No, that’s not a goiter on my neck in the photo on the upper right-hand side of this page. That’s our dog Lulu.

You may be wondering why there are dogs all over my website. The answer is, because we share our home with a very splendid pack of four dogs who like to pose. When I was being photographed for this site, I first tried to pose by myself and I made these frightening, wide-eyed-with-dementia-looking smiling attempts and I suddenly had no idea how to make a smile. It feels incredibly stupid to be standing, grinning at a camera and no matter what Miki the photographer did or said, I couldn’t make a pleasant face. At some point, though, somebody let the dogs out and they joined us. When we resumed the picture-taking, the dogs immediately picked up on the gist of what we were doing and proceeded to sit beside me and strike very regal poses. Our dogs are mutts, except for the little one who is supposed to be a Chihuhua, but they are very beautiful mutts and they seemed to be under the impression that Miki had come expressly to photograph them. Lulu, the reddish-brown dog, especially, put on her Vogue face – I actually think she was sucking in her cheeks to give the illusion of cheekbones in the shot on my homepage. Daphne, the blond, kept offering her profile, which she seems to think is her best angle. Pongo, our only male dog, is fifteen and deaf and blind and castrated and was no doubt resting his smelly self someplace. Anyway, the only photos that came out of that shoot in which I look semi-normal are the ones where I’m smiling with my dogs, so that’s why they’re all over the site. Our daughter Devin is a really talented photographer and I'm trying to load some shots she took of the dogs today but I have no idea how to do that and don't want to bother Nancy, the INCREDIBLY generous and knowledgeable and fun web designer who helped set up this site, because it's a Sunday. But it occurs to me that the fact that I can't load the images might be some kind of divine intervention, because I actually don't love when other bloggers post pictures of their kids and animals. You've seen my dogs. I don't need to keep showing them to you - all 0 people who read and comment on my blogs.
Wait, I just had an idea. I might be able to link to the photos.
Okay, didn't work.

Finally figured out how to post photos. Am using this photo of Daphne as a test. She's one of those dogs that likes to carry things around (part retriever). Unfortunately, the thing she likes to carry is almost as big as she is, so her day-to-day life is sometimes laborious. She makes it that way.

My daughter Devin took these photos the other day. I know it's already spring in New York City but up here it looks like winter still, except for these few blossoms.

I have been trying to strip our beasts of their winter coats. This is Gabriel:

If you're wondering why the image of Gabriel is crisp and clear and the image of my face is so blurry that you can barely make out the features of a face, it's because I photoshopped out all my wrinkles and when that was done, I was barely left with eyes, nose and mouth. Gabriel, though doesn't need retouching, because he is very handsome, as you can see. I guess I could try to photoshop in a forelock - that little tuft of hair between his ears is all he's ever had. He has male pattern baldness, poor guy, always has.

Our dog Lulu had hip surgery on Thursday. Lulu is young but has terrible hip dysplasia and had a total hip replacement at the Veterinary Referral and Emergency Center in Norwalk, CT. Less than 24 hours after the surgery, Lulu came home. She walked out of the hospital barely limping – which is far better than how she walked in. Dr. Matthew Palmisano, her surgeon, is a great vet and we thank all the kind staff at VREC.

I love Lulu, but it's a one-sided love because she's just not that into me. I’ve never had to say that about any dog I’ve shared a home with before. All our dogs have always been totally into me, but not Lulu. I mean, she’s cordial and everything but she doesn't really care what I do, as long as I don't keep Denis away from her. She's Denis's dog - she's completely besotted with him.

Denis has spent the winter finishing a book he's writing called WHY WE SUCK, by Dr. Denis Leary (he has an honorary PhD. Really!) It's very funny. He has a deadline and he works all day in a barn that has been converted into his office. Lulu spends her days watching Denis play hockey or watching Denis write. When I brought her home from the hospital yesterday, she refused to come into the house, but stared, whining at Denis’s barn. We very carefully walked up to the barn and she was reunited with her master and I managed to photograph her smile.

Yesterday, somebody told me that it looks like I’m trying to look like the Dog Whisperer on my website’s homepage. This I took as a compliment because, in fact, I am always trying to be like Cesar Millan, the Dog Whisperer. I wish to emulate him in the same way that some people wish to emulate the Dalai Lama. Anybody who’s a fan of The Dog Whisperer show will understand why. Cesar Millan is a mastermind of canine and human psychological and spiritual healing and I have often thought that he should sell bumper stickers that read WWCD (What Would Cesar Do?)

I think in WWCD terms all the time. Recently I was confronted by a very aggressive man at Stew Leonard’s (it’s a Connecticut grocery store/theme park) who believed that my leaving my shopping cart parked in front of the bagels for two minutes violated all laws of decency.
“Move your f____ing cart,” he barked at me when I wandered back from the cold cuts, and then he actually shoved my cart at me. The man was in what Cesar would call an aggressive/dominant state. In the past I would probably have either joined him in the red zone by cursing angrily back at him, or I would have slunk off with a whining apology and my tail between my legs. But I didn’t do either this time. I did what Cesar Millan would have done. I stood my ground, maintaining calm, assertive energy. I placed my salami in the cart and when the man snapped at me again, I said, suddenly (but still calmly and assertively) “HEY! in a clipped tone – the human version of the “tchhhhh” noise Cesar uses on dogs and the man clammed up and wandered off! If you haven’t seen the show, Netflix an entire season. You really don’t have to be a dog owner to benefit from the teachings of Cesar Millan.

Last year, Denis’s publicist said the Dog Whisperer people were interested in having Denis and our dogs on the show, as they sometimes do segments on celebrity dog owners. Denis loves The Dog Whisper and his first response was “great, I'll get to meet Cesar Millan,” but I wasn’t so sure he should do it, and this is why: Cesar has a tendency to make men cry about their dogs on his show. Especially men with tough exteriors. I’ve seen it more than once. One minute, a man is chopping wood and talking about his years as a combat Marine, the next minute he’s weeping into the fur of his beloved Cock-a-poo. “I just l-l-ove her soooo much, and I wa-wa-ant her to he happy,” he sobs, and Cesar, in a calm, listening state, nods. He understands. He understands everything. One recent weekend while Denis and I were watching a Dog Whisperer marathon, I heard a strange croaking sound coming from Denis’s end of the couch. I think it was during the episode about the Yorkie who goes berserk when the vacuum cleaner is turned on. When Cesar told the owner that she was letting the dog down by treating her with “human psychology not dog psychology,” Denis began making these choking, gurgling noises.

