The Couch

Today I am an ace sleuth detective. I slip into the furniture store wearing inconspicuous clothing and dark sunglasses, determined not to make another furniture mistake. Purchased less than a year ago, our current couch has turned out to be a “dreaded dog hair magnet.” So under the cover of anonymity, I wander purposely around the store, searching for suitable fabric that will camouflage and repel fur.
Having dogs, and therefore having dog hair, you learn things about material. Parachute nylon-good; codura nylon-bad, very bad. It’s embarrassing watching the kids go off to school after their backpacks and pants appear to have spent the night down wind to a furball tumbleweed. Denim is usually good, but I do not want to live in a denim house. As a grown-up, I long for a real couch, instead of the usual fur and jelly cushions.
At the end of the aisle, I spot Ultra Suede. Very interesting. As I stand there pondering, I’m startled by a voice: “Can I help you?” Then before I can answer, I’m receiving the spiel about the wonders of this new miracle fabric: stain resistant, easy to clean, and guaranteed. “Sounds wonderful,” I say and then excuse myself to the ladies room, only to double back a few minutes later when the coast is clear. Carefully I open my zip locked bag of dog hairs and scatter a few on the sides of the arm. To my astonishment, it looks as though the couch is playing catch with the fur. My mouth is gaping as I witness a perfect couch landing. The hair went south and due west to connect with the ultra suede. Another dreaded pet hair magnet! Could there be above average static electricity today, for some reason? No, this cannot be. I have come prepared and reach into my bag to retrieve a dryer sheet. Palming the “Bounce” like a magician, I stretch my arms and covertly wipe the couch arm, and then drop a few hairs once again. Inconclusive. Back into the bag one more time for the lint brush and tape. The ultra suede passed the removal test unlike some fabrics that just seem to inhale the hair.
Moving on, I methodically test couch after couch. Some seem to be feeding on fur. Note to self; write a B-movie about couches that need dog hair to survive.
I do not even bother with the silk and chintz type materials. Never mind dog hair, they would never pass the kid test. We are a tough family-the kind of family that stain-resistant fabric was invented for.
Moving on, I arrive at the home entertainment couch. It has rocking seats, moving foot stools and hidden compartments. Storage bins could hold a weeks worth of food. The next Noreaster, we would only need to leave the couch for bathroom breaks. I start to feel sea sick, so continue on. Here is an interesting one. They call this brushed fabric. The fabric looks tough, but it’s also very similar to what we have now, and I know that doesn’t work for us.
And then I spot the leather. For a few moments I allow myself to dream of life with this beautiful couch, love seat and ottoman, but then the reality of canine toenails, Koolaid, and the ache in my foot where I was impaled by the ears of the Lego giraffe this morning sets in. We would destroy this couch in no time flat.
My high expectations are gone. I ask for several swatches and head for the car. At home I will double stick tape the swatches directly to the dog’s bed for further observation. Deep in my heart I know we will be a slip cover family for a few more years.


This post was written in 2002!  There are more choices for materials today than there were back then. I may need to revisit this.

Happy Mother's Qs to me

Heather and Finn did amazing at their first trial in March. 

This post is intended to be more than a brag. But I get bragging rights for taking my reactive rescue dog and getting him his APDT Rally RL1 AOE title.  Even better, or at least in dead heat tie position, is my 10 year old daughter getting her third Q with our Collie Finney  --and  also titling!!!

Today.

 Mother's Day.

Woot --- or should I say WOOF!


No this post is one of those lessons I taught my kid posts.  Take one basically nice kid and give her a super nice professionally trained Collie. Take that kid who already loves dogs and is pretty much a natural with them, and well....getting a title should be a piece of cake. Turns out Mr Sensitive  Collie Man likes working for the kiddo better than me. (Not that there is anything wrong with that.  Big smile goes here.)

 A few months ago Heather and I both entered our first APDT Rally Trial in Saco at Finish Forward.  Heather was entered in Juniors and also in Level 1. There were only 2 Junior classes, but there was a total of 4 adult level 1 classes. You need three qualifying scores of over 170 to title.   Heather did  well both Friday and Saturday and got 2 great junior scores and scored high in the  2 adult Level 1 classes . Leaving the total at 2 juniors Qs and 2 Level 1 Qs.  She needed one  more Q for both.

 I put my Mom hat and decided not to let her take Finn in the Sunday trial.

All my Momness and dog trainerness told me that my kid hadn't  earned it.  She asked and Finn did. She could be sloppy, or tense, or pull on the leash or just about anything, and my super school pony Collie was going to give her what she wanted.  He loves working with her and together they are a team. Not every person and every dog are going to have that magic that everyone looks for in a canine partner. But Finn and Heather have it.  The more they worked together, the clearer it was to me that Finn is Heather's dog.  My Mom brain also told me that  she didn't "WANT" it bad enough. And so I decided that fateful weekend, --  no more Rally for you.

