Cat wrangling, Part II

My descent into crazy cat lady-ness continues, and I’ve drug the Farmer along with me.

If you tuned in for yesterday’s episode, you’re familiar with my epic fail in the attempt to capture Wild and take her to the vet to be spayed. Instead, I took the big gray tomcat, Bonus, who fortunately for me (and unfortunately for him) was totally fine with being picked up and put in a dog crate.

I spent yesterday afternoon contemplating how, exactly, I was going to catch Wild, since I’d pretty much established myself as Public Enemy Number One in her eyes. My failed “scoop up the cat quick and put her in a crate before she knows what’s happening” attempt had probably dissolved six months of trying to earn her trust. As far as she was concerned, I was extremely unstable.

The feline biological clock was ticking. Cat “breeding season” in these parts begins in February, with the first spring litters on the ground in March, give or take a little due to the weather - warm weather creates lusty cats. I didn’t have another six months to coax Wild into even the slightest pseudo friendship so I could attempt another capture. Even with Bonus out of the picture as a kitty baby daddy, I was sure our township was not lacking in other wandering tomcats looking for a good time.

The Farmer has  a live trap that he uses for capturing critters who end up in the wrong place on our farm - mostly raccoons. They are quickly dispatched with the .22 because doing catch-and-release with raccoons in the country is laughable (from the raccoon’s point of view). For every raccoon you relocate, there are three more willing to move into the barn, machine shed or silo. Don’t laugh. The Farmer has flipped the gears to fill the feeder wagon with silage and had raccoons come flying out of the silage chute. A raccoon fell out of the rafters in the machine shed and broke the outside window off my van. We wage a constant battle with raccoons. Disney-esque raccoons are cute little masked bandits. Iowa raccoons tear things up, crap everywhere (seriously, everywhere) and carry diseases.

Occasionally, we catch a skunk in the trap. No. Wait. I am not using the royal “we” this time. The Farmer occasionally catches a skunk. I had nothing to do with it.

No one in their right mind would deliberately trap a skunk. We’ve had several accidental skunk-trappings over the years (and one that was on purpose when a skunk decided to make a den near the house this summer). Accidental or deliberate, it raises an entirely new problem - get close enough to open the trap door and set the skunk free and risk getting sprayed by a frightened skunk or shoot the skunk in the trap and be guaranteed of an explosion of stink. It never ends well for any of the parties involved.

I decided the live trap was probably the best chance of catching Wild. Of course, we have five other cats and I figured Murphy’s Law being what it is, I would repeatedly catch Winnie, Bonus, Siren, Weezel and Gryphon while Wild sat on a hay bale and licked her paws and laughed.

I texted the Farmer with my request: please put live trap in garage.

I had formulated another careful plan that involved putting the trap near where I usually feed the cats, putting food in the trap and letting Wild go in and out without the trap being set, then after a couple of days of becoming accustomed to it, actually setting it. Even a set and baited trap is no guarantee of catching the critter that springs it. Raccoons have proven this ad nauseum. With a little luck, I might be able to catch and deliver her to the vet in a couple of weeks.

The Farmer replied to my text with his usual speed. That is to say, he didn’t reply. I figured he was at another farm or too busy to concern himself with cats.

Four hours later, I got a text back: Caught your cat.

I considered this for a minute. Not only had he put the trap in the garage, he’d baited it, set it and managed to catch Wild? In a matter of hours? Incredible.

Then I called him to confirm exactly which cat he’d caught. With my luck, we’d had one of our not uncommon failures in communication and he thought I wanted to catch one of the other cats. Which could be accomplished by walking out the back door and tripping over them.

But yes, he had caught Wild. I confirmed this by asking a series of very specific questions, just to make sure. Was it the yellow cat? It’s the yellow cat, right? That yellow one?

These were all affirmative. What did I want him to do with her?

Could he take her over to the vet clinic?

Negatory, too busy to mess with cats today. Should he let her go?

I may have had a brief moment of screeching incoherence: HOLYCRAPHELLNODON’TLETHERGOI’LLNEVERCATCHHERAGAIN!”

And so it was decided he would leave the live trap, containing Wild, in the garage. I would call the vet to confirm they could fit her into their schedule to be spayed the next day. Then I would come home, pick her up and deliver her to the vet.

He did and I did and they could so I did.