“Are you …okay?” I asked.

“What? Yeah, I just have something stuck in my throat,” Denis said, blinking madly. Then after a moment, he whispered, “Life is sometimes just so …unfair,” and he sprang from the couch and ran to the bathroom where he remained for some time.

When I saw Lulu after her hip surgery last Thursday, my first thought was that she was walking quite well for somebody with a new fake hip.

My second thought was, nice gam!.

Her coat is thick and wavy so I had no idea what beautiful musculature the dog possesses. I find that I keep staring at it, though.

I'm just admiring the conformation of an athletic animal, I keep telling myself. But there's something disturbingly sexy about it. I think the exposed flank combined with the mohawk reminds me of that evil/sexy Last of the Mohicans guy.

This guy:

See what I'm talking about?

I just have to stop thinking about this.

Here she is, poor girl. She has a plush dog bed that she could lie on but has found that lying on the hard floor with her head hanging off the step earns her the most sympathy and pats.

I've been cleaning my barn. I can’t stand housecleaning but I find great satisfaction cleaning my barn for some reason, and also cleaning my horses. Yesterday, I washed my horse Mark, and then when he dried and was still as wretched-looking as he was before his bath, I gave him a full body clip. Clipping a horse is one of those things, like child-bearing, that seems like a great idea when it first occurs to you. Why should I spend hours currying the winter coat off this horse, when I can just clip him, is what I thought yesterday at noon. So, out came the clippers and I set to work. An hour and a half later, I was covered with horse hair, was wading through great drifts of horse hair, my nasal passages were lined with horse hair, and I had only shorn a small clearing on what I now saw as the vast acreage of my horse Mark. Horse clippers are big heavy things and moving them over a horse’s body again and again starts hurting your arm and then it starts hurting your back. Plus, the clippers get hot and make a loud high-pitched whirring sound that, after two hours, doesn’t go away, even when the clippers are turned off. Plus, horses are stupid. They’d like the thing to be over as quickly as you would but believe that dancing in place is the best way to speed things along. But I did manage to finish his body and left the legs for another day (the day hell freezes over, most likely).
Here’s a before shot:

Here's the after shot:

Do you want to see the whole horse? Well you'll have to wait until tomorrow because the photos I took yesterday don't flatter Mark. He's not exactly an oil painting, as horses go, and, like Barbra Streisand (and me for that matter), really needs to be photographed from certain angles. Seriously, I adore this horse and can't show the pictures I took yesterday. But I will show you this guy, whom I found when I lifted a bucket from a corner of my tackroom.

When the amphibians start moving in, it's time to turn on the dehumidifier. I named him Newt, though I suspect he's actually a salamander and then put him in the bucket and released him next to our pond.

Last fall I began work on a new book and I ran into a little snare right at the beginning. I was describing the campus of a boarding school in September, in Connecticut, and I had all the trees aflame with bright russets and golds and somebody was raking leaves. It was still early in September when I was writing this and it dawned on me that the leaves might still be green well into October. I really had no idea. And I wasn’t quite sure when the first frost usually arrives. So I decided to start a journal to document the local flora and fauna as the seasons change. I also determined that since there is no better place to observe anything than astride a horse, I would trailer my horse Mark to Steep Rock Land Preserve every day, weather permitting, and that way I could see the exact same landscape as it changed with the season. I kept what I called my Steep Rock Diaries from September until December. Then I had to stop because the trails were too icy for horses. I've been hiking in Steep Rock this winter and spring, on and off, but am dying to get back there with Mark. My trailer needs a new tire but is being serviced on Tuesday and then I will start up with the diary again.

I don't even know where to begin to describe the beauty of Steep Rock. First, there's the winding Shepaug River that divides the preserve:

That's my daughter Dev on the trail. There's an old railroad bed that runs along the river's edge and it's great for riding.

In places, the roots of great hemlock trees have wrapped themselves, like tentacles, around the rock outcroppings along the river's bank. This one appears to be testing the temperature of the water with its root, although you can't actually see the water in the photo:

So we do this big loop, Mark and I. We go along the railroad bed and cross the river and go up to what they call the "clamshell" and enjoy the views and loop back around and across the river again. We go out in the early mornings and it’s often cold riding along the old railroad bed, but when we cross the river, if the sun is out, it shines down on us and sparkles off the rocks below. Mark always stops in the middle of the river at our crossing place and we stand there for a moment. The damp, dark smell of river always reminds me of my childhood, of a winding creek that ran behind a house in Michigan that we lived in. My brother and I spent our summer days wading around this creek looking for tadpoles and crayfish and watching muskrats glide just under the water (muskrats are cute, if you've never seen one - nothing like regular rats.) Sitting on my horse, at this point in the Shepaug River where the clear water rushes over the rocks, something always comes over me. The coolness, the washing, rushing sound, the smell of water and fish and wet dirt and something else – loam? Silt? It all makes my head light and my muscles - even my bones - seem to go soft. Everything in me seems to dissolve into the horse and the river below and once, when a Great Blue Heron soared above us on that very spot, Mark and I both stared at it, blinking, blinking into the dazzling sun and then the sky was made blurry by my tears and I thought, there is a God. There is a God. Because the bird seemed so hulking and primitive, yet it flew. And the horse, and the river...

But the thing I love most about Steep Rock, because it thrills me, and terrifies me, is this:

The dark abyss, not my sweet daughter about to enter it. But I will blog about that another day. I'm supposed to be working on a book.

Meet Mark. I know he looks cuddly, and he is. If you’re not a horseperson, then yes, that is how a horse’s mane is supposed to look. If you are a horseperson, judge not, lest ye be judged. I don’t have time to mess with that mane right now. Mark will be sporting his mullet at least until my book comes out.

