Tuesday, May 29, 2012
The 3 summers
Most folks agree that Memorial Day weekend marks the beginning of summer.
Meteorologically speaking, summer begins on Friday, June 1.
And don't forget the summer solstice on June 20.
So take your pick: summer is either in full bloom, won’t launch until this Friday or is still three weeks away from arriving.
I’ve got a summer to-do list that is daunting but do-able. There’s something about writing things down and posting them in a place I can see them every day that encourages me to just do it. Many of these things are not of “climb Mt. Everest” magnitude, but they’ve just been floating around in my head in that vague, yeah, I ought to get that done, sort of way.
The first item on the list is seeing the eye doctor. Two years ago I got my first pair of bifocals. That didn’t go well. The doctor assured me my eyes would “adjust.” After several weeks of not being able to see anything through either the distance vision correction part of the lens or the up-close vision correction part of the lens, I went back and informed her the alleged “adjusting” wasn’t happening and could I please have my single vision lenses back. I would just take them off for reading and up-close work.
This has been followed by two years of taking my glasses off and putting them back on about 100 times a day. You do not want to know how many time I have lost them. You do not want to know some of the places I have left them.
And now I’m at the point where my take-them-off-to-do-up-close-things plan is not working so well cuz I’m not seeing so great up close either. The only ones liking this are the dogs, because doing nails is such a pain in the butt I’m admittedly not doing it as often as I should. I’m probably headed for my second “first” pair of bifocals. Maybe they’ll actually be helpful this time.
I finally made an eye doctor’s appointment for later this week. I am resigned to the fact she’s going to give me the lecture about how your eyes change “as you age.” I know this because she’s done it before. She’s very nice but needs to eliminate that word from her vocabulary before one of her “aging” patients clocks her over the head with her purse.
But it will be good to get that checked off the list. Maybe I won’t even have to take my glasses off to do it.
Monday, May 28, 2012
Renaissance Festival
Two posts in one day! (Like that's ever going to happen again.)
Marsha, Tammy and I went to the Iowa Renaissance Festival in Amana this afternoon. The weather was good (no rain, like last year), the food was good (turkey leg, mmmm) and there's something about watching lots of people walking around in truly beautiful and sometimes very odd costumes that makes me feel perfectly NORMAL.
Here are just a few of my favorite shots. These guys had a lot of fun.
Joust Evolution was the star attraction. Pretty cool watching two fellows in armor trying to whack each other out of the saddle. Pretty sure if I was wearing all that and fell off a horse, I would not be betting back up any time soon.
Marsha, Tammy and I went to the Iowa Renaissance Festival in Amana this afternoon. The weather was good (no rain, like last year), the food was good (turkey leg, mmmm) and there's something about watching lots of people walking around in truly beautiful and sometimes very odd costumes that makes me feel perfectly NORMAL.
Here are just a few of my favorite shots. These guys had a lot of fun.
Joust Evolution was the star attraction. Pretty cool watching two fellows in armor trying to whack each other out of the saddle. Pretty sure if I was wearing all that and fell off a horse, I would not be betting back up any time soon.
Summer project
This is an odd subject to write about on a long holiday weekend, but I have started another Whole House Purge. It's one of several projects on my summer to-do list.
I did this about 5 years ago, after the Farmer and I had been living in our house for 15 years. Believe me, a lot of stuff had come in during that time and not nearly enough stuff had gone out. At that time, I wanted to buy some new clothes but there was no room for anything else in our closet. I gutted the closet and purged. That felt so good, I kept on going and did the rest of the house. It took about 6 months, working at it off and on.
This time, my aunt inspired me. She is selling her house and moving. I've gone to help her clean it out a couple of times and . . . um . . . wow. Yeah. Inspired. She was a saver. She was raised during the Depression. Nothing got thrown out. I came home, looked at our house and thought, "I need to get a grip on all the crap in this house."
