understand the term 'enough'--we got Annie.

Today is Saturday. It's cooler. The world outside is kind of gray with threatening. It's a lay-on-the-couch sort of day.

So Nancy laid on the couch, stretched out, and decided to take a nap.

For Nancy to lay on the couch, Annie had to get up.

So now Annie is up.

'Up' for a cat means 'up-right' or 'not lying down'. 'Up for a dog means ready, happy and busily on the way to something. (We have no idea what. It doesn't matter: we're UP.)

And the Conservatory couch is a low couch. This is the exact height of the Conservatory couch: Annie, standing with all four feet on the floor, can nose-kiss a person lying on the couch. Even face-lick, if necessary.

She can munch them. Munching is a dog thing: it's sort of a cross between biting and nuzzling, probably a grooming tool. It's hard to sleep when you're being munched.

Oh, dear: a herd of motorcycles just passed the house. Ordinarily there would be dogs hysterically barking, but apparently the machine extends into parts of the back yard. You have to love this machine.

Anyway. Between four face-washing, a short tongue bath, two bounce-ons and some dedicated munching, Nancy has given up on her nap and is now rattling around in the bathroom.

It's a lot harder to nap with dogs. Particularly wide-awake, alert, ready-to-go dogs.

We have developed a much deeper appreciation and understanding for the old saw, 'let sleeping dogs lie'. 

The magic continues.

Riley, who is lounging in a dog-sized hole in the back yard, began barking angrily at something.

Annie roused up off the couch, releasing a low growl, and slunk into the living room to boof at the front window. She seemed to be picking up steam, egged on by her brother barking in the back yard, and she barked

boofed

thought  about it

growled , deep in her throat

BARKED

and a few minutes later trotted silently into the Conservatory where we are and curled up again on the couch.

I am sure there is some reason why we shouldn't be using this machine. It's probably cruel and unusual or will eventually make her go deaf or there is some reason I can't even think of that makes it bad...but what it appears to do is break that cycle of escalating excitement that she gets into until she's running around the house like a dervish, barking at everything in sight and flinging herself hysterically against the dining room window.

Annie is calm.

Annie is relaxed.

We are watching in utter amazement.

We discussed getting the outdoor model and putting it by the fence where they most often gather to bark at sidewalk walkers, interlopers and The Thing That Attacks All Life as We Know It, but the outdoor machines have a much larger range (50 feet vs 25 feet.) Neither of us are sure just how long 50 feet is (Nancy might have a clue--I really don't.) And there are the two chows on the right of us, Jetta and her co-dog on the left of us, Chocolate and the new dog behind us, the bulldog across the street and the dog I haven't seen yet directly across the street... The chows never bark, so subjecting them to punishing blasts of noise for my dogs barking seemed unkind. I would need to talk to their owner and to Jetta's mom and dad before we installed the machine.

Nancy said she took Annie to have her nails trimmed Friday morning and Annie's groomer said she uses a similar devise. (She also shakes cans of pennies. Cans of pennies only work for me as long as I am willing to sit outside behind the dogs with a can of pennies at the ready.)

She also said Annie needs more socialization.

Well, yes she does.

At this exact point in time Annie has no scratches, cuts slices or open wounds from any back yard altercations that these are all from Riley, the dog she lives with. This is a first in all of the time she's lived with us. She has apparently learned enough social skills to play with her situational brother without bloodshed. Yeah, Annie!

Riley is hard to rile. Well. He'll growl. He gets testy. Given a change, he then goes off on a scent hunt and ignores his adversary. It takes concentrated in-your-face antagonism to get Riley made enough to fight. She can do it.

Anyway. At this exact point in time Riley is in his hole in the back yard and Annie is here with us on the couch. Riley barks from time to time, but without Annie to get him hyped, he calms down and quits. Annie rarely barks in the house and almost never more than twice (which is apparently what it takes to set off the machine.)

At this exact point in time I could kiss that little gray machine full on it's little gray lips. 

