Brain wipes.

Sweet beans, I'm glad that's over.


I returned from frolicking in the trees, the bug less trees, but I digress, to find that the infants have vanished. This must be how parents feel with the kid finally, finally goes to their first sleepover. Som'where else of course.

We have a running joke here that the dogs are easier than kids, way easier. I mean, dog kids go willingly into their cages and don't poop in their pants. I think those two facts alone is enough qualification.

Well, having 4, trained dogs, is probably as much work as half a well behaved, decent aged kid...as in a kid that's old enough to pour their own cereal and dress themselves, my dogs are easier than that.

Puppies are not easier than that. Puppies are, mathematically between 3/4 to 2 1/2 times as much work as say, a two year old child. The three quarters puppy being robotically perfect, small sized and low energy and the 2.5 x puppy being a nipping, shitting, screaming, 80lb beast from hell.

I figured that the Muppet's were about a 3/4 of a two year old child, each.

So mathematically, I went from having less than one behaved human kid to essentially 2.25 human children. Human children that don't speak English, keep odd hours and eat doors


Thankfully my brain didn't explode, and all is normal now. Which brings in a new issue.

Wtf to do with myself.

Today I walked in circles, I cleaned, but not in a focused manner, I brushed a few cats, trained a dog or two, but mostly I ambled around going "what were my hobbies again??"

No wonder people do this puppy thing over and over. Motherhood gives you amnesia.

Poopmares

Its official.

I've lost my mind.

Out of all the deep thoughts swirling in my head all day. Dolphins and physics. Polymers and behavior...what does my brain chose to dream about?

Poo.

Not just in a "there was a turd in my flying dream last night". No, as in the whole dream was about poo to the point I became so anxious and upset I woke up and had to determine if it had really happened.

A Poopmare.

I had just, just enough sense in me to not ask if it was real. I had the thought of "if its real, you'll deal with it when you get up, if its not, you'll never hear the end of it"

Anyway, I feel this is fitting, because I'm positive the cause of my poopmares is actually experiencing them herself. Tippy is a sleep pooper.

She was "the bed pooper" before all of her sleeping in bed privileges were revoked. A once in a blue moon thing became clockwork like an incoming train. So the bed pooper sleeps alone

She is bonafide asleep when this happens. So every morning, she awakens to several nuggets amid her bed.

I suppose I can't complain to much, my dream was waking up to find the floor alllll around my bed was covered in Tippy nuggets...

but Tippy gets to live the dream. Live the dream Tippy, live the dream.

Things I've learned this month part twooo

The second you spend $300 building a fence, and half a day, the reasons for it will be tied up on the other side of the yard.

There is a fine line between arrogance and confidence, and its blurry to everyone but you

Tippy must poop in her sleep at least once a day

usually at night

usually in the dog bed that you just washed

yesterday


Monitors like to eat their own eggs

The weather is all over the effing place

My Anna apples are growing in funny shapes


The duck will never fully appreciate his 200sq ft enclosure...preferring to use about 10 of it

I probably will never eat tuna in large amounts again

California only has enough water for another 10-20 years (at most)

Birds get in som' nasty, nasty brawls over bitches.


thats is all.

No thank you, your dead things violate my belief system, Sir.

Its been a hard month, Critter passed and quite suddenly, my house has started to less resemble a fort, but more the need to be a fort. We've always prided ourselves on privacy, and keeping undesirables out, but those "undesirables" never materialized...in fact I've always figured people thought of us as paranoid wierdo-urban hermits...but now I can see my fears are founded.

One of the more positive aspects of Critters absence is I now have a tremendous amount of free time. Most of which must be actively used indoors, for now, due to the dire wolves that have materialized at my fence line, but I digress.

I guess I never realized how much time I spent putting up and taking down baby gates. Mopping up pee in the morning, evening and night, off tile. Using the carpet cleaner when I wasn't lucky enough to be cleaning tile. Time spent wandering around the house aimlessly searching for the giant, invisible bottle of white vinegar. Having to do a potty break ever half hour, all hours of the day, in a futile attempt to keep the floor clean. I'm exhasted thinking about it just typing this up.

Don't get me wrong, I love my dog, and I'd endure "pee feet" every morning for the rest of eternity to have her back...but man that dog peed a lot, and in all the wrong places.

Now that hospice duties are over, I've been getting to know my other dogs. I thought I knew my dogs pretty damn well. I mean, I spend all my time with them, so I thought. I feel like that dad that has a great relationship with his kids, that just lost his job, and is now home all the time and coming to the realization that there was a lot more to know. A lot more to do.

My first impulse was to replace the gaping hole with another dog. Not to replace her, but to occupy my time/mind while I heal. This is how we acquired Emma and Kiwi . This model works out for me logically. Dogs need homes. There is a vacancy at the inn. Sorry no pool. Pets allowed with deposit. Please no peeing on the carpet. That sort of thing

This transition was different, so I laid low and allowed myself to feel the awkwardness. I kinda felt this time, like I didn't deserve another dog, and this time, like it would be an insult on Critters memory. I let the emptiness eat me this time, in between cleaning everything in sight.

