The Wandering Writer...and her dog

January 25

2009-01-25T13:42:00.000-08:00

Home at last! I've been down South for a while, caring for both of my parents while the husband h'as been home caring for Bear and The William, the house and the rest of our lives. It's been a rough time and continues to be. My mother's condition continues to decline, slowly, but she is home with Dad and comfortable.

There have been many blessings for me during this time I have spent with them. A great deal of healing that needed to happen in our relationships has and my sister and I are a lot closer than we have been in a long time. Things continue and I will be going back down at the end of the week again to spend the weekend with them.

Happy wandering!

The Writer...and her dog, Bear.

Rapidly Approaching the new year...

2008-12-27T19:07:00.000-08:00

Christmas is passed and I hate to say this but I barely noticed. Tom and I had such great plans for it this year. This was to be our first Christmas that the kids were not with us. It was morbidly depressing until we realized that all of those things we wanted to do when we were younger, like going for a carriage ride through a quaint Christmas town and stopping by a pub to take the chill off of our noses were possible again. Then my mother was hospitalized for kidney failure on the 22nd and after the CAT scans it was discovered that the cause of the kidney failure was terminal lymphatic cancer that filled her belly and cut off her kidneys.

Kind of put a damper on the whole old Christmas Spirit ...

So, on Christmas day, Tom was in New Jersey and I was in Delaware.

I learned something from this Christmas, though, especially about giving. I really was stumped about what to take my mom for Christmas, so I finally decided to take her the one thing I knew she would eat no matter what...glazed donuts. Watching both of my parents as my mother scarfed down her glazed donut was worth ever Christmas present I ever screwed up on because it was one of the last pleasures in life she is ever going to have and those moments of sitting there and chatting with her about crabbing on the Chessapeak Bay and all of the boating we did when I was a kid while she ate that stupid donut were worth traveling to the moon for if I had to.

My mom is passing right now between here and the next place. It could be a horrible thing, and it is for my father, but to me, dying is a lot like being born. For me, it's a passage, not an ending. My goal in all of this is to give Mom the best quality of time that I can. She doesn't always know who I am. She doesn't always hear what I'm saying or understand, but I'm pretty sure that she knows that I love her and that's why I'm there. In the end, I think that's probably all that is going to matter.

I'm going to miss her when she passes. God, how I'm going to miss her, but I know she's going to be watching me. I also know that she won't be in the pain she is beginning to pass through and her mind and body will be restored to her. For that I am thankful because she doesn't know what is happening now.

My greatest prayer in this is that I am with her in the end to pray because my father's parting gift to her is to keep her ignorant of her condition. In short, she will not be able to prepare herself spiritually for this passage. For him, it's an act of love. To me, it makes a hard thing all the more difficult because she knows something is happening but not what.

And today on the phone when I told her I had made it home okay she wanted to know all about the flower pots...

There weren't any flower pots. She was in a different place.

The Writer...and her dog, Bear

Where has she been?

2008-12-13T04:28:00.000-08:00

Hello all!

As mentioned in my email by some of you, I haven't been around much lately. There is a reason for that, actually two. On December 2, 2008, I started college again. I also started working full time. In school I am taking a compressed online course in which we cover an entire semester in 5 weeks. I love it, but it is a lot of reading and writing! At work, I am working one and a half positions as I am filling in for a co-worker who is out on maternity leave. I started my job five days before the end of the last quarter of our fiscal year after having the girls in the office, who didn't really understand the computer program I work with, filled in my job for a month...after the girl who worked my job over the summer, who really didn't understand this program either walked out. Consequently, I have been having to go back over an entire quarter of the year, clean the data up and create the monthly reports, quarterly reports and annual reports for my position.

Nightmare does not describe what has been transpiring with all of this... however, I do have it pretty much straightened out at this point and will hopefully be moving into the new year with the reports in order... I hope.

SOOOOOOO..... This is why I have not been writing here. I've been working a lot and going to school.

Bear is adjusting to all of this pretty well. The husband has been working with him, taking walks with him...military style, which Bear absolutely loves, and has cut down on the "leaking" in the house all of the time. It seems that 3 miles a day, up and down the mountain is perfect for him. It is also improving Bear's listening skills, considerably. He does still require "Mommy time," but not all of the time.

One of the things we have noticed is that Bear has real separation issues from us, howling miserably when one of us leaves the house or even goes to shower. He really wants both of us within sight, and The William as well. He is really enjoying the cold and doesn't mind being outside on the run at all because he can see us through the windows and hear us. As soon as he can't, the howling begins as well as well as nervous prancing and leaking. After seeing this, I really believe that is where the chewing and destructive behavior comes from when we are gone. He gets very upset and anxious and just starts tearing at things. He has also taken to watching us out of the windows whenever one of us is outside or leaves and he is inside.

While it is wonderful to be loved this much, I do not think it is something we are going to be able to cure Bear of and thus, the crate will probably remain a fixed part of our lives. He has gotten to the point where he really likes his crate and knows that it is "his place" alone. Sometimes he just goes in and hangs out in there with his toys and when he has done something wrong, that is usually where we find him. He goes in now whenever we tell him it is time to without us having to pull or coerce him into it, which is nice!

Other big news is that we have, indeed, survived the ice storm in the North East! We lost power Thursday evening and it came back on at about 4 this morning. All in all, it could have been a whole lot worse! The roads remained passable and the generator ran fine. The husband has gotten the water pump hooked to it, so we have water and lights as well as heat and refrigeration when the electric goes out like this. The water was the last big thing that we needed hooked in. While a bit of a pain in the neck, we were not as uncomfortable as we could have been and our neighbors all fared through it well too. There were definitely places in the area that did not have it this good!

So that is the "news that's fit to print" here. I've got to run as I need to go into work this morning and I am definitely going to hit the shower first! My next break will come at roughly Christmas, so if I don't get over here till then, I wish everyone a wonderful holiday!

Stay safe!

The Wandering Writer and her dog...Bear

Where are we on the days?

2008-11-29T16:43:00.001-08:00

So tomorrow I will, hopefully but not guarenteedly, figure out what day we are on. In the interum, I need to update about the week. I start school again on Tuesday. I'm finishing my Bachelor's degree and very psyched about doing it! Hunting season has continued and Bear has been a mess. House time is not his friend, especially as the weather gets colder, we have discovered. We've had an incredible amount of "mouthing" activity this week, which really grated on the nerves. The husband figured out that if we grab his tongue and hang onto it...which is very long due to the Boxer influence, the mouthing stops immediately.

Bear is not real thrilled about that, but his mouthing had transferred from grabbing my pinkie to take him out to grabbing my arm or clothes or whatever. It was enough, already. Now, whenever he mouths, we grab his tongue until he decides that maybe he doesn't need to have our entire appendage in his mouth any longer.

Bear has also been getting really rough in play and anxious whenever anyone comes...or leaves. We attributed this to the fact that he has been getting like no exercise lately and was thus focusing on everything else. A Bear with no exercise, it seems is a very nervous and anxious being. Yesterday, the husband decided that we should go out to the lower field and bat a tennis ball for the dogs to go fetch. The idea was great...aside from the fact that the husband is going to be 49 a few days after I am and his connecting with the old ball, well, ain't quite what it used to be at 25. He did make a few good hits, but during the time between those the dogs entertained themselves by chasing every car and truck that passed on the road.

Not good.

Especially since Bear is still not real clear on the "come" command.

The episode did last roughly 20 minutes or so but 10 of this was encompassed by looking for the ball which we never did find. All in all, not a real "exercise session" for the Bear...or the William for that matter.

Today, as I was trying to "configure a feng shui in which my portion of the biosphere and my schema develop a symbiotic synergy...aka clean my room while getting ready for school, I had what can only be described as an epiphany. Yes, the lightbulb went on and the heavens did part and I had an idea to channel some of this "anxiety" out of this poor dog before he drove all of us nuts!

"What," I thought, "if I were to take the haybales that we had gleaned from the now famous Pumpkin Party and started an obstacle course for Bear?"

Would it channel some of the excess energy? Would it make him less "mouthy?" Would it end the rough housing and accompanying ... leakage?

Turns out that it has.

I grabbed one of the sleds and Bear and I moved three of the bales plus took all of the gourds from the garden over to the compost. After that, we commenced to start "jumping" the bales!
(Well, he doesn't actually jump them. He hops on them and then jumps down but we do this at a run and I'm hoping that soon this will develop into a full blown jump.)

Bear is thinking that this is BIG fun and every time we go out, we have to do the "course" ... like five or six times. It's made for a much more comfortable inside time for all of us and a much more mellow Bear!

And now it's time for Dog's 101 so I gotta go!

Happy wandering!

The Writer...and her dog, Bear

Day 85

2008-11-21T18:10:00.000-08:00

Has it only been 85 days that Bear has been with us? My God! It seems like I have known this one for a lifetime! I guess that's what draws us to them...

Anyway, it has come to my attention that I am really behind in my reading...and commenting...which means that this weekend will be devoted to that. (I know. I cheat. I can't help it. I'm a perpetual procrastinator.) Anyway, I'll be around this weekend, and, unless the husband has other plans for the weekend, should be back to posting on Monday.

Happy wandering!

The Writer...and her dog, Bear

Day 82-84

2008-11-20T17:27:00.000-08:00

So life goes onward here. The job is requiring more time at present, but that's okay for now. The husband is off this week and next week is a short week because of the holiday, so Bear is getting pretty spoiled here. A friend is coming over in the mornings to go hunting with the husband which is giving Bear a lot of door greeting practice which is excellent for him, especially since I'm still sleeping at arrival time. Barking has not been a part of the picture for either of the dogs, which is really nice!

We've been using the ball quite a bit and doing off leash yard time with both of the dogs as running beyond the bounds of the yard is out of the question right now. We find that as long as there is a focus for the dogs, they stay pretty close and ball is a great focus for them.

Bear has taken to bringing in large chunks of branches that have fallen from the trees this week which is gangs of fun and is giving the vacuum cleaner a good workout. These are great "prizes" to him that he really seems to enjoy collecting. Each is special to him and hidden throughout the house. He's also getting much more comfortable with his crate, wandering in and out at whim, although I haven't seen him curl up for a nap in there on his own yet.

Biggest event for the dogs this week was that, as the grass is dying back, we are beginning to find all of the lost balls and their absolute favorite, the Kong bouncy ball, was found by Bear on one of our walks. It had rolled into the trench by the road. He spotted it and proudly brought it back to show off to The William, who promptly too possession of it and has yet to relinquish.

We found the ball on Tuesday.

Happy Wandering!

The Writer ... and her dog, Bear

Day 81 part 2

2008-11-15T12:54:00.000-08:00

Oh Irene! Our wealth is not measured in the number of deer we get! It's measured in the security of knowing our community and being able to count on our neighbors... not because they are forced to give by the government and offer their least, but because they want to give and offer their best.

The food and heating situation is just an example of what I am talking about. It extends beyond that all throughout our community. The library is another example. We needed a new one because ours, having been built in the 1800's is now way too small to house the programs and books, let alone computers and equipment needed to move into this new century. We could have just raised taxes. We could have gone to the State. We, as a community, decided not to primarily because we, as a community, wanted to define what we feel will be necessary for our library to have in the future. This offered us an enormous amount of flexibility in designing and building this project, including switching the heating/cooling system, mid-construction, to geothermal.

How are we paying for this project? Donations and The Pumpkin Party. My funnel cakes are helping to build a library...along with donuts, used book sales, and a host of other things that people are doing all throughout this community. We also aren't paying construction crews to build it. We're building it ourselves with our own hands, donated equipment and even some donated materials. Little by little, it's building a library that will outlive all of the people who have participated in building it and the stories that our children pass down to theirs about doing this are what will preserve this place and keep it growing. I think that is one of the best reasons for doing this the way that we are.

Yes, we could have settled for less and had the government do it for us, but why do that when we can design and make exactly what we wanted to ourselves?

It's the difference in our way of thinking, of dreaming and of living that I think we are talking about here... not deer meat, and whether or not we are willing to settle for allowing our government to determine where we live and what we do with our lives. I like being able to determine those things for myself rather than being stuck as some anonymous cog in a system whose only purpose it to perpetuate itself by keeping me dependant upon it.

I don't see that as being justice and I sure don't see being kept incapable as being equality. I see it as slavery.

Happy wandering!

The Writer...and her dog, Bear

Day 81

2008-11-15T04:53:00.000-08:00

Welcome to America during hard economic times... The sun has been up for about two hours now and there's no sign of the guys. Haven't heard any shooting at all, so I'm guessing that the rain is having an effect on things this morning. What they need is a cold, clear morning. The deer are all bedded down today and aren't going to be moving in this weather.

Everybody is out today. I saw some of the older guys driving down the hill to the deli. They go down there to dry out and will be back around noon.

For the guys on this hill, the stakes are pretty high this year. In the next farmhouse up the hill, there's a family whose having a tough time. He was a pilot until a few months ago when he just one day didn't have a job anymore. The family is one of the newer ones on the hill. They've lived there for about eight years now. They have six kids and she works as a substitute for the school... their only "steady income" right now. When they moved in, they put everything they had into their new home. Now they're in danger of losing it and, while winter hasn't hit yet, heating is going to be a major issue.

Everyone on the hill knows and consequently filed for every tag they could get...even us. The husband and I don't need more that two deer at the most. The third will go to this family, along with the extras everyone else gets. They will need at least six to get through a year and could probably use eight.

Could this family go on the welfare system? Yes they could, but I don't see that happening in this community...especially with a family like this one. They are hard working people who have come into hard times and I know that this neighborhood is going to take care of them because, here, we rely on each other, not the government. This is how we survive up here and always have.

During my husband's deployments, which lasted almost two years, I wasn't alone. Every eye on this mountain was watching and when I needed help, it was here. Not once was my dignity imposed upon. Things would just happen. If the snow was coming too fast, the snow plough fairy would show up and dig us out in the middle of the night and you'd better believe that my mailbox was always kept accessible. If my tire was flat, one of the guys would show up and help me fix it. If we needed food, it would be in a box by the door. There would never be a note or anything else asking for recognition, just a quiet reassurance that everyone was standing behind us on this hill.

So, yes, we eat deer meat up here. We can buy meat in the stores, but if we had to do that for all of our meat, everyone in the county would be on food stamps because no one could afford to do it. The deer and game, the gardens and the fruit trees are all an integral part of life here and, yes, we do survive on them. The stores are used for toilet paper, laundry soap and supplementing the bulk of our diet that we provide for ourselves and our neighbors. Some may see this as being "primitive." We see it as independence and, as a community, we are very proud of it. To us, "primitive" would be standing by and doing nothing but watching as our neighbors get devoured by bureaucracy when part of the solution is walking around eating our front yards.

I guess it all depends upon the culture you live in.

The guys came in around 10:00 am. I'd like to think it was the aroma of my made from scratch biscuits, but I don't think it was. A father was seen walking the woods with his eldest son. If he's come down this far, it means there was nothing moving up at his place and, as they move down the hill, the "first fruits" of the season and the mountain are being gifted to them. There are enough deer for all of us here, and to us, there is nothing more important than the lessons of independence that father is teaching his son this day.

Happy wandering!

The Writer...and her dog, Bear

Day 80

2008-11-14T18:21:00.000-08:00

Oh God... "Opening Day" is tomorrow... For those of you not familiar with the rural life, there is a day every year that signals the hoped for decimation of the local deer population. "Two buck and a doe" are the hoped for commodity.

In the sticks, that's how families survive through the winter.

Tomorrow is the day that all of the men, and many of the women, on the hill here will go out and try for their first deer of the season. Sunrise is happening around 6:03 am, so at 6:02 and about 25 seconds it will sound like a cannon is going off on this hill. By 6:10, the hill will be silent and those that "got theirs" will be heading back to hang it off of the tree in the front yard. Those that didn't will sit and wait...to no avail, until 10:00 am or so in the rain.

It's a warm hunting season this year.

So, I'm planning a bacon and egg breakfast at 10:00 am with the Virginia bacon we brought up from down South from the Peanut Guy. Win, loose or draw, the bacon hits the grill at 10:00 and if the guys aren't there to get it... well... Bear and Willie will have a nice breakfast!

All of this has brought the problem of "how to dress" to the forefront for Bear. Hunters shoot at anything during season... well, non-locals anyway. We don't have too many of those on the hill here, but once in a while they do show up and Bear is exactly the type of dog that doesn't come home during this season...not that he's ever off leash, but these guys have been known to shoot horses and cattle in their lust to "kill Bambie." The thing that really gets me is that the non-locals are notorious for taking the yearlings... we call them "ling-lings" who have just lost their spots. The act as though they've taken a monster, when in point of fact, they are thinning the herd from the wrong end.

Anyway, Bear has been a concern in all of this because he really needs his morning walks! Let me rephrase that... I really need him to have his morning walk because if he doesn't, he drives me completely nuts for the rest of the day! So the problem was, what to walk him in. The husband came up with the answer! He had a half-vest that almost but not quite really fits bear and is blaze orange. Should do the trick, but I may just have to get him a hat as well. We shall see how the season goes.

Long season this year, so "the big drive" won't be for another three weeks. That is where the guys go through, "drive" down the hill and do the major culling on the herd. I know it sounds barbaric, but it's a lot better than watching the herd die during the winter and interfering with the cattle herds up the hill. These cattle feed the area as well as the deer. What isn't taken for meat for the hunter's families goes right into the food banks up here and ... well, the food banks have been getting hit pretty hard lately. Between the hunting and the churches... we're hoping that at least the families with children will be able to have holiday dinners this year.

Happy wandering!

The Writer...and her dog, Bear

Day 78-79

2008-11-12T12:23:00.000-08:00

With the "Bounding Bear Back" life has been a little bit hectic around here for the past couple of days. Outside time has once again become a necessity and Bear is getting a lot of it! He's feeling good, eating very well again and driving us crazy, which is what a Bear should do, I think.

Veteran's Day passed pretty quietly here. The husband and Vet did the ceremonies in town and indulged in the television Veteran's Day marathon. Both of the boys called from down South. Its always good to hear their voices and talk for a bit. They are both stationed down there but don't really get the chance to spend that much time together as they are kind of busy.

It's been a long war... very long.

Happy wandering!

The Writer...and her dog, Bear

Day 76 and 77...

2008-11-10T19:31:00.000-08:00

Boxer Bear is back, brazenly bouncing beyond boundaries, boldly barreling boisterously before balls and broadly bounding by his buddy, the William, tonight...

Happy wandering!

The Writer...and her dog, Bear

HEY! HEY! HEY!!!!!!!!!

2008-11-08T17:40:00.000-08:00

I GOT IT!!!!!!!

Due to technical difficulties, the posting of the winner of "The First Annual Really Silly Halloween Dog Picture Contest" has been slightly ... delayed in presenting on the site, but I am happy to announce that FINALLY, I figured out how to get it up here. Thus, without further adue and many congratulations I now present the winning entry in the above mentioned contest. Many thanks to phaird over at Dog Parks and for all of his assistance with this endeavor and congratulations again to –Luck O The Labrador!!!!

"Big Dog Discrimination

As a big dog owner all of my adult life, I have found there is a certain level of discrimination against the 50+ pound doggy crowd. Some hotels and resorts that are "pet friendly" are actually restricted to small dogs. Some people are more fearful of big dogs just because they are big. Houseguests don't want a big dog on their lap but probably wouldn't mind a small dog or cat.