I took her to more classes with Jill and they started to gel even more. I was liking what I was seeing.  I could get misty and turn to mush watching them work together.  Heather picked up better handling skills and stopped hauling him around.  My Sensitive Collie Man can work on a silken thread of a leash and that is how he likes it. We had fake trials in class and Heather beat us all. She was ready.

Tight squeeze in the Fiat Rental

So we decided to go for it this weekend and head to Bo-Gee in Raymond NH..  They had two days of trials and silly me, I  thought we could bolt down there yesterday and knock out our  titles. Like my friend Kathy pointed out to me "careful what you wish for." Finney and Heather TANKED yesterday. Finn was the dog that I got to know so well. The one that stares at you like you have a few heads and one may just be made of cheese.  My daughter  had not experienced  that side of him and  NQed. My run was directly after hers and while Beck did fine, I missed a sign.  I am chocking that up to Mommie brain. It is hard for Moms to keep the Mom stuff from invading the rest of what little gray matter we have left that, the children haven't already sucked dry.  Ask any Mom, she will agree.  Kids are like brain eating zombies.

My wish was granted. My kid was humbled by a dog. I spent my childhood humbled by horses and I was no stranger to how awful that feels.  But you know what? It makes you a better trainer. It makes you want it more, and it was that much sweeter when we went back today and both nailed it.  I was tempted to not go back today but what kind of lesson would that have been for my kiddo?  She wanted it so bad she cried this morning. Real tears.  They worked on me.  I explained  ( a LOT of times) , that Finney needs to go in the ring cold. The mistake we made  Saturday was hanging around with him. Too much warm up.  He was done for by the time his turn came around. Today, we timed his peak much better and a wee tear  rolled down my cheek as  they exited the ring.   I am proud of both my two and four legged kids.

As for Beck...the dog was a nut job and now he not. He lived in a shelter for close to 9 months, and now he does not.  He could not be near any dogs, and now he can.  You know that training stuff? There really is something to that.  For me, better than Beck's title, was seeing him at  the trial just doing nothing. My dog can just  BE. Hang around. Do nothing-- be near other dogs! A dog can walk in a room, or by and and he can chill and --Not flip out!   It was awesome.  We earned it.  We spend a lot of time training.  Like I say to my students with tough dogs often,  "that dog sure didn't train himself".

Heather will spend more time in level 1 in the B section, and enter  Junior division  the next time it is offered.  Beck and I are moving on to level 2. Off leash. We are hooked.  

Finn has knocked off an entry off my bucket list.

 I am pleased to announce that after 2 months of working at it. A lot.
 He can fetch!!

Happy Mother's Day!

A big  special thanks to Jill at Poetic Gold Farm. Heather loves you and we appreciate all that you have helped us with.

New gig at Life With Dogs

I will be blogging at Life With Dogs at least once a week and my first introduction post went live yesterday.  You can check it out here.  Basically I say howdy and in a round about way try to get people to consider fostering a dog.

This picture of my daughter and Lady made the cut
on my first Life With Dogs post. It's one of my favorites. 

Life With Dogs is one of my favorite sites,  and I am looking forward to being part of their growth.  "Nigel Buggers" has added quite a few new featured writers besides myself and things have got even more interesting over there.

WANT !

This adorable Maltese is staying with us for a few days.  The kids and I have decided that she is the perfect little dog and we must have her for our very own.

When the owners come to get her tomorrow, we will  tell them  the truth.

 "We were just putting on her dress and she spontaneously combusted.".  

A perk of having a sweet dog loving kiddo

Purple just happens to be both Heather and Starrie's color!
And no they didn't check with each other first to see what the other was wearing. 

My youngest came to Rally-O class with me this past Saturday.  She loves to come to work with me on any given day, but she loved this past weekend.   That's Starrie in her lap. Her young Italian Greyhound brother  trains with me most Saturdays, and their owner didn't feel right about leaving Starrie home, as she had been a bit under the weather.  Nothing contagious, no worries there.
 Eleven year old super sweet  Starrie had stopped eating for just a short time, but dropped over a pound. That is a lot for a dog who doesn't weigh very much.   Starrie had been to the vet and seemed to be slowly on the mend, but her human just didn't feel right leaving her home.

I offered my youngest to sit,( literally)  for Starrie.  For close to the full hour.  Starrie and Heather snuggled on that chair and  had a mega love fest.  Heather offered bits of Natural Balance that Starrie  accepted and  the great news that when Starrie got home, she ate!

Heather reports that Starrie is one of her favorite dog ever.

We all think Starrie ate because she was happy and that Heather helped to stimulate the  healing  process.

