Let them eat bread

I love this time of year, mostly because I love to eat. The garden is full of all kinds of good things: tomatoes, sweetcorn, cucumbers, melons and ZUCCHINI! Well, my garden is not full of zucchini but friends' gardens are and they like to share. Mostly because they know they'll get zucchini bread back.

ZUCCHINI BREAD
3 eggs
2 C. sugar
1 C. vegetable oil
3 tsp. vanilla
2 C. zucchini, grated
3 C. flour
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. baking powder
3 tsp. cinnamon

Beat eggs well; add sugar, oil and vanilla. Blend. Add zucchini, then dry ingredients and mix well. Pour into greased 9x5-inch loaf pans and bake for 1 hour at 325 degrees. Cool briefly in pans, then turn onto wire rack. Freezes well!

Here are some zucchini in pre-bread form. Two are from Tammy and Bill. One is from Alan at work. Tammy and Bill will get bread back. They asked for it. Alan won't. He didn't. But that's OK. His wife probably made him some.


First things first: zucchini have to be peeled before grating. Here they are in all their naked glory. Eeeeek! Naked zucchini!


Next step is grating. This is the Evil Grater From Hell. It also grates knuckles. But no knuckles were grated in the making of this bread. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, use the food processor already. But by the time I drag it out, set it up, figure out which buttons to push, forget to tighten the lid, splatter shredded zucchini all over the kitchen cupboards, well, it's just easier this way.


Here's the beginning. In the beginning there were eggs, sugar, oil and vanilla. And it was good.

But it gets better. Add the zucchini. Now it looks weird. Who would eat green stuff that looks like this?


The dry ingredients come next. I add them one-half at a time. There's a ton of cinnamon in this recipe. Can you see it peeking out from under the flour? Cinnamon is good for your heart and circulation, I think. Or maybe I'm just making that up.


Here's the batter in two 9x5 inch loaf pans, ready to go in the oven. My loaf pans do not match. Nothing in my house matches. I'm just happy I can FIND two loaf pans. Maybe if I put my glasses on that would help. See my glasses laying on the table in the upper left hand corner of this picture. That would explain a lot.


A good morning's work, six loaves of zucchini bread. And I still have zucchini left over. But I was out of cinnamon so had to stop. For now. The zucchini season continues to run rampant. Must buy more supplies.

Dog Days

According to the Old Farmer’s Almanac, we are in the dog days of summer. This is from July 3 to Aug. 11, usually the hottest days of summer and coinciding with the ancient heliacal (sunrise) rising of the Dog Star, Sirius. I know this because Wikipedia says it is so.

Here are 10 fun things to do with your malinois (or whippet or lab or border collie or whatever you have handy) during the dog days of summer.

1) Let him “help” you pick cherry tomatoes. Pick really fast if you want any with your supper. Don’t set your bowl down or he will eat the tomatoes you have already picked. Yet another lesson I have learned the hard way.

2) Encourage him to investigate mole runs in the back yard. Digging permitted. Actually, digging encouraged. $#@!* moles. To date, no moles have been harmed by malinois, the Farmer or the Farmer’s Wife (although not for lack of trying).

3) Let him “help” you water flowers with a garden hose. Occasionally “miss” the flowers and spray him. This offers hours of amusement. Laugh at the look of total disgust on other dogs’ faces while malinois soaks himself from head to tail while voluntarily waterboarding himself with the hose.

4) Play “Take this to your dad.” This can be played with mail, socks or small household objects. Give malinois the object and tell the Farmer to call him. Much family fun and random shredding follows. Playing with food is not recommended. Playing with bank documents isn’t either.

5) Get the Furminator. Put grooming table on patio. Put malinois on table. Furminate to your heart’s content. Remember to warn the Farmer before he walks out of the basement door into a July snowstorm of mal fur.

6) Let dogs rush back into the house after a play session. See how long it takes malinois to leap onto the Farmer’s lap if he is sitting in his recliner. For best results, do this after a flower watering session.

7) Take dogs for a walk (on leash). Go turf-skiing when baby raccoons pop out of the road ditch and run across the road in front of you. Hope neighbors are not watching. Hope pastor (who lives nearby) does not have his windows open.

