S'no goose

I'm really having a hard time of it, trying to organise the chaos in my head. Manic thoughts are having head-on collisions and that pure stream of consciousness that we should all be plugged into seems to have been hi-jacked by the pins-and-needles party in my brain's frontal lobe.

Basically, by now, I of all people, should have my thoughts under control. I should be thinking useful things to help me create my reality. As opposed to those thoughts that resist reality and continue to wreak havoc with my daily existence. Our spiritual gurus remind us that thoughts are things, and by focusing on the negative ones, or rather, on the reality that we DON'T want, we bring into existence the very situations we are trying so desperately to avoid.

My dog Joe acts as a good Colleen-Reflector. Always up for a laugh, I think his job in life is to show me where my thinking has taken a wrong turn.

Yesterday he chewed through my only pair of warm winter thermals, the ones a friend brought me from the States. This morning he bit the goose. That goose drives me crazy. Every morning he charges at us when we get to the stables. Wearing wellies is fine, but when I forget that I have naked legs under my jeans, his beak attack leaves me looking like I've been crawling around the floor of a heroin hostel.

The goose and Joe have gotten personal before. I've seen the bird run his beak up and down Joe's neck and back while he just stood there, taking it. Instead of getting the hell out of the way, he stays within beak-biting proximity. This has been going on for months until this morning, when the dog must have decided he'd had enough. I heard a commotion and when I looked again, the goose was clucking forlornly to itself, waddling away from the stables. That animal NEVER waddles, it's no Jemima Puddle Duck. It usually swaggers, wings outstretched, hurtling towards you...

Anyway, the goose looks ok, still yelling at the top of it's voice. Doesn't look like there's too much damage. I put an emergency call through to my mom – she's used to getting frantic requests for help with our animals. She's sending healing energy and I'm praying to the goose gods that they spare the noisy duck, while I promise to never allow Joe within biting distance again.

What does this have to do with thinking mean thoughts about geese then, you ask. Well, the noise that goose makes is enough to rattle the teeth in my head. I must be honest and admit to wondering when it would shuffle off it's mortal coil and leave me in peace. His rooster companion must surely be deaf, talk about being hen pecked. I'm figuring this is what the Universe delivers when you allow aimless thoughts to run rampant inside a busy head. Darling Joe, being a steadfast co-conspirator, no doubt thought he'd help out and put a sock in it, so to speak. Which takes me back to yesterday's stocking fiasco. If I moan incessantly about how cold it is, my Reflector Dog is going to help create that reality for me and keep me cold...

The damage is done

Joe just chewed through my thermal stockings. It wasn't really a surprise as I'd already taken them away from him once this afternoon. The resulting tennis-ball-size hole renders them useless in the freezing cold weather we're experiencing in Jozi right now.

He has this thing with socks – carries them around in his mouth. At the beginning of winter he left a small hole in my long grey socks. Yes, I wear LONG socks in winter. I'm allergic to the cold and go to great lengths to convince my brain that my body is warm. Wearing long socks under my jeans is NOT super sexy, I know. Especially when BFB runs his hand up my leg, expecting the smooth, silky, shaven limb one expects to find, as illustrated by lady-razor tv ads. It does however, ensure that the object of his desire is not the same temperature as a forgotten pork chop stuck to the bottom of a vegetarian's freezer.

I'm not sure why my dog has a sock fetish. As a puppy he shredded some really important things - like my riding boots, the strap on my crash-cap, my NEW gloves and my favourite Bach Flower Remedies book. I thought he'd gotten over that, but clearly he hasn't.

It's not enough that my dog causes unnecessary damage - my glasses and cell phone have been through the ringer too. A couple of weeks back I made the mistake of leaving my jacket hanging on the fence behind which a mischievous pony was corralled. I'd had carrots in the pockets the night before, and she was making sure that there were none left. By the time someone noticed my jacket, the sleeve was on its way down her throat. I didn't think anything of it until I was walking home... when I put my hand in the pocket, I noticed the unmistakable grass-green gobby sleeve. With a sinking feeling I extracted my glasses and phone from the mess... Glasses were in two pieces and the phone – well, it still works, but the screen was crunched by some heavy duty horse teeth.

BFB came to the rescue, yet again. He popped the lens back into their frame and gave me his spare R200 replacement phone. I'm guessing he's glad the stockings were made redundant and probably wont be replacing those anytime soon.

Zoopy vid – online fame

It was really cool having Zoopy come round to video myself and Fly for their online and mobile social media community. I got to chat about animal communication, and although you don't get to see it, Fly kept coming over, breathing and snuffling through my hair. Funny horse.
My dogs make an appearance too :)
Enjoy the vid and give me a shout if you have any questions.

the whirling week that was

Clicker training with Joe has been interesting. Not really because it's been WITH Joe, but really because I'd forgotten how hard it is to learn new tricks, especially as I'm not the dog!

Learning to CLICK, PAUSE, TREAT all without adding a verbal command is incredibly difficult. For me, anyway. It reminds me of being back at school... where the other kids caught on quicker and I was still trying to understand what happened at the beginning of class.

I thought Joe would enjoy it, him being ADHD and all. And he is. Loving all those treats, pity I'm all thumbs... And it's so left brained in it's approach, it's made me realise how much I depend on my intuition to read my dog. Adding new equipment, body language and a different environment to the mix is really challenging...

But more on my week tomorrow. It's off to la-la-land for me now.

Sheer joy

Dogs really should be tasked with teaching life lessons. They are natural teachers, if only we'd be willing to learn from them.

