The Living Room: Brought to You by Cuca

Some photos by E.g.; all tampered with by Lavenderbay.

Hello, blogworld, Cuca here. Mother has asked me to show you around the living room. She has very specifically not asked the dogs. Note, if you will, the recycle-bin barricade.

First we have the armchair,warmed by a ten-dollar cushion and a five-dollar fleece throw, cozied up to the ABC* coffee table and the BRU** braided rug. Oversized books adorn the lower shelf, among them Netherlandish Painting, Canadian Art, and Australian Birds. On the table top you will see a Cardicorgi candleholder (a birthday gift to Turtle from the dog manufacturer Shelley) and…

… an Indonesian grass basket, costing two bags of kitty treats at Ten Thousand Villages, bought especially to hold beach stones. I just shake my head sometimes.

Another cushion and throw, a twizzly floor lamp, and just beyond that…

A mantelpiece. Spotted Sandpiper, fancy candle, artisanal clock, 1940s incense holder, more rocks (good grief!) and Athena will all have to await my guiding hand; it’s much more amusing to rearrange small items when dogs are sitting underneath them.

Beyond the mantelpiece we see the harp, tucked into the corner between the fireplace and the window. The two white planters expect to greet some sprouted pussywillow stems any day now. I wonder how tasty those will be?

Ah, the window. That reminds me: I’m getting bored. Here’s the NYBA*** rocking chair. Big deal. So if you’ll excuse me…

… the bear and I have a windowsill date with a gorgeous view. Ta-ta for now.

• *ABC: Already Been Chewed.
• **BRU: Baptized by Regurgitation and Urine.
• ***NYBA: Not Yet Been Altered.

How to Pick Up Poopies in a Wintry Saint John Yard

All photos below were taken by E.g. and cropped by Turtle.

Two days ago, on March 29, it was actually raining in Saint John, but when we got here on the 20th it was still solidly, stolidly winter. While Fergus and Cai were light enough to run around on top of the snow in E.g.’s parents’ backyard, a human step would sink up to the knee. How to pick up after the pupsters, then? Alyson?

That’s right: snowshoes!

One small step on yuccakind…

Snowshoes are a First Nations invention. They were originally made of wood and rawhide. The ones here are aluminum and nylon, with canvascloth bindings. No specialized boots are necessary; just slip the toe of your regular ol’ winter boot into the canvas toehold and wrap the strap around your ankle, then slip the strap through the metal clip.

Getting a grip

Their large size distributes a person’s weight to prevent sinking into the snow. One needn’t be heavy to founder, by the way; one simply needs pointy legs. After the rain softened the snow the other day, Cuca the cat snuck outside, only to sink up to his shoulders in the backyard. Differing temperatures and successive thaws and refreezes make for many different textures of snow. On the day these photos were taken, there was a thin crust that upheld the dogs but wasn’t thick enough for me. Snowshoes work on crusty snow as well as they do in deep powder.

The webbing keeps snow from accumulating and weighing down the snowshoe. It also, I think, helps to prevent slipping backwards on slopes. I’m crouching in the second picture above only because the drift is so high; the shoes stayed steady.

Coureur de bois cancan

The third picture displays gratuitous lifting; E.g. wanted a show-off picture. It does demonstrate, however, that I could make my way through the underbrush fairly efficiently, if I needed to step over low tangles of bush and branch.

Le petit prince

As with cross-country skis, the heel is not fixed. You walk normally — you don’t even need poles! — and can crouch to capture those elusive canine poopies. Shh now. Ready, set…

All the better to wait on you, my dears.

Ta da!

PIKCHERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hello evrybuddy this is Tertul the Saint Johner! I am so ekseyeted to hav a fyoo fotos for yoo finully that I’m speling like Dennis the Vizsla Dog! Ennyway hear r three pikchers for yoo two enjoy.

E.g.’s dada yoosed to hav a fens around his vejjett– his vedje– his tomayto plants, for yeersnyeers. It wuz yoozed to keep owt deer. This winter wuz very hard on the fens and haff uv it fell down!

Ennyway the snow is so hi the fens can’t keep owt a Cardi rite now, let aloan a deer!

Its so mutch fun to wotch the dogs play in the bakkyard! Maybee in a cuppla yeers we’ll hav wun, too.

The Good Ship Nettle

Nettleship’s Hardware. Photo scoffed from their website.

As you can see by the sign, Nettleship’s Paint and Hardware has occupied this piece of Parliament Street since 1920. The store was begun by Marg Taggart’s father (if you go here, you can mouse over her name and see her picture) . Although today the business is run by her son Don, Marg still continues to put in her hours. One or two daughters are still there as well, or at least they were when E.g. and I were in studying paint chips two years ago. Even Don’s Britanny Spaniel acts as greeter.

