dogjournal

Here is a journal of some dogs I know. I'm not inordinately fond of them, or anything.

It begins with 2005 at the bottom through winter of 2007, with entries from the Dogster pages as well. With the March redesign of www.uselessbay.org the journal begins anew with the most recent posting nearest the top.

Also, check out U-Tube, Useless Bay videos of dogs on You Tube. Kelsy finds Thelma.

20100307 Kelsy found Winnie today, in practice.

Winnie is the Basenji with more white on her face. She and her sister, Eartha, escaped last week at the home where they were recently adopted. A quick search corralled Eartha, but Winnie stayed out of arms reach. This is just the nature of Basenjis, I was told. An email alert caught my attention, and I offered Kelsy's services. We started on the trail 24 hours after the last sighting. Kelsy started following it in the opposite direction of the observed travel, so after a few blocks, I stopped her and got her started in the direction people witnessed. Kelsy led me past a rabbit carcass, across some railroad tracks, through a wooded ravine by a creek, and down to the Kirkland waterfront condos. She led me through parking garages, and then a little way south along the shore of Lake Washington before she lost the trail. I called off the search at that point, and told the owner that we would come out and restart the search when they got another sighting of Winnie, which I felt confident they would, given the nature of the dog and the density of the area.

A day later, Winnie's owner got the call that she had been picked up shortly after that last sighting, 23 hours before Kelsy started her search. So, it appears that Kelsy was on the right track the whole time, but that Winnie was no longer there to be found. The finder of Winnie had coaxed her within reach using Chicken McNuggets. Winnie was safe and warm indoors the whole time Kelsy was looking for her. In order to keep Kelsy's motivation up, and just for practice, I asked if we could do a practice search with Winnie, and the owner agreed. They walked a trail with Winnie and Eartha on Saturday, and on Sunday we went to Kirkland to follow it. Kelsy didn't follow the exact trail. At one point, she cut off a loop of the trail by skipping across to the point where Winnie came out of the woods. At another point, Kelsy was even on the wrong street, working parallel to the actual trail, but she managed to hook up with it again after a block. At the end point, Kelsy ran past the park where Winnie was waiting, but Kelsy wasn't wrong: Winnie had walked up to the park from their house, and Kelsy had followed the scent back to the house. From that point, we backtracked to the park and made the find. Kelsy got her reward of finding Winnie, plus some cheese treats. Interestingly, Kelsy seemed to select Winnie when she ran up to the pair of Basenjis. They look almost identical, but apparently they smell different enough that Kelsy could tell them apart.

This case illustrated many of the limitations of using a search dog.

The search dog can be on the right trail, but the missing dog has been picked up.

The search dog can be on the right trail but in the wrong direction. Scent trails don't have neon arrows pointing the direction of travel.

The search dog can be off the trail without giving a clear indication. This could be due to many factors. The scent may have drifted significantly away from the actual path of travel. Tires and feet may have transferred the scent to a new location. The search dog is just goofing off instead of focusing on the job at hand. How is the handler supposed to know if it is a case of drifted scent, transferred scent, or just goofing off? The body language could be quite similar in all three instances.

Another limitation, although it didn't happen in this case, is that the search dog can be on the right trail all the time, and simply never catch up. If you start 24 hours behind, you might always be 24 hours behind, as happened in the search for Tabu.

The search dog handler has to stop and ask for permission to cross private property, whereas the missing dog runs right through people's yards. This happened twice in the search for Winnie, and in both cases the homeowner granted permission.

Another thing we learned is that Kelsy looks like a big fat moose when standing next to a pair of sleek little Basenjis.

20100209 My dogs do a lot of boring, ordinary stuff that I still find interesting. I'm sure that if anyone reads this journal, which is unlikely, they will be bored by most of the entries. I am writing this in case anyone wants to read it, but I am mostly writing it for myself. I am also writing it for my dogs. I am their voice. Today was a day of ordinary, unimportant activities, but I wish I could have a photographic memory of the entire day. Well, maybe not the entire day.

Last night, someone got into the kitchen garbage and ate the little pad that comes in the shrink-wrapped salmon package. Until we got to the dog park today, I wasn't sure who ate it, but I soon discovered it was Tess, and the packaging passed through her successfully. Raw salmon can kill dogs, because of a parasite called Neorickettsia helminthoeca. It may take up to five days for symptoms to occur, but it can kill a dog in two weeks if untreated. So, I know that Tess ate the wrapper, but I also know that Porter had diarrhea today, which is one of the symptoms. I don't know if dogs can get the parasite from eating packaging. I'll keep a close eye on them for the next few days, and I will take them to the vet if they show more of the symptoms, or if Porter doesn't get better. Other than that, it was a very good day.

We went to Magnuson Park to return the WNPS Education Booth to the office. Kelsy got excited as we drove by Husky Stadium, as she always does. A little farther on, I started whistling to a song, and this made Kelsy bark like mad. I don't think she would normally bark at my whistling, but the proximity to the park along with my whistling must have inspired her. She was barking so loud it was hurting my ears, but I didn't want to stop because it was so funny. Also, I was having a hard time whistling because she was making me laugh. I will have to try it again in the future to see if it was a one-time thing, or if I can get her to do it every time. Maybe I'll wear ear plugs.

When we got down to the water, we were disappointed to learn that Kelsy's new ball, a blue ball from Chuckit that has holes and whistles in flight, doesn't float. Kelsy likes to fetch the orange balls way out in the water. Because the whistle ball didn't float, I was restricted to throwing it for her in the shallow water. This wasn't as much fun as it could have been, but the dogs still had a good time. Porter had a good time stealing balls from other dogs, like he usually does at the swim beach. As we were leaving the swimming area, Porter wanted me to bounce the ball just for him to catch, as has become our tradition. I did a fake throw to draw the girls away, and then I bounced it the other direction for him. He doesn't seem to have depth perception, so he just throws himself into the air in the general direction of the ball. This time, one of the girls, having caught on to my deception, hurried back and bumped him in mid-flight. Porter flopped onto the ground hard, on his side, and he seemed stunned for a moment. After that, he was his usual happy self. I like to see him launch into the air with unrealistic optimism, completely missing the ball but still ecstatic about the possibility that he might randomly catch it this time. Of course, I prefer to see him land on his feet.

20100207 Kelsy responds to the name Olive. Last night, I was sitting on the couch talking to my family. Kelsy sat beside me. We were talking about socializing puppies, and I said I disagreed with a TV program that said to introduce your puppy to lots of other puppies. I had thought that was the case long ago, but I felt that taking Olive to the off-leash park at 8 weeks old may have contributed to her death. When I said the name Olive, Kelsy looked up at me. I thought I saw recognition and sadness in her eyes. I only had Kelsy and Olive together at home, using those names (they had other names at the shelter) for about five days before Olive had to go to intensive care. When I first picked up Kelsy and Olive at the shelter, I made them a promise that, whatever happened in their lives, they would always have each other. I often wonder if Kelsy is so smart that she knows I broke my promise. If so, I hope she is smart enough to know how much it hurt me to break that promise, and that I would give anything to go back in time, not take Olive to the dog park, and get her to the vet at the first sign of illness.

20100206 Kelsy at the Redmond salvage. Kelsy went with me to Redmond to dig native plants for the plant sale and for restoration projects. We were there five hours, digging in the dirt. Whenever someone would dig up a big fern, Kelsy would go lay in the crater, in the cool, soft, rich dirt. She also fetched her ball about a million times, and convinced other volunteers to throw the ball for her. Two young kids were there, a boy and a girl, about four and five I would guess. One of them was named Zoe. I knew this because every half hour or so, their grandfather would start yelling her name to get her to come back. These kids went out of sight for most of the day, and at one point the grandfather was calling for about ten minutes before he found them. Someone figured he must be calling for a dog, and pointed him toward Kelsy. I felt like telling the person, "No, I wouldn't be that negligent with my dog." It's true that I did have Kelsy off-leash for most of the day, but she was never out of my sight. Whatever I'm doing, I always have a peripheral sense of where she is, and I know if she starts to eat or drink something unauthorized. Of course, I wasn't always such a thoughtful dog guardian, but these days I just don't feel right unless I know my dogs are safe.

20100123 Kelsy finds Rocky in training, then swimming in Sammamish Slough. After we trained at Luther Burbank Park, we drove to Redmond to find Rocky, one of Tony's playmates. We followed Rocky's trail from his house, about a mile to a Microsoft building on the Redmond campus, building 42 I think. Kelsy did okay, but she went to the back side of the building instead of the front. I had to call Marilu for a little guidance. The trail was two days old. After we found Rocky, we searched for him again inside the building, a fresh scent trail. Kelsy went nuts, dragging me all over that building. Fortunately it was a Saturday, but we did surprise a few people as we ran up and down the halls. Kelsy overshot the turns and had to race back. I'm sure they had cameras all over the place, and if anyone was watching, they saw a large black dog dragging a man back and forth, up stairs and down, over a bridge between buildings, out into another courtyard. Kelsy finally found Rocky in the bushes.

After lots of training for Kelsy, we took my three dogs plus Tony, Rocky, Frank, and Luca, to Marymoor to swim in the river. Tony and Porter started barking at each other for a while, but it didn't last as long as the other day. It was our first visit to Marymoor, and my dogs had a blast. It's a long walk to the water, and Kelsy fetched the ball a million times. Porter didn't get into too much trouble with bigger dogs. The swim beach has steps leading down to the river, so the dogs make a kersplunk sound when they dive in. Porter likes moving water, and he paddled around. He swam out to see the ducks, and then swam back. Kelsy fetched her ball in the water, of course.

20100116 Kelsy finds Sounder in training at Seward. Another training day at Seward. Afterward, we took a walk through the old growth forest. Recently, although I can't remember which day, Tess demonstrated why she is called the smart dog. Kelsy is smart, but Tess is smarter. Tess was having a nice chest rub, but Kelsy interrupted it with her demands for fetching. Then Kelsy took over the prime chest-rub spot, displacing Tess. Tess went down the hall and got a ball, and she placed it on the floor about six feet away from the couch. When Kelsy took the bait and went for the ball, Tessie got her chest-rub spot back. It sounds silly, but this took problem-solving, planning, spatial knowledge, and knowledge of Kelsy's personality.

20100109 Kelsy finds Thelma and Tony in training at Burbank. Thelma and Tony, and their families, came out to Luther Burbank Park to help with training and see what we do. Thelma hid first, and Kelsy tracked her down pretty easily. When Tony hid, he didn't go very far very fast, so it wasn't much trouble to find him. After training, all the dogs went to the off-leash area, where Kelsy swam forever. Thelma and Tony just got their feet wet. Thelma is looking good, having gained some weight after being lost. Tony is looking good, having lost some weight after being "lost" in someone's house for two weeks. Here are some pictures from this day, and from other days at the beginning of 2010.

20100105 Kelsy likes to read the newspaper. When someone sits on the couch with a paper, Kelsy waits until they aren't paying attention, and then she jumps into the middle of the paper, smashing and shredding it. Then you have to play ball with her. After she has had enough fetching, which can take a while, the paper reader can try to reassemble the bits and pieces, or go look it up online.

Tess and Kelsy are having another sock battle now. Porter even joined in for a bit.

20100103 Kelsy tried to chew on my face tonight. I hope she didn't take offense that I wouldn't let her. There's a popular YouTube video of a pit bull and a smaller dog where they are chewing on each other's faces, gently. At several points, the smaller dog puts her entire head in the pit bull's mouth. They are relaxed and lounging about, not quite wrestling, just enjoying each other's company. Kelsy and I lounged on the couch while watching a movie. She slept most of the time, shifting from one position to the next. One time when she flipped over, her face came close to mine, and she opened her jaws wide. She tried to put her mouth on me, and out of reflex I moved out of the way. I wish I could transmogrify into a dog sometimes so I could interact with my dogs according to their habits and customs. The other night, when we went to Thelma's house for dinner, a seven year old boy let Kelsy lick his entire face. Why don't I want her to lick my face? Okay, it's slimy and slobbery, but I will live. Maybe I will let her, next time. I don't think I'll try to lick her face, though.

Before the movie, 60 Minutes talked about the language of elephants. They have spent twenty years recording and observing, trying to compile enough data so they can say a certain combination of noises usually accompanies or precedes a certain behavior. I should watch my dogs more closely. Of course, I do pay attention to them quite a bit, more than the average dog owner. I write a journal about their inconsequential antics. But if I'm paying this much attention to them, maybe I should observe them just a bit more closely so I can understand them better.

20100102 Corn cob--mud--sky nuts--Porter's leg--Tabu--Tony--sock battle--training with Sounder--Max--

What looked like a ball on Porter's x-ray was actually his distended stomach. The real problem was a corn cob. We don't know how it got there. It's possible he stole one from the counter when no one was looking, but we never noticed one missing, or any telltale husks or silk. He might have found it in the yard if some neighbor is feeding corn cobs to the squirrels. It's not unlikely that a squirrel transported a cob here, and Porter's nose found it in the bushes where I couldn't see it. Porter is watched for 23 hours and 59 minutes every day, but it only takes a second of inattention for him to get into trouble. I would guess he has been to the vet ten times for eating something off the ground, and it seems he will never learn that serendipitous treats can cause pain or death.

Once Porter recovered from surgery, after a few days, he became incredibly happy and puppyish. He began galloping everywhere he went, and he laughed all the time. That is, until a few days ago when we went to the dog park and I looked away for two seconds too long. He ate some mud, or something, and became very sick for a few days. I had some medication left over from the last time he did this, and it cleared up the diarrhea fairly quickly. Now he is back to being healthy and happy.

We were walking up the hill, on the paved street, and something fell in front of us with a crack. In a split second, Tess ate it. I had zero time to react. Tess just kept on walking, as if treats fall from the sky all the time. Way up high in the maple tree, a blue jay looked down at us. My guess is that it was a nut, and the blue jay accidentally dropped it. Now, if you are a dog, don't you stop to think, where did that nut come from? Apparently not. If I saw a cheeseburger sitting in the middle of the road, hot and fresh, in a clean wrapper, I wouldn't just run right up and stuff it in my mouth. I would wonder where it came from and why someone put it there. Apparently dogs don't think this way. They think nuts just fall from the sky, and it is their duty to eat anything that will fit in their mouths, edible or otherwise.

For a few days, while Porter was acting happy and puppyish, his left rear leg stopped working. It didn't seem to hurt. It just hung there limply, unable to support him. Sometimes he had a hard time getting up. I thought about taking him to the vet again. I was about to make an appointment when it stopped happening. I have no clue what it might have been.

Someone finally found Tabu. One of the people I handed a flier to, while searching with Kelsy, found Tabu sitting on his porch, several days after Kelsy and I had moved on. Mike raced over there, about a mile away, and scooped her up. She acted like it was no big deal. Once she was home, she nosed at the gate like she wanted to go run around for another ten days. Mike and Rohini were extremely happy to have her home. I was relieved to have her home, especially because I felt bad that Kelsy could never catch up to her. Some day soon, I'll have Mike and Rohini bring Tabu to Seward Park for a training session, so Kelsy can find her, as positive re-enforcement. Seeing how happy they were makes this job worthwhile.

Recently, Kelsy got the call to go search for Tony, a Boston Terrier. I told Tony's owners that a search would not be the best use of their time or money because it was unlikely that Kelsy would find Tony. The trail was too old by the time they called me, and it was very likely, because of Tony's size and temperament, that someone picked him up, making a search somewhat irrelevant. They wanted to hire Kelsy anyway, since they were desperate, so I told them it would be a $250 donation to the non-profit organization, which would help someone, and it might be possible that just my being out there, with Kelsy in her search vest, would trigger the right lead and get Tony back, as it did in the Tabu case. Also, I told them I would bring Kelsy to search on the condition that they let Kelsy find one of their other dogs in a training session. She searched for Tony for a couple of hours, showing interest in the woodsy area between their development and the adjacent apartments. She didn't find any definitive trail, probably because the trail crossed a busy street and heavy traffic eradicated the scent trail. She found Rambo, Tony's brother, in about 60 seconds.

Interestingly, even though I warned one owner about the deficiencies of a certain person with trailing dogs, the other owner went ahead and hired him before my message had been conveyed. This man came out with three dogs and claimed to trail Tony's scent to the bottom of the hill, down by the Sammamish Slough, at Marymoor Park. This man said, definitively, "Your dog was picked up by someone at this spot." He didn't say it was a possibility, and that many other things might have happened to Tony. He said he knew what happened, and he charged them a lot of money. What he told them is exactly what I predicted he would tell them if they hired him. Well, Tony was found today, two weeks after he went missing. We know for a fact that Tony had been picked up half a mile in the opposite direction. I don't know if this guy believes the stuff he tells people, or if he is just a con artist. Fortunately, the owners didn't give up looking, in spite of what he told them.

Tony gained three pounds while he was "lost". The woman who picked him up claimed she was going to find his rightful owner, but she didn't seem to be in too much of a hurry about it. I get the impression she wouldn't have minded if Tony's owners stopped looking for him. A third party saw one of the fliers about Tony and alerted the owners that the woman had him. Kelsy will have a chance to find Tony, in practice, too.

Kelsy and Tess used to have sock battles every morning. I hadn't realized they had stopped doing this until they had a good long sock battle the other morning, and I realized it was the first time in a long time. Their growls and postures are so sweet in their mock ferociousness. The sock didn't survive, but they battled very gently. It is a soothing sound to hear the girls growling softly at each other. I hope they continue to have these battles from time to time.

Today we trained at Seward Park, and Kelsy found Sounder. It was a fresh trail, less than an hour old, but the trail was made while Sounder was looking for a kitty, so it was zig-zaggy. I think this is more realistic, as I would imagine that many loose dogs stop to smell all the little things along the way. One difficulty we had in trialing Tabu was that the trail seemed to dive in and out of every yard, so we had to ask permission to search on private property every five minutes. Kelsy performed very well in trailing Sounder. She zig-zagged in and out, but kept heading the right direction. We searched at ten AM, under cloudy skies. The air was cool, about 45 degrees, with strong winds from the south, blowing up the hill. The ground was damp to soggy from recent rains. Two decoy dogs sat by Sounder at the end. Kelsy didn't really care to sort out which was the right one. She found them all, and she was ready for her treats and her ball.

This evening, I got the call of a black Lab running loose in Tukwila, not far from the Ikea store. Some people had been following him for four hours. One woman could get fairly close to him. I took Kelsy into the area and played fetch with her. She and I ignored the other dog, and the woman walked through where we were playing. This did the trick, and the dog came and played with Kelsy. I laid down on my back, and it worked. The dog came right up to me. Unfortunately, I grabbed for him and missed, which was a mistake, in hindsight. I should have spent more time letting him get used to me. Still, it didn't scare him away. I coached the woman a little, although she was doing most of the right things before I advised her. After two hot dogs, and two hours of patient coaxing, he finally let her slip a leash over his head. One of the things that worked best was for her to walk away from him. He liked to follow her around. When she leashed him, he was perfectly happy about it and offered no resistance. Five strangers gathered in this industrial parking lot and spent several hours trying to help a poor dog. He looked a lot like Kelsy, but just a bit taller and thinner. They called the numbers on his tags and the owners came to pick him up. He had been scared off by New Year's fireworks, and he had traveled at least 11 miles in about two days.

20091215

It is my job to read Kelsy's mind. Usually, that's not too hard. When she is standing two feet from my chair, barking loudly with her ball between her front feet, I don't need to be psychic to know she wants to go outside and play.

Part of what I love about searching for lost dogs with Kelsy is that it deepens our bond. When we are on the trail, we are a unit. I watch her every move, and much of the time I can tell just what she's thinking by the tilt of her head or the change of her gait. Our communication isn't perfect, though, and I hate to think that we missed a turn of a lost dog because I failed to distinguish a subtle signal that Kelsy gave me.

For the past three days, Kelsy and I have searched for Tabu, a sweet girl almost fifteen years old, on the run between Seward Park and Beacon Hill. Over three days, we have spent about fourteen hours trailing Tabu. We have come close, and I don't know exactly why she is eluding us. It's certainly possible that we have been on the right trail the whole time, but we never catch up because she doesn't stop moving long enough.

Another trouble we are having is that I am forced to give Kelsy conflicting instructions. I tell her, "Go find Tabu," and then while she is hot on the trail I have to tell her, "We can't follow her in there.". Kelsy doesn't understand about private property, laws, and the need to ask permission. It has to be frustrating for her to get conflicting signals from me, the person she trusts most.

Kelsy has shown her frustration at the end of these long, fruitless searches. She has found a stick in a field, grabbed it, and galloped around in front of me, saying, "Let's play.". I can't say no. Play is Kelsy's reward for doing this work.

20091208 Kelsy finds Thelma



Thelma is a 10-pound Terrier who only lived with her new family for two days before bolting out the front door when something startled her. For over a week, Lani and her family and friends searched for Thelma, sometimes for 12 hours a day. Many people had spotted Thelma on the run, but each time they tried to catch her, they made her run farther. Based on the sightings, this little girl ran for over five miles, and probably much farther if you count the circling and backtracking. Last night, the low was about 15 degrees.

Lani called the Missing Pet Partnership, and I got the case because I've had a bit of experience with dogs on the run. I told Lani that having Kelsy come out for a search might not be the final answer because we could end up chasing Thelma farther, even though we would take steps to avoid that if possible. Given Thelma's tiny size, and the forecast for lows in the teens and twenties for the next few days, we decided to try a search anyway, fearing that if we didn't catch her soon, it could be too late.

Kelsy and I started searching at the point last seen, a large industrial park by 522 in Woodinville. Kelsy took a good long sniff at the scent article, and charged off on the trail, dragging me through blackberries behind the warehouses. We made many circles of the complex, until we found a stream and a pond. This was one of the few sources of liquid water because most ditches and streams had frozen. We found food wrappers shredded under a large cedar tree, so it seemed some animal had foraged a meal there. Kelsy fell in the pond, not realizing how deep it was, and I had to haul her out by her harness. She shook the water off, but the cold water in the freezing air immediately turned to ice, giving Kelsy a frosting of small icicles for the next half hour, not that she cared at all. We searched from 9:30 until about 3:00, checking likely hiding areas, but Kelsy never pulled as hard as she did at the beginning of the trail. I was just about to quit for the day when Lani got the call of a sighting on the other side of 522.

I started Kelsy on that trail, at the point last seen, with the scent about 20 minutes old. Kelsy followed to a gap under a fence, and we had to ask permission to search inside the property of a mini-storage. She showed interest in a covered parking area, where Thelma may have spent the night in relative shelter. Then Kelsy followed the trail to another gap in the fence, leading to a swampy patch of brambles beside the freeway. I didn't want to follow because a tiny Terrier could slip underneath the brambles, whereas Kelsy and I would be torn up. Also, we would make so much noise getting through that we would just scare Thelma further away if she were in there. At that point, I had convinced myself that Thelma was out of reach for the day, and decided to call off the search until we received a new sighting. We would work with signs to draw attention, and Lani could use a night vision scope to look around the area after dark. On the chance that Thelma had doubled back again, or that Kelsy had followed the trail in reverse, I took Kelsy for one last sweep of the perimeter of the storage lot, just in case. She showed interest in the grounds of a manufacturing plant, but I didn't have permission to enter the property. Kelsy's interest was not the urgent pulling I would have expected if we were hot on Thelma's trail, so I had again decided to quit for the day. It was just about sunset, and Kelsy had been searching for over six hours.

Lani asked us to wait a minute while she asked for permission to search the property of the business, and when she got the okay, Kelsy and I strolled up the back side of the plant, not really expecting to find anything. Usually, when Kelsy gets close to her target, she pulls so hard I can barely stay on my feet. I can't restrain her, and I just have to concentrate on not falling on my face. I don't know if it was because she was tired, but she just trotted along as if she was casually interested in something, not about to make her first walk-up find. We came to the corner farthest from the street, and Kelsy started to sniff about the landscaping very cautiously. We checked around the back side of some large evergreen trees, and Kelsy pinpointed a spot under a branch that swept down to the ground. I lifted the branch, and I was actually surprised to see two little eyes looking back at me.

Now, I always tell people whose dogs are in flight mode: 1. Don't stare straight at the dog. 2. Don't call the dog's name. 3. Don't grab for the dog. The reason is that any of these actions can cause the dog to flee again, making your job harder. So, I'm looking right at this dog, staring in disbelief that we've found her, and I realize I'm not supposed to be staring at her, but I can't help myself. Then, before I know it, I'm saying her name. She still isn't moving. I'm just about to make a grab for her, even though I know it's the wrong thing to do, and I feel like I'm fighting myself, trying to stop my arm from going forward. But she still hasn't moved a muscle. She is just curled up in the dirt, staring back at me. Finally, after what seems like years but is probably only a few seconds, I shoot out a hand and grab her. I'm so relieved that I didn't scare her away again that I don't care that she's nipping me. I did everything wrong and got lucky anyway.

As I walked back toward the street with Thelma wrapped in my arms, I tried to tell Kelsy what a good girl she was, and how proud I was of her for finding Thelma, but Kelsy's expression seemed to say, "Why are you carrying her, the bad dog who ran away, when you could be carrying me in your arms?" When I was finally able to hand Thelma off to an overjoyed and relieved Lani, I gave Kelsy her Victory Cheese, and praised her for a job well done. After six and a half hours of hard searching, probably covering five miles of asphalt, swamps, and brambles, Kelsy got her man. She slept very soundly on the ride home.

MAR Technician Amy Adams provided considerable help in the search, often going ahead of me and securing permission to search private properties, making Kelsy's job much easier. Lani is really the one who found Thelma, by refusing to give up and pushing me to search one more area when I was ready to call it a day. Thelma is very lucky to have Lani watching over her.

20091103 Porter wallowed all day today. He wanted out all the time, but instead of wanting out for the usual reasons, like throwing up or relieving himself, he just wanted to lie in his wallow, in the sandy soil beneath the osmanthus bush, in what used to be a lawn of veronica before Porter re-engineered it into his wallow. Something was wrong. We waited all day for the lab results of yesterday's visit to the vet. I potted up cedar seedlings while I kept him company and kept an eye on him. Apparently I hadn't kept a close-enough eye on him. When Dr. Le called with the lab results, she said he had giardia, again. No doubt he had acquired it by eating stuff off the ground. He will never learn, no matter how much I scold him or how sick he gets. He seeks out nasty things lying about in the dirt and eats them if I don't intervene. I have pried open his jaws many times to try to keep him from swallowing something, usually not successfully. When I told Dr. Le that he was much worse than the day before, she said he needed to come in for an x-ray.

Porter had swallowed a ball. The x-ray showed it to be the size of a tennis ball, most likely one of the orange balls that Kelsy loves to fetch. Why did he swallow a ball? Maybe he was thinking, "Something is bothering my gut, so I will send this ball down there to chase it out." Probably, he wasn't thinking at all. I had to leave him at the vet, and he will have surgery in the morning. It should be a simple surgery, with a very high probability of success. And it will only cost $2,000. I think I will invest in a $15 muzzle so that nothing unauthorized can go down that pipe.

20091019 Porter has been throwing up a little, here and there. Dr. Le says it is probably acid reflux. I've started him on Pepcid AC. I'm giving him two 10 mg. pills, one in the morning and one in the evening. This is expensive, not only for the Pepcid, but for the pill pockets, too. And of course I have to give empty pill pockets to Tess and Kelsy, too.

Kelsy and I went on a search today for a blind cat. This search would have been more suitable for Harley, but he was busy looking for cats in Oregon. Kelsy and I looked for Roxie, a male cat, neutered, chipped, about 8 pounds and about 2 years old. He is an orange short-haired tabby. Roxie had a damaged spinal cord when he was young and has been blind for most of his life. He often turns in circles to the right, sort of mapping his territory as he goes, usually bumping into some sort of barrier that defines his world. He got out at 5:15 the night before. Kelsy used a scent article that only Roxie had touched, and started on a trail turning right into the neighbor's yard. Kelsy seemed very intent on this trail. She kept her nose to the ground and completely ignored a large dog barking like crazy at her through a sliding glass window. Kelsy seemed to detect Roxie's scent in three yards, but we never really got a direction of travel. I stopped searching before we got to the house where Roxie was eventually found because I thought the case was better suited for a cat-detection dog. Kat came out with Sadie and searched nine yards. Roxie was in the last place we looked, of course. Saide started checking the perimeter, and I saw Roxie immediately when I shined a spotlight under a deck. Roxie was turning in small circles. His owner says he turns in smaller circles, faster, when he gets hungry, and he seemed very hungry judging by the way he was turning in circles. I couldn't fit under the deck, but a neighbor boy, I think his name was Reese, about ten years old, fit under there easily and brought Roxie out. He seemed to be in fine condition.

The owner, a Veterinarian named Jan White, with a practice at Sawyer Lake Veterinary Hospital, had organized a small army to look for Roxie. Mariah and Sam handed out hundreds of flyers to the neighbors, and Dr. White obtained permission to look in people's yards before we got there, which was a big help. As Dr. White held Roxie, the cat buried his face in her neck, obviously very happy to be back with his guardian. It was perfect weather for searching, about 55 degrees and overcast, little or no wind, and the ground was saturated and dewy from recent heavy rains. Every person we met during the search commented about coyotes in the area, and Dr. White said that flyers for missing cats are posted all the time. Roxie wouldn't have had a chance if a coyote had found him.

20090930 I have trouble expressing sympathy for humans. I know that people are looking for recognition of their suffering, and I can understand, intellectually, that I could be in the same boat, so showing sympathy shouldn't be too much of a reach. Instead, I offer advice, which is usually not appreciated or needed. If I see a cat or a dog that is hurt, or even a wild bird, I immediately feel sympathetic. If one of my own dogs is hurt, I instantly feel and show sympathy, without thinking about it. I often look at craigslist, in the lost and found section, at all the missing dogs and cats. I imagine how frightened and confused they must be. I can't set foot inside an animal shelter because the stress the animals must feel overwhelms me. I appreciate that people volunteer there, but I could never do it. In movies, I can see simulated murders graphically depicted, and I find it interesting and compelling. Rarely do I feel very sympathetic toward the victim, even when the movie portrays the victim as innocent. In one of the most violent TV shows, 24, where they showed torture and mass murder, Jack Bauer shot a dog and I turned the TV off that instant, not watching the rest of the season. I knew perfectly well that it was simulated violence, and that Keifer Sutherland probably really liked the dog and would never hurt one, but the image hit me somewhere outside of my reason. Why do I feel this way? It's not a problem, or something I want to fix or change, but I'm curious why I can easily and immediately feel sympathy toward an animal and not a human.