I'm sure there are other examples but the most discouraging, especially this time of year, is the very small selection of big dog Halloween costumes! Last year, in order to participate in our local doggy day care's Halloween party, I went out in search of a costume for Finn, our 70-lb Labrador. I didn't have much luck as almost all of the costumes were only provided in small and medium sizes. I ultimately settled on a tuxedo and top hat outfit that came in size large. It appeared that all of the super cute costumes - the hot dog, the pumpkin, the dragon, etc. - were reserved for the small dogs.

I quickly discovered that even though the packaging on the tuxedo costume indicated it would fit a 50+ pound dog, I could barely get it zipped. Finn looked like a stuffed sausage as the costume fabric pinched and stretched across his chest and back. Worried that the circulation was being cut off to his legs and chest, the nice staff at doggy day care took some photos and quickly took the costume off.

So this year, I gave up on the costume idea and went with a simple neck scruff that was more comfortable and just as festive. As you can see by the picture, Finn was less than pleased to be wearing it but was a good sport overall! Happy Halloween!"

WOO HOOO! Congratulations Finn for a great job done!!!

Happy wandering!

The Writer...and her dog, Bear

Day 74 and 75

2008-11-08T09:15:00.000-08:00

And life is good. Bear is really feeling pretty much himself again and to celebrate his successful surgery, we went out today and got him an appropriately sized Kong. We already did have a Kong that we got for the William right after we got Bear, but Bear kept stealing it, a fact that I was really unhappy about because its the tiny one for 0-14 pound dogs...which Bear is not. I was really afraid of him using it because, for him, its a real choke hazard. He loved this thing though and I kept finding it in his crate... where all treasures now go.

So, anyway, we got one for the 60-90 pound dogs and stuffed it full of dog biscuits. He's been going to town with it ever since! Definitely an excellent deal and worthy of the price!!!

The presentation went well on Thursday night and I think there were a few more signatures added to the petition, which is good. I always get nervous before presentations like that but, aside from the fact that there was no sound and I had to use a boom box for part of it, it went pretty smoothly. It does me a lot of good to get out and talk to people about this issue, especially college kids.

I'm still working on getting Luck of the Labrador up here and will hopefully do so this weekend. I have her post, I just can't get the picture to transfer so we're going to have to work on that. Otherwise, it looks like a quiet, rainy weekend here.

Happy wandering!

The Writer...and her dog, Bear

Day 70-73

2008-11-06T03:15:00.000-08:00

My apologies for not posting sooner! Its been a busy week here in the States and we have a new President. Either way the election went, I have a big presentation to do tonight and have been preparing for this along with taking Bear out walking!

He's doing great and feeling pretty much himself again which is great to see! Biggest problem we are having at this point is keeping him from romping. That we can live with but has caused a great deal of frequent short walks. He is also finally sleeping through the night, pretty much now. He's still waking up but its usually around midnight so I'm getting an uninterrupted chunk of sleep again which I really needed!

Normally I won't get political on this blog, but with the election just passed and some of the things that I am working on, I really have to pass this on. The presentation I am doing tonight is a series of power points about my two grand-daughters. Both of these little girls were born premature. The first was born at 25 weeks gestation, 5 months, and the second at 35 weeks. A normal pregnancy is 40 weeks. As you can guess, this is a huge issue to me and, not surprisingly, after seeing what these two little ones endured in the early days and months of their lives, I support The March of Dimes in their efforts to see that every baby in the US gets a normal 40 week pregnancy.

Currently, 1 out of every 8 babies is being born in this country premature. Every day, 1400 babies are being born too soon here. One third of all babies who die in this country do so because of the effects of prematurity. What they, and their families endure is heart-wrenching and if there is a way to stop this from happening, I want it to become a reality.

If you feel that way too, please consider visiting www.marchofdimes.com , and signing the petition to continue funding for research, treatment and training for these little ones and their families. These children don't have a voice, but I do. As this is National Prematurity Awareness month, I'm using it as well as my signature in the hope that it will help them.

I hope that you will too.

Happy wandering!

The Writer...and her dog, Bear

Day 69

2008-11-02T16:09:00.001-08:00

And Bear does not deal well with pain killers!

Having finally gotten over the effects of the anesthesia, Bear was feeling pretty uncomfortable by this afternoon, so when the husband got home, we gave him one of the pain killers that the vet gave us for him. This proved to be a mistake for several reasons, but primarily because, rather than calming him down, it wound him right up like a clock! Granted, he felt no pain but he also lost all self control in area of contenance and has turned into the ADD/ADHD 70 pound puppy... with stitches.

This is not a good situation and thus, we have decided no more pain meds for Bear!

He is eating better as I have added canned food to his normal fare, but is still not feeling the greatest. He's still breathing through his nose quite a bit, which is nice for him! Its just going to take some time, I think.

Happy wandering!

The Writer...and her dog, Bear

Day 68

2008-11-01T16:49:00.000-07:00

Thank you to everyone for the well wishes for Bear! He had a little trouble this morning, but the vet said that he would and it has gotten better as the day has progressed. I think he gave him enough sedative for a horse, but it has finally worn off and Bear seems to have his legs back for the most part. I think that tomorrow we are going to go for a short walk and I'll see how he does with that.

I don't know if this is harder for bigger dogs or the medications they had to use because of the breathing or what, but I don't remember any of our dogs ever having this tough of a time coming out of the anesthesia before. Its been kind of a humbling experience, to say the least. He is doing well now, though, and chewing on his bone for the first time since he got home. William still won't play with him and is watching from a distance and Bear doesn't seem real inclined to wrastle yet. He has shown an interest in playing ball, though. We're a few days from doing that yet but it'll come. Its just nice to be looking into his big black button eyes and seeing somebody there again! Interestingly, he is still breathing through his nose too. I don't expect that to last, but it will be interesting to see what happens.

Happy wandering!

The Writer...and her dog, Bear

Day 67...Final update and the winner is....

2008-10-31T18:29:00.000-07:00

Its been a busy afternoon and evening and as I await phaird's opinion on all of the photos to see if he agrees with me or not, I thought a final update was in order. Bear is doing well, although I've spent most of today catching him as he falls over sideways because he's still a bit loopy. He was given extra steroids to help his breathing through the surgery and, because of his size, the went a bit heavy on the pre-surgery relaxants. I kind of hope he's enjoying the steroids because this is probably the only day he will be able to breathe through his nose the way he is and smell things the way that he is. Tomorrow or the day after, it will probably be back to panting and snoring.

He's just getting to the point now where he is feeling comfortable not touching me and is actually asleep in the other room while I'm writing this. He was pretty upset at first and wouldn't get off of my feet.

Willie is being great. Never more than a few feet away from Bear, he's keeping an eye on him but not teasing or trying to play. He was a bit concerned about the lack of food and water and told me about it quite adamantly. He had his food and water in his crate, but around 6:00 pm, decided it was time to get some down in the big bowls for Bear and that enough was enough. I put a little food and water down, which Bear has been able to keep down quite well, and the William proceeded to ignore it. The husband had fed and watered him this morning while Bear was at the vet so Will wasn't hungry to begin with. It was just the principle of the thing that was bothering him, I think.

I really want to thank everyone who sent pictures in! It really made my day to be able to check in and see all of these great pictures! The hardest thing has been to try to "judge" them impartially because I really feel like I know all of your dogs! This is one of the reasons I wanted to pull phaird, the dog photographer, in on this. I think he can look at these more objectively than I can because every time I pull one up I think "Oh...there's so and so and he looks so cute!" because they all do!

So, at 9:52 pm, the winner is still pending and if we don't get it up here by midnight tonight, we will definitely be trying to get it up by tomorrow...depending upon contact with whomever. In any event, we will definitely keep you posted!

Oop! Just heard from phaird and the verdict...I mean the vote is in! The winner of this year's First Ever Annual Really Silly Halloween Dog Photo Contest is ........................................................
................................................(this is a drum roll in cyberspace)...........................................................
......................................................................................................................................................................

FINN over at Luck O The Labrador !

Congratulations, Finn and I hope to hear back from you soon!

Again, I want to thank everyone who participated in this and hope it was as much fun for all of you as it was for us! It really has made a different animal out of Halloween for me, but I have to say that the coolest part of this whole thing, for me, has been watching you guys interacting with each other through this and seeing new links being made that maybe wouldn't have been there before!

Life isn't a spectator sport, even in cyberspace!

Happy wandering!

The Writer...and her dog, Bear

Day 66.... 67

2008-10-30T12:28:00.000-07:00

2nd update... Bear is home, a bit wobbly on his feet and seriously groggy! As I write, he is laying at my feet sound asleep. The surgery went very well and he had no problems with the anesthesia and breathing. They did it first thing this morning and called me at work about an hour after I got there. He was pretty upset when I left him, and pretty upset when I picked him up but seems very happy to be home now...just really sleepy.

We've got a couple of hours to go before 5:00pm so I'm thinking that a nap might be in order for me!

Happy wandering!

The Writer...and her dog, Bear

Update... Because of the contest, I'm going to just update here until tonight. We are now down to it and will be shortly walking out the door to go to the vet. Bear is not a happy camper this morning...not so much because there isn't any food down, but because he hasn't had any water since last night. Being a mouth breather, he dries out quickly and loves to have his water. He also didn't have his "cookie" when he came in this morning so he knows something is up with that. Anyway, I'm looking forward to tonight when Bear will hopefully be back home and sleeping things off. It depends upon how he does with the anesthesia as to whether he will be able to come home or have to spend the night at the vet's. I'm hoping he's home!

Happy wandering!

The Writer...and her dog, Bear

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!! Okay, this may seriously change my opinion about Halloween! We've got a great start going with http://luckothelabrador.blogspot.com/2008/10/big-dog-discrimination.html and Bad Mutha Fudruckers !!! These ladies have set the bar high, Gang, and left Bear and I, both, with a smile on our faces as we face our hour of .... well... ya know.

After taking a first glimpse here, I'm thinking that I'm going to have to call on you, phaird, for some impartial judging assistance. These ladies are good and its going to prove difficult to pick just one!

Enter early and as often as you like! This is definitely proving to be fun!!!

Happy wandering!

The Writer...and her dog, Bear

Day 65 part 2...and the "Really Silly Halloween Picture Contest"

2008-10-29T14:04:00.001-07:00

Okay, I'm going to admit it. Halloween has never been my favorite holiday. As a matter of fact, on a scale of 1-10, Halloween has always rated about a negative 73.2. I really despise horror movies too and there is probably some Freudian connection in all of this, but the bottom line is that I've just never gotten into the whole Halloween thing... until I took this picture during Bear and Willie's first game of ball.

At the time, I thought, "Wow! They look like two goolies with pumpkin heads running through a field!" and actually, they do. I also thought that everybody probably has one of these pictures of their dog where the flash buggers their eyes and their love of a dog looks possessed. "Wouldn't it be fun," I wondered, "to run a contest for the "best Halloween dog picture" on the blogsphere?"

I querried with phaird over at Dog Parks about it...Hi phaird!... and he was willing to help out, but then things got busy with the job and ... well, life, the universe and everything, so the idea kind of fizzled...until today when I realized that on Halloween, the husband is out of town and Bear is in surgery all day and recovering all night so its really going to be pretty boring around here! So, in the hopes of not being bored to death on Halloween night, I am launching the "First Official Best Halloween Dog Picture Contest!" If you've got one of these pictures, post it on your site, hit my comments and let me know you have it up and I will come around and see if yours wins. The first and only prize will be that you can post your picture and the story behind it here on my site... and maybe I can find a blog award thingie to go with it. 5:00 pm Eastern Daylight Savings Time on October 31, 2008 (oops! forgot to put that in earlier...) is the cut off and we will hopefully be posting the winner at midnight on Halloween.

The rule is, its got to be a picture of your dog, suitable for publishing on this blog, and have something to do with Halloween...ie, spooky...like the one above, costumed, messing with the pumpkin...whatever. Have fun with it but be tasteful. You are also going to have to do a paragraph about it...which is three sentences or more in legnth.

I know, incredibly silly but it will keep me occupied... and phaird, if ya wanna lend a hand on this you're more than welcome!

Oh, and the more the merrier on this thing so if you want to post about it on your site, feel free!
(I'm really not looking forward to sitting around here all night by myself watching Bear sleep off the anesthesia...)

Happy wandering!

The Writer...and her dog, Bear

Day 65

2008-10-29T04:37:00.000-07:00

I am seriously bummed this morning! As you can see from the photo above, there was snow just not here. Bear did get a taste of some that had collected on the leaves a few minutes ago, but did not get to play in the predicted 3-7 inches they were calling for all day yesterday.

Every school in the county either didn't open at all or released the children by noon yesterday because of this storm.

All evening activities, everywhere, were canceled last night.

Everyone in the county was expecting to wake up this morning to a snowday and ya know what we got? A whole lot of wind and some flurries.

Even as I write this, it is snowing outside and blowing like a bat. Is anything laying? No.

This storm was a gyp and I feel seriously cheated because, for the first time in my life, I was really looking forward to coming home and shoveling because Bear would be playing in his first snow with me while I did it.

Well, maybe next time. There will be other storms this year, I'm sure.

Happy wandering!

The Writer...and her dog, Bear

Day 64

2008-10-28T13:55:00.000-07:00

Just got the call. Bear has "wonderful" blood and the surgery is set for first thing Friday morning. This tells me two things. First, the vet probably snuck in the DNA test and is really tickled about what he found because it probably confirms that Bear is a 100% purebred all American web footed mutt and he must have really impressed them because he was bumped to the front of the line for the surgery!

All of that aside, something more exciting is happening now and I hope the power doesn't go out before I finish writing this. We are having what looks to be the first snow of the year today. Combine a wind more powerful that "the blusteries" from the other day and snow instead of rain and you've got the idea of what's happening only this one is taking down trees all over the place. It hasn't laid here yet, but I'm hoping by tomorrow it will. It's an interesting storm because there is a snowline that is just above us with it. Earlier, I could look over to the mountains acrosss the way and see it clearly, but it's snowing and blowing too hard to see over there now. I'm hoping that by late tonight and definitely in the morning there will be enough to let Bear go out and play in! Because he was born last spring, he hasn't seen a snow. This will be his first and we get to be a part of it! He wasn't really much impressed when we went out to go hurry earlier, but once it's on the ground, I think he's going to have a blast!!!

Willie really isn't very much of a snow beast. He gets cold really quickly and the snow clumps up in his paws and fur. Bear, on the other hand, looks to be bred for it! I think we're going to find out about that pretty soon!

Happy wandering!

The Writer...and her dog, Bear

Day 61,2 and 3

2008-10-27T16:50:00.000-07:00

The weekend is over and it was back to work today but not before Bear went to the vet for his pre-surgery checkup. He did very well and the vet really looked him over! He's gained 11 pounds since he has been with us which seemed odd to me because it doesn't seem like he has grown all that much. As per the vet, he should top out at somewhere around 100 pounds. His bones won't seal until probably around 18 months so he's got the bulk of his growing yet to do. As the vet put it, he is going to be a very substantial dog!

Bear does have a diagnosis of being a "Mouth Breather" and having "Breathing Problems." He checked his face thoroughly and could not be sure whether the problem with his snout is due to a break or genetic as there was evidence to support both, including the chipped canine which he could have done himself. In the end, it doesn't really matter because the result is the same. He cannot be muzzled, because of the breathing and with the breathing combined with his coat and coloring, he's going to have a rough time in the heat and we need to keep him cool. ( I guess this means we won't be moving to NC to be with the kids anytime in the near to immediate future but should start thinking about summering in Alaska or Nova Scotia.)

The other thing that might be breathing related but might also be breed related is the just stopping and laying down in the middle of our walks and play. Bear gets short bursts of energy but wears out pretty quickly. This could be breathing but could also be that he looks to have St. Bernard in him...and Bernese Mountain Dog...and Rottweiler...and Boxer/Boston terrier or Pug... but not Akita or Chow. Without a DNA test, we're probably never going to know what he is exactly except that he's an "All American, web footed Mutt" and a really cool dog!

I'm okay with that.

The vet and staff were all very impressed with how well Bear was listening to me and how intelligent he is! I swear it was the starvation for the blood work because he really was perfect the entire time. He alerted on the vet the first time the vet walked into the waiting room but didn't growl or anything, just watched... which is what he's supposed to do. The vet looked at me when Bear did this and said to me, "His job is to take care of you, isn't it?" I had never really thought about it that way before, but it really is and he does seem to take this very seriously. He was "working" the entire time we were out and made sure to check everything and everyone to see if they were "friend or foe" in the office...not so much to him, but to me.

He didn't have a problem with any of the other animals there...and there were dogs and cats who were just kind of wandering around the office and waiting area, except right before we left when a man came in with a Doberman mix that he couldn't really control. Bear didn't growl or lunge but he did place himself very solidly between me and this other dog and gave him "the glare" that said, "If you really feel like coming over here, it's really gonna be the last thing you do." The vet was really great about it and calmly told the owner of the other dog that Bear would not tolerate this dog getting near me, while he navigated Bear and I to a "safe area" in the waiting room and body blocked the Doberman into an exam room because it kept lunging at Bear and I. Bear stood his ground, but did not get aggressive toward the other dog, which was really good because the way this dog and owner were acting, I was about to and the only thing preventing this was Bear! He also didn't make a sound through that whole thing, which was interesting.

Anyway, I was really proud of him! He listened to me the entire time but also kept constantly assessing the situation even while he was being examined and that is exactly what he is supposed to do. He also read me very well and picked up on what he was supposed to do and how he was supposed to behave. The best thing was that he operated in concert with me .... without a whole lot of verbalization on my part which really surprised me a lot!

So, should everything come back okay with his blood work, we are on for Friday!

As to the nail file... So far, it takes getting used to for both of the dogs. Neither will tolerate me doing their nails with it yet, but both allow Tom to. As far as the job it does... eh... I think at this point a clipper would be faster and less of a hassle for them. The other thing about it is that, because of his coat and the webbing on his feet, Bear has a lot of tactile hair between his toes and the vibration tickles him a lot so we can only use it for very short time periods before he goes nuts and tries to eat it.

Would I recommend it? I think its to early to tell at this point as it definitely takes the dogs getting used to. My one note on this is that if you're going to get one, don't get it from eBay. Ours was supposed to come with four extra emery's and an instructional video. It came with one extra emery and no instructions.

Happy wandering!

The Writer...and her dog, Bear

Day 60

2008-10-24T19:28:00.000-07:00

And I'm toasted! Not only is everyone sick with strep or on a conference...the only sane person in this office is ten years pregnant and about to pop with a 10 pound baby who is premature!

But I got to go up and play with the baby all throughout the day when I got too aggravated with the computer and phones!

Who says my job doesn't have perks?

Bear got to spend the day frolicking with the husband and Willie and is now quietly resting.

I ordered one of those battery operated dog nail files on ebay and the husband tried it out tonight. Willie just about "de"-handed him while he was using it...which was pretty funny. Bear hasn't had his turn with it yet. I figure that tomorrow is bath day and I will do it then. He did do quite a bit of ear schlarping and sitting on the chair with me, but that's a normal even with him.

This has been an incredibly long week for both of us. Thank goodness I don't go in to work until Monday afternoon! He needs a good romping of a weekend and I think that is what we are going to have!

Happy wandering!

The Writer...and her dog, Bear

Day 59

2008-10-23T18:17:00.000-07:00

Ugh........ I just got home from work. Everyone in the office either has strep or is at a conference...so I guess tomorrow I'm the agency. Lovely.