I'm not a huge saver and I hate clutter, which makes purging easier because a lot of stuff doesn't accumulate in the first place. But it's so darn easy to toss something in a drawer or closet and think, "I'd better save that. I might need it some time." Trust me, no one needs 28 magnetic photo frames. No one. Or four chain chokers. I don't even train with a choker. It's amazing, some of the stuff I've saved.
The purge 5 years ago went well. It cleared up a lot of storage space, which is at a premium at our house (back in 1919 apparently the builders had a thing against closets). Any perceived "loss" was offset by the thrill of being able to open a cupboard and find what I was looking for without the entire contents of said cupboard tumbling out on my head.
This go-around, I started with the bathroom cuz it's easy. Our bathroom is tiny. There's not a lot of storage, hence not a lot of room to save things that are not useful and practical. Then I moved to the kitchen. That was a little stickier but honestly, the rooms we live in and use daily are not bad. I should get through them in a reasonable amount of time.
It's the spare bedrooms that scare me. There are five of them, total, and they are the classic example of "Oh, let's save this! And this! And this!" Not to mention, they're the repository of a bunch of stuff from my aunt's house. Those things won't get thrown out, I want to keep them, but right now everything is piled in a jumble.
Purging is a good project for either summer or winter. If the weather is too crummy to be outdoors, take an afternoon and purge.
My self-inflicted rules for a Whole House Purge are:
1) Do one room at a time. Do not start on a new room until you have completed the previous room.
2) All cupboards, drawers, closets, shelves and pieces of free-standing furniture that provide storage space must be emptied. Everything has to come out. You are not allowed to put it all back in.
3) Sort accordingly to A) stuff to save B) stuff to throw out C) stuff to give to Goodwill B) stuff to donate to the ICDOC raffle/garage sale.
4) This is not a race. Like dog training, it will take as long as it takes.
It's also funny because I find an amazing amount of stuff that does not belong to me and needs to be returned to the friends I've borrowed it from. Ahem. Sorry. Sometimes I find funny stuff, too. During the Whole House Purge of 2007, I found a box of towels that had been wedding presents. (We were deluged with towels for our wedding.) I'm happy to say, nearly 21 years after our wedding, we have now worn out all the wedding towels.
Have a happy Memorial Day! I'm off to the Iowa Renaissance Festival this afternoon, pics to come soon.
I did this about 5 years ago, after the Farmer and I had been living in our house for 15 years. Believe me, a lot of stuff had come in during that time and not nearly enough stuff had gone out. At that time, I wanted to buy some new clothes but there was no room for anything else in our closet. I gutted the closet and purged. That felt so good, I kept on going and did the rest of the house. It took about 6 months, working at it off and on.
This time, my aunt inspired me. She is selling her house and moving. I've gone to help her clean it out a couple of times and . . . um . . . wow. Yeah. Inspired. She was a saver. She was raised during the Depression. Nothing got thrown out. I came home, looked at our house and thought, "I need to get a grip on all the crap in this house."
I'm not a huge saver and I hate clutter, which makes purging easier because a lot of stuff doesn't accumulate in the first place. But it's so darn easy to toss something in a drawer or closet and think, "I'd better save that. I might need it some time." Trust me, no one needs 28 magnetic photo frames. No one. Or four chain chokers. I don't even train with a choker. It's amazing, some of the stuff I've saved.
The purge 5 years ago went well. It cleared up a lot of storage space, which is at a premium at our house (back in 1919 apparently the builders had a thing against closets). Any perceived "loss" was offset by the thrill of being able to open a cupboard and find what I was looking for without the entire contents of said cupboard tumbling out on my head.
This go-around, I started with the bathroom cuz it's easy. Our bathroom is tiny. There's not a lot of storage, hence not a lot of room to save things that are not useful and practical. Then I moved to the kitchen. That was a little stickier but honestly, the rooms we live in and use daily are not bad. I should get through them in a reasonable amount of time.