On a completely unrelated note: they installed a new agility course at Grandview off-leash park. The first time through, I was able to coax Kelsy over the tall ramp and the balance beam using her ball. The next time we went she ran over both obstacles on her own, with little prompting from me. She seems to really like it. I could get her through the tractor tires, but the weave poles are a complete mystery to her.   She seems to have no idea what I'm asking her to do. She likes to climb up the high ramp and look down at me.

20090915

Kelsy did much better on her search for Max. She didn't find him before he came home on his own, but she really seemed to be on the trail this time. Max is a 7-year-old, 80-pound Lab that was attacked in his own yard by a pit bull, at around noon or one.   The pit bull's owners observed the fight but did not break it up. This was the third time the pit had attacked a dog in the six weeks they had owned him. A neighbor heard the fight while
sound asleep, and came out to break it up, barefoot and in a bathrobe. He had to beat the pit bull with a 2x4 to get it to release, after
the fight had been going on for about five minutes. Max ran across the creek and into the woods. Matt, Max's owner, looked all through
the woods, which is over 100 acres of forest near Lake Whatcom. By the time I got the call, got flashlights and batteries, and made it to
Bellingham, it was probably 9 PM when I put Kelsy on the scent trail. She took me back and forth through the woods and into the neighborhood
one block over, on the other side of the greenbelt. Kelsy kept searching for about an hour, and she seemed pretty positive that she
was following Max. After an hour, someone called from the house that Max had come home and was sitting on the front doorstep. Max had
puncture wounds on his neck, but he was in surprisingly good shape. My guess is that he had been in those woods for nine hours, scared,
uncertain whether to come home, and Kelsy had trouble picking a directional trail because Max ran around and back and forth, more like
a typical cat trail than a dog trail. All's well that ends well, and after they were pretty sure Max was okay, they let Kelsy have a "find"
in the back yard. When Kelsy picked up Max's fresh scent, she pulled very hard and took me right to him. I rewarded her with her ball and
some treats. They were taking Max to the 24 hour emergency vet, just to be certain he was okay, but I'm sure he'll be fine.

Kelsy also did a training run tonight, finding Cougar pretty quickly. I hate to admit it, but I'm very pleased with her. I want to love her just as much, whether she is the worst trailing dog in the world, or whether she rescues many dogs and makes me proud. I do love her just as much either way, but I feel more...happy to be around her when she is successful. That's not right. She's just a dog. All I should ever want from her is to wag her tail once in a while. I only want Kelsy to be a trailing dog if it is fun for her. On the other hand, every day I see lost dogs on Craigslist that we could be helping. I need to be careful that I encourage her without pushing so hard that it makes trailing frustrating and difficult.

Porter is dreaming right now, twitching his paws. He has a hot spot on his face, most likely due to allergies. He has six pills to take every day, but he looks forward to it because of Pill Pockets. Of course, I have to give these very expensive Pill Pockets to the girls, too.

20090909

Kelsy is just on the verge of being fired from her job. She has become completely unreliable, and I don't know why. In training, she can do a trail expertly, with no errors, and then the next time she will run off in a random direction while acting certain of her direction. We are miscommunicating, and I don't know how to fix it. She is pictured above with Chester, the five-pound Chihuahua, whom she tracked partially on the day he went missing, but didn't find. We tried a practice trail with Chester, in Volunteer Park, but Kelsy performed poorly on this fresh, easy trail. Not only does it make me look like an idiot, but how can I take her on a search if I don't know whether she is working the trail honestly or just galloping about randomly? It's not a question of ability. I think it is a motivation problem. She is just as happy to romp about smelling stuff as she is to find a dog. I guess I can't just expect her to want to do it because it's important to me.

20090829 Kelsy trained at Seward Park today, as did 10 other dogs. Our group had 14 dogs there, all together. Kelsy searched for Cheeto, a large orange cat. Cheeto walked about 100 yards, with much prodding by Kat. Then he hid in his carrier in the salal. Kelsy took the scent from the gauze pad, and she did a double take, thoroughly sniffing the scent article of something other than a dog for a change. To start, she got off the trail a little, but she found her way back to the trail without any help from me. Then she pulled me right along, exactly on the trail. At the T, she took the right turn without hesitation. At the carrier, she spotted Theresa and was distracted for a moment, then she went past the carrier and slammed on the brakes, coming back and finding Cheeto in his hiding place. Kelsy got cheese for her reward. Lucy also found Cheeto, and then Lucy ran a longer, aged trail to find Porter. It was only about 65 degrees, but the humidity seemed to be about 100%. It had rained a third of an inch overnight. No wind. scattered clouds. The search was performed at 10 AM.

I took all three dogs to the vet recently, spending $500 even though nothing much was wrong with any of them. Porter and Kelsy have ear infections, and Kelsy has a UTI. Tess, Porter, and Kelsy weighed 84, 91, and 97, respectively. They all need to go on a diet, but Kelsy especially. Her weight is slowing her down, and it can't be healthy for her. When I have to give the dogs ear drops, it's like wrestling alligators. Tess wants to have ear drops, too. I pretended to do one ear, and she wasn't satisfied because I didn't do both ears. When I gave her pretend drops in the second ear, she trotted off happily.

20090825 Yesterday Kelsy went on two searches. The first was for Chester, a five-pound tri-color Chihuahua. He had escaped a fenced yard in Bothell at 8 PM the previous night. When Kelsy started her search at about noon, she went straight to the hole in the fence. In the next yard she meandered to the next hole in that fence, on the opposite side of the yard. Then we went around to the street, and Kelsy didn't have much luck following the trail. She did find a pond, which she often does. I don't think Chester went to the pond, but I'm sure various critters did. At the street, outside the second fence, the lawn was very short and clean, like it had just been mowed and blown. I saw a landscape crew working a block away in the same subdivision as we pulled up. My theory, with no proof to support it, is that the landscape crew cut and blew that area just outside the fence and obliterated Chester's scent trail. The owner found Chester later that afternoon, a couple of blocks to the northwest, which would be consistent with Kelsy's opinion that Chester went out through that hole in the fence. I wish they hadn't blown the scent away. It could have been Kelsy's first find all on her own, and they could have found Chester quicker.

The second search was at Pasado's Safe Haven in Sultan, east of Monroe. This 80 acre property is mostly wooded. Cosette, an abused dog from the Tacoma shelter, escaped by digging out of a fenced enclosure. Kelsy seemed definite about Cosette's path from the cabin to the fence line. Outside the fence, Kelsy seemed less certain, and she led us to a dead end in the gravel road, with no indication of a trail leading out. We advised them to set up a barbecue at that location, along with a "dogloo" shelter and water. It was a frustrating day for me and Kelsy, not finding our dogs. I went out that morning with a good feeling that we would find Chester. It was a fresh trail, and how far would a five-pound dog travel? But Chester is home, and Kelsy's information may help bring Cosette home. I know we will have more failures than successes, but I'm ready to have just a few successes.

Conditions at both locations: 70 to 75, little to no wind, clear, sunny.

20090823 I love my dogs for lots of reasons, like their loyalty, good nature, natural beauty, and the way they make me a part of their pack. But I also love the littlest inconsequential things, like the way they snore, the order in which they come downstairs to bed at night, and even the way they smell.

This morning, Kelsy made me laugh harder than I've laughed in a long time. It was time for their morning biscuits, but Kelsy didn't want to put her ball down because Tess always takes it and teases her. Kelsy took her ball over to the veronica and laid down. My thought was to toss her a biscuit so she could guard her ball and have a biscuit, too. I threw the biscuit, and she watch as it hit her square between the eyes. I laughed so hard that she wondered what was wrong with me. She just watched it sailing toward her, without blinking or moving a muscle. She kept her ball in her mouth, and the sound of the biscuit hitting her skull was like a wood block, with a slight rubbery sound. I wish I had a recording of it, the sight and the sound. What was she thinking? She has quick enough reflexes that she could have caught the biscuit easily. Was she trying to make me laugh? Did she just not care about getting hit in the head? It is funny little moments like this one that make me love them so much.

20090821 Porter and Kelsy have smelly ears. The vet prescribed ear drops for Kelsy, so I thought it couldn't hurt to do Porter while I'm at it. I called Porter over and he didn't want to come because he knew it was a trap. I wrestled him to the ground and pinned him down. I used a flashlight to try to see where I was putting the drops in the convoluted, dark, hairy labyrinth of his ear. ("Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read."). After the struggle for one ear, the second ear is even harder. Then Kelsy is just as difficult, even though her ears aren't as furry inside. After getting drops into four ears--who knows if they went to the right place--I think I'm done with the fiasco. Tess comes over to where I'm kneeling and plainly asks, through facial expression and body language, "Aren't you going to do my ears, too?". So I pretend to wrestle with her and I hold the dropper up to each ear. The dog who has never had an ear infection thinks she's missing out on the fun.

20090820 What have I done to my baby? Kelsy is now 100 pounds when she should weigh about 75. I thought we were doing better about treats, but I found out how wrong I was when I had to take her to the vet this evening. She has a UTI and needs meds for two weeks. We have got to get this weight off of her. It's not good for her at all. She already has elbow trouble. The UTI could be related to the obesity. I'll have to be cruel to be kind, and not allow so many biscuits and treats.

20090528 Kelsy is thinking thoughts tonight. We've done everything we were supposed to do, in the correct order. Play, walk, dinner, cookies. She came downstairs to go to bed, and she sat there with a look on her face like she was thinking about something. I don't know why, but I imagine she looks sad. I reached out to pet her, and she held her paw out to me, not a gesture she usually makes. I wonder if she is thinking about her sister. I wish I could tell her how sorry I am for that whole ordeal. I would give anything for Kelsy to have her sister, Olive, the way I intended. I wonder if Olive would still be grouchy to this day if she had lived. If that's not what Kelsy's thinking about, then I would sure like to know what makes her look so serious and thoughtful. I need to learn the Vulcan mind meld.

Recently, I caught a great picture of Kelsy with her cheeks puffed out. She is barking at me to throw her ball, and the picture caught her just as the shock waves of her bark were rippling through her cheeks and a spray of water flew off her chin.

Porter has discovered V8 Juice. Someone left a can of V8 unattended when coming outside, and pretty soon Porter came up the driveway, doing his happy walk, with a dented and leaky can of V8 in his mouth. I poured the rest out into my hand and he lapped it up. Perhaps he should have been scolded for stealing food that didn't belong to him, but he looked so cute and he seemed so happy that I didn't want to spoil his fun. We'll just have to make sure not to leave any V8 juice unattended.

I gave Porter a haircut again, and it makes him look taller, thinner, and younger. I wish that worked for me when I got a haircut. Porter also got his teeth cleaned, which involved anesthesia and a tube down his throat. At dinner, I make him speak, but with his sore throat, all he could say was "arroooo" instead of "woof". It was a very cute and sweet word, but I felt bad for making him speak with a sore throat.

Tess lost her collar in Lake Washington, so I had to get her a new one. I saw one of red leather with steel hearts, and I had to get it for her, even though it was $40. Then of course I had to get the bones collar for Porter and the Stars collar for Kelsy. Then I had to get new tags. Tess loses her collar in the lake and I spend $150 on new collars for all three dogs. I must be nuts.

20090515 Kelsy didn't train for a couple of weeks because no training was scheduled one week and I was sick the other week. Last Tuesday was her first training in a while, and she was a heat-seeking missile. We were looking for Harley, in a place Kelsy had never been before. Lucy went first, but Kelsy didn't follow Harley's trail or Lucy's trail. From the starting point, she made a beeline to Harley's hiding place under the bridge, sprinting all the way. I had to give her a timeout so that someone could run ahead to the back side of the bridge and give Amy the ball so Kelsy would think Harley had her ball. It was a windy day, with the wind shifting directions, so Harley's scent must have blown all around, creating a cone. I have been trying to convince Kelsy that she has to find the target dog to get her ball, and it seems like it might be working, finally.

This morning, Kelsy became dizzy for about five or ten seconds. She wobbled and walked in a semi-circle, but she didn't fall down. This has happened to Porter a couple of times, and he actually did fall. I have no idea what could possibly be going on. Kelsy seemed fine after that.

20090428

Porter is such a good, sweet, kind dog. In the picture above, he's a bit groggy from anesthesia after having his teeth cleaned today. His teeth look great, now, and I really need to start brushing them on a regular basis. I try not to think about it, but it makes me sad to think I only have three to eight years left with him. I need to keep him as healthy as possible for as long as possible. We'll just have to make brushing our teeth a fun thing. Kelsy's teeth are still white, but not as white as they used to be. It's not like I have to wash their clothes or pay for college tuition. The least I could do is brush their teeth for them.

20090403 "Are your dogs friendly?" People often ask this question when they see me and three large black dogs approaching. Usually, they want to pet them, or allow their dog to greet them. They want a yes or no answer. Actually, they want a yes answer. The answer I want to give, but never do, is, "It's complicated." A guy walking toward us today, with a pug puppy under ten pounds, asked this question, and I felt it was safe to say Yes under the circumstances. So the puppy comes up, and my big dogs growl. It was a short growl, and no one took offense. The puppy played around with my dogs, especially Porter. Then Porter puts his entire mouth over this little puppy. Okay, I know he's just playing. The puppy doesn't care, and the owner isn't freaking out. Still, I'd be happier if Porter didn't have his jaws around a puppy's entire body. Casually, not showing any alarm, I tell Porter to knock it off, and I put my hand in his mouth to make sure he bites me, if he bites, and not the tiny puppy. On the one hand, I kind of wanted to get a picture of Porter with a pug puppy in his mouth. On the other hand, what if he sneezed?

When people ask if my dogs are friendly, the answer is yes, but..... They do have misunderstandings and they do misbehave. None of my dogs has ever bitten anyone, two legs or four. Porter does posture around bigger dogs, and he has growled and barked, but it was all for show. He knocked my young cousin down, one time, but that was because he wasn't watching where he was going.   Kelsy will bark if someone takes her ball. Tess will bark at people with hats, or if children are running without her permission. So, yes, they are friendly, but they are also goofballs with idiosyncrasies, and things happen. Many times, I have said Yes to the question, only to have my dogs bark or be rude and embarrass me. Sometimes, when I have said my dogs were not necessarily friendly, they have run up to other people and dogs and been super friendly, as if to prove me wrong. I would like to say I know my dogs well enough to predict how they will behave, but I really don't trust the little buggers. One time, I told a little boy that he could pet Porter, and when the sweet little boy approached, slowly and cautiously, Porter barked loudly right in his face. Now, I will let Porter meet kids, if the kids are calm, but I have my hands right on the sides of his face and my fingers in his mouth, so that if he bites, he bites me. Another time, a boy wanted to pet Porter, and I said okay while taking precautions. This boy patted him on the head and pulled his ears and stuck his hands in Porter's mouth, and Porter was a little angel, patiently putting up with it. I don't know why he barked the one time and allowed rough treatment the other time, so I hesitate to say my dogs are friendly.

As we were walking today, we saw a pit bull in the park, running around with the girls playing soccer. At first, I thought he belonged to a player, but then I noticed they weren't all having fun. The dog had popped one soccer ball with his teeth, and some of the girls were afraid. As I got closer, I learned that he didn't belong to anyone there, and they wished he would go away so they could have soccer practice without having their balls flattened. I leashed my dogs to the fence and tried to make friends with this young pit bull. He was an unneutered male, having fun, running around like a maniac. He wouldn't let me get close enough to grab him. I borrowed the punctured soccer ball, and I lured him over to the grass beside my dogs. He wanted to play with my dogs. Actually, he wanted to mate with Kelsy and Tess, even though they are spayed. Tess wasn't too happy about that. Both Kelsy and Tess were fifty percent bigger than him, and they let him know he was being a pest. He got around Porter before I could get over there, and I was relieved that their meeting was uneventful. After a while, all three dogs began to play in a cheerful and civilized manner. It made me proud to be their owner. I wished the whole world was watching so I could say, Yes, my dogs are friendly. After a bit of play, the pit bull laid down on the grass, and I was able to slip Tessie's leash over his head. I called Mom to pick up my dogs in a car, and I walked the pit bull to the vet. I would like to have taken him home, but we don't need a fourth dog. I posted flyers for a found dog, as well as a notice on Craigslist. I hope he makes it back home, instead of going to the shelter.

20090401 Training Kelsy. She found Lucy today. Because we were short-handed, Brian followed along behind in the car, with Lucy, and Kelsy kept turning around and looking at the car, as if saying, "She's right there. I found her. Give me my ball, and give me my treats." These dogs are too smart for their own good, but not smart enough to understand simple instructions in plain English. Lucy had a rough day. At one point, while on Kody's trail, she just sat in the intersection and wouldn't go any further. After a time-out, she eventually finished the trail. Kelsy made two wrong turns, and both times she turned toward a distraction. There are always distractions, but when they come at a decision point, it really throws her off. I am trying a new incentive where the person handling the target dog has Kelsy's ball. She seemed to like that best of all. I'm hoping Kelsy will get the idea that the lost dog has her ball. She would do anything to get her ball. For today's treat, I didn't have time to stop at the store for hot dogs or cheese, so I gave her a peanut butter sandwich. It was a drizzly day in Federal Way, about 45 degrees, no wind, 1600, light traffic, solid overcast.

20090331 Porter gets a cone.

Porter is having a rough week. Besides his hot spot, he ate something disgusting at the dog park and got sick, again. He finally stopped throwing up after a few days, but then he started digging at his hot spot with his back claws. I told him I would put a cone on him if he didn't listen, but he didn't listen. He looks charming with his black Elizabethan collar, and he only runs into things some of the time.

20090319 Kelsy played with Jenks today. Jenks weighs about ten pounds, and he always barks at my three dogs when he walks by with Cookie and their owner. Today, I was weeding down in the road with just Kelsy while Tess took a nap and Porter mooched a bite of a sandwich. The meeting of Jenks and Kelsy was a bit dicey at first. Kelsy got her hackles up as the little dog barked, but she never does anything when her hackles are up. Kelsy has never bitten anyone. After the initial posturing, Jenks wanted to play, and Kelsy was very interested in this. As Jenks bounced from side to side, 90-pound Kelsy made pouncing motions like a big kitten. I haven't ever seen her play like this before. When we go to the off-leash park, Kelsy only ever wants to fetch her ball, and she mostly ignores the other dogs. Jenks and Kelsy played for several minutes. Cookie just stood off to the side and watched. I hope Jenks and Kelsy will remember that they are friends next time they meet.

20090318 Training Kelsy. We searched for Yanco in Federal Way. The trail was about four hours old, about half a mile long. Kelsy did okay, although she blew one turn completely and needed my guidance to get back on track. Yanco hid inside a car, and it took Kelsy a few minutes to locate him. Kelsy got cheese for her reward, instead of hotdogs, but that seemed to suit her just fine. 55 degrees, hazy, light wind, 4:30 PM.

20090317 Kelsy and Porter to the vet. Kelsy yelped as if she were dying when I touched her dew claw. When the vet poked at it, she hardly made a peep. It looked like it was unraveling when I first noticed her licking it, and half of it had fallen off by the time the vet looked. He said it will heal on its own. Porter got a hot spot on his left cheek. He had hot spots in 2002 and 2007. The vet shaved off the fur and prescribed antibiotics and steroids. Porter has seemed out of it the last few days.

20090316 On our walk today, Kelsy was completely spooked by a garbage bag moving in the wind. Someone had dumped some trash in the dead end, so this bag was not supposed to be there. Porter and Tess didn't care at all. Kelsy yanked her leash out of my hand and ran off fifty feet. I saw what she was afraid of, and I went up and poked the garbage bag to show her it was nothing to be afraid of. I had to go get her and ease her past the evil bag. When we were a hundred yards beyond it, she still glanced back to make sure it wasn't sneaking up behind us to attack. I have never known Kelsy to be afraid of anything. I wonder what she thought the bag was. A black monster from outer space?

20090314 Training Kelsy. At Tukwila, Kelsy searched for Kody on a fairly new trail. She zoomed along the exact trail, perfectly, and found Kody in record time. Steady rain, 45 degrees, no wind, saturated ground, 10 AM.

20090311 Training Kelsy. This trail was twenty hours old, and Kelsy found none of the turns. She just ran around like a maniac. At one intersection, she would have been correct if she had chosen either right or left, but she went straight. She didn't correct any of her mistakes. I had to guide her back to the trail after every missed turn. We were looking for Lucy. Federal Way, clear and sunny, light breeze, about 48 degrees, 4 PM.

20090304 Porter loves corn cobs and I am an idiot. It just makes sense that I shouldn't give Porter a corn cob. I already know that he eats Greenies too fast, swallowing large chunks that could block his intestines. However, he was frantic as he watched the corn being prepared and consumed. Seeing how much he wanted it, I rationalized that I could let him chew a corn cob if I kept a close eye on him. Well, then the girls wanted corn cobs if Porter was getting one. I put the cobs in their bowls, and I looked away from Porter for no more than two seconds, to see how the girls were doing, and when I looked back, a third of the cob had vanished. I took them all away and threw them out. I called the emergency vet, because I always do stupid things when the regular vet is closed. He recommended induced vomiting, so I used a turkey baster to get six tablespoons of hydrogen peroxide down his throat. Twenty minutes later, he threw up mostly foam and some corn cob, but not all of it. Porter was sick for two days. He is better now. I hope I have learned my lesson. Next time anyone has corn on the cob, I'll just shut Porter in another room so he won't be so tormented.

20090223 Kelsy was attacked by a dog at Magnuson, today. I didn't see it start, so I don't know exactly what happened. I would imagine that Kelsy lunged for her ball and the other dog was protecting his owner. I whistled to call her back when I heard her yelp, and I was a little surprised when she returned to me without her ball. I was glad she did come to me. I expected her to go after her ball no matter what, and I'm encouraged that she can use restraint in dangerous circumstances. I called all three dogs to me and had them sit while the other owner tried to get her dog under control. The other owner was clearly outmatched by her large and willful dog. She pulled him away, eventually, using a leash. Kelsy did not appear to have any wounds. When she laid against my chest at bed time, she grumbled and groaned in an unusual way, and I wondered if she might be telling me about her day, about the way she was bullied when she was just trying to fetch her favorite ball. I told her I understood.

20090221 Training Kelsy. We found Coco today. She was lost in the Cedar River Watershed a couple of months ago, and the owners brought her to training to be the target dog. I thought it would motivate Kelsy to have a new dog to find, but she still missed a couple of turns. It might be because she was the third dog to run the trail, and the scents of Zeke and Lucy might have distracted her. I know Kelsy likes to cheat. Coco doesn't shed, is amazingly clean and soft, and seems to have no scent. Perhaps following smelly old Zeke was easier for Kelsy. Near the end of the trail, I radioed ahead and asked Coco's handler to remove the bright green vest because Kelsy always goes charging toward the vest at the end of a search. This seemed to stop Kelsy from cheating that way, and she eventually homed in on Coco.

20090219 Kelsy is turning gray! I'm not happy about my dogs getting older. I want them to live forever, of course. But it's hard to believe my little puppy is getting a gray fringe about her muzzle. Yesterday, during training, she didn't seem to have gotten old. She pulled me along rapidly on a 1.3 mile trail for Sadie. I had already walked and jogged the loop with Zeke and Lucy, and then Kelsy really got me sweating. When she overshoots corners, it seems to happen most often when she is running the trail. Maybe if I slow her down, she will be a little more careful. ON the turn she overshot yesterday, a different dog had recently gone straight. I started to anchor her, but she also seemed to slow down and question that direction. At the end of the search, Sadie and Laddie had walked apart in a V, and Kelsy definitely chose Sadie's scent at that fork in the road. Sunny, fifty degrees, little or no wind, heavy traffic on some streets, and several dog distractions. (I think the trail was aged, but if Kat told me, I don't remember.)

20090214 Kelsy loves perfume. Porter loves squash and Kelsy loves perfume. These are weird little people. Tonight, she found a Ralph Lauren advertisement torn out of a magazine, and she rolled on it and chewed on it. A couple of months ago, she discovered Calvin Klein. I would like for her to be able to wear perfume whenever she wants, except I hate perfume. The room still stinks of it from when she walked through an hour ago. I much prefer the smell of a dog to the smell of perfume.

20090214

Watching bits of the Westminster Dog Show, I was dismayed at the excessive grooming of some of the dogs, their coats turned into cotton candy. Many of the dogs lacked an essential doggishness. I didn't even know what a Sussex Spaniel was before I saw Stump. I enjoyed seeing some of the more normal looking dogs, but what I enjoyed most were the commercials that featured mutts at the pound. Mutts are beautiful. I oughta know. I think Tessie is probably a mutt, but there is a slight chance she may be a fine example of that little-known, rare breed, The Couch Hound. Couch Hounds have a difficult job, holding down a sofa for twenty hours a day. To maintain her athletic physique, the Couch Hound has to engage in some serious fetching for fifteen minutes a day. Then it's right back to the job, lounging on the couch. She is also a master of the traditional positions on the couch. She can smash her neck right up against the arm rest at a ninety degree angle and still manage to look comfortable. In the photo above, she has achieved a state of relaxation where she has actually left her body, and she is astral traveling to Sirius. Sometimes, she is faced with the challenge of holding down the couch when an ice cream bowl comes available for licking, and she uses her powers of telekinesis to bring the bowl to her while she maintains her post. When she sleeps on the couch, she dreams of being a wild Couch Hound in days of yore, hunting feral couches on the savannah. It was no easy feat for her ancestors to charge after a raging couch and jump on top of it. Now that couches have been domesticated, her life is a bit easier, but it is still a challenge to sleep for eighteen hours a day and still stay on top of all the other important items on her agenda. Some day, the Couch Hound will be a recognized breed by the AKC, but until that day, Tessie remains content to perform her duties like a professional, taking great pride in her work. I would like to claim that her great Couching skills were due to my training, but she possesses that rare, innate ability to lounge that you just can't teach.

20090210

          It's been an interesting week in the dog world. Last Wednesday, Kelsy trained at Steel Lake Park, trailing Cheeto again. The first time she smelled a scent article from a cat instead of a dog, Kelsy was highly interested. This time, it was no big deal. Last time, when she found Cheeto, she ran straight to the hiding place. This time, she meandered and goofed off, apparently bored with finding cats. Along the trail, a toddler came racing toward Kelsy faster than the parent could catch up. I had Kelsy sit, and I held my hands close by her teeth so that, should the child provoke a response, Kelsy would bite me and not the tiny hand of a child. Kelsy was surprisingly calm. I gave the kid one of Kelsy's cards, and as we resumed our search, I could hear him walking back to the picnic area exclaiming, "Kelsy! Kelsy!"    She found Cheeto, and it was interesting to watch her catch the scent cone and follow it to the hiding spot. She grabbed the scent out of the air with her head held high, and turned left and down toward the cat.

We were supposed to train on Saturday, but I had a salvage event to go to. I took Porter with me--he is the digging dog. Not that he is helpful, but just because that's his thing to do, like Kelsy is the search dog. I recently learned about dogs that help with conservation work by finding rare turtles or whales or owls by scent, and I think it would be great to train Porter to find trilliums while they are dormant, underground. Porter loitered around the snack table, looking at various people with his sad puppy eyes. He discovered popcorn and Oreos. When we walked out into the woods, he walked right behind me, I thought, but I turned around and he had vanished, as if he had been abducted by aliens. I whistled very loudly for him. I was just about to panic when I turned around and he was right behind me. When I had turned the first 180 degrees, he stayed exactly behind me, as if he were an extension of my backside. When I found him hiding behind me, he was looking all around, wondering who I was whistling for. Fortunately, I don't think any of the other volunteers witnessed our Laurel and Hardy routine.

Tessie's special trip, unfortunately, was to the vet. She had a split pad, and I wanted to make sure it wasn't infected or abscessed. When I take her into the lobby, she starts trembling so violently that she can hardly stand up. I don't know if it is best to comfort her or ignore her when she is like this. Of course, I want to comfort her, but I don't want to reinforce her anxiety. After a few minutes in the exam room, she clamed down a little. The cut wasn't infected, and it has already healed. She has had cuts on her pads several times in the past, much more than the other dogs. I don't know why. Kelsy had a tick the other day, but I haven't found any more since then. I don't want the dogs to have ticks, but I especially don't want the dog who sleeps against my chest to have blood sucking parasites. Maybe I should wear a flea collar.

A few days ago, I was awakened by an air raid siren right by my head. I went from sound asleep to wide awake in half a second. It was a pure tone, and it would have been beautiful if not for the fact that I had been sleeping. It took me a moment to realize that it was Kelsy, howling in her sleep. I nudged her awake, to stop her, and I instantly regretted it because it was such a nice sound. I wish she would howl on command like Walter does. She went back to sleep pretty quickly. I wanted to ask her what she was dreaming about. Did she dream she was a wolf? Was she pining for Olive? If she ever does it again, I hope I have the presence of mind to grab my phone and make an audio recording of it. I'd like to have that for a ring tone.

Today, we played in the snow. It was just a thin layer of slushy snow, but the dogs enjoyed galloping around the park in it. Porter licked the snow off the grass. At dinner time, it was squash night. Porter is a maniac for squash. Not buttered, or fried in bacon grease, but just plain old baked squash. He nearly jumped up and stole it from a people plate. While a large portion of squash cooled in his dish, he paced frantically outside the kitchen. When I let them in, he wolfed it down twice as fast as the girls ate theirs, much faster than he eats his normal dinner. He ate an amount of squash equal to his usual dinner, and he still wanted more. He got the leftovers form people's plates. I think he wants squash more than a steak or bacon. After he got a belly full of squash, he slept soundly on the floor, looking content, and I wondered if he dreamed of squash.

