Chapter 2 – I Paid For These Classes, We Are Going!

I am posting the second chapter of the Luka Chronicles as I had a 36-48 hour bug that knocked me on my ass, literally. I was so dizzy I was bouncing off the walls like a pinball on my way to the bathroom . Fortunately I slept through most of it. 'Nough said. Here is chapter 2.

Acting on the suggestion of several people in my dog obedience class when we chatted across the nylon fence, I took Luka to the dog park for "socialization" on Sunday. Once again the sight of other DOGS put her into a frenzy of baking and straining at the leash. Luka is a smallish (50 pound) Shepherd/Lab/something-odd mix, but she is a
powerful and strong for her size. When she saw a dozen or so dogs behind the fence, she gave a mighty lunge as if pulling a sled out of a quagmire and yanked me off my feet on and dragged me for about 15 feet on my back on the ice to the great entertainment of the entire park. Once we got through the fence and the people stopped laughing, I let Luka off leash and she had a fine time running with the packs of dogs. When I finally called her & snapped on the leash, my white dog was mostly brown. The field was slightly snow-covered, but mostly churned up mud. I did find out something interesting about Luka’s coat. She has doggie Scotch-guard. At home I vigorously toweled her off before letting her in the house. She was only partly clean, but I wanted to go inside. About an hour later I looked at her and she was completely white again. Hmmmmm. Perhaps I could patent this and make up the cost of collars, classes and incidental chewing accidents.

After this fun day I swore I would get her a pinch collar. I did and we walked several times this past week with the pinch collar (on Luka) with reasonable success.

Last night Luka had her second obedience class that I really was not looking forward to. I put on my leather gloves and after dragging me through the store, we were able to actually enter the ring with the rest of the class. I just dragged her out when she started to bark, but she was a million times better. However, she still could not pay any attention to me with all those other DOGS to sniff and jump on. After about 15 minutes, the teacher asked me if I wanted to try a Gentle Leader collar. That is one that has two loops, one goes around the neck and another goes around the muzzle of the dog. I had noticed that several other dogs in class had them, but they just looked like quite dogs with silly collars. Boy was I wrong! The trainer put the collar on Luka, she jumped up twice, pawed at her nose once and then walked perfectly at the trainer’s side. My mouth fell open. She handed the leash to me and said if she paws at it, give her a treat and say, “lets go.” It was like she handed me a different dog. Luka did not pull and paid attention to me (pretty much for the first time in her life) the whole rest of the class. I would not have believed it if someone told me. At the end of the class she asked me if I wanted to purchase the harness. Well duh.

I can't wait for lesson 3!!!

Patty & Luka, the perfect dog

Random Thoughts

This is why I like photography so much. You take what you think will be a nice picture and circumstances and sunlight you would not get at any other time and chance make it a great. This was taken on our deck, under the picnic table. The vertical bars are the deck rail posts and the horizontal bars are the house siding.

Say what you will about smoking, and I am a former smoker, there was something very sexy about a man lighting two cigarettes and handing one to a woman. (Bette Davis and Paul Henreid, Now Voyager). Or a man lights a woman’s cigarette and she steadies his hand holding the match as the flame touches the end of her cigarette. What a potentially intimate moment between two people who barely know each other. Do not get me wrong. I am glad that people in general do not smoke as much and there is no smoke in restaurants. But, an occasional nostalgic glimpse of the past ……

I was looking through some photo albums the other day, one with pictures of my kids when they were very young (and so was I). The other one is one of my favorite presents from my mom. One Christmas she made personal photo albums for my sister and me, each with pictures of ourselves growing up with pictures of various relatives. She gave them to us many years ago, but I now and then pull it out and have a nostalgic moment. I happened to look through both of these albums because I had dug them out from the many boxes of unpacked books in the basement. It seems every time we move that stack gets bigger. Anyway, I was feeling a little nostalgic and talking to BG about it. And that brought on conversation about our kids when they were toddlers. I said that it was pleasant to look at those pictures, but sort of sad. No not sad, nostalgic for simpler times with simpler problems? Nostalgic for just being younger? I couldn’t quite put a word to the feeling. Definitely a little sad, but a pleasurable sad. Bobby told me that he realized a long time ago that no one gets to be 20 for any longer than anyone else. Wow. I never thought of it that way before, Duh, but it is SO true.

The Luka Chronicles- Chapter 1 - Dogs Aaaarrghghgh!

As promised (or threatened), here is my first rerun. I had to search through three computer memories to find this. Do you think we have too many computers in our houehold? In rereading these chronicls it certainly brought back good memories and quite a few laughs. And, by the way, Luka, while fairly good on a leash, still jumps in the air in a demented ballet chasing bugs, still chases her tail (she hasn't caught it yet) and still will get up suddenly, run into the living room, grab a rope toy and shake it wildly while growling her silly growl/moan. And we love her more every day.

I took Luka to her first obedience class last night. Just getting out of the car was a challenge. I had a martingale collar on her as I knew from talking to the teacher when I signed up for the class that they only used “humane” collars. I could not ever use her choke chain and I suspected that if I walked in with her wearing a pinch collar I would have been booed out of the room & had positive reinforcement pamphlets thrown at me. Note, however the key word here is “walk.”

Luka dragged me at full speed into the store. I knew from previous experiences walking her that I needed to wear leather gloves or the leash would have shredded my palm and fingers. Luka barked and strained at the leash at every dog & person she saw. We managed to get up to the dog training area but we never even got into the ring! She barked incessantly, almost pulled my arm out of my shoulder socket, and was so excited she was not ever interested in food treats; the most food motivated dog I have ever known. The trainer kept telling me to walk her around the store to calm her down.