Last evening Nancy and I were artfully arranged around the television in our customary positions of leisure when the God-awful Horrible Thing That Must Be Barked Away attacked the front of our house. Annie bolted off the couch and charged into to the dining room window where The Thing could best be seen and she said,

               “BARK, bark….

               And then--had there been pins falling somewhere in our home—we could have listened to their music.

               Annie reappeared in the hallway where she was intently nosing something that very clearly should not have been left where it was.

               And then she trotted back into the living room, hopped up on the couch and went back to sleep.

               I have no idea what The Thing did. No more reports on its activity were filed.

               It would appear that after 8 months, several dead ends and bad investments and a dizzying array of pointless human tricks, one small gray $39 box that makes noise I can’t hear when she barks at it may be enough to make her do just exactly that. Stop. Or, perhaps it repels the God-Awful Horrible Thing That Must Be Barked Away, which is fine.

               It works!

               This makes me smile because I had my doubts. I read the packaging. No less than four times the packaging for this box, which works by picking up the dog’s bark on its mike and returning a two second blast of noise in an octave I cannot hear warns:

May not be effective on deaf or hearing-impaired dogs.

               No rocket science involved here. I figured that any devise that needed to warn me four times that a loud noise might not startled a deaf dog might not be functioning at a level of sophistication sufficient to outsmart Annie.

               It would appear I was wrong.

IN 2009 I wrote a post about electronic cigarettes. I have received more comments on that particular post than almost any other. There's a word for that, which I have forgotten: there are people who troll the Internet, looking for blogging posts that in some vague way mention, allude to or could be construed to allude to a product they are trying to sell, and they then comment on the post and use that comment as a link to create more links that lead to the sale of their product. It has nothing to do with my skills at blogging.

I have a friend who smokes electronic cigarettes, incidentally. As I watch her with her 'pack' and her little bag she keeps all of her tools in, I remember: yes, smoking was all about the ritual. I miss the ritual of lighting a cigarette, even after all these years. I knew I would probably never lapse back into smoking the day I gave myself permission to buy a lighter whenever the mood struck. They're what--a dollar? Maybe two? Nothing compared to the cost of smoking itself. Besides, whenever the urge to 'slip' strikes, I just wander on down to the pharmacy and buy another inhaler. Although, truth be told, I still cuddle up next to an honest-to-God smoker in discreetly sniff his exhaust.

Where were we? Nancy, Annie and I went to Annie's second intermediate obedience class (this round) last night. I took her into the store. We walked up to the classroom, the door opened, and 47 puppies came out. Holly was in front of us before I could even focus my attention, and while Annie was deeply interested in the puppies, Holly kept her distracted from them and focused on us enough to prevent...really, even a growl.

Halfway through our class we switched from a short lead to a 20 foot leash and while I was doing this I dropped the leash altogether and Annie danced across the classroom to greet Diesel, the black lab-mix puppy. He's about 10 months old, a little on the shy side...everything that sets Annie off. I'm fumbling like an idiot and Holly managed to get to her, but she never really offered to do anything but sniff him. Baby steps, but steps nonetheless.

Nancy talked to the trainers about the barking we have been dealing with, and they suggested an electronic bark inhibitor. It's a box you set up in a room and when the dog starts to bark, the machine sends out a noise we can't hear and they won't like. They'll learn to associate their barking with the noise and hopefully they'll stop barking. We'll try it. A few months back I bought a citrus spray collar for her to kick back some of her barking. It never worked. I took it back. But it didn't work because it literally didn't spray any citrus.

Besides, Annie likes citrus.

I get frustrated and I forget, but we HAVE made progress. Annie walked around the store with me last night on a loose leash for quite a while instead of jerking and pulling me all of the time. She is a model for 'sit' and 'down' (doesn't like 'stay' so much.) We played a game where we put our dogs into a sit and them another classmate walked past us, practicing 'heel'. With a Lickety Stick Annie is a completely focused model for 'heel' (or, at the very least, 'lick') and she sat and ignored the other classmates walking past her. I was actually surprised at how well she did, particularly because she was tired and specifically she was tired of 'sit' and got this bored, 'what-if-I-just-stand-here-and-ignore-all-of-you' expression on her face.

