Flower and Wildlife Therapy (and a pox on Daylight Saving Time)
Eeps, sorry, the week has gotten ahead of me. Let's all blame "Daylight Saving Time". I put it in quotes because its title is patently illogical--it's not like we are actually getting more daylight. And besides, I dislike this silly time change twice a year, that has no purpose but to mess up our biological clocks. Humm, I detect I am sounding a bit grumpy.Daylight Saving Time is, however, a convenient explanation of why I can't write a decent post today, so there is that. I did have fun with some photos this weekend, so I thought I'd share those today. In the meantime, I'm working on posts about exercises for older dogs, whether bigger brains mean smarter dogs and what fear might smell Read More
Book Review: Deep Creek
Deep Creek, by Pam Houston, is a book that could ruin your day, in the best of all possible ways. Once you start reading, all you want is to continue doing so. I love this book, love it deeply and completely. It is everything a book should be: Brilliantly written, flat out honest, rich with a sense of place in the Colorado Rockies, layered with her love of the land, her dogs, her donkeys, her stranded elk babies and frozen water tanks.A committed bookseller at my favorite bookstore, Arcadia Books in Spring Green, Wisconsin, said she thought I'd like the book. It reminded her of The Education of Will. Both are centered on "the land," in the sense that Aldo Leopold meant when Read More
Scent Games
Ah, poopsicles, my current competition for Willie and Maggie's attention. It's too bad that their primary outdoor object of interest is, well, poop, because searching for something in knee deep snow is a great way to keep dogs entertained. (Luckily, we have a vast armory of treats that make it easy to reinforce our Recall or Leave It cue, and avoid being licked by dog whose breath smells like a sewer. We just have to watch them like hawks.)But watching Maggie plunge her nose into the snow, a nose that could clear a 200 acre dog park of poop in an hour, no matter how deeply buried in snow, reminds me how important scent is to dogs. Not to mention how snowy winters give dogs less Read More