The Dawgs

Being silly with my teeny-tiny digital camera again. I LOVE that thing.

And I love my boys.

And yes, Jamie, who'll be 10 in July, is waaaaay grayer than Connor, who'll be 15 in August. Go figure. Obviously, being the Most Patient Dog In The World is hard work and gives you gray hairs.

Connor, the Skunk Dog

Jamie, the Coyote

Phoenix, the Maligator

Training gone amuck

Last night Phoenix and I went to the park in Conroy to do some obedience training. It’s a tiny little park in a tiny little town but honestly, last night it had more distractions than a barrel full of monkeys. In fact, if we’d stayed much longer, I have complete confidence a barrel full of monkeys would have rolled out of somewhere. It was that kind of night.

One of my goals this summer is to train away from home AT LEAST once a week. I’m trying hard not to count training at SueAnn’s or Kay’s buildings, which we’re at frequently, because Phoenix has spent so much time there, he is virtually bombproof. While it’s great to have a “perfect” workout in a clean, quiet, matted, gated building, that’s just going through the motions and it’s not doing either of us any good.

What the two of us need are brand new training sites. I don’t worry about whether there are distractions there or not. Just being in a new site is enough of a distraction. Phoenix is 2 1/2. He’s got tremendous drive (food and play/prey) and a wonderful work ethic. He loves to train but he needs work on focusing on me and his work when there are other things going on. Last night’s session was an example of “Be careful what you wish for because you might get it.”

We were just getting started when a squirrel ran across the grass in front of us and zipped up a tree. Squirrels rank right behind cats on Phoenix’s list of “Animals I Want To Get to Know Better and Must Catch One to Investigate and Possibly Eat.” He had a laser target lock on the tree where the squirrel disappeared. Not only was his brain totally focussed on the squirrel, his body had gone into something resembling full rigor. He was totally rigid from whiskers to tail. I tried tugging him in my direction. It was like tugging a cement statue. The evening’s training agenda I had so carefully crafted that afternoon (okay, it was a slow day at work) flew out the window.

First I had to get him back from Squirrel-vania. He wouldn’t watch me, wouldn’t play with me, wouldn’t do anything but obsess about that d*mn squirrel. I did some head holds, some bouncing and finally got him to tug, gradually playing closer and closer to the squirrel tree. The little varmint had disappeared. If he’d shown his face again, I might have climbed the tree and throttled him myself.

After about 10 minutes of this, Phoenix gave up on his squirrel pursuit and was once again “my” dog. I wiped the sweat off my brow, pulled out his dumbbell and was ready to start some retrieve work when something that sounded like the Hound of the Baskervilles launched from a house across the street. A fat beagle waddled onto the front porch and started baying. How could so much noise come out of such a small dog?

Phoenix was clearly annoyed. His reaction wasn’t so much a distraction issue as it was “Someone needs to go make that dog shut up and I’m volunteering.” While I heartily supported this in theory, it was unacceptable in reality and off we went again with a series of exercises to get his focus off the baying hound and back on me.

More hands-on corrections and more Crazy Dog Lady antics (imagine a middle-aged woman doing fake ballet leaps across the park, waving a fake-fur skunk pelt over her head, being chased by a dog with an insane gleam in his eye; honestly, it’s a wonder I haven’t been arrested) remedied the situation.

By now we’d been training for nearly 20 minutes and hadn’t done one darn thing I’d planned. I abandoned retrieving and decided to focus our remaining time working on drop on recalls.

I set him up in a stay, walked 40 feet away, turned, opened my mouth to start psyching him up and my voice was immediately drowned by the RATTLE-CLACKETY-CLACK of someone driving a lawn mower down the middle of the street. This is Conroy, remember. You could walk from one end of town to the other in two minutes but residents get from Point A to Point B by any means possible, including but not limited to ATVs, tractors, snowmobiles and, apparently, lawnmowers.

