Recently Lisa Lemberger (Business Mgr, Numbers Wizard, HR guru) and I traveled to Wenatchee, WA to visit the good people at Dogwise. Several years ago we partnered with Dogwise such that they send out all orders that come in through our website. It's been a great arrangement--as the "Amazon of Dog Books" [I mean that in the best of all possible ways, not in a take over the earth kind of way] they are set up to mail packages all over the world to individual buyers, to big book distributors, like Ingram and Baker & Taylor, and to Amazon itself. But unlike Amazon, they are a small, family-run business that has staff that's been there for decades, and considers Dogwise part of their family too. Here's the pack in front of their dog friendly office: That's Nate (VP & son of Read More
Archives for 2019
I Am So Sorry
I am sorry to have to tell you that Willie, my Silly Billie Willie Boy, has metatastic pulmonary adenocarcinoma. Lung cancer. Chemo might slow its progression, but can’t cure it. Surgery isn’t an option. I thought you would want to know. So many of us here have become a close village of dog lovers, and have followed each other’s dogs for years. Many of you have read about Willie’s challenges in The Education of Will. I didn’t want to blindside you with the end of his life, which is predicted to come in two to six months. In my experience, people don’t want to be protected, they want to be informed. This chapter began with a quiet cough, a little mouse of a thing, a single solitary huff after he got up from resting. By the end of January it became 3-4 coughs in a row, as if he were Read More
Setting Dogs Up to Win
I am out of town this week, meeting with the good people at Dogwise in Wenatchee, WA. So I'm reprinting a post from 2010, which has me grinning like a fool because 1) It's fun for me to read about Willie's early driving lessons nine years ago, and 2) I'm using similar techniques with Maggie after watching videos on the Macrae's online training program. You'll see in my post that Willie needed to learn to drive the sheep in a straight line. Maggie, on the other hand, would drive sheep for miles in a line so straight it would bring tears of joy to an engineer. But she needs to learn to push on heavy sheep, rather than let them set the pace, so we're again using Alisdair's magic cones for another purpose. So here's a post from September 2010, with lessons from Read More
Nothing to Fear but Fear Itself
Recently I called Maggie, and she didn't show up. I was outside at the farm, working on clearing the muck-infused ice from a gate. The Border collies were out with me, behind the barn. No matter what I'm doing, I never let them out of sight; we live close to a road and even though the dogs are trained to stay off of it, they are dogs, not machines. I'm well aware that it just takes one second for trouble to turn into tragedy. In addition, let's face it, I tend to be on the neurotic cautious end of the continuum. "Maggie! Maggie Maggie!" I called again. Nothing. And there it was. That feeling. That moment when your stomach drops like a plane hitting an air pocket. Fear, in all its physical glory. And then I turned around, to find that Maggie was standing two feet behind me Read More
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 like. Stay tuned. First, some flower therapy. Outdoors it is all black, brown and grey, so I am Read More
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