It's the spare bedrooms that scare me. There are five of them, total, and they are the classic example of "Oh, let's save this! And this! And this!" Not to mention, they're the repository of a bunch of stuff from my aunt's house. Those things won't get thrown out, I want to keep them, but right now everything is piled in a jumble.
Purging is a good project for either summer or winter. If the weather is too crummy to be outdoors, take an afternoon and purge.
My self-inflicted rules for a Whole House Purge are:
1) Do one room at a time. Do not start on a new room until you have completed the previous room.
2) All cupboards, drawers, closets, shelves and pieces of free-standing furniture that provide storage space must be emptied. Everything has to come out. You are not allowed to put it all back in.
3) Sort accordingly to A) stuff to save B) stuff to throw out C) stuff to give to Goodwill B) stuff to donate to the ICDOC raffle/garage sale.
4) This is not a race. Like dog training, it will take as long as it takes.
It's also funny because I find an amazing amount of stuff that does not belong to me and needs to be returned to the friends I've borrowed it from. Ahem. Sorry. Sometimes I find funny stuff, too. During the Whole House Purge of 2007, I found a box of towels that had been wedding presents. (We were deluged with towels for our wedding.) I'm happy to say, nearly 21 years after our wedding, we have now worn out all the wedding towels.
Have a happy Memorial Day! I'm off to the Iowa Renaissance Festival this afternoon, pics to come soon.
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
More is not always better
Today's post is subtitled "A Trip Down Memory Lane" or "This Explains A Lot."
I took my first obedience class in 1974. I was 9 years old, training the family beagle. It was a local 4-H dog project class and we met in an empty storefront at a local shopping mall.
The first 30 minutes of class were spent on “showmanship,” also known as “handling,” or for anyone who actually showed at AKC all-breed shows, “juniors.”
Showmanship was followed by an hour of obedience. Most of this was spent marching around the perimeter of the building, popping and releasing and chanting “good dog” like a bunch of little Gregorian monks. Using treats was unheard of and nobody ever played with their dog, with or without a toy. It was largely a bunch of kids with farm dogs and the evening was considered a success if there weren't any dog fights and no humans got bit.
When our 90 minutes of training were over, we were sent home with the instructions to “Train your dog 30 minutes a day, every day.” This was followed by dire threats of what would happen if we didn’t train our dogs and how our instructors would know who had been training and who hadn’t.
Honestly to God, this was how I learned to train 38 years ago.
Okay, I can cut our instructors some slack when it came to the “30 minutes a day” orders. They were talking to kids. Kids generally aren’t big on practicing anything. The admonition to train for 30 minutes every day was given with the desperate hope that we would, maybe, on a good week, manage 15 minutes of training three times before the next class. Or if we actually did train for 30 minutes, they knew most of it would be spent screwing around.
My parents, however, were very literal-minded people. I had been told to train 30 minutes a day and that was what I would do. Once I started showing at AKC obedience trials, they were even more adamant that I train daily. If I didn’t train, they wouldn’t write the entry fee check. I was nobody’s fool. I wanted to show so I trained. It never occurred to anyone involved that perhaps 30 minutes of training, day in, day out, would not produce optimal learning for every dog.
But I enjoyed it. Jury is out on how the dogs felt, but I remember my two 4-H dogs being relatively happy workers in spite of the jerk-and-yank methods I employed. Could they have been happier workers if I’d used kinder and gentler methods? No doubt. But this was the 1970s. The power of the cookie would not reach the Midwest for another 20 years.
Flash forward to the present. Thirty minutes a day is usually overkill for Phoenix but I have a hard time knowing when to say when. I love interacting with my dogs and it’s easy to push beyond the time frame where the dog is actively engaging with me and slip into cookie bribery in order to keep my dog from saying "Enough already" and tuning out.
Bad trainer. Bad, bad, bad.