I got home, popped the hatch on R2, chucked out my lawn chair, Phoenix’s tent crate, a couple of crate pads, a blanket, two sets of scent articles and the water jug I forgot to take back in the house after going to train last week, and set Wild in the back. If I thought she was angry this morning, it was only a shadow of her mood now. For exactly half a second I considered trying to transfer her to a dog crate, then came to my senses. I may be crazy but I’m not stupid. I’d warned the vet’s office about the temperament of this creature - angry, wild, scared demon spawn. They assured me they could handle it. I have great faith in them.

We were about halfway to the clinic when I noticed the interior of my van was starting to smell like a previous resident of the trap. The scent of eau de skunk gained strength as we drove. I may have been the only person in Iowa driving with her windows down on a balmy January day when the mercury had risen to a whole 8 degrees. Please refer to the crazy/not stupid comment above.

I had to take Bonus home from the vet’s in order to free up cage space. Apparently there were no vacancies at the veterinary motel. Bonus was retrieved and put in the small Vari-Kennel I’d brought him to the office in. He looked stoned. Good  kitty. It would be a peaceable trip home. I thanked the staff and apologized again for bringing them a wild cat in a stinky cage. In the grand scheme of things, this is probably not the worse thing they’ve ever had to deal with.

I took off for home in the skunk-stink-mobile, with Bonus ensconced in the back. We hadn’t been on the road for long when I caught a whiff of some new odor rising above the residual skunk stink. Tomcat urine. I drove faster.

When I got home, I carried Bonus down to the basement. He’d earned a night in the house, albeit in a crate. I wasn’t optimistic about his discretion in using a litter box if left to his own devices. Turned out he was just fine and the critter who had the biggest problem was Phoenix, who went back to his OCD “There is a cat in the basement and I must stare at the door because maybe I can make the cat teleport into the kitchen” behavior.

Today is day five of the cat saga. It started on Sunday, when I brought the Adorables inside because of excruciating and dangerous windchills. Tomorrow, I will pick Wild up from the vet. She will stay in the basement over the weekend, to give her a few days in a clean and warm environment to heal. I have no clue how I’ll get her from the small carrier into a bigger crate. Hopefully we’ll have a special bonding moment. Hopefully it won’t resemble the special bonding moment that started all of this.

In the  meantime, I still have the windows cracked on R2 and Febreeze is on my shopping list.

Cat wrangling 101

In my defense, I had a plan. It was a good plan. It was a well thought out plan. I had rehearsed the plan in my mind. I had set up every aspect of this plan to ensure success. I was confident that it would be executed smoothly and without undue angst to any of the parties involved.

It didn’t work.

Not only didn’t it work, it failed on a level of spectacularity that defies words. I am happy about two things. Number one, I did not get hurt. Number two, there were no witnesses. This was the sort of thing that makes the Farmer shake his head and walk away, then later, give me The Look when I try to talk about it.

Anyone who has tried to put a cat somewhere the cat does not want to go will understand.

The plan was to scoop up Wild this morning, stick her in a crate and take her to the vet to be spayed. Next week I would repeat the plan and take Bonus, the big gray tomcat, to the vet to be neutered. That would ensure the cat population on our farm was safely removed from the reproducing gene pool.

I think things started to go wrong about six months ago when I named her Wild.

Wild is essentially wild. She is a little yellow tiger striped cat with big yellow eyes and bobcat tufts of fur on the tips of her ears. She was born on our farm last spring and gradually moved from the outbuildings into the garage/machine shed where I feed the rest of the cats.

Wild and I had advanced our relationship to the point where I could pet her, providing she was distracted with a bowl of food and providing I didn’t get too familiar. Petting was restricted to happy cat butt scratches and fondling of her neck and ears. It was all good. There was no holding, cuddling or other manipulation of said cat. We existed in a contented plane of existence where we both knew our roles.

Then I decided she needed to be spayed. This is a non-negotiable issue. I don’t want multiple litters of feral kittens every year. I formed a simple plan. I’d pet her while she was eating, then quick as a flash I’d scoop her up, toss her in the little Vari-Kennel I use for transporting cats to and from the vet and we’d head on down the road. No prob. What could go wrong?

It wasn't my first day at the rodeo. I was prepared. I had the crate sitting nearby, door open. (This was extremely optimistic because as it turned out, it really didn’t matter if the door was open, closed or missing.) I was wearing heavy gloves and my Nanook of the North parka, A) because it was -4 degrees and B) to ensure protection of vital organs. Looking back, I think if I’d been wearing my Carhartt coveralls and the Farmer’s welding gauntlets and helmet things might have gone a little better. Chain mail would have been my second choice.

I called the cats. I poured their food in the pan. I waited until Wild was settling into her meal. I stroked her back. She arched up under my hand. I scratched her ears. She leaned companionably into my fingers. I gripped the scruff of her neck, scooped my other hand under her tummy and lifted, confident I could transport a smallish cat the distance of perhaps two feet without anything going wrong.

