The cool of the morning is wearing off, but it remains damp and sticky. The varnish on my desk, which is old, has a gummy quality to it. Everything is still. The leaves hang from the six-inch forest without moving. Annie has collapsed on the couch, moving every now and again to stretch a cramped muscle or to snore. Riley is MIA. (He could be behind the couch in the living room, he could be under the outside bench or wadded up in the vine that clings to the side of the house--or did, until he took up residence there.) It is very quiet here.

For one, we are not under fire from explosives just now. Most of the neighbors appear to be elsewhere.

Three bags of treats 2 1/2 days later, one of us--at this very moment--is not driven to dash to the front window, the front gate or the side fence and begin barking hysterically at movement, forms, buggy wheels or (OMG, OMG) other dogs. I do not credit the training with this so much as possible ingestion overload and the sheer absence of things to bark at. We could begin a new day any time now.

It is important for me to keep sight of the goal, since I have no idea what I'm doing with this dog and it seems fairly clear she has no idea what I'm doing either. My goal is to keep her from escalating to the point of sheer sensory overload which results in explosive barking, compulsive running from bark site to bark site, leaping at the windows, and when in absolute desperation, throwing herself on the couch hard enough to all but knock the couch over. I need to remember that it surprised me when she did that last night and to understand that we ARE making progress: there was a time when keeping the couch upright was work. Yes: 42 pounds. When Nancy had her hip surgery we admitted that only one of us ever sat on the couch and she was facing hip surgery. We bought blocks and raised the couch to the point where she felt she could get up off from it, which was two blocks per corner. Unfortunately when a small black flying missile threw herself at the couch, she would knock it off the blocks and I, with my waning strength and bad shoulder, could not lift it enough to get it back up on the blocks. Nancy by then was drugged and groggy and used a walker. We now use one block to raise the couch, Annie rarely if ever throws herself onto it, and the couch no longer comes undone. We have made progress.

This is the progress we have made this weekend: Annie has become my constant companion. She naps on the floor beside my chair. When she gets up and runs outside she barks, I call her and she comes vaulting through the dog door to my chair side and lays her chin on my thigh, waiting for her treat. When she doesn't bark, I don't call her: she then comes vaulting through the dog door to my chair side and lays her chin on my thigh, waiting for her treat. We have had discussions about coming sooner to my call, coming always to  my call, paying attention to my call, not making me get up and go outside to get her to answer my call, not barking like an idiot, treat overload, why I should dispense treats for a dog that comes whether I call her or not...

Things that bother me: like Riley, she tends to inhale her treats and then trot outside wheezing like an asthmatic.

She is outside growling now. And doing something I would almost call...yodeling. It's a sort of bark, in varying pitches, which seems to be saying, I'm really not suppose to bark at you but damn, you're making me mad... 

Well, she's awake, no question of that. She has made seven trips outside to bark at suspicious behavior so far.

I'm running out of treats. 

The cool of the morning is wearing off, but it remains damp and sticky. The varnish on my desk, which is old, has a gummy quality to it. Everything is still. The leaves hang from the six-inch forest without moving. Annie has collapsed on the couch, moving every now and again to stretch a cramped muscle or to snore. Riley is MIA. (He could be behind the couch in the living room, he could be under the outside bench or wadded up in the vine that clings to the side of the house--or did, until he took up residence there.) It is very quiet here.

For one, we are not under fire from explosives just now. Most of the neighbors appear to be elsewhere.

Three bags of treats 2 1/2 days later, one of us--at this very moment--is not driven to dash to the front window, the front gate or the side fence and begin barking hysterically at movement, forms, buggy wheels or (OMG, OMG) other dogs. I do not credit the training with this so much as possible ingestion overload and the sheer absence of things to bark at. We could begin a new day any time now.