On a personal note, I made Bear's appointments today. Monday, we go in for blood work and to get his face checked out to make sure that we can do this. Because of Bear's breathing, the vet wants to do a really thorough check before using anesthesia with him, a move I thoroughly appreciate! If all goes well and his blood work is good, the surgery is Friday of next week. That will give us the opportunity to be here with him during early recovery which I will feel much better about!

It was a really really long day today, ending in facilitating a satellite class tonight, so I am exhausted and I think Bear knows. He's been a real softie with me since I got home and just wants to hang around with me...and sit on my desk chair with me while I write...and drool in my ear... I still haven't figured out how he manages to fit up here at the same time as I do.

Oh well. It his way of letting me know that the day was as long for him as it was for me. Its kind of nice to come home to someone who just wants lay on my ankles and chew on my feet...

Happy wandering!

The Writer...and her dog, Bear

Day 58

2008-10-22T14:47:00.000-07:00

HA! Okay, today's a great day. It really is. I worked all day and got home late to check the mail...and do you know what was there? That's right!

THE CERTIFICATE HAS ARRIVED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yes, its that long awaited certificate from the New York State Department of Agriculture that will curtail Bear's ever growing urge to climb on me and enable him to develop consistent thought patterns in the near to immediate future! Not only that, it will be our part in the growing effort to curb the overpopulation of stray dogs on the planet and establish my community in the New York State Department of Agriculture's spay/neuter program.

Thank you! Thank you!

Its been a strain on everyone in the household, but we've made it through the most difficult phase of this endeavor and better times are at hand for us. The only bummer is that I'm going to have to call from work tomorrow to schedule the appointment because the vet was closed by the time I got home...

Before everyone gets upset and thinks that I have a grudge against unfixed dogs, I would like to clarify why this is such a big deal to me. We've always had multiple dogs in the household and one of the things we noticed early on in our years of domestic bliss with canines is that dogs that are not fixed get difficult to handle, for us, especially when there are more than one of them. It has been our experience that neutered male dogs make much nicer, calmer pets and get along much better with each other and everyone else. I want that for both of these guys and that's why we are doing it. It has nothing to do with altruism and an overpopulation of dogs on the planet and everything to do with wanting Bear's experience as a pet and my experience as a pet owner to be the best one that we can have. Its completely selfish. Oh well...

Should the weather cooperate, treasure hunting will hopefully recommence tomorrow although its looking pretty nasty out there tonight...

Happy wandering!

The Writer...and her dog, Bear

Day 57

2008-10-21T13:00:00.000-07:00

This is the time of year where "The Blusteries" come through here. Short storms with ferocious winds that hit in minutes and bring leaves and limbs crashing to the ground! It seems late to be hitting this year, but I think that has more to do with the incredibly long and early Indian Summer we just had than anything else. We really don't rake the leaves too much up here because of this. Everyone knows that one good bluster and they're all going to be gone...or all over the side of the yard you just raked.

This was our day today. Blusteries blowing in and out with a hint of the snow that will be coming soon. Unfortunately, this pretty much "tanked" our plans for "treasure hunting" today. We were up behind the house playing ball when this one hit. It was Bear's first time out of a kennel during a storm, let alone one like this. It was really interesting to watch his reaction to the whole thing because he panicked. I was watching the storm approach over Red Mountain across the way. It hit the top and came climbing down faster than Willie could find his precious ball and Bear was beside himself. He didn't know whether he should bolt for the tree line, grab Willie and carry him to the house or grab me and carry me. As the rain began to hit sideways and the wind blasted, he froze not knowing what to do.

With Willie finally in possession of the ball, I started to run around the house under the trees which caused a great deal of concern for Bear. Finally we hit the porch and all got into the house before getting thoroughly soaked. Missing my treasure hunt for the day, I grabbed the camera and began video taping from the porch, remembering the fun I used to have with the kids watching storms like this blow through. These are the storms that Rip Van Winkle was made of, bouncing between the mountains and rolling through the valleys, carrying great peels of thunder in the summer...

Realizing those days are now gone, I turned the camera off, opened the old screen door to come in and dry the dogs.

And those memories are my treasures for this day.

Happy wandering!

The Writer...and her dog, Bear

Day 56

2008-10-20T12:31:00.000-07:00

Something happened today that really got me thinking. This morning, I posted my entry and suddenly I was getting views from all over the world within minutes. It was really interesting to watch because this was the first time this had happened to me on the blogger network. I didn't know what was happening or why and it got my brain turning.

Fifty-six days ago, I began this blog about a journey... a "wanderung" I wanted to make with my dog that I didn't even have then. Finding the dog, I became entrenched in the processes of training and working him so that he would be able to make this "wanderung" with me. He's still a long way from being able to make that journey and so am I, but the desire to make it is still there because I think that a journey of this nature is an important thing to do, not because I want to get out there and explore, which I do, but because I think that the world needs somebody out there who is willing to go out there and find the good things that are happening every single day that nobody knows anything about. These thing are little jewels, treasures if you will, hidden away all over the world and nobody ever sees them because they're part of everyday life.

On any given day we can look at our computer screens or on the TV and see horrible things happening on what seems like every square inch of the globe. "The stock market is crashing! We're all gonna die!" "Global warming is killing the planet! We're all gonna die!" "We're running out of oil! We're all gonna die!" "You didn't get the spots out of your laundry! We're all gonna die!" "If you don't vote for this one or that one, you're not a patriot and ...We're all gonna die!"

You know what? I'm sick of that. I really am. Not for nothing but... I'm sick of the hours on end of horrible events with a sixty second human interest montage thrown in for good measure here and there so that we can all go to bed feeling warm and fuzzy in the full knowledge that its okay because .... "We're all gonna die!"

Guess what, people. Part of living is dying and, yes, when the time comes, all of us are going to die.

That's life. Get over it.

The thing that gets to me about all of this, though, is that we ,as a people, are so focused on the catastrophe of the moment that the moments we are living get lost in these catastrophes and lives are going by without having ever really experienced any of the treasure that makes life worth living for. These moment and relationships are really what life is about and people are completely missing them because they are so caught up in an endless global catastrophic moment that, in the grander scheme of things, they really can't do a whole bunch about...and to me, that is heartbreaking.

So in thinking about all of this, and seeing the great flux in my stats this morning, I wondered what I would do if I had this blog and these moments to say something significant to humanity. What is the thing I would want to show the world in this moment that I am living in right now? Not surprisingly, I realized that I would want to show them and share with them the treasures I have in my life, so that they would know they weren't alone in this world and that it really is okay to feel good about things too...and I'd want Bear to do it with me.

So this week, that's what I'm going to do.

Today is a simple treasure that I noticed when I drove up to the house from work. Its a color, a really special color to me. There is an orange that happens to sugar maple trees this time of year that only happens when the light is shining just right and the moment is right there. It only lasts for a few moments every year, but I saw it on the maple by the driveway today as I turned in to park. I ran inside, let the dogs out of their crates, grabbed the camera and the dogs and while they had their time to stretch, I reached out with the camera and snatched that treasure for my own. Now, I want to share it with you...and go make some phone calls because there are more hidden treasures around here that I want the world to know about this week.

Happy wandering!

The Writer...and her dog, Bear

Day 54 and 55

2008-10-20T03:02:00.000-07:00

Well, we have had some limited success with Bear at night. I have discovered that if I stay up a half an hour or so later, until 10:30 or 11:00 pm, and let Bear out right before bed that he sleeps until 5:30 or six. We had been hitting the hay around 9:30 or 10:00 pm because we're up at 5:30 am. This may not seem like a big deal, but to me it is huge! He has been waking up once or twice a night, usually at 1:37 am and 4:19 am since we got him. I finished midnight feedings and wakeups with the kids roughly 16 years ago so this dual waking throughout the night has been very wearing for me as it is accompanied by an outing as well. For the past two nights there have been no chewing sessions or messes when we wake up! Yay!

Exercise is going much better as we are giving Bear and Will a lot of yard time playing ball and chase. Bear and I also did some walking in the fields and picture taking as my daughter is homesick for fall and wanted some pictures. I guess the leaves don't change in North Carolina...but then again, we don't have a beach here. I don't think there is anywhere that fall happens like here in the North East!

Happy wandering!

The Writer...and her dog, Bear

Day 53

2008-10-17T16:33:00.000-07:00

On the first night of temper tantrums
my doggie gave to me....
barking incessantly....

On the second night of temper tantrums
my doggie gave to me...
two pair of chewed shoes
and barking a little less incessantly...

I don't know if its because of the full moon or what, but Bear is...quite frankly, indescribable the past few days and nights. My sandals and my most comfortable loafers...both leather, were removed from my room last night while we slept, chewed to shreds and messed on top of right square in the middle of the living room floor... and the certificate for neutering did not arrive in the mail today.

I know, I'm a saint for stubbornly standing behind my community that stood behind me and getting this program in place and all that, but I'm about ready to fix this dog myself if that certificate doesn't come...like tomorrow! I mailed it last Friday and it should be here by now, holiday or not. Not for nothing but...it doesn't take a week to open a cabinet, fill out a certificate and mail it back. This is not that complex a task!

But I rant...

In any event, the barking today seems to be directed toward me rather than the husband, who has been home all day and working in the yard with the dogs who should both be exhausted but aren't. Mouthing as well. We are sticking to the standing and walking away tactic and it is working, but Bear seems to forget after a bit and try again. Maybe tomorrow's mail will bring the long awaited certificate.

I feel like the guy on "Blue's Clues" waiting for the mailman.

Hopefully tonight will go better.

Happy wandering!

The Writer...and her dog, Bear

Day 51 and 52

2008-10-16T17:47:00.000-07:00

Somebody's been throwing temper tantrums and it isn't me, the husband or even "The William."

It started over the weekend when Bear discovered he had a voice and that he didn't like to entertain himself. This explains the lack of posting because every time I sat down to write, I have been boxed with the paws, climbed on and when all else failed, barked at with increasing volume and voiciferousness.

This doesn't work for me or the husband for that matter, so today we decided to get matters under control. Every time Bear either barks, paws or mouths on us, we are standing up and turning our backs to him with our arms crossed over our chests. If he walks around in front of us, we simply turn around and put our backs to him again. We don't have to yell. We don't have to swat or push him...and we don't have to put up with being mawled at, barked at and constantly interrupted from everything we are doing because Bear wants us to entertain him 24/7.

Right now he's a bit confused about it, but is calming down in the house fifty thousand percent which should improve the regularity of my posting. It is amazing how quickly this behavior escalated and how draining it was becomming! Bear was literally climbing on me every time I sat down to do anything and all of the walking and playing in the world was not helping the situation. I am sure that part of it has to do with hormones, but a lot of it is puppy stuff too. Again I run into the problem with him that he is a very large pup and, consequently, his puppy stuff can be painful to the rest of us and has to be corrected.

While I would love to say that we thought of this technique ourselves, we didn't. We stole it from the dog lady. We watch her show a lot and saw it there, thinking at the time that it was pretty dumb. It really does work though! It takes consistency, but after about an hour of both the husband and I doing it, Bear is actually minding his manners.

The hardest thing about this behavior is that this wasn't really a "control thing" on Bear's part. He just wanted to play...incessantly and to be engaged with us, incessantly. At his age, its hard to realize that all three of us, even "The William," get tired and sore after a bit and that, in the house, romp, tug and wrestle are not good games to play...and barking every time you don't get your way doesn't cut it either.

In the end, I can't wait for the neutering certificate to get here because I think that is going to help a lot, but even without it, we are correcting the behavior without being punative and that's a really good thing!

As far as the "come" training is going, Bear is doing much better than "The William." Because he wants to be wherever we are, he isn't going very far and all we have to do is walk in the opposite direction and call him and he's there. "The William" on the other hand, comes when he feels like it, so I am giving a loud and high pitched "Bop!", waving my arms and walking in the opposite direction. Will thinks he's going to miss something and pretty much comes running now, after Bear is at my side...so we're getting there.

Happy wandering!

The Writer...and her dog, Bear

Day 50

2008-10-14T04:32:00.000-07:00

And we are back to walking! Bear is now unconscious in the doorway. That's okay though, because he's been driving us up the wall for two days now. Unconscious is good for a while.
He slept through last night as well, a really good thing because I'm getting kind of old for the 2:00 am outings. Little by little we are getting there, I think.

Big event this weekend for him is that he is using the bowls in his crate! He likes to wander in a little bit at this point which is very nice. We are getting there as well.

Behavior training is coming along pretty well. Walking today was pretty good with fewer distractions. I think I'm going to start applying some training stuff there too in an effort to try to improve his concentration. One of the things I'm doing is shortening his training walks. Right now we are doing a little under a half a mile. I think I'm going to keep it there for right now until he can really hold his attention for that time and distance. Its also enough of a walk on the mountain to tire him out for a bit.

I don't know if its his age or breathing or what, but he does tire quickly. If there is St. Bernard in him, that would be why. During puppydom, St. Bernards tire easily because they are growing so much. I don't see that Bear has gotten all that much bigger but, from my perspective, I probably wouldn't notice that much. I'm going to have to ask the vet about this when we take him in, which I'm really looking forward to at this point.

Happy wandering!

The Writer...and her dog, Bear

Day 49

2008-10-13T18:44:00.000-07:00

Hi guys. Rough day today. I arose late and had to rush off to a doctor's appointment which was followed by a funeral for a friend's mother and then another doctor's appointment for the husband's knees, so its been a day.

All of this running around has made for a very rammy Bear this evening so we have been playing ball and wrastling and playing tug of war and I'm whomped. He, on the other hand, thinks we should play some more. I think tomorrow we are going to take two walks as well as playing outside because he is driving me nuts.

CC asked in the comments what we are doing for teaching Bear the "come" command. There are several schools of thought on this. One school is that we could put him on a lead with a choke chain and have him come to us from the sit position using a tug on the command. Another school is that we could use treats and reward him with them every time he comes. Yet another is that we could turn it into a game for him and finally build a strong enough relationship that when we call him, he can't concieve of doing anything other than responding to us.

The last option was what I had with the Budman from day one. On the first day that we had him, I had him on a cable run and was talking to a neighbor by the road. Bud actually broke the cable and came charging over because the only thing he wanted in the world was to sit next to me, which he proceeded to do.

Some relationships are like that. The one that I have with Bear is not...yet. Bear, at this point, knows he has a "good gig" going here and is "jazzed to be on the show" but the absolute, unconditional bond isn't there with him yet. He doesn't feel that he needs to be right there with me the way that Buddy did. This is not to say that he doesn't like me or love me, he just doesn't trust that I am in charge yet and probably won't until after he is neutered, if then. As far as he understands, I've never been there when he has absolutely needed a human to be there for him and he's never been scared here. When he goes to the vet, even though the vet I am using is one of the most gentle people I've ever known, he will be separated from his home and us and when we come back for him, that will probably be the point at which things will change for him because we won't just be dumping him, we will be coming back for him. That's a new experience for Bear.

So, for now, we are using a lot of games...I call him and run or walk in the opposite direction until he comes. I get down on the ground and "play bow" while calling him and sometimes I scold him when he knows he's being naughty and taking off with the ball or ignoring me in the house. Scolding is the least effective, at this point. Also, I'm not really using treats as "rewards" but more as a part of the daily schedule of things. I know that a lot of people "treat train" their dogs, but I really don't want a dog to behave on the basis of whether or not it gets a treat. I want a dog who behaves on the basis of the relationship it has with me and that, in this case, is gonna take some time and growing for both Bear and me.

Those are the best tips I can give you on this one, although the game one from saratogajean on the last post was good too so check it out.

Happy wandering!

The Writer...and her dog, Bear

Day 48

2008-10-12T09:13:00.000-07:00

Boy, today is a lazy day! Well, not really but it feels like it. Bear and I went for a short walk this morning which he really seemed to enjoy and I used to kind of assess how much ground we have lost on his training with my foot thing. He didn't do too badly but any distractions present and he looses all concentration. I really need to work on that because when we are outside, his focus needs to be on me. He's doing pretty well off leash, however, he's starting to get interested in the deer tracks and that's not okay. We were able to call him off of one today, actually I was, by starting to run in the opposite direction he was going and calling him. His "fun junkie" instinct is still stronger than his hunting instinct and that's a good thing because it makes him easier to call out if he starts following on something he shouldn't.

I'm really starting to see a lot of boxer traits in his disposition. One of them is that if you chase or follow after him, he will continue to go where he is going and run. If you challenge him to a game of romp, he can't resist it. I think that Boxers train more easily if you make things a game rather than a challenge and I'm going to work with that and see if we can't improve his on leash behavior.

Bear is also being a real "cuddle bug" today which is really nice. He's been really calm and just following us around the house as we putter. When we sit, he is actually just laying down beside us and hanging out. He's enjoyed coming down to the basement with me and doing laundry or watching the husband work on the computer because his knees are still bothering.

I'm hoping to get another training session in tonight with Bear and maybe another short walk. We will see. I think we need to work on "come" for a bit.

Happy wandering!

The Writer...and her dog, Bear

Day 47

2008-10-11T19:35:00.000-07:00

Good day today. Quiet, but good. I decided to clean the fish tank before it became completely engulfed by algea and Bear thought that was big fun. He enjoys the fish, really. I've never seen a dog watch things like fish tanks and TV but Bear really enjoys both. I have five goldfish in a 30 gallon tank and Bear really enjoys watching them. He doesn't go after the tank, but just kind of sits there and watches sometimes. Anyway, he thought that pulling out all of the ornaments and rocks and cleaning them was really pretty cool.

Other big event for the day was that the bowls arrived for the crates. Willie thinks this is definitely the final touch that was missing. Bear isn't quite sure yet but is using the water dish in his. They both also had a bath today with organic soap and organic doggie cream rinse/dip. The rinse/dip stuff smells like beer because of the hops in it but boy did it make both of their coats look and feel wonderful! Now if I can just get beyond the smell it'll be great.

The rest of the day was mingled with outside and inside activities. We brought another load of wood around which the dogs really enjoyed...especially riding inside the cab of the pickup for the 40 feet around to the front of the house. We also had a great game of ball this evening which was big fun.

Didn't risk the walk today as my foot wasn't doing too well today and the husband blew out his knee yesterday while working on a ladder to fix the chimney. Gotta love thouse home repair injuries! Hopefully we will be able to get out in the morning tomorrow...

Happy wandering!

The Writer...and her dog, Bear

Day 46

2008-10-10T18:45:00.000-07:00

Busy day, gang! Sorry to be posting so late but...the whole life thing happens, ya know?

Anyway, many things must be addressed today. For those of you who weren't watching last night, Hawk was indeed on TVagain and behaved just as well as he did the first time we saw him on the Animal Planet Dog Championships. Congratulations and Kudos to Hawk!

Secondly but only in order, not in importance, if you haven't gone already, take a trip over to the Luck o the Labradors!!!!! FINN MADE IT!!!!!!!! I am so proud of Finn and his person!!!!!!!!!!!!! Finn is now not only a good citizen, something Bear and Will are both dreaming about, but he is a full blown THERAPY DOG as well!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It has been a really long journey for both Finn and his person, but THEY MADE IT and I am thrilled for both! CONGRATULATIONS to BOTH of you and please keep us posted on how you guys do!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Okay, in reality, I am jealous here because Bear and Willie desperately want to be "Good Citizens." For real. I know it. They really do...so we're working on it.... and Bear's application was mailed today.

Next thing is that the STUFFIES ARRIVED TODAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Okay, Willie's is still intact. Bear's was demolished in like ... maybe two minutes. It was really cute. It was a teddy bear.... I'm never investing in one again because Moo Moo at least lasted a week. From now on we do the Moo Moo and variants....