Mark has an interesting history. He was born approximately twelve years ago, on the wrong side of a fence. His mother, lacking foresight, chose to lie down next to a fence during her labor. Mark was born and then, when he managed to stand, he was on one side of the fence, and his mom was on the other. Horses are herd animals and the foals “imprint” on their mothers immediately after birth. The mare’s scent, her distinct vocalizations, her gait – the foal absorbs it all, commits it to memory, and then is able to pick her from any number of other mothers in the herd. It has long been a notion among cowboys and others, that human “imprinting” of a foal can help it get over it’s innate fear of humans. When a foal is born, it’s important to touch him, have him smell you and hopefully he will associate humans with the world in which he finds himself. Unfortunately, many foals choose to be born at night and by the time a human has found him, he has imprinted on the mother and is about as receptive to the human touch as a wild deer.

Mark, however, spent his first night wobbling around in a cold, dark field, hungry and alone, listening to his mother’s frantic whinnies. In the morning when the mare’s owner discovered him, she helped him through the gate to the flank of his desperate mother. So Mark’s first touch was a human touch, and it was a human’s hands that guided him to the warm milk that filled his empty belly and that auspicious beginning made Mark a bit of a human lover. Now, if you approach our horse field, Mark will come trotting over to meet you. When somebody forgets to close a gate and the horses get loose, Mark gallops down to our house and peers in our windows. Mark is a clown and a coward which makes him my soulmate. We have foxhunted together, competed in hunter paces (a pace is a cross-country race over hunt-field style jumps) and hunter trials. Here we are at the Golden’s Bridge Hunter Trials:

If you’re not a horse person, then what you are seeing is perfect jumping form by horse and rider. If you are a horseperson, give me a break. We were in a field. He was galloping. You can see it’s a drop jump, I had to brace myself against his neck like that…

I love to take pictures while riding Mark. Here we are watching Devin ride Snoopy:

This one shows Mark's mane at its most ridiculous. It looks like I'm riding a Pomeranian:

Mark is such a versatile horse. You can really take him anywhere. Here we are in Rome above the Spanish Steps:

Viewing the Coliseum:

Okay, I just installed Photoshop Elements and have found a new way to waste time. Now I'm trying to get a shot of Mark on the Red Carpet at last year's Emmy Awards but I can't figure out how to cut around his ears.

“Don’t treat your dog like a person, or he’ll start treating you like a dog,” my grandfather told me once, when I was a child. I can’t remember what I was doing that provoked this warning, probably spoon-feeding one of our dogs, but I do recall hoping, praying, that his words were true. It was my dream to have a dog treat me like another dog. I’m a dog nut. I seem to have been born that way. I carry the fascination around with me the way my retriever-mix, Daphne, carries around an oversized stuffed animal.

She doesn’t know why she does it, she just does. She comes from a long line of dogs that were bred to carry things around. I come from a long line of people who are enchanted by creatures who must carry things or herd things or stalk things for reasons that no longer serve them any purpose.

My great-grandfather bred Welsh Terriers. Here is his favorite, Freshy, surrounded by my mother’s aunts and uncles. My mother is the littlest one, with the boy’s haircut, gazing at Freshy.

Apparently my mother was nipped by Freshy when she was just a toddler. The dog, being a terrier, was feisty and combative. My mother, being a Sullivan, was likewise, so according to family legend, after overcoming her astonishment at having been bitten by a dog, she grabbed her by the leg and bit her right back. After that they were fast friends.

My grandfather – the one who gave me the advice on how to treat dogs - had a champion English Bulldog. My grandmother (his ex), kept Beagles. In this photo I'm petting my grandmother’s Beagle while my grandmother and mother pose on my grandmother’s porch.

Although my grandmother lived for decades after this photo was taken, this was one of the last times I saw her. I don’t remember much about her, but I remember that the dog was called Daisy, and that when she wagged her tail, her whole body wagged. My grandmother was mentally ill and alcoholic and ended up estranged from us. There were no framed photos of her in our house growing up, no calls on Mother's Day, so, like I said, I mostly remember her dog Daisy. The way her body wagged, her hips and tail a jolly serpentine dance, the way she smelled like wet shoes, the way she followed my grandmother’s every move with doting eyes. This photo is fascinating to me. My father only recently sent it to me, so I've been studying it. My grandmother is in a crisp dress and pearls, but her paint-peeling porch is cluttered with mops and brooms. You can see the hasty attempt to make things nice for us, her guests, then the defiant leaving of the mops, as if to say, "it doesn't matter what you think." My mother is smiling in a sort of zoned-out fashion. Me, in heaven, adoring Daisy, whom I had only just met.

Here I am on my seventh birthday, when I received my beloved puppy Beau. Notice my sister Meg (the clone of my mother in the earlier photo) and her clandestine attempt to pat Beau. I'm sure I was feeling a little territorial and she had good reason to have her eyes trained on my face.

Beau lived until after I left home for college, and was only one of a number of family dogs we had while I was growing up. Beau was a poodle. He was smart and learned tricks. He bit. He slept in my bed. He humped our drapes. He had a reeking skin condition that caused the fur on his rump to fall out and oozing scabs to form.
I loved him, I loved him, I loved him, but when my friends came over, I locked him in a room and wished he didn't exist.

Allow me to introduce Pongo. Pongo is under-represented on my website because he’s not usually running around in front of the camera. He’s usually asleep someplace.

Pongo is 15 years old and is some kind of terrier/poodle mix. He used to be all black with a white chest. We hooked-up with Pongo in Canada, when he was just a puppy. We were staying in a house in Toronto for several months while Denis was making the movie “The Ref.” Jack was 3 years old, Devin was 1 1/2. I was a little lonely and broody that summer - I think I had just weaned the baby and I wanted another baby, but we had a tough time having the two, and were not going to have any more. For some reason that reality hit home hard those months of “The Ref,” when I found myself, once again, friendless in a strange city, my last baby sauntering around drinking out of a sippy cup. So, one day I saw a sign that said “puppies for sale.” I took the kids to the house, just for a look, and we came home with Pongo.

