Remember the good old days, when I wrote about social issues, fitness, literature, beauty and red-carpet glamour? Well, I’m afraid those days are over, at least for the present. People, I have discovered the Flip camera, have learned how to load the videos and this blog, as we once knew it,  will never be the same.

Seriously, I promise not to keep doing this, I know it’s boring, but, well, I’m having so much fun. Here are some vids I tooks this morning. In the first, you will experience with me, the serenity and peace that surrounds me as I enjoy my morning coffee in bed with my dear companions:

In this next, the dogs have accompanied me to the barn to feed the horses. Each day I teach Holly the “watch out” command, that the other dogs know. She is so little that she really needs to obey around the horses. When told to “watch out,” she is to go to the back of the aisle and sit, facing me. Not bad for a 5 month old.

And in this last you can see the three dogs waiting as I let horses out of stalls. Lulu came to us at 9 months of age with very bad/dangerous horse manners. She would bark, growl and actually snap at their muzzles and engage in all sorts of herding/predatory behavior when they were in field. Fortunately my horses have fox hunted (we never killed any foxes, promise, not once in all the times I hunted) and they won’t run from barking dogs, nor kick them, so she has more or less stopped with her attempts to chase them. But she’s still learning barn manners as you will see. At end, I overlook her ignoring my “stay” command and allow her to go into horse’s empty stall for leftovers. I’m more focused on the puppy at present and Lulu has learning issues, so just not barking at horses is good enough for today.

Somebody very kindly posted my (Leo) horoscope yesterday or the day before and I’ve been scanning all the comments because I’m wondering if it warned that I would break a tooth and then a computer in one weekend.  I still can’t find the comment with the horoscope, but did get a new laptop today. Mine has been on it’s way out for a long time. It didn’t close and I had to tape it shut when I traveled with it. I guess you’re not supposed to keep dropping the laptops on the ground.  And it wasn’t really my tooth that broke, on Friday, just a veneer. On one of my front teeth. Oh, you thought those were my real teeth?  No, no, my real teeth have been filed down to scary little nubbins in order to make way for the veneers. You see, I had a less than perfect smile.  I had a big gap between my front teeth that somehow looked cool until I was 35, and then, overnight, made me look like a witch.  I’m not sure how that happened but the exact same thing happened to a friend of mine when she turned 35.

But yesterday nothing broke.  Denis and I went to see our daughter play her last high school hockey game.  Holly came along. She is sometimes timid in unfamiliar places so I’m trying to expose her to stuff.  The last time I took her to a hockey game she shivered under my coat, so this time I found a little hoodie for her.

Yes, it’s a hockey sweatshirt! I found it on a stuffed bear.

Lord almighty, ain’t she a cute ‘un, though? (Still missing part of tooth).

She rode on Denis’s lap on the way to the game.

And she rooted for Dev’s team.

Sorry, the hockey photos all came out a little blurry, but that’s our Dev with her stick on the ice (I think).

GO BIG RED!

Last night’s chat was great fun.  Have spent the morning looking for the “Blaize” reference, which Alan insists is the name of the young Mrs. Mrs. De Winter .  Still haven’t found it.

But now we must discuss something more important than all that. We need to talk about me.  At what point does one become a crazy dog lady?  After 4 dogs? 5?  We have 50 acres – a small farm -which makes 5 dogs not seem entirely crazy, but all the dogs prefer to spend most of their time on my bed-desk, which even I know is crazy.

Here’s the thing. I met another dog.   I’ve been visiting shelters and meeting dozens and dozens of dogs over the past few weeks, and I’m not one to fall for every dog I see.  In fact, I really don’t want most dogs I see, even the most beautiful, young and friendly.  But the other day, while visiting the site of the new facilities for The Simon Foundation, a wonderful rescue organization that I’ll  blog about soon, I met Raven.  Stephanie Ferguson, the director of the Simon Foundation is fostering Raven in her home and this is what she has to say about her:

“Raven a 2-year old American Staffordshire Terrier, was confiscated from a home in December 2009. Until that day, she had spent her entire life bearing puppies in the basement. She is a beautiful dog, even though someone did a really bad job of cropping her ears with a pair scissors.