At bed time, Kelsy always is hesitant to come downstairs and go to bed. She always stands at the top of the stairs and questions whether that is the best course of action. When I make her come to bed, she just hops right on the bed and falls asleep instantly, so I don't know why she is reluctant. At bed time, I call her Ping, after the little duck who was always the last one up the ramp in that children's book. Kelsy always seems to question me. She has ideas of her own. If I insist, she goes along, but she always has her opinions. I think this might help make her a good search dog, that inquisitive, adventurous, independent nature. Whenever I get tired of being questioned by a puppy, I remind myself that it might be a useful trait, somehow. All the dogs are snoring, now, bellies full of squash.

20090131

Ten days ago, we visited Magnuson off-leash, and Porter became ill the next day, probably because he ate something off the ground. He barfed in the middle of the night, and Tess ate some of it before I could gather my wits enough to clean it up. She became ill. Lab results were "negative," although they didn't specify what the tests were negative for. Yesterday, we walked through the park, and I set their leashes down for ten seconds while I picked up some trash. I turned around to see Porter eating something off the ground! This made me so mad, I was speechless for a moment. Then I lectured him while he looked sorry, even though he really wasn't sorry. I said, "Don't you realize that that is why you were so sick last week? Don't you realize that stuff you find on the ground could kill you?" I don't dare let him out of my sight anywhere, not even in our own yard. I've seen him eat mud, chicken bones, and much worse things. I have pried his jaws apart many times to try to retrieve the item, but it is usually too late. I don't know how he has survived for ten years. No matter how much trouble he gets into for doing this, he will still go eat nasty stuff off the ground every chance he gets.

Recently, the dogs went with me to fix a hole in Virginia's roof. After I was done, the dogs came to the front door to say hello to Virginia. She said she wished she had a picture of the dog sitting so politely at her front door, so I whipped out my phone and snapped a picture. I printed it at the drug store and dropped it off at her book store the next day, and she was happy to have a picture of the three nice dogs. Of course, they are usually well behaved around her, and she has not witnessed their hooliganism.

Last Wednesday, Kelsy trailed Sadie on a 1.2 mile trail, 4 hours old. We probably ran about 2.4 miles after Kelsy ran in and out of every single yard in the neighborhood. I have decided that she is very capable of trailing, but she is not motivated enough to stick to trailing instead of crittering. I thought I would try tastier treats to see if I could bribe her into better performance. Looking around the grocery store, I saw special dog treats in a refrigerated case, for seven dollars a pound. It seemed like a lot of money for something I wouldn't feel confident about eating myself. I went to the meat case and found liverwurst, which I know the dogs are crazy about. I'm not crazy about the smell, though. The liverwurst was only three dollars a pound, and supposedly fit for human consumption. I also saw sausages stuffed with cheese, which seemed pretty tasty. I bought a package and opened it in the grocery store parking lot. The bite I took was pretty darn good, and all three dogs concurred that this was an excellent treat.

Today, we trained in Tukwila, trailing Cheeto, the orange cat. Kelsy was the first of five dogs to find Cheeto. When she went to smell the scent article, she paused and analyzed it carefully. She is used to dog scent, which she quickly sniffs before charging on. The cat scent made her stop and think. Then she followed the trail fairly closely, and she looked right up into the tree where Cheeto sat in a carrier tied to the trunk. I gave her the tasty cheesy hot dog treats, and also gave her the orange ball to play with. It was a good training day, with an exciting new target and good treats, so hopefully this will make her more motivated to search in the future. Sunny, no wind, 40 degrees.

20090117 Kelsy found Coco today, in a very efficient manner. She didn't even have to get out of the truck. Coco was standing in the middle of the area where people had spent two days looking for her.

20090110 Training Kelsy. I think she likes to make a fool out of me. I'm sure I deserve it, for the times I've taken pictures of her with stuff on her head. I know she can track a dog because when she's done goofing around, she zooms right along to the hiding place of the dog. That's not so much a problem during training because the dog isn't actually lost. On real cases, Kelsy's knack for clowning around will make it very hard to find anyone. Today, she went around a tree, and I followed her to prevent the thirty foot leash from becoming tangled. That would have been fine except she started following me, so, in classic Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd fashion, I was following her while she was following me. Fortunately, we only made two laps around the tree with the instructor watching us before I dropped the leash and grabbed the dog behind me. Eventually, she found Yanco. Even then, Yanco gave away his location by barking in the bushes. Kelsy did not follow Kody's decoy trail at all, which is either a sign of her skill or sheer luck. On the second trail, Kelsy found Harley with much less nonsense. We trained at Bicentennial Park in Tukwila at 9 AM. Overcast, light drizzle, light wind, 45 degrees.

I did achieve a milestone today, though. I was finally permitted by Yanco to pet his wonderful ears. At first, I hardly got to pet him at all, but in the past few weeks he has become more accepting of me. I've watched jealously as Theresa played with his ears, petting them and pulling on them. Today, while he had his head sticking out the truck window, I sneakily began to pet his ears gently, and he let me do pretty much whatever I wanted with them. (I was gentle, of course.) I am now a member of that select group of individuals that has been allowed to touch the magnificent ears of Yanco.

20090106 Kelsy the star.

For the past three days, Kelsy and I have been participating in a TV story about MPP and Kat Albrecht. A Canadian crew from the TV show, "TV Made Me Do It," is telling how Kat was inspired to start MPP after watching Oprah. They followed us on two missing cat cases. Tank, a grey and white cat, escaped from his owner's arms at a parking lot in Tukwila, near a pond and the Green River. Punkin, a longhaired orange cat, escaped from a home north of Green Lake. In both cases, Harley the Wonder Dog tried to find them. Harley did find several cats, but not the ones we were looking for. Harley got a blackberry thorn in his eye and had to go to the vet to have it surgically removed, but he came back the same day and searched more yards for Punkin. I was interviewed for two sentences, which will certainly end up on the cutting room floor, but they shot Kelsy extensively, while demonstrating and posing with Kat and while performing a mock search with me, along with Brian and Lucy. Most of the story they shot was dramatic rather than documentary. They only had three days to tell this story, and unfortunately we weren't able to give them a happy ending. In both cases, we set up a digital camera overnight. The Tukwila camera caught nothing, and the Green Lake camera caught several cats and a squirrel, but neither captured an image of the missing cats. Filming the searches disrupted our usual methods and limited our ability to search effectively. Hopefully, if this footage ever makes it to air, people will learn about MPP and support our cause, enabling us to find more cats in the future. If nothing else, people will see how beautiful and talented Kelsy is. Filming was frustrating for her because we didn't do things right. She wanted to do an actual search, finding a dog by scent, and performing for the camera went against her previous training. Still, she looked good, and she behaved herself okay.

Reviewing the images from the previous night.

Kat demonstrating some of the equipment.

Kat and Kelsy performing for the camera.

The trees behind the white SUV are where we thought we heard a cat, and where we set up the digital camera.

Kat and Kelsy

20081228 Training Kelsy.

She was very unmotivated today. Or, rather, she was very motivated to do anything but find the lost dog. I laid a trail with Porter and Tess, about a mile long, and put Kelsy on it right away, with no aging. She missed at least half the turns, and if I hadn't corrected her, we would still be out there running around in the dark. Even though she performed poorly, when she eventually found the dogs, I rewarded her enthusiastically with both treats and some ball fetching, hoping that more positive associations would motivate her for next time. I really think she would benefit from daily training with a different dog each day, but that is difficult to coordinate. Today's conditions, rainy and breezy, 43 degrees, 2pm, light traffic, no other dogs or people for distractions.

20081226 Kelsy is training to find lost dogs, but she is already skilled at finding orange rubber balls. Before your dog gets lost, attach a Canine Hardware orange rubber ball to your dog's collar, and Kelsy will be sure to find him or her. Today, we went out to play fetch in the driveway. It's too slushy, slick, and sloppy for me to walk anywhere interesting, and the dogs are getting cabin fever, so it was important to play a little fetch. On the first throw, it bounced right into the rhododendron. Kelsy and Tess searched all underneath this large bush, fifteen feet high by fifteen feet wide. When they didn't find it, I came up and looked. Orange on green should be easy for me to spot, but I couldn't see it or shake it loose. I found a regular yellow-green tennis ball and tried to get Kelsy to play with it, but she insisted on having her orange ball. She barked at me and she barked at the bush. She held her nose high, pointing up into the bush. I got a step ladder and tried to find it. I picked Kelsy up so her head was at about six feet high, and let her sniff around the rhododendron. I thought about climbing the step ladder while carrying the ninety pound dog, but thought better of it, especially since my weight alone exceeded the safe capacity printed on the label. She knew it was there, but she couldn't find it. Finally, I climbed inside the bush from the back side and found it lodged in a crotch of three branches, deep inside the bush where it was impossible to see or reach from the outside. Kelsy's nose pinpointed the ball from about six feet away. Keep in mind that this is a rubber ball, not a living organism shedding millions of dead skin cells every second. Sure, she was smelling her own saliva on the surface of the ball, but still, I think it was an amazing feat. I aimed more carefully and kept her favorite ball out of the bushes, and Kelsy and Tess played fetch for about fifteen minutes in the rain, diving into the slush to get it.

20081224

The black dogs met another black dog, Leroy, found by Amy at the Tulalip Casino where he might have been dumped. Leroy is a perfectly behaved dog (better than my dogs) who will now get to live indoors in luxury after many years as a yard dog. Amy, an MPP volunteer, went to great lengths to solve the mystery of Leroy's ownership. The first scan by a vet did not show a microchip, but another scan by a different vet did reveal a microchip with outdated information. Amy's detective work led to the owner, who agreed Leroy would be better off in a new situation. I was glad to meet Leroy, and even happier to know he has a bright future in a new home. I was worried for a while that no one would want Leroy, and I'd end up wanting to take him because he fits in so well with my dogs.

20081220 Training Kelsy. Today we searched for Nala. It was a short trail near Tukwila Pond. Nala remained securely on a leash at all times, so she wouldn't got really lost, having just come home from a 32-day adventure in the wilderness. This trail passed through fresh snow, which was very helpful in discerning what Kelsy was after. I could read the footprints in the snow, but Kelsy only followed her nose, ignoring the tracks. Most of the time, I could see she was following Nala, but when she took a detour, I could see the tracks of whatever bird or small mamal she smelled. I could tell her "Leave it" when she got on the scent of the wrong critter. Of course, she knows the difference between Nala's scent and a squirrel's scent, and she is just goofing off when she detours. This snowy trail helped me know instantly when she was goofing off so I could correct her and reward her for staying on the right trail. We trained at 10 AM, no wind, 24 degrees, snow and ice on the ground. The trail passed through a deserted park and a crowded parking lot.

20081218

20081216

Tessie doesn't like people with hats. People come for dinner, people that Tessie knows and loves, and she barks like a maniac because they wore hats. So they take off their hats, and Tess is fine. They eat dinner, stay for several hours, pet Tessie, and everything is perfectly fine. They get up to leave, put on their hats, and Tessie starts barking again. Does she think hats are evil? Or does she think people who wear hats are evil? She came around the corner one day and saw my mom in a gardening hat, and all four feet left the ground when she leapt into a barking fit. I wonder if it is stressful for her to always be worrying about people in hats. Was she chased by people in hats when she was a puppy? I guess Santa won't be visiting this house.

20081213 Tessie acting strange. A little after midnight, Tess started grumbling. It wasn't quite a growl. She'd already had dinner, a walk, a drink, dessert, lots of petting, everything a dog could want. I brought her outside with me, and she didn't act like there was an intruder or a raccoon fight or anything. Is she warning us of an impending earthquake or tsunami? Is Mt. Rainier going to blow its top?

20081210 Training Kelsy

We trained in Federal Way with Sadie, Zeke, and Lucy. The trail was a 1.1 mile loop laid 6 hours earlier. Zeke went first, and Kelsy second. Along 21st Ave SW, she followed the fence line where Sadie had walked, not the sidewalk where Zeke had gone half an hour earlier. On one of the turns, she followed interesting smells down toward a creek, so I had to steer her back to the trail. Sadie had been in the vehicle following behind us. At the end, the vehicle jumped ahead so Sadie could be "found" at the end of the trail. When the SUV with Sadie went by, Kelsy turned it up a notch and really went after the scent. It must have been like turning up the volume, six hours old compared to fresh. Kelsy went right up to Sadie in the carrier in the back of the SUV. She worked much harder than a couple of days ago. We need to practice more frequently. Conditions: light and variable winds, about 45 degrees, getting dark. Traffic was heavy, loud and stinky, along 21st Ave SW, but that did not seem to pose any problem.

20081208 Training Kelsy. She seems to do poorly when she has taken time off. Because she was sick and I was busy, we haven't trained for a couple of weeks. I laid a shorter trail, three quarters of a mile, to ease her back in, but she still didn't want to finish it right. She got within ten feet of the vehicle where Porter and Tess were waiting, and then she ran all over hell, investigating things, no where near the trail. I had a hard time not showing frustration with her. Eventually, she found Tess, probably through random chance, and I rewarded her with treats and ball fetching. We train again on Wednesday, so I hope today's fiasco will get it out of her system before the next training. 50 degrees, calm, overcast, 3PM, in the neighborhoods around Lake Burien School Park.

20081206 Porter in the mud.

Porter helped me salvage native plants at a site in Redmond where new homes will be built soon. I dug up ferns and hemlocks, mostly, and cut some branches draped with licorice fern. The soil was beautiful and rich, full of organic material and easy to dig. The only difficulty in digging came from all of the plant roots intertwined in a mat. The mud lay between the street and the forest. Like deep snow, we could walk on top of it, mostly, but I could never tell when I would suddenly be a foot deep in the mud. Porter worked his way through one especially goopy section. I was worried he might get stuck and I'd have to go get him. He had a good time. He mooched food from the snack table, he played with a Bernese Mountain Dog named Samba, and he slept on the rich, loamy earth exposed where I had removed some ferns. Most of all, he was absolutely no trouble at all. He has come a long way from the puppy I first met.

Below: my boots and some licorice ferns.

20081125 Kelsy is sick. On March 9th of 2008, Tess and Porter became very ill after a visit to Magnuson. We visited Magnuson two days ago, and Kelsy became ill. She is so quiet and gentle. She wagged her tail at me this evening for the first time in two days. She hasn't wanted to play fetch. You know Kelsy is sick when she doesn't want to fetch a ball. Dr. Jolivet prescribed antibiotics, and she seems to be getting better quickly. She weighed 88 pounds, down from 94, most likely due to dehydration. Magnuson, with thousands of dogs visiting every day, with all that mud, has to be the perfect breeding ground for dog diseases.

20081122 Training Kelsy.

Today in Tukwila, Kelsy found the world's cutest puppy, Yanko. This was a split trail, not very long. I took the scent from Yanko using a gauze pad, and Kelsy smelled the scent pad in a plastic bag on the ground. Then she took off after Yanko, a new dog to her. Yanko and Lucy had walked the same trail, but Lucy turned left and Yanko went right. Kelsy stayed right on Yanko's trail and went directly to him, not even thinking about following Lucy's trail. I was a little surprised how well she did and how exactly she followed Yanko's trail, just from the scent on a one inch square gauze pad. The conditions were cold and breezy, overcast, about 47 degrees.

20081119 Porter's clone and Training Kelsy.

On our way to train in Federal Way, we stopped at Grandview Park to burn off a little steam. We met a dog that looked exactly like a younger Porter. The Young Porter's teeth were white, and sadly my Porter's teeth are not. I should brush them more. I forgot to check for a white spot on the chest, but in every other respect, this was a young version of Porter. Especially in the respect of excessive energy. My Porter wanted to check this dog out, but he wouldn't hold still for two seconds. He taunted Porter by zooming past him many times and running too fast for Porter to keep up. Porter snarled at him as if to say, "You little punk." This cracked me up because Porter was a little punk when he was that age, except much worse. I wanted to point out the irony to Porter, but I don't think he would have appreciated it properly. The owner of the Young Porter said his parents were a Golden Retriever and a Black Lab, just like the Porter twin we met on April 25th, 2008. This should be a breed. If they have labradoodles and such, I think the world would be a better place with more Porters in it.

After meeting the Young Porter, we continued on to Federal Way to meet Kody and Zeke and Lucy. Kody had left a trail four hours earlier. After gathering scent from Kody, Kelsy and I set out on the one mile trail. Kelsy did okay, but at about the halfway point, she just quit. We took a break for a few minutes. Kat thought that Kelsy might be tired, but I'm not so sure. I wondered if she might be bored of that game. We let Kelsy nose around the lawn by the school, and then after few minutes I told her to get to work and she continued trailing Kody. I would day Kelsy got three quarters of the turns right, without clues from me. A couple of times, I'm not sure how far she would have gone on the wrong turn before turning around. One time, she definitely started tracking a squirrel, so I told her to leave it. Kelsy's report card would read, "Kelsy has the brains and the ability to go far, but she doesn't apply herself." We started the trail around 3:45, sunny, cool, about 50 degrees, light winds although it had been fairly windy earlier.

20081116 A close call today at the dog park when Kelsy's ball accidentally bounced onto the roof of a shelter. I went and got a long maple branch, but it wouldn't reach over the lip of the corrugated roof. I tied the Chuckit thrower to the branch, using a blue waste bag, but it wasn't firm enough. I borrowed some tape from the SODA volunteers, and secured the Chuckit to the branch, at an angle. Some people up the hill told me which way to move my improvised reaching device, and I grabbed it after several tries. Kelsy was really glad to have her favorite ball back.

20081115 Training Kelsy at Tukwila Pond with Zeke, Lucy, Rachelle, Kody, and Janko. Along the same general path, Rachelle found Kody, then Lucy found Rachelle, and then Kelsy found Lucy, the trail a little longer each time. So, by the time Kelsy went to find Lucy, she was following a trail that 3 dogs had run down recently. I thought this might be helpful, but I think it was confusing to Kelsy. She looked up at me several times as if to ask what she was supposed to be doing. another complication was that Brian had some tasty treats, and he gave Kelsy a couple. Several times along the trail, while she was supposed to be tracking, she ran up to Brian to ask for more treats. She did find Lucy, at the pond. We ran onto the deck, not knowing that Lucy was hiding underneath. Lucy gave an excited bark and gave away her position. 11 AM, sunny, cool, no wind.

20081112 Training Kelsy.

She trained last Sunday at Angle Lake with Dianna and Kody, where she performed poorly. She obviously had the ability, but she was highly distracted by the lake, the ducks, and another dog. She trained a few days before that with Lucy and Kody and Zeke, and she did okay, but not as well as in the past. Today, we tried a new training method, with mixed results. I took all three dogs to a park and left Kelsy in the truck by herself while I laid a one-mile trail with Porter and Tess. They waited in a second vehicle while I went back and got Kelsy for the trailing practice. Kelsy did not seem enthusiastic about finding Porter. She did quite a bit of goofing off along the trail. This trail had twelve turns, and I would say she got at least eight of them right. On the others, I'm not sure if she picked the right path or if she took her cues from me. On one corner in particular, I could see her working. We ran along the sidewalk, and she sniffed around the entrance to a church parking lot and looked that way. Then she continued up the sidewalk about twenty feet, lifting her head and trying to get the scent. She came back, on her own, without cues from me, and took the path into the church parking lot. I was encouraged by this. (One problem with this training method is that she would also be following my scent, from when I took the dogs along the course the first time.)

I have been frustrated with her, lately, because she is not trailing nearly as well as I know she is can. I am trying not to show my frustration to her. If this whole process ever becomes a chore for her, she will probably just quit all together. I need to think of ways to heighten her enthusiasm for the trailing game.

Today it rained lightly, with breezes out of the southwest at five to fifteen miles an hour, 55 degrees, overcast, start time around 3 PM.

20081108 Another Porter.

The big dog with golden-brown fur and eyes to match was also named Porter. He seemed like a very nice dog. He was not any better at fetching than my Porter. They had to keep throwing rocks at the ball in the water to try to entice their Porter to retrieve it. All had fun, though.

My Porter makes valiant leaps to try to catch the ball when I bounce it in front of him. He almost always misses. He could just wait until the ball comes down, like Tess does, but he throws himself into the air, usually several inches away from catching the ball. I know he has excellent vision in at least one eye, but I think he might have trouble with depth perception. We should see about getting contact lenses for him. Recent heavy rains created large mud puddles and patches of goopy, mucky mud, perfect for a dog. The people had to step around the puddles, but the dogs splashed right through. Magnuson Park after heavy rains becomes dog heaven.

20081027 Training Kelsy.

Kelsy rocks. We trained on two trails, each over a mile long, through dense neighborhoods with traffic, dogs, and thousands of scent distractions. This time, I knew the trail that Porter and Tess took, so I corrected Kelsy when she went off the trail on several occasions. Still, she was right 90% of the time. Also, I am beginning to be able to differentiate between those times when she is locked on the scent and when she is randomly charging about. I was able to praise her for being on the right track, which should reinforce the desired behavior. She really flew along some of the straight sections of the trail. Porter and Tess also enjoy the game of being found by Kelsy. Tess always jumps on me when she is found. 5:40 PM, clear, getting dark, 59 degrees, no wind.

20081021 Training Kelsy.

We trained at the Kent community center, 6 PM, getting dark, clear, light breeze, about 50 degrees. Kelsy found Lucy twice and Frankie twice. Once, when finding Lucy, I thought Kelsy was on the wrong track, so I pulled her back and headed the other way. It turned out she was right and I should have listened to her. But on the second hunt for Frankie, Kelsy led me inside the building, toward the source of food smells, and nowhere near Frankie. The lesson for me is that I need to know where the scent trail actually goes so I can praise Kelsy for doing it right, and also so I don't pull her off a trail when she is right. Kelsy is doing well on the "Take scent" phase of the hunt. We are fairly consistent on that now.

Later, at bed time, she curled up with her back against my chest and her head on my arm. Her mouth twitched and her feet quivered as she chased Lucy and Frankie in her dreams.

20081020 Swimming in the Rainbow, Magnuson Park, Lake Washington

20081018. Training Kelsy.

9:30 AM in Tukwila, light, shifting breeze, sunny, about 55 degrees. Where we trained behind some stores in Southcenter, the hillside is covered with a dense forest between the shops and the freeway. This private property is like a hundred-acre park. Today the maples were bright yellow against a crisp blue sky. Two hawks soared above us, screeching. Kelsy waited in the truck with Porter and Tess while we trained Lucy and Rachelle. This is really a game to the dogs, as you can plainly see by their enthusiasm. Lucy especially was yipping with excitement waiting for Rachelle to get settled into her hiding place. Kelsy took her turn at training with Kody as the Target dog. In the past, Kelsy had done an odd, growly thing at Lucy, Rachelle, and Kody, but she didn't do it today. I think it might be related to tension on the leash. If I just let go of the leash, she seems to be fine. On the first hunt for Kody, Kelsy seemed to be distracted at one turn, but this might have been caused by some interference from a previous track that Kody had made. On the third search for Kody, Kelsy took breaks on a long trail, and she had no trouble starting the chase again after a break. Kelsy trailed Kody into the Petsmart, but the smells, people, and dogs were too much of a distraction, and Kelsy only pinpointed Kody through random trail and error. Still, she did find Kody and get the reward of praise and treats.

After Kelsy went back to the truck to relax with the Porter and Tess, and fog up the windows, we tried Zeke on a long trail laid two and a half hours earlier by Kody. This trail had many turns and crossed five lanes of traffic twice. Zeke lost the trail a few times, giving a full-body shake, but it was exciting to watch him catch the scent and swing around with his nose to the ground, taking off in a new direction. We were within ten feet of Kody, waiting patiently in a car, and Zeke seemed a little distracted by all the other scent activity in the parking lot. After a few moments, Zeke caught a whiff of Kody and zeroed in on the car. It's amusing to watch Zeke run, very different from the other dogs. He reminds me of the Scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz.

After training, we went to play at Magnuson because I had to drop off some trees for the plant sale. On one of the tosses, Kelsy didn't see where her ball went, way out into the lake. When the water is choppy, she can't see over the tops of the waves. I threw rocks out there, about as far as I could throw, to help her pinpoint the location of the ball, but she knew that rocks are not balls, and she ignored them. I found an abandoned tennis ball to chuck, but then I had to catch sight of Kelsy's orange ball. It took several minutes to spot it because the wind had moved it east and farther from shore, and the whole time I was looking, Kelsy bounced up and down in front of me, excited to chase a ball. People seemed to think I was just teasing her. I finally spotted her ball, and threw the tennis ball out to it, making sure that Kelsy was watching this time. Both she and Tess swam way out there to get it. Kelsy swam back with her orange ball as Tess swam beside her with the tennis ball.

After a hard day of work and play, Kelsy relaxes on the bed:

20081017 Nothing beats walking in the rain, in the dark. The dogs would be happy to walk any time, but I prefer the night time. Especially on a rainy night, everyone is inside, off the streets, and we seem to have the world to ourselves. Miles of pavement lay wide open to us, with little concern for traffic. Homes become small pools of light in the distance, with most of their details erased. People are huddled around their TVs, or in bed, and my three dogs and I can walk right down the middle of the street.

Tonight's rain fell softly, and I only needed to wipe my glasses clean every other block or so. Enough rain wetted the pavement that Porter's furry feet made splooshing sounds with every step. The girls walked along silently, except when they splashed through the puddles. The rain generated white noise, soothing and soft, and yet the sound contained volumes of information if I paid attention. The texture of the rain changed as we walked by a metal roof or a lawn or the grove of grand firs. The magnolia released droplets in a distinctive pattern. On one unlit street, I walked around the corner into darkness. My black dogs disappeared, and I only kept them in my awareness by the pulsating tension on the three leashes. This street was lined by large maples, and the rain on their large, papery leaves sounded louder than any of the other trees. In the total darkness, I could see the maples because of their sound signature.

I wondered what it must be like for a scent animal. Smells are amplified by moisture, as anyone with a wet dog can attest, and the dogs' world must unfold on dark, rainy nights. I could smell that someone burned plastic in their fireplace on one block. Mostly, the night lacked smell to me. They stopped and sniffed all their usual roadside attractions. Sometimes I waited patiently for them, and sometimes I pulled them along. In a patch of tall grass, Porter waded through with his nose plowing into the wet grass. It must have been a scent buffet for him. I wondered if dogs might enjoy the scent of something nearly as much as we enjoy the taste of food or the sight of flowers. The only thing missing from this perfect night was the smell of Daphne laureola, but that comes in the winter.

20081016   I worked in the garden for a while this afternoon, and I didn't want the dogs helping me in their particular fashion. As I transplanted a clump of Veronica, Tessie poked her head out the cat door. This amused me and startled the cat, who was thinking about going in the cat door. I wanted to snap a picture of Tess on my camera phone, so I crinkled a wrapper in my pocket, cruelly tricking her into thinking I had a treat for her. Doubly cruel, the cat, Norbert, took advantage of Tessie's predicament to whap her on the nose. The picture below shows her cautiously trying to peer out while keeping her snout out of range of the cranky cat. After I took her picture, I went inside to give her a treat as compensation for laughing at her and luring her into a cat ambush.

My dogs mean the world to me, as you might imagine, given that I waste countless hours tending this web site, reporting on their meaningless and insignificant antics. Recently, a friend with three dogs has been under pressure from several problems--health, finances, relationships, and such. Of course, I worry about her, and I want to help her even though there's little I can do. I know of several other dog owners, friends and acquaintances, who are experiencing difficult circumstances. They love their dogs as much as I love mine, but it seems possible that their circumstances could limit their ability to care for their pets the way they would like. They might not even be able to keep their dogs, if things get worse. This would be an unimaginable horror to me, and yet I can see how just a few misfortunes could put me in the same place. Dogs can be needy. Even though they only require a bowl of kibble and a scratch behind the ear, most of the time, there are other times when they need much more, such as when veterinary bills start reaching four digits. It should never be the case that economic, emotional, or health problems could come between a man and his best friend. I'm sure that's how many dogs end up in our overcrowded shelters. If I had my way, a significant chunk of Leona's eight billion dollars would be freed up from lawyer-limbo and placed into an insurance fund so that, no matter what misery life throws at a person, you would never be at risk of losing your animals. Your animals should not be at risk of losing your love and care. Sure, to some people it is nothing more than a picture of a stupid dog peeking out of a stupid hole in the wall, but to me it is everything. I would do anything I could to keep that sweet face sweet. I wish I could do more to secure the bond that others share with their dogs.

20081016 Training Kelsy. Cool, overcast, 55 degrees, no wind, the ground and bushes still damp from last night's rain, 2 PM. Today we focused on the "Take Scent" command. I rubbed Porter with a gauze pad to get his scent, and then when Porter and Tess hid, I put the pad down on the ground, in a plastic bag, with a treat, to get Kelsy in the habit of taking the scent before charging off on the hunt. She found the dogs four times, pretty easily, but the emphasis was on the "Take Scent" command, so it was a good day's work in spite of the easy finds.

20081015 Training Kelsy.

Kelsy trained with Lucy, Zeke, and Kody this afternoon, at a shopping center in Federal Way. Kelsy searched for Kody. She became a bit distracted in each of two searches, but she did find her target, fairly quickly. I had to anchor her on a few corners. She also took shortcuts rather than following the exact path, which is okay. Kelsy played the target dog for Zeke, who found her with no trouble over a longer route. 3 PM, sunny, cool, about 53, light breeze.

20081014 Training Kelsy.

We practiced in the park today. It was an open field with hiding places around the perimeter. Porter and Tess went across the open field to four different hiding places. Each time Kelsy went to look for them, she just charged out into the field, not adhering to the path they took. Was she following the scent that had drifted through the air? Or was she just being a little maniac? Using this open lawn, the size of a football field, was an interesting exercise because in most of our previous searches she has been running down a trail or a street, with limited options. To try to get her back on track, I anchored her and told her to get to work. Several times, I could see that she used her nose to get back on the track of their scent. At any rate, whether through blind luck or skill, she found the dogs four times and she was rewarded and happy. If nothing else, I hope I'm reinforcing that finding dogs is fun. Temperature in the mid fifties, weak sun, no wind at 1 PM.