We went on a hike the other day. I took the three able bodies, and left Tippy to sleep on her pillow, which she'd probably rather do anyway, to the trail up off of Ettiwanda. It was cold and my hands wouldn't work. The dogs were beside themselves. For the first time I didn't feel any guilt for leaving the "others" behind.

Emma is a turnkey dog, if I could replicate her and sell her to new owners I would. On this trail, Kiwi must be kept on a long line, or else in her glee, she'd get lost. Chili stays by my side, sniffing this, or that, but staying with me, I watch for dogs and people which could potentially ruin both his and my day. Em, on the other hand, is having the time of her life, looking for rabbits, she must have inspected every shrub on that trail, all the while, staying near and checking in with me, of her own volition, which required no training to accomplish this.

I never in my life thought I'd be comfortable, letting a 25lb dog, run out of sight, with prey around. Never in my life. I trust this dog that much.

Chili followed her into the brush for a brief moment. I do see that the other dogs are role models for him, as hes gleamed a bit of behavior from them all. But I could see in his face that he had no idea why the hell this was so "fun" and eventually came back to me. Probably the same feeling I had as a kid, backpacking, miserable, all the while my dad was toting it as the best thing that could have ever happened to me... "your not tired! this is fun!"

There was a place where the trail doubles back on itself, and as a result, Em had emerged quite a bit ahead of us on her "check in". I could see her, but she could not see me. Hilarious. She wasn't panicked, but had this look of "stupid human, I left her RIGHT HERE" funny to see the dog look for the "lost" person rather than the other way around. I highly recommend it


So wikipedia, defines religion, partially as such

Religion is a cultural system that creates powerful and long-lasting meaning, by establishing symbols that relate humanity to beliefs and values


I mention this, because today, on impulse, I almost said "sorry, its against my religion" when a guy came in selling flowers. This struck me as odd, since I've always prided myself on the absence of religion in my life.

I took note of this, because my head didn't miss a beat, so I must assume it was genuine. Kinda like a Freudian slip.

But now, when I look at the definition, perhaps my subconscious was onto something.

For those that don't know about Roses, specifically the hybrid tea rose...I wont bore you with details, but essentially its an over bred hybrid, with pretty much no resistance to insects of disease, grown for the long stems that us Humans prefer in our cut flowers. They are readily available at garden centers at huge prices, yet almost never in garden, since unlike other roses that are hard as nails, these teas die.

Since hybrid teas are what are raised for cut flowers, and they essentially, suck. They are raised indoors in huge greenhouses with heavy fertilizers and pesticides.

My other understanding, is for the sake of cheap labor and lax chemical laws, they are grown primarily in South America...where workers are exposed to toxic chemicals and paid less than they are worth, probably without the knowledge that they are killing themselves.

Somehow my brain accessed all the above, and in an instant took a stand. No. I do not believe in this. My second thought however, was that this guy wasn't aware of any of these things, and chewing him out would do no good.

I could have educated him on it, but I didn't, which IN FACT goes against one of my OTHER beliefs, about educating the ignorant. So now what?

I guess if my hypocrisy is going to send me down the road to hell, I'll at least have Emma escorting me down that road, checking every damn bush along the way.

Enviromentalism with a side of bipolar.

I have been manic lately. Massively manic

Not in a good, clean the house, paint the ceiling sort of way. More of a recycle the bottle caps, tempted to root through the neighbors trash kinda way.

I've known the sky to be falling for a while now, but the combo of dolphin eating footage, that dude skinning the golden retriever, and the large amounts of people I run into with far to many children finally got to me. If I could have had a seizure, I would have, pant crapping and all.

I am not the depressive type, quite the opposite, I have pep talked myself out of som' heavy shit. Even if I was crying uncontrollably. But it all finally got to me, my brain went into death mode, and why are we here, and nothing you do matters etc etc.. even as I was thinking these things, I was totally aware my brain was slitting its own wrists.

I am currently out of my funk, but like everything, I have learned from it. I overdid it. Much like an athlete pulls a muscle, I am an intellectual that overloaded and pulled my empathy tendon. Resulting in an accute case of emphadepresalitis.

I read once, that empathy was kinda like a floodgate, once you open it, stand back, or else your sneakers are going to be more than a little wet. This is held true for me, as I have in the last five years yo-yo'd from not giving a damn about anyone but me and my fuzzy minions to caring about every goddamn thing in this world, crying at not just aspca commercials, but at infomercials and everyday things, like some crazy pregnant woman.

So now I sit in a zen state, partway between my "I only care about me"  and the over the top "feed the world, save the whales" overly emotional brain. I find, that this is the state that I get the most done, and feel the best doing it.

stay sane everyone, you can't save the world alone :)

Squats like dis mom?

Kiwi has the muscle memory of a rock.

The 'wi has gone from impossible to train, to OMG I LOVE YOU WHAT DO YOU WANT like a ball-sick labrador after you've been gone all day. These are also peppered with the occasional fit of OMG DON'T BEAT ME. Which occur at complete random, usually when I am not even interacting with her. Take last night for example, I was putting my phone on the table and whatever motion that involved gave her the impression I was about to gut her and serve her raw. No amount of anything would "fix" her. So I eventually gave up. Today shes my buddy again. I think a wire is loose in there. If she kills me in my sleep, it'll all make sense.

