Mud Puppies

It's good to have friends.

Friends are there to help you have fun, blow off steam, and provide a sense of camaraderie.  In the canine world, friends help with a very important task to all dog owners: they help expend all that pent-up puppy energy that has been building up from laying around on the couch all day.

Granted, these pups don't get out too much lately to go crazy.  It's been drippy and foggy and cold and even the dogs don't feel like hanging out in the yard a great deal.  Sure, we go for daily walks around the creek trail but those are more structured and are my half-hearted attempt to teach them the meaning of the word "heel" (the meaning of which is either not recognized by them or completely ignored on purpose.  I'm beginning to think it's the latter.)  So after what seemed like the 19th or 20th day of having them chase each other around the kitchen and family room (which includes jumping on the couch and ricocheting feet-first off the wall in a dog version of the X-Games) I had pretty much had it.  The sun had made a feeble attempt to peek out through the clouds and it hadn't rained in over a week so it was time to let these guys burn some energy somewhere other than all over my furniture.

Off to the Dog Park!!!

Not being the most social of dogs just yet when it comes to their own kind, they have not gone to the dog park before, as I was afraid of their reaction to the rather exuberant dogs that I have seen playing there in the past.  But at some point in time they are going to have to meet and greet other dogs and learn the proper social etiquette involved.  Their reaction to dogs we meet on our daily walks range from general indifference to abject terror.  Bodie is fast on his way to being a mama's-boy dog (case in point when he cried and ran to me terrified, tail between legs, because he had a "dingleberry" stuck to his backside) and Leila, as always, is the princess of the castle and we are all here merely to do her bidding.   A little friend-time with other four-leggers (with the exception of the family cat who hates everyone) would probably be welcome.

So we bundled up the kids and leashed up the dogs and took off for the nearby dog park.  Along the way I was thinking of what I should do if bigger dogs scare them or if smaller dogs are scared by them.  Should I take off the leashes right away or let them get acclimated first?  What if they both go for a ball at the same time as another dog and a fight ensues?  I swear, you'd think I was dropping my kids off at daycare the way I was over-thinking this.  We got to the dog park gate and I realized my worries were in vain anyway.

The place was empty.

Well hell, this defeats the purpose, now doesn't it!  I wondered why, on this first sunny day we have had in awhile, why other dog owners weren't eager to get out here and run their also-pent-up dogs while they had the chance.  I'm sure my kitchen and family room weren't the only rooms in town waving the white flag.  Even though this dog park is small, I always see dogs in various numbers frolicking about when I drive past.  We go in anyway, figuring that my two can run around freely at will, usually running from or chasing after my 7-year son who is no stranger in the pent-up energy department.  We close the double gates, unhook the leashes, and only then do I notice why there are no other dogs in the dog park today.

The center of the park is one gigantic muddy mosh pit.

I notice this shiny brown mass immediately after the dogs have both run merrily through it and then jumped up on my son, leaving four brown paw prints on the legs of his grey sweatpants.  Wow, dogs with muddy feet AND laundry to do when we get home!  Who's idea was this, anyway?  Oh well, we're here, dogs and kids are running around, I'm snapping photos, and we are trying to make the best of the fact that at least it's not raining.  Moments later, Bodie and Leila bound up to the gate where a woman, her daughter and black labrador retriever have stopped by to visit the park.  Finally, someone else with a dog with cabin fever!  To my surprise, Bodie and Leila are overjoyed to see this new friend and dance around her, tails wagging and happy barks echoing, at Sophie the black lab who has come to play.

Sophie could have cared less.

When my two get their "silly" on, they are hard to ignore.  Sophie managed to do this with little to no effort at all, focusing her attention the woman who was about to toss a tennis ball across the grass.  Sophie took off after the ball, and Bodie and Leila took off after Sophie, not sure of why she was running but hey, she's running!  We should too!  My son took a cue from the obedient lab who brought the ball back and dropped it, ready for another go, and tossed a ball for Bodie to retrieve as well.  He hurled it as far as he could and Bodie just stared in its general direction.  You could almost hear the crickets.  Exasperated, my son jogged off to retrieve the ball, only to be passed up by Sophie running after her own ball, with her two shaggy Bernese shadows in tow.  This continued on for the duration of our stay there, with my two running back and forth for no apparent reason, and Sophie completely oblivious to their existence.  The only one in our family who seems to have gotten the hang of playing fetch is apparently my son.  But hey, they are all running around, having a blast, and most importantly, burning off the cobwebs from the past house-bound days.

When it came time for Sophie to leave, Bodie and Leila walked her to the gate and appeared to be saying their good-byes.  I was glad they had a good time with another dog, even if that other dog did not give them the time of day.  I had almost forgotten about the blackened muddy dog-feet and filthy wet children I would have to contend with when I got home.  Oh well, they all needed a bath anyway, kids included, so we ended our dog park run with a lather-rinse-repeat on the driveway for the pups, so I could actually see their feet were white again!  After a good toweling off and "silly five minutes" run pell-mell through the house, both dogs crashed on the family room carpet and fell into a restful snooze, complete with snoring.  It was a long way to go in order to get a few minutes of peace in the house, but I'll take what I can get!