8) Blow bubbles for dogs to chase. Proceed with caution, as bubble pursuit by malinois involves extreme jaw snapping and maniacal leaping about. Bonus points awarded if you do this while your in-laws drive by, confirming their suspicions that not only in their daughter-in-law insane, so is her little dog, too.

9) Fill baby pool with water straight from the well. Kick off shoes and stand in pool while dogs splash happily around. Stand until feet go numb (about 45 seconds). Go sit on patio and toss balls into the pool for underwater retrieves. Make sure in-laws see you have a baby pool for your dogs. This will remove any doubt they had about your mental status.

10) Pull weeds from flower beds. Place weeds in bucket. Make annoyed noises as malinois does drive-bys, grabbing a mouthful of weeds and flinging them hither and yon. Chewing on pre-pulled weeds are clearly more fun than having to pull your own. Use extra caution when pulling weeds around tomato plants. Sneaky picking of tomatoes by weed-stealing dog may ensue.

Living for the moment

Today I am a lazy blogger. Check out Susan Garrett’s blog at http://susangarrettdogagility.com/ She has written two great posts about the competitive evolution of dog trainers (July 27 and 28).

In regard to the final stage of this evolution, Susan writes on July 28: “We have moved to a mental place where we enjoy the sport for how beautiful we can make it with our dog. Competing never results in dissatisfaction with the dog regardless of the outcome and all disappointments are experiences we learn from and then dismiss.”

For a long time, I defined success by wins and titles. It was tremendously important to me to have a dog who was nationally ranked, to be invited to the NOI, to carry home my obedience club’s “Highest Scoring Dog” trophy year after year (just another thing to dust; really, why did I want it so badly?!). I seemed to be in a constant state of elation or frustration, depending on the outcome of any given trial (both obedience and agility, I believed in equal opportunity angst).

As the years brought more experiences, I realized my criteria needed to change before I made myself totally crazy — not my training criteria but my “success” criteria. What an absolute relief it was to give myself permission to STOP OBSESSING about being perfect, always winning, being number one, etc. That’s not to say I don’t still train for those “outcome goals” as defined by wins and titles because I certainly do, but they are no longer the solitary focus of my training and showing. And that's why I can look back on our recent 0 for 8 agility weekend and joy of being in the ring and the lessons I learned from it and say, "That was a GOOD weekend!"

So go read Susan Garrett’s thoughts because they’re worth your time. And they’re totally cool. And you might laugh when you recognize yourself in them.

Tomorrow I’ll quit being lazy and come up with something original. Phoenix’s new Invince-A-Bell has arrived (finally!), the Farmer is putting up a gi-normous grain bin at our house and the sweetcorn is ripening. Life is good.

The Glen Carbon report

“If we learn by our mistakes, I am in a constant state of education.”

The learning curve continues! Phoenix did some brilliant stuff at the four-day agility trial at Glen Carbon and I made some really stupid handling errors. Thank goodness for friends who videotaped us all weekend long (Terry and Michele, that would be you.) Watching “game films” was incredibly helpful in figuring out what the heck happened, since I have a hard time recognizing it in the heat of the moment. When the run is over in 30 seconds, it’s really tough for me to pinpoint where things went wrong, especially when my feet and arms seem to be operating independently of my brain . . . which clearly was not operating at all several times. Plus it was just plain fun getting together every night in the motel to plug the camcorders into the TV and review the day’s successful runs as well as those that didn’t go quite according to plan.

Overall, I was really happy with the progress Phoenix and I have made in running Excellent-level courses over the summer. While Novice and Open weren’t exactly easy, they were much less demanding on both of us and not really a true test of our teamwork. I do feel like we’ve made a lot of progress in our teamwork (versus individually running amuck . . . which still isn’t totally out of the question) but we've got a long way to go.

The other side of the coin was continuing frustration with the table. Phoenix stuck it one day (because I was body-blocking him from flying off), did a touch-and-go two days and totally ignored it the last day. Terry thought he was looking at someone walking by outside the ring. Oh look! A shiny object! Apparently he is just like his handler.