'Sit'? Really? Go ahead, have at it--why don't you sit?

The problem dog who would have tested all of the progress we have made was unable to attend the class due to an illness in the family. This is both good and bad. Good we don't have to spend an entire class avoiding bloodshed, bad that we don't have the obstacle to work through.

So I will say this. If Annie belonged to someone experienced with owning a terrier, she would be a well-behaved dog by now. I can see that in the way she responds to Holly. Either Annie is extremely smart and a quick learner, or we are busily teaching her commands and lessons she's already learned.The one example that sticks out most clearly in my mind is the hand command for 'sit'. I had a certain difficulty making my hand do that. So I was standing there, practicing my hand command and I glanced down and Annie was sitting. Watching me with that, "What's next?" look. I'll swear she also knew the hand command for 'down'. She also appears to have a very clear idea what 'heel' means (although again, she could be confusing it with 'lick'.) Nancy and I are taking the lessons. Annie is merely our guide.

Today is the day 'that thing' happens. I have no idea what it's called. All of the grade school children gather up in groups and stride around town, talking as loud as they possibly can. I had no idea this even happened until I retired--I believe Murphy brought it to my attention--but it happens every year, and today is the day. It's really very exciting: the kids are all talking and as they get closer and closer to the house, their voices get louder and louder... Annie boofed and took off for the back door at a dead run, but when I went out with treats to distract the dogs, they were easy enough to distract. Let's see, food versus a pack of loud, strange children... Let's do the food, Riley. 

Okay. An exercise in faith. I have mentioned this before, but Riley loves kids, particularly toddlers. I will probably never test this, but I believe a toddler could poke his eyes, stick their fingers in his ears and wave his head back and forth by sticking their fists in his mouth and he would never harm her. He would be more likely to bite an adult human than a baby. Annie, on the other hand, is not entirely sure of herself around children. They confuse her. They move too fast, which makes her nervous. So Diesel comes to class with two adults and two children, a little girl about six and a boy younger than she is. Both of them immediately wanted to pet Annie, so Annie and I stood still and allowed this to happen. I'm not sure about this, Cheryl, Annie said.

"You're fine."

Later during class the little girl decided she wanted to pet Annie again and someone told her not to. So--being a six year-old--she realized no one was watching her, and she snaked her hand out for a quick pet.

I wanted to say, "Oh, honey, whatever you do, don't do that."  I didn't. Perhaps I should have.

Annie flinched, but otherwise didn't react very much.

The problem--much like my dropping the leash in the middle of the class--is the difference between Annie's reaction time and mine. I could see it all happen in real time, but if Annie had decided to nip the child, could I have prevented it? Oh, hell no. And I don't want to tense up because that travels right down the leash to the dog. Annie would have had the kid down on the floor and bleeding from the ears by the time it occurred to me to move. And it's not that I think my dog would hurt a child: it's that I'm just not...sure.

I keep a close eye on Riley when kids are around--but I trust him. (Frankly, it's the kids I don't trust. Kids do some really stupid shit.)

Before going to class yesterday I was in Walmart and I stopped by buy some yellow ribbon to tie a bow on Annie's leash. According to some people on facebook, it tells (some) people the dog is in training, has medical issues or needs not to have people grabbing at it all of the time. It means (politely) please don't pet my dog. But of course ribbon, yellow or otherwise, is sold by the yard at Walmart by employees who were laid off two years ago so you can admire it all you want, but heaven help you if you actually want to buy any of it...  

So we have our work cut out for us. Stay. New command: "Settle'. And we need to work on 'heel' (vs 'lick'). Nancy said she woke up this morning thinking, "I have to work with that dog today...." 

Wednesday. Beautiful morning, sunny, cool, leafy green.  Yesterday I worried that the six-inch forest was not going to provide much shade for us this summer: today each individual leaf is bigger. You might think I had never gone through a spring before.