Three of Raven’s housemates (Sydney, Spike, and Annabelle) came with her to The Simon Foundation. None of the dogs had ever been socialized with humans, and they were terrified of their new environment. They spent the first several weeks cowering in their pens, not making any eye contact with the staff. None of the dogs knew how to walk on a leash, so trying to get them out of the pens for exercise and socialization was a stressful experience for everyone.

While fearful, once Raven was out of her pen, she loved to be held and petted. She craved affection, and a life she never before knew existed.

One day we received an application for Sydney and Spike. Because the dogs didn’t show well at the kennel, we decided to take them to a storefront that we use for events and showings. On a whim we decided to bring Annabelle and Raven so they could get out and have a little reunion with their friends. We are so glad we did, because the Raven that was unveiled was a wonder to us all.

Upon seeing her friends, Raven expressed immense joy and playfulness. She ran around with the pack and even approached the people in the room. It was amazing to watch, and gave us hope that Raven could be adopted sooner, rather than later.

A staff member took Raven home and discovered she doesn’t just like other dogs, she also likes cats and children! It was decided that she would be fostered by another staff member so she could be integrated into a home environment and learn how to “be a dog”. She needed to learn how to walk on a leash, up and down stairs, go outside to go to the bathroom, and other basic skills that would help facilitate a successful adoption.

It didn’t take long before Raven’s true personality started to reveal itself. She has the calm, mature demeanor of Cesar Milan’s “Daddy”, who recently passed away. She is extremely intuitive and maternal, perhaps from repeatedly whelping litters.

Raven loathes the cold (and especially the rain) so she needs a sweater to keep her warm. She has learned to walk well on a leash, go up and down stairs, and she’s pretty well housebroken. She likes to ride in the car and pretty much sleeps on a dog bed the entire trip. We do not allow her jump on the furniture, but if you let her, she would love to snuggle with you on the couch while you watch TV. She’s no longer afraid of people (maybe a little shy), but definitely not afraid.

She has been trained to sleep in a crate at night. She didn’t like it at first, because she doesn’t like to be alone, but now she goes right in and sleeps the night away under a soft fleece blanket.

Raven is highly adoptable to anyone who has other pets and children. She would do best in a home that has at least one other dog for her to play with, and someone who will either take her with them wherever they go, or who is around a lot, because she does not like to be left alone.

If you can offer Raven the home she so deserves, please visit The Simon Foundation website at www.thesimonfoundation.org to submit an online Application to Adopt. Her friend
Annabelle is also still available.”

So that’s Raven’s story. We haven’t adopted her yet. Denis will meet her tomorrow, But Stephanie brought Raven over to meet my girls yesterday. I had a bit of trepidation about this, I must admit. She’s a pit bull and they are more inclined to fight, generally, than, say, a Labradoodle..  Female dogs can be aggressive toward each other, but my dogs never fight. They take bones away from each other, eat out of each others’ bowls, etc. I didn’t know if Raven had ever fought other dogs (I was told she was taken from a crack house). Daphne, our pack leader has been known to growl at dogs who have come to our property and whose energy she doesn’t like, so I was worried that if she growled, Raven would be triggered to attack and there would be a tragedy.

But Raven and Stephanie arrived while we were outside and Daphne wandered over to them her tail wagging slowly. Raven was on a leash, which can make some dogs very defensive when confronted by a loose dog, But Raven was mellow, wagging her tail, her head lowered. Soon all of my girls were sniffing Raven, everybody seemed to be admiring her and then we went inside and let them all off-leash together.

Well, I won’t bore you with all the details, but Raven loves to play with other dogs. She LOVED the puppy and Holly loved her. They played for an hour, at least. She’s very short and compact, so she’s easier for the puppy to play with than Lulu, whose size can be overwhelming to the puppy. But she’s so strong that she can play tug-of-war with Lulu, which none of our other dogs want to do because she’s so powerful that they get flung into the air when she shakes her head.