It is important for me to keep sight of the goal, since I have no idea what I'm doing with this dog and it seems fairly clear she has no idea what I'm doing either. My goal is to keep her from escalating to the point of sheer sensory overload which results in explosive barking, compulsive running from bark site to bark site, leaping at the windows, and when in absolute desperation, throwing herself on the couch hard enough to all but knock the couch over. I need to remember that it surprised me when she did that last night and to understand that we ARE making progress: there was a time when keeping the couch upright was work. Yes: 42 pounds. When Nancy had her hip surgery we admitted that only one of us ever sat on the couch and she was facing hip surgery. We bought blocks and raised the couch to the point where she felt she could get up off from it, which was two blocks per corner. Unfortunately when a small black flying missile threw herself at the couch, she would knock it off the blocks and I, with my waning strength and bad shoulder, could not lift it enough to get it back up on the blocks. Nancy by then was drugged and groggy and used a walker. We now use one block to raise the couch, Annie rarely if ever throws herself onto it, and the couch no longer comes undone. We have made progress.

This is the progress we have made this weekend: Annie has become my constant companion. She naps on the floor beside my chair. When she gets up and runs outside she barks, I call her and she comes vaulting through the dog door to my chair side and lays her chin on my thigh, waiting for her treat. When she doesn't bark, I don't call her: she then comes vaulting through the dog door to my chair side and lays her chin on my thigh, waiting for her treat. We have had discussions about coming sooner to my call, coming always to  my call, paying attention to my call, not making me get up and go outside to get her to answer my call, not barking like an idiot, treat overload, why I should dispense treats for a dog that comes whether I call her or not...

Things that bother me: like Riley, she tends to inhale her treats and then trot outside wheezing like an asthmatic.

She is outside growling now. And doing something I would almost call...yodeling. It's a sort of bark, in varying pitches, which seems to be saying, I'm really not suppose to bark at you but damn, you're making me mad... 

Well, she's awake, no question of that. She has made seven trips outside to bark at suspicious behavior so far.

I'm running out of treats. 

This fall I will have new coat that will make me look much like I'm wearing a small golden retriever: I have an entire wastebasket of raw materials sitting beside me as we speak. Riley has blown his coat. And I mean Blown. He comes up to press up against me I'm here, Cheryl and wads of the stuff fall off from him. Now part of our  morning ritual, in addition to chest-thumping, you-can-do-it encouraging speeches and short renditions of Eye of the Tiger, Cheryl grabs the undercoat rake and brushes as much of Riley as she can find (given that Riley's favorite brushing position is with his butt slammed tight to the floor and his entire body crammed firmly between my knees. I'm not sure whether he finds comfort there, or it simply reduces the brushable surface area. It is unquestionably his position of choice.)

We are enjoying a moment of peace and calm right now. No fools are parading their dogs in front of our house. No children are running loose in the neighborhood, shouting for no reason. No one has set off a firecracker in...someone just set off a firecracker. Still, none of us feel any deep need to dash outside and bark, and this makes everyone in the house happier and more content.

And we who live here are not eccentric old ladies. I want everyone to know that. This morning Nancy and I went out and had coffee and Nancy read her paper in lawn chairs strategically placed in front of the hen yard, so we could watch Henrietta, Henrietta, Henrietta and Henrietta do their exercises on their new jungle gym. Nancy had a wooden base for something left over from her compilation of found objects from which she built the yard. For a while she had a chair inside the hen yard where she would sit and commune with The Ladies, but this created a small black bundle of discontent on the far side of the fence. And the chair acquired its own decorations from The Ladies. So the chair came out, and Nancy but the wooden base inside the pen, and all four Henriettas ran to the base, inspected it, and deemed it a very pleasing jungle gym. They sat in it. They sat on it. They climb around its interior. They chatted among themselves about the wonders of discovering a jungle gym inside their yard. They gathered in a line on the edge of the gym and practice wing-building exercises, deep knee bends and unison appreciative clucking.

A few days later Nancy tipped the gym over on its side and voile: it was a whole gym! 