20081007

20080917 Porter in the dirt.

Porter spent about five minutes digging in the sandy dirt. He's never done this before, that I know of, but suddenly, at nine years of age, he decided that he would be more comfortable if he rearranged the dirt. After digging and digging, he flopped down in his new hole.

20080905 Kelsy collapses.

Apparently, Kelsy will not stop playing when she is in danger of overdoing it. On this day, we played lots of fetch at Grandview Park in the morning and then played again at Magnuson Park in the afternoon. That was two miles of walking for me, but probably five miles of sprinting for Kelsy, chasing the ball constantly. Also, toward the end of our Magnuson walk, Kelsy collided at full speed with another dog chasing another ball. That dog was knocked down, and got up shaking his head. Kelsy just plowed through as if her head was made of steel. She continued to play for at least ten more throws of the ball. When we got close to the gate, Kelsy still wanted me to throw her ball, but she started walking with her head close to the ground, and then she tipped over. She never lost consciousness, and she never stopped wanting me to throw her ball, but it was very scary to see her no longer in control of her body. It reminded me of Tess having a seizure. I carried her to my truck, planning to drive her to the emergency vet on Stone Way, about 30 minutes away. As we drove along, she seemed to recover fully. I went to a meeting I had planned to attend, and one of the members was a retired veterinarian. She said Kelsy looked fine, and I agreed, so I just let her sleep in the truck while I attended the meeting. For several days afterward, Kelsy seemed more subdued than usual. Now, she is back to normal, asking to play at every opportunity. In the future, I will say play time is over before she decides play time is over.

20080826 Trailing Gibson.

Today, Kelsy and I tried to find Gibson, an Irish Water Spaniel who sprinted down the street when lightning struck near his West Seattle home last night. We did not find Gibson, but Kelsy seemed to follow the trail that eyewitnesses said Gibson took. Kelsy pointed out two possible locations for further investigation: a house, and the elementary school next to Schmitz Park. I think one of the keys to Kelsy's training is keeping this fun and having her win the game most of the time. While this search didn't culminate in the joy of a found dog to play with, as it usually does in practice, I did praise her and reward her for following a trail for a mile and a quarter. I'm not positive that Kelsy understood the concept of an aged trail. Certainly, she is capable of detecting scent. I just don't know if I have made the association in her mind that we can play our game with the scent of a dog that is a day ahead of us. We will work on this in practice. I let the family of Gibson know that there was a low probability that Kelsy would find Gibson. If Gibson does come home, it would be interesting to learn if Kelsy was on the right path. Gibson pictured below.

Update: I received a call from Gibson's owner saying he came home on his own after several days. I'm glad to know he's safe. They weren't sure if he had been hiding out in Schmitz Park, the point to which Kelsy led me.

20080823    Training Kelsy at North SeaTac Park.

Kelsy performed okay today. She tracked something else, not Lucy, on one of the trails. She did well on 4 out of 5. After training with the MPP dogs, we went to visit Irana and Meghan. Although they've met before, this meeting resulted in a short scuffle and Meghan bled a little. After that, they were fine. We went to the Cedar river, southeast of Renton, and played hide and seek in the park. I goofed on the first two trails, letting Kelsy see the target before Meghan was properly hidden. On the third trail, Kelsy followed the scent fairly closely, right toward one landmark and then hard left to the target. It was too hot (especially for me) even though Kelsy had air conditioning and cooled herself with a quick swim in the river. It was over seventy when we started and about eighty when we finished, with little breeze and no clouds. Kelsy breathed in front of the vent, and the air conditioning turned her breath into little puffs of steam.

I took pictures of Kelsy, Lucy, and Zeke today, for their "trading cards."

20080816 Training Kelsy at North SeaTac Park.

Our scheduled training from 9 to noon was interrupted from the start when we found a dog. Kelsy got out of the truck to train with Lucy, a wiggly yellow lab, and a stray dog trotted right up to Kelsy to play. This dog would not let men pet him, but he was happy to have women pet him. He wore a collar, but with no tags, and he limped. Someone from our group called animal control, but they never answer their phone. Another pair of dog walkers, not part of our training group, gave the stray some canned food, and he wolfed it down. He hopped into the car of a female volunteer, and she followed me to my vet. They will hold the dog until Monday, and then turn him over to animal control. I placed an ad on Craigslist. No owner has claimed him, but one woman wants to adopt him. I certainly hope our attempts to help this dog are successful, and our kindness doesn't kill him. The fact that King County Animal Control euthanizes 40% of the animals that enter their system doesn't fill me with confidence. If I am going to try to help animals, and I am required by law to turn them over to Animal Control, what is the best strategy? I don't want to continue paving the road to hell with my good intentions.

Anyway, since it was so hot and we had a stray to deal with, Kelsy only play hide and seek a couple of times. On the second trial, she overshot the turn in the trail by about fifty feet, but then she tracked back and found Rachelle hiding behind a tree.

20080815 Sophie came home today. I felt so relieved to hold her in my arms. I wished I could have kept her, but she has a good home and I have too many mutts already.

20080814 Training Kelsy at Saltwater State Park. We trained with Carin and her golden retriever Star. Kelsy found her pretty easily the first three times. The fourth time, we also found Star right away, but Kelsy didn't follow the trail. She just ran straight toward Star's hiding place. Airborne scent?

Earlier in the day, we tried to track a missing dog, but the trail was about five days old. I told the owner, before we started, that it probably wouldn't work. It is slightly possible Kelsy was on the dog's trail, but since she ran straight into a yard where, if the dog were there he would have been returned long ago, I figured Kelsy was just checking out interesting smells. I should not have tried Kelsy on this old trail. We haven't even started training on aged trails, so how could she know what I wanted? I need to follow the steps of the training.

20080807 Training Kelsy.

This picture of Kelsy in her red harness, with her long leash, shows her taking a break while the other dogs find a place to hide. At the start of this morning's practice, she barked excitedly when Porter and Tess first went out of sight to the first hiding spot. She really enjoys this game and gets psyched up for it. We only found the dogs four times before she started to get bored. We need to practice with other dogs so she can maintain her excitement for the game.

The practice took place at 11:30 on a clear, sunny day, no wind, 64 degrees.

20080730 Training Kelsy.

At 4:30 PM, temperature 63, light breeze, sunny. Porter and Tess got lost together (with handler) and Kelsy found them on five trials. The first four trials, she found the dogs right away, with no doubt about the direction. She can discriminate between a newer trail and an older trail when they cross. The fifth time, she saw a raccoon and she lost interest in the "lost" dogs. She eventually found them, but it took some encouragement to get her going on the trail. The raccoon was walking right up the middle of the street in broad daylight, which I thought was rather cheeky. Kelsy performed all these searches for the reward of treats, instead of her ball. I think she also enjoys the game, and would do it for no reward at all, eventually. The longest trail was around 100-120 yards.

20080727 At Magnuson off-leash, we saw this beautiful mangy mutt. I think this is my favorite picture of all time, at least for today.

After Porter swam in the lake, he rolled in the dirt and turned himself into a brown dog.

On the way home, the Montlake Bridge was up, stopping traffic, so we pulled over and snapped a picture with the University of Washington Husky. On previous outings, when we have been stopped in traffic in front of the University, all three dogs have barked at the Husky, standing there defiantly. When we approached on foot, the dogs were cautious, smelling him and checking him out. Kelsy jumped when she thought the Husky was sneaking up on her. Then they all relaxed to have their picture taken.

20080726 Training at North SeaTac.

Kelsy and I went to North SeaTac Park today to train with Kat Albrecht of Missing Pet Partnership. Kat used her techniques to check out Kelsy’s suitability for tracking lost pets. Kelsy turns out to not be excited enough about cats. She met Cheeto, Kat’s cat, and sniffed and touched her, but Kelsy showed no enthusiasm for being around a cat.

Kelsy passed several tests for work tracking dogs. Another dog was fairly aggressive toward Kelsy (not actually part of the test) nipping at her and barking, and Kelsy did not respond aggressively, which is good for a trailing dog. As part of the test, Kat dropped metal pot lids, making a racket, and Kelsy did not shy away. Kat picked up two brooms, held them high over her head, and slowly advanced on Kelsy while staring at her in a threatening manner. Kelsy did move around a bit and back up, but she did not lunge or attack. So Kelsy passed. Another dog basically went nuts when Kat approached staring, with brooms held high. I think that’s a perfectly valid response from a dog, just not a trait you want in a trailing dog that has to be around a variety of people in dynamic situations.

After Kelsy passed her test, we played at finding some of the other dogs who came for training or testing. Kelsy found Rochelle several times, and Rochelle found Kelsy hiding behind trees and bushes. We also found Harley and Cody. On our last trial of trailing Cody, Kelsy seemed to lose interest and basically gave up. On the six or eight other practice runs, though, she went right to the hidden dog, quickly and definitively. I think Kelsy could be very good at this, as long as she thinks it’s fun. I’ll have to be sure to avoid training her to the point of exhaustion, boredom, or frustration.

It was a partly-cloudy morning, in the mid-sixties, with a light breeze. Planes flew right overhead, every few minutes, for the entire three hours.

Below are Dezi and Rochelle, two of the nice dogs we met.

Also of note: Porter got his annual haircut a couple of days ago. Even though my styling technique is somewhere between amateur and criminal, Porter looks very good. His coat looks a little like Rochelle in the picture above--short to medium in length and soft and coarse at the same time. This isn't a great picture of him, but you can tell his coat is much shorter, the fringe on his elbows is gone, and he just looks smaller and skinnier than with his full coat. Also, last year I cut the fur off his tail. It looked funny and it took nine months to grow back. This year I left his tail alone.

20080720 More training.

Kelsy trained from 12:30 to 1:00. 70 degrees, sunny, with a light breeze. On the first trial, she found the dogs enthusiastically. While waiting, she started barking her, "Let's go play" bark. She ran right to the dogs, sometimes with her nose high and sometimes with her nose closer to the ground. She is learning our area too well, and she just checks the scent trail at the branching of the possible paths. In subsequent trials, she became less and less enthusiastic. I think she might be getting bored of finding the same dogs in the same places.

Tess and Porter seem to enjoy being the "lost" dogs. Tessie especially was very happy when we found her on the first trial. She ran up to see me, bouncing and smiling. Both dogs are good at sitting and staying quietly, so Kelsy has to find them by scent, not sight or sound.

20080720 Training the dog hunter.

A long, long time ago, shortly after Kelsy came home from the shelter, I had in mind to train her to do something. She just turned three on her arbitrarily-selected birthday of July 14th, and her best trick so far is to roll over. However, the other day at Grandview Park I saw a flyer for training your dog to become a Dog Detective, and since then we have been practicing and training to find lost dogs. Porter and Tess get "lost" with a human guardian, and Kelsy goes to find them. She is very good at this task, with the proper motivation. That motivation is THE BALL. She will do anything if she gets to play with the ball. We started out training her by having the ball go with the dogs. So, she wasn't so much interested in finding the dogs as she was in finding the ball. She did have to follow the scent trail of the dogs to find her ball, which was the important thing. She can track Porter and Tess quite easily. I'm certain she will have no trouble at all tracking a lost dog, as long as she is properly motivated.

The next step in training involved me keeping the ball while the dogs went to hide. Her first response to "Go find Porter, go find Tess," was, "I know you have the ball. What, do you think I'm stupid?" I was able to convince her that she would get her ball back when she found the dogs, and after a couple of hesitant trials, she learned the game and became very skilled at this new version. We tried another variation, in which she remained in the kitchen while I went and got "lost" with Porter, Tess, and the Ball. This really got her going. I called on my cell phone and said, "Release the hound." Seventeen seconds later, Kelsy came charging around the corner to find us, hundreds of feet from the kitchen. This method worked very well until one trial when she found a second ball in the kitchen. Once she had a ball, she had zero motivation to come and find me. She lollygagged around the yard and eventually wandered up to my hiding place after about five minutes. If I ever want Kelsy to rescue me, I'd better be certain I have a rubber ball in my pocket before I fall into that abandoned well.

I am currently reading Dog Detectives Kat Albrecht. One of her recommendations is to keep a log of the dog's training and progress. Well, I am already keeping this journal (sporadically) of my dogs, so I will just add Kelsy's training to the journal. Kelsy's last training was on Friday, July 18th, 2008. She practiced for about half an hour. The weather was warm and dry, and she had no difficulty tracking scents, even when false switchbacks were thrown into the trail. Some time soon, we should find other dogs to track besides Porter and Tess.

20080614: Grandview.

Kelsy runs like a maniac until her tongue hangs down to the ground, and then she runs to the drinking fountain for dogs and flops on the ground in front of it. She drops her ball in the water and drinks several gallons of water while lying down. Usually, she makes some stranger turn the water on for her until I get there, and then I hold it on for her. People laugh at her.

More pictures.

May 4th

Today, Kelsy refused to play fetch with a tennis ball! This would be a sure sign of the apocalypse, except that I knew what she wanted. She insisted on playing with the new, hard rubber ball--her new best friend. We had to search all through the house and yard. I said, "Go find your ball." She found a half dozen tennis balls, but none of them was the perfect ball. We finally found the right ball at the bottom of the stairs outside. Once I had the right ball, she played until she collapsed. It was a perfect day to play fetch in the driveway. Cherry petals snowed down on us and we were surrounded by walls of rhododendron flowers. After sufficient play, I snapped this picture of Kelsy on the deck. Her eyes are hardly visible, darkly glinting. The terra cotta pots and dark shadows complement her pink tongue and black fur. This is my new favorite picture.

April 25th, 2008

Which dog is mine? One of these dogs is our Porter, and the other is a dog I met at Grandview Park. The dog that is not mine has a sister who looks alot like Tess. They are both almost two years old, and their parents were a golden retriever and a black lab. The one that looks like Porter also has a goofy personality. Give up? Porter's white spot is much smaller, and not visible in this picture. Also, Porter doesn't have black spots on his tongue (but Tess does.)

20080309

    Tess and Porter were sick recently, after a trip to Magnuson. I'm sure it's a breeding ground for disease, with at least a thousand dogs a day, and a few people don't clean up after their dogs. Also, the weather has been too mild--no rain storms to flush things away and no hot sun to bake things dry. They are better now. Tess has adopted a new couch, one that doesn't even stink. In the picture above, she got very cozy with a pillow, so I had to run and get my camera.

20080210. We went to Magnuson Park today, to play and to work. I went to work at the native plant nursery, and the furry monsters went to romp around the off-leash area. Kelsy got chased by lots of dogs. Since she is the avid fetcher, she catches the attention of the others. Porter met a dog who looked a lot like him. There were dozens of black dogs at the park. They played for a while, then watched me work, and then we walked down to the swim beach. Kelsy swam the most, fetching, but the other two also swam a little. We saw a yellow lab who found a mud hole to wallow in--he came out looking like a chocolate lab. Magnuson Park is Disneyland for dogs.

20080119

I had a strange dream this morning. I remember it because I woke up suddenly at the end. I dreamed about a large owl. He had a specific job, and I had to keep a cloth wrapped around him to keep him from flapping before it was time for his work. I noticed his feet, and there were bees between the talons. Then I felt bees on my feet. This made me kick, in reflex, and I kicked a dog out of bed. This was very startling to all three dogs and me. I'm not sure who I kicked, either Tess or Kelsy, but all three moved excitedly around the bed, wondering what was going on. I felt bad about kicking a dog in my sleep. I've never done that before, as far as I know. On the other hand, we have had wolf spiders around recently. In the past, 3 cats, all three dogs, and I have been bitten by them. They leave a nasty welt on me, and they made the cats very sick. So it's possible a spider was crawling across my foot, in which case it was a very good thing I kicked in my sleep. It's too bad I woke up before I took the cloth off of the owl. I wonder if he has to stay like that until I dream of him tonight.

20080114 Tessie's results came back negative, so we don't have to worry about cancer at this point. However, she did split her stitches open while running through the woods. She did this on a Sunday, of course, when our regular vet was closed. When I took her to the emergency vet, what had at first been copious bleeding had completely stopped. She was anxious and bumping me with her cone constantly as I tried to fill out the forms. I told her firmly, Sit. She instantly jumped up into one of the chairs and sat, looking at me, which got a laugh from the people in the waiting room. I said, "That's not what I meant--well, fine, then." and I sat down beside her to fill out the forms. They said she had a slight fever and an infection. They stapled her lip closed again, and they said she didn't flinch at all when they put the staples in. No way would I hold still while someone stapled my face! Her cone was battered and dirty, so they gave her a new one. She was just about to receive her freedom from the cone when she split her stitches, so now she will have to wear it another ten days. She is learning how to use the cone to defend herself from the puppy, and Kelsy is very frustrated that she can't bite Tess on the side of her face as she is accustomed to doing. Maybe twenty days of wearing the cone will break Kelsy of the habit.

20080109   Life with a cone-dog is interesting. She is getting used to it, a little, but she's still a bull in a china shop. She scratches at it with her hind foot, making a racket and looking pathetic. It disrupts her daily routine: she would always lay in wait for one of the dogs coming down the driveway and pounce on them, but she can't really do it with the cone on. Also, she kindly goes into the bushes to do her business, unlike Porter who leaves messes in the middle of the driveway, but the cone gets caught on the salmonberry and vine maples. Eating dinner is tough. She finally got the knack of placing her cone over the food bowl, tight against the ground, so she can get to the bottom of her dish. Then there's the Cone Monster. Tess has been growling at this strange, shrouded beast when she sees her reflection in the window. The window had to be covered so she could get some peace from the Cone Monster. Right now, it's sad. When she's all better, and when the test results come back saying the lump was all benign, then I will laugh at her spastic antics with the cone.

20080107 Tess just came home from surgery. She sounds so sad when she cries. She seems to be in pain, and she doesn't like the cone she has to wear. I'm relieved when she can fall asleep for a while. The doctor said the surgery went well and she should have no problems.

20071230 Poor Tess. Bee stings, seizures, wounds on her ankles, constantly picked on by the puppy, never gets as many treats as she'd like, and now what?

Is it a fat lip from roughhousing with Kelsy? Is it some sort of growth? I'll watch it a couple of days, and if it doesn't go down, I'll take her to the vet. Tess doesn't like to visit the vet.

20071226

Today we hiked Tiger Mountain in the snow. It was an 8 mile hike. The dogs are sleeping soundly now that we are home.

Here is some video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Y73IcL9cJg

20071225 The dogs had a festive Christmas. They got Greenies while we ate Christmas dinner. They also tried to help with the process of opening presents, but they weren't very helpful.

December 2nd. Yesterday we got a little snow before it turned to rain. We ran out to play in it, but it only accumulated a trace on the grass. After the snow, we received buckets of rain, making everything soggy. We went to Grandview Park, which had turned into a bog with several small streams running through it. Perfect for dogs. No humans seemed to think so, because only one other dog was there. He was a beautiful Bernese puppy, 8 months old, with one blue eye. I would have liked to take him home with us.

Kelsy is on "restricted duty" because of her possibly-fractured, possibly-dysplasic elbow. I left the tennis ball in the truck so that she would take it easy. Ha. She found a dozen tennis balls, and she kept dropping them at my feet, asking me to throw them. I felt mean for ignoring her. She galloped along easily, without even limping, so I think she's healing quickly. All the dogs splashed around in the flowing water and mud. There was nearly enough to swim in. Days like this make me glad I have an old truck with a canopy on the bed so that three sopping dogs can pile in the back and the interior stays clean and dry.

November 29th. Kelsy slipped on the stairs this morning and jammed her legs under one of the steps. She whimpered and sat still, so I knew something had to be wrong. Normally, Kelsy doesn't feel pain. She doesn't care if one of the other dogs bites her or if she runs into a tree. For her to actually show pain meant she was really hurting. I took her to the vet, and the x-ray showed either a slight fracture of the elbow or else elbow dysplasia. The x-ray showed what might be osteoarthritis, and that wouldn't show up on a brand new injury. If Kelsy lost about ten pounds, it would be better for her health overall and helpful for minimizing elbow dysplasia problems, if that's what she has. We all need to lose weight, then.

In cleaning house today, I pulled the couch out for the first time in a long time. Here's the inventory:

11 partially chewed sticks.

23 empty yogurt containers, licked clean and punctured by sharp teeth.

1 running shoe. I have no idea where its mate is.

3 socks with holes chewed in them.

3.5 tennis balls.

1 Kong and 2 other chew toys.

4 empty water bottles, partially chewed.

1 AA battery

Enough black fur to build a new puppy.

Except for the battery and the fur, all these objects fall into the category of chew toys for Kelsy. Apparently, she likes to always find new things to chew and stash her old chew toys under the couch. Her half-chewed sticks gave me enough kindling to start a good fire.

November 23rd.

Today, the dogs and I ran at Grandview Park, one of our favorite places. I’ve marked out a mile course that loops three-quarters of the way around the park and back to the lot. The first two trips were a warm up, and I threw the tennis ball for Kelsy and Tess about a hundred times. The third mile, I put the chucker and ball away, and timed us. We did a mile in less than ten minutes! Woohoo! Considering it’s the first time I’ve run in about a year, that’s not too bad. I think I could qualify for the police academy at that pace. My heart rate reached about 170 at one point. I could have pushed harder, but this is just the slow start of 13 months of work. My weight is about 235, the heaviest I’ve ever been. My goal is to weigh 185 a year from now, losing 50 pounds gradually.

I felt really good, running with my pack of wolves. They stayed right beside me most of the time, loping along with their tongues out. When they detoured for a distraction, it was no problem since we were in an off-leash park. I plan to return to Grandview regularly. This is the way to run. No jerking on the leashes to ruin my stride. No need to yell at the mutts about anything. Just smooth sailing. The park was busy but not crowded. It was a cool and sunny day, with Mt. Rainier out and shining.

November 9th. We walked in the rain tonight. I enjoy walking in a soft rain. Everyone else is inside, and I feel like I have the world to myself. Porter has slippers on his feet, due to his general fluffiness. When he walks on wet pavement, his feet go sploosh, sploosh, sploosh, sploosh. When we get home, I want Porter to sit by the fire and dry out and warm up. He only ever wants to sit near me, and I'm not wearing a wet fur coat so I don't want to sit by the fire. If I make him sit there without me, he'll think he's being punished. Oh well. Let's just hope he dries out before he hops into bed tonight. If I weren't so lazy, I suppose I could towel him off.

October 10th. Dogs eating carrots!

October 8th. Last Saturday, Porter and I drove to Ellensburg with Dad to visit his brother. I left Tess and Kelsy with Mom. She said they were very well behaved, although Kelsy helped herself to a can of cat food she found in the kitchen. It was a small can that fit in her mouth, and she just started chewing through the metal. Her sense of smell must be pretty powerful to detect cat food through metal. Mom found her with the half-chewed can in her mouth.

September 26th. Why did I wait until Kelsy was over two years old to get a video camera? I definitely should have gotten one when she was two months old. She's still a puppy, though. She stars in a new YouTube video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SELwzYomqPU

Porter is still a puppy, too, at eight years old. At the beach, he was galloping around and jumped right over Kelsy.

August 28th. On Sunday, Porter and I went to Tolt-MacDonald Park in Carnation. I left the girls at home because this was the annual meeting for the WNPS board, and I thought Porter could sit quietly whereas any other combination of dogs would be a distraction. Porter was very good. It is highly ironic that Porter is my good dog. When we got him, he was hell on wheels. He could not sit still. He would not obey any commands. He found trouble everywhere he went. He didn't bite anyone, but otherwise he was the most troublesome, rambunctious, wired, crazy dog I have ever met. I had wanted a Border Collie, but I didn't get one because I didn't think I would have the energy to gain control of such a high-energy dog. Porter was like a Border Collie crossed with an Irish Setter, with the energy of the former and the goofiness of the latter. The only reason I didn't take him back to the shelter was because I could see he meant well. He wanted to be a happy, friendly dog--he was just too happy and too friendly. (And also because I fell in love with him the first moment I saw him.)

Seven years later, he has all of that sweetness but the craziness has calmed down to a few controllable bursts every day. The whole trip to Carnation was a pleasure because of his company. On the forty-five minute drive there, he laid his head in my lap most of the way while I petted his ears and chin. He sat up just a couple of times to look out the window. Very calm and sweet. On the way home from the shelter, the day I met him, he insisted on sitting on my lap as we drove, squirming and wiggling, and it is probably pure luck that we weren't in a fatal wreck that day. Once we got to the park on Sunday, he walked along on his leash beside me, not pulling much. He smelled the smells and saw the sights. He was a little nervous about the swaying of the suspension bridge, but he trusted me.

We walked along the trail to a point where we could get down to the river bank. The Snoqualmie River ran slow and calm. While it was very wide--probably a hundred yards across--it seemed to be shallow all the way and I imagined I could wade across the river with no trouble. Porter splashed around a bit. I found a large stick and threw it upstream so that he could swim out and get it before the current took it away. When he swam out, he became fascinated by the slow current and he forgot about the stick. Other than the Duckabush River, which was shallow but very fast, Porter's swimming adventures have taken place in Puget Sound and Lake Washington, with no noticeable currents. Porter swam in place, pointed upstream, swimming lazily against the current of the lazy river. The look on his face was one of contemplation. I often say that Porter is not the brightest dog I've ever met, but he seemed to be thinking deep thoughts as he paddled against the current. I took a dozen pictures as he swam and made ripples in the reflected sky and clouds.

As I watched him swim, I fell in love with him again. I never wanted to fall in love with a dog. I'm not sure what I wanted. I just wanted a dog. I wanted him to sit, stay, and heel. I wanted him to bark at strangers if they trespassed onto private property. Porter had other ideas. He made me give myself over to him completely, the way he had completely given himself to me. In fact, I think that's when the level of craziness dropped from 9.0 on the Richter scale to a mild 3.2. All that time, he was saying, "Look at me. See me." I wasn't allowed to think of him as a dog, as a thing. He made me see him as a person. He made me fall in love with him. Once I was madly in love with this person, then he finally calmed down and became manageable. He still makes me fall in love with him every day. Just the way he is, the way he was on Sunday, calmly swimming against the current, enjoying the world from a dog's-eye view. I would like to learn to paint, and if I did, I would make a painting of the photograph below, accentuating the swirling colors in the river and the capturing the textures of black fur that the camera could not. Others might look at the finished painting and see a picture of a dog. To me, it would be a painting of a beautiful soul (even though I don't believe in actual souls beyond the metaphorical sense) a person of intelligence and grace, not just a dog.

August 25th. I discovered two things about myself tonight. First, I can run faster than I thought I could, and second, I don't love wildlife so much as I thought I did. Tessie caught a raccoon by the pond, something that rarely has a happy ending. The dogs always chase raccoons, but the raccoons usually have the good sense to get right up a tree and out of reach. For some reason, this one attacked Tess before climbing up a rhododendron. When I heard Tess yelp several times, I started running toward the pond as fast as I could in the dark. Porter was in front of me, and I caught up with him and ran past him. Tess was long gone by that point, and I guessed she ran back to the kitchen, to her safe spot in the corner. I found Kelsy, running around in circles excitedly, wondering what was going on. My flashlight beam caught the raccoon twenty feet up the rhododendron. I ran back to the kitchen, telling Porter and Kelsy, "Go find Tess." They just ran around in circles, looking at me. Tess was in her corner in the kitchen, and I checked her for bite wounds. I couldn't find any marks or blood, and she seemed fine.

For some reason, I wanted to catch the raccoon. I wasn't thinking straight. Mostly I wanted to wring its little neck for daring to hurt my Tessie, but I was also thinking I might need to catch it in case of rabies. Had I stopped to think, I would have remembered that all the dogs have had rabies shots, but I didn't stop to think. I shut the dogs in the kitchen and went after the raccoon with a flashlight and a shovel. I tried to knock him out of the rhododendron, but he just went higher. I threw some rocks at him and missed. When I started to climb the rhododendron to get him, he just jumped out the far side and scampered away faster than I could catch up to him. Having lost him, I took a moment to think and realized I probably did not need to catch him, remembering about the rabies shots. I went back to the kitchen and checked Tess again, but I couldn't find any wounds. When I calmed down a bit, I thought that she might have yelped if she bumped her ankle scrape on a branch or a stick.

I've done a lot to make the yard more inviting to wildlife. I've planted native plants and created a recirculating pond. I have left things as wild as possible. Even though it would be helpful, I have not installed a proper fence because I wanted to let wild animals move freely between the park and the yard. Tonight I discovered that my love of wildlife stops cold, right at the point that my dogs are threatened in any way. I love animals, I just love some more than others. Raccoons are going to find me much less welcoming in the future. My guess is that some frequent visitor to the park is feeding the animals, leaving out stale bread, possibly thinking they are helping wildlife. Anything you read about wildlife says never to feed wild animals, but of course this person probably hasn't read that. The odds of my finding the person are slim, and the odds of them complying with my request to not feed wildlife are probably even slimmer. My best option is to teach raccoons to stay away from humans, and I'll do this with a well-thrown rock to the hindquarters every chance I get.

August 20th. I was mean to Porter yesterday. It was his turn to ride in the truck, and I took him with me while I ran a few errands. I went through the drive through, and the tradition is that whoever is the special dog of the day gets the last bite of the sandwich. I wasn't paying attention, and I ate the last bite. As I was chewing it, I looked over at Porter, staring at me in disbelief that I hadn't shared. He had been sitting there patiently and quietly, drool streaming out of his mouth and a small puddle forming on the seat between his front feet. It must have been my imagination or my guilty conscience, but he looked heartbroken that I ate the last bite while he was being so good and patient. I felt so bad that I almost drove to another drive through, but there wasn't one nearby. I hoped he would have a short memory about it and not hold it against me. Last night he got to have several pizza crusts and he got to lick the ice cream bowls, so I hope that made up for it.