So what do you all think? Will you stop reading my blog if I adopt her, because you will then know for sure what you have long suspected – that what you are reading is the rantings of a lunatic? A dog lady? Or will you admire me for my bravery and kindness, bringing yet another 4-legged creature into our home to live out its days with us?

PS – we have had 5 dogs before, and two of them were Irish Wolfhounds

PPS (PSS?) – we really would like to spend more time in the city and traveling once Dev leaves for college in the fall.

Today, as I drove around our charming little town in search of a USB cord (didn’t find one, but if you’re looking for candles I can show you ten shops within spitting distance of each other) I realized that I need no such cord, as I have several Moses Pendleton photos that I’ve not yet posted. Quite a few actually. There are are a series of red roses that I absolutely refuse to post here because they are rich and sensual and textured and beautiful, and the photos really do lose something when I reformat them for the blog. I just can’t do it, but hope to get prints of them from him someday. I know exactly where I will hang them, Moses, if you ever figure out how to print them.

But I recalled a photo that Moses sent me over a month ago that I just love.  Here it is:

Photo by Moses Pendleton

I love the way the two chairs seem to be just barely touching hands, facing into the late afternoon sun together. Rooted there, like a lovely old married couple.

Then, wonder of wonders, I found a place that sells …well I have no idea what the hell it’s called but you take the photo card from the camera and stick it in this little plastic thing and then you insert the erect male end of the little plastic thing into one of the female receptors on your computer and, if the camera and the plastic thing really love each other, boys and girls, they will make pictures together!

I know somebody here tried to explain this contraption to me once. Maybe somebody knows what it’s called.

So now I’ll post some photos I took during our last snow storm.  I hate to post my photos on the same page as Moses’s, but mine is a sort of photo essay. It’s the story, more than the composition that’s important.

This is Holly in the snow.  The snow makes Holly feel quite alive and full of herself.

She believes that the cold gives her special powers that will enable her to conquer all larger mammals.  Here is Daphne after Holly has gone for a muzzle-grab:

Oops. She tried the same move on Lulu and was forced to offer an immediate surrender:

Here they are having a little conversation, working out the terms of the surrender. Somebody looks slightly humbled:

But all is soon forgotten. Holly will walk behind the other dogs for a little while. Until her special powers return:

Horses in snow:

A field of white:

Meg (not my sister, but the other Meg who sometimes comments here) sent me this incredible news clip about a dog that stayed with a lost three-year-old and kept her from freezing overnight.  Love happy endings:

I’m a little hesitant to blog about our puppy AGAIN.  You all will tell me if I’m getting to be a bore, right? I feel like the annoying mom who keeps showing pictures of her baby to all her friends.  But just …please :

This was Holly before our hike today.  Yes, she likes to sleep on the center console of the car!  Here you can see how she rests her hind feet on my legs and sleeps against the gear shift.  I think she likes the vibration:

I know.  I know.

Well, she was resting up for her big hike in the snow.  We’ve been hiking with my friend Marcia and her gorgeous puppy Gus.  Today Gus was sporting a very jaunty vest, due to the snow:

And Marcia’s beautiful daughter Ava joined us because she had a snow day.  Holly was rather taken with Ava:

Holly would like to be carried on snowy hikes.  It’s a lot of work for those little legs, but I encourage her to walk most of the way.  The whole point is to tire her out.

Eventually, though, if she starts to shiver, I end up tucking her into my jacket. It makes her happy:

Me too!

I spent time with a couple of animal rescue people the other day.  We were at a city pound that takes in dogs off the street or animals that have been surrendered for one reason or another.  The two rescue people that I was with look for adoptable dogs to remove from the pound and try to place in homes.  They want to save the dogs’ lives and they are wonderful women. We had a discussion about the issue of what is to be done with dogs that are aggressive.  Biters and fighters.