Wild begged to differ.

Did you know cats are capable of turning from solid to liquid? I think I should be awarded a Nobel Prize for my work in the field of this new  scientific principle.

The first hint that I was in trouble was the subtle shifting under my hands when Wild changed from a five-pound relatively domesticated farm cat to five-pounds of hissing, yowling, fur-covered demon spawn. How many toes does a normal cat have? Four on each paw? And one claw per toe? That adds up to 487 razor sharp claws slicing and digging at any available surface. There were claws embedded in the leg of my jeans and the arm of my coat. There were claws whizzing through the air near my face. I realized that my scruff-and-scoop plan might have been a tad optimistic. I realized the only part of this situation that I actually controlled was the two square inches of fur I was gripping  on the back of her neck. I realized this was not going to end well.

Wild transformed into her liquified cat state and in doing so, grew at least two more legs and 63 more claws. She found more places to embed the claws that weren’t spinning like ninja blades of death past my head. The volume of angry demon spawn squalling issuing forth from this small creature was startling. I don’t know if bodily fluids were leaking out of her but it was a distinct possibility they were going to leak out of me. I was afraid of what would happen if I turned her loose. I was afraid of what would happen if I didn’t.

In the end, Wild resolved the issue by slithering out of what I had thought was a death grip on her scruff. She bolted into the depths of the machine shed. Her yowls and my swearing echoed in the silence. A few tufts of fur drifted down on the cold morning air.

Bonus, the big gray tomcat, looked at me. I looked at him. I picked him up. I put him in the crate. I shut the door.

After all, I had an appointment at the vet’s office to get a cat altered. Darned if I wasn’t going to produce a cat.

Now is the winter of our discontent

Prologue:  Last week I called the vet to make an appointment for Wild, the half-grown yellow kitten who makes up 1/6^th of our farm’s feline population.

“She needs to be spayed,” I said. “Or possibly he needs to be neutered. I really don’t know. I’ll let you decide.”

Fortunately, my vet understands these things. It’s really hard to tell the sex of a cat by looking at its face. Said cat is not tame enough for further inspection.

“But,” I continued, “I’m not sure I’ll be able to catch her/him, so if I can’t, I’ll bring Bonus instead, he needs to be neutered.”

“Bonus?’

“Yeah, Bonus. A cat I didn’t need or want. He just showed up. Like a bonus. Bonus Cat.”

“Okay . . . are you sure he needs neutered?”

“Yeah. So can you just schedule me to bring in a cat of one sex or the other and you can proceed accordingly?”

My vet’s office is great. That’s why I always pay my bills on time. I never know what I might need them to do for me next.

Present day: This morning I scooped up the Adorables – Gryphon, Siren and Weezel – and moved them into the basement. We’re heading into a mini ice age here in Iowa with air temps forecast lower than -20 tonight and wind chill values of -30 to -40. The high temp tomorrow will be -15. This is wrong on so many different levels I don’t know where to start.

The Farmer assured me the Adorables would be fine in the garage, out of the elements and snug in their insulated cat box but since this is their first winter, I decided they could stay in the basement for a few days.

The kittens, now 10 months old, are swaddled in thick fur coats and look like denizens of some Arctic planet. If George Lucas had put cats on Hoth in “Return of the Jedi,” they would look like the Adorables. However, I am not convinced that they are all that bright when it comes to winter survival skills. Bringing them into the basement for a few days brought me peace of mind about their well-being. At least, it was supposed to.

Nothing these kittens do is very peace-inducing. They are constantly in some degree of trouble. I had to rescue the Fed Ex guy yesterday when Siren got into his truck. He had pulled up in front of the house and opened his truck door, then disappeared into the back to get a package. Siren put her paws on the first step, looked around, then, tail waving jauntily, leaped up the steps and into the cab. She was not the least bit repentant when I captured her and apologized to the Fed Ex guy, who was balancing a 60-pound box of dog food and clearly wondering how he was going to explain taking a header out of his truck because he tripped over a cat.

So the kittens came in the house this morning. It wasn’t the first time they’ve been in the house. It was the first time they’ve been in the house with permission. I wondered if this was the start of my descent into crazy cat lady status.

I gave them food, water, litter pans and a couple of cardboard boxes to entertain themselves with. They settled in with apparent gratefulness. That is to say, they immediately started prowling around in the shadowy corners, knocking things over and coming out draped with cowebs. Our basement is a veritable feline Disneyland, complete with all sorts of rides and attractions. I went back upstairs and spent the rest of the morning listening to assorted thumps and bangs.  Whoever said cats are stealthy and silent never met the Adorables.

