Chloë Scales New Heights

New mattress, new problem

After talking about it for months, Mike and Heather finally got a new mattress. Good for them, but did they think about me? They may be more comfortable, but do I get to sleep in it any more often? No, I don’t. And that’s not the worst part.

This mattress is thicker than the last one. That means it’s higher off the floor. And that means I need to be an Olympic high jumper to get up there, whereas I could vault from floor to bed top from a sitting position, no problem, on the old one. Since the new mattress arrived before Thanksgiving, I have gone splat against the side of the damn thing on several occasions. Even eating several cases of Wheaties (which wouldn’t be so bad as long as it they were covered with milk and bananas) won’t get me enough boost to make it over the top. I doubt even performance-enhancing drugs would do the trick.

Solution: Proper positioning.

Even using my personal Stairway to Heaven is not as easy as it used to be. The top step of my unit now leaves me several inches short of the goal. Luckily, Heather figured out how to re-position the steps (two inches from the side of the bed and even with the foot) to give me the maximum efficiency for speed and angle. I can make it to the top of the bed with ease, but I still need to get a running start. Getting down from the new mattress via the steps is a breeze, as long as I can stay clear of Heather’s dresser when I hit the floor.

But getting down is still the tricky part. I am not supposed to jump off the new bed directly to the floor, ever, because landing hard like that is going to eventually be bad for my delicate dachshund back. Why didn’t Mike think about this inherent danger to me before he brought this new mattress into MY bedroom?

Victory achieved.

So far, I’m coping. I’ve heard NO JUMPING more times in the past couple of weeks than I have in the rest of my time on earth combined. Heather, especially, and even my good friend Lynn when she came over to stay with me last week, have kept harping on it, trying to make me learn. We’ll see if this loud, Trumpian campaign works, or if somebody comes up with a better solution. In the meantime, I know I can get away with bed-jumping on Mike’s watch, since he never pays attention to anything. Yahoo, I’m flying, just like Peter Pan!

 

 

Chloë Gets a Timely Gift

A big shout out to my pals in Juneau, Alaska, Max and Bob.

Max, June 2011

Bob Eyes His Ball, June 2011

We’ve never met, but we have friends in common. And we share a mutual knack of running our households while slyly allowing our peeps to think they’re the ones in charge. What a racket.

Anyway, I really liked the towel Max and Bob sent me last week.

Chloë checks out her new towel

And wouldn’t you know it, practically the day it arrived it rained all day, the first time in a long while. The towel was pressed into immediate service, and  I’m afraid it didn’t stay clean very long. It was inevitable.

Chloë Returns to Her Getaway

Finally, last week I got back to my ridgetop getaway for an extended stay. Every time we go out there, it’s like I’ve died and gone to heaven.  When I think about the highlights,  there are so many I don’t know where to begin.

Chloë gnaws a ball chucker on the lawn.

A Lawn. Rich, thick, green. I could roll around and lie in it for hours. Just wake me up when it’s dinner time.

Chloë digs for mice in the horse pasture.

Pastures. There were mice in that grass, lots of them. And moles. If you couldn’t find me rolling around the lawn, chances are I was in the fields, digging holes. Keeps my nails neat, too. When I got tired of chasing mice, I liked to go after the little lizards that scamper across the patio.

Tara! I bugged the heck out of Tara, the Aussie who lives there. She’s getting old and cranky, growling at me softly every time I crossed her path. Every damn time! I ignored it, however, realizing there’s so much I can learn from her if she would just let me hang around.  So I followed her around whenever I knew she wasn’t looking, and I even sneaked a sniff around her ample butt now and then . There’s definitely some wisdom there.

Chloë tugs on Tara’s Santa toy.

But I’ve seen her get nasty, too. Every time Mike threw one of her toys for me to chase, she leaped in my way to cut me off. I backed away each time, not wanting to challenge her authority in her own house. Instead, I just went back to her toy pile and pulled out another one. They’re all good, every last one. And all of them wound up strewn around the carpet at one time or another, often with a trail of fluffy white stuffing behind . Get this: Heather had Mike gather all the little white balls and stuff them back inside the toys–like Tara’s ever going near those toys again after we left.