This summer (okay, it’s not summer yet but it’s been so dang summer-like around here it feels like we’re a month into a season that hasn’t even started yet), one of my goals is to pay better attention to what Phoenix is telling me about the length of our sessions. If he wants to go on we’ll go on. If he’s starting to fade, I’ll set up something to get effort and enthusiasm, then end the session. Some days, we’ll just take the day off and not train at all.
I’ve learned that A) begging my dog to participate in training, B) bribing my dog to participate in training or C) forcing my dog to participate in training is not going to get us where I want to go. This has meant getting over the “train 30 minutes a day” mantra that was carved into my psyche at a tender young age.
I realize this is a weird problem to have. Lots of people love their dogs but struggle to find motivation to train, so over-training is never a problem for them. The up side of forming this habit 38 years ago is that training is very much a part of my daily routine. I look forward to it and I schedule time to make it happen. I just need to pay more attention to my dog and less attention to the clock.
I took my first obedience class in 1974. I was 9 years old, training the family beagle. It was a local 4-H dog project class and we met in an empty storefront at a local shopping mall.
The first 30 minutes of class were spent on “showmanship,” also known as “handling,” or for anyone who actually showed at AKC all-breed shows, “juniors.”
Showmanship was followed by an hour of obedience. Most of this was spent marching around the perimeter of the building, popping and releasing and chanting “good dog” like a bunch of little Gregorian monks. Using treats was unheard of and nobody ever played with their dog, with or without a toy. It was largely a bunch of kids with farm dogs and the evening was considered a success if there weren't any dog fights and no humans got bit.
When our 90 minutes of training were over, we were sent home with the instructions to “Train your dog 30 minutes a day, every day.” This was followed by dire threats of what would happen if we didn’t train our dogs and how our instructors would know who had been training and who hadn’t.
Honestly to God, this was how I learned to train 38 years ago.
Okay, I can cut our instructors some slack when it came to the “30 minutes a day” orders. They were talking to kids. Kids generally aren’t big on practicing anything. The admonition to train for 30 minutes every day was given with the desperate hope that we would, maybe, on a good week, manage 15 minutes of training three times before the next class. Or if we actually did train for 30 minutes, they knew most of it would be spent screwing around.
My parents, however, were very literal-minded people. I had been told to train 30 minutes a day and that was what I would do. Once I started showing at AKC obedience trials, they were even more adamant that I train daily. If I didn’t train, they wouldn’t write the entry fee check. I was nobody’s fool. I wanted to show so I trained. It never occurred to anyone involved that perhaps 30 minutes of training, day in, day out, would not produce optimal learning for every dog.
But I enjoyed it. Jury is out on how the dogs felt, but I remember my two 4-H dogs being relatively happy workers in spite of the jerk-and-yank methods I employed. Could they have been happier workers if I’d used kinder and gentler methods? No doubt. But this was the 1970s. The power of the cookie would not reach the Midwest for another 20 years.
Flash forward to the present. Thirty minutes a day is usually overkill for Phoenix but I have a hard time knowing when to say when. I love interacting with my dogs and it’s easy to push beyond the time frame where the dog is actively engaging with me and slip into cookie bribery in order to keep my dog from saying "Enough already" and tuning out.
Bad trainer. Bad, bad, bad.
This summer (okay, it’s not summer yet but it’s been so dang summer-like around here it feels like we’re a month into a season that hasn’t even started yet), one of my goals is to pay better attention to what Phoenix is telling me about the length of our sessions. If he wants to go on we’ll go on. If he’s starting to fade, I’ll set up something to get effort and enthusiasm, then end the session. Some days, we’ll just take the day off and not train at all.
I’ve learned that A) begging my dog to participate in training, B) bribing my dog to participate in training or C) forcing my dog to participate in training is not going to get us where I want to go. This has meant getting over the “train 30 minutes a day” mantra that was carved into my psyche at a tender young age.
I realize this is a weird problem to have. Lots of people love their dogs but struggle to find motivation to train, so over-training is never a problem for them. The up side of forming this habit 38 years ago is that training is very much a part of my daily routine. I look forward to it and I schedule time to make it happen. I just need to pay more attention to my dog and less attention to the clock.