Later in the morning I went down to see how everyone was getting along. Siren was sitting on the top step on the basement side of the kitchen door. Being the social climber that she is, I opened the door and she waltzed into the kitchen. I reached down for her and she darted across the floor. Phoenix had a look of delighted disbelief on his face. Finally – cats in the house! Disneyland indeed!

The fact that there are kittens in the house has Phoenix in a state of consternation. He thinks the basement is clearly a Gateway To Hell and will not go down the scary stairs but will sit for hours and stare at the door because he knows the kittens are on the other side. And maybe if he stares hard enough, one will slither through the half-inch crack at the bottom of the door.

I captured Siren and turned to find Weezel sauntering toward the dining room.  I scooped him up, too, and headed down the basement stairs, stopping just long enough to pull the door shut behind me. The Farmer is going to have to deal with cats dropping out of unexpected places in the basement the next few days – I’m pretty sure he doesn’t want to find one in his recliner in the living room, too.

Lest Gryphon feel neglected, I deposited his brother and sister and scooped him up. He let out a yowl, whipped around and sank his teeth into my sweatshirt sleeve.  So much for gratefulness. This is very un-Gryphon-like behavior. Since getting bitten once apparently wasn’t enough for me, I put my hand right back on him. This elicited another unhappy yowl but I was fast enough to move this time and didn’t get chomped. Then I noticed thick greenish yellow pus trickling down his flank. Surprise. I had ruptured an abscess on his back.

I am a farm kid. I’ve seen a lot of gross things. I’ve smelled a lot of gross things. But I have never smelled anything that reeked like the pus draining out of that abscess. How could one relatively small animal make such a big stink? I gathered up Gryph and carried him up the basement steps, out to the grooming table on the back porch. As long as I didn’t poke at his flank, he didn’t seem to mind.

I collected a bowl of warm, soapy water, a couple of towels and the dogs’ grooming scissors. Holding my breath, I cleaned up the mess and tried to trim the hair around the puncture wound. This met with limited success. Gryph has a coat like a wooly mammoth.

I was wearing leather gloves and had a firm grip on the scruff of his neck. This didn’t stop him from making several more attempts at chomping me. Such appreciation. I decided I had achieved crazy cat lady status.

As I rinsed clean water over the wound, I was imagining my Monday morning phone call to the vet.

“Hi, I called last week about bringing in a semi-feral female cat to be spayed or a semi-feral male cat to be neutered, really not sure which, or I might not be bringing that cat at all if I can’t catch her/him but a totally different cat who definitely needs to be neutered and now I need to bring in another cat who’s been fighting with something and has a nasty stinking abscess.”

I suspect the vet’s office is the only business that gets weirder calls than the newspaper office where I work.

Can’t wait for Tuesday morning cat wrangling.

2014: OCD and OTCh.

We’re three days into the new year and I am feeling compelled to write something profound about goals, resolutions and saving the world in 2014.

My obsessive-compulsive disorder is focused on finishing Phoenix’s OTCh. this year. Easier said than done and probably not a good foundation for a new year’s resolution. In order to finish his OTCh., we have to earn points. In order to earn points, we have to win or place in classes. In order to win or place in classes, we have to beat other competitors, many of whom are highly skilled, well seasoned teams. I really don't want my focus to be solely on winning and beating people. That’s not who I am and that’s not why I show dogs.

I show dogs because I love training dogs and love to go into the ring and give a performance that reflects that love. Plus trust, partnership, confidence, fun and skill. Plus precise heeling, straight fronts and clean finishes and all the other stuff that goes into creating an OTCh.-caliber dog.

We’ve all heard people talk about an “easy OTCh.,” as in “I’ll get a golden or a border collie or a sheltie so I can get an easy OTCh.”

No. Such. Thing.

Ever.

I live in a part of the country where it’s not unheard of for someone to earn their dog’s UD one weekend and its OTCh. the next weekend. Yeah. No kidding. It happens and it’s amazing. You might say THAT was an easy OTCh. but when you think about the amount of training that went into choreographing the nearly flawless performances needed to win classes large enough to provide 30 or more points at a time . . . hmmmm . . . maybe not.