Carpeting. Did I mention the wall-to-wall carpeting? If there’s one thing that’s better than lawn for rolling and sleeping on, it’s got to be wall-to-wall carpeting. Luxurious. I love carpeting.

Chloë fords the Snoqualmie River.

Hiking. We did some great hiking, too. The first weekend we hiked the Middle Fork and Denny Creek trails in Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest, which was great fun. Besides the swimming and great scenery, I was lucky enough to find two small spills of sesame snack mix and potato chips, one on each hike. Keeping nourishment and hydration at optimal levels is extremely important on a hike, you know.

Chloë chases a lizard.

Relaxing . I’ve got to admit, things seemed calmer out there. In contrast to Magnolia, where I bark when anybody or anything walks down the street, when I was outside in my exercise pen near the driveway, I barely noticed when delivery and service guys came around, and there were a lot of them, more than I see in Magnolia in a month. Tara barked at some–she really let the mole guy have it–and her barking got me going, too, as if she needed any help. But I didn’t  bark at the pool guy, not even when he was cleaning the fountain where I have my swimming lessons.

I  did bark at Manuel Garcia, Blue’s trainer, but just once before I recognized him. He’s  OK.

Mike and Blue

Those horses, though, that’s another matter. I wasn’t sure I wanted to get too close to something that big. Whenever I saw horses I slipped into self-defense mode,  barking at them and sprinting away. One day when Mike and I were hiking a horse damn near ran me down. I could sense him getting closer,  so I got out of his way quickly and cowered. The very next day I lunged after two horses that Manuel was leading to the corral, barking up a storm. Mike had to run over to shut me up. I guess my equine relationships are a work in progress.

So how’s this for an idea? I know Heather and I are coming back out here next week for her company picnic (Mike isn’t going because he’s flying to a Syracuse football game in Los Angeles on what is apparently a “no-dogs weekend”).  Maybe Heather and I should just stay out at the getaway for the week in between so I can have more time to sort out my equine behavior issues.

Oh, but if Mike’s not there with us, who’s going to be making and serving my meals? Maybe I better think this one through again–and what better place to do that than on Mike’s pillow?

Chloë claims squatter’s rights.

Chloë Senses Fall Is in the Air

Discovery Park changes colors for fall.

The weather has been nothing short of stellar for the past few weeks, but even as it continues at least through this weekend I begin to see and feel the hints of change. A nip in the night air, for example, and clusters of dead leaves covering some of the park trails. The calendar still says it’s summer, but fall has already started to move in.

Two other signs: My young friends Halle and Riley came back from their summer at grandma’s house in Quebec–that means it’s almost time for school. They had to go to the doctor for shots the other day, and the shots made them a little feverish, their mom told Mike when we saw them the other day, and that’s why they didn’t come to the big Block Party the night before.

I watched most of the Block Party from my pen in the front of our house, but Heather took me over there for a while to socialize. She made me lay down and stay the whole time, which I did with no fuss. I didn’t want to create a scene with so many new neighbors around. If the new people last, they’ll find out soon enough about the real me. Actually, I was quite surprised that not one neighbor remarked how cute I am. I guess they see me often enough that they just take it for granted. It’s from the newbies that I get the most doting reactions.

Chloë on the trail.

I spent most of today outside in front.  I barked at the two white huskies who come down the street frequently, and then I barked at the guy who showed up to buy the bicycles that Mike and Heather had advertised on Craigslist. Then after dinner I barked at the kid delivering the Magnolia News to houses across the street. I am getting to be quite the guard dog.

Chloë Entertains While Mike and Heather Are Away

As soon as I saw the soft black boxes with all the zippers, I knew Mike and Heather were leaving again. For about a half an hour, I pouted and pretended to care. But the minute they left me in the kitchen with a peanut butter Kong AND a rawhide chewy, I could drop the pretense and dive right in. No doubt my buddy Lynn was coming soon, and my daily rations will be taking an upward turn. All is well. By the time Lynn arrived, I was done with the first treats, and so I greeted her with two kitchen towels in my mouth that I pulled off the oven door. I don’t want Heather thinking I’m past that kind of puppy stuff.