Today I am somewhat encouraged. Tonight is Snorty's obedience class. We have worked with her. We've worked on 'sit', 'down', 'stay' and 'Annie, come!' We have worked on Jesus Christ, stop barking! until I can walk to the back door and shake a treat bag without say a word and she comes running. (Yes, we give her treats for barking. I expect any day now she'll figure that out, and whenever she wants a treat, she'll run out into the back yard and start barking. So far she stops to run into the house and get a treat.) Last night we were able to eat a calm, relaxed meal (with an open treat bag on the table) by calling her whenever she starts barking and giving her a treat. I am following the 're-set' theory: that coming to get a treat resets her mind from high excitement to calming peace. The trick is to keep her from ever escalating to high drama, which is when she runs from window to window, barking at wind changes and cars backfiring on the highway a mile away.

It doesn't help that the dog next door is neurotic (and a barker,) or that the noisy, hysterical kick dog still lives down the street, or the two chows lives on the other side of the fence where they chuff aloofly. But slowly we are learning. Nancy has a whole speech she gives whenever Annie starts to get hysterical. "It's okay. We've got it. You don't need to worry your little head about that..." 

I read on the Internet that:

1. Salt poured on a piddle place will pull the urine out of the carpet and kill the smell. I'll let you know, although right now I'm ready to salt the dining room. I figure about a foot of the stuff, left for a week or so, would give some idea of how well it works. Much less than that I might just as well throw over my shoulder.

2. Vicks applied to my toes will kill nail fungus. Interesting idea. There is a prescription med which, when applied every day for 265 days at exactly the same time every day will maybe, with luck, kill nail fungus...or you could apply Vicks Vaporub for two weeks and it will maybe with luck, kill nail fungus... As it happens I have a particularly happy fungus growing under one nail. Actually it spreads slowly from nail to nail, but this particular nail is actually sore because the fungus is such a healthy little colony. So what the hell? I have applied Vicks to it. It may not be cured, but it doesn't hurt as much. I am hopeful that it will calm it down to the point where I can cut it. Should you ever need to know more, I will eventually report my findings.

3. South Carolina just elected a congressman who, while Governor, told everyone he was hiking the Appalachian trail while in fact, he had flown off to South America to have an affair. Fidelity is apparently not an issue in South Carolina, and while I'm not sure it's all that important to me...he left the entire state in limbo while lying about where he was and taking off to chase tail.

4. The Kardashians can make news by changing their wigs, wearing flowered dresses, gaining weight. Breathing in, breathing out...

Not on the Internet (until now) the little black dog is balled up on the couch and chuffing, now and then. In the distance someone's dog is barking. This annoys her, because for the past few days her people have not allowed her to bark. Ruff. Riley is outside.  I assume he is balled up in the dog-shaped hole that has appeared out there. I started out with one gold dog who almost never dug, and wound up with multi-colored prairie dogs creating a colony in my back yard.

I got the oil changed in the car yesterday. $27 and they replaced a rear brake light (or as my mechanic said, "One of your rear brake lights was out, so we broke the other one.") And I had the salvageable photographs from the packet entitled 'Byron Flinn' (someone else must have written that: my great uncle's name was 'Flynn') digitized. I like this one:

I do not have a clue who these seven children are.

Nor do I know who this baby is (but I love the buggy.)

This is my Grandfather, J. Harold Peck. I recognize him. He is younger than he was when I knew him (of course) but there's little doubt in my mind who he is. The woman is very likely my Grandmother Lucille (Gwinn) Peck. I find myself staring at this photograph. I remember when I was a kid she used to comment that when she was younger she looked a great deal like my younger sister and she was always 'going' to show us a photograph of her when she was younger. She never did. She really did not like photographs of herself nor did she like having her picture taken. (A trait the same sister has since decided to share with her.) 

I had 8 prints digitized (many of the negatives were either damaged or severely over-exposed.) I have no idea when these shots were taken, or if they were all taken at the same time. My grandparents were married the evening my grandmother graduated from high school (he was 5 or 6 years older than she. I think.) In my mind this photograph of the two of them was taken that night--but I don't know that. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but there is a great deal it doesn't tell you.

This is the same woman with my aunt, who is 17 years younger than my father, so the photograph is probably +/- 20 years older than the one above it.

Her name was Lena Lucille.