August 14th. I'm building a low retaining wall, and improving the drainage. The dogs like to help me with this project. It involves digging in the dirt, and the dogs love fresh dirt to lay on. Fresh mounds of dirt. Fresh craters, fresh trenches. Lying on a mound of fresh dirt and watching a human work is paradise, it seems. When they do get up from the dirt, they sometimes go to the far side of the wall, looking for varmints. All I can see above the wall is the tips of their tails. They are little dog-sharks, swimming back and forth on the far side of the wall. I can tell them apart by the tips of their tails. Tess's is just a bit bushier, and Kelsy's is narrower. Porter's would be distinctly fluffy, but since he's had a haircut, his tail tip looks distinctly butchered at the moment. I entertain them by toiling away while they lie in the dirt, and they entertain me by being little dog sharks behind the wall.

August 7th.

Tessie’s leash finally died today. We’ve had that leash for several years, longer than we’ve had the puppy. Tess used to “take me for a walk” with that leash. I would dangle it in front of her, and she would grab it in her mouth and lead me along our walking route. She would hold her snout down as she tugged, and she looked very businesslike. The puppy ruined this fun routine of ours. Tess could never take me for a walk any more because Kelsy would always pounce on her and take the leash away. We developed a new routine. When we started our walk every morning, I would dangle Tess’s leash, and Tess and Kelsy would both grab it, playing tug-of-war all the way up the driveway. After we got biscuits at Mom’s house, Kelsy would grab Tessie’s leash and lead us away for the second half of our walk, and Porter would always get in line to get a last biscuit at the back door and follow the parade led by Kelsy.

This morning, the poor old leash finally broke. It used to have little metal bones riveted onto the leather near the clasp. Those fell off, one by one, over the years. The wrestling matches between Kelsy and Tess had created a tear half way through the leash. This morning it broke the rest of the way. I couldn’t find the clasp. Tess walked to Mom’s house without a leash, and when we were done getting biscuits at the back door, there was no leather leash for Kelsy to grab and lead us away. I dangled Porter’s nylon leash, but Kelsy rejected it. She looked around, and sniffed around for the usual leash, but it was gone. Finally, I just had to walk away and call them after me, but our happy routine was disrupted. We’ll have to figure out a new routine.

July 25th. The joy of dirt. Nothing is funner than mud and dirt. We took another trip to Magnuson, yesterday. On the trek to the water, Kelsy found the shallowest of puddles, about a quarter of an inch deep, and laid her belly in it to cool off. (And yet, when I bought her her very own swimming pool, filled with nice clean fresh water, she wouldn't have anything to do with it.) Porter has a strange physiology with regards to drooling. At home, he never drools, unless he thinks he's going to get a bite of a sandwich or a pizza crust. He doesn't drool the whole time I'm eating, but when I get close to the last bite, he will suddenly start drooling a river, as if a faucet has been turned on in his mouth. When we go to the off-leash park, he also starts to drool, but it is strings of white foam. Eventually, he will shake his head and end up with white stripes across his snout. He never drools this white foam, except at the off-leash park. So, we went swimming and fetched the ball, and the wet dogs were walking back to the car. All of a sudden, Porter just throws himself onto the ground, upside down, and starts doing one of his patented roll-and-snorts. Two women in nice clothes are watching him, amused at his insane antics. Then he gets up and walks over to them to be petted, since they seem interested in him. They pull their hands away and step back, trying to keep away from this wet, muddy, dirt-caked mutt with stripes of drool over his snout. I called him over to me before he rubbed against the clothing of the ladies. All three dogs were happily damp and caked with dirt as they hopped back into the truck. Today, Porter is perfectly clean, even though I didn't give him a bath or hose him down. He is a magical dirt-shedding dog. Of course, he shed all that dirt throughout the house, but at least he's clean.

Tessie is having a bit of a rough patch. She threw up a couple of times last week. She has started another "lick granuloma" on her ankle. Yesterday and today she is sneezing alot, and seems to have a cold.

July 19th. Porter is covered in burrs from the stickyweed. He went out for about one minute last night and came back plastered with seeds. They are about the size of BBs. His ears especially gathered them. The girls went the same places Porter did, but their otter-type fur doesn't collect them. I've been picking them out all morning. I've removed about a hundred, and there are about a hundred left. Of course, once I get the last seed out, he'll go gather hundreds more.

I bought some canned pumpkin for the dogs, and they love it. Some nights they'll get green beans on their kibble, and other nights they'll get pumpkin.

July 6th. I gave Porter a haircut and a bath today. He doesn't know what to think of it. He's stoned on his medications, for one thing. He just sits there staring into space, not sleeping, not doing anything. It was quite a project to give him a haircut. I couldn't find the electric clippers, so I just used some scissors. He remained pretty calm the whole time, although he was nervous about being on the table. When I finished cutting off the excess fur, I was left with a mound of clippings that looked like an average-size black cat. Then I took him to the tub and gave him a shower, using people shampoo. He was very good about it. I think he looks great, even though I didn't do an artful job with the shears. He looks younger, like a puppy again. I hope he enjoys being a short-haired dog in the summer time. I'm sure it will all grow back by fall.

July 5th. Porter developed a hot spot for the Fourth of July. Although plenty of people set off illegal fireworks, none of them were immediate neighbors, so I thought it was going to be a relatively peaceful night. Porter began scratching and licking more than normal, early in the day, and in the afternoon it occurred to me to see if he had some problems more serious than fleas. It turned out that he didn't have any fleas (none of the animals do, for some strange reason) but he had a wound on the front of his neck. I took his collar off because it was rubbing right on the wound. I saw a white blister in the middle of the swollen red area, and the skin felt hard underneath. It looked similar to a nasty spider bite I had gotten years ago, and I guessed that was what it was. Throughout the evening, it seemed to bother him worse. I had him sleep right next to me in the bed so I could keep an eye on him, somewhat. By three in the morning, he hadn't fallen asleep, so I couldn't sleep either. His breathing sounded labored, and he coughed a few times. I had the horrible idea that this wound on the front of his neck was going to make his throat swell closed during the night. I had planned to take him to the vet in the morning, but the horrors of my imagination drove me to drive to the emergency vet at 3 AM.

The doctor said it was a hot spot. Porter had gotten one behind his ear, where his fur is often matted, several summers ago. It could have been caused by a spider bite, but sometimes they happen on their own, due to warm weather, a long-haired dog's thick undercoat, and dirt and bacteria being trapped next to the skin. Porter has never bitten anyone, since I've known him, but he seemed like he might take a nip out of someone when we touched the spot on his neck. I held his snout up while the doctor shaved the area, leaving a pile of fur like a black kitten on the linoleum. Porter received shots of steroids and antihistamines after the doctor cleaned the wound. Porter also has a fatty cyst at the base of his neck. Later in the morning, we visited our usual vet, and the microscope revealed the cyst was nothing to worry about. I didn't get much sleep last night, but the sky is nice at 4:30 on a summer morning. He has several bottles of pills to take, so I bought some American cheese slices to wrap the pills. He is acting stoned, now. He will just sit there, not sleeping, breathing heavily, staring at nothing. But he's also not scratching and licking his wound, so the drugs are helping in that respect, at least.

All 3 dogs have lost weight. Porter: 88, Tess: 83, and Kelsy:83.

July 1st. When I can't take all three dogs in the truck, they take turns being the special dog of the day. Today was Tessie's turn. We went to Molbak's to get some sedum and strawberries for the new rock wall. She likes to rest her right elbow on the arm rest and sit up like a little person. She also demands that I rub her chest frequently, grabbing my arm if I stop.

On the way back, we stopped at Luther Burbank Park and she swam in Lake Washington. I brought the tennis ball. She chased it on land, but the first time I threw it in the water, she dove into the lake and just enjoyed the cool water, forgetting to fetch. I think her fetching skills have gotten rusty since Kelsy does all the fetching these days. I found another stray tennis ball, and we worked on her fetching reliability. She got the hang of it again. She was nice and damp for the rest of the ride home, keeping her cool on a hot day.

June 24th. The puppy is back. She had just been taking a break from puppyhood, apparently. Yesterday morning, she woke me up by licking my ear. I was vaguely aware of her presence, and then: fwip! This long tongue whipped out of her and into my ear as fast as lightning. I covered my ear with my hand and tried to go back to sleep. She leaped over to the other side of the bed in one effortless jump, and started to work on the front of my face. I grabbed her snout to hold her away, but after a bit of struggling she had me fully awake, so I just got up.

Yesterday afternoon, when we were next door, she launch into one of her fits of wild zooming, this time in my parents' living room. Fortunately, she didn't break anything and they thought it was funny. She charged around the couch and around the coffee table and in and out the front door. She zoomed under Tess, whose rear half got swept away as if on a tidal wave. She made about ten laps in and out of the house and around the couch, stopping and accelerating, ears flapping, tongue out, with a crazed look in her eyes. I'm not sure if her expression said, "I'm running and I don't know why," or, "Look at me! Life is pure joy!"

This morning, she wanted to play. After I had had breakfast, she brought me a toy and wanted to play fetch in the house. We did, for a bit, until Porter got annoyed with us, and then we went outside. I threw the tennis ball for her probably fifty times. She ran until exhaustion, stopping a few times to get a drink from the children's swimming pool I got for the dogs. After wearing herself out, she watched me work for a while as I cleared the area for the new lawn. Then we came in for lunch. After lunch, and after she had licked my ice cream bowl, after she had been lying calmly for at least a half an hour, she came upstairs panting heavily even though she was sitting still. She looked hot, but it was a cool day, and the other dogs weren't panting. I took her outside, and she peed for about five minutes. She must have drank too much water. But why did the need to urinate make her pant like that?

I often feel she is trying to convey an idea to me. She seems to have a specific idea in mind, and we play a game of interspecies charades until I guess the answer. Sometimes it is obvious what she is saying, such as Let's go for a walk, Feed me, or Let's play. Other times, I can see she's thinking of a particular thing, and I just have to keep guessing until I hit upon the answer.

A couple of days ago, I had worried that life with dogs was going to become boring. It looks like I won't need to worry about that for a while.

June 22nd. Could this be the end of an era? Usually in the mornings, I am awakened by some animal kicking me in the head. Then, as I'm trying to put on my socks and shoes, one animal or another comes between me and my feet. It almost always results in Kelsy and Tess engaging in a "Sock Battle," in which they wrestle over a sock, growling and snarling, while the sock becomes stretched and full of holes.

This morning, I woke up and all the dogs were sound asleep. I went to put my shoes on and had no trouble. After checking the internet, I was finally ready to go out for the first walk of the day. I hadn't heard a peep out of Kelsy. I went downstairs and saw her motionless on the couch. For a fraction of a second, I worried that she had eaten something toxic off the ground and had died during the night. She was just sound asleep. I gently rubbed her belly and she gradually woke up and stretched. It took all her strength to roll of the couch and stumble outside.

When they would pester me in the mornings, I would often complain about it, but I will miss Kelsy's constant pestering if she is truly growing out of that phase. Maybe she was just tired from a hard day's work playing at the dog park. I don't want her to grow up too fast.

May 30th. When my father was fourteen, on a farm in McMinville, Oregon, in 1950, he decided he wanted a crow for a pet, and he grabbed a baby crow from a nest. The crow, named Dickie, grew up to be an intelligent and mischevious bird. He could sort of say my father's name, "Charles," although he had trouble pronouncing the Ch. He would drop a walnut on the ridge of the roof and fly around and catch it as it rolled off the eaves. He would intentionally spill the cats' milk and eat their dinner. He would untie people's shoe laces and fly off. Dad used to like to climb a tree in the orchard and eat an apple, and he would share the apple with Dickie. When Dad was 16, they moved to Walla Walla, and Dickie disappeared. Dad's grandmother said she thought she saw Dickie back in McMinville, but this was never verified. Somewhere there is a picture of Dad with his crow. I'll try to find it.

May 29th. Kelsy has opinions about things. The other dogs do, too, but they often are too lazy to get up and express those opinions. I've often observed Porter "Sitting and thinking," possibly about the deep mysteries of the universe or possibly fantasizing about green beans. Kelsy frequently wears an expression of conflicting emotions. She wants to do everything, it's just so hard to decide which one to do first. After seeing all the fantastic tricks that Skidboot can do, I became inspired to teach Kelsy some new tricks. We went outside, leaving the older dogs to nap, and played with a tennis ball to warm up. I ran her through her known commands: sit, stay, lie down, come. After some good practice with those, I started to try the roll over command. At first, I just waved my hand in a circular motion, which was pretty stupid. Kelsy thought so, too, judging by her expression. Then I coaxed her into the motion by leading her with the ball just out of reach. She objected, "But I can just reach out and bite the ball now. Is it really necessary to do all those extra steps?" I had to physically roll her a few times, and I gave her abundant praise for each successful approximation. She got to the point where she could do it several times in a row, hardly even making me repeat the command.

When we took our show on the road, she forgot everything she knew. I tried to show Mom Kelsy's new trick, and she made a fool out of me. Part of the problem was the other dogs getting in the way and distracting her. I put them in the kitchen, behind the door, and worked with Kelsy on the patio by herself. Still, she kept objecting to the procedure. She crawled forward, rolled on her side, and did all kinds of cute things except the thing I wanted. Porter, in the kitchen, heard me continually asking for something and not getting it, so he started to do his one trick, which is to speak. I had to tell him to knock it off. Finally, after twenty tries, Kelsy did a complete rollover with just a little nudge from me. I gave her heaps of praise, even though she did it wrong, and gave her the toy I'd been withholding from her. When she's happy, she has no trouble expressing that opinion. A couple of days later, we were able to successfully demonstrate a rollover without too much repetition or helping nudges.

A couple of nights ago, Kelsy started barking at two in the morning. It wasn't an alarm bark, and if there were trouble, Tess would be barking before Kelsy. I would have just ignored it, but if she was trying to say she needed to go outside, I didn't want to have a mess to clean up in the morning. (None of the dogs ever makes a mess in the house, but she could have contracted some ailment or eaten something she shouldn't have.) After several minutes, I roused myself enough to stumble downstairs and see what the trouble was. It turned out that her toy, a tennis ball, had rolled across the couch and bumped up against Tess. Kelsy didn't like Tess touching her ball. She decided to tell Tess, and everyone else, all about it. Thanks a bunch, Kelsy. I put the tennis ball away where it wouldn't cause any more trouble that night.

May 23rd. Porter, Tess, Kelsy and I went to see Virginia today. She had fallen at the bookstore, and the doctor persuaded her to use a walker for a time. She wanted me to pot some geraniums and do a few other yard chores that required a little more mobility than she has right now. When I showed up, I put Porter on a leash and took him up to the door for Virginia to visit with. She really seemed to enjoy seeing him and petting him. I'll bet she would like to have a dog if she were physically up to the challenge. I know she misses her cat, Thomas. After a few minutes, I put Porter back in the truck, and all three dogs slept while I worked, waking up occasionally to bark at a passing dog.

This evening, Kelsy and I walked up to the gate to try to fix it. She caught a raccoon in the process of vandalizing my plants, and she chased it up a maple tree. Someone has been vandalizing the plants growing in the middle strip of the gravel driveway. I had planted strawberries, wanting them to make a continuous carpet from the gate to the house. One afternoon, I found that someone had gone along and pulled out several of the strawberry plants, leaving their roots exposed. I figured it was a raccoon looking for grubs or worms, but I didn't catch anyone that day. This evening, the dirt was still fresh from where the critter had been digging. Kelsy chased it up the tree and barked. I went over and confirmed that it was a raccoon, staring down from thirty feet up, unapologetic. I've seen pictures of Coonhounds that look very similar to Kelsy, and I think she's a Coonhound/Lab mix.

May 16th. I am currently reading The Emotional Lives of Animals, an excellent book. It has caused me to pay even closer attention to my dogs. I pay pretty close attention to them anyway. Even when I'm trying to ignore them, when I'm focusing on something else, they tend to remain in the periphery of my awareness. This evening, after dinner, I started to get up, and there was Porter, right in my face. I greeted him and petted him, of course. I petted his head, and he put his left paw up to signal that I should rub his chest. As I started to rub his chest, I asked him, "Is this what you want?" His big eyes glanced over at the plate, which still had a few slices of pizza on it. It was just a brief glance, but it spoke to me so eloquently and clearly, as though he had understood my question. He said, "I really like having my chest rubbed, but if you were to, maybe, give me a slice of that pizza, I wouldn't say no." If I weren't paying attention, I could easily have overlooked it. When you listen to dogs, they have a lot to say. Well, maybe they don't say much besides, Feed me, rub my chest, and take me for a walk, but outside of those obvious desires, they do communicate other subtle things.

This afternoon, when I came home and the dogs were out in the yard, Tess was sitting in the back of the truck, and she didn't seem overly glad to see me. Usually, she is very enthusiastic, but this time, she just sat there, looking blankly, and she seemed to twitch a couple of times. After a few moments, she warmed up and seemed like her usual self. It made me wonder if she had had another seizure. I've never seen her have one besides the one when I took her to the vet right away (January 8th, 2007). It's certainly possible that she's had more than the one seizure, but while I was sleeping or away. In cases such as this, a dog's communication skills could use some improvement. I asked her, "Did you have a seizure while I was gone?" If she answered me, it wasn't an answer I could understand.

May 14th. Kelsy did the funniest thing last night. On Sundays, we go to my parents' house for dinner. The dogs stay outside on the deck, and then come in after dinner. Kelsy has a favorite toy, made of rubber and shaped like an Apollo space capsule. She brings it to me, and to others, so we can toss it gently for her and she can play a tame game of fetch in the house. Kelsy's ears were bothering her--I think she might have had swimmer's ear from swimming in Lake Washington on Saturday evening--and she would occasionally stop her play to scratch at her ear. On one of these occasions, she scratched while holding the rubber toy in her mouth, and she made a groan of frustration. The rubber toy amplified and modified the groan to make her sound like a horror movie creature. Everyone burst out laughing.

May 2nd. Duck gets a new bed.

Duck is a professional napper, so he really needed a new bed. He had been using the one that was originally a gift for Wolfgang. After Wolfgang died, Gizmo used it for over a year. After Gizmo died, at the age of eighteen, Duck didn't really use the old cat bed. He just slept on the couch. He was probably too hot because of hyperthyroidism. Duck used to weigh 24 pounds, but his weight dropped down to about ten pounds before the medication stabilized him. He received the radioactive iodine treatment, and now he's doing much better, back up to nearly twelve pounds. I think he began to get cold after he no longer had hyperthyroidism, and he started sleeping in the cat bed handed down from Wolfgang and Gizmo. He didn't really fit. Even though he had dropped down to twelve pounds, he still has a large frame. He really had to pack himself into that smaller bed. I recently got him this new bed, which might be for a small dog, and it immediately became his new favorite sleeping place.

But what is a cat doing in a dog journal? Duck is the boss of all the dogs. He often makes them get out of the way when he walks from the bed to the food bowl. A couple of times, when a sleeping dog has been in his way, he has just walked right over the top of Porter. Why do the dogs allow this eighteen-year-old bony cat to be their boss? Mostly because I told them so. I've let them know--especially Kelsy--that they aren't supposed to horse around when the boss cat is in the area. I think they also respect Duck because he is a champion sleeper. The dogs sleep hard, often sleeping as much as twenty hours a day, but they can't keep up with Duck, who logs twenty-three hours without batting an eye. Yes, Duck is an old pro at sleeping, in a different league than the dogs. The only ones who can out-sleep Duck are Gizmo and Wolfgang, who sleep twenty-four hours a day in quiet little corners of the garden.

April 27th. Dogs taking turns. Can they count? Do they know whose turn it is? When they are getting biscuits, they seem to know, "Porter, Tess, Kelsy. Porter, Tess, Kelsy." Although sometimes it goes, "Porter, Kelsy, Tess, Kelsy, Porter, Kelsy...." When it comes to taking solo rides in the truck--when the back is full of stuff and unavailable to the whole pack--I try to be fair with them, but I'm not sure if they understand that I'm being fair. Mostly, they all want to be included all the time. Porter went first, today, to get a load of gravel. He likes being the only dog, as they all do. Instead of wrestling around with the other dogs in the back, he gets to lie down and put his head in my lap. And he gets petted and gets my full attention. Kelsy went second. She doesn't necessarily relax, when up front, but she is happy and interested. Before it was time for Tessie's turn, she cried a little, as if she were aware that the others had gotten turns and she hadn't. When I put Porter and Kelsy in the kitchen, Tess trotted toward the truck in a decidedly happy manner. I thought, if dogs were truly ethical, they would say, "Sure, I'd like to go for a ride with you, but what about the other two? Can't they come too?" I don't get the impression they think along those lines. It's more like they do a happy little dance while thinking, "Ha ha. I'm going for a ride while those suckers are stuck at home." So, they seem to understand the concept of taking turns when it's not their turns, but when it is a dog's turn, she'll still wish it was her turn every time.

April 14th. Another trip to the nursery, and another trip to the Magnuson swim beach. I took the good camera and took some shots including the sideways willow. The pictures are in the third section of the Magnuson gallery. On the way back, we drove past the University, and all three dogs barked at the Washington Husky, a large bronze statue at the main entrance. They barked, and the husky just stared at them intently as we waited for the light to change, so they barked at the husky more. Kelsy barked the most.

April 11th. We may have reached a milestone, today. I went for a short walk up and down the driveway. Porter couldn't be bothered to get off the floor, which isn't unusual. Tess stayed by the kitchen, as usual. Kelsy would normally come with me, but she just sat there by the kitchen door with Tess and waited for me to return. She's not quite two years old. I don't think I'm ready for her to be a grown-up dog. Maybe it's just a temporary thing. She did have a big adventure yesterday. Or maybe she's sick. It's very sad that a person with three dogs has to go for a walk on his own. Of course, if I had jangled the leashes, indicating a real walk, beyond the gate, I would have had plenty of volunteers. Still, it would be nice if the lazy varmints could show a little more devotion.

April 10th. I had a meeting at Magnuson, so the dogs and I made another visit to the off-leash area. We've been there at least a dozen times, and I never noticed this tree before. It's right there at the dogs' swim beach. To be fair to myself, there is usually so much excitement at the swim beach that I shouldn't be expected to notice a charging rhinoceros. I have to keep one eye on Porter to make sure he doesn't pick a fight with a bigger dog, one eye on Kelsy to make sure she doesn't get a cramp and go underwater, a third eye on Tessie to make sure she's having fun and not being neglected, and a bunch of other eyes on all the other wonderful dogs having fun there. The only reason I noticed the tree this time was that it wasn't very crowded--only 6 to 10 dogs--and a large rainbow drew my attention that direction. This amazing willow tipped over at least a couple of seasons ago, but a few of the roots still have a good hold, and it seems quite healthy and happy. This picture was with the camera-phone, but I'll get a better picture on a future visit.

A large portion of the park was fenced off for landscape work. I threw the ball for Kelsy, and she didn't catch it before it rolled under the cyclone fence surrounding the construction area. She looked frantically for a way to get in. I could see other people had lost their tennis balls inside the fence. I went over the bridge, hopped a smaller fence, walked through a swampy area, hopped another fence, and walked through the muddy construction area to get Kelsy's ball, which she was quite happy to have back. Then back through the mud over the one fence, through the swamp, over the other fence. I threw the ball more carefully after that.

I took Duck to the vet today for a post-radioactive-iodine checkup. He had gained another pound, so he's up to 11.5. While we were there, I weighed the dogs. Porter = 91.7, Tess = 87.5, Kelsy = 85.5. This is a big increase for Kelsy, although she still doesn't look fat at all. I asked the vet about feeding the dogs green beans and carrots, and she said that was fine. She feeds the same things to her dogs. One of her dogs is especially fond of green beans, like Porter is, and her dog hordes the beans in her bed at night. The vet will often find a cache of green beans in the dog's bedding. I'm glad Porter just eats his.

April 6th. We used to get Greenies, which Porter loved, until I read reports that some dogs had died from eating them. Then our vet said that the new Greenies were safe for dogs, so Porter was happy to have Greenies again. Still, they're awfully expensive, over a buck a bone, so I don't get them very often. Since they like green beans so much, I decided to try carrots. I gave them all a few baby carrots, to make sure they didn't have any problems. Now I'm giving them big carrots, and they all seem pretty happy about it. A big carrot is like a bone for them. They each settle into a spot and methodically work on chewing down their carrots. Porter is especially deft at holding the carrot between his paws and chewing on the end. Carrots are a lot cheaper than Greenies. I imagine they must be good for their teeth.

April 4th. The other night, Porter and Kelsy demonstrated the difference between a young dog and an older dog. Tess decided to stay on the couch when I called the dogs to bed. Porter looked up at me from the floor, saying, I'd like to sleep on the bed, but it seems like a lot of work to get up off the floor. I coaxed him up by patting a spot on the bed. He hoisted himself to his feet, lurched up on the bed, turned around halfway, flopped down with his spine against my leg, let out a huge sigh, and slowly drifted off to sleep. I could hear Kelsy get off the couch downstairs, where she had been napping beside Tessie. She came trotting up the stairs to the foot of the bed. She looked around to assess the situation with Porter, and then she made a flying leap onto the bed with all four feet. She dove at me and licked at my face. I started to read my book, alternating hands holding it while I petted Porter for a little bit and then Kelsy. Kelsy looked at me as though she had some urgent thought in mind. I rubbed her chest, and if I stopped, she would nudge me with her paw to get me started again. From the look on her face, she was mentally recounting the events of her busy day, chasing Tess, walking next door for biscuits, riding in the truck, smelling the ground where the raccoons and coyotes had passed in the night. She looked like, if she were a human child, she would have jabbered on and on about all of the exciting details of her day. As she moved her eyes back and forth, replaying the movie of her life, and as she occasionally prompted me with her paw to keep petting, I could see sleep wash over her. It had only been a couple of minutes since she came flying into the bed, but the good chemicals were already seeping into her brain. Her eyes began to narrow, her head lowered, and her paw nudged softly, absently. Finally, her head slowly sank to the comforter, and she was asleep. She hadn't even had time to roll on her side, and she was sound asleep about thirty degrees from vertical, her head resting on the tip of her nose. I would like to have taken a picture of her that way. She's still a puppy.

March 31st. Porter loves green beans! The woman at Mud Bay, Spree's mom, suggested I sprinkle a few on their kibble to help the dogs lose weight. I tried about ten beans in each bowl, as an experiment. Usually, Tess finishes her dinner in half the time that Porter takes, as if it were a race. Last night, Porter wolfed down his green bean surprise faster than Tessie. Meanwhile, Kelsy carefully picked around her green beans while the other two sat and watched. I had sprinkled them over the top of her kibble, and when Kelsy was done, the beans lay at the bottom of the bowl with the other food carefully removed. Then Porter anxiously gobbled up Kelsy's leftover beans. We went for a walk up and down the driveway, and when we got back to the kitchen, Porter looked up at me expectantly, asking, "May I please have some more beans?" I hand fed him a few more out of the bag. A can only cost 58 cents. I spent ten bucks on a bag of treats at the doggie store, and Porter likes the beans better. It was nice of the Mud Bay manager to tell me this secret, even though it will mean I spend less money on treats in her store.

March 30th, 2007. Porter and I went to the Mud Bay store to get a bag of dog food, and the manager said that Porter looked similar to a Flat-coat retriever, but more like a mix between a Labrador and a Golden. For comparison, she brought out her own pup, Spree, a 20-month-old Flat-coat pedigreed purebred. Porter was characteristically snarly at the initial introduction, but then they were friendly, and I took a picture with my phone. Spree's mom said that Porter has more of a stop on his snout than a purebred would. Since Porter came from the animal shelter, I have no way of knowing what he really is. I hope he is a Labrador/Golden mix, as this would probably make him less likely to develop cancer.

March 28th, 2007. Every morning, Kelsy and Tess have a sock battle. First, the morning begins with me disturbing a pile of sleeping dogs. I give them time to stretch and stir before kicking them out of bed. While I'm putting on my shoes and socks to take them for their first walk, Kelsy and Tess start playing tug of war with a sock. It involves a lot of growling and head snapping. Tess seems to have an advantage with a shorter, stouter neck, but Kelsy more than makes up for this with her excess of energy. If either of them wins by getting the sock away, then she'll bring it right back for another round. Sometimes, they accidentally bump into Porter, and he has to bark at them.   He has forgotten that he used to be an insane puppy himself. Many of my socks are full of holes.

March 21st, 2007. We went to Grandview Park today, an off-leash dog park in Kent. This park is almost as much fun as Magnuson, from a dog's perspective. Kelsy fetched until she collapsed, rested while I looked at plants and flowers, and then fetched a bunch more. Porter did his famous 'roll and snort' which never fails to entertain people. He flips over onto his back and writhes in the dust while snorting and growling, looking insane. We found trilliums and currant blooming in the woods at the north end of the park. Afterward, we went to Rosso nursery in Georgetown to get some salal. While we were there, we stopped to snap a picture at the Hat & Boots. The Hat is being remodeled, but the Boots looked good, except for the graffiti.

March 19th, 2007. Kelsy is missing a tooth. It's a small one, in front, on the bottom. It's not surprising, the way she crashes around, but she never gave any indication that she was hurt. The space is completely healed over, so it must have happened a while ago. I suspect she must not feel pain, very much. She often bites the other dogs until they cry, as if she doesn't expect them to be hurt, or she doesn't care. The other night, as I was rolling over in bed, she did let out a yip to let me know that my elbow was on her paw, so she did feel something then. But she will swim in Puget Sound without hesitation during freezing weather, and she'll crash into solid objects at ninety miles an hour, so pain must not matter to her as much as having fun. Her teeth are perfect, straight, white, and clean, except one is missing.