Happy Belated Mother's Day to all

Computer issues have been plaguing me for months now. My kids seem to be like moths to flames in terms of acquiring  new computer  viruses these days.  I am told Facebook and You Tube are the culprits but who knows really.  The last crash was caused by a new anti virus program I installed, and it took a real computer person  aka good friend, to fix it.  The anti virus program  messed up the start load program.  My computer was down and out this last time for quite a while  and even after it was fixed it, it wasn't working properly.  Key features were lost.
*waves goodbye to cut and paste and photo upload on this blog*

I was sad on Mother's Day that I could not share the present that I made my kids give me.  When I say made, I mean it.  I   literally dragged them out of bed, down to the park that is filled with tulips on Brighton Ave. I made them pose like we did in 08 with and without the dogs, ran to CVS to print, off to another store to buy frames for my self my Mom and my sister and made it to Revere for a lovely lunch with the family.  You can't tell looking at these photos that they are not one big happy family.  Let's just say that my middle daughter made on of the photos her FB profile pic and cut her brother out,and I had to threaten them and triple guilt them to get them  not look miserable.   I was met with sentiments that went something like "I can't wait until 12:01 when Mother's Day is over. When is kid's day anyway?"

In other news, we can now stream  Netflix. I was very late to this party and I had to up load Google Chrome to get it,  which duh, gave me features that I lost on Internet Explorer.  I may have figured out to download IE again, but we have been so busy, I didn't give it much thought.
So without further delay, here is a little photo essay from Mother's Day.  I think we did pretty good for a 5 minute shoot. The flowers are still peak. Go take some of your own!

First the photo from 08

I framed those two together.

We also did a few with the dogs.

                             Beck met my family for the first time. They loved him and he loved them more.

The meeting was bittersweet because Charlee's absence was palpable.  *sniff*  I knew my Dad would love Beck. I just knew it.  My Dad spent most of the afternoon petting him telling him "do you know how lucky you are?  

Wordless Wednesday Way back edition

more video-Beck's 5th jumping lesson and the sweetest pic evah

On the heels of my last post, I didn't want you thinking Beck is  partyboy/wild child/caveman dog all the time,  So I am posting something quick showing the dog's awesome. 

This video shows his 5th jumping lesson.  We have done some foundation work without jumps first to teach wraps.  As you can see, the dog is very (very very very)  easy to work with.  Although I am quite sure that in a regular pet home, Beck would have been a disaster.  His jumping style needs  work, and we will be working on distance soon, but I am sure proud of my guy who we adopted 2 months ago tomorrow.









Beck plays hard and he snuggles even harder. Took this next shot in the dark. Wasn't so sure I liked my new camera, but this shot has impressed me, and I am digging having  decent video capability.

Can I have an awwwwwww?

From May 3, 2011

click to embiggen

one up

See a pattern?

Tears were streaming  here last night. Tears cascaded down the cheeks of my sweet 9 year old's face. The cause of her tears, was our adorable bunny she named Cotton. When I gave her the bunny for her 9th birthday in September Cotton was just 8 weeks old and too young to tell her sex. My daughter gave the bunny a name suitable for a male or female. To be honest, I didn't give the bunnie's sex another thought for a good (and happy!) solid 4 months. We all kind of assumed that Cotton was a she because of the adorable factor.




Well listen up folks, she is a he. The reason for the tears?

"Boys are icky, boys are gross."

and
Cotton only has one ball. He has an undescended testicle. At 6 months, it still may be on it's way, but I kind of doubt it judging by the whopper of a right nut this little guy is sporting.  Upon this revelation

tears then morphed to -
"Ew."

"What kind of Mother gets her kid a birthday present that will die."

"We need to find Cotton another home, I don't want him to die here."

and

"How will we get the other ball get out, what does the ball do, why does he need it, and will it hurt, how much does it cost, will he die at the vet, and you need to call the vet right now."


Then more

*sob. sob. sob. *

These very serious questions were peppered with the over the top smart ass comments of my 17 year old son, who could not contain the flood of bad bunny wiener jokes. Each one pushing my poor kiddo closer and closer to the brink.

He gave our bunny the new name of .....

"Cotton Ball."
*sob*

"Peter Cotton Peter"

*wail*

and

"Little Bunny Foo Ball."

Where as I then had to

*physically restrain her so she didn't injure her brother.*



By the way, for those of you who know us in real life, please don't mention this to my kid, she would be very angry at me for sharing.

Sharing private information on blogs can get prickly.

Beating the heat at Babb's Bridge

Meggie our foster puppy has been here for a full day, and we are madly in love with her 98 % of the time. The other 2 % may be deal breakers, but time will tell. Keeping in mind that she may never leave, it was a priority of mine to introduce her to water and teach her how to swim. I regret not doing this with Charlee and Finney when they were younger. They both like the water and they both can swim, but prefer not to.  I blame myself. Both we forced into my parents pool.