On the crate training we have the following pictures.

And other incredibly silly things I have done for my dog....

Ear schlarps mean I own him....

Happy wandering!

The Writer...and her dog, Bear

Day 45 part 2

2008-10-09T17:26:00.000-07:00

As promised, the photos of the crates....

Yes, that is Willie in the smaller one...

Its really kind of embarrassing how much he is enjoying his crate...

Note that Bear's is standing empty...

Because Bear decided to nap on the other side of Willie...

So we're working on it........

Oh, and the application from the State arrived today. Tomorrow it begins the second leg of the journey.

Happy wandering!

The Writer...and her dog, Bear

Day 45

2008-10-09T04:05:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was a pretty challenging day at work and, as I let the colors of the leaves soak into my mind on the drive home from work, I made a ton of plans for what I wanted to do once I arrived. They all went out the window as I drove into the driveway and saw the two boxes sitting on the porch.

The crates had arrived!

Now, setting up the crates was not a major source of time consumption. What took the time was removing half the furniture from the living room so that there would be room for them. It isn't that Willie's is so big but Bear's is. Its a 48 inch long crate. Bear and I can both sit in this thing and still have room, which we did yesterday after I got it set up. (He thought that was BIG fun!) To have a place for this crate and Will's, I'm having to remove two chairs and a table from the room. This doesn't really leave us much furniture left in the room because it is a small room to begin with.

I thought about that for a few and decided that, while it isn't the norm to have a couch and two dog crates as the main furniture of a living room, for us this is okay...and an expression of our changing lifestyle. "Less is more" and in our life, the priorities are now changing. We have two dogs that we love and we want to be safe, healthy, happy and with us while we spend our evenings together. The crates in the living room, is thus a non-compromise situation, so our guests can socialize with us in the kitchen...which they always do anyway.

Willie loves his crate! He knew what it was as soon as he saw the boxes on the porch. The funniest thing was watching him wait patiently while I set Bear's up and then escorting me through setting his up. I had just gotten the blanket in and hadn't even moved it into place and he was in his and curled up. If I didn't know better, I would say that he has wanted a crate just like this for his entire life...which he has, kind of.

My mother-in-law lives with Willie's sister from a different litter. Her name is Gia and she has a crate that is a bit smaller than this one but otherwise the same. William has always wanted to spend time in that crate when we visit and tries to, which of course, Gia will not allow. Now he has his own and he knows it. He spent the evening going in and out of it and slept in it all night.

We're leaving the doors open to them when we are here so that the dogs can just go in and hang out if they feel like it. Bear doesn't do that yet, but we have the whole weekend to work on it. The husband is home today as he is dutifully burning up his sick leave before retirement. Tomorrow is his day off and then we have a three day weekend because of Columbus Day which should be "Erickson Day" or "Pocahontas Day" but isn't. I'm thinking that by then we should have him warmed up to the idea that his crate is a good place and hopefully the rest of the stuff will arrive by Tuesday.

So, I'm going to leave you here with this because I have to go get ready for work. Hopefully tonight I will be able to get some pictures up of all of this for you.

Happy wandering!

The Writer...and her dog, Bear

Day 45

2008-10-08T03:25:00.000-07:00

I love this fall weather! I think I could live in this kind of weather all year long. For me its perfect except for the fact that it only lasts a couple of weeks.

Yesterday was a perfect day. It was sunny, clear and crisp all day long. I was able to walk Bear a little in the morning, but think I'm going to hold off until this weekend to do anymore of that as the toe has been a bit sore since then. We went out back after work and played ball for a while which both of the dogs really enjoyed. After that we hit the pear tree and got some of the last of the pears it looks like. Bear got one that we have both been watching. He took it over into the taller grass and just laid there and relished this thing. It was really funny to watch him doing it because it was like he was eating the most wonderful food on the planet!

A few more days and the pears will be gone, unfortunately. The apples are starting to come though and they should last a few weeks for him. I don't know what I'm going to do once fruit season passes here because he really has enjoyed being able to just go out and pick it up off of the ground or bushes. He also loves to eat grass, but with the frost coming, which has already started here, that will be dead soon too. I've never seen a dog eat fruits, veggies and grass like this guy does. Berries, yes, and sometimes grass too, but never to the extent Bear does. Every time Bear goes out, he goes right for the long grass and munches away. He eats his dog food fine, but really seems to need the other stuff as well. I guess I'm going to have to start making him salads and fruit salads this winter...

Anyway, last evening, when the husband got home we went out and brought over a load of fire wood. The dogs love doing this because they just hang out and play while we load up the truck...which takes a while. Bear has difficulty realizing that he is a lot bigger than Willie and needs to play softer but he's getting there. He's doing very well off leash and is so funny when he comes running after being called because he has difficulty stopping and tends to kind of crash into whoever called him. Its not the heart that isn't there yet, just the coordination.

That will come with time...

Happy wandering!

The Writer...and her dog, Bear

Day 44

2008-10-07T03:01:00.001-07:00

God, what a morning it is out there! I saw two shooting stars while I was letting the dogs out this morning! Beautiful and clear out, it should be a wonderful day here.

This morning I'm going to try to walk Bear for a bit. Don't know how far we will get, but hopefully we will at least stretch the legs. We've been playing ball out back and the husband has taken to having wrestling matches with Bear in the afternoons to give them both some exercise. He's been pretty good waiting for my toe to get better, but really needs his morning walks...on top of playing ball and wrestling.

Another thing I was able to do yesterday morning, because I went in late to work and worked into the evening, was start the final assault with the State of New York. We've had Bear for a few days more than a month now and he needs to "get fixed." Because he was adopted from an approved pound, he is part of a state program that greatly discounts the price of neutering. Our town is enrolled in this program but never got the applications for the people who adopt to mail back to the State to get the certificate to take to the Vet when they get an animal "fixed" and thus get the discount.

After spending a great deal of time on the phone with the Animal Control Officer, I called the State Ag Dept and hopefully got the situation straightened out. They are mailing me an application directly and also one to the town for future adopting people which the town can photo copy. Why this stuff isn't online, I have no clue. It seems to me that the Animal Control Officer should be able to just hook into the system and print the application out, but that would be logical. Instead, there is a file cabinet somewhere in Albany that some clerk has to pull out the one existing copy of this application from, make two photocopies of it and refile it. Then this poor clerk will have to get two separate envelopes and mail one copy to my town and one to me.

That should take a week to accomplish.

When I get my copy of the application, I will fill it out and mail it back to the clerk in Albany. The clerk will then probably have to go back into the file cabinet and get the one copy of the certificate that I will present to the vet, fill it out by hand and mail it back to me. This process should take another week and a half.

Once I get the certificate, I will then call the vet, who is currently waiting for my call because I set that up yesterday, and we will make an appointment. (This should take another week.) Then we will take Bear in to be neutered.

So, we're looking at three and a half weeks until we can get Bear neutered.

I'd like to say that I'd be more than willing to spend the obscene amount of money that is being charged in this area to neuter a dog, but I'm not. I think if you are not breeding the dog, it should be fixed and getting that done should be affordable. Without this program in operation in our community, it isn't, which is why the town and I are working at getting it established, even if it takes a little longer to get things done. This way, the next person who adopts a dog from the pound won't have to go through this kind of hassle.

Anyway, the wheels are in motion and we should be able to get things happening soon in that area.

Happy wandering!

The Writer...and her dog, Bear

Day 43

2008-10-06T05:29:00.001-07:00

Wow! do I feel broke but better. I just ordered the dog crates and decided that some of the things that really bug me about the crates, I can fix so I did. I really don't like that the dogs have no food or water access while crated. Kong toys aside, Bear is still a pup, drinks a ton of water and even for four hours, I worry that he has no water or food. The other issue is that they are planning on giving me more hours within a month or so at work, and especially if I have to be gone longer, I want food and water access. So I got a set of crate bowls for each of the crates.

The other thing that bugs me is that both of these dogs are smart and it gets pretty boring sitting in a cage, thus, I got each of them a Kong stuffy toy...I think they are called Dr. Noys and a special ball. Bear I picked one of the Bounzer Balls and Will, the tennis ball king, I picked air balls for.

I did not get either of the dogs the Kong treat dispenser toys because these two would much rather live on treats and table scraps than dog food and I don't want to encourage that. I'm thinking that a couple of cookies in their bowls with some dog food is a better option for them if they get hungry.

The crates are identical in everything but size so I'm hoping this eliminates the jealousy issue going on. Bear's crate is bigger than the one we currently have and Wills is smaller. I already have the blankets for them, sooooo, hopefully, in a week we will be set with the crate and dog stuff....I just don't know where I'm going to be putting all of this stuff now! Oh well, we will make it work.

Happy wandering!

The Writer...and her dog, Bear

Days 41 and 42

2008-10-05T16:59:00.000-07:00

HA! Contrary to urban legend, I did not get swallowed into the eternal abyss of deep frying grease and have returned from the "Pit of Despair," more locally known as the Funnel Cake Booth, and have lived to tell the tale as well! We had a great time yesterday in perfect weather and sold a ton of funnel cakes...gag, choke...I hate the smell of deep fried anything, but especially dough! That's okay, though, because I don't have to smell it again for a year, after which I will gladly tolerate the smell of because those funnel cakes are helping to build a library for my town which I will write more about at a later date.

Anyway, we returned home exhausted last night from "deep fried hell" to a destroyed kitchen. I had come home in the middle of the day to let Bear out of the cage and give the dogs a "hurry break." Will has been getting very territorial about the crate lately because, once upon a time, three years ago when he fit into the palm of my hand the 35" crate that we had belonged to Will. When I let the dogs out, Will went straight for Bear and attacked him. I was able to call him off of Bear outside, but Will escalated when we came in and I had to kick these dogs apart. So, rather than putting Bear into the crate which was obviously such an issue for Will, I decided to put Will in it for the afternoon.

Mistake!

Interestingly, Bear did not even go into the living room all afternoon. Nothing was out of place or
even touched. Will was just happily sleeping in his crate. The kitchen, however, was destroyed! Everything we had on the table was all over the floor. Garbage had been gotten into and was all over the place.

In short, I'm just going to have to get over my phobias about crating and Bear will be crated when we are not home from now on.

We are going to make a change, though. As this is such an issue with Will and the crate we are currently using was his a long time ago and he does have a right to be mad about Bear using it and it isn't fair to either dog to allow one to be out while the other is crated, we are going to retire this crate and purchase two new crates, a larger one for Bear and a smaller one for Will. Hopefully, in a week or so this problem should be solved.

After spending an hour cleaning up the mess, the husband and I sat down to dinner in the living room with the TV. We went from National Geographic to Animal Planet because the dog lady was on and then later, the Animal Planet Dog Championships. (Yes, there really are people in this world who watch dog shows on TV.) We watched along through the poodles and shaggy things and then, during the herding class suddenly they announced Hawk the Swedish Vallhund . I looked up, and there was Hawk! He wasn't just any Hawk, either. He was the same Hawk whose person I talk to on this blog!

I couldn't believe it! Our Hawk was right there on TV! How cool was that? Well, I thought it was pretty cool and tapped at Bear, who was laying on my feet watching with us, and told him to see how cool it was that Hawk was just prancing so smart in front of all of the TV cameras and the huge audience and wasn't chewing the kitchen apart and that this is what "good dogs" got to do when they don't chew kitchens apart.

He went out to the kitchen to get a schlarp of water and drool it all over the floor.

I emailed Hawk's person to ask if it was Hawk and, sure enough, it was! In point of fact, he will be appearing on Animal Planet again on...mark these dates....October 9, at 7:00 pm EST and again on October 11 at 2:00 pm EST.

Bear and I will probably be viewing both of these airings.

Oh, and last but certainly not least, Therra Cathryn, the answer to the argument is:

Even the rocks themselves shall sing!

Now how do I get this so I can put it up on the blog because its hysterical!

Happy wandering!

The Writer...and her dog, Bear

Day 40

2008-10-03T03:30:00.000-07:00

I received a question in my last post from Irene about crates that I need to address here. (Hi Irene, and don't feel bad because you're probably the only one who knows what a Leonburger is.) Putting it very simply, a crate is a small cage. People here in the States have them in their houses and we keep our dogs in them when we are away and sometimes at night, so that the dogs don't destroy the house. Here is a picture of the "crate" we have for Bear.

Here is a picture of the pen that Bear spent a little over two months living in with one 20 minute walk everyday.

This is the view from our front porch.

I have issues with confinement. I admit it. I really do. It probably has something to do with being swaddled as a baby. I don't know. What I do know is that putting Bear into the cage really bugs me a lot, as does leashing. When we go for walks and the like, I don't mind the leash. What I do mind is that every time Bear goes outside, he is on a leash or a tie. (We have a cable run out front we used for Willie and BJ when they were pups during hunting season.) We have never had a dog that we had to do that with consistently and I'm not sure we need to do it with Bear or if I'm just doing it because I know he has the Boxer in him, I had that experience with the family Boxer as a kid and I'm responding to that and Bear's size in giving him absolutely no freedom. We have also never had a dog so destructive that we felt the need to "crate" when we were out of the house. BJ did go through a real chewing period but not with the living room furniture. He went for smaller stuff.

Bear was chewing up the living room furniture.

The other issue is that hunting season is coming up and dogs that run who are as big and as powerful as Bear get shot. All of the neighborhood dogs know that they are to stay home unless they hear the coyotes going or they are with their owners. Bear doesn't have that distinction yet and probably won't until he's been through a winter...which he hasn't yet because he was born last spring...and is still a puppy in a very large body.

I think the issue here is that "very large body." Because he is so big, I'm expecting Bear to act like an adult and it just isn't there yet. He is still a pup, just seven months old. Off leash, with no visitors, he acts like a pup as well, hanging close to me and playing with Will. I can't rush maturity, but I can mold a pup and working from that mind set might do me better right now.

Happy wandering!

The Writer...and her dog, Bear

Day 39 part 2

2008-10-02T15:28:00.001-07:00

I know, these two part days do get annoying, but today was a really great day and I have to write about it. The big news for today is that I made a friend at work. Pat, who works in a different agency but has the office next to mine, said something to me about having to get home to her dogs, who were still young. We started talking a little and it turned out that her dogs are Leonburgers! I don't know if any of you remember the earlier parts of this blog... since its all of 39 days old, but on Day 5, before we even knew there was a Bear, I mentioned that I had loved Leonburgers since the days when my husband and I had lived in Germany. (That was a whole lot longer than 39 days ago, by the way.) Anyway, today she brought in pictures of her two Leo's and they are beautiful. As I was looking, I noted that they hadn't gotten their fur in yet as Leo's are noted for a great mane of fur! They are really wonderful dogs and she was so thrilled to know someone who actually knew anything about the breed because they aren't very common here in the States.

I think if I hadn't gotten a Bear, I might have ended up with a Leo...nah. Can't see it. I'd go nuts with the shedding...which interestingly enough, Bear does not seem to do a lot of. I think I probably would have kept looking for our Bear. I really don't see us ending up with any other dog. He does have his idiosyncrasies, but he's one of us now.

On that end, I've been doing some serious thinking about his training. I'm really not happy with the way that its going, primarily because it seems very unnatural to me. We've never trained a dog the way that we are, Bear. Its always been pretty much off leash from the start. Also, the crate thing is really bugging me! As a kid, my parents always kept their dogs tied or crated and their dogs always went mean. One, a Boxer, really got nasty! It used to get out of the house and, because it never got any exercise, went nuts running and would attack people. Eventually, it had to be put down.

I really don't want that happening with Bear and after thinking about it, decided that I really need to start working with him off leash. I started this afternoon when I got home. As I can't walk very far right now, I decided that we would go up behind the house to the field by the pear tree and play ball. I was really shocked when Bear just walked right around the house with me...off leash! That's what our dogs have always done but for some reason, I have been really afraid that Bear wouldn't. He did and enjoyed chasing Willie who loves to play ball. Eventually, Bear got tired of the game and decided to go over to the pear tree and have some of the drops. It was really funny because he searched through all of the pears on the ground, picked the ones he wanted and made a pile. When they were all stacked the way he wanted them, he laid down, shoved his face into the pile and just started eating!

There is now a pile of 3/4 eaten pears out by the pear tree.

After that, he romped a little with Will and then we came in. I did leash him to go in because the traffic was picking up and all of our doors to the house are on the road side of the house. The back of the house is cellared into the mountain. Hard to explain but its an old, Dutch farmhouse with built in fruit cellar. You walk onto our roof from ground level out behind the house.

I think after the success of today's experiment, I'm going to start working with giving Bear more freedom...even in the house. While crating is convenient for me and I do want him to be able to crate for travel, I don't like that he has no food or water access while in there and I don't like the confining him like this. So, I think we are going to start weaning on the crate next week and see how he does. We are also kind of forced into the position of having to start working more on the property here with both of the dogs, so, I think we will be working on voice command off of the leash.

Big decisions but tonight I need to get some photos together to take into work tomorrow. I've wanted to do a screen saver since I started working there, but this gives me a bigger excuse to get it done.

Happy wandering!

The Writer...and her dog, Bear

Day 39

2008-10-02T04:20:00.000-07:00

Busy day today. Several of the girls are out of the office so we are going to be kind of short and I may have to stay late. Not a bad deal, but it was a very early morning this morning because Bear is off his schedule. My hours were late in the day yesterday and, because of the toe, I'm not going for walks for a few days. It doesn't hurt so much this morning, which is good, so hopefully by the end of the weekend, I'll be feeling good enough to walk with him again.

I miss our walks!

In any event, the Pumpkin Party is this weekend and I will be spending Saturday covered in pancake dough and grease. One thing that doing this every year does for me is make me swear off of deep fried foods for the year. By the end of the day I'm so coated in grease that even the smell of frying turns my stomach for an entire year. I think the husband is going to be with me on Saturday because of the foot. He was going to be out of town, but it looks like he will be here now. That's a good thing. I could use his help and it will make letting the dogs out at mid-day a whole bunch easier!

I think I will make a funnel cake just for the dogs this year. I think they'd like that!

Happy wandering!

The Writer...and her dog, Bear

Day 38 part two

2008-10-01T16:49:00.000-07:00

Owe! Owe! Owe! My toe is turning purple from the sides first. Bear doesn't know where his feet are and has been consistently stepping on it every time he comes to get loves. I think I'm going to bed now.

Happy wandering!

The Writer...and her dog, Bear

Day 38

2008-10-01T04:33:00.000-07:00

Okay, foot is still sore but not as sore this morning. I received a blog award a few days ago from Irene over at The Most Splendid Day! (Hi Irene!), and it took me a while to figure out how to get it from there to here, but I finally did. Now, part of the deal with this award is that I have to pass it along to 7 other blogs soooooo, without much fanfare, because I haven't figured out how to do music on here yet, and with great appreciation to all who have labored over their blogs so consistently and ... well, laboriously, I would like to bestow this most esteemed and coveted award to the following blogger's blogs:

A Day In My Life... Photos and More , Hi Marie!

Bad Mutha Fudruckers , Good morning Saratogajean! Time to wake up and smell the mocha!

Animal Hugs and Blessings , Hi Katherine! Everyday is a blessing!

I Live In A Caravan , Hi Therra Cathryn! How's the gas situation?

Ramblings of A Lost Mind , Hi Cosmiccowgirl! How's Kerouac doing today?

Luck O The Labrador, Hi Luck O the Labrador! You're doing great things, keep it up!

Life With Dogs , Hi Chris! How are things going?