It is a busy, busy day today. The next door neighbor is mowing his lawn. He doesn't do it right. We have had to rush outside and correct him at least five times now. 

The people behind the fence: they've been talking again. We've had to speak sharply to them.

And the front yard is FULL of fools on wheels, pedaling past.

Last night a whole bunch of big trucks with flashing lights and rude noises flew past our house, and we put on our leashes and we all went outside and sat on the bench on the front porch, all of us, even Riley. It seemed like it might be more exciting than it was.

And there were lots of loud noises last night. We don't mind loud noises--like we're not afraid of them or anything--but they  make us nervous and super diligent about patrolling the property. We had to go check on The Ladies at least nine times. At one point Cheryl put us on a leash and made us lay under the kitchen table while she ate something that smelled particularly good. (She gave me a few pieces--it was really good. For some reason it made me think about The Ladies, but I know that's bad.)

Cheryl is playing a new games with us. It's called...something, I don't know... This is how  you play. We run outside and alert her to something. She calls, "Annie!" (We ignore her.) She calls, "Annie, come!" (Depending on what we're doing, sometimes we come, sometimes we linger...) If we're particularly busy barking, she calls, "Annie, Leave IT!" and then she calls, "Annie, come!" and we come and she gives up a treat. Every time. It's kind of amazing. Sometimes we come whether she's called us or not. She says strange things like, "I didn't call you, Annie--you get the treat when you come when I call."

She also says stuff like, "We need to speed up the lag between my call and your come" and then she pats me on the chest and sings about tiger eyes. She does that, Riley says. I don't know what that's about. but Holly really taught her the good stuff about treats. 

But right now we're going to work with Nancy and this is very good because it's a 'go' thing. We are all about going. The other day Cheryl was going to go somewhere and we trotted right out to the garage door with her, and we sat when she told us to sit because--we didn't want to--but she told us to and we did, and we used our very best pleading brown eyes and every muscle in our body was keyed up to GO with Cheryl...

And she left us.

We did everything we were supposed to do, and she left us.

Our heart was broken.

And then we went outside and corrected the neighbors, which Cheryl keeps saying is really not our job, but that just goes to show you what she knows. 

And here we are on the Fourth of July.

I used to love the Fourth. I love holidays. And a holiday in the middle of summer? Well, about half-wasted on a school kid, but we always DID something on the Fourth. Went to the lake, went to picnics, eventually went to the fireworks. I have oohed and aah-ed over fireworks with the best of them. And I love my country. I love freedom, baseball and apple pie. Well: apple pie, really--never having finessed the fine art of baseball, I equate it, personally, with watching paint dry. Paint that spits and scratches itself. Nonetheless, I made a special compartment in my mind for fireworks and loved them.

I was sitting on a not-overly populated lake up north, watching fireworks, when I realized the loon that had been floating on the lake was terrified. And (I am a slow learner) it belatedly dawned on me that we celebrate the birth of our nation with the sounds of war. Watching that poor bird fly around the lake, looking for a safe place, took some of the fun out of fireworks for me. It appears to be permanent.

And then Murphy came to live with us. Murphy is terrified of fireworks. Murphy shivers and shakes and burrows under things and goes wall-eyed when the fireworks came out. It hurt me to see her so frightened. And she was ten the first time we went through the fireworks together, so it was unlikely there was anything Ranee or I were likely to do to change the situation.

Noomi was terrified of fireworks.

Riley and Annie are not. Annie, however, is excitable, and loud random explosions over the course of a long weekend just wind her up. She is prone to barking bursts and hysterical house-galloping anyway; after a weekend of fireworks--and today, on the Fourth, we are going into the second weekend of fireworks this year--Annie is wired.  Our lives are pretty much devoted to keeping Annie from getting wired.

