Linda Arrives!!!

Oh, dear readers, I am a mighty bad blogger. Yes I am. I've said it and I mean it.

I bought batteries. I put the camera right on the kitchen counter, where I couldn't possibly forget. I repeated "I shall take photos, I shall take photos, I shall..."

I opened the kitchen door. Sam I Am looked around me. So did Mama Pajama. Bill had a good hold of Very Old Dog to avoid tippage, either from over excitement or from bumpage and generalized greeting flummadiddle. Fat Charlie came swooping in. Luciano's eyes got huge.

They couldn't believe who I had found. Their Linda!!! The very Linda who Lindy Loo is named for!!! Here right here in our kitchen, brought in with the rest of the groceries!

Since when did Krogers start stocking Their Linda!!!!????

The greeting was sweet, dear readers. Excitement, disbelief, sniffing just to be sure it wasn't a bobo Linda, but no... It was the real thing. Their LINDA!!! Whom they hadn't seen for two years, which is very long in dog time.

But I failed you. So taken was I in the merriment, and so senile am I in the head, I forgot to pick up the stinkin' camera and click.

These are from two hours later, after the meal.

Sammy says, "My Nana Linda."

the rare Mama Pajama kiss, as tolerated by Sam I Am, and witnessed by a happy Very Old Dog

I promise I'll do better tomorrow. I'll try to.

I'll ask Linda to remind me.

hug your hounds

Delia's Pick

On the side bar of this page, I rotate some of Bill's new paintings. (When I remember...) Delia adopted Bill as her own four years ago, and she hangs out in the studio with him. Although, as I write, she is curled up with Sam I Am on the couch under a fleecy blanket. Bill is reading the paper downstairs.

Solitary Tree. acrylic on canvas. 36 x 36

do click to enlarge, you won't be disappointed!

Anyway, Bill emailed me an image of a new painting for the sidebar, and I thought it deserved posting on the main blog. It is just stunning. He painted it when Maria died, and though I'm not sure he would make the connection, I see her in the red sky. I see us in the strong mourning tree.

Or maybe I just see a beautiful painting that I proudly want to share with my dear readers.

I love it. (You can see lots more of Bill's recent paintings on his blog: HERE.)

Now, back to cleaning and decorating the house and getting ready for our FUN guests! Linda arrives tomorrow!!!)

Hug your hounds

Getting ready

[photo from 2004 or 2005??? or 2003? I dunno. Friends start arriving on Thursday!!!]

Every year for so many years that none of us can agree just how long it has been, some friends get together for a holiday hug. And a whole lot of good food. And belly laughs. And a gift exchange.


We used to live within an hour of each other. We'd see each other nearly every weekend at a dog show, or obedience trial, or lure coursing. We saw each other through the very best times, and we saw each other through unspeakable tragedies.


We were our dogs' favorite other people.


Linda was the first person I told I was pregnant. Jake just turned 32 on Thanksgiving.


When I moved fourteen hours away, I drove home for our holiday get together. And other years they flew out here.


Last year, we all decided it was just too expensive. Wasn't that a foolish decision?


This year, they're flying out here. This year, Linda and Rhonda and Cheryl each have a new puppy to tell us about and show photos of and miss. This year, Crystal, of the trip to Sweden, will be joining us.


My dogs will go completely bonkers.


So will I.


I can't wait.





hug your hounds

A Mutual Rescue

I forgot to share this week's iPet of the Week!



It's a fabulous happy story, about Dru Bear the Maltese/terrier mix.

Marie rescued Dru Bear from the Lexington pound, because the then six year old looked so terrible. Then Dru Bear turned right around and rescued Marie back, just by loving her so much. Marie figured if her little dog could love her with such a huge big love, then she could love herself a little bit.

Read all about it HERE.

Hug your hounds

In Today's Paper

I have a regular "gig" in the Paducah Sun. In a section called

Local bloggers are featured, and we are given assignments to write about. Today's topic was

When I think Turkey Day I think...

And I wrote:

… about a soggy oyster and Rex, my childhood mutt.

Rex always proudly greeted people with a gift. He would pick up whatever was immediately available: a scrap of paper, a leaf, my dirty underwear out of the laundry pile. He strutted around with his treasure, offering it to any worthy hand. One Thanksgiving, our next door neighbors ate at our house. My best friend, 11-year-old Sandy, didn’t appreciate the oyster he found in his stuffing, but was too polite to leave it on his plate.

Rex had never been fed a morsel from the table, but would lie quietly underneath, waiting for the meal to end, when he would “gift” us with any dropped napkins.

I can still hear my mother’s shriek, when, two hours after the meal, Rex dropped Sandy’s soggy oyster into her outstretched hand, proud as ever.

Rex

You can meet the other featured bloggers at Bizzyville and at the iList Paducah Blog.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Enjoy your oysters, and hug your hounds

Where's the umph?

I've noticed something.

I have become exclamation mark disabled. In my informal writing (email, blog, groups and lists) I usually evoke emphasis with

bold,

italics,

bold and italics,

CAPS,

BOLD CAPS,

BOLD AND ITALICIZED CAPS,

and three exclamation marks.

These tools, well, they're familiar friends really, have left me. Left town altogether. Vamoosed.

Hmmm.

I think it's this new bloggy place to express myself. I mean this blog is for you, dear readers. So I can't bore you with wallowing. Ah... maybe another reminiscence?