All summer long, I pushed Dev’s stroller back and forth to the park with Jack running ahead of us and Pongo tucked into a diaper bag that hung from the back of the stroller. Pongo loved his rides and would sit with his scruffy paws and face peering out over the top of the bag. Now, I know I’m partial, but Devin happened to have been a strikingly beautiful baby. She was plump and pink-cheeked with strawberry blonde hair and always a big gummy smile for everybody. So, when all the little old ladies of Cabbagetown (the neighborhood we stayed in) stopped me and said, “How adorable! What a precious baby, how old is she?” I would thank them and say, “She’s fifteen months old!” Then, they would almost invariably say, “And what breed is she?” because they were admiring the puppy, not Devin. The Canadians are like the British that way, from what I have seen – they just love dogs. Kids, not so much.

Pongo was the perfect dog for our young family because he’s small and we lived in New York City, and he had incredible amounts of energy and so did our family. He cured many kids in our building of their fear of dogs, because he always approached children with his head down and tail wagging slowly. He wouldn’t dream of jumping up on a child or growling at a child, let alone nipping one. And he suffered some abuse at their hands, though I tried to prevent this. In those days there were always playdates at our house and sometimes, when I was distracted, a toddler or child would grab Pongo by the whiskers and he soon developed an instinct for recognizing undomesticated children and would slink off to the bedroom when those kids darkened our doorway. But unlike many dogs, he never developed a prejudice against all children and still gets excited when a little one comes to visit.

Pongo’s story is too long to tell here, but I will summarize by saying he’s a classic terrier. He’s made of steel and has always been the boss of our pack, even when it included two boisterous Irish Wolfhounds. He has been run over by cars, not once, but twice (once he was attacking his enemy, the UPS truck and the other time, it pains me to tell you, he laid down behind the wheel of my hybrid car, which he didn’t know was running, and I…I…backed over him). Both times he recovered in record time and though he has suffered a shattered leg and broken pelvis, he takes himself on a little tour of our property each day, and he doesn’t have the slightest limp. And the blessed dog has forgiven me for running him over, because he’s a dog, in the very best sense of the word, which is to say that he lives in the present, lets bygones-be-bygones, and still shows his unwavering devotion by refusing his supper when I'm away, and howling with joy when I return.

People often ask me if I miss living in the city. My friends tell me they think it must get terribly depressing to be “stuck” up here in Connecticut all winter long. “Yes,” I tell them, “it’s awful. You’d hate it!” Then I receive all sorts of sympathy and attention and kindness from them, because it seems that nothing pleases people more than discovering somebody else’s regrets and I’m happy to let people savor their action-packed city life at my expense.

“We've thought about moving up there, but I think I would need more …stimulation,” people have said to me. I'm never really sure how to respond to this, but have often been tempted to say, "well, I'm a simpleton, so watching grass grow is about all the stimulation I can handle." Instead, I say, “It’s mind-numbing. Really, you’d hate it,” because the truth is, I don’t want neighbors who are running around jonesing for stimulation all the time. I like neighbors like this:

I have this little nervous condition that offers me stimulation-a-plenty, so I need neighbors like this guy, who lives down the road. He's a Scottish Highland calf. He likes to ruminate. Me too. Every day I drive past his field and sometimes I have to get out of the car for a proper visit. I have often wanted to offer him a treat, but am against feeding anything that has more than one stomach, plus I really don’t know what is safe or unsafe for cows to eat. But this handsome chap doesn’t need treats – he seems to thrive on compliments. He always wanders over to the fence and waits for me to start in with my gushing praise.

“Good God,” I always say, “you’re making me sick, you’re so cute!” and he blinks and tosses his bangs. “Okay, get in the car,” is what I want to say to him then. I want him to live in our house and sleep in our bed with us. I want to frolic with him in a meadow, then I want to curl up on the couch with him and watch an old movie.

This gorgeous redhead lives at another farm in town. She's part of a small herd of Scottish Highland Cattle at Maple Bank Farm, which has been owned by the Hurlbut family since the 1700s.

Here's a photo of their farm stand:

They sell fresh vegetables, homemade pies, yarn spun from their sheep's wool, homemade jams, flowers, plants, fresh honey, maple syrup, apples from their orchard, fresh blueberries, fresh eggs and the most delicious sweet corn on earth.

The other day I was taught how to look at my “web stats,” that is, how to see the amount of traffic on my website. Guess what my new obsession is? It turns out, there are more than just a few relatives looking at my blog each day – I’m getting lots of hits, which thrills me, but it was suggested that I blog about my book Outtakes From A Marriage more, since that’s why I started this whole blog in the first place. And I will. But first, I have to blog about Daphne, because I just realized that, though I’ve featured her photo a few times, I haven’t really introduced her properly. I love my two children equally, but among my dogs, Daphne is my absolute favorite (the other dogs seem fine with this). Anyway, here she is on a recent hike:

We got Daphne in …brace yourself …be ready to hate me/report me to PETA/send me death-threats…A PET SHOP. There, I’ve said it. Yes, I know that pet shops are the scourge of society, that the puppies come from inhumane puppy mills, that they’re bred willy-nilly, etc. I know. Now, be ready to move me a notch lower in your esteem, when I tell you that she’s a LABRADOODLE. That’s right, the ridiculously yuppy/trendy hybrids that are seen, suddenly, running across every other suburban lawn and trotting around urban dog parks. I know. I get it. I suck. But I didn’t go to a pet shop looking for a Labradoodle. I went there looking for a dog brush. This was four years ago and I was at the dreaded mall with my kids. They were shopping for video games and I was killing time. I walked past the pet store and decided to stop in and pick up a brush. It was shedding season and we had wolfhounds at home. When I walked in, one of the workers was walking past with this very floppy, scruffy, blonde puppy in her arms. I think you know what happened next. I asked if I could pet the puppy, I asked if I could play with the puppy. The puppy was keen, alert, made eye-contact, attacked my shoelaces. Within the hour she was seated between my kids in the backseat of my car, and to this day there’s no place else she’d rather be.