(Yes. Dogs bark. Annie barks at people who walk past our house, dogs that walk past our house, dogs that move in their own yard on our right, dogs that move in their own yard on our left, dogs that move in their own yards behind us, dogs that move in their own yards across the street from us. Annie barks at our neighbors when they talk on their own deck. Annie barks at wagons, pull toys, baby buggies, car, trucks or boats blowing sirens. Annie barks at squirrels, cats, aggressive birds and the occasionally dragonfly. She reports, although she does not necessarily bark about, any unusual activities from The Ladies. If none of these things occur, Annie barks at the wind, the rain, leaves that move, and sometimes I simply lack the imagination to determine what Annie is barking at. This is not a terrier: this is a hyper-reactive dog responding to every known stimuli in the universe until calming Annie has become our singular goal in life. The bark machine helps. Training helps. Vigilance on our part helps. Sheer emotional exhaustion does not help.)

Recently Riley bolted through the front door during a guest greeting and Annie bolted after him. He stopped four cars before we caught him: Annie chose a different adventure which reminded us that the stakes for her (and us) are even higher. We need to get this behavior under control. We have now posted a sign on our door which says:

We are in training. Please ring our bell and wait patiently while our women catch us and get us under control. Please do not open our door and let us out because we will run and up down the street like idiots and our women will be surly and short-tempered all evening.

The Dogs   

I believe a very real part of the problem is that our training methods are not the training methods Annie experienced the first year of her life. I doubt that anyone would argue that's a bad thing. She remains terrified of raised hands, sticks, canes, even random boards. While Nancy was recovering from her hip surgery Annie had a terrible time getting into the truck with her because the cane from hell was in there. Neither of us have ever hit her with a cane. Or a stick.

Still, she is either very, very smart, or she was trained to do a number of things that we are diligently re-training her to do. One of the things that continues to vex me is a behavior she exhibited from the day she came to us that I don't recognize, but understand has some meaning for her. She would come up to me and sort of bop my hand with her muzzle. It's very distinctive: her mouth was closed--in fact, in the beginning, I couldn't treat her because she wouldn't open her mouth. She would bump my hand with the flat of her nose or even the bottom edge of her chin. Recently looking through a dog book I found a description of something similar to this in something called 'target training'. Unfortunately having read through the process, I still don't know what the ultimate goal is.

So what we are working on this weekend is recall and de-escalation. Annie runs outside. Fine. Annie trots around outside. Fine. Annie finds something to bark at hysterically, Cheryl shakes the treat bag and calls her inside. When she comes, Cheryl gives her a treat. We praise and reassure. And start all over again. Either the dog will (ideally) learn to come when I call her no matter what is going on, or she will learn she gets a treat for barking at other dogs or she will eventually weigh 212 pounds and I will be able to out-run her. We are employing 'leave it', and 'Annie come'  and shaking the treat bag until we run out of treats. Non-stop. My hope is this will help her spend a weekend as a dog instead of as a Militant Perimeter Guard. My hope is to keep her in a calmer, more controlled mental state. I don't know what else to do.

In the past few days I have trolled the internet looking for stories and videos about the Michael Vick dogs. Michael Vick had 49 fight dogs. Two were destroyed; one was too aggressive, and one was too sick and injured. Twenty-two of those dogs went to Dogtown, two mandated by the courts to remain permanent residents there. Seven of these twenty-two were adopted out to families. I think Bad Rap got a few of the other 27 dogs, but I'm still researching that. What I've seen so far is endless videos of pit bulls wagging tails and licking their handlers with unreserved joy. Which I find interesting, because Annie wags her tail so hard it sometimes knocks her over, but she has never kissed me. (Well, once: yesterday. It makes her uneasy.)  I don't think Riley has ever kissed me. Once, perhaps, very politely.