It was a question of who was staring harder. Phoenix decided he had never seen a lawnmower before in his life. (Granted, when he sees the mower at our house it is, well, mowing the lawn, not rattling down the street). He was staring at that mower like it was some bizarre mechanical creature in need of pursuit. The guy on the mower was staring at me like he’d never seen a woman with a dog in the park before. (Possibly he’d seen my ballet leaping, skunk-pelt flinging act earlier and was hoping for a repeat performance. Or not.) I was staring at Phoenix, wondering what in the h*ll was going to happen next and if maybe, just maybe, we could possibly string together 5 minutes of productive training before we ran out of daylight.

The mower proved less interesting than the squirrel (still up the tree) or the beagle (still baying on the porch) and we did indeed manage to salvage 10 minutes of uninterrupted training before I called it a night.

In retrospect, it might not have been the training session I had in mind but it certainly gave me multiple chances to work through distractions. I also figure it qualifies as aerobic exercise although darned if I know how I’m going to explain it to my cardiologist.

It was a dark and stormy night

If you live in a part of the country where severe thunderstorms are not a part of your weather reality, you haven’t had the joy of being woken up in the middle of the night by a storm phobic dog who is sure every crack of thunder spells impending doom. In my pack of three, Connor is oblivious and sleeps through everything; Jamie is the weather watcher who can alert to dropping barometric pressure two states away, and Phoenix, well, Phoenix thinks its very exciting for the humans to be awake at 2 a.m., watching live color radar on TV. And the Farmer? He doesn’t believe anything the weather forecasters say although he constantly asks me (the journalism and English major) what the weather is going to do.

ACT I
1 a.m., dogs and humans are sleeping. Thunder rumbles faintly in the distance.

Jamie: Poke. Poke-poke. POKE-POKE-POKE!

Me (waking up): Get your nose out of my armpit.

Jamie: Storm coming. We should go to the basement.

Me: It’s thundering 40 miles away. We are not going to the basement.

Jamie: You’ll be sorry.

Me: Go to sleep.

Phoenix: What’s up? Party?

Me: No party. Go to sleep.

Jamie: We should go to the basement.

Phoenix: I’m not going down there. Scary.

Me: No party. No basement. Go. To. Sleep.

Jamie (snort): Fine. Nobody listens to me.

Phoenix: She’s crabby.

ACT II
1:45 a.m. Thunder is closer now. Wind is whipping bedroom curtains.

Jamie: Poke. Poke-poke. Oh to h*ll with it. (Leaps on bed.)

Me: Oooph! Get off my stomach!

Jamie: Storm coming. We should go to the basement.

Me (noticing curtains are blowing straight out): OK, it’s going to storm. But we don’t need to go to the basement. Get off my stomach. I want to shut the windows.

Jamie: Can’t move. Scared.

Farmer: Why is the bed vibrating?

Me (rolling eyes): Jamie says its going to storm. (Shoves 60 pounds of vibrating Tervuren off stomach and shuts windows.)

Farmer: It’s not going to storm. ZZZZZZZZZ

Jamie: Woe is me. I’m going to die.

Me: You are not going to die. You’re rocking the bed. Go lie down.

Phoenix: Party now?

Me: NO PARTY. Go lie down and go to sleep.

Jamie and Phoenix: She’s really crabby.

ACT III

2 a.m. Rain slams into the house, thunder rolls and lightning crashes, illuminating the bedroom in a wash of silver. Outside, wind is howling and tree branches are creaking. Something that might have been an agility jump goes flying by the window.

Jamie (leaping onto the bed): Basement! Now! Battle stations! Full speed ahead! Man the lifeboats!

Me: OUCH! You are a freaking nutcase. Get off my head!

Phoenix (leaping onto bed): It IS a party! I knew it!

Farmer (shoving tails out of his face): %$#?* dogs.

Me (flipping on TV): Since we’re all awake anyway . . .