One woman works for an organization that doesn’t believe any dog should be euthanized, regardless of temperament. I don’t believe in this philosophy, for several reasons. First, of course, is  the risk that a child or adult will be seriously injured by the dog.  But I also have concern for the dog. The human-aggressive dog faces such a bleak future, and I don’t think a lot of animal-rights advocates take this into consideration. I have seen what some “trainers’ do to large, aggressive, difficult to control animals.  You see this a lot with horses.  Whips, spurs – with dogs, choking with pronged collars, electric shock collars used in a punitive way, kicking, etc.  Or, if they end up in a “no-kill” shelter, that won’t place human-aggressive dogs in homes – that’s where they will live the rest of their days. In a kennel.  Perhaps for years.  Is this a life for a dog?  As we discussed this, one of the women told of a story about a local “trainer” who specializes in aggressive behavior, and what that trainer did to that dog, right in front of its owner made me so sick.  After such treatment, I have no doubt that the dog’s fear of humans will have intensified, as well as his aggression.  I wonder if it wouldn’t have been kinder to have the dog humanely euthanized, before the brutal training.  I suspect that it’s the ultimate fate for this dog, anyway.  Too bad it had to have its short life made worse by such torture.

I would love to know what you all think about this issue.  I’ve been talking to so many people about animal ethics, for my book, and people become very emotional about this topic. Do you believe that “no-kill” shelters are the most humane solution for dogs?  And I’d like to hear from horse lovers about your feelings regarding bans on horse-slaughter,  which is another controversial issue that some animal advocates don’t believe is in the best interest of the animals.

I was just looking at some photos this morning and came across a few of Holly from around Christmas, when she was still with her mom and Charlotte.  What a little dumpling she was:

Amazing that just a couple of months later, she looks like this:

I know, weird shot. She doesn’t really look like that unless I say or do something really, really funny. Usually she looks like this:

We’ve been continuing with our daily hikes, Daphne, Holly and I (me?), despite the cold and snow and wind.  It makes such a difference in her behavior, if she gets that morning hike, and in my behavior too.  I like walking in the woods more than walking on a treadmill, no matter what the weather.

I have been studying Holly ever since we brought her home to live with us, when she was about 9 weeks old. It’s been a while since we had a young puppy and I was so amazed during our first weeks with her, at what a nine-week-old puppy  already knows about the world. Because she had spent her first weeks with Charlotte’s pack, she had excellent social skills when it came to our other dogs.  She knew to stay away from them when they were eating and that the best time to play with them is after a meal, when they are at their most jolly. She knew to flatten herself on her back when our big Lulu wanted to play too rough, exposing her belly and throat in an act of total submission which caused Lulu to sniff her gently and then back off.  All this she learned from her mother and Charlotte’s other dogs.  But she also seemed to be born with an innate instinct about humans.  She immediately aligned herself with me when she moved into our home.  How did she know that I was the dominant female? She seemed to know it instantly.  She also registered all of our family members at once, committed us to memory, and immediately knew to bark at the sight or sound of a stranger. This barking we nipped in the bud. None of our dogs are barkers, even the chihuahua. We can’t stand it and shush them immediately.  Of course, they’re allowed to bark at scary things like ghosts and wild animals, which they do.

She has learned to sit, lie down and stay.  She can’t hold the stay for long. She’s too young.  But, because I include her in my day – barn chores, hikes, etc, she has learned quite a few things herself. Yesterday she learned the phrase “watch out!” which all my dogs understand.  They all freeze when I say that, or they run to my side.  The big dogs learned this phrase when I had to train them to the invisible fence.  That fence training was excruciatingly painful for all of us; any of you who have the underground fence knows how awful the initiation is.