I woke up this morning cocooned in my blankets and pillows, barely able to move, and as I looked around to figure out the obstacles to a turnover, I spied two little black pop-up ears in the hollow between Nancy and me. It is her safest place. From the time we go to bed at night until we wake up in the morning, Annie is burrowed in between us, just as tightly as she can get. She doesn't bark. She doesn't run frantically around the room. She doesn't growl (unless we dislodge her.) She will sleep as long as we sleep.

We continue to struggle to find ways to make the world a safer place for Annie.  

I am still alive. I have actually been writing, although I have switched horses and plots and characters so many times I'm not sure even I can remember them. And I have been transferring my Xanga sites to Word documents so I have copies of them for my own use. Not sure what the future holds, just now, but so far I have decided to...float.

This is a recent visitor to our lawn. I took a photograph of a very similar creature last week and posted it on facebook with the question: What is it? Most people agree it's a common whitetail dragonfly. (Although there are a number of dragonflies who look a great deal, but not exactly, like this one.)

This is the facebook picture:

Do you notice anything? Why, yes: one white tail dragonfly has...a white tail. This one does not. The top dragonfly, as a matter of fact, looks like it might be suffering some sort of mold issue.

THERE'S A WORD FOR THAT!!!!

It's called 'pruinescence' and it is displayed as a territorial threat by mature male common whitetail dragonflies to whomever needs threatening in the common whitetail dragonfly world.

And even more interesting, this same process--'pruinescence'--accounts for the glaze that appears on mature grapes.

Someone in the scientific world has been very busy observing things I never even noticed before. (This from the woman who observed wild flox flowering in her garden, dying out and flowering again a month later without ever realizing, for 60-odd years, that one 'flox' has four petals* while the real flox has five. I'm not saying this superior vigilance is all that hard, I'm just saying it happens.)

*the first plant is actually Dame's Rocket. I think they look a great deal alike, disregarding the extra petal thing, so that means....they both grow in Michigan.

And with that astute observation, I will return to the thrilling days of pure fiction.

Vile and hostile threats are being issued right now. It is uncommonly dark for 9am and thunder is just rolling through the atmosphere as if 50 miles away Lake Michigan itself is under siege. (In this area of the woods, we blame all storms on Lake Michigan or South Bend.) Riley has gone outside to boof the storm into submission. I am having minor, minor technical challenges which are steadily becoming more problematic. The delete key took a vacation (always problematic for someone with my typing skills.) It appears things have restored themselves.

I am sitting here in the near dark listening to the thunder and drinking my morning coffee. Nancy is not feeling well this morning, which is both uncommon and worrisome. So I got up this morning, released the hounds, freed the chickens, fed the hounds, laid out her mother's breakfast array. Ilah is having her breakfast, Nancy is still in bed, Annie is napping on the couch and Riley is out in the back yard holding off the rain.

We lost power last night in the storm. It went off, it came back on, it went off, it came back on...Ilah's oxygen machine went into full screaming panic, all of the clocks reset themselves to midnight and Nancy and I raced like children around the house, closing all of the windows... The house is low to the ground and has a fairly wide roof over-hang, and it's in the city, where low, ground-level breezes are blocked thirty different ways by the time they reach us. Closing the windows is not the panic it used to be when I lived in the country on a slight hill in  two story frame house. It's really more of a ritual, now. And we hate to close the windows after three days of mid-eighties weather when the breezes are cool and exciting, as storm breezes tend to be.  We restored the oxygen machine, flipped the TV back on and went on with our evening.

Cheryl, Riley alerted me, there's bad weather outside. 

"Then stay here inside with us."

Oh. Okay. Ill protect you, Cheryl.

"Thanks, Rile."

I'll be right here.

"Good dog."

I'll just touch you from time to time to make sure you're okay.

"Thank you, Riley."

I'll do it, Annie offered, I'll do something--what should I do? She ran around the inner track in the house three times, but in the end she piled on the couch and watched TV with Nancy. Giving her strength.

For all of the threatening, there does not appear to be much of an actual storm right now, but I should probably not say that out loud until next Tuesday.