Maria loved to lure course. I can't find any photos of her coursing, because she was in the days before digital photography. In lure coursing three dogs of the same breed chase a lure - three white garbage bags - on a string around a series of turns (think of the cats cradle string game, only instead of your fingers, there are pulleys nailed into the ground).

Whippets LOVE this game. Well, they love any game that involves running and chasing.

Maria was pretty fast, and her small size made her very agile; she could turn on a dime. She got her field champion title in fairly short order.

But there are RULES to this game. Number one rule is no aggressive activity ever. In lure coursing muzzles are optional, and most don't use them. (They are used for dogs who feel the urge to bite at the moving string or dive at the baggies, most often.)

Maria developed her own rules. RULES, I should say. Once she had moved up into the Field Champion division, some of the more experienced runners would cheat. Meaning, instead of following behind the baggies, they would guess which way the course would turn, and cut the corner. Maria was Highly Offended by this and would respond by running over to the cheater and SCREAMING, no, by SCREAMING in his or her ear.

"CHEATY PANTS CHEATY PANTS YOUR MOTHER IS A BASSET HOUND!!!"

I don't know why, but the judges took this as a sign of aggression, and no more lure coursing for the mouthy little redhead.

But she could race.

In racing, the whippets run in groups of six, out of a starting box, for 200 yards straight. No turns, no cheating. In racing they chase a furry lure, with a squawker inside, and a white garbage bag too. In racing, muzzles are mandatory, because all six whippets get to the end at around the same time, all bent on mauling the evil squawker lure.

Oh Maria did LOVE to race.

But by the time we started racing, she was not so fast. This did not diminish her love of it. This is a picture of Maria (#1) and her best ever friend Willow (#6). It looks like they are first and second, but I am quite comfortable in my assumption that they were last and next to last.

Can you see the smiles?

Maria only had one litter. Four girls and a boy. In the picture she is resting on Delia, with Promise and Pippin. I've never known her happier, and she loved her Luciano and Delia with all her maternal heart until her last day.

Showing Maria was a blast! She never did get her last win for her championship, and when she started to get bored with it we stopped. I could have sent her with a professional handler; she would have gotten her last win quickly. I had good handlers offer, frequently. But I just couldn't bear to send her away, or even to hand her to a professional ringside and then disappear. She drove my friends CRAZY. Good friends who were kind enough to hold her for me while I was in the ring with Caruso, Jazzbo, Giacomino, Willow, or Jessie.

Maria squeaked, trembled, cried, "MY TURN!!! MY TURN RIGHT NOW!!! I SAID IT IS MY TURN!!!!"

(To those of you who have held Lindy Loo ringside, she gets it honestly.)

There. It worked.

I found my exclamation points!!!

hug your hounds

Floating Boulders and Southern Ice Skating

Our lives are still kind of topsy turvy.

Fat Charlie, who is 11 years old, and is sweet as sugar, stands and wags and stares at me. Two hundred and sixty-seven times a day.

I think he's trying to tell me that I lost her. That in my senile servitude, I've dropped off his Maria and forgotten to pick her up. So he's gotten three breakfasts a day and countless kisses, and I'm trying to go on and make life around here as usual.

Would you like to come along on our walkies today?

First is 14.5 year old, Giacomino, aka Very Old Dog. I was afraid he would be unhappy, walking alone, since he's walked with Maria for 13.5 years. She did not feel like walking with us for the last week (except Thursday; she went along on Thursday), and Giacomino felt silly and happy.

This is a great spot for pee mail, and sometimes there's a cat poop to try to nab.

Is that not the sweetest, most adorable face?

[Oh don't be so sentimental, silly human! Let's go walkies!!! The sun is out!]

Giacomino just goes around one block. He loves his walk.

The next walk today was Mama Pajama (Fat Charlie's litter sister), 8 year old Luciano, and Fat Charlie. Luciano had already walked to the river with his sissy Delia and Bill earlier. But he wanted to go again. (Looch and Delia are Maria's son and daughter.)

PEE MAIL!!!

Here we are downtown, and I took a picture of us in a store window.

Yes, my hat has a whippet on top, with his own hat and scarf!

In front of the Federal Court House downtown. These guys walk about a mile.

Then it's the Wild Bunch's turn.

Lindy Loo, Sam I Am, and Swede William.

Our delicious and wonderful neighborhood coffee shop, named Et Cetera, has a post for dogs and they always put fresh water out. My dogs have never been tied there. If you click to enlarge, you will see Lindy Loo, who is Maria's great granddaughter, is VOICING her displeasure at this arrangement.

Swede William wanted a do over, in case his girlfriend Teka or his Nana Lisa might see. Also he wanted to show how he had hog-tied Lindy Loo. Sammy's just being good.

We have a new ice skating rink in Paducah!!! It is WAY popular.

And on the river was a tug pushing several barges full of HUGE rocks. (Notice Lindy Loo's concern.)

Okay, they'd been as good for as long as they could. Chaos.

Nothing has made so much sense lately, so rocks the size of easy chairs floating down the river... there they were.

In front of the store where I sell my goodies.

It is a pretty downtown.

I hope you enjoyed our walks! We are trying to get back to normal. Maria spent her life creating smiles and laughter, and I feel she would not tolerate this sorrow for long.

Hug your precious hounds