I walked about 5 miles around PetSmart that evening. However, by the end of the class she would stop barking if I just walked her to the end of the short side aisle. I did get to listen to the trainer for a few minutes at a time and I got Luka to sit and down twice. These are things she knows very well, she just could not even look at me as she was so excited at all the other DOGS. I kept reminding myself that this is why we were there. She needs to learn to listen even with distractions as huge as a dozen DOGS. The trainer promised me that the next week we would actually get into the ring. We waved to the other dogs and dog owners and left store at a slightly more controlled pace. We were both exhausted when we got back to the car, but Luka and I have high hopes. One of my hopes being that our goals will converge by the end of the session and we will both find paying attention to each other and working like a finely oiled machine an end in itself.
Those goals hardest to reach are the most prized.

Exhausted,

Patty & Luka

Tennessee Waltz

When we moved we had a piano given to us. The movers actually picked it up on their way to our old house so it was on the moving van before anything else. BG was an awesome guitar player inn his previous life (before we met) and played in bands up and down the east coast. He also went to Berklee College of Music. I can turn on the radio. BG did not know much piano technique when we moved, but he can’t resist walking by a piano in a store, so he has been playing a lot with one in or living room. And I love it. I’ve always loved it when he played guitar and I love to hear him at the piano. The kids used to complain loudly, run to their room and shut the door when he cranked up the electric guitar, but I always found it soothing and delightful and very special.

I told BG that since we have a piano taking up all this room, I wanted to learn to play. So BG has become my music teacher. BG also recently heard an interview of a doctor who wrote a book about keeping your brain healthy and vibrant, especially as you age. This doctor said that exercise was very important (along with some specific vitamins), but not just physical exercise to increase blood flow. You need to exercise your mental abilities and one of the best things for an older person is to learn to play the piano because it is a completely different thought process and really exercises those neurons. That explains the smoke coming out of my ears when BG explains music theory to me.

Anyway, after a few weeks, I can do scales (both hands!) and some basic chords and arpeggios. Cool. BG has been teaching me some snippets of songs, but yesterday he decided I should learn The Tennessee Waltz as it is a simple song, but one that we both think is very pretty.

Well I can now play a one-handed simple version of Tennessee Waltz. Linda Rondstadt eat your heart out!

Spinning Update

Well, I know how to upload a picture, I think. Here is a picture of the shawl I am making using the pattern from Elizabeth Zimmerman's Knitter's Almanac. I made this shawl previously using a lighter weight yarn. This time I am using Briard hair that I spun. I wanted a warm, cozy, comforting shawl for those dreary winter days when it seems that spring will never come. The briard is my Britty, passed on over 3 years ago, but I have bags and bags of her hair. My son told me that I can never come to his apartment and tell him he is a bad housekeeper, no matter how many dirty socks are on the floor or dirty dishes in the sock. He does not and will not keep bags of dirty dog hair in the closet. And I have six or eight.

Anyway, the brown is Britty hair. The green is from some odd roving I had picked up somewhere or other. It was actually an incredibly ugly green and gray, but it spun up beautifully. And the red is brown sheep's wool that my sister sent me a ton of because she met the sheep and it is really soft and wonderful wool. But it's brown. So I dyed it brick red (color choices are limited when the base is brown). And I think it came out pretty nice. most of the shawl is straight knit in the round, but I am throwing in some knit 2 together then yarn overs. and some rounds I am doing a gull stitch. That and the color changes makes it kinda nice. At the moment I am out of yarn. And as soon as I finish the spool on my wheel of lambs wool, I will start another spool of Britty yarn. Looking at the picture, it looks a little bit like a large brown turd, but I am knitting on circular needles and I am not about to take some hundred odd stitches off the needle. You can get the idea. It is basically a big, round shawl that you fold in half when you wear it. And the Britty hair is wonderfully soft and luxurious.

I also filled in some of my profile and uploaded a picture of me on the couch in my old house with Sophie & Luka. It is one of my favorite pictures. I used to have it as my desktop picture at my last job.

First Thoughts - Thanks Laura

I saw a hummingbird moth yesterday for the first time. Talk about an animal made by committee. It gave the general impression of looking like a bumble bee, of which I often see visiting our deck, but it flits around at speeds that would give a slow, thoughtful bumble bee heart palpitations. Its speed and darting action gives the impression of a hummingbird, but the size is too small and the color is all wrong, again, bumblebee like, black and bright yellow, but the configuration is slightly off. I spent a pleasant two or three minutes watching this visitor to my hot pink geranium. I keep the hanging basket not hanging, on the picnic table on the deck, in my direct line of vision when I sit in the sun room. The colors make me happy just looking at them, and I was sure it would attract interesting visitors. And it did.

I have decided it is time to set up my blog. Ok, I am the last person on the block to do so, but a couple of years ago I had a semi-regular series of emails I sent out to all of dog people I know. I enjoyed the writing and it was satisfying to share the loopy puppyhood of the silliest dog I know. Luka was describing on her rap sheet at the shelter as a “shepherd-lab” mix. She looks like a beautiful white german shepherd. Boy did she pull the dog fur over our eyes. Her face is 100% shepherd, but her personality is 100% silly lab and she has some strain of husky (I think) as no lab or shepherd every had that silly curly tail. I am noticing that I cannot describe Luka for three straight sentences without using the term “silly.” In the Luka Chronicles I went on to write about the addition of a Briad puppy to our household (our second Briad) and it petered out when puppies grew up and settled down.

So I will start this blog with some reruns. Hey, we live in a rerun world. With current non-events as they happen and as I ge the urge to write.

So, here goes!

Now, how do I post pics? Another day.