Weaves were another source of gray hair. Honestly, weaves and the table are the two things we have been working diligently all summer long but from the looks of it, neither of us had any idea what to do with them. Sigh. I’ll change my training strategy (the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results) and keep after it.

One of the best things about the weekend was everyone’s willingness to offer suggestions on how best to handle any given portion of the course. While this produced a considerable amount of conflicting advice, I am getting better at sifting through it and deciding what is the best approach for me and my dog. This is somewhat of a trial and error process and it probably won’t end any time soon. It’s great to have an instructor or good friends to tell you “do this” or “don’t do that” but at some point you have to decide for yourself what is the best strategy for you.

So often, we measure the success of a trial weekend by the number of Qs or the color of ribbons displayed on our crates. I’ve totally been there, so it’s a new experience for me to look at a weekend where the stats show us going 0 for 8 and call it successful! Being able to run four days in a row - although exhausting - was a great way to learn what worked and what needs work. I think we improved a little bit each day and it was a total rush to run a tricky sequence successfully, knowing that success was due to teamwork, not blind luck (although I’m certainly not opposed to that, either!).

Weekend highlights included Rilda’s wild rice summer sausage (thanks for feeding us, Rilda Sue!); doing some early Christmas shopping at the vendors (hope I can remember where I put things in December); watching Michele’s lip change colors from day to day (she had a little accident while loading her van before we left); a great meal at Zapatos after which we all suffered from “Hispani-bloat,” Tracy’s word for eating waaaaaay too much at a really good Mexican restaurant and four days spent having just plain fun with my dogs and good friends.

Vacation, Day 2

I took this week off and as usual, being on vacation is more work than being at work. Yesterday was crazy busy but today? Not so much. It's been raining steadily since 6 a.m. Not so great for doing anything outdoors but good for forcing me to get after some work around the house. Dust? Yeah, we got dust. Oh, REMOVE the dust? Yeah, maybe I should do that.

Mostly I've spent the day getting ready to leave for Glen Carbon, Ill., tomorrow for a four-day agility trial Thursday through Sunday. That is probably one more day of agility than good sense dictates but the site is lovely and the company will be great. It will be a welcome mid-summer get-away. 

All three dogs are going with and we're stopping to see my folks on the way. The plan is to get to the motel early enough to beat the St. Louis traffic . . . and of course I have an ice cream stop already plotted at the DQ in Hannibal, Mo.

The Farmer is staying home. It's hard to bale hay when you're sitting with your wife and her crazy dog at an indoor soccer arena for 8 hours a day. The big item on his agenda, aside from second-cutting hay, is bug bombing the basement while we're gone. It's not something we can do while any of us are in the house and there is a serious spider problem going on in the basement. Since I have no use for spiders (I totally share Ron Weasley's spider phobia), I am happy to let him tackle the problem. In his words, "Set up the bug bomb, push the button and get the hell out of the house." He's a good man.

Will file a report on the weekend's events when I get home. My major goal is to use some of the new handling skills I've been trying to learn this summer. Shut up and run!

Happy birthday, Jamie!

Jamie turns 10 today! Happy birthday, Big Red Dog!

What an amazing 10 years it's been. I remember the trip to southern Ohio to pick up Jamie in September of 1999 like it was yesterday. Tammy probably does, too! And no, I am NOT sorry we did not stop to take pictures of that log cabin . . . the one with granny and her corncob pipe on the front porch and the moonshine still in the back yard. I swear I could hear "Dueling Banjos" as we drove by.

Jamie, 9 weeks

(the future OTCh., U-UD Ariel's Escape Through Time, 

UDX3, TD, MX, MXJ, MXP, MJP, RE)

Jamie, 3 months

Jamie's legacy is being the Most Patient Dog In The World. Nothing reflects this more than his tolerance of me as a trainer. I put him in the obedience ring when he was too young. I rushed to push him into Open and Utility before he was ready. I tried to make him "just like Connor," my first OTCh. He must have shaken his head in exasperation with me more than once, then slowly and gently nudged me around to his agenda.