While I was contemplating the purchase of this puppy, I weighed out all the moral implications. I had scolded friends who had bought puppies in pet shops. But this puppy had already been born. She had just arrived at the pet shop the day before and who knew how long she’d have to stay in her smelly cage, her wet nose pressed up against the glass. I could see how bright she was; what if stupid people bought her? What if they were cruel and left her chained up in the scorching sun all day? Again, I know - not the right logic. Anyway, puppy mill or no, this dog is a genetic marvel. Her IQ is off the charts. And just look at her!

Where do I begin? She’s got a great sense of humor. For example, she likes carrying stuff around and when she wants to get my attention she will offer me a sock or something. If I’m busy, I won’t really respond to the sock, so she looks for something really funny to carry to me, like an over-sized stuffed animal or a small piece of furniture. She knows she’s being funny when she does this, because, as she approaches, her entire hind end wags slowly at her own gag and her eyes narrow with mirth. She knows I’m about to start snorting with laughter, and this makes her laugh with her body, the way dogs do. She will go to give me the thing and when I reach for it, she will turn away so that it’s just out of my grasp – another favorite joke of hers. Like most dogs, she doesn’t understand one of the basic tenets of comedy, which is that a thing is usually only funny the first time. Daphne thinks it’s just as funny the fortieth time and has no idea why I am not still hooting with laughter when she tries to hand me the sofa cushion again and again and again.

She also thinks it’s very funny to push the laptop off my lap. She does this when she’s lying next to me in bed and I’m trying to write something. First she’ll just tap it once or twice with the tip of her paw, and when I smile, she thumps the bed with her tail. Then she taps it a little harder. Once, she accidentally closed the laptop doing this and apparently she found my reaction very amusing ( I thought I had lost something I had written and was spazzing out) and ever since, she’s been trying to repeat the joke. Usually, she succeeds in knocking the laptop off my lap.

And she’s smart. She understands everything I say. She is at my side, always, when I’m home, and would like to go everywhere with me when I leave.

Sometimes I can’t take her along, so when I walk through the house and she sees by my energy, that I’m about to leave, she becomes giddy with anticipation and begins to prance alongside me. I will then say to her, in the same tone I would use when speaking to any human, “Oh, sorry, I can’t take you with me,” and she will stop dead in her tracks, her whole body sagging with disappointment. We can be lying in bed together and I will say to her, casually, “Well, I guess I’ll go take a shower and then let’s go into town. I need to get some gas,” and when I go outside, she’ll be sitting next to the car, all ready to go. I have a convertible and she spends her entire summer in the driveway, seated in the passenger seat, staring straight ahead, waiting for me to get in and start driving. Did I mention that she can open doors? She can. She knows how to hit the handle of all our storm doors with her paw and then, when it unlatches, she pushes the door open and out she goes. She only wandered from the property once, during her adolescence. She was picked up by the dog officer and spent the night n the pound. I don’t know what happened to Daphne when she was in the can, but she was apparently scared straight because she has never strayed again.

Oh, I could go on and on, but I’ll stop there. She’s a dear friend, my Daphne. Now go check out my book!

Remember when I was saying how much I love the country? Well, I take it all back. I want to live in a building. A building in a city with lots of other people in it. And no wild animals.

This is how my day began:

My dogs woke me up at 4:30 a.m, just as they have every morning this week, because there was a raccoon in our garbage. I decided to let Daphne chase the raccoon away. But did it run away? No, It climbed up our house and then stared at me with such pleading, terrified eyes, that I called off Daphne and was tempted to pack it a little "to-go" bag of garbage.

Now it's 11:00 at night and I’m typing this in my bed with my sweatshirt hood pulled over my head. I’ve pulled the drawstrings of the hood so tight that I’m left with nothing but a tiny hole to peer out of. Why? Because this just flew past my head:

Okay, well is was actually almost an hour ago, and it wasn't a vampire bat, but still – it was a bat, in my house, flying past my head. It flew a mission of terror through our house, provoking much hysteria and panic. It whizzed past my daughter's head and she did what anybody would do in her position - she snatched up a rug from the floor, placed it on her head, and then she screamed and ran in circles. My son, being 6'5", felt like an easy target so he assumed a squatting position and sped across the living room in a most comical crab-walk, bellowing about rabies. I chose to cling to my son, who, even squatting, is taller than me so I felt that he was a sort of human shield (I know, my maternal instincts could use some work). Finally we decided to flee the house and we sat in my car, huddled together like three terrified, twitching rabbits. I'm usually brave about wildlife but I have a history with bats so I was freaking out. We left the door to the house open and from the car we watched the bat put on a show that was clearly meant to shock and awe. First it swooped back and forth through our living room, our dogs chasing it and leaping at it. Then it landed on our floor and staggered around, dragging it's disgusting form across our rug with its winged feet. For some reason, when it did this the dogs stopped chasing it. In fact, they backed away from it and then began looking for us. Finally the bat found his way outside. But we're still worried he might have a friend or two hanging around. I mean literally hanging around (I'm afraid to look at my ceiling for fear of seeing one.)

My book, Outtakes From a Marriage, comes out a week from tomorrow so I have been running around like a maniac, trying to get my life organized. I'm disorganized, to put it mildly, and now I'm trying to get one kid ready for final exams and another kid ready to graduate, while at the same time, trying to find something to wear for interviews and appearances and trying to not succumb to nervous exhaustion. My house has no power. We were knocked out by an electrical storm hours ago. No power, no water, no phone. My dog's kidneys are failing. My horse has thrown a shoe and our barn cat hasn't been seen for days. Let's see, what else? Oh, mice in the kitchen. They come at night, like fairies, but instead of sprinkling fairy dust everywhere, they leave mouse dung.

But I got another nice review today. This time from the Library Journal. It said, in short: "Verdict: Leary, wife of actor Denis Leary, follows up on her critically acclaimed memoir, An Innocent, a Broad, with this fun yet not too fluffy debut novel. This glimpse of Hollywood glitz and glamour, coupled with a dose of reality, is an addictive and delightful read."

Well, gosh that was nice, thanks Library Journal!

Every year I hang flowering baskets on our front porch.

And every year, a sparrow builds a tiny nest amidst the blooms in one of the hanging baskets, and there she lays her eggs.