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
First cutting hay
All our sunny, dry weather has been good for hay-making. We could really use a soaking rain but the Farmer says it can just wait until he's done with first cutting hay.
This is a great field for walking the dogs once the hay is made. If there are still bales in the field, Phoenix likes to jump up on them and survey his kingdom.
The Farmer makes mostly big round bales for feeding cattle. He'll square bale a field once in a while but that's a lot more work.
After a field is baled, the individual bales are moved (either one at a time, with a front-mounted bale stabber or six at a time on a bale mover, depending on the field) into the hoop building where they're stacked three high.
Then it's off to another field, plus the waterways in row cropped fields are mowed and baled, too. More great dog-walking spots!
This is a great field for walking the dogs once the hay is made. If there are still bales in the field, Phoenix likes to jump up on them and survey his kingdom.
The Farmer makes mostly big round bales for feeding cattle. He'll square bale a field once in a while but that's a lot more work.
After a field is baled, the individual bales are moved (either one at a time, with a front-mounted bale stabber or six at a time on a bale mover, depending on the field) into the hoop building where they're stacked three high.
Then it's off to another field, plus the waterways in row cropped fields are mowed and baled, too. More great dog-walking spots!
Thursday, May 17, 2012
Soulmate
I wanted to title this post “How to be an optimistic and self-motivated trainer for high-end obedience achievement when it seems like you’re the only one who cares” but it wouldn’t fit on the subject line.
Nevertheless, the question has arisen. How DOES one stay optimistic and forward-thinking while working toward obedience goals with an incredibly talented dog who has some hang-ups when you don’t have a ginormous support network of nearby personal instructors and/or an abundance of like-minded friends who can regularly offer support and feedback?
When it comes to staying the course mentally, I count myself fortunate in two respects:
A) I have always been very happy and very comfortable training by myself. Probably too happy and too comfortable. I like training by myself because I can use MY time to MY advantage for MY dog. It’s all about ME. I can train when and where I want to and focus entirely on what I think is important that day and still be home in time to watch “Criminal Minds.”
Of course, this has the obvious drawback of never getting any feedback and I always have to put out my own gloves and articles.
B) I have a small circle of friends who I routinely round up for a group training session where we help one another with our dogs. Of course we’re all going a dozen different directions with work and family demands so it’s hard to meet very often but our sessions — while erratically scheduled — are tremendously valuable, not only from a training perspective but from a motivational standpoint.
Sometimes there are four or five of us, other times, only two. We all have different goals and different issues to address. The important thing is that we are there for each other. Advice and suggestions are always given from the heart, no matter the level of training experience. I love my obedience friends!
But since 98 percent of my training is still done by myself, the thing that keeps me going is the simple enjoyment of working with my dog. I love training time with him, learning how to teach him new things, to build his confidence, to share the joy that bubbles out of him when he does something he loves and to let him share the delight I reflect back at him. Does that sound really dumb? I hope not. I love this dog. The desire to bring out the best in him is what drives me.
And I simply enjoy obedience training more than any other dog sport. I know this puts me in the minority. But! I have tons of wonderful friends who don’t show in obedience at all but sometimes there are training elements that transcend a single discipline and can be applied to obedience work as well as agility training. So I think cross-training helps, too. And it keeps me from bogging down both myself and Phoenix with obedience overload.
Plus, with Phoenix I’m paying a lot more attention to the subtleties of canine body language than ever before. I’m trying some training methods that are totally new to me. I’m finding more joy in the journey than I have with previous dogs. While it would have been awesome to fly from UD to UDX/OTCh. in a matter of months, I would have missed out on a lot of learning.
Letting go of deadlines helped, too. I used to see levels of achievement (as represented by titles: CD, CDX, UD, etc.) all neatly organized into time slots. X title would be achieved in X year, followed by X title six months later, etc. Obviously Phoenix does not see it quite the same way. Things will take as long as they take. I’ve let go of a lot of the frustration and disappointment that used to come with what I perceived to be his inability to “get it” in my pre-determined time allotment.