Like his Scottish Highlander namesake in Diana Gabaldon's "Outlander" series, Jamie is full of surprises. After a completely mediocre Novice and Open career, he went High In Trial from Open B in the pouring rain at the ABTC nationals in 2004. Suddenly, our teamwork blossomed and he finished his OTCh. a year later. His obedience career was a roller coaster of highs and lows and the lessons he taught me were invaluable.

Jamie enjoyed an agility career that admittedly was not marked by blazing speed but was one of consistency and fun. He was a steady and reliable dog and I never under-valued those qualities even though they rarely found us collecting the blue ribbon when the class was over. I sometimes wondered if he read the course maps in his crate because he was so consistent. He retired with half the DQs for a MACH but I think we would have both been old and gray before getting 750 points. (We may be gray now but we are not old!)

Jamie, 1 year old

Jamie is a wonderful dog to camp with. He is a highly efficient, snuggly heater and camp guardian. Only once in all the years I've camped did I get a bad feeling about a couple of guys who were hanging around the campground. When they loitered close to my set up, Jamie stood up, stepped in front of me and stared at them. They left and did not come back.

He also sparkles with that ridiculous Tervuren sense of humor. This usually involves poking people in the butt with his nose and the list of poke-ees is long. He smiles when he sees people he likes, a happy, fang-baring grin that shows every tooth in his mouth.

Jamie, 10 years old

Ten years has flown by, measured by training sessions, trials, classes, ribbons, friendships, lessons, celebrations and above all, sharing the journey with my big red dog. His current jobs include holding down the couch and barking to alert when the Farmer comes in from chores at night. He is a wonderful "Belgian express" dog, carrying mail, messages and occasionally (VERY occasionally) food from me in the kitchen to the Farmer elsewhere in the house.

This is boring! Where's my cake?

Jamie sends happy birthday wishes to all his friends who also turn 10 this year: Simon, Syd, Ryelee, Breeze and Nina, in memoriam. They are our wonderful '99 models.

Ice cream therapy

Yesterday, Phoenix and I went to visit my dad. I'm trying to get down there at least once a week. It's such a long trip but I know he won't be around forever and I need to give Mom as much support as I can. The hospice staff is really great about caring for Dad and I don't think he's in any pain but it's still really hard to see him the way he is now, basically immobile and uncommunicative. He doesn't smile any more. Phoenix remembered what his "job" was and leaped up on the bed and made himself at home. Dad doesn't have much motor control so his movements are really convulsive and jerky. I know he knew Phoenix was there and enjoyed being able to touch him.

It was an emotionally draining day. On the way home, we stopped for ice cream at this little dairy mart just off Highway 218. I decided Phoenix deserved his own cone so ordered a baby cone for him and a small cone for me. The girl handed me mine, chocolate, of course. It was just the right size, not too much, not too little. Then she handed me Phoenix's  vanilla baby cone. It was exactly the same size as my small! 

Thank goodness that crazy dog has a cast iron gut and no lactose intolerance. I let him eat the whole thing, which he loved. I figured he deserved it; it was a tough day for both of us.

Oh, a fun thing while visiting my folks: there is a huge lake near the hospice house. It has a wonderful paved trail all the way around, about one mile long. Mom, Karene, Phoenix and I went for a walk mid-morning. At one place along the trail, you can buy food from a vending machine to toss to the fish. Mom was armed with stale bread (no need to buy fish kibble). At first, all I could see were a bunch of little bluegills swimming around. Then the catfish started coming up. Holy buckets! Those were some big cats! They must have imported them right out of the Mississippi River (which is pretty close). Even Phoenix got excited when he saw all the splashing in the water. I think one of those catfish could have had him for lunch.

This morning, 'Nix and I had a lovely workout with Michele and Cider at the 4RK9s building. He got to play with Cider and Bea afterwards. This always gives me a warm fuzzy feeling because Phoenix is NOT what you would call "dog park" material. But he loves the Lab girls and was totally in his element playing tug and chasing balls. When we came home, he crashed and I stripped out C3P0, vacuumed and detailed the interior and am washing all the crate blankets. It will be great to have a clean van for the trip to Glen Carbon in a few days. Wish it would stay that way longer!

I think there are some ice cream bars in the freezer. It may be time for more therapy . . .