I wonder what Neil Gaiman is doing right now. (He's on the cover of this issue of Poets and Writers, which happens to be lying on my desk. I subscribe to it religiously, as if having the magazine around will automatically make me a better writer. I suppose it would be extreme dedication to actually read it.)

The sun might actually come out.

And somewhere I have received a text, facebook alert or some other telephonic communication, I can tell by the faint buzz in the background. Interestingly, the one thing my phone almost never does is ring.

My father should be at home again, recovering. Hey, Pop. Love you. Say hi to Ella for me.

Cheryl and I went to our Holly Class at PetSmart Saturday morning. We are pretty good at the class. We've taken it twice before. Cheryl says we have not progressed beyond intermediate because a.) we are unable to behave in a peaceful and sociable matter around certain other dogs (little, old, too high-strung) and we are unable to walk into PetSmart to meet Holly without the use of our Gentle Leader.

We hate our Gentle Leader.

We rub up affectionately against Cheryl's leg, pretending love and affection, when in fact, we are trying to rub off our Gentle Leader.

Without the Gentle Leader, we lunge and jerk and pull and behave badly.

We cannot pass our Canine Good Citizen test wearing a Gentle Leader.

Sometimes we hate it so much we stop dead in the middle of the road and start digging at our face for all we're worth. We would turn inside out if we could. We hate, hate, hate the Gentle Leader.

Not quite enough to behave well without it...

...but we may get there yet. 

There are 5 other dogs in our class. There is Sophie. We like Sophie. She's like us. And there is Lucy. Lucy is short and thick and easy-going and we like her. There are the puppies, who are both huskies and don't have a lick of sense between them, but we kinda/sorta don't mind them any more. And there is Vinnie. Vinnie is evil. Vinnie is so small we can hardly see him and he's a poodle. We hate poodles. At first we thought we would like to eat Vinnie, but Cheryl and Holly both say no, we can't do that. Now we would just like to meet him. They won't let us do that, either.

In our class we played a stupid game where the people shout 'heel...heel...heel..." while waving Lickety Sticks in our faces and we walk past all of the other dogs in class. One of the puppies came over and nose-kissed us. Ordinarily we would object to that, but hey--he's just a kid. We let it go, this time. We were supposed to 'sit' while the dogs all heeled by sucking Lickety Sticks. I told Cheryl, I'm not sitting. This floor is hard and it's hot in here and I'm not doing it.

"She's lost her mind," Cheryl said to Holly.

Then we put on long strings and ran down aisles and every time we found something interesting, Cheryl would shout, "Leave it!" and then "Annie, come." I guess that was fun for her. She got all happy and gave me a whole handful of treats because one of the interesting things I left was Vinnie.

And then we went home, and we helped Nancy work on the chicken pen all afternoon. I thought maybe I could go inside the pen and smell a hen or two, but both Nancy and Cheryl said no.

I never get to have any fun here.

This is me helping Nancy.

I have been saving past blogs to my hard drive. There is a method set up to archive all of the blogs through Xanga, but I am convinced I will end up with a bunch of files I can't use because they're written in some language my computer refuses to understand. I'm saving them, blog by blog, in Word. Which is pointless... Old Word files die over time as well, it's just...my printer won't print color any more and it's a pain to print in B&W (requires diligence and additional keystrokes--otherwise everything comes out green.) I suspect whatever is wrong with my printer is a simple clog, but I have no idea how to fix clogs and when you can buy them for $50, no one fixes them any more...