It's always the basket that hangs from the same spot on our porch - right near the corner. We're not sure if it's the same spot because it's the same sparrow family each year, or if it just happens to be an ideal location because of the way the porch shades it or something. Anyway, because of the nest, we are unable to water the basket and as the little family hatches and grows, the flowers dry up and die, which seems somehow wonderfully symbiotic to me. I'm not sure if symbiosis is the right word, since only the birds benefit from the relationship. I'll have to ask one of my kids. They go to school. But it's the whole a time to be born, a time to die thing. When the fledgelings are old enough to leave the nest we replace the basket.

WARNING: VERY SAD STORY AHEAD

Denis drinks his coffee on this porch every morning, and - brace yourself, be prepared to report him to PETA, the National Audubon Society, etc - he has a morning cigarette. Relax. He doesn't sit in the chair closest to the nest and there's no proof that second-hand smoke harms bird eggs. Anyway, one morning last week, he was enjoying his coffee and smoke when he heard a little splat. More like a little pat sound, he said. You almost couldn't hear it at all. But he looked over and there was a tiny egg smashed on the porch. It had fallen from the nest. We think the mother must have laid it too close to the side of the basket. As Denis watched (in horror), the mother bird flew down to where the egg had smashed and stared at it. Then she fluttered up to the nest for a moment, then flew back down to the smashed egg. Denis said it looked like any egg that you might break - the baby hadn't even begun to form. The mother tilted her head and stared at the egg with one eye. Then she tilted her head and stared at the egg with the other! Flew back up to the nest and then back down to have another look. It was like she was trying to make sense of the whole thing. It appeared to me that Denis was trying not to cry when he told me about this later. Denis cannot go to zoos, HATES circuses and can't be in the room when Animal Planet is on TV because he can't bear to see any kind of animal cruelty, and even the cruel laws of nature are sometimes too much for him (me too). People are often surprised to learn this about Denis for some reason.

Anyway, the mother seems to have sorted it all out for herself and the remaining eggs are safe and secure. I'll post a photo of her babes when they hatch.

So, I blogged a while back about a bird that had built a nest and laid her eggs in one of the hanging plants on our porch. There was a very sad story involved, unfortunately, but I am happy to report that the first of the surviving eggs hatched today. That bright red thing in the center of the nest is baby's open beak. The other eggs have yet to hatch.

Okay, just everybody relax. My camera has a very good zoom lens. I wasn't close to the nest at all. I've been trying to photograph the mother bird for days, but was unable to. Today my daughter went out and got this beautifully framed shot in one try.

I believe she is some kind of a sparrow, but if I'm wrong, feel free to correct me. We were trying to think of a name for her over dinner last night. Because of the unfortunate egg incident, names like "Dropsy" and "Butterfingers" were bandied about. There was some speculation as to whether the falling egg was an accident at all and somebody suggested "Mommy Dearest." But her nest is right outside my office window and I get to watch her every day and I can see that she's a very good mother, though I sense this might be her first brood as she has been a little overdramatic during the gestation period, checking the eggs every minute or two, frantically moving bits of nest here and there. She's a hoverer and a fretter, that's clear. I think we'll call her Jane Sparrow. Plain Jane Sparrow.

Blogger's note: Sneakers has been missing for weeks. We found his remains yesterday. A coyote got him, as we suspected. I miss him terribly. He had this weird meow that sounded like a human voice and he used to follow me around the barn muttering things at me that I couldn't entirely understand. I understood his tone, though. Sometimes he was cheerful and just chit-chatty. Other times, he was cranky and insistent. You really miss a cat like that. So this post is a reprint, it originally ran in April.

Meet Sneakers. Sneakers is our barn cat. He may look cuddly, but he’s not. Trust me. I know him well. In order to survive, I’ve had to learn to interpret his every expression and anticipate all his needs. In the photograph above, he’s saying, “Put the cat food down …and nobody gets hurt.” He is the king of the barn and has trained me, and all other humans who enter his kingdom, to treat him with a fearful reverence.

Sneakers has his own apartment in the barn. It’s a tackroom that we keep heated for him all winter long. He has a little swinging door through which he enters and exits his apartment, and in which he is liable to get stuck if he doesn’t do something about his ballooning weight. Sometimes in the mornings, if I am very sleepy, I start feeding the horses before I have offered Sneakers his breakfast. Sneakers corrects me when I do this. He always asks politely first. He purrs and rubs against my ankle once, purrs and rubs against my ankle twice, and if I don’t drop the grain buckets and race to get his food, he dig his claws and teeth into my leg and tries to flay my flesh into ribbons. I have scars from this. I’m fully trained now, so he only has to purr and rub my ankle once and I obediently flip open a cat food can and present it to him with a flourish. Denis has a hockey rink near the barn and sometimes he needs to hook up hoses to the faucet in the barn. Sometimes one of his hockey buddies will offer to do this and the guys allow him, because it’s always funny to see a big hockey guy come running, screaming from the barn with a hissing, spitting cat attached to his shin guards.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Allow me to introduce Pete. Pete lives at North Forty Farm in Roxbury, CT. He's one of those rare and wonderful dogs who can smile:

Pete's a boxer-mix. He weighs over 100 pounds. I'd estimate that fifty pounds of that is head. When you first drive up to North Forty, if Pete hasn't met you before, he will usually rise from his bed next to the riding ring and give you a few short woofs. He's an impressive looking dog, with those big jaws, and if it weren't for his slowly wagging tail and his affable smile, you might think twice about getting out of your car.

Pete's owner Mike is in the army. When he is away, as he is most of the time now, Pete lives with Mike's parents Mariann and Larry. Mariann and Larry dote on Pete, and when they're not busy grooming and cleaning and mucking and tending to all the other duties involved in running a small horse farm, they are brushing out Petey's coat or fluffing up one of his many dog beds.

The other day, Mariann told me that Mike was coming home for the weekend. Pete was lying at her feet. "Yes, Daddy's coming home," Mariann said, and Petey lifted his head and stared off down the driveway, his ears alert, his tail thumping the ground, his mouth turning up, ever so slightly, at the corners.

I have featured most of our dogs and our cat on my blog, but realize the only horse I’ve blogged about is Mark. (More on Mark here, if you're interested. And here.) We have three other horses, so today I present Snoopy.