First, for those who think the underground fence is cruel, the training part is not nice, but we’ve had dogs injured and one killed by a car.  The fence is not cruel. It keeps our dogs from the main road, on which people drive very fast.  But the training sucks. It required me to place an electric-pronged collar on my dear dogs, then to walk them, on a leash and allow them to wander forward across a an underground wire that I knew would give them an electric shock.  I have never given my dogs a reason to mistrust me before this. I was shaking, and the first time one of them was zapped (it was our wolfhound, Clancy) I burst into tears, making it even more traumatic for him.  The thing is, you never lead the dogs across the wire.  You let them wander ahead, and then pull them back toward you when they’re shocked so their already ingrained understanding that you will protect them is reinforced, even though you are the one who set them up.  It’s awful. But the collar gives the dog a warning beeping sound before they cross the line and they very rapidly learn that the noise means stop and turn around.  As I walked them around the perimeter, I added my own warning, which was “WATCH OUT!”. They heard this, then the beep, and then would run to my side.  I can’t tell you how useful this lesson has been.  I have stopped our dogs from running in front of cars, underneath horses, running out doors, just by saying “watch out!”

Yesterday morning,  Holly and the other dogs were in the barn with me. When I release the horses from their stalls, the older dogs all know to stay in the back of the barn, because I just let them out of their stalls and they clip-clop hastily down the aisle, not paying attention to what or whom is underfoot.  I usually hold Holly when I do this but yesterday I just forgot that she was up there with me.  So, I opened Gabriel’s stall door and as he stepped out, Holly ran into the barn and was right under his feet!  ”WATCH OUT!” I yelled, and then I screamed (so not the right thing to do in a horse situation, ever). Fortunately Gabriel is old and knows me very well, and didn’t panic, but, rather, carefully stepped around the puppy and wandered outside.

Holly learned her lesson though.  She rushed to my side and begged me to pick her up.  Today, when I fed the horses, she did her usual sniffing around the aisle, but when I went to open the stall doors, I said, “Watch out!”  All the dogs retreated to the back of the barn, Holly first.  It might have been the stall door opening that reminded her, but I will repeat the “watch out” command until she makes the connection.

Thank goodness she’s not old enough to train to the fence, I don’t think I can bear it.

There was a little pup, who had a little tuft, right in the middle of her forehead.

When she was good, she was very, very good.

But when she was bad…..

SHE WAS HORRID!

After defeating her first opponent (she’s the one hiding behind Daphne, the ref), Holly takes on heavyweight champion Luscious Lulu.  This can’t be good for lightweight newcomer Hellacious Holly. She’s really outclassed in this match.  Look at the conditioning on Luscious!

And Luscious Lulu has her in a headlock. It looks like the end for Hellacious.

REF! DO SOMETHING!

Wait, Holly’s taking it to the floor! Smart!

And she pulls out her trademark move – the “ear pull.”

Followed by a quick “jowl pinch.” Oooh, that’s gotta hurt.

Luscious Lu is trying to stay on her feet, but it’s not looking good, folks

AND SHE’S DOWN!

SOMEBODY STOP THE FIGHT! No tongues!  NO TONGUES!

DING! DING! DING!

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!  The winner of this morning’s fight and reigning defender of the ottoman empire, Hellacious Holly!

You want to get up on that ottoman?  Go ahead…make her day.

We had a full “wolf moon” the other night. I was heading out, and though I was slightly late, I had to stop to snap a few photos before I got into my car.  According to the Farmer’s Almanac, Native Americans named the January moon, the “wolf moon,” because the wolves howled so loudly on the nights when it was full.

Here in Connecticut, the coyotes enjoy a night of song and merrymaking whenever there’s a full moon.  I think it’s because the night’s brightness makes the hunting easier and when they mate,  it’s as if the lights are on, which makes it sexier. There was some very loud hunting and carrying on the other night.  It gave me goosebumps. It made my dogs bark until they were hoarse, and I made the mistake of letting them out too close to my bedtime, and had to wait up for them to come in.  I stood in the freezing doorway yodeling out into the night for them to come. Calling and cursing like a witch. The moon was so bright  that the trees cast shadows across our white fields.

Yesterday I came into the city and stayed over night, for the first time in months.  We went to a party  and then out with some friends.  It was exciting to be in the city.  I always feel a little dazzled by all the beautiful people when I come to the city after having been in the country so long.  All the beautiful, stylish people, all the delicious smells coming from restaurants. The cool hair. The fashionable babies and dogs.  Today, having breakfast with a friend, and then back to coyote country.