Chloë dances.

Lynn’s stay was fun, as usual. Some days we walked around the neighborhood before breakfast, then went back to sleep for a while, which was fine with me. One day we went off to her office, where I spent half the day.  I entertained the staff with dancing and rolling over and I tormented Lucy, the office dog, after she dared to sniff the toy Lynn brought along for me. It was just the stuffed sun Sunny, not even one of my favorites, but I wasn’t about to let a total stranger take it away from me, not even for a minute. So I distracted Lucy by repeatedly circling the bookshelf in the middle of the Lynn’s office so fast that Lucy’s ears were pinned back like she was in a wind storm.

Then Lynn gave me some of the high-end turkey that she brings to the office for Lucy (with Mike, I’m lucky if I get bologna), and I spent the rest of the day trying to sneak out of her office to hang out in the kitchen, where I knew there was more turkey. You never know when it might be turkey time.

Lynn spent the rest of the weekend spoiling me by letting me sit on her lap while she worked at the computer and stuffing my Kongs to overflowing. And Mike rations my peanut butter a lot stricter that Lynn does. On the other hand,Lynn never lets me off my leash, so I couldn’t chase any birds or dig into mole hills with her around, like I can when Mike’s in charge–or when he thinks he is, anyway.

Heather and Bob

So even though I knew full well that while they were away they were hiking and playing fetch with other dogs (my buddies Max and Bob in Juneau, so it was sort of OK), I did miss them. As soon as I heard Heather’s car pull up on Monday evening, I ran to the front door, and when she opened it I jumped all over her and then ran to the street to bowl over Mike, who was crouching to pick up his suitcase.

Chloë with one ear up and one ear down.

So I guess being on vacation is OK, but mark my words: I like it better when the whole pack is together.

Chloë Finally Befriends Two Kids

Chloë kisses Frank and Stan’s mom.

I’m behaving a lot better around other dogs now, and getting a lot better about scoping out a situation and behaving accordingly. I wouldn’t say I’ve grown up completely, but hey, I’ve come a long way, baby. And with people? Once I got over my early fear of joggers and bicyclists, I haven’t met a person I haven’t liked.  As you can see from the accompanying photo, I am free with my kisses.

Kids, however; well, kids have been another story. Not sure why, but they seem to  make me nervous, even frightened. If I see one coming, I normally like to take a wide berth. Or worse, bark at them while wagging my tail and backing up.

Halle lures Chloë with treats.

But Halle, who lives around the block from us, has been persistent. She really loves dogs, and her mom told Mike she wants to be a vet when she grows up. For now, she’s starting out by working hard to make me be her friend. When she comes to the park in the morning with her mom and their dog Dana (a lab who is more interested in her ball than in me), she always runs up to see me, and Mike slips her some Charlie Bears to lure me to her. At first I was too timid to take the bait, but then I began swiping it quickly and slinking back behind Mike.

Chloë and Halle look adoringly at each other.

But Halle wouldn’t give up, and her mom says she talks about me all the time at home. So recently I finally started to warm up to her, at least a little bit. Last week I let her walk me on a leash a few feet, and last Saturday when she brought her sister Riley around while we were in the park pulling weeds, I let both of them get close to me and give me a hug. A close-up one, you know, head to head . And this week I was out in the front of the house in my exercise pen when I saw them walking up the street toward me, so I started to bark excitedly. I was actually glad to see them, and when they came over and petted me, I shut right up and wagged my tail! Not even the UPS guy comes over and pets me like that (although he has other charms).

Chloë with Riley, Halle and Heather.

Mike tells me that the girls are heading back east to spend most of the summer with their grandma and family in someplace called Quebec, where all they’ll swim all day and eat something called poutine. Based on what I’ve heard about this Canadian delicacy, I am decidedly jealous. They better bring me some, or I may pretend not to remember them when they return.

Chloë with Halle and Mike.