If you listen really closely, you can hear the kitchen and family room sighing with relief.

The Artist in Residence

Yo people.  Bodie here.

I am quite a patron of the arts.  Some of the great artists of our time create masterpieces out of blocks of marble, some from lumps of wet clay, and others through oils and watercolors.  I like to consider myself somewhat of a Renaissance man, and think I possess a certain "flair", if you will.  But I prefer a different medium in which to bring my creations to life, to put my thoughts on canvas, to carve my name in the artistic journals of our day:

Drywall.

I find I do my best work when the lady of the house (I'll call her "Mom") leaves me alone in my thoughts.  Usually the venue is in the laundry room, where I have created some of my best works.  One of my earliest pieces I like to call "Bodie and Baseboard."  The inspiration for this piece came when Mom went shopping and left us alone for just a bit longer than I was comfortable with.  Notice how the curve of the corner of the laundry room wall makes a perfect platform to carve all the way down to the metal brace.  And those that look closely enough will notice that the baseboard is whittled away all the way down to an exposed nail, for added effect.  I liked the fact that I could lie down while creating this masterpiece, thus causing little or no effort on my part.  Mom must have liked this work in progress, as when she came home and saw it, she clasped her hand to her forehead in an "Oh my God!" sort of movement which could only mean she treasured it as a Bodie original.  She then sprayed bitter-tasting dog repelling medicine on it so I no longer cared to work on it.  That's okay, it was time to move on to bigger and better canvases anyway.  Let the creative juices flow!

Like many of the great artists before me, Rembrandt and Da Vinci to name just a few, I would sometimes start a work and then leave it to my assistant or pupil to complete.  Here is my lovely sidekick Leila who helped me with this particularly satisfying piece called  "It Wasn't Me."  I started the piece but let her join in the fun in order to take the blame...er, the credit....for such a lovely piece.  It wasn't until Mom came home and found chips of drywall in my hair that she realized who the true artist was.  Again, she voiced her pleasure with shouts of "What the hell did you do to my wall?" and "How am I going to fix that before Dad gets home?" and of course my all-time favorite, "@#!^%$*&!".  I think she truly appreciates my talent.

Then again, maybe not.

Like many a great artist who must suffer for his art, Mom tried to quash my enthusiasm by NOT locking us in the laundry room one time, thinking that having more room to walk around might make us feel less stifled and less bored.  She closed off the staircase so we had room to roam and stretch downstairs.  I saw this as a chance to explore new canvases!  This piece I like to call "Kitchen Nightmare."  This stub wall by the cabinet is just the perfect size for me to get my whole mouth around, which only added to the unique texture.  The teeth-striping on the wall was a nice effect, but I added a bit of baseboard-chew just to finish the look.  Mom paled when she noticed the proximity to the non-replaceable cherry wood kitchen cabinetry, thus ending the have-the-whole-downstairs-open experiment.

So it was back to the laundry room for us, but Mom moved the baby gate fortress down the wall just a little, so we had enough room to stretch out but not enough to get into trouble.  Or so she thought.  Here I am with a particularly nice piece called "Bathroom wall?  Don't Mind If I Do!"  This work of art was quite satisfying for me, as I was able to construct on a different-colored canvas than the laundry room and kitchen, thus requiring Mom to have to buy not one, but two cans of Kelly-Moore touch-up paint at a cost of $22 a can, or so she hollered at me.  Mom has an art degree herself, certainly she can understand the need to branch out beyond a monochrome palette at some point!  I added more to this piece later on when no one was looking, just to add a bit of flourish!!

My latest work is a little mixed-media number I like to call "Open The Back Door Now Or A Puddle On The Floor Is The Least of Your Worries." Notice how the tooth-striping is situated at an impossible angle between the door frame and windowsill.  That took some doing.  I carved out a chunk of the windowsill as well, because Mom had not purchased any high-gloss touch up paint for wood yet and thought I would just remind her.  The look on Mom's face when she saw this one was priceless, I have never seen quite that shade of red before or heard expletives linked together in such a manner.

But alas, vandalism of epic proportions occurred a few days later when Dad got home and opened the industrial-sized pot of spackling paste and filled in all my hard work.  The giant white dots that cover the walls now are just not esthetically pleasing!   Mom still puts us in the laundry room when she goes out, although I noticed her trips are markedly shorter now, as she rushes to get back to us before more creations occur.  I think I overheard her one time mentioning "skidmarks" and "take corners on two wheels."  When she puts us in the laundry room now and I stare at the irregular white splotches on the wall that have yet to be sanded, I see what any great artist of my time would see:

Blank canvas!!