I’ve put OTChs. on two dogs. I have friends who have OTCh.’d multiple dogs and friends who completed their first OTCh. and never went back into the ring again. It’s a different journey for everyone, but it’s never an easy one. I don’t think there’s a quantitative measure for establishing the difficulty of earning an OTCh. The number of different factors involved boggle the mind and they’re constantly shifting. They include but are not limited to: the breed of dog, age of dog, experience level of the handler, resources available to the handler (time, money, a place to train, availability of an instructor, support of friends and family), area of the country where you live and how good you are at handling disappointment.

Both Connor and Jamie completed their OTCh. 13 months after they completed their UD. I didn’t plan it that way, it’s just how it worked out.

Then along came Phoenix. Our OTCh. journey has been very much like riding a monster roller coaster. We’ve spent a lot of time screaming downhill at breakneck speed, then crawling with aching slowness to the next pinnacle of achievement, balancing on the precipice of brilliance for nanoseconds, then launching once more into the abyss.

I’ve come to appreciate my clever, strong-willed, pushy, tough, sensitive dog more than ever. He is an amazing, complicated creature. Our journey is taking much longer than 13 months, but I’ve come to understand this as a gift that is taking its own sweet time to be unwrapped, heavy with anticipation and discovery. While it would be an awesome experience to finish an OTCh. in a weekend, I wouldn’t trade one second of the last few years with Phoenix. I know he is the dog I am supposed to have and I know we are right where we are supposed to be in this on-going adventure.

Yeah, there have been days at trials when I agonized over that one major error that took us out of the placements. I’ve played the “woulda-coulda-shoulda” game with scores. I’ve looked at the catalog and wondered why Miss 200 Trainer with OTCh. Perfect Dog couldn’t just stay home for one weekend so we could win. I’ve tried to find little, out-of-the-way trials where none of the Big Name trainers would bother going. Guess what - all the other little name trainers with their very good dogs were there, too, looking for the same thing I’m looking for. I’ve gotten ridiculously irritated in training when my dog refuses to share my concern about straight finishes.

And then I’ve realized what a silly obsession this is. Finishing an OTCh. is equal parts love, trust, skill, patience, faith, strategy, attitude, determination and luck. It represents a refusal to quit and a complete lack of good sense.

With Phoenix, I have a soulmate. A friend. A partner. I share my life with someone who teaches as well as learns. He’s helped me find humor in unlikely places and given me a new appreciation for the simple enjoyment of life. He’s helped me discover that my sense of self-worth is not tied to achievement in the obedience ring.

Believe me when I say the joy of achieving an OTCh. (or any title) must come from the journey, not in that final glorious moment when the judge calls your number for the win that gives you that 100th point. Because then it’s over. Done with. Honestly, it’s yesterday’s news within minutes. A bit of applause and then what’s next?

My advice for anyone pursuing a title at any level in this new year is simple: keep your perspective and enjoy your journey. You’re right where you’re supposed to be.

Does this happen to Martha Stewart?

Last year I hosted a family Christmas gathering and our furnace quit working. This year I hosted a family Christmas gathering and my oven broke. It has been suggested that I stop hosting Christmas gatherings before I manage to blow up the entire house, but since no one else is offering to have them, I'll continue my reign of domestic terror and see what household appliance I can break next.

The oven actually broke before Christmas. It happened at some point while I was baking. I can't pinpoint the exact moment the thermostat or the heating element went whack-a-doodle but it was shortly before I took a sheet of semi-charcoaled cookies out of the oven.

I don't burn cookies. Ever. Period. This is not open for discussion. Cookie baking at our house is a sacred activity and Cookies Do Not Burn. The smoking tray of cranberry/white chocolate cookies was distinctly un-Martha Stewart-esque. Something was amiss.

As it turned out, the thermostat worked. It just didn't work correctly. Reminds me of some dogs I know. A temp setting of 350 degrees yielded anything from 275 degrees to 425 degrees. I got the holiday baking done by constantly monitoring an oven thermometer and juggling, shifting and turning the trays accordingly. My apologies to any friends who received slightly under-baked cookies this year. I prefer to err on the side of caution. Using the smoke alarm as a kitchen timer is frowned upon.

So the Farmer and I hitched up the team, went to town and bought a new oven. Oops. We bought a new range. There's the oven part and the stovetop part and collectively they are known as a range. Like home on the range. Which gives me visions of cooking in a cast iron stove fueled by wood and corn cobs. Which was kinda what I felt like I'd been doing because the old oven couldn't hold a steady temperature setting to save its life.

The good news was they had a model I liked and it was on sale and there was even a rebate. The bad news was that they couldn't deliver it until after Christmas. Which meant I got to cook Christmas dinner for the family with an oven that offered complete unreliability. I planned side dishes that could be fixed in the Crock Pot or microwave, said a prayer for the well being of the ham and promised family members I would not serve them baloney sandwiches. My mother wisely offered to bring the pie. I thanked her for it. Pie is sacred.

