Cody's Ears

For a while, we had two foster whippets living with us. They were dogs we knew, and who had stayed with us before, and we had them for about six weeks before they went to their forever home in Pennsylvania. During that time, I got a new camera. Which is how I got this photo.

Agnes on Vacation

For the last 18 months, Agnes has been on medication for a problem with her calcium levels. It isn't a very exact science - she gets Calcitriol (to help with her Vitamin D production) two days on and one day off, and then Calcium tablets nearly every day, depending on how she seems. And then, a few weeks ago, she had a tumour removed from her skinny front leg. So we decided that, instead of trying to describe all of this to our 17 year old neighbour who would be feeding the critters while we were gone, we'd just take the grumpy old thing with us, and leave him with the healthy youngsters.

Agnes hadn't been eating much since her surgery, and I was a little concerned. While we were away, it got worse. We traveled for two days, spent a week with the in-laws, then traveled for two days home. On the way there, she turned her nose up at the dog food she'd been happily eating for the last few years, and even at the cat food I use to deliver her tablets with. At my in-laws house, she turned her nose up at frou-frou dog foods (you know all those little tins of stuff that looks like you could serve it on fine china and your guests would be none the wiser?) and only just tolerated broiled chicken and the occasional left over hamburger.

We came home, everyone said hi to each other, I get the regular dog food out and think 'Well, I'll give it a try' and... sure enough, she eats it down just fine and has been ever since. I guess she just doesn't like being away from home!

Mind you, now she looks good for a whippet, which is skinny for Agnes.

These are her holiday snaps.

Knitting - and why, perhaps, I shouldn't...

Mostly the stories in here will be about dogs, but from time to time I will write about the joy of knitting. And, the frustration of knitting.


I learned to knit many, many, many years ago. I was still in primary school - probably 4th grade of so. I knitted on and off for many years, more so when I was living in Sydney and commuting by train, and then dropped it for more than a decade. Three years or so ago a friend was on pregnancy-related bed rest, and asked if I knew how to knit, and would I teach her? Not long after that, we were on vacation, and the local quilt store near my in-laws sold wool, and needles, and I thought I'd make myself a scarf to while away the time. Then I discovered I could knit in the car (I can't read, it makes me car-sick in about ten seconds). So on the way home from Minnesota to Virginia I made a scarf for one of the boys, and started another. Since then I've made more scarves than I care to think about, a cardigan I gave to a friend, sweaters for each of the boys, a jacket for myself and, last but not least, socks. Lots and lots and lots of socks. A friend showed me how to knit them on two circular needles, and that was that. They are the perfect item, to me. They're useful. They're small. They're packable. They don't take months to do and, within reason, you don't have to worry too much about size. I have 'work socks' - which are basic, every day socks I knit during my lunch-hour, that are just plain and let me chat and knit at the same time. I have some more fancy socks, that I work on at home, when I'm by myself.


Every so often, however, I feel compelled to make something different. And last Saturday I decided I would make a baby hat for my boss's baby shower. Which was today. I mean - honestly - how hard can a baby hat be, right? So I trundled around online, looking for the cutest baby hat ever. And I found it. See? Too cute.

This hat is courtesy of the Berroco people, and frankly even if you hated babies and thought knitting tedious, you'd have to admit it was pretty darn cute.



So on Saturday night I emailed a friend of mine, who happens to work part-time at a yarn store, and asked her if she could pick up this yarn for me. By some miracle, she emailed me back and said sure. I figured I would pick it up Monday at the earliest, but as my kids and I were coming home from the Virginia Ren Faire (you can see the photos here - and for those of you looking for dog related ramblings, you'll see some lovely greyhounds, one of whom has only three legs and is still the fastest dog on the block!) I called my friend and managed to catch her just as she was packing up at the store, and she had my yarn, and she could meet me and I'd have it and be ready to start Sunday evening.


In knitting, there is this odious little thing written into 99% of patterns called gauge. Gauge is basically how many stitches or rows you need to have within a certain space to ensure that your item will turn out the size you want. It is like anything, really, you need to use the right tools for the job. If you're making a bird-house, and the drill bit you use to make the entry hole is 1/8" then the chances of you having eagles laying their eggs in there is slim. Which is a bit extreme, but you get my meaning. The same applies to knitting. You knit this thing affectionately known as a 'swatch' and you measure. And if your measurements aren't what the pattern calls for, you pull it apart, try a different size needle, and start over. Because I tend to knit fairly tightly, I frequently go up one size of needles. And because this is a fitted item, and it couldn't be too badly out of size, I ended up knitting my stupid swatch three times, and using two different sized needles to achieve the measurements I needed.