Chloë Tries Out a New Ball and Likes It

Chloë gnaws blue ball.

Among the many bouncy blue balls Mike dug out of the closet, none has held up to my jaws of death. Super Glue didn’t prove to be much of a remedy, either. The beige racquet ball that I stole from Tara at my getaway house was OK, until I lost it at the military cemetery. Mike took his eye off it for an instant, and it must have skipped over the low stone wall into a thicket of ivy and stinging nettle. No way anybody’s finding it. Charlie Kolsky, one of my loyal readers, has volunteered to send me a box of racquet balls he said wear out for using after only a few games. Well, I look forward to getting them, but I’m willing to bet none will withstand the test of teeth.

Chloë’s new purple and white ball.

However, one night Heather brought this ball home, and I liked it right away. It’s a little bit bigger than the bouncy blue ball, but it has tiny bumps on its surface that are easy to grip. And it’s hard, very hard. Unless the outer rubbery layer starts to peel, it might be indestructible, even for me.

The colors–purple and white–didn’t do much for me, however. My collar is also purple, and I don’t want people to start thinking I’m a Husky. Let me state unequivocably, that is not the case. One look at me in my Orange blankey should make it clear this dachshund is an Orange through and through–but lest there be any lingering doubt, I have instructed Mike to procure an orange collar for me when he’s back on Marshall Street this summer.

Chloë goes Orange.

A week or so after I got the ball, Mike looked at the package, and he found out the colors on the ball have a purpose: “Are dogs colorblind?,” the VisionSmart Original Fetch and Play Ball package says. “A major university study concludes dogs see certain colors. In over 4,000 clinical trials, happy subject dogs picked the correct colored target panel with amazing accuracy. The results indicated brightly colored purple and white objects are highly visible to dogs, and ‘pop’ against the background. Your dog will see the difference.”

So this new ball has been working out so far. The grasses and ground covers  in the park are so high that Mike has almost lost it a couple of times, but I can usually find it and point him to it, as long as I don’t carry it too far away in grass so high that Mike can’t see me, let alone the ball. At any rate, the same ball has been around for nine days consecutively without any gnawing. In my world, that already makes it a world-record holder. Let the games continue.

 

The only danger with this ball is that I keep getting whacked with it. It doesn’t bounce off softly like a blue ball, it bounces off like an anvil.  Mike has already bonked me good a couple of times, so if you start seeing welts all over my sides, you’ll know Mike isn’t kicking me, the purple and white ball is. It’s darn dangerous when it’s in the air, but it rolls forever once it hits the ground. I think I’m going to try to keep it around a while.

Chloë Loses Her Blue Balls, at Least Temporarily

My favorite sport of ball chasing is constantly evolving. Notice that I didn’t try to pawn it off on you as “fetching.” We’re not quite to that stage yet. And after the most recent developments, there’s some possibility that we’ll never get there.

Original blue balls.

Yellow tennis balls were fine to start with, until my friend Lynn gave me two bouncy blue balls for my birthday in February. These balls are bouncier, faster and, best of all, smaller than tennis balls. This allows me to catch them, hold them in mouth, and run with them until I decide to drop them somewhere, which recently has been never. Running after them was fun for a while; then catching them mid-air became a challenge. But then I decided what I REALLY like is how they feel in my mouth when I’m squeezing them in my teeth. Very tasty, and good exercise, too!

Chloë gnaws on blue ball.

Unfortunately, when I start to wear them down and make them softer, those bouncy blue balls start to crack. Then they’re not so bouncy anymore, and if Mike doesn’t notice right away that I’ve broken the ball, I get to keep gnawing at it for a while, and I can break up and ingest darn near the whole thing before he knows what’s up! Mike frowns on this behavior, of course, and after I cracked open three balls in the past week, Mike has put my bouncy blue balls on something he called “Double Secret Probation.” Mike is fed up, I can tell. I’m sure he’s thinking that he paid good money for those balls. But really, what’s the difference between a blue ball and a rawhide bully stick? (Besides the blue poop, that is.) As I see it, here today, gone tomorrow.

A clean split.