The dogs are at work, the chickens are fine and it's not quite time for lunch yet. Someone is mowing their lawn. The birds are chattering away in the yard. Peter peter peter 

Annie and I have class tomorrow morning. She was home with me all day yesterday while Nancy came and went, running errands, shopping for groceries... She did bark and do a lot of running in and out, but she's better. She's still Annie, however. She and Nancy went out last night to shut the chickens in the coop and Annie sat as instructed while Nancy went through the yard door. However, Annie very much wanted to go too and the release cue for 'wait' needs a little work yet, so she concluded waiting and bolted into the hen yard (being four times as fast and Nancy or I have ever been, and certainly are not now...) Nancy expected her to dash right through the coop doorway and decimate all four hens before she, Nancy, could even get there: she didn't. We're not sure why, but the chickens are fine. Instead Annie decided her diet needed a generous helping of chicken shit, and so she ate that, leaping from deposit to deposit to avoid Nancy's grasp... By the time they made it back into the house Nancy was mad enough to kill, no treats had been dispensed for good outdoors-going, and Riley was burrowed down in tight in a hole somewhere. Annie came to me. Nancy's gone crazy, Cheryl--she hates me now and I didn't do anything wrong... 

But the ladies survived, as did the dog.

I have to say I have really been enjoying the weather lately. Today is a little warm, but the evenings are nice, the sunlight is wonderful, and nothing seems parched or dry quite yet. I'm happy. 

And it would seem I am possessed of no particular insight or wisdom this...noon...so away I go. I will be steam-cleaning the carpets this afternoon, so the lovely attitude is doomed. On the other hand, it isn't that hard, never takes anywhere near as long as I expect, and it will be nice to get it done. Again.

And she's coming. It's lunch time.    

I have assigned the chickens names. This is complex because a.) I can't remember their names from one day to the next, b.) they're not my chickens, and c.) I can't tell three of the four of them apart. The chicken above is one of the three. She is braver than her sisters (they were huddled against the back fence, clucking to each other about the nerve of me, stepping into their yard,) and she came over to determine what I was doing. She stared very intently at my right shoe for some time. This apparently told her everything she needed to know and she went to the back of the yard to report her findings.

So, this may or may not be the same chicken. As you can see, she's deformed (or holding her breath.) Some of their larger feathers are just not quite right. My grandmother's chickens used to molt about once a year, and we would drop by for a family visit and her chickens would be running around about half-naked in their yard. Every so often she would have a hen in isolation because chickens are not at all bright, nor are they particularly kind to each other, and when something looks a little different, they peck at it. So all of the hens would decide Gertrude looked a little 'off' today and begin pecking at her, and soon Gertrude started sprouting holes, which would then bleed, which only fueled the frenzy... This dampened my ardor for chickens, actually. I was a child who had enough problems of her own in the school yard. 

Somewhere in the neighborhood some little kick dog is issuing a singular Bark! followed by 7-35 seconds of silence and then another high-pitched Bark! And it's not my dog. My dogs are behaving quite well, at the moment. They have given up on the chickens. This morning, after another character-building session of courage and food-eating, Riley burst through the back door and ran over to the chicken yard: once there, he looked around, seemed to nod to himself Yeah, they're still there and went off to visit his other morning checkpoints. Annie has been in and out thirty-five times already this morning. She has a regular path worn into the lawn. First I go here and then I go there and then I duck back over here, and then I check the fence on the right and then ...

There is a sound the dog's paws make when they're digging at the fence. It's much like listening to someone hammer on their roof. Someone must be working on their roof because I've heard that sound three times already this morning, dashed out to rescue to the chickens, only to fall over Annie as she raced (yet again) through the hole in the back door and find Riley ambling along Annie's path. Neither dog was anywhere near the chicken yard. I believe I can relax my vigil. Riley spent most of yesterday afternoon outside and he never once went near the chickens. You sprayed me six times with a water bottle, Cheryl. I hope weasels eat your chickens, and don't think I'm going to tell you, when it happens...

My father is back in the hospital. He is on a number of medications that continue to do their work with complete disregard to how the rest of his system is functioning. Someone tested his blood and said, "Whoops--this is pretty much water, at this point," which--while improving the flow--is not exactly the consistency the body expects of blood.

I have called for an update today, but while I can hear her, she apparently can't hear me.