Okay gals, the rule is that you have to pass it on to seven other bloggers and go to their sites and tell them they got the award.

Happy wandering!

The Writer...and her dog, Bear

Day 37

2008-09-30T17:04:00.000-07:00

I'm just gonna come out and say it. I am in serious pain as I write this because I think I broke my toe tonight while cleaning the funnel cake booth for the Pumpkin Party this weekend.

Don't ask.

Okay, I dropped a cinder block on it, by accident.

For real. I did.

I know that I should be smarter than a cinder block and generally I am, but it was getting late and I was in a hurry and my rubber gloves that were coated in grease were also wet. It slipped and ... well the rest is history.

Its my big toe on my left foot and it feels like I slammed it in a car door just a minute ago...when in actuality this happened three hours ago. If its still bad in the morning, I'll go get it checked but I don't know that there is much they can do for a broken toe.

Bear doesn't seem to mind at all. He wants to play and that's about it for now. We had a shortened walk this morning because everyone on the hill decided to let their dogs run this morning and when they run, they pack. We've been having a problem with coyote's starting to pack at night on the hill here. This time of year, this is a common thing. The problem with it is that when the coyote's pack like this, they run the hill at night and take all of the smaller pets and livestock. Cats disappear this time of year, along with ducks, chickens, turkey, ground birds and even younger deer. I know it may seem strange to consider the turkey, ground birds and deer as livestock, but people here hunt for a lot of their meat and do consider these as "non-touchables" for predators. Its taken as seriously as if they had taken a calf from the herd, which would be next if the pack gets too big.

So, rather than allow the coyote's to rule the mountain, people let their dogs out at night to drive the coyote's away, which they do with great skill. All of the dogs on the hill know each other and when they are out at night after the coyote's start the yipping, the dogs know what their job is, except for Bear.

Bear hasn't met "the pack" yet. He's still an outsider and has to be for right now because deer season is coming up. One of the things I knew about Bear when I got him was that he could hunt. He's strong enough and big enough to take a deer at this point with no problem and dogs that do that don't last long up here, especially around hunting season. But, he does need to start meeting the other guys on the hill here because, as a dog on this hill, he is expected to be able to defend the houses, kids, families and livestock with the other dogs here, sooooooooo, I've got to work on that end of the socialization pattern with him. I was hoping that Willie would help with this endeavor this morning, but unfortunately, Willie thought that it would be big fun to go play with his buddies and wasn't listening to my thoughts on this issue at all. I think I'm going to have to work on that too...

Hmmm....The toe feels better when I'm not wandering around on it!

Happy wandering!

The Writer...and her dog, Bear

Day 36

2008-09-29T17:36:00.000-07:00

There are worse things than Mondays. There are worse things than "The Impending
Financial Crash of Western Civilization as We Know It." In this world it is so easy to fall into a place where all one sees is the disaster and crisis within every minute of every day, and yet this morning I woke up thankful.

Today I awoke with my husband beside me, and there were many days when that was a privilege I did not have. I awoke in the knowledge that all of my kids were fine, again a privilege I have not always enjoyed. I got myself up and went for a walk in the morning with Willie and Bear and realized in that time that what is important to me in life, I have, and that is a great feeling. Life is not always easy, and there are days when the struggle to survive seems so overwhelming, but we do and things continue on. The work day is done, goldfish get fed and the dogs are walked, but there is a time after all of that, when the dinner has been served and the dishes are done, that emerges in the pounce of a puppy, the toss of a ball, the wag of a tail and the peace that comes from knowing that the world is still turning. There is a being beside me whose only desire is to be sure that it can see me, be with me and interact with me. Part therapist, part friend and the rest, a guardian angel, I have a dog who is my friend and along with all of the other blessings in my life, I am blessed by this great beastie of a dog sleeping beside my chair.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I count myself a wealthy woman.

Happy wandering!

The Writer...and her dog, Bear

Day 35

2008-09-28T18:25:00.000-07:00

Wow! Busy weekend here! As promised, it rained...all weekend. Bear was okay with that for the first two days, but today we had to go for a walk. Because he's been cooped up with only really short games of ball and trips out to go "hurry," and because it was only misting heavily this morning, I decided to give him a treat and take him for a solo walk with me today. I think he really enjoyed having some quality time for himself and we enjoyed our walk before the torrent kicked in by the middle of the morning.

Today was a really big day for Bear because it was his first real experience with visitors coming to the house. We have a friend who is an Army buddy of my husband's who usually visits a lot but, due to our new arrival, hasn't really been here for the past few weeks. He came over today and we also had some friends up from Jersey for the afternoon.

I was a bit worried about Bear with all of this as he completely lost continence when the Army buddy arrived. He was so excited and spent about the first hour or so having accidents all over the downstairs between my taking him out. After that, he seemed to calm down a bit and we let him greet our friends from Jersey outside, which seemed to help. He really enjoyed having all of the people around and was really very calm around everyone, which was great to see! I was kind of worried about how he would react when people came to the house, but he was a real mush and not too pushy!

I think the day exhausted him, a blessing, because he is laying here in the doorway unconscious right now. It's good to see him tired out!

Hopefully tomorrow the sun will shine for a while!

Happy wandering!

The Writer...and her dog, Bear

2008-09-26T17:41:00.000-07:00

Does anybody out there really care...
about what "Tom the Spaces Guy" is doing? I mean, for real, who cares? Do you? I don't. In any event, I love my job and had a great horoscope today! Here

Capricorn
By Rick Levine

Your pragmatic approach to life can bring you rewards today, especially if you don't veer away from your original intentions. If you have an important decision to make, do it as early in the day as possible because as the evening approaches, you could become more negative. Try to be fair-minded as you balance your pessimism with optimism.

I love that because I didn't get to read it until just now and ya know what? It fit my day. One of the difficult things about this job is that, aside from the fact that everyone is terrified of it, I am walking into someone elses brain that doesn't fit mine. My desk is a prime example. This girl had sticky notes with God only knows who on them and phone numbers. That's it. Just random sticky notes....all over the bulletin board that surrounds my desk. THEN, she has all of the stuff that belongs with what I actually do....just randomly stuck up all over this board.

This had to change...today.

It did.

AND EVERYONE IN THE PLACE HELPED ME DO IT!!!!!!!!!!!

From this I can gather that the last person who filled my position was not well liked within the agency.

She was there less than one year.

So onto happier things. My boss, boss, the top clam, and I call her that because she looks like she just climbed off the beaches in "One Morning In Maine" and someday I think the two of us will meet on a northern beach and do a sandcastle together if not some serious crabs and clambs...but she may have the affinity for conchs and seashells that I do as well and lobster is definite..., is backing me up 1050%. The job I am walking into is the worst in the agency and basically, I have carte blanche. I'm going to wait until after he is neutered, but I think I will be able to bring Bear into work with me for stress management. Yeah, its really that good a job...

"Hurry time" I'll be back.

ANYWAY, the job is going really well and everyone is very thankful that I am there, including me because I have never had a job where I had my own place...and the boss brought donuts in every Friday, and we had complimentary bags with no strings attached, and everyone was waiting to help me figure out what it was that I had to do.

There are a lot of people who have done this job in the agency, but not fully. My job is to put it all together and get the whole job done again. Don't know if it can be done, but do know that I have the skills to do it.

So "The Dog Lady" is on, so Bear and I have to go because he really loves this show!

Happy wandering!

The Writer...and her dog, Bear

Day 32...

2008-09-25T17:09:00.000-07:00

but whose counting? Actually it was a good day today. Strike that, it was great. As far as days go, this was one of the better ones that I've had in a long while. The new job is, well, I think I've found where I'm supposed to be. I'm starting at the bottom, but there is a whole lot of growth potential in a direction that I could really do. Its a good place to be...finally, and I'm hoping to make the most of it.

Onto the real matter of the day, though, all of you probably are wondering how things went with "the crate." I set it up last night and put all of the dog toys into it so that if Bear wanted to chew, he would have to go in and get a toy out, which he did. Everything seemed like it would go well with it. We went for our morning walk which I really wish I had the camera with me to take pictures during because the mist in the valleys was really lovely this morning, but hindsight is always 20/20. (Don't hope for much tomorrow as its supposed to start raining tonight and not stop all weekend.)

When we got back, I did some chores and got ready for the first day on the job. I decided to wear a skirt. Bear thought that was great and has apparently never seen one before because he thought this was big fun to chew and bat at, until I took him out. Upon entering back into the house, we reached the moment of truth.

He was not happy about going into the crate.

I insisted, so he did...with assistance.

Once in the crate he was not happy, but calmed down before I left. Will was very upset with the entire situation. I went to work and got oriented, sort of, and came right home. When I got home, there sat Bear in the crate, wagging his tail at me.

The house was intact.

I did not have to raise my voice or have my first words to Bear be reprimanding.

I went to the cage, noticed something was amiss, and focused on getting Bear out to go "hurry" before the moment passed and the impending mess ensued. As I came back into the house and checked to see what I didn't register while getting him out, I found what didn't make sense to me.

Bear had not destroyed the house, but he did manage to "reconfigure" the front bottom of the crate. How he did this, I am not quite sure, but this does pose a problem with keeping him in a crate as I'm not sure how much of this "reconfiguring" the crate will withstand.

I may have to consult with some experts with this problem because at this rate, I do not believe that the crate will last very long. He did have two toys, his tire that he likes to chew and a bone which is still in the blanket but can't be seen in this photo, while he was in there. His teeth and legs are all still intact as well as the toys and there was no mess in the cage...of any kind so I am thinking that the food is okay with him. This just appears to be the kind of thing that Bear likes to do when he is bored... and better he do it with a crate than my living room.

As you can tell from the photo below, Bear was a happy guy once he went out. He wasn't hyper but did enjoy moving firewood in for the weekend with my husband, Willie and me. He's just a really big puppy with a demolition instinct that even my daughter's black lab could not match.

So my husband unbent the crate and is off tomorrow so we will see how Bear does with it on Monday. My first words to Bear today were kind and if we have to get a new crate, then we do and that's life.

I really love those eyes and that face...even if he is in his "destruction phase."

Happy wandering!

The Writer...and her dog, Bear

Day 31

2008-09-24T15:28:00.000-07:00

And life is getting better. I was off from my job today, a good thing considering that the job that I interviewed for last week called and...I got it! This is going to work much better for Bear and me because I will be working fewer but consistent hours every week and earning more than I was working 40 plus hours a week. Instead of being alone for six to eight hours a day, Bear will be alone for four hours and roughly 40 minutes. This is a "cratable" time frame, I think. I really hate the idea of crating him, but it's either that or the living room at this point. Once he's fixed, he should calm down, but that is still at the discretion of the town hall at the moment.

After getting the news about the job today, I called the woman I worked for and let her know I won't be in again. She knew this was coming when she hired me so it wasn't a great shock to her. She was kind of happy for me and offered to pay me today for the one day that I actually had work from her this week. I decided to take Bear with me to get my check and he proceeded to throw up all over the inside of the back of my car for one of two reasons: a) we changed the type of food he is on today and its not agreeing with him b) he gets car sick. Thus we are going to have to work on the car training to discern what, exactly, is going on with him. He's been acting kind of "under the weather" since we got back, so I'm not sure its not the food. He seems to like the taste of it, but also seems to not be quite himself so we shall see how he is tomorrow.

Happy wandering!

The Writer...and her dog, Bear

Day 30

2008-09-23T17:55:00.000-07:00

And I am a toasty critter! Today was a rough day with the Bear. I went to work and dealt with two year old temper tantrums...for real, I work with young children when I'm not aspiring to become a writer, and spent a solid hour getting kicked and punched by a very "put out" little guy who was not very thrilled at the prospect of not being held through his entire nap. Aside from this, the day was pretty normal, until I got home...

The kitchen was just about perfect upon first glance, dining room was fine, and then I entered the living room.

You know that picture of Bear with the "beastie eyes" I took last night? Well, that's who was in my living room while I was at work today. Now, I don't know what the thing with the cushions is but every cushion from every piece of furniture was on the floor. The three dog blankets which normally reside in the corner were all over the place. The pepper shaker from the kitchen, the place mats from the table, the dog brush, both of my husband's boot brushes, chewed up pillows, a chewed up cane and I can't even remember what else...plus one accident over by the bathroom were what greeted me when I entered.

It was in that moment that I realized that "positive child guidance techniques" do not work very well with canines and that Bear is, in point of fact, a dog...who will continue to slobber all over and chew on everything in the house until he realizes that I am higher on the pack totem poll in this house than he is. Round about the time I was slinging the couch cushions across the room and back onto the couch while pointing out to him that this was not appropriate dog behavior in my house and that I did not want to see him or hear him while I was cleaning up his mess, I think he realized that.

By the time the husband got home, I had the mess cleaned up. I was calming down with a game of spider solitaire when he walked in and inquired as to why the table was not set for dinner. I only had to give one look for him to realize that this was not appropriate spouse behavior and that the table would be set when I won the spider solitaire game...which I did and then set the table. Bear spent the entire meal silently laying beside me without moving a muscle and, when offered his after dinner treat, was actually very sorry for upsetting me. Then he gobbled it down and proceeded to slobber all over me until we went out to play ball for a bit with both of the dogs.

Some days go better than others, I think, and hopefully tomorrow will.

We had a great walk this morning...

Happy wandering!

The Writer...and her dog, Bear

Day 29

2008-09-22T16:26:00.000-07:00

Great day...yadda, yadda, yadda... We went grocery shopping first thing today as the husband took off from work because he's got to burn up leave time before retirement and we had no food in the house.

So great. Dogs missed their morning walk and trashed the house while we were gone buying groceries...and bones for them, and special dog food...and THE ULTIMATE BALL! Okay, it was a guilt thing and we were compensating for being gone this weekend so we caved and got it.

Finally, this afternoon, we got the walk in, gave them their bones and special biscuits and introduced the toy and THE ULTIMATE BALL! So, the introduction with Bear went well, but he wanted to share it with Will, who thought he should have complete control of the ball for himself and thus the game ended until this evening after dinner. Dad had a brilliant idea of utilizing the old ball along with THE ULTIMATE BALL which was great and Bear got a real taste of off leash romping!

What was really cool to see was the two actually working together as a team on something other than destroying the living room or chewing apart my slippers which was what we woke up to this morning.

They did really well overall, but tired out after about 15 minutes of chasing back and forth. Bear is now sound asleep beside me as I write and will probably be resting up until about 10 pm when we are ready to go to bed.

Oh well...it was really fun to let him really stretch out a bit and play!

While taking these pictures, I came up with the ultimate Halloween picture of the dogs that I have to post, even though it is early. I think I'm going to use it as my profile picture as well until Halloween because it really is pretty cool. Anyway, here it is!

Happy wandering!

The Writer...and her dog, Bear

Day 26, 27 and 28

2008-09-21T18:12:00.000-07:00

Oh boy! Three days tonight!

We are back from our trip, actually arriving home last night after having a great day in Greenport, New York! What a great town and festival they had there! If you're in the area next fall, be sure to stop in for this because it was a blast! Six pipe bands, great parade, air show, a ship from Mystic Seaport and a great waterfront make this a really great place to have a "Pirate Party!" Yes, I believe that sometime this month it was John Paul Jones' birthday...or maybe not, but its a great reason to have a party anyway...which the people of Greenport did...and we went to because my husband, as a 42nd Royal Highlander in the Brigade of the American Revolution...which is a Rev War reenacting group, was in the color guard for one of the pipe bands. So at 48 years old, I finally got to tell someone "I'm with the band" and got in for free.

The really cool thing about this festival is that it is DOG FRIENDLY with leash. We saw a lot of beautiful dogs and next year, ours will be among them, bus ride or no. Actually, I'd really love to take the dogs up and just walk the town without all of the festival stuff as it really is a lovely place! So this is definitely one to put on the list of where I want to go walking next summer or fall!

As to the dog sitting. They actually did quite well with it. Bear did have the predictable accidents, but Willie did as well which is not an okay thing. Will was pretty upset when we too BJ down to my daughter and isn't doing well when we are gone for too long. The house was clean when we got home, and everything was good, until Bear decided that he didn't have to "go" outside anymore and had two messes last night...which might have something to do with the five pears he stole out of the fruit bowl yesterday, so, while he did get reprimanded for the accidents, we got over it quickly!

Today, after his walk, he seems much more his "happy-go-lucky" self. We did some off leash play with him for the first time today and he did wonderfully! He's been watching Willie and the husband play ball since we got him, and today I decided that maybe it was time to learn how to play stick. Well, I didn't have to teach him on this one and he really enjoyed being able to run and romp with Willie over the stick! He also got his first ride in the truck today because we went up behind the house to start on the pears. We have a pear tree out behind the house here and Bear and I have been monitoring it for the perfect day for picking and today was the day.

The great thing about picking the pears is that, basically, we just shake the tree and they all fall down. Bear thought he'd died and gone to heaven on this one. He loves fruit in general and has been tasting the pears with me for a week or so now. When they all came falling down around him he just laid down and started munching away while we picked up the rest.

We saw Roy and his dad last night after we got home. They came up to the house around ten to take care of the dogs, which was great. He survived well and so did these guys. Dog sitters are definitely great as the dogs can be in their home, but they want to be with us and not having them there yesterday was the one thing that was missing from an otherwise perfect day. So, we work on the training a little more and little by little we will get there.

Happy wandering!

The Writer...and her dog, Bear

PS...and just because I want to try this, a very short video of a boat!

Day 25

2008-09-18T17:36:00.000-07:00

Oh the angst of having to leave a new pup! This is what we are facing this weekend. We had made plans a month ago, down in "The City." Up here, there is only one "city" on the planet, which is New York City. It is referred to as "The City" and everyone else in the world is expected to know exactly which city "The City" actually is. Actually, our plans are not technically in "The City," they are on "The Island" which again is the only island on the planet and refers to Long Island, or "Lawngiyaland" if you are from there.

So we had plans there...and can't bail out of them...which means I have to leave my Bear with a dog sitter!

Oh God!

Actually, its not that bad. You see, I've been working on this all week during our walks down the hill. In truth, I've been working it since the day we got Bear because I knew then that this dreaded day would come and we would need someone to take care of him while we had to go to "The City," or in reality, "The Island."

Right after we got Bear, he met a young man down the hill. He's a neighbor which means that he lives within five miles of this house. From my perspective, here, everything and everyone is either down the hill or up the hill and this young man is "Down the hill, Roy," which is not his real name but will suffice for now.

Down the hill Roy is one of the kids here. In fact, he is what we on "The Hill," which again is the only "hill" on the planet and the entire community knows this even though this entire town is in the middle of the mountains, call a "ridge runner." He is a kid that was born to these hills and we've watched him over the years do all of the "ridge runner kid stuff" that "ridge runner kids" are apt to do here. Its been fun watching him grow into the young man he is becoming and to introduce him to Bear.

From the moment Roy and Bear met, the two were trouble twins. Bear absolutely adores Roy, who absolutely adores Bear back. Its a mutual fan club and if either are in the vicinity of the other, they can't help but go to each other for a greeting. Roy has spent the past few days walking with Bear, Willie and me so that the dogs can get a feel for his presence and Bear doesn't dislocate Roy's shoulder while going out to go hurry. Roy now knows how to handle Bear and does pretty well, or at least I thought so until this afternoon when Roy came up to the house to get the final rundown on what to do and where things are.

Bear and Willie saw Roy come to the house and instantly decided that this was going to be BIG fun! It really reminded me a lot of when my kids were younger and the babysitter would show up...