Even this, however, was not too big a deal. The pattern was not too bad (although I do question their math just a little) and it knitted up nicely. Mine isn't exactly an exact replica of theirs, but it worked out in the end, and didn't end up big enough to fit an award winning pumpkin, which is always a concern.


However.


See all those stripes? Because there are so many colours in my hat, every time I changed colour I couldn't simply carry it along the edge, or I'd have ended up with six strands of yarn all the way along one edge, which would be silly. So I would snip the yarn, add on the new, knit two rows, and repeat. Which means - and in my heart of hearts I knew this before I started - I would end up spending nearly as much time weaving in all of those ends as I did knitting the silly thing in the first place.





The hat is done now. And it is cute as a button. And so is Carson, who nicely modelled it for us this afternoon (and yes, I left off the ears) (the hats ears, Carson still has his).

Sam's story.

As I mentioned in my introduction, Sam came to us from a shelter in Wichita, KS. His group had been put down, and they had somehow missed him, and although all his paperwork had also been destroyed they let us take him home. We often joked that he had been 'in the pen' because he had killed his previous family in their sleep.

Sam was the most amazing dog. Much to my husband's disgust, the labrador blood in his past had somehow filtered out the 'fetching' gene and apart from one afternoon where he retrieved a ball at least a dozen times, fetching was a game he thought beneath him. He preferred - supervision. It didn't matter the activity - something quiet, or something noisy and dangerous like chopping wood - there he would be, lying calming nearby, his front feet crossed, supervising. Perhaps he was a council worker in a previous life?

The boys love to hear our 'Sam stories'. There are many of them. Other dogs, apparently, could tell that he'd done time 'in the pen' and would often give him a wide berth. Despite being nearly the same height as the whippets (ie not very tall) he weighed around 80lbs. He mostly resembled a pot bellied big. But he was as sweet as you could ever ask for, and didn't mind the constant influx of strange new creatures into his life. Holly used him as a chew toy when she was a puppy. Agnes bit his back legs on a daily basis. Even the puppy we puppy-sat for six months while her mom was finishing school abused him. But apart from an occasional growl, which you knew he didn't mean too seriously, he let them have his way with him.

Sam did have one trait that always amazed us. He understood the meaning of 'back around'. When he was out on a leash and inadvertantly went around the other side of a tree to you, you'd tell him 'back around' and he would untangle himself and on we would go. Not even my sister-in-law's obedience trained golden retrievers ever managed that feat.

Apart from supervision, Sam's other vocation was defence. That certainly wasn't why we got him from the shelter, and it wasn't something obvious, but every so often, there he would be, keeping us safe from harm.

When Scott was little - small enough to be in a sling on Darren's chest - we all went for a walk and the crazy german shepherd from the house of the corner came running at us. And there were Scott's feet, dangling enticingly down Darren's front. Sam, however, was having none of this. He charged in front of Darren, and literally knocked Skeeter back across the street, and stayed between us until we had cleared the end of the street. Then, his job done, he happily joined us on our walk.

Another time, when I was walking with Sam and Holly past the edge of town (the town we lived in in Kansas had a creek that ran diagonally through it, with a walking path - the first half mile from our house were shops and houses, but after that it gave way to fields and eventually a baseball diamond, so the dogs walked off leash a lot) and a gentleman coming towards me commented that my 'guard dogs' were quite a way back. I replied that they were close enough and when Sam passed the man, instead of just ignoring him, he circled off the path a little and growled. Which was not something Sam generally did, and made me wonder what he knew that I didn't.

Sam got to defend Holly quite a bit, most memorably from the chows at the end of the street, who had her cornered one day. We could hear her whimpering and Sam went off to investigate, once again putting himself between her and trouble. Of course, now that she was feeling safe, Holly would then prance around behind Sam, horrible show off that she was.

Sam always knew when he had done something bad. We would get home and he would run to greet us, and then immediately take himself into the back yard, where he would sit like the loneliest dog in the world. It was a clear hint that he had done something (he would pee in the house from time to time) and we would go looking for whatever mischief he had been up to. One day, seeing a puddle in the hallway, I yelled at him and he looked at me as if to say 'Hey, wasn't me!' I cleaned it up, and a while later came by to find yet another puddle. Sam still protested his innocence. After the third time I discovered one of the kids had left a popsicle on the bookcase in the hallway, and it was melting and dripping and making a mess. Sam, to his credit, knew that this particular mess wasn't his fault at all.