Flash forward. Delivery day arrived. The delivery men assured me they would call 30 minutes before getting to our house. Fortunately, I took the entire afternoon off of work and was at home, because they didn't call 30 minutes ahead, they just showed up. And tried to deliver my range to my mother-in-law, who lives down the road. That was just the beginning.

We have a pretty solid coating of snow and ice at our place and once they finally got here, the delivery men were flummoxed regarding how best to park their delivery truck so as not to damage the new appliance, the truck or themselves. There was a great deal of backing up, pulling forward and circling around. Then the hydraulic ramp thingie on the back of the truck refused to cooperate, resulting in a lot of whacking and banging until they got it lowered.

They came in and took the old stove out. The dogs were shut in the bedroom. Really, these guys didn't need any more help. Or maybe they did. There was some dispute about getting the old stove through the door onto the porch. Seriously, I have drug enough over-loaded crate dollies through doors at show sites I could have told them all they needed to do was back up and get a straight approach, then run like you're on Platform 9 3/4 at Kings Cross. But nobody asked me.

Once they got the old one out, I thought things were going to get better. I hung out in the house and waited. And waited. And waited. The new range is electric. All they needed to do was unload it, plug it in and shove it into place. But nothing was happening.

There were two guys, a big husky guy and a skinny little guy. They were standing at the back of the delivery van, waving their arms. Finally the skinny little guy came in. "We broke the glass in the oven door of the old stove," he said.

This didn't concern me too much but I was starting to have doubts that my new stove was going to ever make into my kitchen in one piece. It was looking like baloney sandwiches for supper for the immediate future.

The big husky guy came in. "I'm going to pick up the glass," he informed me. Well. Yay for you.

In the mean time, the skinny little guy hauled the new range in, plugged it in and after a great deal of grunting and groaning, got it shoved into place. The big husky guy came in when he was done. "I got all the big pieces," he said. "Pretty sure I got most of it."

I signed the delivery form and they left. I  looked at the kitchen floor. It was covered with mud and melted snow.

I went outside to look at the place where the glass had broken. I wondered what constituted a "big piece." The ground sparkled with thousands of tiny bits of shattered glass, mingled with snow and gravel. I got a scoop shovel and shoved up about a six-foot square section of the driveway.

Since the back porch door had been propped open the whole time the kittens had come inside and made themselves at home. They were sprawled atop the grooming table in the sunshine, batting at the leashes that hung from nearby pegs. One of them had drug all 40 feet of a tracking line off its peg and wrestled it into submission, creating a delightfully snarled mess. Weezel was happily chewing a leather leash in half. Seriously. He chews like a dog. This whole litter of kittens has some very canine characteristics, not the least of which is they run in a pack.

I rescued the leash, untangled the tracking line, shooed the kittens outdoors, mopped the floor and turned the dogs out of the bedroom. Does Martha Stewart have days like this?

A weather-induced rant

In the last five days, the National Weather Service has issued four separate watches, warnings and advisories for the area where I live: a freezing rain advisory, a winter storm watch, a winter storm warning and a windchill advisory.

Some were issued concurrently and the winter storm watch came out last Friday, before winter even officially started. So special. The irony of that was not lost on anyone who calls the Midwest home.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but I am descended from freaking crazy people. That’s the only explanation for why my ancestors chose to settle here. Or maybe I am descended from perfectly normal people who arrived in this part of the world on a day that was cloaked in deceptively mild weather.

When my Cameron, Mills, Andersen and Hanson ancestors immigrated from Scotland, Ireland, Sweden and Denmark, respectively, they must have arrived in the Midwest on a lovely day when the sun was shining and the rolling hills were ripe with the promise of fertile farm land and soft breezes. It looked like the ideal place to start a new life.

If they’d arrived in the dead of winter they would have taken one look at the glacial wasteland that is Iowa in December, gotten right back on the train and kept going. Then I could be living somewhere sensible like southern California, where Mother Nature only occasionally tries to kill people with earthquakes. But no. They liked what they saw, built farmsteads and planted crops and raised livestock and managed not to freeze to death long enough to produce the next generation of crazy people, who chose to continue living here.

The Swedes and the Danes, after all, came from lands that spent a good part of the year locked in ice and snow. They probably felt right at home. Crazy Vikings. I would like to think my Celtic ancestors had better sense, although Scotland has been called “the land that invented weather,” so maybe not.