Roy spent about an hour here walking with Bear and getting Will calmed down, which never quite happened, but long enough for me to see that Roy's older brother is going to be a necessary component to this equation as well. In time, like a year or two, I think that Roy will be able to handle the dogs alone fine, but right now, they see this as an opportunity to see how much stuff they can get away with because "Mom always lets us do it this way..." Yadda yadda yadda...

So we leave out tomorrow night and we get home Sunday morning. Hopefully, Roy, the house and the dogs will all survive...

Happy wandering!

The Writer...and her dog, Bear

Day 24

2008-09-17T05:23:00.000-07:00

Everything that went so well yesterday, well, Bear made up for it this morning. To understand this, I do have to reveal one of the awful things about Bear's past. Before Bear got to the pound, somewhere in the first four months of his life, Bear had his face broken by a human. By best guess, he was kicked in the face. He has scaring on his lower jaw, you can feel the break, now healed, at his stop and if you look really close you will see that his nose, snout and lower teeth are crooked. This is why, whenever you see a picture of Bear, he is panting. His nose doesn't work for breathing very well. Its also why, when he is trying to get the scent of something or someone, he has to get right up onto it and taste it as well.

He's still our Bear and it doesn't really matter to us...except sometimes at night because he breathes really loudly, especially when he is cleaning himself. Last night was such a night and after a couple of hours of taking him out to go hurry and telling him to stop cleaning himself while laying right next to my side of the bed, I put Bear out in the living room with Willie and closed our bedroom door.

This was a mistake.

He did stop the incessant cleaning, but then proceeded to get into my pine cone collection and chew it up all over the floor. He also stole one of my seashells and slobbered all over that and, just for fun, stole one of my slippers and slobbered all over it as well, piled all of this mess up and surrounded it with his favorite toys.

Now the thing about this behavior is that, in my house, this is not appropriate dog behavior. In fact, it is "Bad dog behavior!" But we looked at Bear, who really was proud of entertaining himself through the night, and we looked at the pile of stuff, and looked at that face with the crooked nose and beautiful eyes that really has absolutely no reason to love or trust any human on the planet... and, okay I caved...bigtime, and Dad did the reprimanding on this one while I got the leash to take him out to go "hurry."

I've really got to work on being able to be stern with this guy because he's going to walk all over me if I don't.

Happy wandering!

The Writer...and her dog, Bear

Day 23 part 2

2008-09-16T16:55:00.000-07:00

The job was not the high point of my day today. In point of fact, it was pretty annoying, as jobs will be from time to time. I arrived 10 minutes early to a boss who was panicking and couldn't handle what was going on. Ergo, I immediately took over...and ended up leaving a half an hour late because, she couldn't handle what was going on.

This, of course put me a half hour behind on getting Bear out when I got home. Realizing that the worst had most definitely already happened, I decided to verify the location for the interview I have tomorrow...which put me another half hour off the schedule and thus, arrived home an hour late.

It wasn't until I got half-way up the walkway that I heard Willie bark. The dogs were calm as I walked in and there was no trash or recyclables littering the floor. Cautiously, I inhaled through my nose, searching for any clue of what I would probably find in the next room. There was nothing. I repeated the process. Again, nothing. I searched the dining room, living room, kitchen, even by the bathroom and then I found it, the only offense of the day, an old comb and hairbrush of mine, lovingly chewed up in the dog's blankets by the door.

There were no piles. There were no puddles, just a dead comb and hairbrush that just hadn't made it to the trash yet.

We went out immediately to take care of the pending business for both dogs, who, interestingly enough seemed equally proud. If pushed to say which one had been wonderful by the way the dogs were acting, I couldn't and I pondered that for a moment as we stood waiting five minutes for Bear to finish. In fact, I didn't think about this fact again until, after opening up my bedroom, I walked back out to the living room and found Bear lounging on the couch chewing the bone that I had given to Willie the other day as Willie sat in front of him watching in what, if I didn't know any better, I would call a very self-satisfied and doting manner.

I looked at Willie, who never shares anything, especially the bone ... that disappeared almost the minute I gave it to him the other day. He just looked back at me and wagged his tale a little. I looked at Bear who was lavishing this treat... almost as though he had been waiting for it all day...and I couldn't shake the feeling that an arrangement had been made somewhere along the line...which entailed a trip out to play in the middle of the night, a disappearing bone, a miraculously mess free house to come home to this evening and two very proud and happy dogs.

I know its silly, but as I think about it, I can't help but wonder if the reason we think dogs can't talk to each other is only because we can't hear the conversation.

Happy wandering!

The Writer...and her dog, Bear

Day 23

2008-09-16T05:46:00.000-07:00

Today the goal is to outsmart the puppy. Now that I've gotten a job working in my field, everyone wants an interview, so even tomorrow, my day off, I am going to have to be gone for part of the day. Thus, I have come up with a strategy to keep Bear out of the recyclables and garbage. I'm going to empty them before I leave!

I know, this is rocket science, but somebody had to figure it out.

He had a great walk this morning with Willie and managed to go through the entire night without going, but did make me take him out at 2:30 in the morning because Willie wanted to go out and play in the moonlight. Neither of them had to go, they just wanted to go outside.

That was fun.

I did learn, though, that Bear is capable of lasting nine hours without "going" so part of this is about making inappropriate choices on his part. We will see if he makes better ones today.

Anyway, got to run. Will update tonight.

Happy wandering!

The Writer...and her dog, Bear

Day 22 part 2

2008-09-15T18:00:00.000-07:00

As I was walking Bear tonight around in the yard, I realized that there are so many things I have missed seeing for so long now. I looked up in the sky and the moon was rising so huge and beautiful in the sky! I haven't seen it rise like that in so long!

I looked through the pictures of the past few days and found the beautiful fall leaves and the wonderful view down the road where I live... Its all still here and happening and I was missing all of it until I started getting out and having to walk my dog, Bear.

I have to remember these moments when I get home from work and am greeted by a mine field of chewed up soda bottles and the obligatory noon time mess that he missed going out for even though I walked him repeatedly this morning before leaving. I also have to realize that it was only one mess and that he is only six months old and, all things considered, it could have been a whole lot worse!

Where did I put that list of possible sponsors?

Happy wandering!

The Writer...and her dog, Bear

Day 22

2008-09-15T04:51:00.000-07:00

We were up early this morning as today is my first day off to work with Bear in the house. We didn't walk yesterday and it was very hot and heavy outside so I wanted to be sure to get a good walk in this morning. Bear was more than ready, and as I walked out the door and looked back, there stood Willie looking at us and wondering why he couldn't come too. There was no reason, except that he's my husband's dog and my husband is the one who does fun stuff with him. That's changing, and so is the fact that Bear is "my dog."

As the days are passing, an interesting thing is happening in our house. The dogs are starting to show us that they each and both want and need to be with both my husband and me. The Vet is great for rough housing, giving the stern backup when I need it and just hanging out. I'm great for cuddles, walking and going "hurry." Increasingly, they are looking to both of us for instruction and having their needs met and, as we are working as a "team" on this, they aren't getting away with so much inappropriate behavior, especially Willie. He's actually developing a nice personality!

One of the biggest changes we are seeing in Will is his voice. He has a "play voice" that we had never heard before. We're hearing it a lot now and we're also not hearing a lot of the "snarly voice" that he grumbled with all of the time. He really was a grumbley dog who was very snappy and snarly. Thankfully, that part of his personality is receding and this other dog is starting to come out who is really quite a pleasure to be around! We still have set backs, but they are quickly corrected and Will is learning that if he wants to do fun stuff, he needs to be nice.

A development we're not quite used to is what happens when we get home. It used to be a situation where the dogs attacked the door whenever they heard one of the cars pull up. Walking in was always a challenge because there would be jumping, and BJ was 98 pounds of 3 year old Lab jump, scratching and really loud barking. That's not happening so much anymore. Bear and Will are glad to see us, but there isn't any barking or jumping and we can actually open the door without forcing the dogs back. Its nice to come home to this!

So, our walk this morning went very well. I did spend some time working with Bear on basic obedience yesterday, mainly heeling and sitting, which really paid off during today's walk. I was actually able to chat with the neighbors as they drove down the hill to work. The dogs just sat and waited patiently until I was done and we'd continue on. It is so cool to be able to do that, to have them under control and working with me instead of going all over the place! Bear is still having a problem with distractions and focusing, but is getting better by the day. He's still young but I think by the time he is a year he is going to be incredible!

This is my first day to work since we got him and I'm a bit nervous. I'm going to be gone for 7 hours, roughly, so I'm a bit worried about what I'm going to arrive home to. Its going to be what its going to be though. Four days a week of my working outside of the home is not going to kill him and he can learn to "hold it" until I get home...I hope. We do have a crate for him, but I don't want to go there unless absolutely necessary. We did pick up extra paper towels at the store yesterday, so I'm prepared for the worst. Hopefully it won't be a problem.

Happy wandering!

The Writer...and her dogs, Bear and Willie

Day 21

2008-09-14T06:09:00.000-07:00

...and a rainy Sunday. Sunday's were made for resting and I think this is what we will do with this day. We may go for a walk in a bit, just to keep the legs working, but today is a much deserved day off for all of us, I think. It's been a summer full of changes for us and a day to just not "do" is in order.

We did have a development last night that was wonderful to see. As we watched one of our favorite shows on TV, Willie and Bear started a game of romp in the living room. They were prancing and barking, chasing each other in circles and having a great time! It was wonderful to see this happening again in our house; something that has been terribly missed over the past few years. The did get loud. They did run all over the downstairs but nothing was destroyed or knocked around too much.

They were playing...and it was good.

Happy wanderings!

The Writer...and her dog, Bear

Day 20

2008-09-13T04:16:00.000-07:00

Peanut brittle. That was what I was dreaming about. I was standing by a shelf with Bear, reached up and pulled down a bag of peanut brittle. It wasn't just any peanut brittle either. It was the peanut brittle we get at the gas station at exit 37 off of 95 in Virginia from the peanut farmer/Publius who owns the gas station, when we go see the kids. We always stop there for peanuts, peanut brittle, bacon, gas and political commentary on the events of the day.

The stuff is amazing! Not to sweet, but not bland. It actually tastes "nutty" and it's my favorite peanut brittle in the world! His boiled nuts and regular nuts are wonderful too! The bacon, we haven't tried yet. It's still sitting in the bag in the cupboard awaiting a cold Saturday morning breakfast toward Thanksgiving.

He owns the gas station, the peanut and pig farm and the factory that does the processing. A man of outspoken political views, he always has an opinion about Washington to express...which he does with feeling, conviction and hard work. Sundays mornings we usually find him sweeping up the outside of the gas station and debating with the customers who, whether they agree with him or not, usually give him credit for standing up for his beliefs.

And in my hand, I had a bag of his wonderful peanut brittle just waiting to be opened...

I looked at Bear who was anticipating the delight of the most delectable treat I was about to share with him. He knew it would be good, just like the home made split pea soup I had shared with him for dinner. I could see the joy in his eyes stemming from the excitement of another shared adventure and I opened the bag. As the clear plastic separated, it began to hit me, that smell that wasn't the peanut brittle that I had come to know and love. It was a stench of unbelievable magnitude! Something so incredibly foul that once it hit the nose there was no retreating from it and it kept growing...and growing...and growing until it saturated everything, everywhere!

It was horrible. In fact, it was so horrible that I couldn't accept it as being real and awoke from my deep slumber at 1:00 am and when I did so, it was still there, in my bedroom, and growing.
It took a few moments, for me to realize that I wasn't still dreaming and gently, so I wouldn't wake up the Vet, I folded back the covers, and in the dark began searching for my crocks with my feet that Bear has taken to moving all over the house. As I sat up, the light on his side of the bed quietly went on.

"You smell it too?" I asked.

An unenthusiastic "Ugh.." was his quiet reply.

The smell was nauseating! We expected the source to be right there in the room, it was so strong, but after a thorough search, we found nothing, including Bear. As I entered the living room, Bear was on the couch looking happy and fine and Will was curled in his chair. I turned toward the bathroom and there, right at the threshold, was the offending pile that was permeating the entire house with it's caustic smell.

It wasn't a big pile, more like a "leak" than anything else, so I quickly searched the rest of the house to ensure there wasn't anything else as I grabbed the leash. I took Bear out and the Vet had the honor of cleaning it up, a task my stomach couldn't take at that hour.

Note to self: No more home made split pea soup for Bear.

Happy wanderings!

The Writer...and her dog, Bear

Day 19

2008-09-12T19:31:00.000-07:00

OH NO! It rained today... all day! Bear, the dog who has been getting three walks a day plus his yard time had to make due with one walk, plus, I had a job interview. My husband was here with him while I was gone as he was off and reported morbid depression accompanied by one great moan as Bear planted himself by the kitchen door until I returned. Basically, when I'm not here, bear lays by the door...or so we thought until we ran out to the grocery store. Something about living in the middle of nowhere which is that to get anywhere, it's about a half an hour. Thus, we were gone for about an hour and fifteen minutes total and the dogs were here, alone.

Willie did not eat Bear while we were gone. Bear did not eat any of my shoes or slippers that I have been finding soaked with slobber but intact all over the house. What we did find when we got home was a ball of twine...unraveled all over the living room, two freshly picked squash...one on the couch and one on the floor of the living room, that had been nibbled but not chewed and one empty soda bottle which had been removed from the recycle bin and was now on the living room floor.

There were no accidents.

I addressed the issue with my sternest voice and explained to Bear the error of his ways ... and the need to reform them immediately, as my husband stood by the living room door and giggled...nothing like a little back-up there. My husband then reasserted that this was not acceptable behavior with Bear by discussing the fact that this was "BAD DOG BEHAVIOR!"
Bear took us seriously for about two hot seconds and then resumed his attempts at frolicking with us.

I'm hoping the lesson took because I start work on Monday. It's a part time position and should allow time to maintain most of Bear's schedule. We will see how he does with it.

Another change that's happened in the house is that when we arrive home, the attacking of the kitchen door and barking doesn't occur anymore. That is a welcome change and having both of the dogs, while happy to see us, not jumping all over the place and going nuts is a relief! Hopefully this will continue as well.

Here in the Catskills, it's going to be raining all weekend, so rather than go up to Blueberry Heaven again, I think we're going to do some car training and go geocaching for a bit. We also have the dump to do tomorrow, which should be interesting. Our town dump...actually it isn't a dump it is a "Waste Station and Recycling Center" and is one of the "hubs" of our community. Everyone goes there on Saturdays and gets the local ... well, "guy gossip." The local "girl gossip" is acquired at the library, but if you want to really know what's going on with the men of the community, Saturday at the dump is where you find out! I'm sure that between Frank-down-the-hill and Phil the farmer, the whole town knows about Bear by now, so the talking should be pretty good down there tomorrow. I may just have to tag along with the Vet for this trip! We shall see.

Happy wanderings!

The Writer...and her dog, Bear

Day 18

2008-09-11T05:57:00.000-07:00

The Tale of Five Tails

We had kind of a crazy day yesterday with all of the Blogger stuff! If you're visiting from "Dog Parks," welcome! Feel free to look around and hang out. We're just working with the dogs here, which is developing into a full time job!

We are beginning to have a huge break through here with "The William." He's been pretty horrible since we got back from North Carolina and when Bear came into the picture, things just got worse. Never what I would call a "well behaved" or "good" dog, Willie is known throughout the neighborhood as "The Brat." He came to live with us shortly after the Vet returned from Iraq. At the time, we had two shepherds, Buddy and Rocksie. They were both getting old at the time and Rocksie had developed cancer in her gut while he was in Iraq. She was his dog and hung on until he got home.

Rocksie Buddy

He was devastated when we had to put her down and swore that there would be no more dogs, then the girlfriend of our nephew in Florida had a Cairn terrier that had pups of questionable heritage. My husband had always wanted a Cairn because he is into the whole Scottish heritage thing. Willie was the last of these pups, the runt of the litter and nobody wanted him. So, we snuck my nephew up to a family gathering in Philly, met him there and on my birthday and gave Willie to the Vet for my birthday present. Since then, Willie has ruled the roost and has been very spoiled, until Bear came along. BJ and Budman never questioned his authority as they were both large dogs and, for them, it wasn't an issue. Bear has and Will is having to make some adjustments.

One of the biggest problems we've had with Will is that he never played with our other dogs. Budman didn't play with toys, ever. He did like to romp, but his greatest joy in life was just to shepherd his family. BJ is a black lab and, would play with toys for like two seconds and then want to be under the hand and leaning on either my daughter or me. He did chew a good bone, but never really played with Will.

Baby Will and Bud BJ and his girl

Bear lives to play, and now, "The William" is having to learn how to do that with another dog. He's also learning that life consists of other things besides "ball." There are walks and grooming, petting time and even lap time with Mom. Yesterday was the first real play we've had with the dogs. When my husband got home from work, Willie, of course went to greet him and Bear did as well. Bear was on the 25 foot lunge line and they started playing with a tire toy that they both like. It was so great to see these two having fun together! Later in the evening, Will actually came over and sat on my lap for a while, an event that never happens with him. He's also sharing the toys, even the ball!

Willie and Bear

I feel like a balance is finally returning to the house that has been missing for a long time! Yes, the house is a mess right now as there are dog toys and blankets that Bear seems to enjoy rearranging all over the place, but the important thing, the rightness of the energy in the house, is coming back to us and balancing itself again.

Happy wanderings!

The Writer...and her dog, Bear

Day 17

2008-09-10T07:07:00.000-07:00

...and "socialization" with Bear has begun. I must confess, after thinking about the socialization issue last night, that I called Frank-down-the-hill and set up a hot date for this morning. If we are going to be able to "wander all over the planet" with Bear and Willie, then they really need to be very well mannered dogs. The natural disposition with Bear, with some training, should be very amenable to that, however, Willie still seems to believe that the sole function of anyone who passes this house is to play ball with him. My thought is to get Bear trained to visit with manners first and then add William to the equation.

Today was our first day with it, so, at 7:30 this morning, Bear and I were out the door for our first "meeting." Frank-down-the-hill lives in the next house "down-the-hill" from us. He's maybe a quarter of a mile down from here and confessed to "spotting" me walking with a "new family member" when I spoke with him last night. I didn't tell him that I've seen him watching us with his face plastered against the window as we pass by, or that driving his new Matrix out to the the field next to his house to watch us was a bit obvious, even though he did try to hide it by the tree line. He's getting on in years, isn't as steady as he used to be and the Matrix is quieter than the four-wheeler so is better for "covert operations" like spying on your neighbors.

People do still do this kind of thing here because, living in the Catskill State Park, there isn't a whole lot else to do but watch what everyone else is doing. Frank has been retired for years, is a widower and a wonderful friend so when any changes happen at our house, he's the first to know. Bear's first "official" visit couldn't be with anyone else.

When we got to the door, Bear was frightened about going into the basement that Frank converted to a living area when his wife died, so Frank came out to meet us at the door. It was cool this morning and damp enough that "older bones take on a chill," or so Frank insisted. After standing outside and having an initial meeting, Frank invited us in again and, with some coaxing, Bear came in. There was an ulterior motive on this entrance on Frank's part. He likes it when our dogs "come visiting" on their own because he likes to have dinner with them. Pizza night is a particular favorite and there have been many a night over the past two decades that dogs who have lived with us came back with anchovy and cheap beer breath. He teaches them about the "neighbor path" we have between the houses and after that, there's no stopping it.

He and my former dog Buddy, aka "Budman," were great friends in younger years.