As he got older, the labrador in his breeding showed itself in hip problems. One of the reasons we got Agnes was to be company for Holly when Sam died. I believe Sam took this as a challenge, for despite having some really bad times, he lived another five years. We think he was around two when we got him, which means he lived to the ripe old age of 13.

Then there were seven.

Scott was born in February, 1995. Which means, scarily, that I am now the mother of a teenage boy. A very mellow, easy-going teenage boy but still!

Kirby went to live with the in-laws in 96 and Luke was born in June, 1997. Add two, take away one, leaves you with six in our little family.

Then in May, 1998 the most pathetic looking dog you have ever seen appeared on the whippet email list I subscribe to - skin and bone, and holding up her right front leg with a huge gash down the front. She was in a shelter in Kansas City, and one of the ladies from there was doing her best to get her out. Because she had been found on the street, wearing a collar, they wouldn't let Libby adopt her for a week. They did - finally - allow her some softer bedding, but her leg wasn't looked after at all. And they insisted on her being spayed before Libby could take her home. At the time, she weighed 16lbs. It goes without saying that she wasn't up to spaying, but they did it anyway. The gash down her leg had started to heal on its own, so Libby spent five weeks soaking and debriding it three times a day. The joint got infected, and her vet went through a variety of antibiotics before they finally found one that would take care of the infection. Because of all the bits and pieces he pulled out of the joint during that time, her leg buckles forward a little. It has never affected her speed or mobility, but it looks strange to see her standing like that.

Libby named her Angel, but whenever I called to check on her, Darren would ask 'How is Agnes doing' and Agnes she became. It suits her perfectly, to be honest. We picked her up from Libby at a dog show in Sedalia, MO on the 4th of July. She's been with us for ten years now.

Then there were five...

During our time as a family of four, we spent a lot of time (an awful lot of time) at baseball & softball tournaments. My husband loved to play and we had nothing better to do. Most of the time, we'd take the dogs along for the ride. They were always well behaved (well, there was that time Holly chewed on the button on someone's baseball cap but he laughed about it...) and made friends with everybody. One night, though, we'd gone straight from work on a Friday and just as the games were finishing for the night, somebody found a tiny white kitten in right field. Well, I could hardly leave him there, all alone, could I? So we scooped him up, stopped at the store and purchased food, litter box, all that stuff and took him home.

Now Holly had already established her cat chasing credentials by this time. In fact, she'd given me a heart attack a week or so after she came to live with us by chasing a cat up the street. The cat chasing part wasn't the problem. Not even the street was the problem. The problem was she was a three month old whippet who utterly and totally underestimated her speed and, more importantly, her co-ordination. She went head over tail off the edge of the gutter and came limping back home - I was worried she had broken something but apart from the first of many, many chunks of missing skin she was fine.

However, Holly also had maternal instincts, and these came out for our new kitten. We would see them together, with the kitten trying to nurse and Holly keeping her legs out of the way so he could. What either of them got out of that we're not sure, just comfort I suppose. Kirby (as we named the kitten, after the Minnesota Twin's Kirby Puckett) did try the same thing with Sam but that was too much even for a good ole boy dog and he would move away. Mind you, he did the same thing when Kirby ate out of his food bowl as well, despite being 20 times his size.

The three of them got on really well. Sometimes you would see Kirby hiding beside the couch, listening as the dog tags jingling got closer - he would either pounce on Holly, or sag in disappointment if it was Sam.

One day, as he was sitting on the woodpile in the back yard, the neighbourhood tomcat came around - all stiff and swaggering. Kirby merely sat, quietly, on the wood pile. The tomcat got more macho. Kirby sat. And then, suddenly, two dogs exploded out of the dog door and chased the tomcat around the backyard several times before he finally found a hole in the fence and escaped. We've never worked out how they knew he was there but have referred to that as Kirby's 'I've got a Donk' moment (you'll need to watch Crocodile Dundee for that reference!).

We had Kirby for several years, but he was very adept at bringing half-dead birds into the house and once Scott was born, we really couldn't have that happening. So Kirby went to live with my in-laws and a few years afterwards did the 'disappearing cat' thing. With dogs, when they disappear, you usually find them one way or another. With cats, not so much. So we like to think he went to live with some little old lady who spoiled him constantly and let him walk on the counters whenever he wanted, and he lived to a ripe old age.

Anyway, this is the three of them together, though you have to look closely to see the cat part of the pile.