Although there are more blue balls in the closet where Mike and Heather keep my dry food supply (They think they’re hiding the food and toys from me in there? Get real.), I think chasing bouncy blue balls on my walks is over for a while. Mike’s been trying to make me chase tennis balls and that beige rubber ball, but they’re not bouncy enough, and I’ve been turning up my nose at them. So I guess we’re at a stalemate, just like the NFL.

I think it won’t be forever, though. I foresee more chasing of bouncy blue balls in my future, sooner or later.

Chloë Takes a Walk in the Park

 

Chloë guards her front walkway.

Now that the weather has finally gotten warmer, I like to hang out in my pen in front of the house during the day. It’s a lot more exciting outside then in Mike’s office, that’s for sure. While Mike just keeps staring at that computer screen and typing all day, I am outside, guarding the house and watching everything that goes on at the park entrance up the block and the house renovations next door. If my buddy from UPS drives down the block, I am positioned for an easy treat toss. Sometimes other dogs pass on their walks, and I bark to let them know I’d like some attention.

Late in the afternoon Mike comes out, slips the harness over my head, and accompanies me on a long walk. We go to Discovery Park most of the time, but Mike makes sure we take a different route every day. Sometimes I get to choose, which is big of Mike, dontcha think? I mean, it is MY walk, right?

Chloë with blue ball.

When nobody’s around, Mike lets me chase after the bouncy blue balls, which is my favorite part of the walk. Mike, however, likes it best when I’m just walking alongside with him at a steady clip, which I can do fine when I want to.  Just walking the trails is OK; in fact, the warmer weather had made the park’s woods, beaches and meadows swell with new growth, so every day there’s new stuff to sniff. The trails are alive, and I’m digging it. I can’t wait for all the different kinds of grasses to flower later this month.

Chloë on the Trail

By the time Mike and I are done, we’ve covered several miles in an hour or so. Sometimes I still have so much energy that even after hiking I want to play a bit of tug of war or fetch before dinner. Recently, however,  I’ve been looking forward to a cocktail…

Chloë relaxes with a drink.

a snack,

Chloë keeps her eyes on her prize.

and maybe a nap before dinner.

Chloë naps in her blue bed.

I guess that means I’m growing up.

Chloë Finds Some Touches of Gray

Chloë meets Brian and Maureen, friends from the Great White North.

Heather’s friends Brian and Maureen visited last week, stopping for a night on the long road back from Houston (where they bought a new car) to Osgoode, Ont. (that’s near Ottawa, for my Yankee readers). Yes, I barked at them a few times when they first came inside the house, but I quickly decided that they were OK, so I sat in my red chair next to the table while they ate. They thought I was OK, too, and they agreed to pose for a photo before hightailing it for the border.

Their visit  would have been the highlight of the week, except that a few days later I found a couple of mice while walking in the park. And scarfed them up, of course. It’s just what I do.

The first one was on the ground right in front of us in the middle of the trail, and it was already dead. I wasn’t that smitten with it, so I gave it up to Mike easily. He was so happy that he gave me several Charlee Bears.

The next one I tracked down and pounced upon all by myself. I clenched it tightly between my teeth and ran, and there was no way I was about to give this one up so easily. Mike was  just lucky that Heather happened to be there. She pried my mouth open while Mike reached down my throat, yanked out Mr. Mouse and flung it away. Mike knew I’d be back after it next time we were in the vicinity, of course,  so I saw him go back  and pick it up with a plastic bag like poop and throw it in the trash bin on the way home. Rats! No, mice–but you get my gist.

Chloë’s gray hair (center right).

I know it was just my badger-dog instinct kicking in, but killing that mouse made me sad and sorrowful for a while. That must explain my first gray hair. Yikes, 14 months old and already going gray. It’s on my back, between my shoulder blades. I can’t actually see it, at least not without a mirror or two. But Mike can see it, and ever since he brought it to my attention I’ve been obsessing about it. Not that I’m vain or anything. Not me!

On the other hand, maybe I should get Mike to pluck it out with tweezers. It shouldn’t hurt too much.