Depending on which account of history you choose to believe, Clan Cameron was at the forefront of the Highland charge against British troops in the Battle of Culloden in Scotland in 1745. That didn’t end well for the Scottish Highlanders in general and Charles Stewart in particular. I have no idea if I can claim a direct ancestry to Sir Donald Cameron of Lochiel but if I could, it would be great to blame some of my questionable decision-making skills on genetics.

But I digress. The Farmer is a German whose ancestors apparently didn’t have any better sense than mine so here we are - lifelong residents of Iowa for better or worse.

Winter in Iowa generally qualifies as worse. During the summer when it’s so hatefully hot, I swear I won’t complain about winter. Then when it gets here, I’m the first one to complain. It’s a God-given Midwestern right. If you live through it, you get to bitch about it. We recently had a string of days here in Iowa when it was warmer in Anchorage, Alaska. That. Is. Just. Wrong.

The problem with winter here is that it rarely presents itself as the Currier and Ives print of happy people skating happily on frozen ponds and riding happily in sleighs pulled by happy horses. In Iowa, we don’t get happy ski resort winter. We get freezing rain that turns highways to greased skating rinks. Then we get snow on top of it and spend the next four months falling on our butts and crashing our cars into ditches, deer and each other. The ice is happily insulated by the snow, ensuring that it lasts until March. We get winds that scream straight down out of Canada until the mercury drains out of the thermometer. There’s nothing between Iowa and Canada to stop them. Minnesota is clearly not up to the task.

Snow and bitter cold are only fun (translation - "tolerable") during the holidays. I can pretend to enjoy ridiculous amounts of crappy weather by telling myself it adds atmosphere. Santa is coming and everything is a cocoa and pine trees and roaring fires and cookie-baking winter wonderland. How fun. If you needed proof that I can be delusional, this is probably it.

Once Christmas passes, the novelty wears off and shit gets real in a hurry. Or in the case of this year, it got real before Christmas. When the holidays pass, there are still three more months of snow and cold to endure before spring comes and I can start complaining about mud. Mud sounds deliciously attractive right now. No one ever cut their paws open on mud. The jagged ice razors lurking outside our back door guarantee at least one incident of bloody pawprints coming back into the house before spring arrives.

Living in the Midwest provides a skill set that people who live on the West coast or in the South will never experience. Over the years, I’ve become a pro at gauging how much speed I need to bust through the drift at the end of the lane without spinning out of control and doing a Wile E. Coyote on the back of the neighbor’s machine shed with my van. I know exactly where to put the space heater to thaw frozen pipes and am capable of doing it at 1 a.m. in my pajamas without actually waking up. Shoveling sidewalks is a cardio workout and I can maneuver across an ice-glazed parking lot while carrying grocery bags with the delicate balance of an Olympic gymnast.

I could happily spend the winter months ensconced in a sweatshirt and flannel pajamas, stuffing myself with carbs and binge-watching "Game of Thrones," seasons one and two, which were thoughtfully loaned to me by a friend. In fact, I plan to do just that once I am released from the familial obligations of this coming week.

On the bright side, from December through March, all it takes for me to have a perfectly wonderful day is to get up in the morning and A) the furnace is working B) the pipes aren’t frozen C) my van starts D) I can get the garage door open E) there’s no snowdrift in front of my garage door (or if there is, I can blast through it) and F) I can get to the highway without yelling "Yeeeee-haw!" as R2 goes sideways or airborne more than twice and G) I can see at least 50 percent of the pavement markings on the highway on my way to work. That qualifies as a damn fine day, no matter what else might happen.

Merry Christmas, everyone. I've enjoyed this last year of sharing my life, my dogs, the Farmer, the Adorables and Phoenix's and my on-going training and trialing journey with you. I hope you all have warm, safe, wonderful holidays and I wish you all the best in the new year.

Because I don't want to break my dog

In the spring of this year, I made the decision to stop running agility with Phoenix so we could focus on his obedience work. Trying to excel in the upper levels of two demanding sports was not going well. Our training time was constantly in conflict and seemingly governed by whatever trial was coming that weekend. This wasn't a recipe for success in either arena.

Eight months later, I feel I made the right decision. As long as Phoenix was having a delightful time on an agility course (regardless of whether it was the course the judge designed and I attempted to handle or one of his own creation), I could happily ignore the engagement and effort problems that arose when agility obstacles were not present and we were faced with a much less self-rewarding performance venue.

Through the summer and fall, I’ve gone to several agility trials to watch friends run or to work and support the clubs I belong to. The question is always the same: Why aren’t you running? This is followed by a secondary question, usually spoken with a combination of concern and disbelief: But you’ll come back, right?