TV meteorologist: . . . go to your safe place NOW. Repeating, a tornado warning has been issued for -

Jamie: He said go to the basement! LISTEN TO HIM!

Me: That’s for Poweshiek County. We don’t live in Poweshiek County.

Jamie: Close enough!

Phoenix: I am NOT going in that basement and you can’t make me.

From the kitchen: assorted bizzare electronic noises.

Farmer: Now what!

Me: That’s my all-hazards weather radio going off. A tornado warning has been issued for Iowa County.

Jamie (crawling onto the Farmer’s chest): I told you! Now will you listen to me?

Farmer: GET OFF OF ME you big hot hairy panting vibrating dog!

Phoenix (bouncing around on the bed): Party-party-party-party!

Me: Look at that big red blob on radar. Cool.

Farmer: I can’t see it. Get your dog off my face.

Me (grabbing Phoenix): Uh-oh. That blob is headed right for us. Maybe we should go to the basement.

Farmer: You’re the storm spotter.

Me: I can’t spot anything in the dark.

The story ends here because in the 18 years we’ve been married, the Farmer and I have never actually gone to the basement. There have been two times we’ve come very close. Jamie, on the other hand, sends himself to the basement on a regular basis during severe weather season. If the weather gets a bit twitchy, I leave the basement door open and he goes down on his own. This seems to bring him some comfort. Phoenix will not follow him. And Connor usually sleeps through the whole thing.

Fun in the sun

I took today off work and this morning, Phoenix and I went up to Tammy's place and shared a two-hour private agility lesson with her and Seeker from Michele Persian. This is the first time in my life I've ever taken a private agility lesson and it was totally worth it.

Michele was extremely patient with me as it was apparent I:

A) had never seen a dog before

B) had never seen agility equipment before

C) had two left feet, or

D) had two right feet

E) didn't know my left from my right, and

F) was basically clueless

The time flew by and I got tons of great ideas that (providing I get out there and WORK them - WHAT? You have to train this stuff?) will improve my ability to handle Phoenix with more accuracy and a lot less frustration on both our parts. It's incredible how agility training has changed since we lured our first dogs slowly across the dog walk, yelling "EASY! EASY!" the whole time.

Phoenix is totally exhausted. Since we got home, he just lays on the floor and rolls his eyes at me when I walk by. I think his brain is full, too.

Thanks, Michele, for all your insights and thanks, Tammy, for hosting her and providing such an absolutely, perfectly, wonderfully, beautiful Iowa June day for playing agility outdoors.

A study in blue

Blue is my favorite color. Royal blue, navy blue, sky blue, cornflower blue, denim blue, teal blue, whatever. Blue is definitely my team color. So it's little wonder I have lots of blue flowers in my gardens. Here are a few of them.

This is Siberian squill. It blooms early in the spring. A word of caution, if you plant Siberian squill, you will never get rid of it. Never. Ever. This is a small portion of a patch I thought I'd "dug out" the previous fall. So much for that. (Did you know if you double click the pics in this blog, they blow up to full screen size? It took me a long time to figure that out. But they do. Now you know.)


I have no idea what kind of flowers these are. They are a perennial I bought cheap last spring and stuck in an empty spot. The little clump tripled in size this spring and bloomed throughout May and are still blooming now. If anyone can tell me what they are, I would appreciate it. Everything needs a name!


This is perennial salvia. They are gorgeous and very hardy. They bloom May through June. The only drawback is they attract bumblebees. Lots of bumblebees. I'm thinking they should attract hummingbirds, too, but maybe the bumblebees have scared them off. I know they scare me.



These are my very favorite bearded iris. They are just plain gorgeous. That's the newspaper office in the background. It is not so gorgeous.

The dumbbell saga continues

After the fates conspired and Phoenix's PERFECT dumbbell broke, I ordered him a new one from Max200. That was back on May 21. When it hadn't arrived by June 1, I called them. "We'll ship it today," they said. Hmmm, 11 days to ship an in-stock size dumbbell, especially when their Web site says they ship within three days? Wonder how long it would have taken if I hadn't called?