With the tempertaure  tipping the thermostat at close to 95 degrees, the question was where to take the dogs. I had seen photos of friend's dogs swimming at Shaw Park in Gorham, so after a few on line attempts to find out where it was, off we went.



In attendance were Meggie, Charlee and 5 kids. Two of mine, and three kids belonging to a good friend. We parked just after the quarry on Rt 237 in Gorham, in a little lot next to the Presumpscott River. I am still not sure if that is where we were supposed to be, but as far as the kids were concerned it was a big fat FAIL.

My 12 year old tumor toed wild child smiler.

Charlee and Meggie didn't think so. They loved it. We walked to the end of the hay field along the river and back, looking for a place to swim. The two dogs were thick as thieves and they both ran straight out. I broke my second cardinal rule of fostering and let Meggie off the leash. She didn't go anywhere and had a perfect recall (as I knew hoped she would). We broke our first foster rule earlier in the day when I had the pup snuggling on my bed for a while.

You would never know by the way the dogs ran flat out that the day was so hot if it hadn't been for the whining from the kids, but the river was to quote a middle schooler "gross". The water appeared "stagnant and slimy" and we didn't find an easy access for people, although Charlee had no problem getting in there to cool off.



We were all badly in need of a dip and middle schooler came up with the genius idea to drive a few miles to the covered bridge in Windham off River Road.

I cannot say enough superlatives about our morning. I kept both dogs on the leash, because I was watching 5 kids and 2 dogs and there is a road, although cars need to slow down to go through the bridge. The kids jumped off the rope swing, and caught frogs, and the dogs loved being in the water with us.

Meggie got a swim lesson. I picked her up and pointed her to shore.  This is a good way to teach a puppy to swim by the way. The first time, I held her body up a bit till she got the idea.

Here is her second attempt. She was a natural.

Don't these kids looks happy?

 

 

 

 I should have had them pose when we got back to the car after our first attempt at cooling off. They were so sweaty they all looked like they had already been swimming.

Charlee looks on while dumb ass teenagers jump from the top of the bridge. I was ready to call 911.

The Passing of the Paws

I knew this day would come.  I knew the day would come when Finney took over for Charlee.   When we got Finney four years ago this past July, I had spaced out my dog's ages on purpose. I always feel so badly for people who have multiple dogs close in age, who hit their senior years together.

Finn has always been my great with other dogs dog, and Charlee my great with people dog. Finn's job from the day we took him home was as what I still refer as "bait" dog. The term "bait" dog is not politically correct. because it evokes images of fighting dogs, when in fact, Finn brings peace. Some old timers, like myself have a hard time breaking with tradition and using a more PC term like helper, or distance dog, or neutral dog.

Finney will always be a bait dog to me.

Charlee looks like crap. She has lost a lot of fur, her coat is dull and her tumor toe looks yucky, but she is felling great from what I can see. She is eating and drinking well, and still has the energy of the younger dogs. Last weekend when I was working Finn on front and finishes over a jump, Charlee literally jail broke the house by bulling her way out the back door when one of my kids opened it a crack. Charlee did a go out over the jump on her own free will, and came at me at full speed. She sailed over the jump, whizzed past Finney, and came to a  Quarter horse like full speed ahead sliding sit front, followed by a big air flying swing finish left. She still has a lot of drive, that one and she loves to work. For those coming in late, Charlee may or may not have cancer. Her hair loss may be due to her thyroid issues, even possibly the flea issue we had earlier in the summer.  Or not.

It was with a heavy heart that I chose to leave Charlee home and take Finney on what would have been her favorite kind of job, a Safe Dog/Safe Kids demo for kids ages 11-14 at Strive   http://pslstrive.org/about   in South Portland. After conferring with my daughter  in the same age range, we both agreed that kids that age would not be able to get past "gross," and I had no desire to field public questions about her toe, or hair loss. My daughter Hannah came with me and we both agreed that Finney was awesome and far exceeded our expectations of him. Finney won over everyone in that room and he was really happy to get the gig. In one of the perfect life moments of "he knows", Finn lay down for the child who was most unsure of him and was a perfect statue when she approached him, while most of the other kids got licks to the nose. From start to finish Finney rocked the program.

The kids at Stride have special learning needs and were a sweet and wonderful group. When we were heading back to the car my middle schooler said "I didn't know doing something for free could make you feel so good."



The Safe Dogs /Safe Kids runs 30-40 minutes and is free to qualifying groups. The program  is suitable for all ages.
My fantastic dog Finney looks forward to many more demos. .

Charlee says don't count her out yet.