Joe embodies the the words Enthusiasm, Intent and Humour. He's always up for a joke, making me smile by stealing my socks, but not chewing them. This is not the same as when he shreds something I hold dear, like my riding boots or hat, or my new gloves... or my favourite Bach Flower Remedy book - he knows exactly what to chew if he's been left home alone, when in his opinion, he should have been included in my plans.

He's six years-old now, and still suffers bouts of Puppy Hysteria. A term coined by my mom, which describes a blast of energy from a young dog, where it looks like it's lost it's mind, as it hurtles around whatever space is available. This might be the kitchen, or in Joe's case, my parent's front lawn. This is his best Greyhound Impersonation. Running for the sheer joy of it - he does it so well.

Taking time out to do something I love - for the sheer joy of it. Another lesson I could learn from my dog !

Smells like...?

A New Year!

My word for 2009 is CREATE.
Resolutions include: healthy eating, regular riding, more fun, more dog walks...
and CREATing beautiful things ; )
Choosing creative pursuits over the mundane and showcasing my talent = challenging, cobbled together with intention will be the way to go.
Here's to a spectacular year!

Dog bed desires

As an artist/graphic designer/animal lover person, I'm always on the look-out for good looking pet products. I stumbled across Wren's super stylish home made doggie bed... I dream of a home filled with beautiful furniture, hand printed scatter cushions, and designer dogs draped lazily across a gorgeous couch...with a dog bed like this tucked out of the way. There is no dog hair in this fantasy... the probable reality is that Joe would probably shred my handmade efforts.

The Maid & The Mutiny

So I've been abandoned by my maid. This is not something I want to get into here, suffice to say that it leaves me remembering why I have no grandiose ideas about being a domestic goddess.

Part of the reason I paid her to work for me twice a week was to keep the dogs company. Yes, I know you're wondering WTF? I'm what you'd call A Good Dog Mom. The desire to meet my canine's needs - lest they look like neglected, homeless waifs - has nearly left me bankrupt.

This is the same reason I bought the dogs a really expensive kennel, a solid (it needs 4 mean to pick it up), waterproof, cute-as-hell dog house. Needless to say, the ungrateful little thugs don't appear to actually SLEEP in their snug li'l hut. One of our (many) former homes included a treeless garden, with no shelter for the dogs, unless they stayed in the house - hence this exorbitant purchase.

The treeless garden was situated on an idyllic farm, south of Joburg. With riders milling about the stables, I was able to leave the door of the house open for the dogs, so they could decide if they wanted to be in or out. All this really meant was that it allowed Jo to decide, at his leisure, what he'd like to shred in my absence; he'd promptly chew it in the garden, in full view of the liveries on their way to the arena.

On one such occasion, I was away from home for the day, it was the middle of June, and raining. So, to assuage my guilt, I left the door open and off I went. Only to receive a phone call a few hours later from my friendly landlady, telling me that Jo (who else!) was carry carrots, by the mouthful, out into the garden to eat. In the rain! Once he'd eaten through the 5kg bag on the kitchen floor, he'd started on the toilet paper, at which point my phone rang.

So that's why I bought the world's heaviest kennel, to make me feel better. And that's why I sit at work now, and worry that the dogs are home, and bored. Especially since I banned all stuffed toys and bedding between the weekday hours of 8am-5pm. They were really into the special effects and it didn't bother them that we didn't get any snow in our suburb earlier this winter. Why? You might ask. Because they made their OWN! That's right. They shredded their bedding and spread it across the lawn, and not for the first time either.

Now they're just average suburban dogs, barking their heads off at any drive-by entertainment which passes their gate. That is until I get home, when they can watch my kak-handed attempt to clean the kitchen floor. Staring forlornly through the bars of the security gate, taking in my manic attempts to emulate the serene, smiling, floor-cleaning-women in those annoying tv ads; who looks smug and satisfied with her gleaming handiwork.

Pity I didn't think of putting the dogs inside BEFORE I swilled down the decks...

Charge Of The Dead Fish

Joe is the clown of the family. He has the sunniest disposition and his irrepressible sense of humour forces me to smile when I’m having a bad day. He is infamous for the Charge Of The Dead Fish. When we lived on the Klip River, the dogs were free-rangers and they thought it was heaven on earth.

The first of the summer rains always washed a timber shed of dead wood downstream (Velvette would retrieve logs four times her size!). However on this occasion, a factory’s pollutants had resulted in a lot of dead fish amongst the debris, floating on the water for days before they were washed away. I stood chatting with my landlord and several friends, some distance from the river bank, when a black dot burst from the Willow trees on the bank.

The smell hit us first. Joe was heading straight for us, doing his best racing-greyhound-impersonation, smiling, with a rotten fish clamped firmly between his jaws. Suddenly the air around me was filled with retching noises as people fled in all directions. Chunks of his rotten prize were breaking off as he ran. By the time he got to me the stench was overwhelming. As a kid we’d had a dog who had eaten an entire catfish - he stank for WEEKS afterwards. I knew that the consequences of this dead fish in Joe’s digestive system did not bode well for our household. I was the one who had to pry his jaws open, get him to drop the rotting thing, and then dispose of it!

His catch-me-if-you-can act included running circles around me, his ears flattened to the side of his head – a dead giveaway that he had illegal contraband in his mouth. Fortunately it wasn’t Velvette who had the fish – as a puppy, we’d inadvertently chased and tried catching her when she stole something. She’ll wait until your hand is within grasping distance before she bolts and you can never catch her. Ever! She'd have swallowed that thing whole!

The joys of being a dog lover... I suppose when it's a baby, at least you know what to expect in that nappy!