March 17th, 2007. I went to the WNPS nursery today to help pot bare root plants. I took the monsters with me, and of course they go nuts when we get within a mile of Magnuson Park. As soon as we turned off I-5, Kelsy started yipping excitedly. I wonder what they smell that tells them we are getting close. Before I could go help at the nursery, I had to take them to the Magnuson off-leash area. Since it was Saturday, the dog park was crowded, with people waiting in line just for a place to park. I took the tennis ball chucker. Kelsy and Tess chased the tennis ball while Porter checked out all the other dogs. He didn't growl or bark at anyone this time, for a change. The park had areas of thick mud, and the yellow tennis ball was black after two minutes. We slowly made our way to the beach, about a half mile from the parking lot. Kelsy's ball got swiped by other fetchers a couple of times, but they gave it back eventually. On one bounce, the ball went over the fence topped with barbed wire. I could see Kelsy standing up against the fence, sniffing a spot four feet off the ground. The ball caught on some blackberries, and I was able to reach over with the chucker and grab it, carefully, only receiving a few scratches from the thorns and barbed wire.

    At the water, they all went charging in, and I threw the ball for Kelsy. She made many good fetches, swimming way out into the water. Other people were throwing balls, and she would sometimes get confused over which one was hers. When she went to the wrong ball, she would grab it in her mouth, but let it go after a bit. Then she swam around until she found her ball. I guess she could identify her ball by scent, even after soaking in Lake Washington. When I threw it especially far, she got distracted by another ball and didn't watch where her ball went. Of course, it doesn't do any good to point. She swam around in circles, looking for her ball, and I had to call her in to me so we could head back to the truck and I could go work at the nursery. When we found other balls along the way (there must be ten thousand tennis balls in the brambles near the park) she rejected them all because they weren't her ball. Eventually she decided that a new ball could be hers, and she fetched it several dozen more times until she became completely exhausted.

    At the nursery, I parked the truck with the canopy opening facing the beds. I thought they would all just go to sleep after so much running around and playing and smelling stuff. Instead, they stayed up at the tail gate and barked at people for about an hour. They got to meet many of the other volunteers. Eventually, after an hour and a half, or so, they did go to sleep. On the drive home, driving down 65th to I-5, they didn't bother to bark at the dogs they saw on the sidewalks, so I know they must have been tired. Now, they are sound asleep.

Tess’s entries on Dogster.

weight

February 7th 2007 12:30 pm
Tess weighed 86.4 pounds today on the vet's scale.

The Black Panther Attacks!

February 3rd 2007 12:41 pm
Recently, Tess has been crouching down in the driveway in preparation for attacking Porter or Kelsy. She crouches down like a panther, ready to spring. The other dogs will see her, and they don't want to walk into the trap. She kept Porter trapped at the top of the driveway for several minutes a few days ago, and then she kept Kelsy trapped up there yesterday. But she can outwait them, and they eventually make the charge. She springs upon the charging dog, with lots of bare teeth and snarling. (No one gets hurt, of course.) I love to watch her play this game. In most of the games she plays with the other dogs, she will let them win. It's nice to see her take charge of the play, even for a little while.

Snow play.

January 15th 2007 5:18 pm
I'm tired of the snow and ice already. It's hard to walk or drive anywhere since thawing and freezing have turned every road or path into a sheet of ice. For dogs, it's no problem, and they all think snow is the most fun ever. Tess and Kelsy fetched the tennis ball in the driveway today. I'd throw it into a snow bank, and they would come out with white faces. Tess has learned to cheat, since she can't outrun Kelsy, by getting a head start. Tess actually retrieved the ball more times than Kelsy did. She also wouldn't give the ball to me as readily. Tessie may be pure sweetness most of the time, but she doesn't play fetch as well as Kelsy does.

Porter wouldn't play at all. He only wanted to chew on chunks of ice. I went to the eaves of the house and snapped off some icicles for him, and he was content to chew on them while the girls played fetch. When I got tired of throwing the ball, I snapped off enough icicles for all three dogs, and they came into the kitchen to settle down with their ice treats. Seeing how happy they were with icicles, I should make ice treats for them in the freezer. All the dogs would be perfectly happy if we entered a new ice age and it remained snowy and icy forever. I like some snow, too, but this sheet of ice that covers everything is making it hard to get basic things done.

Tess scares me.

January 8th 2007 9:06 pm
Tess had a couple of seizures on Sunday afternoon. During the first one, I wasn't sure if it was really a seizure or she just felt guilty about something she did. She was walking in small circles with her head low, looking everywhere but at me. I called her outside into the light to get a better look at her, and she seemed fine. Then I went to the kitchen for two minutes and came back, and Tess was definitely having a seizure. She seemed unable to see, and she was losing her balance. She kept trying to place her left hind foot up on some object that wasn't there. I scooped her up and ran to the truck with her, putting her up in the cab. I put the other dogs in the back, and I called the emergency vet while driving there. They already had her info from the bee sting incident and the grapes incident. On the drive there, she stopped the tremors, but she was drooling heavily, and she never drools. I carried her into the vet's waiting area, and set her down, and she was pretty much fine, just a little groggy and nervous, but she's always nervous at the vet. They kept her for observation for ten hours, and she never had another seizure. The doctor said she may never have another seizure or this could be the onset of epilepsy. A website I checked out says that seizures are not uncommon in dogs, and that they are usually not dangerous. The vet did a bunch of blood work and urinalysis, but everything looked normal. She slept right next to me Sunday night, and this morning she played fetch with Kelsy and me, and she seems perfectly fine. I want to admonish her for scaring me to death, but I can't.

Ferociously Sweet

January 5th 2007 10:26 pm
The thing to know about Tessie is that she is pure sweetness. She has a tender manner. Even though she was here first, by a good four years, she almost always lets the puppy win their play battles. Kelsy often nips too hard and plays too rough, but Tess is a good sport and often initiates another round of play when she could just let sleeping dogs lie. When I am face to face with Tess, she often looks to the side in a shy, sweet manner. She is the sweetest soul you could possibly meet.

Except when you are not a member of her pack. One day when we walked over to my Mom's house, she was wearing her gardening hat. Tess didn't recognize her for a moment and went lunging toward her in a ferocious spasm of barking and snarling. My mom spoke, and Tessie instantly became a gentle puppy again, whining an apology for her mistaken snarling. Mom commented on how fierce she looked for that instant. It was something I never got to see until tonight.

I went to do some errands, and took Tess with me. I dropped her off at Mom's house and came back an hour later. Tess didn't hear us coming until we were right at the front door. I looked in the window to see her leaping into action, all four feet off the floor. Her fangs were bared, she snarled and barked, and her hackles stood up as she charged at the door. As soon as she knew it was me, she was sweet little Tess again. I'm glad she's on my side.

Help me down again.

January 1st 2007 3:38 pm
Tessie has hurt her foot from time to time, which started her on the habit of asking me to lift her down from the tailgate of the truck. (She's also a little overweight, at 95 pounds, which might make it uncomfortable for her.) It started with her hesitating to jump down one day, so I helped her without her having to ask. One forearm under her belly and the other hooked between her front legs along her chest seems to work best. Dogs are front-heavy and not necessarily balanced the way they might seem. She became accustomed to being carried down. The puppy often punishes her for this special treatment, waiting on the ground to nip at her when I set her down. Now, after all of her owies have healed, she still often asks to be helped down. Sometimes I accommodate her, but I often tell her to just jump down.

Last night, she asked to be helped down, but I told her to jump down since my hands were full. She stood there, insisting, so I put my stuff down and helped her down. She hopped right back up on the tailgate and asked me to do it again. This made me laugh, but I told her she was on her own for the second trip down.

Sore paw

November 23rd 2006 9:50 am
Tess has a "lick granuloma" on her left front ankle, again. She kept licking and nibbling at this spot until she made it into a sore. I took her to the vet last week and she is now on antibiotics. If it doesn't start to heal itself, I'll have to put the cone on her. This is at least the fifth time this has happened with her.

Bugling

September 6th 2006 10:21 pm
Tessie sometimes bugles like an elk. She used to do it all the time, nearly every morning, but not so much lately. It's a combination of a yawn and a howl, I think. She does it when she's stretching. I would like to get a recording of it someday. When she made her funny noise this morning, I realized that she hasn't been doing it as much as she used to.

Porter makes a "Wookie" noise when he's being pestered. He used to do it all the time when Tess was a puppy and pestered him. Now he does it only occasionally, when Kelsy pesters him. I need to get a recording of that, too.

Injured paw

September 2nd 2006 1:48 pm
Tess has hurt her foot again. I imagine it was a small puncture in the pad that became abscessed, and then an area the size of a dime blew out. She has been limping for several days, but it seems better today. She has had injuries to her foot pads at least twice before. When I have taken her to the vet for this type of thing, they put a booty on her foot and she chews it off as soon as she gets home. This time, I didn't bother taking her to the vet, yet, hoping it will just get better on its own.

Tessie doesn't lead a hard life, exactly. She's sleeping on the couch right now. But she does seem to get an unfair amount of abuse and rough treatment. When it was just Porter and Tess, before the puppy came along, Tess seemed to lose all the battles, although she didn't mind. Now that Porter is older and the puppy is here, Tess still loses all the battles with the new dog. She could win, but she has a slightly submissive personality, and Kelsy takes advantage. I have tried to intercede on Tessie's behalf, but if I ever protect her from a puppy attack, the rotten little puppy just makes sure to attack her harder later. Now, I no longer break it up, but I try to put something in between them, like a stick or a toy or a sock, so the object gets the punishment and not Tess. It seems to work somewhat. I'm sure Tess will survive until the puppy outgrows her hyper-playful stage. It just seems unfair that she's always on the bottom of the totem pole.

Porter’s entries on Dogster.

weight

February 7th 2007 12:28 pm
Porter weighed 91.5 pounds on the vet's scale today.

Does Porter need glasses?

February 4th 2007 5:21 pm
He went to get a drink out of the bucket this morning, and he started flicking his tongue about three inches above the surface of the water, gradually lowering his snout until he found the water. Last week, he tripped over one of the steps, and I seem to remember him tripping on a stick. I've never heard of a dog tripping before. I also don't recall seeing an eye chart at the vet's office, so if he is near-sighted, all I could really do about it is fit him with a helmet.

It just occurred to me that this might be the reason he doesn't want to catch biscuits. Tess and Kelsy will catch biscuits or tennis balls all day long, but if you throw a biscuit to Porter, he scrunches his eyes shut and lets it bounce off his head. I always thought he was just a goof, but maybe he has a good reason for not catching biscuits.

Jogging Doggy

January 9th 2007 7:22 pm
Porter and I ran around the lake today. A young girl, around seven, was very fascinated by this, and she said, "Look, Mom, he has a jogging doggy." He was indeed a very nice jogging doggy today. He didn't pull, even when a squirrel darted across in front of us. When he was younger, he pulled all the time, much like Kelsy does now. Since he's a middle-aged dog of seven, he's much more manageable and easier to run with. He was a pleasure to run with, especially since I'm in the process of getting back into shape and not able to tolerate much leash yanking. Maybe when I get stronger I'll feel up to taking Kelsy for a run.

Luxury

January 4th 2007 11:53 am
Last night, as I was falling asleep, I thought about luxury. Porter slept with his spine against my spine, Kelsy's back was against my chest, with her head on the pillow, and Tess curled up at my feet. All three breathed softly, with Tess emitting a gentle snore. I ran my fingers through Kelsy's silky fur. For many people, a fur coat is synonymous with luxury. For me, not only is the idea of a fur coat disgusting, but having the actual fur-bearers at hand is ten times as luxurious as a lifeless pelt. The warmth, the life, and the personality of these creatures is the real luxury. They have made me the center of their pack, these wolf puppies, and although they are not exactly wild, sleeping on a down comforter on a king-size bed, they have a relationship to wilderness, and they allow me to bring nature indoors in a manageable form. 275 pounds of ferociously sweet nature, gently snoring all around me. This is luxury.

Jokes and Cuteness

November 28th 2006 10:08 pm
Porter only knows one joke, but it makes me laugh every time. He waits until I'm busy with something, and then he will position himself so that when I turn around I will see him with his snout down on the ground and his eyes looking up at me, just patiently waiting, and it makes me burst into laughter every time he does it. When I write it out like that, it doesn't sound very funny, but trust me, it's the funniest thing ever.

Tonight, he did the cutest thing ever. The cutest thing ever, and he's not even the puppy in the house. I was eating a slice of pizza. He casually got up from where he had been sleeping, stretched, and slowly walked over to my chair. He sat with his back to me, counted to three, and then turned his head and looked over his shoulder at me with big puppy eyes. He is a pretty dog anyway, but that was just over-the-top cute. On the one hand, it seems like he plotted the entire cuteness attack, but on the other hand, he might just have an instinct for manipulative cuteness. Either way, it worked and he got his bite of pizza crust.

Puppy Kelsy is going to have to work hard to top that display of cuteness.

Cornered Coyote

November 23rd 2006 9:40 am
The three dogs tracked and cornered a coyote on our private property this morning. As soon as I caught up to them, I called them off, and they let him go. It was big for a coyote, probably at least 40 pounds. I heard it yelp once as they were chasing him through the brush, and I think Tess might have given him a little nip. He had tall ears, and his fur was a mix of gray and brown. After I called the dogs to me, they were all anxious to follow the scent trail and catch the coyote again, but they were very well behaved and stayed close to me.

Magnuson Madness

September 11th 2006 9:34 pm
We went to the Magnuson Park off-leash area today, at Sand Point in Seattle. Porter had a couple of bouts of temporary insanity. It's a long walk from the parking to the lake, maybe half a mile, along a narrow, fenced path. It's a nice walk because there are always other dogs making the trek, and they play and socialize along the way. Walking with three black dogs, and forty other black dogs besides, it's not always easy to keep track of your animals. The girls stayed close to me, but twice when I looked for Porter he was gone about a quarter of a mile away and running around looking for something. It seemed like he was looking for me, but he wasn't coming to my calls and whistles. I ended up walking halfway back both times. Porter is usually my best dog, getting into the least amount of trouble, but today his mind must have been overloaded by all the wet dog smells. Porter was the only dog in the whole park--probably a hundred dogs--whose owner looked like an idiot, calling and whistling from a quarter of a mile away while being ignored.

Other than those incidents, it was a good time. I brought the tennis ball chucker, and Kelsy and Tess fetched the ball out of the water about a hundred times while Porter splashed around and checked out all the other dogs. Kelsy is the best fetcher. Tess will fetch very well when the puppy isn't around, but she doesn't like to compete, so she always lets the puppy get the ball. The three wet dogs slept very soundly in the back of the truck on the way home.

Grandview Park

September 4th 2006 8:23 pm
This afternoon, we went to Grandview off-leash dog park. The dogs all perk up when we are about a mile away. They can smell that we are getting close. I forgot to bring the tennis ball and the plastic thrower, but we found a tennis ball there for Kelsy to chase. I just had to touch the slimy thing with my hand is all. Porter likes to "roll and snort" on gravel or grass, but he really loves to roll and snort at the dog park. He'll be walking along and suddenly flip over onto his back, throwing himself onto the ground.

Kelsy just wants to chase the tennis ball. She will chase it until she's so tired she can hardly stand up. If I refrain from throwing it so she can rest, she pesters me to throw it again. She is super fast. She ran the length of the former soccer field, over 100 yards, in less than 7 seconds.

On the ride home, they all collapse flat in the back of the truck.

Brushing our teeth

September 2nd 2006 2:39 am
Porter's teeth aren't as white as the puppy's. I've always felt I should brush their teeth, but I've been too lazy to do it. Today, we started what I hope will become a new routine. I bought the toothpaste and toothbrush, but I started them off by just using my finger with a dab of toothpaste and rubbing it around on their teeth. All three dogs did just fine, so maybe it's not going to be the huge chore I imagined it would be.

Kelsy’s entries on Dogster

weight

February 7th 2007 12:31 pm
Kelsy weighed 80.4 pounds today.

Snow.

January 10th 2007 8:59 pm
Several inches of snow fell this evening, and the dogs and I went out to play. Kelsy and Tess like to catch snowballs in their mouths. Porter gets excited like he wants to catch a snowball, but when I throw it to him, he almost never catches one. When Kelsy catches the snowballs, she eats them like they are a special treat, even though the ground is covered with several inches of snow and she could go around eating all she wants. Tess will catch them when thrown from a great distance. They explode in her mouth. (I make sure not to pack them very hard.) Walter was here this evening, too, and all four dogs romped around making tracks in the snow.

When the snow flakes landed on Kelsy, they melted fairly quickly. The snow lasted longer on Tess and longest on Porter. It's going to be cold tonight, so the snow should still be there in the morning. We'll go out in the daylight and have more fun.

Sitting on dog heads.

January 3rd 2007 9:31 pm
Kelsy likes to sit on the heads of the other dogs. They usually lie down first while she mills about. She casually walks up to one or the other dog, and while her front end is looking around, her hind end will sit on the older dog's head, almost as if it were an accident. Then she just sits there, looking around, and Porter or Tess will just sit there with a puppy rump on his or her head, surprisingly patiently. I would think they might complain about it, but they tolerate it for several minutes until Kelsy wanders off. She has done this from the time she was a little puppy, about twenty pounds when I got her, but now she weighs about eighty-five pounds. I've tried to get a picture of this odd behavior, but black dogs are hard to photograph.

Learning the hard way.

December 28th 2006 8:40 pm
Kelsy swallowed a rock the other day. The only reason I knew about it was because she vomited it back up a couple of hours later. (I wonder if she felt like she had a rock in her gut.) She had been playing with a piece of gravel in the back of the truck. I would have taken it away from her if we weren't driving down the freeway at the time. I think she didn't mean to swallow it. Lager than a quarter, it must have been painful going down and coming back up.

I tried to get all of the gravel out of the back of the truck, but I guess I missed one. Driving down the road yesterday, I could see she had another piece of gravel in her mouth. I don't think she swallowed that one. Later, I got in under the canopy and made sure each last piece of gravel was gone.

I remember that on the day I took all three dogs to the emergency vet because I fed them grapes, only to learn later that they were toxic to dogs, there was a golden retriever in for emergency surgery to have seven rocks removed from her stomach. I try to keep an eye on Kelsy all the time, to make sure that nothing inappropriate goes in her mouth. She doesn't seem to have clue of her own. When an animal sleeps twenty hours a day, it shouldn't be that hard to keep an eye on her. She seems to know when I'm distracted and she takes her opportunities.

What is she barking about?

November 2nd 2006 10:33 pm
Porter and Tess are out here with me, watching TV, while Kelsey is in on the bed by herself. She's rolling and squirming on her back, on the comforter, and she's growling and barking. Who or what is she barking at? This is the first time I've ever seen her do this. She can't have fleas, because I just gave the flea treatment to all three dogs last week. I wish they could talk. If they could talk, I'd probably wish they'd shut up, but every once in a while I wish they cold tell me what is happening in their funny little minds.

Fat dogs!

October 3rd 2006 8:49 pm
All three dogs went to the vet today for their annual checkups and shots. The scale said they'd all gained about five pounds when they were supposed to be losing weight. Kelsy is 82 pounds when she should be 75 pounds. Porter is 95 pounds when he should be 87 or less. Tess is 92 pounds when she should be under 80. It looks like all three dogs and their human need to go on a diet. And go for longer walks. 269 pounds of dog! No wonder they pull my arms off when we go for a walk.

Kelsy had had papilloma virus on her tongue, but that's all gone now. Porter and Kelsy had ear infections this summer, but their ears looked fine. Kelsy likes going to the vet, but Tess is very nervous about it. Also, Porter got scheduled for having his teeth cleaned.

Bucket Head has an Iron Tail

September 3rd 2006 5:22 pm
Kelsy's tail is very dense and strong, compared to the other dogs. When she gets happy about something, which is often, her tail bangs against the wall, making a surprising racket. If she's standing next to the oven, it's even noisier. She seems not to feel pain in general. She got the name Bucket Head because she was running around with a plastic bucket in her mouth, holding it by the bottom edge so that it covered her face. She ran full speed into an obstacle. It would have broken my neck if it had happened to me, but she bounced right up and continued with her insane rampage. So when she wags her tail against something and it sounds like a hammer, it must be her lack of pain sensitivity the lets her whack her tail so hard.

Trailblazing

August 31st 2006 8:03 pm
This afternoon, Kelsy helped me re-open a trail that had grown over with blackberry vines and clematis. It was on the steep face of the bluff, and there is really no place to walk but the trail. Kelsy stayed right behind me most of the time with her head pressed against the backs of my knees, saying "Hurry up and clear the trail so I can get through." Most of the time, I thought it was cute. After about an hour of her head pressed against me, practically pushing me into the blackberries, I thought about getting annoyed with her, but then I was reminded how cute she is.

She is staying closer to me these days than she used to. Now that she's thirteen months old, she seems to be outgrowing her puppy hood, somewhat. Right now, she is sleeping on the bed while Porter is sleeping on the floor at my feet and Tess is sleeping on the couch downstairs.

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Below are entries from the old uselessbay.org during the year 2005.

12/31/2005
When Kelsy shakes water off, the shake starts at her head and migrates down to her tail, but there is a section, between her ribcage and hips, that doesn't shake. You can see the shake-wave travel along until it gets there, then nothing, then the rump and tail start shaking. Her tail almost ties itself in a knot when she shakes. When she swims in Puget Sound, she shakes after every fetch, and that dead zone always stays still. She's a mutant.

Last updated on 12-31-2005 @ 11:49 am

12/20/2005

Every morning, my dogs and I go for a walk to my Mom's house, several blocks away. She feeds them biscuits at the back door. Sunday morning, she was washing some grapes for her and my dad for breakfast, and I suggested she give one to Porter just to see if he liked it. It turned out that all three dogs liked grapes, and they ate about a pound between the three of them. It was fun to watch them learn about this new food, biting carefully at first, and then wolfing them down. For some reason, I had the notion to Google "dogs and grapes" a couple of hours later, and the first site the pops up says that grapes are deadly to dogs and can cause kidney failure in less than three days. Oh, crap. And of course these things always happen on weekends or evenings when my regular vet is closed. I checked a couple more websites, and found that some dogs can eat grapes every day, while some dogs die after eating just a few. I found the ASPCA Poison Hotline and called them. They told me to make my dogs vomit by giving them hydrogen peroxide. Of course, I didn't have any in the house, and on the way to get some, the transmission failed on the SUV. I called my mom and she came and got us. By the time we got back home with the hydrogen peroxide, three hours have passed since they ate the grapes. I force the hy.per. into them with a turkey baster, but none of them barf. I give them a second dose, and still no vomit. I call the hotline back, and they tell me to take them to the emergency vet. Now the second vehicle has a flat tire, so I borrow my mom's car again, and it's four hours after ingestion when I get them to the vet. Fortunately, they all checked out fine, because if they had been sensitive to grapes, they would have been in kidney failure by then. I had the option of admitting them to intensive care and getting IV fluids for 24 hours, just to be safe, but since that would have been traumatic for them and very expensive, I decided to take them home and watch them. The vet fed them activated charcoal to try to neutralize the grapes. Two days after eating the grapes, they are fine, and the vet said if any kidney damage would have occurred, it would have been obvious in those first 36 hours. I got lucky and didn't kill my dogs. I'll be more careful in the future. That pound of grapes ended up costing me $400 at the vet, but it could have been much worse. Here's a list of dog toxins.
• Alcoholic beverages
• Avocado
• Chocolate
• Coffee
• Fatty foods
• Macadamia nuts
• Moldy or spoiled foods
• Onions
• Raisins and grapes
• Salt
• Yeast dough

Last updated on 12-20-2005 @ 01:22 pm

12-18-2005 @ 12:22 pm
This morning, when we went next door for biscuits, the mutts discovered grapes. Mom had just washed some, and I suggested she see if the dogs liked them. Porter took one gently and held it in his mouth a long time before biting into it and discovering he liked it. Kelsy ate hers more quickly. I think Kelsy would eat broken glass. Tess took the grapes but didn't eat very many of them. The other two dogs cleaned up the ones Tess left on the ground.

12-17-2005 @ 12:44 pm
Right now, all three dogs are right at my feet, sleeping. Kelsy is using Tess as a pillow. She wants to sleep with Porter, but he gets snappy, so she has managed to just have one foot touching him. All three dogs are snoring gently. It is a very pleasant, soothing sound. Kelsy is almost as big as the other dogs now, although much skinnier. I wish I could transmogrify myself temporarily into a puppy Kelsy's age and take a nap on the floor in that pile of dogs.

12-16-2005 @ 10:22 pm
It has been freezing for a while, at least a week. The dogs love ice. The bird bath at Mom's house freezes over, and the dogs get shards of ice with their biscuits in the morning. They love to fish the ice shards out of the water, and then crunch them. They will fight over the large chunks. If Porter gets the big piece, Kelsy will nibble off the edges while he growls at her softly. Sometimes, the ice has been too thick for them to break into it themselves, so I have to stab it with my pocket knife to get them started. I have to keep them away from the knife with my left hand, because they are anxious for their fresh ice.

12-14-2005 @ 11:39 am
Kelsy has been fetching in the water lately. Our walking loop takes us up 149th, down 150th, to Mom's house for biscuits, and down to the beach on the old trail. I make sure no one is around to see my dogs off-leash, and then I start throwing the stick into the water for Kelsy. I think Tess would like to fetch, too, but she wants to be the only dog fetching, not competing with Kelsy. Kelsy is an energetic swimmer, if not exactly efficient. This morning she was fetching a stick that was as big as her. She dries quickly, compared to Porter. A couple of days ago, we walked in the rain and Kelsy went swimming while Porter stayed out, and Kelsy was dry at least an hour sooner.

12-13-2005 @ 12:35 pm
She likes to sit on the heads of the other dogs. I remember she used to sit on Olive's head. Now she does it to the other two. She does it in a very casual way, as if it was her rump's idea and her head didn't even know what was going on. She just wanders up to a lying dog, looking every which way, and Oops, her butt just happened to sit on that resting head. Neither Tess nor Porter complain about it, which is surprising. They just lie there, with funny expressions, looking at me as if to say, "Why is there a puppy rump on my head?" She will linger there for several minutes before sliding off. I want to get a picture of this, but I never have the camera ready.

12-12-2005 @ 11:06 am
It was an epic battle this morning. Kelsy attacked a three-gallon plastic pot and chased it around through the bushes. She got a hold of it and shook it to kill it. She ran all around with the pot-corpse in her mouth. She didn't cover her eyes with it, like she did the other morning, but she was nearly as reckless, charging in all directions and crashing into things. After she was done killing the pot, we played fetch. She is a better fetcher than the two older dogs.

12-09-2005 @ 12:23 pmI'm starting to concentrate on Kelsy's training more. She had picked up sit and stay pretty readily, or else her previous owner had trained her for that. We are working on Lie Down, and she is making good progress. She is also fetching very well, even giving the stick back. She likes to fetch in Puget Sound, more so than the other dogs. I would like to train her to do more than the standard obedience.

12-03-2005 @ 07:51 pm
Yesterday, Kelsy was playing with a two-gallon plastic pot. She was running around with it in her mouth, with her jaw on the lower edge so the pot was blocking her vision. It wasn't quite like having a bucket on her head, but practically. She came running along at ninety miles an hour and plowed right into the side of Porter, and bounced off with a grunt. She sat there with a dazed look for a half a second, and then she started running around again. I was laughing so hard that she wondered what was happening to me, or what I meant by all that laughter. moments like these make up for all the damage she does.

11-06-2005 @ 06:04 pm
Kelsy was around on the west side of the house and when I whistled for her she came charging around, running toward me at full speed. It was the first time, that I recall, that she had been away from me and came running to me. (She's usually never ten feet away from me.) Her ears were flopping as she ran and her body flowed in a long, bounding gallop. She's probably double the size of when I first met her. I like to pick her up and hold her in my arms, but she's too squirmy for that. She's also becoming more coordinate this week than she was last week. She can almost catch a biscuit, when they would just bounce off her head last week. She knows Sit, Stay, and Come, to some extent. She is all healthy now, and no longer taking antibiotics.

10-14-2005 @ 09:34 pm
Tonight at dinner time, Kelsy started throwing herself around the kitchen in spasms of joy. Porter has this happy jump where he leaps up and does a wiggle at the high point. Kelsy was doing this, but in a far less coordinated manner, so she was basically flailing around the kitchen while I took soooo long to fix her dinner. She barked, too, telling me to hurry up. For a sick puppy, she's way too healthy.

09-29-2005 @ 03:37 pm
How is it possible to fall so deeply in love with a little monster who pees on your floor and chews holes in your socks? I only knew Olive for nine days, but losing her was very painful. She had parvovirus and pneumonia, and wasn't strong enough to recover despite round-the-clock veterinary care from Dr. Le, who is very knowledgeable, competent, and caring. I visited Olive several times in her compartment at the Vet's office. The last time I saw her, I thought she was showing improvement. She got up to try to come home with me, and I felt bad for leaving her there. In the short time I knew her, I got to know a sweet and delicate personality. She was often cranky and bossy, which nobody minded, and in hindsight she may have been complaining because of some underlying health problem I couldn't detect. I adopted the two of them together so that they would always have each other's company, and I suppose I am angry at Olive for leaving us. As angry as one can be at a sweet little innocent puppy. Kelsy is currently sleeping close to Porter, though not quite touching. I'm sure she will be fully integrated into our pack, and there will be endless hours of horseplay to help alleviate the absence of her sister.

09-26-2005 @ 08:36 pm
Kelsy and Olive came from a very crowded shelter with an overworked staff, so it's not surprising that they both came to us with kennel cough, or something. They both started sneezing about a day after arriving, then runny noses and gunky eyes, then vomiting, then diarrhea. I was about ready to rush Kelsy to the emergency vet on Saturday night, but then she got better fairly quickly. Olive started vomiting on Sunday night, but since Kelsy had recovered so quickly, I decided to wait until their scheduled Vet visit on Monday afternoon. Dr. Le did a chest x-ray on Olive and found she had pneumonia, so the poor girl had to stay overnight for treatment and observation. I should be able to pick her up tomorrow. Before I left, I could hear her barking and yipping in the back room, anxious to get back to her sister and her new dad. Kelsy has broken teeth, from her misadventures with her previous owner, but they are puppy teeth, so she'll get brand new ones to replace the broken ones. Kelsy was 28 pounds, and Olive was about 23 pounds, I think.

