Well, Michelle is in India, so it’s just me and the maminals. The Doggs really hate it when they’re home alone with me because they get ignored all day while I sit behind my computer or play music. Not today, though. I loaded the Doggs into the truck and made for Disco Park.
It was cold and windy, and the dogs were as polar opposite as usual.
The coast and the mountains looked amazing as the weather started rolling in.
Michelle, Pat, the doggs, and I all headed up to Whidbey Island on Sunday to check up on the property there and make sure everything is A-OK. (The lot was perfect.) After an unusually long wait for the ferry from Mukilteo to Clinton, we passed through Langley on the way up through Freeland and to the lot. After a quick checkup on the site, we drove the mile north to South Whidbey Island State Park to have a picnic and a walk on the beach. Naturally, we ended up taking more photos of the doggs than of people or scenery, but that’s what we do. Enjoy.
Bart-a-bok. Bear-de-doo. Bearje. Boorgurgeboo. One who went by many names passed away today.
About 14 and a half years ago, my parents were out of town and my grandma was 
in the market for a new puppy. My sister and I jumped in the car with Oma and headed up north from our cabin in Brainerd, MN to a farm which had left an add in the paper saying they had six puppies up for adoption. One thing led to another, and not only did Oma adopt a dog, but so did I. I was 17 and my parents were not consulted. Nor were they pleased when they came home from their trip a few days later and found a new puppy in the house.
My parents were upset with me (and I can’t imagine what they had to say to Oma who let me leave that place with a dog) but they let me keep her because she was such a good dog. She was easy to train and sharp as a tack. Everyone she met fell in love with her. Here are a few of my favorite memories of her.
She was still a puppy when winter hit; at the time I was Nordic ski racing very seriously, so I typically spent 2 or 3 hours per day on skis during the week, and 8-10 hours per day on the weekends. Obviously, that was too long to keep a puppy in-doors, so I often took her skiing with me. Being a skier meant that I took the condition of the groomed trails very seriously, and I didn’t want her running on the tracks. Within the first afternoon skiing with her, she learned to run alongside me in the ungroomed snow, avoiding the trails. I’ll never forget gliding along with her running at my side.
When she was younger, she was very protective of our family and ferociously barked and growled at anyone who came to the door. By the time my graduation party came along, she was still too jumpy to allow her into the party, so I had to lock her in my room upstairs. At first, she was barking and whining constantly but eventually, she quieted down. A few hours into the party, she was so quiet we decided to let her out and see how she did. She was so relieved to be allowed into the party that she behaved herself perfectly and didn’t make a peep. Ever since, she was perfectly socialized, charming the pants off anyone who came to our house.
When I went to college, my parents took over as Bear’s primary caretakers. My dad is a professor and did a six-month exchange program with a University in France. As Michelle and I couldn’t watch her in our apartment, my parents brought her to my Aunt’s house near Amsterdam to stay while they were away. My aunt had a dog as well, Boomie, and the two tolerated each other but did not particularly care for one another. Poor Boomie was not the sharpest knife in the drawer, so Bear ended up taking advantage of him, often framing him for her crimes. Her finest hour was when she ate an entire roast off my Aunt’s countertop. The roast was resting under tin foil, and after Bear finished her stolen feast, she carried the sullied tin foil over to Boomie’s basket and laid it there to be found.
Some years later, Michelle and I got our own puppy (Mack) and had to move into an apartment that allowed dogs. Obviously, at this point we were able to watch Bearje for my parents when they were gone. As a young dogg, Mack was wound tighter than a drum. He absolutely would not ever, under any circumstances, sit still for even a moment (like he’s doing right now, by the way). One weekend, we watched Bearje and she just sat at our feet and was the most mellow and sweetest dogg ever. Michelle and I realized how much company having a dogg could really be like; how nice it was to have a mellow dogg to hang out with.
They call this feeling I have “heartbreak” and it is amazing that my heart really does hurt.
Mack is a really good dogg. He is so motivated to please that he is very easy to discipline. With rare exception, he does what he is supposed to, 
when he’s supposed to, and how he’s supposed to. Beene, on the other hand, is motivated mainly by inertia. In fact, as I’m writing this, she is staring at me with a look that says, “.” She’s so spacey that she’s almost impossible to train and her unwillingness to focus has brought us to lower our expectations an order of magnitude from what they are with Mack.
This morning, I woke to the realization that I had no more coffee beans. It had not escaped my attention that I was using the last of our beans yesterday morning, but I optimistically assumed I would remember to buy more before the next morning. No big deal. I am totally flexible enough to turn “walking the doggs” into “taking the doggs to Makeda for my favorite beans (Seven‘s Espresso Huli blend).”
Makeda is like most places in Seattle in the sense that there are dog treats at the counter for the dogs most store owners assume you have. I got my beans and grabbed four little dog treats to give the doggs who were patiently waiting, tied to the bench outside. I always have Mack sit and hold the treat on his nose, which he does no matter how badly he doesn’t want to. So, I say, “Sit. Mack, hold it…” and he sits and holds his nose steady for me to set the treat on. Meanwhile, Beene sits down behind him and as soon as I set that damn treat on his nose, she dives over him like a giant oafish ninja and snatches that treat right off poor Mack’s nose. As if that’s not bad enough, she leaves a bunch of slobber on his nose.
Ah well, some doggs have all the luck. After all, I did give him the remaining three treats.
It’s funny the way dogs seem to have good days and bad days. Mack is pretty even-keeled, but he does have a temper, and some days it gets the better of him more 
quickly than others. Beene has on-days and off-days. “Off days” means she has difficulty making it through a doorway without screwing it up, and “on days” means it’s not an off-day. Today seems to have been an average day for Mack, but Beene was on top of her game all day . That doesn’t mean she was actually on top of her game; it just means that she felt extra good about herself and everything she was doing.
I feel bad for Mack that I write about Beene more than I do about him. It’s not that I like her more. If anything it’s the opposite. But the fact is that he impresses me less often because my expectations are much higher for him than they are for her. With him, it ends up with me being annoyed with him because he forgot to take into account the curvature of space-time for the object (himself) versus the observer (everyone else) due to his current speed, whereas I’m overjoyed when Beene recognizes me when I wake her before 6 am.
I got the dogs up early this morning because Michelle and I had arranged to Skype at 7:00 and I wanted to be ready to leave for work when we finished up. Morning walks when Beene isn’t fully awake are pretty rough because she just plows ahead with her head down and doesn’t notice when we’re stopping to let Mack do his business. She outweighs Mack by roughly 100 pounds, so the poor guy doesn’t stand a chance. We use a Y-leash for them, so couple a 150 pound moron to a 60 pound mutt, and that little guy just gets ripped off the pot every time. When I raise my voice at her to tell her to stop and wait, she looks at me with those big brown empty eyes that say, “What? Am I not on the couch anymore?”
But it’s really hard to stay mad at her when we round the corner for the last uphill stretch to the house and she suddenly wakes up a bit and gets an extra spring in her step and holds her head a little higher. She’s so ignorantly optimistic, I just don’t have the heart to stay annoyed with her when she’s feeling so good about herself.