I don’t know. Honestly. I don’t.

I haven’t undergone a zealot’s transformation and I don’t hate agility, but stepping outside the sport for the better part of a year has allowed me to see some things I did not see before.

The primary reason I backed off training and running agility is that I want to earn an OTCh. with Phoenix worse than I want to earn a MACH. Anyone who has embarked on a journey for either knows this is not a quest for the faint of heart or something you’re likely to achieve without absolute dedication.

The secondary reason I backed off is that I don’t want to break my dog.

Without a doubt, Phoenix loved agility. He loves anything he can do at high speed with reckless abandon. In spite of being trained and handled by a middle-aged woman who admittedly does not like to push the envelope, he happily compensates for my cautionary tendencies. As a trainer, I have worked hard to master timely cues, set realistic lines on a course and give him safe approaches to all obstacles - all in the name of keeping him from getting hurt.

Phoenix will turn 7 at the end of this month. He’s been running agility since he was 2. In those 5 years, fueled by the adrenaline high that comes from running at trials, he has leaped off the top off A-frames, flown off sides of dog walks and launched himself from teeters. He has gone through muscle-wrenching contortions to accommodate courses with complex twists and turns. He has crashed through jumps and face-planted on turns. He has hit weave entries with so much speed I swear I could hear his ribs crack. The dog who runs with controlled elegance in the back yard becomes a crazed speed addict when put on the start line at a trial. He apparently has no pain threshold and the word "caution" is not in his vocabulary. He is the most physically and environmentally sound dog I’ve ever owned, a natural athlete with a love of the game and no fear. Some trainers might consider him the ideal agility dog. For me, running him was becoming a nightmare.

I was seriously afraid he was going to break himself.

My two previous agility dogs never ran fast enough to get hurt. They took courses at a canter and didn’t slip, crash or do fly-offs. In a sport where handlers work to shave fractions of seconds off course times, this casual approach was not looked upon as a desirable quality.

I thought getting a dog who ran balls to the wall would be a wonderful thing. It wasn’t.

Maybe my ears are just more open to it now, but there is quiet litany that hums under the surface conversation at every agility trial. Listen closely and you can hear it: my dog is limping, my dog is lame and the vet doesn’t know why, my dog pulled (insert muscle group here), my dog has a soft tissue injury, my dog needs a month of crate rest, my dog has to be leash walked for six weeks, my dog tore his ACL, my dog needs surgery, my dog needs six months of rehab, the vet doesn’t know what is wrong with my dog, I’m taking my dog to (insert name of veterinary college or rehab facility here) for an evaluation, my dog is retired from running agility.

You can’t swaddle your dog in bubble wrap to insulate him from every potentially injurious situation, no matter what games you play. Phoenix could (and has) hurt himself chasing a cat. He ended up with a neat line of stitches across his ribs a few years back when he smashed himself into a piece of farm machinery. Case in point. That had nothing to do with any training venue. But I’d like to think I can control the odds to some extent and that means not giving him repeated opportunities to fly off dog walks and crash through spread jumps every weekend.

Agility is marketed as a sport for everyone and their dog, yet looking at the spectrum of dogs who are running, there are undoubtedly some that should not be on the course due to structural or conditioning issues. The impact of repeated jumping and negotiating contact pieces at speed is not doing their bodies any favors, and this repeated stress may or may not eventually catch up with them in the form of injury.

Yet other dogs are truly natural athletes who perform weekend after weekend without showing any ill effects. I often wonder if their love for the game simply overcomes minor degrees of pain until an injury becomes debilitating. Then there are middle-of-the-road dogs who appear fine for years, then suddenly come up with a lameness that defies diagnosis. Maybe it’s an agility injury. Maybe it’s not.

I’m not saying agility is dangerous and I’m not saying every dog who runs agility is going to get hurt. I’m just calling it like I see it in respect to my own dog.

When Phoenix is 10 or older, I’d like to still be showing him - maybe in veterans classes, maybe tracking or doing nosework or exploring some venue we haven’t tried yet. Most of all, I’d like him to be fit and strong and not plagued by chronic pain from an injury that perhaps I could have prevented.

It’s a choice every handler has to make, based on their priorities and goals for their dog.

Can I guarantee that by not running him in agility he will avoid all injuries? Of course not. Will I return to agility at some point? I don’t know. It’s a fun sport and I’d like to think I could get a grip on my wonderfully insane dog to allow him to participate in a safe manner. I’m not sure how realistic that is. For the immediate future, our focus remains on obedience.