09-21-2005 @ 09:47 pm
Now I've done it. Our family has grown by two puppies, Kelsy and Olive, who look like they could be the offspring of Porter and Tess. Kelsy looks more like Porter, and Olive looks more like Tess. P&T weren't very happy on the first day, but by the second day they seemed to include the puppies as part of our pack. All of our routines have changed, including the routine of getting a good night's sleep, but the big dogs seem to be adapting. The wee ones aren't housebroken, which is proving to be quite a challenge--something I hadn't even considered. They are horrendously, dangerously cute, though, and even though they are evil little creatures, I get enough pleasure from watching them sleep after a hard day of play to make it worth the extra work and inconvenience. They are two months old, about twenty to thirty pounds. Kelsy is about 25% bigger than Olive. Kelsy is lanky and Olive is round, relatively.

09-15-2005 @ 08:08 pm
Porter howled twice today. Both times, Walter got him started. After they're done, I make sure to praise Porter for a job well done, in the hopes that he will one day howl for me without Walter's influence. Tess still isn't giving a peep, but if I could get Porter trained to howl, I would be pleased. He has a beautiful voice.

09-09-2005 @ 10:16 am
Walter was here yesterday, and he is a famous howler, known to howl on his own quite frequently and willing to do it any time someone gets him started. Yesterday, while Lance and I were working on the roof, Walter started howling, and after a bit, Porter joined in, softly, just barely audible over Walter's substantial howl. Porter's voice was so sweet. It was like he was singing a melancholy song, not dominating the wilderness with his wolf brethren. I wish I could make him howl like that on demand. My parents were on their deck a quarter mile away, with guests, and heard the howling coming through the woods. They phoned in a request for an encore performance, and Walter was perfectly willing, but Porter didn't join in the second time. Tessie was quiet through it all, just watching and listening.

09-02-2005 @ 12:06 am
I felt like I was home, when I walked into the forest near Lake Quinault, the same way I felt at Kendall Katwalk and Myrtle Lake and Castle Mountain. It wasn't until I had been walking for hours in the Colonel Bob Wilderness that I began to realize why I felt that sense of belonging. Of course, there was the absence of people that I greatly enjoyed, almost as much as I enjoyed the company of dogs and trees. I realized that the act of going for a hike incorporated many of the interests I had acquired recently and long ago. All that I've learned about native plants, in the course of taking the Native Plant Stewardship training, makes the woods a rich and detailed place. It's not just a mass of vegetation, but a complex, interwoven system of specific plants performing particular tasks in the whole organism of the forest. Now I know many if not most of those plants and I know their traits and habits. Another facet of old skills being put to new uses comes into play because hiking fourteen miles with almost a mile of elevation gain is like running a marathon. There's not quite as much physical exertion, but it has that rhythm to it. I get the same feeling of "I'm never going to make it" at the same time I'm certain that I can as long as I don't listen to that voice. Like a marathon, a long hike breaks me down, and what was effortless at the beginning becomes amazingly heavy at the end. The long hike is also a commitment to going a certain distance, whereas during training for a marathon I can always skip making another lap around Lake Burien if I get bored. Near the top of Colonel Bob, I knew I had to make it to the highest point, and of course, once at the top, I had no choice but to hike back to the truck. I couldn't just call a taxi. The third habit that I use on a long hike is my photographer's eye. Although I'm not constantly taking pictures, I am constantly looking out for a picture that needs to be taken. That is, when I'm not busy watching my footing on the trail. I see things, like the way the forest was dancing at one point, the evenly spaced trunks moving in unison as I stepped along the trail, each tree dipping in time to my stride, the spacing and rotation reminiscent of an ancient dance that was passed from generation to generation through demonstration rather than explanation, and I know these things I see, these beautiful things, would come out as nothing in a photograph, a mistake. Then I see other situations that have the proper relationship of icons so that the viewer would recognize a familiar motif with a new list of particulars and be drawn into the image, and I stop and take the time to unstrap and dismount the backpack and dig out the camera while the dogs take a break. Then there are images that I know will be confused and unmanageable for someone who wasn't there, but I take the picture to remind myself of the experienced beauty, which I can recreate in my head from the shorthand of the photograph, sampling that blue, sensing the moisture in the air, tasting the huckleberry. And of course there are ten thousand pictures of dogs, which, to most people, would just be ten thousand pictures of the same dogs, but to me become a record of the ten thousand dogs my dogs have been as the world filtered through their noses. Lastly, hiking is the best form of writing. I do not write while I am sitting at a keyboard. I only write while I am walking or running or hammering new plywood sheathing onto the old fir skip sheathing. I write everything then, when I am away, then I forget, and then I sit in front of the blank screen and slowly remember what I wrote out there along the trail, Tessie in front, Porter right on my heels, so close that his backpack bangs into the backs of my legs and jars me out of my thoughts. All of my useless talents are put to use during the course of a long walk through the woods. It is the way Tess moves along the trail carpeted with hemlock cones, the wolf-like flow of her body shining out of the boxiness of her accidental genetics. In addition to employing all my sensibilities, hiking along a trail has the bonus attraction of fitting into my lamentable philosophical framework of never being a tool toward an end, but just being an organic part of a moment.

09-01-2005 @ 06:54 pm
Porter and Tess and I went to Lake Quinault on the Olympic Peninsula to hike in the Colonel Bob Wilderness Area. The hike was recommended by the Best Hikes With Dogs book and described as 14 miles round trip with 4300 feet of elevation gain. After a three hour drive, we got there about noon and set out on the trail. Before long, a third dog joined our party. He was a boxer mix, black and brindle, with white sox, unneutered, underweight, and young. We were a mile from the trail head, and I hadn't seen anyone, so I didn't know if he lived by the lake or if he had gotten away from some campers up the trail. I ignored him, hoping he would go home. After a couple of miles, I wondered if he just does this all the time, hiking with people he finds and then returning home at the end of the day. I thought about just taking him with us for the whole fourteen miles and, if we didn't find his owner camping in the woods, checking the neighborhood around the trailhead to see if anyone recognized him. When I saw that he had diarrhea, I didn't think I should subject him to a fourteen mile hike, whether he was willing or not, because he would be dehydrated no matter how much water he drank. So, two miles away from the trailhead, we had to turn around and go back, scratching that hike for the day. When we got back to the truck, I wanted to put the boxer in the back of the truck, secured with leashes, so I could take him to the Ranger's Station to see if any campers were missing a dog. I put Tessie's leash on him, and he got spooked and ran off, dragging the leash. I couldn't chase after him right away, because I had to secure my dogs in the truck, and when I got out to the road, he was nowhere in sight. I had horrible visions of him stuck somewhere with the leash caught on an obstacle. At the first door I knocked on, the woman said, "Oh, that's Kane. He lives a few doors east. He's always running loose in the neighborhood. When I knocked his owner's door, he seemed irritated that someone had attached a leash to his dog. I explained that I was trying to help get the dog to his rightful owner, and the man relaxed and said thanks. I got Tessie's leash back. I wanted to tell him to take Kane to the vet to be neutered, and to be treated for giardia or whatever was ailing him, but the man wasn't listening. I doubt that he cared, since he was already letting his dog run loose without any tags, drinking out of streams and ponds. I was glad I didn't end up with a third dog, though. Since Kane scrubbed our original hiking plan, we went on a shorter hike in Fletcher Canyon, six miles east. It was dense, old-growth forest, foggy, drizzly and drippy. The mountains on either side of the canyon went steeply up into the clouds, their tops invisible. We could hear Fletcher Creek rushing along below us as we walked. I couldn't take pictures because, in the middle of the afternoon, it seemed like twilight with the thick clouds and dense forest, but if I tried to use the flash, all I got was fog. What looked like clear air to me became mist when the flash hit it. I could only take a few shots in clearings with enough light so a flash wasn't necessary. Tessie fell off the log when we crossed Fletcher Creek, but she didn't mind. Porter jumped in after her and they both splashed around. We stayed overnight in the Bates Motel (with a recent remodel). Tessie and Porter jumped up into the bed and slept on either side of me as I watched the news and the weather report. It was good that Kane bungled our trip that day because the next day was perfect weather, cool but clear, with plenty of light for photography and views hundreds of miles across the Olympic mountains. The huckleberries were ripe and delicious, freshly washed by the previous day's rain. At lower elevations, the red huckleberries were plentiful, but higher up, there were blue and black huckleberries. The black ones were okay, and I could certainly have lived off them for weeks if we were stranded in the woods, but the blue ones and red ones were just like candy. I brought a bag of Fritos, and up above Moonshine Flats, above Fletcher Canyon, I shared the Fritos with the dogs, who liked them much better than I liked the huckleberries, judging by the way they begged for more. The summit of Colonel Bob Peak was 4,510 feet according to the book, and my GPS said it was 4,473, not too far off. It was a spectacular view, but I only stayed long enough to snap one quick picture because I didn't like having my dogs near the edge of the cliff on the north side. Even though we stayed back ten feet from the edge, I didn't feel comfortable, as I imagined Porter trying to scamper away from a bee or something, so we went right back down to the safety of the trees. For the minute we were up there, it was nice to see the lake in the distance, three miles as the crow flies and seven miles of trail, where we had started. A lone raven was playing in the updrafts. He would make a low rattling noise and then tumble down about twenty feet, over and over, apparently just entertaining himself. We got back to the truck in under eight hours. 4.5 hours up and 3.25 down, with plenty of breaks for water, lunch, pictures, and huckleberries. On the drive home, the dogs were very tired. Porter slept with his head in my lap, and Tessie slept with her head on Porter's chest.

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"Isn't that cute," said the woman watching Porter and Tess swim at Seahurst Park. "They're swimming along together holding onto the same stick." Porter was actually stealing Tessie's stick. Tess swims faster and gets the stick first, and then Porter comes along and takes it from her. They were both very energetic considering that we had just hiked 10 miles through Eagle Landing Park, Lake Burien School Park, Seahurst Park, and Salmon Creek Ravine Park. When Porter gets soaking wet, he looks like a skinny little puppy again. When we got home, I rinsed them off with the garden hose to try to remove most of the salt and pollution.

Last updated on 08-29-2005 @ 09:31 am

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Kendall Katwalk

This was a nearly perfect outing. It was a cooler day for August, and clouds occasionally obscured the nearby peaks. Right out of the parking lot, we dove into old-growth forest with huge hemlocks, skunk cabbage, devil's club, foamflower, and salmonberry, with many small streams trickling by. After a couple of switchbacks, we came to an open boulder field with a nice view of a neighboring peak, which might have been Guye Peak, judging by the map. We saw lots of fireweed, and just a few paintbrush. The forest switched from hemlock as the dominant species to Silver fir as we went from 3,000 to 4,500. When we broke out into the open again, the rocky slide areas were populated by marmots. I wouldn't have known they were there if they hadn't given their chirping warning calls. Kendall Katwalk was just an easy stroll to get across, but I held the dogs' leashes securely and didn't look down too much. If one were to fall, there'd be no stopping for about five hundred feet. There would have been room to pass somebody, but I was glad we had the whole path to ourselves. I didn't stop to take a picture until we got to a wide spot on the far side. We went on to Ridge Lake, about 6.5 miles of trail from the trailhead, about three miles as the crow flies. The dogs went swimming and fetched a stick, and then Tessie got out of the lake and rolled in the dusty dirt, giving herself a coat of mud. There were stretches of trail that were very dusty and dry, and ten feet trudging through it stirred up a cloud of dust that hovered around us as we walked. By the time we got back to the truck, I was a different color with the coating of sweat-glued dust. I was using my GPS toy to navigate, but it wasn't necessary because I could see I-90 in the distance from near the top, even though the cars looked like ants, and I could hear the constant roar of the freeway as we got closer in the dense woods. It would have been hard to get lost on that hike. On the way back, there were hawks or something up on the ridge above the trail, and they had very piercing calls. Their calls were directional. I could tell they weren't far away, but I couldn't see them when I knew I must be looking right at them. They would aim their calls at me every once in a while, and it was like being shot with a sonic arrow. Then they would turn their voices away and it would fill the whole hillside. I got the impression they were telling the cougars and wolves where to find me so they could pick my bones clean after the predators had done their dirty work. When we got back to the truck, Tessie collapsed on the seat and wouldn't make room for Porter. Usually, it's Porter sprawling across the entire bench seat with Tessie jammed up against the passenger door, but she was so tired that, since she got there first, she wouldn't budge, and Porter was too tired to make her move. He drifted in and out of sleep standing up. They woke up when we reached the McDonald's at North Bend, and then as I ate while driving, Porter laid down with his chin on my knee, looking like the sweet sort of dog one might give a bite of sandwich to. Tessie echoed his position and expression by curling around the same way and resting her chin on Porter's back, and looking up with her sweet puppy eyes, saying, "I'm a good dog who deserves a snack." Most of the couple dozen people I saw on the trail had full backpacks and were going to or coming from overnight camping trips, but I was very glad to have a hot shower and a soft bed at the end of the day.

Last updated on 08-24-2005 @ 05:19 pm

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Tonight we had dinner over at Mom's house, and she baked a chocolate cake for Ruth's birthday. As a finishing touch on the cake, she placed a doily over the cake and sprinkled powdered sugar over it to make a decorative pattern. Tessie decided to help, and she jumped up to sniff the doily and see what it was. This dislodged a burst of powdered sugar, and Tessie ended up with a frosted pattern on her head. She looked delicious, but unfortunately she shook her head and ruined the pattern before David could take a picture with his digital camera, so she just looked diseased in the picture. Tessie mooched for chocolate cake, but all she got was carrots.

Last updated on 08-21-2005 @ 11:42 pm

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We went to Castle Mountain on August 15th, to see wildflowers and a view of Mt Rainier. This was a shorter, easier hike with not too much elevation gain from the mile-high parking area. My new gadget said we reached 6500 feet at the top. The flowers were a bit past their peak, but many of them still looked good. If we had been there a couple of weeks earlier, I'll bet it was spectacular. Porter wore the doggy backpack, and he did fine until we were almost back to the car and he just sat down on the trail. He looked at me and said, "I'm not going a step further until you get this damn thing off of me." I took it off and transferred it to Tess, and then he was fine.

Last updated on 08-20-2005 @ 10:54 pm

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Porter and Tess would do anything for a Greenie. Often, Porter can't be bothered with getting up off the floor if he knows that I'm just going outside to work on the roof or water the plants, but if I so much as crinkle the wrapper on the Greenie package, he's there like lightning. Just a little while ago, I gave them some Greenies, and I pretended to take them away just to make them want them more. Tessie understood the game. She let me take it and she was confident I would give it back. Porter, however, started to growl at me. It sounded pretty much like his fake, playful growl, but it was kind of on the border of being aggressive. Just to make sure we weren't having a misunderstanding, I took it away from him and made him sit and say please before giving it back. Last week, we got Greenies on the way home, and I gave them each one to chew on while riding in the car. When we got to my parents' house, Porter hadn't finished his yet, and he paraded into their house, announcing, "I've got a Greenie and you don't" with his body language. He usually runs up to my mom and nearly knocks her over in greeting, but he walked right by her with his neck arched, kind of prancing like a pony. It's hard to describe his walk, but it was definitely different, and there was no mistaking that he was proud of his Greenie.

Last updated on 08-20-2005 @ 12:38 am
Today, we went to the Grandview off-leash dog park in Kent. I mean to take them there more often, in order to get them more properly socialized. While we were there, Porter scuffled with a large black poodle. It may have been the poodle that started it, but he does seem to find trouble more than he should. We met a black lab pretty close to Tessie's size, who was about 18 months old. He was submissive and playful when my dogs approached. He kept his tail down, asking for acceptance, and then after the proper amount of sniffing, he scampered off in an invitation to be chased. My dogs could have been nicer. Porter didn't bark, but he could have gotten into the spirit and played a little game of tag with the pup. Not getting a great response from my dogs, the Lab ran over to me and sat right on my feet, with his back leaning against my shins. It was such a friendly and sweet gesture. I gave him a nice full-body pet, and after a minute he scampered off again. I guess that part of the reason that my dogs aren't as gregarious as this puppy might be because I don't really care for people much, and I tried to avoid them when possible. So, my dogs don't get enough practice dealing with strangers appropriately. I'll have to make an effort to go to the dog park more often, so they can be better socialized. Maybe it might help my attitude toward people as well.

Last updated on 08-18-2005 @ 07:53 pm
Porter and Tess and I went for a hike in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness, 5.5 miles along the Dingford Creek trail to Myrtle Lake. I wanted to escape the 90 degree temps at sea level, but it turned out to be almost as hot at 4,000 feet at Myrtle Lake. I enjoyed seeing all the devil's club and twinflower along the trail. Porter and Tess enjoyed splashing in the various little creeks and swimming in Myrtle Lake. The picture of Myrtle Lake shows Porter retrieving a stick, which is unusual because it's always Tessie who's anxious to fetch. The flies and mosquitoes were vicious, and I didn't take as many pictures as I would have liked because the only way to avoid insect attacks was to stay moving constantly. See the Myrtle Lake section of the gallery.

Last updated on 08-05-2005 @ 09:12 pm

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At the McDonalds drive-through in Woodinville, where we like to stop after visiting Molbak's Nursery and Olympic Tree Nursery, the landscaping is very woodsy and the drive-through lane is lined with wire-frame deer covered with moss and a few ferns. They are very attractive, peaceful looking deer, but Porter gets freaked out by them because they stare unblinkingly, as if challenging his dominance. He starts growling at the fake deer, and his growling grows louder because the deer aren't intimidated. I have to put my hand over his eyes to get him to stop, but I let it go on for a little while because it's so funny.

Last updated on 07-22-2005 @ 03:32 pm
Porter is snoring right now. It is raining gently, and I have the windows open. The clocks are ticking and I can hear a distant robin or two. Porter has his head wedged against the baseboard, he's damp from walking in the rain, and his snoring is the sweetest, most comforting sound. ==== I think Tessie is beautiful because I love her so much. She has luminous dark eyes and she is bursting with energy, but she is not exactly beautiful in any conventional sense. She is rather awkward looking, and when some purebred, long-legged Black Labs walk past her at the dog park, they make her look bulky and misproportioned. If she only looks beautiful to me, that's all that matters. Porter, on the other hand, draws comments everywhere we go. He is frequently admired, and people ask what breed he is. A few days ago, when we went to Grandview off-leash park, he went charging around the central field like he was the King of Everything. He galloped like a rocking horse, with his front feet slightly wide, his tail up, and his ears flowing majestically. Then he decided to catch Tessie, and he shifted gears to cheetah speed. He looked powerful and sleek with his fur blowing back in the self-generated wind. In Tessie's defense, she was still outrunning him with her clunky body. She is the superior athlete, but he looks better doing it, to an objective eye. I see Porter all day every day, but when I saw him charging around the field like that, he became an exotic and fabulous creature charging across a wild savannah. He seemed completely unrelated to the Porter I know who loses all dignity when he backs up to someone with his rump and starts bobbing his hips in an attempt to get someone to rub him just above his tail.

Last updated on 07-08-2005 @ 11:08 am

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I got especially dirty today. I was sweating, and bits of debris from the roof demolition were clinging to my skin. Then, as I was tearing off the old gutters, a large clump of roofing debris fell right on my head. I had asphalt granules on my scalp. I looked like a caveman. Now, after I've taken a shower, it feels really good to be clean. I don't think I would have survived as a troglodyte. It made me wonder if the dogs like having a bath. They tolerate it while it's happening, but I wonder if they feel better being clean. I looked dirty today, but they still look clean after they've been rolling in the dirt. All they do is shake, and they look as good as new. They only way in which they don't look clean is that Tessie rolled on a slug, and then rolled in the dirt, so she's got a spot on her ear where slug slime has glued dirt on her ear. It's been there several days. but other than that, they always look clean. And they don't feel dirty when you pet them. They can smell a bit doggish once in a while, but if I had gone a month without a bath, I wouldn't be able to stand my own smell, and other people would rightfully shun me. Compared to people, dogs are very clean.

Last updated on 07-02-2005 @ 12:27 am

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I researched dogs for about a year before I got Porter. I had decided on a Bernese Mountain Dog because I liked their looks, they are good with cats, and they will run with you and then switch off. I decided not to get any sort of purebred after reading an article on what inbreeding does to dogs. So I went to the pound and picked out Porter, who, I discovered later, is most likely a purebred Flat Coat Retriever, ironically. Oh well. One of the reasons I picked out Porter at the shelter was because he looked so serene and calm. That turned out to be a trick, because when I got him home, he definitely did not have an off switch. He drove me crazy. Now, when I want them to go for a walk with me in the afternoon, I can't get them to get up. If they know that I'm just walking up the driveway and down the trail, they figure I'm not going anywhere interesting, so why bother. they just lay there like lumps, and I have to really insist if I want them to come with me. They are a little too much like Bernese Mountain Dogs, now.

Last updated on 06-18-2005 @ 10:38 pm

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I was thinking of joining PETA, because, after all, I am definitely in favor of ethical treatment for animals. When I went to their web site, the first thing that struck me was that I'm not exactly a vegetarian. I don't eat much meat, but I thought I should try to go completely vegetarian before joining PETA, in order to avoid hypocrisy as much as possible. I've been doing pretty well for about a week, with only a few lapses. It got me thinking about vegetarian diets for dogs. I've checked out some vegetarian-dogs web sites, and it seems doable. I'll try to learn more before tackling the project.

Last updated on 06-17-2005 @ 10:32 pm

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I hate crows, mostly. Not as much as I hate people, but I hate the incessant noise they make. Lately, I can hardly hear the dogs barking over the murderous squawks of crows. There is a young crow who is stuck on the ground for some reason, and he's making me feel guilty for not rescuing him. If it were an eagle, I would have taken him to Sarvey Wildlife Rescue. If he's going to die, I wish he would do it out of my sight so I wouldn't feel so bad. Tessie keeps finding him along the trail and in the driveway. She charges after the crow and pounces at him, but the poor thing just hunkers down, unable to flee. When Tessie reaches the crow, always before I can get there to intervene, she bumps it with her muzzle, as if to say, "You're not playing the game right. You're the prey, and you're supposed to try to get away." Then she just looks at the crow. She is the sweetest creature.

Last updated on 06-16-2005 @ 09:53 pm

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Tessie ate a bunch of Hershey’s chocolate Kisses tonight. I would guess it was between 4 and 10 ounces. I heard a funny noise in the other room, and it took a while for it to dawn on me that it might be a dog eating chocolate. It was out of sight in a box, so she must have tracked it by scent. She ate the foil wrappers, too. I called the vet, and they told me that the chocolate was not enough to be toxic, and that the foil was inert and harmless. I hope it makes her a little sick so she won't want to do it again. I'll have to watch her for the next twelve hours or so.

Last updated on 03-26-2005 @ 09:36 pm

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As he did on December 30th and January 26th, Porter started behaving strangely. This time, he had just been lying on the floor asleep, so that rules out a head injury during a wrestling match with Tessie. He tried to get up, but he was weak and wobbly. He eventually did get up, and he was able to walk down the stairs, shakily. I called the vet while it was happening, but he started to get better before I had even finished making an appointment. He's fine now, and I'll probably cancel the vet appointment. I asked him to tell me what was wrong, but he couldn't say. Stroke? Seizure? Ingested toxin? I wish I were like Dr. House, only for animals, and I could deduce what was wrong with him from the clues of his behavior and his recent history.

Last updated on 03-23-2005 @ 12:58 pm

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I went down to the beach today looking for a good location to plant my Devil's Club, Oplopanax horridus. It needs a wet seepage site. There are drains in the hillside near the beach where water runs all year at a constant rate, but I had already planted about a dozen cedars, two pines, and two redwoods near those streams and there was no room left for a Devil's Club. I knew of a wet site in the new park where Skunk Cabbage grows, so I checked it out for the possibility of planting the Devil's Club there. Last week, the biggest Skunk Cabbage was in full bloom with a beautiful yellow hood around the central spike of the flower. Today, the flower was gone. Some idiot had plucked it. This is why I hate people. I'll bet the flower didn't even survive until the idiot got home with it. I abandoned the idea of planting the Devil's Club there, even though it was a perfect location, because I knew that some idiot would beat it with a stick and break it off just because it was interesting, just because he or she could. I ended up planting it near the house, and I will create an artificial seep using runoff from the roof and a rain barrel. There is still the risk that the dogs will run over it, but they would have the excuse of not knowing any better. People have no excuse for being as stupid and mean as they are, which is why I hate them.

Last updated on 03-12-2005 @ 09:00 pm

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The Trilliums have just started. The salmonberry has been out for a week. The osoberry has been out for maybe three weeks. Red flowering currant has fat pink buds starting to explode. Low Oregon grape is in bloom, and some tall Oregon grape is in bloom, but not mine. The palmate coltsfoot is still blooming, having started two weeks ago. Almost everything is showing signs of new growth. I am looking forward to the bunchberry. It is showing vigorous new growth, and should be flowering any day now. Skunk cabbage is in full bloom down by the beach, which must mean that the one I planted by my pond must be dead. Viola sempervirens, oxalis, and candyflower are also blooming.

Last updated on 03-09-2005 @ 09:41 pm

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I have been seeing Trilliums popping up all over the place, and last night I saw the first one in bloom. This morning, I heard a robin for the first time this spring, making the Trillium's other name, Wakerobin, seem very appropriate.

Last updated on 03-03-2005 @ 10:31 pm

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At home, Porter and Tess aren't allowed in the bed at night because they track in a lot of dirt from the woods and tend to deposit that dirt in the bed, making it uncomfortable. Since we were away from home last week, and they were staying fairly clean, I relaxed the rule and I had dogs in the hotel bed with me. It was very nice. Tessie was panting too hard at first, shaking the bed and making it hard to fall asleep. Eventually, she calmed down and I was pinned under the covers by warm bodies. In Colorado, I ended up with four dogs in the bed--my two black retrievers and two yellow labs of the house where I stayed--and that was something. It took a long time for that bunch to settle down. They were like kids at a slumber party. Before sunrise, the two yellow labs decided it was time to get up, and they both licked my face thoroughly until I got up. They all had a great time romping around the soccer field behind the house. (See picture in gallery.)

Last updated on 03-02-2005 @ 09:24 pm

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Porter likes to make me laugh. He only knows one joke, but it cracks me up every time. While I'm working, he'll go lie down somewhere in the dirt, with his paws stretched out in front of him and his snout down on his paws. He looks terribly cute like that, and he'll hold the position for a long time until I turn around and notice him and burst into laughter. A couple of days ago, he added a new twist to his joke: he had his snout down on his paws in the usual way, but he also had a vine maple leaf on his nose. I laughed hard when I turned around and saw him, but then he made it even funnier by looking cross-eyed at the leaf on his nose. I guess I'm easily amused.

Last updated on 02-18-2005 @ 06:48 pm

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Last night I dreamed I had a German Shepard and a couple of other medium-sized nondescript mutts. The German Shepard liked to smoke cigarettes, so I would bum cigarettes from people, saying, "It's not for me, my dog likes to smoke one now and then." The people I got cigarettes from seemed to think it was perfectly normal. /p/ One thing I wanted to say about Walter, which I got distracted from, was that he has a large vocabulary. If Lance, or anyone, says something like "ride" or "dinner" Walter immediately looks at him for confirmation that that is really going to happen. Walter also responds to the names of people or dogs. My dogs don't have such a strong vocabulary. They know sit, stay, come, and go away, but if I were to say Lance's or Walter's name, I wouldn't often get a reaction. They do respond to noises or movements. If I put on my jacket, they both head for the door. If I so much as crinkle the wrapper on a package of cheese, they are right at my feet in an instant. If I give a certain sigh of exasperation, they will stop horsing around and lie down. If they don't come when they are called, and I start to walk toward their position, they start to come toward me. I think my dogs' limited vocabulary is more a function of the fact that I don't talk much. Walter's vocabulary is amazing, though, and I wonder if I shouldn't talk to Porter and Tess more often.

Last updated on 02-12-2005 @ 10:32 am

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2005.02.10 Thursday Lance brought Walter to visit us today. It's always very exciting for Porter and Tess to have visitors. Walter made his way around the yard, leaving his mark, and Porter and Tess had to add their own comments in each new place. Lance and I worked outside planting cedar trees as a screen for the new park. The park trail comes too close to the house on one corner, so we placed the cedars strategically to plug the holes in the undergrowth and block the sightlines. Of course, these four-foot-tall cedars won't block anything this year, but maybe next year or the year after. Before planting them, we had to cut through a solid matt of ivy. Cutting down to the ground only got us half way there. A whole new layer of ivy was woven into the soil. The soil underneath the ivy matt was very rich and fluffy. It drained well when we filled the holes with water before putting the trees in. It was a nice, sunny day, too cool if you were in the shade but just right in the sun. Many plants had buds beginning to break open, although the maples still seemed pretty sound asleep. Ocean spray had little green leaflets brightening the stems. A swarm of tiny birds drifted in around us, twittering and picking at stems for some unseen prize. Walter found a nice place in the sun in front of the old dog house, in the freshly exposed soil where some ivy had been removed. As I was digging a hole for one tree, Porter was lying in the ivy beside me, with the sun shining on him, and the ivy was like a soft bed made just for him. He likes to watch me work, and he was a picture of contentment. I dug some more and talked to Lance, and when I turned back to look at Porter sleeping in his sunny ivy bed, he had become Tess. She was lying in the exact spot, in an identical pose, as if by magic since I hadn't been paying attention when they made the switch. After we drank the water from the plastic bottles, we gave them to Tess and she enjoyed chewing them apart. I pulled the long hose out into the woods and all the newly planted cedars got a long, deep watering. I plan to water them regularly, regardless of rain patterns, in order to speed their growth as much as possible. Mom planted some cedars about twenty years ago, in the woods about one hundred feet south of there, and they are still less than twenty feet tall. I don't want to wait twenty years before these trees provide an adequate screen. I have now planted over a hundred trees on these ten acres over the last five years, and it will be interesting to see them grow. I planted four Douglasfir trees up on the ridge on 1/1/00: only one of them survived, and it grew rather slowly the first couple of years. This last summer, it really took off and doubled in size, now standing at least seven feet tall. If it doubles again this summer, it will really begin to be a substantial tree. It was a tiny tree when I first planted it, less than eight inches tall, so I've learned to grow them in pots longer before releasing them into the wild for better results. Bigger balled and burlapped trees don't do anything for a couple of years while their roots recover from the severe pruning. A tree three to six feet tall in a five gallon or larger container is the best candidate for good growth in a wild setting. The dogs and I will go back and visit these five cedars often and make sure they are getting everything they need to put on rapid growth. Once they are about twenty feet tall, I'll stop giving them extra water and attention and let their growth slow down so they can have a few years of tighter growth rings for denser, stronger wood.