Here is Phoenix with what is left of his perfectly-sized Joe Feist dumbbell.

"This was NOT my fault. Just want to make that clear."

Below is Phoenix's old "training" dumbbell. It is not fit to go in the ring. Actually, the chew marks are not from Phoenix. They are from Jamie. Sweet, patient, gentle Jamie . . . who has teeth like an industrial buzz saw. If the Max200 dumbbell is not satisfactory (providing it ever gets here), I will have J&J make me one just like this. But it won't look like it's been gnawed by a rabid wolverine.

In the meantime, Phoenix has been trying on some of his friends' dumbbells.

"Mom, this isn't going to work."

"I am Petra, queen of the demon pomeranians.
Do not put malinois slobber on my dumbbell."

(Now honestly, whose idea was it to take a picture of a black dog against a black background? But on the bright side, Petra finished her CDX a few weeks after this picture was taken.
Maybe malinois slobber is a lucky charm?)

"You have GOT to be kidding. I could poke my eye out with this thing."
(This dumbbell belongs to Sydney, a PWD who preferred pick up dumbbells by the ends, not the bit. A custom job with monster ends from J&J fixed that problem.)

Will Phoenix's new dumbbell ever arrive? Will it be suitable? Will I end up spending a small fortune again to find the perfect dumbbell? Don't I have anything more important to think about? (No. Duh.) Stay tuned!

Ames agility

The Ames agility weekend was as much fun as ever. Great friends, excellent weather and of course, FOOD! The only bummer was Rilda the Deer Slayer reducing the Linn County deer population Saturday morning. Thank goodness she wasn't hurt, her car is drivable and looks really cool and redneck with the bumper held on with duct tape. Three cheers for Mike taking her tire to get fixed. Wonder if Sophie and Ryelee have chewed the deer fur off the rim yet.

Phoenix and I came home empty handed when it came to ribbons but I am really proud of my wild dog for the way he ran. And the way I ran, too! Probably my biggest overall goal with Phoenix in agility is to change my running style from "spectating" to having my dog chase me around the course at top speed. I got into the habit of being a "spectating" handler with Jamie, who had one speed, a pleasant lope, and I had all the time in the world to watch him as he ran.

Not so much with Phoenix. He loves to chase - meaning I need to be ahead of him - and I'm learning a totally new approach to handling. Some days it comes easier than others. Of course, this means I need to burn a calorie and RUN! (If I didn't have a heart condition BEFORE getting this dog, I'd certainly have one by now.)

Speaking of calories, thanks to Liz for making pancakes for breakfast Sunday morning, Marsha for bringing cinnamon bread and Marsha's parents for bringing cookies and to die for cinnamon rolls. Plus we had orange birthday cake to celebrate Jamie, Sydney, Ryelee, Simon, Breeze and Nina (in memoriam) who all turn 10 this year. Our "1999 models" rock. Not to mention delicious barbecue at Hickory Park Saturday night and DQ for humans and dogs on the trip home. The diet starts to day. Really.

Saturday after supper, I got to tour Wendy and John's "new" house north of Ames. It was built around 1880 and it a wonderfully cool place they have put a ton of work into.

Camping Saturday night was slightly less than ideal. The weather was super but as the Farmer pointed out the one and only time he camped with me there, "It's too d*mn loud." Yeah. He had a point. And there weren't even any severe t-storms this year. Between the sirens, trains, traffic, fireworks, trains, Odyssey of the Mind kids coming back from their closing ceremonies and did I mention trains, it was not a great night for sleeping.

Phoenix gets today off from training. We have a busy week ahead: agility class Wednesday night, obedience workout Thursday night and agility lessons with Michelle Persian on Friday morning.

I should probably go eat some leftover cake to make sure I have enough energy for all this.