I let Frank know that this one will not be "visiting" without me because he is going to have a job and that Willie was in training now too. Judging from the look he gave me, I think I am going to have to be extra vigilant about this as Frank is not above "sneaking" when there is a challenge involved. Between him and farmer Phil, who is still oogling my dog, I've got my hands full in preventing these guys from turning Bear into a complete delinquent or worse...

Thankfully, I do have the complete cooperation of the neighborhood ladies, two of whom we met and Bear slobbered all over, while they were out having a healthy morning walk on "the hill." They saw that we had been visiting with Frank and will be keeping an eye to things as well!

Happy wanderings!

The Writer...and her dog, Bear

Day 16

2008-09-09T12:32:00.000-07:00

...and she keeps on chugging away at it. Things are going relatively well today, except for the rain that is dumping here in the North East. Oh well. It could be snow, so I should be happy. We missed our morning walk due to excessive thunder and lightning, however, we did make the lunch walk, all three of us, and hopefully we might be able to have a dinner one too. That is the plan, at least. I'm trying to encourage the Vet to walk in the evening with me as it would be a good thing for both of us to get used to doing! We shall see how that goes tonight.

Today I turned my attention to the business end of this whole idea and it is a spiderweb! The basic idea remains the same, to get out and walk with the dogs, but our approach for sponsors needs to be tweaked. Then there are the logistics of the entire project and planning of where we actually want to go to. It's a lot to figure out, but I think if we put our heads together, we can come up with something.

I went looking around the blogger end of the web a bit today and was really kind of surprised at how few dog blogs were findable. I'm going to keep searching, because I really can't imagine people not writing about the adventures they have with their dogs...unless my hunch was right and they aren't having all that many adventures. It would be a great shame if they really aren't having that many adventures! For us, just walking down the road is like going on a vacation to a different planet! I'm really excited about the prospect of even thinking about a trip with these guys, but we're a ways from that yet.

Another event for today was meeting Paul-the-Hardware-Guy down at the Post Office. He owns the hardware store in town and has been a great help to us over the years with the myriad of plumbing supplies we've needed for this old farmhouse! One of the things I'd like to start doing in a bit for socializing these guys is to take them downtown to meet people. Our downtown isn't very big, really. It has the only blinking stop light within 7 miles, a deli, a hardware store, the post office and the library....and that's it...really. There's nothing else. So, I figured that we'd head down once these guys have passed "Greeting Walkers on the Road 101" and meet the folks in town. Oh! I forgot the Town Hall! That's downtown too. And then really, that's all there is.
I asked Paul if he allows dogs in the store and he said "No, but I do keep dog biscuits and come out and give them to the dogs while I say Hi."

So I've got a "sometime in the not too distant future date with Paul-the-Hardware-Guy." Now I just need to get with the Town Hall, Matti at the Deli, the Post Office and farmer Phil who likes my dog, because while he is a cattle farmer, he is also building a library and I think I could convince him to give Bear and I a tour of the place! I think this might be my first real "wandering trip" or as they say in Germany "Wanderung!"

We don't have that word in English or a word to convey quite the same meaning.

That needs to change.

Happy wanderings!

The Writer...and her dog, Bear

Day 15

2008-09-08T18:17:00.000-07:00

Hi,

Well, it's day 15 of the blog and day 3 of socialization and training for Bear...who is rapidly managing to steal the hearts of my neighbors here on the hill. One guy in particular, a cattle farmer who lives up at the top of the road, cornered me at the library during the Pumpkin Party meeting. He's been watching Bear and I on the road in the morning, at lunch and in the evening.

"What a dog that is! He is absolutely beautiful!" says he. "I can't believe what you've done with him already! What kind of dog is he?"

So I told him..."He's a pound puppy."

He couldn't believe it. Loves the dog who he has been waving and grinning at...with enthusiasm, every time he passes. If Bear comes up missing, I'm going to know where to go looking!

In any event, it was a really good day with training. Willie is still pretty jealous, but is also beginning to "instruct" Bear in the finer points of the pecking order in our house. You see, in Willie's mind, he is the top dog. As a point of fact, in Willie's mind, he is the only dog. In short, he does not share or play well with others because with BJ, he never really had to as they were into completely different things. BJ was into being directly under the hand of either my daughter or myself. Willie was and is into playing ball...until Bear got here. Now he has taken possession of everything else in the house as well, except me. Known throughout the neighborhood as "The Brat," because he terrorizes everyone until they play ball with him, here he is in all of his glory...

I know, "He's soooo cute!" which is why he gets away with his behavior, but he is now learning that there are other cute dogs on the planet as well.

Yesterday on our walk, that seemed to lessen some when we walked them together. Seizing on the exhaustion and sore muscles of the day today, I decided, after Bear did so well on his morning walk, to try taking them for a walk in tandem. It was wonderful! Will had a bit of trouble at first heeling with me, but once he got the hang of it, did a wonderful job. Bear decided, as we turned to come back up the hill, that it was time to take a nap though. Pulling contests with this dog are a losing proposition as he locks his legs, digs in with the paws that are more like flippers and doesn't budge.

Thus, I decided that this was an opportune moment to utilize psychology with my new friend.

I loosened the leash, turned with Willie, who was more than willing to just leave him there, and took two steps. By step three, we were right back in tandem.

Lesson learned, don't fight with him, just do.

This afternoon, as the dogs were pretty tired and I didn't want to stress them anymore with another walk, I decided to use the lunge line with Bear outside to give him some romping room and socializing with Will. We use a 25 foot horse lunge line that we got for my daughter's dog when he was young. Basically, a long web leash, we use it first for play room for them and then for training them to come. It's really great and, with large dogs, works very well. Bear really enjoyed having some freedom and he and Will even managed to play for a split second.

It was good.

No walk tonight after dinner as I had a meeting at the library... oops, time for Bear to "go hurry!" Be right back!

My apologies!

Where was I? Okay, no walk because of the meeting and the Vet felt that maybe we should back off a little on the exercise. I don't think the dogs are the only ones who are feeling yesterday! Anyway, just because I can, this is my daughter and her dog, reunited last week. She tells me that BJ is doing great and adjusting to his new roomie wonderfully, which makes me feel about two inches tall but we will get there too...eventually.

No, his eyes don't usually glow...

So that was day 15. Little by little we are getting there!

Happy wanderings!

The Writer ...and her dog, Bear

Day 14

2008-09-07T17:24:00.000-07:00

Hi,

Today...was supposed to be "The Tail of Tales."

That tale will have to wait until tomorrow

because today was a gorgeous day outside and

we took a walk we've been waiting to take for

a long time. We went out in back of the house

and started up "the hill" to a place called Blue-

berry Heaven. It's at the top of this "hill" we live

on and, in our younger days, we used to

take the kids up there to pick blueberries at

about this time of year. We had planned a

date to go up there for yesterday, but the hurricane we had spent the previous three

days praying off finally hit and it rained for most of the day, a blessing considering the driving we

had done this week and the fact that Bear needed a day to just hang out with us.

The trip up is a gorgeous hike through the

woods and up our side of the mountain and while

the path looks deceptively flat in this photo, this

is only because I angled the camera up as I shot

these photos. It is definitely a hike and a few

spats ensued, but our marriage did, miraculously,

survive the trek! You see my hiking boots

died...oh about ten years ago and all I had to wear were sneakers and the trail is very rocky.

This combined with Bear deciding he didn't need to listen to a word I said about pulling made me

pretty grumpy rather quickly. We almost threw in the towel, but we both really want to do this,

and thus continued on. As my husband was a dog handler in the Army years back,

he helped me get the idea across to Bear that while he didn't

have to walk in a heel position while we hike, pulling was not

and I am sure I will be feeling my shoulder tomorrow! He

did get the idea rather quickly, though, it was just hard for

me to use a firm tone with him. I really want him to be able

to do this though, so I have to work on my ability to let him

know what he needs to do because once he understands

what I'm asking, he is more than willing to do it.

And here's

my guy. Turns out he's not so camera

shy at all. He just didn't like being photographed

in his pen. He had a blast today because he and I

also took two shorter walks along with this one.

The Vet and I did too and once we got used to

each other's paces because we haven't walked

like this in years, the dogs did as well.

Happy wanderings!

The Writer...and her dog, Bear

Day 13 part 2

2008-09-06T17:22:00.000-07:00

Hi,

I cannot tell you what this day has been to me! My daughter is now getting ready to come home from work in NC, sleep in her own bed and have her own dog there waiting to greet her. My middle son is laying in bed right now in Camp Lejeune, dreaming of his fiancee who he just got an apartment with in PA. My oldest son is sitting on the couch, staring at the tv in that way that only a parent who has a newly crawling baby can, and while trying to be affectionate with his wife, but, quite frankly right now, both being so fried from chasing my grand daughter all day that neither of them have the energy to do anything but the 5000 mile glare into the tv set...and he thought an Iraq tour was hard... My husband is carelessly tossing the ball for Willie off the couch while Bear... okay, I can't help it, I look at this dog and all I can think is "He's such a bear!" is laying by my feet while I write...and house breaking with this one is gonna be nothing!

I've been waiting for seven years for this day to happen in our life and ... finally, it's here. Everyone is in their place and moving forward and, quite frankly, I am exhausted!

Bear is wonderful! Everything I wanted in a dog and more!!! I can't say enough about checking with your local pound and will be writing an article for the local paper on this one. He really is a gift, is socializing well with Willie and...AND loves to watch my goldfish by the way...and natural chunky peanut butter with rasberry jelly sandwiches on oatmeal bread...and the pears from my pear tree...and the apples from my apple tree...and has frizzy curly hair when it rains, just like me...and has a "noisy nose" when he sleeps...and seems to want to do anything I want to do whenever I want to do it...and...and...thinks that having a home is about the most wonderful thing in the world...even if that home has a "Willie-whose-nose-is-very-out-of-joint" in it.

Even "The William" has his weaknesses and Bear is finding them!

I'll post about the trip tomorrow because I am still braindead from the driving, but I wanted to let you know about the name thing... My spouse and I had decided, on the way down to NC, that "Ernie" was the perfect name, so most of the way down and all of the way back, that is how we thought of him.

It's not his name, though.

First time I saw this guy, first thought I had was "Oh my God, this dog is a bear!"

Every time after that, when I saw this dog, upon greeting and leaving him, that is what I thought. Today when I went to get him, this is what came right into my head when he was sitting in the pen waiting for me to go take him for a walk again.

Somebody was talking, I just wasn't listening.

Okay, "Bear" is not the name I would have chosen, but it is the name he responds to and it is what he "is"...even though he is a dog...which is technically a canine...which is not a bear but we aren't even going to go there. "Bear" is his name because ... this guy looks just like a baby bear and the teddy bear I had as an infant.

I'm sure there is something very Freudian in all of this, but ya know what? He's happy with the name. I'm happy with the name and if I want to call my dog Bear, who, on the face of the planet, is really going to care?

His name is "Bear."

Tomorrow, pictures and the "Tale of the tails," I promise! Tonight I am going on about 10 hours of sleep in the past 72 so I'm heading to the bed...if Bear lets me because, not for nothing but, he snores louder than "the Vet" after Iraq when he's not trying to climb into bed with me...

Did I mention this dog is at 68 pounds right now and is maybe six months old but possibly younger?

Yeah....

He's a love though!

Happy wanderings!

The Writer ... and her dog, Bear!

Day 13

2008-09-06T05:00:00.000-07:00

Hi,

We're back and today is "the" day but before we go down to get Ernie, I want to let you know that Blackjack, aka Galumph, aka the big black dog, aka my daughter's dog is very happily reunited with my daughter. We beat the hurricane, both on the way down and back, which was a God thing, I think. We left at 6:18 pm on Wednesday and arrived at 6:45 am on Thursday as we traveled I-95 all the way down. BJ made the trip very well and was thrilled to have his girl back.

To understand why all of this had to transpire the way it did, I need to set up some background. My daughter is the youngest of my three children. She is 18 and graduated from the community college last spring. She is starting her junior year this fall and decided she wanted to be in North Carolina because she loves the beach. Blackjack came to live with us when my middle son graduated from bootcamp. He is a Marine, as is his brother and both of the boys decided to enlist after their father returned from his deployment in Iraq. During my husband's deployment, my oldest was in Michigan in college, but my middle guy, my daughter and I became very close because we were all we had.

When my son left, my daughter was devastated! Noting this, my middle son's girlfriend, who had awoken one morning to find a litter of puppies and two older pups tied to her porch at the end of the summer, showed up one day with BJ. My daughter loved him and much pleading and begging ensued...we caved and ended up with this huge puppy who became everything to her.

When she moved to North Carolina, she did so with the intent of finding a place to live where she could have BJ. She got a full time job, found a beautiful house that she is renting with another wonderful young woman who is a student and is having a third move in shortly. There is one stippulation on the house-mate situation, and that is "must love dogs." All do and all do have. They also have a huge, fenced yard and a beautiful home with lots of room!

Anyway, this is why BJ had to remain "her" dog. The plan had always been to get him down to her, it was just a matter of when this was going to happen. We were planning for Christmas as my grandbaby's birthday is Christmas Eve and both of the boys are at Camp Lejeune, so we could have Christmas together, but Ernie is ready to come home now and we thought it best for all parties involved, because there has been a lot of coming and going here lately for everyone, including Ernie, to come to a stable family that isn't in the middle of moving all over the east coast.

So BJ is now stable with his girl and Ernie is about to get stable with us. It took a killer trip, but this is the way that we wanted it to happen. I'll update later to let you know how things go.

Happy wanderings!

The Writer ...and her dog, Ernie

Day 12

2008-09-05T20:29:00.000-07:00

Hi,

Sorry about missing day 11. We are back from North Carolina and as it is 11:30 pm here now and we have been on the road since 7:15 am this morning, I am really tired. Things went well and I will fill you in tomorrow.

Happy Wanderings!

The Writer... and her dog, Ernie

Day 10 part 2

2008-09-03T11:11:00.000-07:00

Hi,

WE'RE LEGAL! Bernie, who will probably be renamed "Teddy"... ugh, is now legally my dog! He has a brand new collar that I put onto him today. He has a home address and he has a dog tag and his rabies shot. He also has a "Puppy Packet" and a case of "Science Diet Large Dog Breed Food Packets" for when we go hiking and walking that the Animal Control Officer gave us as well. Saturday cannot come soon enough as we have a "date" with my husband and his dog, Willie, to go up to the top of the mountain and find the benchmark and then to Blueberry Heaven to pick blueberries. I haven't been up there in years and I can't wait!

When I went to adopt him, the town clerks were so relieved he has a home. Right now, they and the Animal Control Officer are all checking, actually they started checking on this yesterday, with Albany to see if they can get the state to subsidize his neutering, which would be wonderful! This is one of the reasons I love living here! It's "small town America" and everybody really does know everybody elses business...and tries to help when they can. I'll keep you updated on the neutering situation as we progress.

In any event, he does have a home now and I do have packing to finish, soooo.....

Happy wanderings!

The Writer...and her dog who is still nameless

Day 10

2008-09-03T04:13:00.000-07:00

Hi,

Busy day today! I brought the furniture down yesterday and we broke it down last night. Pre-packing on the truck went well. Unfortunately, we aren't going to be in NC long enough to do any walking or geocaching this time. Basically we are going to sleep, get the furniture set up, sleep again and come home, but on Saturday, I think we will take a walk!

I'm looking forward to that at least.

My dog, who I can't name Bo because my husband really can't work with that name, is getting his shot today and will become "officially" my dog this afternoon. He will be staying at the pound until Saturday morning when we pick him up. I wish it could be sooner, but I really think it's better for him to stay there rather than being here in a new house with a complete stranger to feed him and let him out. The extra two days won't hurt him. We're having a friend come stay with Willie, my husband's dog, and feed the fish while we do this.

So, sorry for such a short blog today, but I've got stuff to get done here and not a lot of time to do it!

Happy wanderings!

The Writer...and her dog...who still doesn't have a name.

Day 9

2008-09-02T09:38:00.000-07:00

Hi,

It looks like Saturday is going to be the day for us to bring my new dog home. I spent some time this morning at the pound with "the dog of my dreams that I want to name Bo, but my husband doesn't" and really had a nice time! He isn't as big as I thought he was and is a complete mush-head! It is not that he is not intelligent because he did everything I asked him to, he just wants to spend his life being right next to me and being loved. He isn't demanding of affection, but just really enjoys it!

We went for a short walk together and he enjoyed being out of the pound, but wasn't rammy or anything like that. He doesn't know how to heal yet but isn't "a puller" on the leash either. He responds very well to vocal instruction and praise, so I don't think we are going to have to use treats to train him. All he wants is a kind/gentle word and a good petting and he will do anything I want, basically. He isn't house broken, which is a challenge, but I think he is aware enough that it isn't going to be a huge problem, which is good. He never really took biscuits from the woman who has been caring for him but I think that has more to do with the way she was giving them to him. A lot of people try to give treats using a pincer grip with their forfinger and thumb and having the dog nip it out of their fingers. There are two problems with doing this. First, because of the way they are holding the treat, the dog feels like it is taking the treat out of your mouth. In a dog that doesn't have a propensity to nip, they will generally take it out of the hand and drop it onto the ground and leave it there. This is what my dog did when the woman caring for him offered a biscuit. The second problem with this is that in a dog that has the tempermant to be a "nipper," people who do this are encouraging and rewarding the nipping behavior in their dog. By taking a buscuit, breaking it in half and offering it to the dog from a flat, open palmed hand below his mouth level, most dogs will accept anything you want to feed them...unless they really find it unappealing. This is what I did with my dog and he ate six of them right up. Problem was that he then expected me to hand feed him his breakfast because he thought that was a really good deal! When he realized that was not going to be an option, he decided he could still feed himself.

I saw no indications of any nipping or biting behavior with this guy at all. Snarfeling with his nose is another matter. He has a lot of boxer in him and drinks everyone and everything in with his nose. How much of that we will be able to adjust, I'm not sure, but it is something we will have to watch with young children...and ice cream cones. Basically, the most overwhelming characteristic I noted with him is that he really loves to be loved and wants nothing more than to have someone to spend time with doing whatever. He's also very young and acts very much like a baby still, which is fine, he's just a big baby as opposed to a small one. We stopped several times while walking, by his preference, because he just wanted to be reassured and rest, which is fine for now. I think that was more of the baby in him than anything else. His canines are still not quite in yet, so he actually may be younger than thought or the malnutrition may be causing some developmental delays which is okay because intellectually he is very alert, attentive and responsive. We're just going to really have to ensure great nutrition for development from here to adulthood and keep an eye to the bones and joints once he reaches adulthood and exercise is going to be a part of that.

Now, it's time for me to do some packing as we are leaving tomorrow night for North Carolina. I can't believe all of this is happening so fast but things fall into place like that sometimes...well, at least this time. Don't know if I will be able to blog through our travels, but will try.

Happy Wanderings!

The Writer...and her dog who is almost here!

Day 8 part 2

2008-09-01T17:24:00.001-07:00

Hi,

Sorry about being "gushy" on the last post, but I'm really stoked about finding Bernie... Okay, we may have to change the name, but he's the dog! I've called my daughter and we are set to return Blackjack, aka Galumph, to her this coming weekend.

While I was talking to her I realized that until we had found the dog, we really didn't have any reason to really push to get BJ down to her. Now we do. I want him with her before we bring Bernie home. He's had enough separating to do and has been alone enough. Tomorrow morning I will be going over to walk with him for a while and spend some time as I will until we get him home.