Snoopy is a draft cross. He was born in Montana. I bought Snoopy when he was three years old, which is technically still a colt. Even at that young age I could see that Snoopy was a very laid-back individual, which was what I was looking for. I wanted a "guest horse" that anybody could sit on and go for a quiet ride without fear of getting bucked off and run away with. A "husband horse." My friend Jen found him for me.

Snoopy is what they call an “easy keeper.” When horse people say that a horse is an "easy-keeper", they are really saying that the horse is a fatty. Nervous and high-strung horses, no matter how much you feed them, tend to look too thin because they burn off the weight pacing and worrying. Snoopy doesn't have this problem.

Snoopy is a gentle giant. My daughter Devin took him to 4-H camp when she was only ten years old and he showed all the fresh ponies how to behave like a gentleman. I have hunted him, paced him, ridden mile of trails on him and Devin has shown him. Snoopy prefers Devin to all of us and he's her horse now. Today we went on a long ride along some of the beautiful country lanes in our town, Devin and Snoopy and Mark and me. Snoopy is a bit of a couch potato, he felt that the hills were a bit much for him, so he did a one-horse performance piece at the end, to demonstrate how exhausted and overworked he was. This was the finale:

"I'm dead. Are you happy now?"

I know it’s boring and tedious the way I keep blogging about my ailing computer but the cursed thing isn’t working again! It just hasn’t been the same since my hard drive was fried by a lightning surge last month. Everything – all documents, letters, my journal, my music, contacts, calendar – EVERYTHING was destroyed. I was given a new hard drive and gained a new outlook once I decided that the whole thing was probably for the best. I needed to start anew. The manuscript pages for my new book that I hadn’t saved weren’t great anyway. And I was sick of all my old music. My new hard drive was supposed to be my new beginning. But now my effing keyboard doesn’t work. I need to go to the Apple Store and figure out where on the Web all my music is. It appears to be out there someplace because when I have tried to purchase songs that I can’t live without, I am told that they are already in my library. But where? I hate itunes, right now.

I can’t load photos onto this computer because …well, I just can’t. I don't think the blog looks great without photos (and nothing but my bitter words) so I'm going to post some that are already on here, like this one of the dear calf who lives down the road:

How can a creature as perfect as this live in a world where itunes exists?

First, I played two long hard sets of tennis with my husband. I didn't want to leave my computer, but he made me, and then he beat me. But it was a blast. It was a beautiful day here. Later, Devin and her friend Ellen got me up to the barn. I didn't want to leave my computer then, but they made me, and again, what was I thinking sitting inside our dark house on a day like today?

Here I am leading Gabriel in from a field:

Later, we gave poor Lulu a bath, because she tangled with a skunk last night:

This is Sailor, who is a fresh thing, and nosy.

Here are some flowers that Dev photographed:

A great Sunday, in every way.

Gabriel is feeling better. The swelling has gone way down and he's MUCH perkier. Here he is gazing out of his stall (still not looking terribly happy.)

Remember Lulu, who had the hip replacement last April? Well, she has totally recovered. Here's a before and after:

Really, have you ever seen a better looking dog? She was a rescue, found in Louisiana as a pup. Perfection in a dog, our Lulu. We're all completely besotted with her.

Here's a photo I took over the weekend of my daughter Dev (left) and her friend Ellen riding Mark and Snoopy up a country lane:

And here are some Lilies that I photographed just in time, because two nights ago, the deer got them, and now there is a bed of stems.

(I originally posted this tribute to Pongo several months ago. Pongo died today so I am repeating it.)

Allow me to introduce Pongo. Pongo is under-represented on my website because he’s not usually running around in front of the camera. He’s usually asleep someplace.

Pongo is 15 years old and is some kind of terrier/poodle mix. He used to be all black with a white chest. We hooked-up with Pongo in Canada, when he was just a puppy. We were staying in a house in Toronto for several months while Denis was making the movie “The Ref.” Jack was 3 years old, Devin was 1 1/2. I was a little lonely and broody that summer - I think I had just weaned the baby and I wanted another baby, but we had a tough time having the two, and were not going to have any more. For some reason that reality hit home hard those months of “The Ref,” when I found myself, once again, friendless in a strange city, my last baby sauntering around drinking out of a sippy cup. So, one day I saw a sign that said “puppies for sale.” I took the kids to the house, just for a look, and we came home with Pongo.

All summer long, I pushed Dev’s stroller back and forth to the park with Jack running ahead of us and Pongo tucked into a diaper bag that hung from the back of the stroller. Pongo loved his rides and would sit with his scruffy paws and face peering out over the top of the bag. Now, I know I’m partial, but Devin happened to have been a strikingly beautiful baby. She was plump and pink-cheeked with strawberry blonde hair and always a big gummy smile for everybody. So, when all the little old ladies of Cabbagetown (the neighborhood we stayed in) stopped me and said, “How adorable! What a precious baby, how old is she?” I would thank them and say, “She’s fifteen months old!” Then, they would almost invariably say, “And what breed is she?” because they were admiring the puppy, not Devin. The Canadians are like the British that way, from what I have seen – they just love dogs. Kids, not so much.

Pongo was the perfect dog for our young family because he’s small and we lived in New York City, and he had incredible amounts of energy and so did our family. He cured many kids in our building of their fear of dogs, because he always approached children with his head down and tail wagging slowly. He wouldn’t dream of jumping up on a child or growling at a child, let alone nipping one. And he suffered some abuse at their hands, though I tried to prevent this. In those days there were always playdates at our house and sometimes, when I was distracted, a toddler or child would grab Pongo by the whiskers and he soon developed an instinct for recognizing undomesticated children and would slink off to the bedroom when those kids darkened our doorway. But unlike many dogs, he never developed a prejudice against all children and still gets excited when a little one comes to visit.