Anyway, back to rock muscles. I have been trying to convince her to "sit pretty" for about a month straight now. Its a behavior I have been capturing and shaping, and since its not perfect, there's no lure/hand motion/cue for it yet. She just does it at random when she feels its time for her and I to party. Which is many times a day.

She would only hold it for a split second, before either dropping back into a sit, or doin' som' zoomies-ish motion, or standing up completely like a weirdo. Paws high like a 6 year old kid stands when mom is about to put a shirt on them. After selective rewards for over a month now, shes not making any progress in the duration department. So my conclusion is simply that there are no abs-o-steel in there, and those muscles instead are in her ridiculously muscular pit bull beef legs that she has, despite the only exercise she gets being nap marathons.

Chili, on the other hand. Has decided to once again make all the other dogs look like chumps, and just randomly one day decided to basically stand in front of the 'wi as it flopped around, and do the trick with 110% perfection. He even held it until I said "OK". Hes like that gifted kid in high school that really should be the one beat up, vs the people that have to actually put in effort to get things. Its so sad, hes like "like this mom?" with a pathetic expression. While the others just emanate a long, low durrrrrr sound that fills the room.

I think kiwi is debating stuffing him in his locker and eating his homework.

Handstands and Unseen Cues.

Damn you weather.


Well, severe weather that is.


I was so proud I was still getting tomatoes in late Nov. That is until the wind ripped the giant trellis loose and THREW it across the yard...ripping out most of the plant with it. Little unripened green tomatoes littered the ground like innocent victims. I left them hoping an animal would come along and eat them...but being as the only mammals that like to hang around are the ones I discourage I ended up going outside and being once again reminded of the windy murder..

For the most part tho, I've conquered the severe winds, or at least, learned not to panic when I see a tree defoliated in two days by having its leaves ripped off 2-3 months too soon. I now know the tree isn't dead, it will come back...it will come back. Don't panic.

the frost tho. Is my newest foe to conquer. Its unpredictable. So far. Unless I turn on my computer and go look at the weather and see the frost warning. I am blissfully ignorant until I walk outside in the morning and see it...the little ice crystals of doom on my "lawn". Then I know...I survey the yard to find the victims. Last year, it was agaves mostly. I also had a scrub that hadn't hardened off yet (still green, not bark) that got fried...this year however, since I've moved slowly away from ornamentals, and more towards food, my squash was fried. In fact, it was mush. Except for the little baby squash that was too small to harvest, stuck to the dead plant like a pathetic mammal trying to nurse from a dead mom (which is REALLY sad if you ever see that...)

enough of my bitching tho. I am not a complainer, at least I tell myself that. Its most me just stewing about what cues I haven't picked up on yet to warn me of things...It will come tho. I know it.

Chili is working on his handstand. With massive progress. We had worked on this off and on for months now...and that should be a clue...when I work on som'thing "off and on" that means generally I am doing som'thing wrong. Chili is sharp, and I am not a bad trainer, so when it takes longer than a session or two to teach som'thing...the method is off and its time to stop and figure out what to do different.

This behavior tho. I knew involved alot of muscle memory and strength. Time essentially. This trick would take time. Don't push the dog too far to fast, or you'll hurt his cute little body.

I suppose this made sense for a while, but as was hit a wall and got stuck, I think I used it as an excuse for too long. I needed to know a time frame, som'thing to compare his progress to and finally I found it.

Another trainer posted a montage of videos, here was a dog that was a blank slate, and six week or so in, she taught him 10ish tricks. Complex ones at that. Including, the holy grail, the walking handstand.

Now I had my timeframe. Nothing like seeing stuff like that to either

A. Motivate the hell out of you
B. Make you feel useless as a trainer

Luckily, I am in the "A" generally. I have a large drive to be like the people I idolize, and in general, an optimist...so now that I know the problem is ME. I now could figure out WTF I was doing wrong

I took the clicker adage to heart and went back a step. Then from that step, I broke it down into micro steps between it and the place we got stuck. Som'thing in there was incomplete. My criteria wrong, my click late, som'thing.

Within 5 mins of changing my criteria he was doing brief handstands against his platform.

Within 5 more mins, he could do it with minimal help, as in i could remove the platform and he could get into position against a bare wall

watching a dog levitate for a tenth of a second on his own is mindnumbingly exciting. I think I screamed at him. Which fortunately he likes.

the first ten of so handstands were accidents. As in, he'd do them in an attempt to balance, and would loose his footing on the books/wall. Now the criteria is intentional foot removal from the wall...one foot at a time. So far its going well...and now, our biggest enemy is fatigue.

I am reaching a point where I feel I can teach most anything...confidence swells in me.

And now, the anxiety begins, because the next step in the growth. Is taking your knowlege and giving it to others...which is new to me...and som'thing I am going to be dipping my toes into.

Scary.