Last updated on 02-12-2005 @ 12:27 am

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We had planned to go for a walk with Killer in Point Defiance Park. We drove down to Tacoma hoping the light rain would let up, but by the time we got there it was settling into a moderate, continuous rain out of a solid gray sky. Killer's mom and I went to a couple of nurseries to look at plants and kill some time while waiting for the rain to let up. Then we went and had lunch. After lunch, the rain hadn't let up at all, so we just decided to go anyway. Even though I got hypothermia from the walk, it was nice because the park was deserted. The dogs had a great time. Killer barked at the seagulls. Tessie went swimming in the choppy waves. She fetched a stick out of the surf, and Killer stole it from her every time. It's hard to defog the windows of the Blazer with three wet, panting dogs and two wet people in it. It took me about five hours to feel warm again.

Last updated on 02-10-2005 @ 11:47 pm

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Porter and Tessie and I went to the Trilogy development east of Redmond for a salvage event for the King County native plant salvage program. They sat in the truck and watched me dig, most of the time. The location had lots of nice mossy stumps with licorice fern and huckleberry growing out of them. I wished I had a big fellerbuncher so I could scoop up a couple of those stumps and put them in the back of my truck. After salvaging alders, hemlocks, salmonberry, and bitter cherry for the County for three hours, the thirty-or-so volunteers were allowed to salvage for their own projects or parks. I got several sword ferns, and a few huckleberries, but mostly I filled the truck bed with mossy logs with licorice fern. I used my pruning saw to cut them into manageable chunks. I also took great carpets of moss peeled from logs. The mossy logs have all been installed in the garden, and they look like they've been there forever. I draped the moss rugs over logs and stumps in the yard, so they don't look quite natural yet. Hopefully, they will attach to the logs and start spreading.

Last updated on 02-10-2005 @ 11:44 pm

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I am the alpha dog. I never really wanted to be. The day I got Porter, I drove home with him sitting on my lap, 55 pounds of squirming, happy dog. We somehow survived the trip home, and I thought, He's just happy to be out of the pound, and he'll calm down in a few days. Two weeks later, he was driving me insane, and I was very worried that I would have to take advantage of the animal shelter's money-back guarantee and take him back before he destroyed us both. I don't remember how I got the idea--it might have been a dog obedience book--but I finally learned that I had to be the alpha dog to him. I didn't like it. I don't like telling people what to do, and I especially don't like telling animals what to do. People and animals should do things because they are the right thing to do, not because I say so. But, people and animals will tend to do whatever they can get away with. [paragraph break. . . . . . . . ] I started setting boundaries for him. I had let him jump up on me at first, because I usually didn't mind, except when he kicked me in my sore knee, or somewhere even more sensitive, but I set a new rule of no jumping up. I wasn't very consistent at first, but I got in the habit of automatically stopping him as soon as the idea of jumping up crossed his easily-read mind. This one change was a big help. He had also had a habit of chewing through leashes to escape, which was probably how he ended up in the pound in the first place and why his previous owners hadn't bothered to come find him. The first time I tied him up with a medium-thick rope, he chomped through it in two bites and showed up at the other side of the house right on my heels. The somewhat-expensive retractable leash that I bought for him had forty-seven knots in it from where I had tied it back together after he chewed it, and it no longer retracted very well after the first week. The second retractable leash I got him lasted much longer because I began to scold him every time he bit his leash. I'm sure it's a sign of his getting older just as much as it is a result of my training, but now he walks on a short leash, right beside me, and never even thinks of chewing through it even though it would be simple for him. [break. . . . . . . . . . . . ] He trained me to be the alpha. He trained me in many ways. He educated about separation, and how that hurts him, and now I try to avoid being away from him at all if it is practical to be near him. He trained me about the best way to get a dog to come when called. He taught me about myself, in some respects, such as that being the alpha dog doesn't have to be such a burden. If I give the dogs guidance before the trouble starts, I don't have to give them a ton of correction when they get too far afield. Tessie was much easier, partly because Porter alpha-dogged her from the moment they met, and partly because he had taught me how to lead and educate and encourage. One thing I do with both dogs, which has paid off handsomely, I think, is to reward them for doing absolutely nothing. Several times a day, I will go up to them and praise them for just being calm and still and sweet. [break. . . . . . . . . . . ] I would hesitate to say that I love my dogs, but not because I doubt my affection and commitment to them. Rather, love isn't really the right word for it. I couldn't live without them. I would give my life to protect them from harm. I would rearrange my life in order to spend more time with them and provide them with the kind of attention they want. I feel I am a more complete person since they have become a part of my life. When we are out for a walk, I feel like we are a single ten-footed creature rather than three separate beings. It's not love, exactly, but we could call it love just for shorthand in this bit of musing. [break. . . . . . . . . . . ] Do I love my dogs only because they are subservient to me? Whatever answer I give should be viewed with suspicion, since I might be too close to the question to give any objective or accurate answer. With that in mind, I believe that their obedience and general sucking up is not the glue that binds us. I wish they didn't need correction or direction, so I would never have to make them subordinate. I view them as people, not a lower form of animal than humans. I enjoy their displays of affection. I feel comfortable with them because they do not judge me as deficient or inappropriate if my hair is horribly mangled after a rough night of sleep. They don't recoil from my breath first thing in the morning. They don't think I'm stupid when I make mistakes, even if I make the same mistakes over and over again. If I love my dogs, it's because I like who I am when I am with them--not necessarily the alpha dog, just someone they accept and enjoy being with regardless of what I do or fail to do. Whether this is love, or whether it's the product of five thousand generations of selective breeding, I enjoy the relationship, unquestionably.

Last updated on 02-03-2005 @ 09:39 pm

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On Sunday, Porter and Tess and I went for a hike on the woodsy trails of Cougar Mountain with Killer and her mom. When we went to pick them up, I knocked on the door and Killer came out. Her mom said, "I'll be out in just a minute," and closed the door. Killer must have thought she was being taken away from her mom again, because she started crying. I sat down on the step and listened to her sad story. She said, "I liked staying with you before, but I would really rather stay with my mom, so please don't take me away from her again." Her whimpering was so sad and sweet. When her mom came out with us and we went to the truck full of dogs, she started prancing about and smiling in a very definite expression of joy. At Cougar mountain, we took the Cave Holes trail up to Wilderness Peak. The Indian plum was blooming, and the rain held off. the parking lot was full, so I was worried it might be crowded, but after half an hour on the trail we saw people only rarely. Oddly, we heard almost no birds all afternoon. I took a wrong turn at a trail intersection, so we ended up taking the long way back. It was getting dark as we got back to the truck. It was probably an eight to ten mile hike, with at least a thousand feet of elevation gain. The dogs slept in the back all the way home. Some pictures of moss, licorice ferns, and Coal Creek Falls are in the gallery in the Winter album.

Last updated on 01-31-2005 @ 07:28 pm

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Lance brought Walter and Sammy for a visit today. Walter is an old friend to Tessie and Porter, but Sammy was new to them. Porter was first to assert his dominance, and Sammy, a young, skinny black lab, had his hackles up while Porter acted tough. After quite a lot of milling about and sniffing and posturing, Tess barked at Sammy with one short, sharp bark, a bit highly pitched, but not as high as her you've-just-stepped-on-my-tail yip. It was a different bark than I've heard her make before. I've heard her go after the milkman and other intruders with a ferocious, continuous barking, and I've heard her bark at Porter rather softly while they were playing, but this bark expressed something new, it seemed to me. My translation is: "Look, you're new here, but this is my house, and I'm going to be higher in rank if that's okay with you. I was here long before Killer came, but she just settled in like she was queen bee, even though I'm bigger than her and could have kicked her ass if I wanted to. I let her be the boss because I'm good-natured and easy going, but enough is enough, and if you're going to stick around long you'll have to be the low man on the totem pole because you're younger and smaller than me. Okay? Please?" Later, Sammy licked and nipped at Tessie under her chin, which seemed to be a submissive act, saying that he got her message.

Last updated on 01-30-2005 @ 12:59 am

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Today I saw the first Indian Plum flower of the season. The salmonberries have buds, but no flowers yet. The serviceberries are still sleeping. My shooting star poked its first leaves up out of the soil. Many non-native cherries are in bloom.

Last updated on 01-28-2005 @ 11:13 pm

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On December 30th, Porter had been acting strange, as if he were either dizzy or his back legs had stopped working. Yesterday afternoon, he did it again. Killer came over for a visit, and Porter lowered his hips and crept along slowly, moving his head around slowly and oddly. He snapped out of it after a minute, and seemed fine the rest of the day. We all enjoyed having Killer around for the day.

Last updated on 01-27-2005 @ 11:24 am

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The eagles have been very noisy all afternoon and evening. Usually they grow quiet after dark, but tonight, one of them keeps muttering and squawking and screeching. It sounds like it has a toothache, but maybe it's just tired of the rain. For as long as I've lived here, I've always heard a certain owl calling at dusk. Often there are two or more. I had never seen the bird in all these years of hearing it, so tonight I finally looked it up through Google, and it turns out to be the Western Screech Owl. I've never heard it screech. It always makes a calm and pleasing sound. If you Google Western Screech Owl, or go to http://www.owlpages.com/, you can play the audio file. The actual sound is much smoother and softer than that recording.

Last updated on 01-22-2005 @ 08:41 pm

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Tessie has very sharp teeth and a strong jaw. She stopped eating a few days ago and was throwing up, so I took her to the vet, and Tessie now has antibiotic pills to take twice a day. It has been like wrestling an alligator. She tries not to hurt me, but she works very hard at rejecting this evil little pill I'm trying to force down her throat. Tonight, after she rejected one pill and my fingers were sore, I decided to wrap a pill in a slice of cheese. First, I gave her a chunk of cheese with no pill, and then I gave her the cheese-wrapped pill. It went right down in a blink, no trouble at all. When I was giving Porter three pills a day for some ailment, I was coating them in peanut butter, which worked for quite a while until he eventually caught on and wouldn't accept peanut butter any more. If I keep doing the cheese trick with Tessie, I'll have to be careful to wrap the pills completely with no pill surface exposed. I should get some of that thin-sliced turkey to wrap pills in.

Last updated on 01-21-2005 @ 11:20 pm

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Porter and Tess got new license tags in the mail today. Porter had no tag on his collar because his previous ID tag got torn off in a battle with Tess, probably. Tess was downstairs on her couch, and Porter was upstairs with me. When I put Porter's new tag on, it began to jingle as he walked around. This gave Tess the impression that there was a canine intruder, so she started barking her head off. Porter ran down the stairs barking, and they both barked away for a while before Tess realized, "Oh, it's just you." I put Tessie's new tag on and took of an old rabies tag which was hanging by a thread. She is so bouncy and active that her tags wear out just from rattling around on the D-ring on her collar. They only last about a year before the metal gives way and they fall off. That's why I got them collars with their IDs embroidered. But now they have official license tags which just might stay on until they are renewed next year.

Last updated on 01-21-2005 @ 09:09 pm

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Porter ate some mud today. I stopped him as soon as I noticed. He didn't eat the mud on the surface. He dug down a little way to what is apparently the good mud. When you're eating mud, you don't want to settle for the ordinary stuff. There was plenty of mud to go around. My rain gauge says we got about four inches of rain in the last two days. When we went for a walk tonight, it had stopped raining, but the air was thick with moisture. It wasn't fog, exactly, just saturated air so thick you could see it.

Last updated on 01-18-2005 @ 10:27 pm
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I am not inordinately fond of people in general. There are exceptions, with a few people I like, many more I intensely dislike, and the vast majority being a nuisance I could do without. For every good quality I might find in a person, I am reluctant to explore further because it has been my experience that distasteful aspects lie not too deep beneath the surface. People are dishonest, inefficient, self-centered, self-serving, self-defeating, unkind, destructive, and wasteful. The worst thing of all is hypocrisy, a faculty that allows people to say, "It's okay when I do it but not when they do it." All of these negative qualities are evident in myself, especially the hypocrisy, which makes it difficult to solve anything. The lack of a cure for what ails the human disposition is the main reason I am not inordinately fond of people in general. I am inordinately fond of dogs in general. There are exceptions, with a few I don't like, many more I intensely like, and the vast majority being a pleasure that I seek out. And yet, dogs have all the same bad qualities that people do, if not more so. They are lazy, unproductive, self-centered, self-serving, self-defeating, unkind, destructive, and wasteful. They are the ultimate hypocrites, one minute chasing a squirrel with no regard for its feelings, and the next minute looking up at you with sad and reproachful eyes, saying, "Don't stomp after me and scold me--it hurts my feelings." While they can be intensely loyal, I can't help but be aware that my devoted dogs once belonged to someone else whom they've forgotten about completely by now. Dogs have been manipulative little parasites for millennia, and far more of them make a living by getting the couch all hairy and smelly than by herding sheep or guarding property. In spite of all their unpleasant aspects, I am inordinately, unreasonably fond of dogs. Why is that? I'd better not investigate the reason too deeply, or I'll ruin a good thing. Perhaps I could look at humans as merely another variety of bad dog, marking their territory, trying to be alpha, killing and maiming weaker creatures without compassion, expecting a meal just because they want it. If only people could manage to be a little more cute and cuddly as they trash the entire planet, maybe I wouldn't have such a hard time liking them.

Last updated on 01-17-2005 @ 03:43 pm

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As we were walking around the neighborhood this evening, Tess's ears started flapping like a bird's wings when her stride hit just the right harmonic frequency. She was like a little hummingbird, flapping and flapping and getting nowhere fast. Porter's ears can flap, too, but only when he's in a full gallop. When he comes bounding down the driveway at full speed, each leaping cycle is a takeoff and landing, and for an instant in each stride he is flying with his ears out, his tail up, and all four feet off the ground. I would like to get a picture of him in mid-flight, but I've been unsuccessful so far. Killer, whose absence was felt tonight, would sometimes get one ear stuck in the up position, making her look like she was listening intently to something on her right. Human ears are boring--you almost never see them flapping.

Last updated on 01-14-2005 @ 09:59 pm

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Her rightful owner came and got Killer yesterday. They were very happy to see each other. When I picked up Killer's "mom" at the airport, Killer laid herself across her lap and told her a sad little story about how she had wanted to get back to her family for sooo long. When I dropped them off, Killer asked, with her expression and posture, if she hadn't better go with me, but I assured her that I would see her again before too long. Now, we are adjusting to being only a couple of dogs, whereas they formed a Pack of Dogs when there were three of them. When there were three dogs, I would often take one dog with me in the pickup truck while the other two stayed home in the warm kitchen, keeping each other company. It worked out well, I think, because the one dog got to feel special and enjoy my full attention without having to battle the others, and the two that were left behind weren't alone. Now, I can't take one and leave one alone, so I have been taking both Porter and Tess. It's nice, but a little crowded. Porter likes to lay across the entire bench seat with his head in my lap. This works well when he's the only dog, but with two dogs he ends up crowding Tessie clear over by the window, sitting up straight, with only about eight inches of seat to rest on. Killer was always the first to greet me in the morning, not because the others weren't eager but because she strategically positioned herself to block the others out. I would get a kiss or two from her, and pet her for several minutes, and then she would step aside and Tessie would pounce on me, licking my face and kicking me in the head. Now, Tess and Porter can both come up to the bed at once. Porter and Tess are playing with each other quite a bit, but without the third dog, there's something missing. Killer had softer fur than Tessie. She was often bossy, but no one minded too much. We definitely look forward to the next time she comes to play, and we hope her mom will let her come for an extended stay the next time she has to travel.

Last updated on 01-12-2005 @ 06:27 pm

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Porter likes to chew on ice. Every morning, they go and drink from the birdbath next door. Recently, it has been icing over, and Porter likes to take a chunk and hold it between his paws while he chews on it. Tessie likes ice, too, but not as much as Porter. When she got a chunk out of the birdbath, Porter stole it from her. We played fetch today, and they all did very well on the commands. Killer fetched eight times out of ten. Once, when I was asking her to let go of the ball so I could throw it again, she was hesitant to let it go. She started bobbing her head playfully, and then she threw the ball up in the air. What did that mean? Was she saying, "I'll throw the ball and you go fetch"? After dark, we ran around the lake, about three miles.

Last updated on 01-05-2005 @ 10:34 pm

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She is also known as Tessie, Littlebarrel, or Bongo. She can bugle like an elk. She usually does it first thing in the morning, while she's stretching. She likes to fetch, when the other two bullies let her. I took her to Lake Washington by herself one summer day, and she fetched an old stick out of the water several dozen times, very happily. She likes to ambush the other dogs. She never wins any of the battles, although I'm sure she's stronger than both the other dogs, but she always plays this game where she gets ahead of them on the trail and then pounces when they come around the corner. Then Porter or Killer will scold her and she'll go darting off. Tess is almost always a very happy girl. She wiggles with excitement. The vet says she is overweight, which I'm sure is true, but it is a very pleasing chunkiness. You can thump on her (like a bongo) and she likes it, whereas Killer, who is very trim and fit, feels too fragile to give a proper thumping to. Tessie often punches me in the face first thing in the morning, before she bugles, which I guess would make that second thing in the morning. She is just trying to say hello, but she gets too enthusiastic, and one of her big paws, which are hard and rough, will hit me in the face, fortunately before I put my glasses on. Tessie loves Lance. When Lance comes to visit, it won't be long before he has two muddy paw prints on his chest from being greeted by Tess. Lance has been instructed that he's not supposed to let her jump up like this, but she seduces him. Tessie was acquired as a playmate for Porter, who was a horrible nuisance at the time, in hopes that a playmate would bleed off some of the excess energy. We took her on a trial basis from a family who didn't have enough time to devote to her, but after fifteen minutes I knew we would never give her back. At first, I thought she was nice, and I thought she was good for Porter, but I didn't think I would ever be as fond of her as I was of Porter. That didn't last long. She soon charmed me, and now I can't imagine life without her. She is exceedingly sweet, no matter what the milkman thinks. One day, my mom had been gardening when we came to visit, and she had a hat on. When Tessie came around the corner of the house, the hat disguised Mom for a moment and Tessie charged at her, barking, with bared teeth. She looked ferocious until she got close enough to recognize "The Biscuit Lady," and then she was sweet little Tessie again. Sweet little Tessie. At eighty-three pounds, she's about the same weight as Porter, who has a larger frame and bigger feet, but her personality is that of a sweet little girl. She always crosses her front paws at the ankles when she sits down. Her tongue is lightning fast, and she'll smooch you on the face before you know what's happening. She can catch biscuits very well, but she will not speak on command, whereas Porter will speak on command, but he'll let a biscuit bounce right off his forehead. Tessie has traveled to California and Colorado, and is an excellent traveling companion. She loves to swim, and she has webbed feet. She can swim about twice as fast as Porter. She is not great to have in a Kayak. Too wiggly. She has beautiful white teeth. I'm sure there are many other important things you should know about Tess, but that's all I can think of for the moment.

Last updated on 01-05-2005 @ 12:01 am

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Yesterday afternoon, Killer and Porter and Tess and I went into the park to salvage ferns. The common sword fern is a very salvageable plant. You don't even have to be careful of how you do it or what time of year. A section of the trail had not been started by the subcontractor, so I went in ahead of them to transplant ferns that they would have simply bulldozed. On one leg of the trail, I removed a patch of four large fern clumps, and it left a large swath of freshly disturbed earth. Porter is very fond of fresh earth, and he settled into the middle of it to watch me work, which he is also very fond of. Killer was off looking for squirrels, and Tess eventually came and settled in next to Porter in the fresh dirt. As I was working to dislodge a boulder, I accidentally hit myself in the side of the head with the shovel handle. I doubt that had anything to do with what happened next, but I looked up at Porter and Tess, and it struck me that the image of these two dogs sitting in the dirt was one of the most beautiful things I'd ever seen. I recreated the scene the next day, but the photo captures none of the qualities I saw at the time. The earth was rich and loamy, with plenty of sand for drainage as you went deeper into it. The smell of good dirt is one of my favorite smells. It was full of a network of root hairs and decaying twigs. The shovel went into it like a fork into a chocolate birthday cake. Porter had his chin down on his toes, and his eyes were turned up to look at me, showing white crescents at the edge. Tess was sitting up and looking around at everything, listening to the sound of Killer rustling through the ferns and ivy, and the golden sunlight of sunset was angling through her eyes, making them look like jewels. Her eyes are lighter brown than Porter's, and the sun slipped between the fern fronds to set them on fire. The entire scene was very rich and warm, and I thought I would like to paint it if I knew how to paint, because a photograph would fail to capture the qualities I saw. Also heightening my awareness of the beauty of the moment was my relatively recent appreciation for native plants. When I was young, growing up in these woods, the only interesting thing about mundane sword ferns was that you could use a maple branch like a machete and hack them to bits pretty easily, which made a skinny little boy feel like an intrepid explorer. After my recent education about the value of native plants, I have grown to appreciate this ancient and hardy plant so much that I wanted to save them and transplant as many as possible to an area of the park that I had cleared of invasive laurel and ivy. My appreciation for ordinary things, such as dogs and dirt, is opening up a new world to me. For decades I have been ignorant of so many things that I could have been enjoying all this time, and I am now finding more pleasure in free things than I have gotten from all the expensive (relatively) junk I have to navigate around inside the house. It also pleases me to know that many people, including my former self, would be profoundly uninterested in this journal about the wonderful world of mutts and ordinary plants and plain old dirt. Note: I inserted an image into this journal entry by carefully following the instructions for html, but it ignored my commands, as well as my paragraph commands, so you can find the picture in the gallery, in the most recent album, or you can cut and paste the following to your browser address bar: http://www.uselessbay.org/modules/albums/album03/P1010033.sized.jpg

Last updated on 01-03-2005 @ 08:36 pm

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Today was a step forward and a step back. The three dogs did very well on the fetching rotation. I had a pocket full of biscuits, and I rewarded them for coming only when their names were called. One fetched while two watched, and they did even better than before, with one exception: Killer wouldn't fetch at all. She would come out to take her turn, but when I threw her red ball, she said it was beneath her to play like a little puppy. I went and got it for her a couple of times, in order to demonstrate what I wanted from her, but then it began to seem like she was teaching me to fetch. We went through the rotation three times, and Killer didn't fetch a single ball. I didn't keep trying with her, because I didn't want to reinforce doing it the wrong way. Maybe tomorrow. When we came in for the afternoon, I gave them all large bones from the freezer. They were happy to chew on them for a couple of hours. Later, after dinner, we went for a run around the lake, about three miles. It was the first time I had run in a while. I had been walking, mostly, because of sore joints. We had a nice easy pace. I think it might have been snowing very lightly, but it was to light to actually see in the street lights. I just felt an occasional flake on my face. We ran by Aunt Rita's house to see her Christmas lights one more time before she took them down, but we were too late. She's not a procrastinator. My goal is to run 2500 miles this year. I'm off to a very slow start, but it is still doable. It's about seven miles a day, and since I'll be lucky to average two miles a day in January, I'll have to work up to twelve miles a day in December. All it takes is avoiding injuries.

Last updated on 01-01-2005 @ 08:02 pm

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2005.01.01 I should have tried this out before the first of the year, but I'm always late with everything. This is a daily journal, for the year 2005, documenting the interesting and uninteresting activities of two or more dogs. Porter and Tess are the main protagonists, with frequent appearances by Killer, and occasional cameos from Walter. This first post is just a test to see if I've set it up right.

Last updated on 01-01-2005 @ 11:11 am

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12/31/2004
We learned a fairly complex fetching sequence today. Tessie likes to fetch, but before she can ever get the ball or the stick, Porter and Killer (a third dog on loan to us for a while) just pounce on her and ruin the game. It had gotten to the point where Tess didn't even go after the stick any more. I would throw a stick, and that would be the cue for the other two to jump on her. One day last week, I said, This has gone too far. I put Porter and Killer in the back of the pickup and had Tessie out with me. I threw the stick for her several times, and she fetched beautifully. She was very happy. Then I switched out Porter for Tess, and he fetched while the others watched. Usually, he's not much of a fetcher, but he had been watching Tess do it and it really improved his ability, or his willingness. So he fetched for a while, and then Killer had her turn, and she did very well. I rotated through all the dogs a few times. A few days later, I was at the pet supply store, and I asked the friendly, helpful clerk, who I always see there, if having different colors of toys would help the dogs know which belongs to which. She said they were basically colorblind. I got an assortment of colored tennis balls anyway, which worked out well because I could tell whose was whose. Tessie got the green ball to go with her green vaccination tag. Killer got the red ball to go with her red ID tag. Porter's tag fell off a long time ago, and I gave him the blue ball, I don't know why. (Porter and Tess have collars with their IDs embroidered on them, besides the microchips, so I've stopped trying to keep ID tags on them, which often get torn off during wrestling matches.) We used the back of the truck as an out-of-play area again, and I used the plastic tennis-ball-thrower to throw them up the driveway. It worked very well again. I also obtained some empirical evidence that dogs are colorblind because I could see the red ball in the ivy from a hundred feet away, but the dog had to find it by smell. Today, we tried a more difficult variation of the game. The truck was around the south side of the house, full of demolition debris and unavailable for dog play, so I laid a shovel down on the gravel driveway and set that as the barricade for dogs in play and dogs resting. They didn't get it at first, and I was almost going to quit in frustration, but then they finally understood. I think they have learned when I get frustrated and they try to be more helpful. At first, I had to physically place the dogs where I wanted them. Then I gradually worked in the pattern of saying each dog's name prior to each command. I had only ever given blanket commands before, so they were very perceptive to figure out that the command was linked to the name. I would say, Porter, Killer, stay, Tessie come. They got it after a while. We played fetch, one dog at a time, while the other two rested behind the line. It worked very well. They needed a few corrections, but I was very pleased. Tessie fetched more times for a longer distance each time, but they all did the fetching well. Porter doesn't like to give the ball back. He would rather play his own game called I've Got Something and You Can't Have It. It's a game we play a lot. I was able to get him to stop that game and let go of the ball so we could play the fetching game. I was very pleased with and proud of all of them. We went into the kitchen and had biscuits with peanut butter. Well, I had my peanut butter with chocolate. (I apologize for the lack of paragraphs. I typed them in, but the software keeps deleting them. My New Year's resolution is to figure out how to put paragraph breaks in my text.)

12/30/2004
Porter was acting strange today, which isn't unusual in itself, but he was acting strange in an unusual way. We had already been out for one walk, and when we went out later, he was stumbling, lagging behind, and then he tipped over. He got up quickly, and seemed to recover. By the time I had called the vet and got ready to take him in, he was completely normal, or as normal as he gets. I had seen him act that way a couple of years ago, but that time I knew the reason. We were at the beach, before we had Tess. Porter likes to dig large rocks out of the shallow surf. I had been tossing rocks for him for weeks, but on this morning, when I threw half of an old weathered brick, I must have put too much of an arch in the toss, and he ran under it before it came down. It conked him on the head, and he gave a little yelp. Then he picked up the brick in his mouth and looked happy about his catch. As he was trotting around proudly, wagging his tail, he started to go in a circle and then keeled over. For an instant, I thought I had killed him, or seriously injured him, but very quickly he popped up and seemed fine. I was going to take him to the vet then, but by the time we got home he was completely okay. Perhaps this morning he ran into a tree or something when I wasn't looking, or maybe he collided with Tessie too hard. It's possible he had some other medical condition, such as a small stroke, called a Transient Ischemic Attack, but I don't know how I'll ever know. He's not telling. I tried giving him an IQ test of sorts, going through all the commands that he knows, and he obeyed them about as much as he ever did. The only way I would ever know what the problem was this morning would be if I could perform a Vulcan Mind Meld or learn to speak Dog.

12/29/2004
This is going to be a journal about my furry friends for the year 2005. I'm getting a running start so that I can figure out how to use the website. In addition to covering all the exciting news of the day, such as, Tessie played fetch today, I would like to cover such topics as the role of dogs in human evolution, how to be a green dog, how to garden with dogs, and things that might actually be informative to some people. First of all, I must confess that I don't actually live in the actual Useless Bay. It's a very nice place, and I would like to live there if it worked out, but I live in the metaphorical Useless Bay. It has the same topography, climate, shoreline, environmental issues, and the feel of being out of the stream, but it is not actually Useless Bay. My dogs, Porter and Tess, might have been described as useless at one point, and they still fit that description on a daily basis. On the other hand, these animals that were unwanted by other people can, if viewed in the proper light, become stunningly beautiful. If I could afford it, I might like to travel to Africa and view wild lions basking in the sun, and I would no doubt be impressed by their magnificence. My state of mind might be influence by the fact that I had traveled half way around the world to see them, and because I had never seen a lion up close before. That impressive lion would have no particular quality I couldn't find in my own domestic animals, though. If I look at them, I find in them athletic grace, loyalty, mischief, serenity, and exotic beauty. Because this beauty is right before my eyes, I might be inclined to overlook it. The purpose of this journal is to make sure I pay attention to the wonders of nature lying at my feet, although I might also complain from time to time about a muddy mutt having slept in the bed, or similar transgressions. Also, Porter and Tess will help me explore the metaphorical Useless Bay and explain what it is about, from a dog's-eye view.