Pongo’s story is too long to tell here, but I will summarize by saying he’s a classic terrier. He’s made of steel and has always been the boss of our pack, even when it included two boisterous Irish Wolfhounds. He has been run over by cars, not once, but twice (once he was attacking his enemy, the UPS truck and the other time, it pains me to tell you, he laid down behind the wheel of my hybrid car, which he didn’t know was running, and I…I…backed over him). Both times he recovered in record time and though he has suffered a shattered leg and broken pelvis, he takes himself on a little tour of our property each day, and he doesn’t have the slightest limp. And the blessed dog has forgiven me for running him over, because he’s a dog, in the very best sense of the word, which is to say that he lives in the present, lets bygones-be-bygones, and still shows his unwavering devotion by refusing his supper when I'm away, and howling with joy when I return.

Posted on May 4, 2008 5:57 AM | Permalink

Yesterday I determined that riding my horse Sailor would be a very therapeutic endeavor for me. I’ve been in a little bit of a funk. This was meant to cheer me up. So I went out and collected Sailor from his field and we walked up to the barn - he jigging and prancing with nervous excitement-me wondering what I ever thought was so great about horses anyway. I brushed him off, pulled and fussed with his mane, and then I threw his saddle on his back. It was then that I noticed that the saddle had no stirrup leathers or irons (the things you put your feet in). One of the girls had borrowed them and now they were in my house. If it was any other horse I might have ridden without stirrups but sometime I will share some of Sailor’s zany antics with you. You really want a good foothold on that one. This is a photo of him harassing poor Gabriel:

Anyway, I led Sailor down to the house and then yelled up at Devin’s window so she would bring me the stirrups. She couldn’t hear me. That’s when I had my GREAT IDEA. I would lead Sailor into the house. The stirrups were right in our entrance-way which has a stone floor and very high ceiling. He would just think he was in a barn, I thought, and actually Sailor has very nice manners when you’re not riding him. So I led him up to the stone terrace. He was quite good about the steps to the terrace but when I opened the door to the house and started in, his eyes grew wild, his nostrils flared and he froze. Then he raised his tail and, after trumpeting a flatulent warning, he shot a series of industrial-sized manure patties all over the terrace. Then, being a horse of many talents, he managed to adjust the manure output to a thick spray while at the same time executing a perfect canter pirouette. Anybody who watched the dressage competitions at the Olympics would understand what a complicated maneuver this is for a horse, especially with a twirling, cursing human underfoot. Anyway, by the time we leapt together from the terrace, there was not an inch of it (or me) that wasn’t carpeted in manure.

The horse didn’t want to go in the house. I understood this as clear as day - I can read animal’s minds. He did NOT want to go in the house. All the commotion brought Devin outside and I ended up having a very nice ride. When I was finished, I learned that the dogs had decided to clean up the terrace for me. What they didn’t ingest, they tried to mop up with their fur, the dears.

The next time I need something therapeutic, I’m going to try therapy.

It's hard to find time to mope around about the son going off to college when I have my daughter Devin and her friend Ellen keeping me busy with their elaborate schemes. Yesterday, they came up with a plan to take our three horses to Steep Rock Land Preserve for a long trail ride. The complicated part was that I only have a two horse trailer. No problem, said the girls. I could drive two horses there, they would stay with them, then I could drive back to the barn, pick up the third and bring him to Steep Rock and we'd all go for a ride. Despite the fact that this would add up to about three hours of horse hauling for me, I agreed, as the girls and I are riding in the Bedford Hunter Pace this weekend and I wanted to see how the horses would behave trotting and cantering together in a group. Besides, how can you turn down a pair like these two?

Or, for that matter, these two:

So we eventually got all three horses transported and we rode the beautiful trails of Steep Rock, which look like this:

Trotting through the pine groves, splashing in the river and climbing the hills of Steep Rock on horseback, accompanied by two of my favorite people on earth, was such a restorative and, I hesitate to say it - it's so cliche - but really a spiritual experience. Before I disengaged the "Google Alert" on my computer, I used to be able to see every nice and nasty thing anybody said about me, anywhere, on the web. One blogger said that, in addition to other despicable things about my personality, I have a blog in which I brag about what a great life I have, which made me wonder if that's how I come across. But I do have a great life, and it wasn't always so great, and I'm prone to depression which sometimes makes it hard for me to see all the goodness around me, so it helps to write about the good stuff. There's so much.

I'm grateful. I'm .... again, sounds trite... incredibly blessed.

I have spent the past 24 hours just steeped in inspiration for my new book. So today, I awoke with the dawn and decided I would spend all morning writing. I had plans to meet my friend Dani for coffee at 2:30, so I took a shower and put on a cute outfit (which I rarely do in the country) and donned a pair of adorable Marni flats that I bought at a 75% off sale at Louis in Boston over the summer. I knew that only Dani, who is very stylish, would appreciate the cunning little flats, as, honestly, to the untrained eye, they look like a tattered pair of canvas slippers. I fed the dogs and walked them up to the barn to feed the horses. There I found my poor old Gabriel lying stretched flat out in his paddock, right outside his stall! I know some of my readers are horse people and they will understand how horrifying it is to see a horse lying, flat out, with his head on the ground, groaning. Gabriel had decided to roll next to one of the columns that supports the overhang of our barn roof. When he rolled he got his forelegs on one side of the column and his hind legs on the other side. It's hard to explain, but it's called being "cast" when a horse gets stuck lying down and it's very dangerous. In 20 years, Gabriel has never been cast, and this summer it has happened to him twice. The dogs and I encouraged him to try, once again, to get up, but he was so exhausted and he was starting to scrape his legs on the column. So, I ran and got a lunge line (long rope) and sort of lassoed his hind fetlock (horse ankle). He was thrashing so much I was afraid he'd kick me accidentally if I got too close. Then I managed to pull the top leg forward enough to clear it of the post. Once that leg was free, he was able to release the other and he leaped to his feet and though I feared he was in shock from exhaustion, the blessed horse walked quite briskly into his stall and had a nice long drink of water. I cleaned him up and fed him his breakfast and that's when I saw that my delightful little flats were caked in mud and manure. It rained last night so there was actually mud and manure inside the flats and oozing between my toes. See, this is why I never bother with nice clothes in the country.

After I sorted Gabriel out I got caught up in all sorts of other barn chores and it's now the afternoon and I haven't written a word (except this).

Tomorrow, BACK TO THE BOOK!