By the same token, I’ve quit linking the concept of fun and success to a specific ring achievement. Have we earned his UDX? No. Are we having fun training? Absolutely! We’ll keep having fun and I believe eventually it will transfer into the ring and eventually the AKC will send me a certificate validating what I already know - my dog is capable of doing some very high-end work.
But basically, I just enjoy being with my dog. We are soulmates.
Readers, how about you? What keeps you training when things get tough?
Nevertheless, the question has arisen. How DOES one stay optimistic and forward-thinking while working toward obedience goals with an incredibly talented dog who has some hang-ups when you don’t have a ginormous support network of nearby personal instructors and/or an abundance of like-minded friends who can regularly offer support and feedback?
When it comes to staying the course mentally, I count myself fortunate in two respects:
A) I have always been very happy and very comfortable training by myself. Probably too happy and too comfortable. I like training by myself because I can use MY time to MY advantage for MY dog. It’s all about ME. I can train when and where I want to and focus entirely on what I think is important that day and still be home in time to watch “Criminal Minds.”
Of course, this has the obvious drawback of never getting any feedback and I always have to put out my own gloves and articles.
B) I have a small circle of friends who I routinely round up for a group training session where we help one another with our dogs. Of course we’re all going a dozen different directions with work and family demands so it’s hard to meet very often but our sessions — while erratically scheduled — are tremendously valuable, not only from a training perspective but from a motivational standpoint.
Sometimes there are four or five of us, other times, only two. We all have different goals and different issues to address. The important thing is that we are there for each other. Advice and suggestions are always given from the heart, no matter the level of training experience. I love my obedience friends!
But since 98 percent of my training is still done by myself, the thing that keeps me going is the simple enjoyment of working with my dog. I love training time with him, learning how to teach him new things, to build his confidence, to share the joy that bubbles out of him when he does something he loves and to let him share the delight I reflect back at him. Does that sound really dumb? I hope not. I love this dog. The desire to bring out the best in him is what drives me.
And I simply enjoy obedience training more than any other dog sport. I know this puts me in the minority. But! I have tons of wonderful friends who don’t show in obedience at all but sometimes there are training elements that transcend a single discipline and can be applied to obedience work as well as agility training. So I think cross-training helps, too. And it keeps me from bogging down both myself and Phoenix with obedience overload.
Plus, with Phoenix I’m paying a lot more attention to the subtleties of canine body language than ever before. I’m trying some training methods that are totally new to me. I’m finding more joy in the journey than I have with previous dogs. While it would have been awesome to fly from UD to UDX/OTCh. in a matter of months, I would have missed out on a lot of learning.
Letting go of deadlines helped, too. I used to see levels of achievement (as represented by titles: CD, CDX, UD, etc.) all neatly organized into time slots. X title would be achieved in X year, followed by X title six months later, etc. Obviously Phoenix does not see it quite the same way. Things will take as long as they take. I’ve let go of a lot of the frustration and disappointment that used to come with what I perceived to be his inability to “get it” in my pre-determined time allotment.
By the same token, I’ve quit linking the concept of fun and success to a specific ring achievement. Have we earned his UDX? No. Are we having fun training? Absolutely! We’ll keep having fun and I believe eventually it will transfer into the ring and eventually the AKC will send me a certificate validating what I already know - my dog is capable of doing some very high-end work.
But basically, I just enjoy being with my dog. We are soulmates.
Readers, how about you? What keeps you training when things get tough?
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
A few of my favorite things
Here are a few more red Solo cup pics.
Who knew that could be so much fun.
Crazy eye.
Jamie was just out of the frame to the left.
An obvious threat.
Here are the snapdragons that refuse to die.
They are annuals.
They lived through last winter.
I'm not complaining.
Love, love, love my iris.
Even when they fall over.
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