So onto Geocaching! Our second site was kind of a surprise for both of us. It was a benchmark by a flower box that we see everyday. The things we didn't see were the rock sculpture of the turtle and the beavers at the box as well. The box has been there for a couple of years now and is in such a place that if you never stopped to look, you would definitely not see the turtle, which is the greatest part!

Pretty cool, huh? Anyway, very fun to find and I ask your forbearance with the photos as I'm just getting used to doing this on Blogger. So after this we went to our third cache site which was down by the covered bridge in town. This one got a little hairy as the cache was supposed to be hidden in the roots of an old tree stump next to the guardrail on the bank. There are several problems with this location. First, every spring the creek floods and the bank gets washed out. Anything hidden on that bank would probably not survive as these floods take down whole healthy trees, not to mention wash out all of the dead stumps and the like. Also, there is no longer a guardrail as the garden club had it removed to put up a fence and shrubbery during a town beautification project. Thus, if the floods didn't get the cache, the garden club probably did. In any event, we spent quite a bit of time climbing around the bank and seeing the bridge and brook from the underside which was really pretty fun! When we returned home, my husband discovered that someone had logged the cache as missing a while ago, soooo, it wasn't just us. The thing really isn't there.

We did have fun looking for it though!

So overall, a great day! We had a lot of fun and I'm going to put up this last picture, just because I can!

This is my dog, Bernie.

Happy wanderings!

The Writer...and her dog, Bernie

Day 8

2008-09-01T09:49:00.000-07:00

Hi,

The husband and I have been having a blast this morning! We've been looking into this geocache stuff and decided to give it a try since there are a ton of these things around here. One of the caches was right down by the town pound, where we wanted to go look and see if the "dog of my dreams" was there.

On the way down, we passed the pound road and decided to look for the cache first because that would be the first turn around anyway. The cache was at the Eagle Lookout down by the reservoir. This is a place we know quite well and usually try to visit in the spring when the eagles are nesting down there. We did see geese and I even got a shot of one of the eagle nests, now empty because the little guys are flying on their own, and...we found the cache! Really cool and we had a good time! Also, that cache we found on the ground rather than "above ground" as stated on the site.

We got back in the car and headed up to the pound where I think the real "treasure" of the day was found. There was one dog in the pound. He was abandonded and is about six months old. By my own estimation, I would say he's a mix between a boxer and a St. Bernard. He's a goofball and really wants out of that pen, young enough to train and by the look of the paws will certainly be big enough to keep the bears away when we head up the hill to get berries. He's a little on the hyper side, but I think that has a lot to do with being confined. He's got a shaggy, brindle colored coat, a good face and eyes and was not at all happy when we left.

So, we came home and I called the Animal Control Officer, who has just returned my call. "Bernie," the dog, was supposed to be put down this weekend because he has been at the pound for two months now. Because of the holiday, they couldn't schedule it. Tomorrow, instead of being scheduled for that, he will be scheduled for his rabies vaccine and... adoption... and he loves blueberries! :-) I'm going over to "socialize" with him in the morning...and maybe we will take Willie, my husband's dog, over to meet him now, I am being told because our friend who went to find the cache at the Eagle Observation point is obviously lost, even with the GPS.

So life is really good right now and sometime tonight I hope to finish the writeup on the geocaching stuff because we hit two other sites and I want to write them up as well, but for now,
I'm going to see MY dog!

Happy wandering!

The Writer...AND HER DOG!

Day 7 part 2

2008-08-31T18:54:00.000-07:00

Today did not include a bout on the "torture machine of doom," however, it did include something better. Our neighbors, who live about 1/2 of a mile down the mountain and they had a party today for their 25th wedding anniversary. We live in the country on the side of a mountain, so things are pretty spread out up here. Anyway, rather than hopping in the car and driving down, which all of our other neighbors did, my husband and I decided to walk and it was really nice.

During our walk, we discussed a lot of things about this project and the dog I am looking for. He seems to feel that a puppy would be best for me as I could then train it up to be the dog I want it to be. It would also grow in it's ability to wander as I do and there is a great benefit to that. We are still going down to the town pound tomorrow, however, as we are not in the immediate position to adopt tomorrow and the Animal Control Officer will not be there, we won't be bringing home a dog just yet. I do, however, think that I will be taking my daughter's dog for a walk tomorrow morning because I really enjoyed getting out and walking today. One of my neighbors also mentioned that the berries are ready for picking on the top of the mountain, so I'm thinking that maybe we will take a wander up there at some point this week.

I need a big dog for wanders up the mountain because we have bear here and bear like berries, a lot! My daughter's dog will do for that for this year, I think.

Happy wanderings!

The Writer...and her dog...who is still trying to materialize.

Day 7

2008-08-31T11:23:00.000-07:00

Hi,

Well I'm bummed. I spent a while today online looking for the "dog of my dreams" and I actually thought I had found one...but they didn't. The dog has joint problems and probably wouldn't hold up to the kind of walking we'd be doing.

Glucosamine anyone?

Anyway, the search continues and I'm morbidly depressed because I was actually hoping to get my daughter's dog down to her...like in the immediate future. I'm thinking that having this endless situation with her dog interned here is not such a good thing for me and we need to begin solidifying plans for getting him to her so that I can get on with my life. It would seem so at least.

In other areas, the husband is getting into this idea with me and is helping me in the endeavor. It's kind of fun to be looking at this with him and exploring the different options we can pursue with it! I've also discovered, through some of the readers who have visited, this thing called "geocaching" which might be a really fun aspect to add to the entire idea. While I'm not quite sure about climbing Mt. Everest, finding out if there are some less remote caches might be big fun! Thus, we are adding GPS companies to the list of possible sponsors for our project.

Another area of exploration was "The American Walking Dog Association."

There isn't one.

I think there should be because there might be other people out there who want to take their dogs wandering as well. I think I should talk to that Dog Whisperer guy about this because, not for nothing but, there should be a network out there for people who want to go places with their dogs that neither they, nor their dogs, have to jump through hoops and win blue ribbons to be able to participate in.

Oh well...

The Writer...and her dog that she, unfortunately, did not find today.

Day 6

2008-08-30T16:59:00.000-07:00

Hi,

Ah, the tales of the eliptical machine... and my daughter's dog... He does not even go into her bedroom anymore while I work in the sewing room up there. He sleeps on my son's bed after bypassing her empty bedroom. Today was different though. I awoke this morning, determined to at least begin my new regime in order to "train" for my wandering around the world with the Leonburger who is still not present.

I spent an hour kabitzing with the spouse, checking the news, having a cigarette and, eventually, got into my shorts and t-shirt, climbed the stairs and walked into my daughter's room which now contains the "torture machine of doom." I mounted the machine and started the timer...while my daughter's dog stood dutifully beside me.

Actually made five minutes on the thing which completely surprised me!

My legs feel quite a bit better and I was actually able to get some work done today for like the first time in a week. It's still hard for me to go up there with the empty bedrooms...

So, when I finished my exercise in masochism on the "torture machine of doom," my daughter's dog and I left the room and had a pretty productive day...until the mail came with no acceptance letter and I checked the emailed list from the place I submitted to and was...decidedly not on it.

Morbid depression ensues...which seems to be the lot for unemployed writer's these days.

So I keep writing and submitting, sending out resume's and working on the sponsor list...

Happy wandering!

The Writer...and her dog...that is still not present.

Day 5

2008-08-29T17:03:00.000-07:00

Hi,

Day 5...and if Martha Stewart sends me one more "Cookie of the Day Recipe" I have enough weight to drop right now, thank you very much, or "Craft of the Day," there are only so many ways in which one can "creatively" store pencils in covered tin cans or glued together fabric cases, I am going to vomit. Some women are born to do this stuff...I'm not one of them and I'm really okay with that! Noting my angst and as he was off today, my husband took me "visiting" some friends of ours. Prior to leaving, he mentioned that an Old English Sheepdog might be the breed I should consider for the dog who is waiting to wander all over the world with me. I gave this some thought and research on breeds and at present, my thinking is that this dog will either be a German Shepherd mix, I'm still missing Budman, or a Leonburger.

I first came to know the Leonburger when we lived in Germany and have always felt it would be a wonderful dog to live with. They take a lot of time and love, need very gentle training and are very loyal and loving...and huge. While my daughter's dog rivals Clifford the big red dog, a Leonburger would make him, at 120 pounds and meeting my hip at his shoulder, seem malnourished and stunted in his growth. Known as the "Gentle Giants" of the dog world, they are a mix of a Mastiff, Newfoundland and Great Pyrenees Mountain Dog. Big, hairy, wonderful with children and devoted to those they love, this is what I want in a dog...except for the hairy stuff...which I could deal with if it were the dog of my dreams.

The daughter's dog is becoming problematic. As the days pass, he is becoming more and more my shadow. I've started giving him a daily flea comb which has resulted in his not leaving my side when we are inside or outside of the house. If I stop, he is there sitting at my right side, because my daughter is a leftie, with the top of his head under my hand. He has even started switching to the left side on his own and sleeping on the floor beside my side of the bed. Not a good situation for him...

The other issue is that I want to start working on dropping some weight and getting strong enough to do this and if just combing him has resulted in this, I can't imagine what walking with him will do. My daughter wants her dog and I'd really like him to want to go with her when the time comes. So I'm praying for a miracle here and that by Tuesday of next week that I've sold a major piece of writing and can get the car fixed so that he can go down with her...next weekend would be a good time for that to happen. Thus, it's the elliptical machine for me for now...and praying heavily for a miracle at this point.

Happy wanderings!

The writer...and her dog...who is trying to formulate but is still not present yet.

Day 4

2008-08-28T08:18:00.000-07:00

Hi,

Day 4 is begun and going. My daughter is speaking to me again. She called last night and we talked for quite a while, much to her father's chagrin. It's interesting, the relationships we have with our children. I was very close to our sons until they were late teens, at which point I became the dreaded "Mom Monster" and there was no torture too cruel to submit me to. It was hard because my husband was deployed at the time and, at least in our house, that seemed to be the time they needed him most. With our daughter, it's the opposite. He's the "Dad Monster" and she and I are more like friends. It's really pretty wonderful and speaks volumes for having children of both genders.

Anyway, she doesn't hate me for asking about her dog...although it did piss her off a bit...which brings me back to the entire issue of the dog, which still isn't, and making a plan to get her dog down to her so that I can find this dog that I know is waiting to go wander the world with me.

This does prove to be problematic as we are definitely not going to fly my daughter's dog, and all of her furniture, down to her. Thus we are going to have to drive. The spouse does have a truck which will fit the furniture, however, her dog is not going to ride in the back of an open pickup for the 15 hours it will take to get there. He will not be able to sit in the cab with us as he is... large, and neither of us can fit in the cab with him. This does indicate that we will need two vehicles to get the dog and her furniture down to her. The problem with that is that after having the breaks, $300, and fuel pump, $670, replaced on my vehicle, I now need to have the bearings redone before I can take it on any significant trips...which will entail roughly another $652.91.

The car is two years old and has 46,000 miles on it.

I will never buy a Chevy again.

As this is the situation with the car, I have decided that a meaningless job is in order to fund the repairs to the car which are necessary before being able to embark on the delivery of my daughter's dog and furniture and thus have been creating wonderful documents of resume all morning.

Oh, the joy of being an unemployed writer!

Actually, I'm hoping to hear from one of the places that I have submitted work to this summer within the near to immediate future. It would make my life much more meaningful if this were to happen, but in the event it does not, and morbid depression ensues because I will be relegated back into the realms of the unpublished again, I will at least have a meaningless job with which to accomplish my grander dream of wandering the world with my dog that seems to be consistently absent lately.

And the viscous circle of life continues to rotate around and around and around...

Happy wanderings!

The Writer ... and her dog... that is nowhere in the picture yet.

Day 3 part 2

2008-08-27T11:55:00.000-07:00

Hi,

Well, the email I received back from my daughter was...not positive. Thus, she will probably not be speaking to me for the next year or two and I am still without a dog...which doesn't work very well for my plans. The issue now becomes getting her dog down to her so that I stop bonding with it and getting a new dog for me.

I did have a dog, not too long ago. He was, at best estimate, 18-20 years old when he died. He was with us from about the time he was between two and four years old. His name was Buddy and he was the best dog. He was a shepherd, husky, lab mix with one blue eye and one brown. His blue eye was the "watch eye." He saw into who a person was with it, I think. He was a really good friend, had both a heart of gold and the heart of a warrior. He would defend any of us to the end but was so gentle with everyone he trusted. He was also an excellent judge of character.

I really miss him.

I'd like to think that he would have loved to do this with me, but I don't think he would have. Bud was a homebody. We got him from the local pound after he had been dumped at the reservoir. People do that up here. They pick up dogs or cats for their summer vacations, decide they don't want them or have to go back to the city and dump them at the end of the summer season down at the reservoir or on the local farms. We had gotten Bud in February after he had been fending for himself since the end of summer. When we picked him up and brought him home, he expected not to be allowed in the house and it took some coaxing to get him even onto the porch. It took him several months before he even attempted to get onto the furniture. When he finally did, it was the pleasure of his life!

All that dog ever wanted was a home and people who loved him. We were lucky enough to be the ones to give that to him.

He passed this past spring and I miss him. I often think that if I ever get another dog, I want one like him. There will never be another Budman, though. He was a "once in a lifetime friend." They all are. So maybe having a bit of extra time here will allow me to get to the point where I can accept the dog ... that is still not present, for who it is. That's my hope, at least.

In the meantime, getting things in order so that I am ready for a new dog is a good thing and getting my daughter's dog down to her is the priority now, especially since "dumping season" has begun here.

We live on one of those farms where animals tend to show up at this time of year.

Happy wanderings!

The Writer...and her dog... who is definitely not yet present.

Day 3

2008-08-27T05:35:00.001-07:00

Hi,

So moving right along here, I am on day three of my journey. Aside from the "technical difficulties" encountered with the Blogger computer, I am encountering other unforeseen "challenges" to my plan here. In discussing the concept of this idea with my spouse, it has come to my attention that he does not intend to get onto an airplane...ever again. That does pose a problem with walking all over the planet because there are these things called oceans that I am not capable of walking across and unless there has been a universal act of divination that I have no knowledge of on his part, he can't either.

He suggested we cross these aquatic wonders by boat.

There's an analogy here.

The Writer detests boats as to her spouse detests airplanes.

That covers the situation accurately.

I love water, I just hate boats. After spending a lot of time on boats as a child in open water and, well, let's be honest here, my idea of hell is being trapped on a boat with no land in sight in either the doldrums or a storm, both of which I have experienced, I have no intention of ever getting on a boat again. Thus, any destinations outside of North America I will probably have to traverse alone, or have him meet me en route because I cannot visualize myself hanging around for two weeks waiting for his boat to come in.

This is one of the reasons why I will need a dog who is capable of and wants to walk all over the planet with me...which I still do not have...because I still have my daughter's very large, black dog...that could use some training...and a bath...but comes right back when I call him no matter what...and follows me everywhere...and could really use someone who is around for him to follow...and has a good heart...and gets along with my husband's dog...knows me inside and out...is house broken...and I trust...

I think I need to think about this a bit...and email my daughter.

Happy wanderings!

The Writer and her dog...who might be here and might not.

Day 2 ... Testing

2008-08-26T11:45:00.000-07:00

Hi,

I received several alarms from the Blogger computer system last night threatening impending doom because it thought that my blog was a "spam blog." After being instructed, several times, to fill out the "review form" which I did, I was assured that a human would take a look at my blog and I would be able to blog again.

I am now testing to see if this is the case.

So, if you see this post, I am operational.

If not, then I guess we're screwed....

Happy wanderings!

The Writer...and her dog that is still not here yet.

Day 1

2008-08-26T11:44:00.001-07:00

Hi,

First days are always difficult. I remember, as a child, first days of school were always horrible. I hated them passionately, primarily because I disliked school intensely as it seemed to have no point. I don't feel that way any longer, but still...first days are difficult, as are first weeks, months and years.

First weeks of college were always dreaded. Professors never quite knew what they were doing. No one had books. Nothing happened aside from clocking classroom hours. First months of pregnancy? I suffered with morning sickness 24/7. First years of marriage? That's when we learned that I'm not an easy person to live with...and neither is he.

We've been married for 27 years and have learned to deal with our difficulties.

First weeks with no kids in the house because they've all grown? It's what you spend a lifetime working for, and then it happens. You wake up. He goes off to work and you're left with their dogs, your goldfish and a house full of memories that bounce off the walls in a continuous cacophony of silence that now stands still where little feet ran for so many years. It's a bittersweet time that doesn't quite fit right when it first happens. In a few weeks, your feet begin to feel the bottom of the sadness, the sense of loss and confusion, and you begin to ask yourself what it is that you want to do with the time you have left because, for the first time, it occurs to you that your time now has a limit.

It occurred to me that I wanted to see my grandchildren and know them...but not raise them or tell my children how they should raise them. That still left a lot of time and echoing in the house. Getting a meaningless job could be good, but I spent a lot of years working meaningless jobs so that we could pay the bills while we raised the kids. I'm tired of jobs with no meaning, especially to me. He's coming up on retirement and, if now is the time for me to have a career, I want it to be doing something that I really like to do.

I've always loved to write...but then again, so do a lot of people. The difference between all of those other people and myself, though, is that I write relatively well.

Thus, the decision to write was a natural for me, but what to write about, beyond the echos in the house, was difficult to find. Oh there are interesting projects that will be good "one time pops" like poetry and short fiction stories, but nothing with which to earn a consistent living. There is always the "great American novel," that every writer on the planet wants to write, except me, because they know they can capture the true angst of living in modern society. Not being a person with any titration level for bureaucracy, I've always found that "society," as a whole, is really pretty boring. It's everyday people that are interesting to me.

I began to think about this and the things I would want to write about, if I ever had the opportunity to try. It took a while, but after giving it some careful consideration, I realized that I want to see places, to wander around the world a bit and find out what is really going on out there. Some might call this traveling, but I want to do more than travel. I want to talk to people, explore different points of view and see the planet through their eyes as well as my own.

The best way to do that, I think, would be on foot, so, at the age of 48 and 3/4's, overweight and a heavy smoker, I have decided to go for a walk, a wander, if you will...with my dog.

Now, there are a couple of "challenges" with this endeavor. First, I do not have a dog. My husband has a dog. My daughter has a dog that is living with us until we can get it from our house in New York to her house in North Carolina, along with her furniture. How she is planning on caring for said dog, with full time college and full time work, I do not know but she has decided that her dog is going to live with her. My husband's dog lives for my husband, weighs about 12 pounds and fetches a ball...incessantly. It lives here as well and would make a good walking companion for him as this dog and I live with a mutual tolerance of each other and not much more. This brings me back to the point that I mentioned earlier; I do not have a dog, let alone a dog capable of wandering the planet with me.

So, I will need a dog.

The next "challenge" is that my husband does not retire for another 18 months. In that time I could train the dog to wander with me and get myself into the kind of shape I will need to be in if I am going to wander and maybe even take a few little wanderings first. This plan works except that we have bills which need to be paid which outstrip his income. I will need to have an income, then. This would mean either getting another meaningless job or getting sponsorship for the job that I want to do. I vote for sponsorship and thus, need to develop a plan of exactly how I intend to wander from being an overweight, unemployed, non-dog owning writer who smokes too much to a writer who is healthy enough to make this kind of journey with her well trained dog that is not only capable of but willing to walk all over the planet with her.

Thus the journey begins with a dream ... and I've got work to do.

Happy wanderings!

The Writer...and her dog who is absent today.

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2008-08-26T11:20:00.001-07:00

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