Marg shares gladly in the life of her neighbourhood, from little everyday things to bigger events. She participated as a judge in my blog’s “Name the WWF Sea Turtle Stuffy” contest. Jane and Robert tell me that one evening during one of the Cabbagetown community festivals, they saw her dance longer than anyone else in the room. She’s one heckuva septagenarian.

Yesterday evening, I realized with dismay that I would need another roll of packing tape. I headed the two blocks over to Nettleships, only to find that it was twelve minutes past closing.

Not that that mattered. A woman and a little girl pushed open the door just ahead of me. In the back section of the long, narrow store, Marg was chatting with someone. Don was serving a customer at the cash. So in I went.

In I went, and couldn’t find the tape. I’d gotten a roll here the week before, I knew where it was supposed to be; but a combination of the two-hour morning’s walkies to get mattress covers on Mount Pleasant Rd, the 90 minutes it took to disassemble our platform bed, the other hour taking apart the futon sofabed, the lack of supper, and the guilt at being in the store after hours, blinded me. Marg saw my helplessness, and came right over.

No no, we’re still open, she soothed. You’re moving? We’ll miss you, she sighed. New Brunswick? My friend has a daughter in Fredericton, she smiled. By the end of that dollar-sixty-eight transaction, I felt like one of the store’s best shareholders and closest neighbours, and wanted to shake her hand in farewell.

Toronto the Big used to have a nicer nickname: Toronto the Good.  It’s terrific to see a family-run store like Nettleship’s Paint and Hardware still contributing to this city’s kinder, gentler reputation.

Happies Birthdays

Fergus, in tinier days.

While the Ides of March may not have been a happy occasion for Julius Caesar, it’s a wonderful day for Turtle: her partner and her younger puppy were both born on March 15th.

Ten-week-old Fergus adoring his mummy E.g.

Fergus is one year old today, and E.g. is… well… old enough to have seen Topo Gigio’s debut on the Ed Sullivan Show (although of course, so am I; we’re only six months apart in age).

Fergus at four months, lounging on E.g.’s ankle.

In preparing for our long-distance move, we’ve been working hard to improve our Cardis’ manners. Sometimes I despair that Fergus will never “get it”, even though I know that two-and-a-half-year-old Cai was older than Fergus before he settled down on leash. I’m much more philosophic about training E.g.; she’s had as many decades to form ingrained habits as I have.

Post-pinecone Fergus presents his papasan-hopping prowess to his proud mum.

Despite his mischievous ways, however, Fergus has one big thing over both Cai and Cuca: he loves to cuddle. He snuggles right in, and loves to be fussed over. (The photo below isn’t the best proof of this, but it’s the best one I can find. The other is possibly still lurking in the backup hard-drive thingy.)

E.g. holding her snugglepuppy, with Cai and Cuca at her feet.

Happy birthday, you two! Many happy returns.

Guinea Pigs

http://make-bread.blogspot.com/2007/07/youtube-video-easy-bread.html
Sorry, people, I wanted a nice Youtube video at the top of this post, but couldn’t remember how to insert it. Since the “Easy Bread” video is on Jim Mortenson’s blog, however, I figgered promoting a fellow blogger’s blog was the proper thing to do.

Today I’d like to tell you about three recent experiments. The first two are in the spirit of using up pantry ingredients, and the third is a preparation for getting the furchildren to Saint John.

1. Easy Bread

What intrigued me with the “Easy Bread” recipe was the puny amount of yeast it requires: only a quarter-teaspoon! In order to make a little yeast go a long way, however, the dough needs to rise overnight (a similar video suggests 12 hours) .

I followed the recipe exactly, except for the part where you’re to put a pan of water in the bottom of the oven. Because Jim’s oven is gas and mine is electric, I wondered how well the instructions of 10 minutes each at 500, 450 and 350 degrees would work. I wondered even more that the bread dough was lower than the rim of the pie plate when it went into the oven.

In ten minutes, however, the round loaf had puffed up like a package of Jiffy Pop. The bread came out properly cooked after the allotted time.

The crust would have been nicer had the pan of water been in the oven. And the inside looked like an English muffin, with cells the size of my thumb; not sure why. It tasted fine, though.

2. Fudge

“Fudge” should have been a sweet, but it turned out to be an oath. I followed the recipe, used the candy thermometer, and strictly adhered to the commandment NOT to beat the fudge until it had cooled to room temperature. When I took the wooden spoon to it, it fell apart into cocoa powder and dry marble-sized lumps — which is pretty strange, considering I used baker’s chocolate and not cocoa. Am considering using it to make hot chocolate; not yet sure how to sell E.g. on the drink’s added-value raisins.

3. Rehydrated Guinea Pigs

When E.g. and I were working out the logistics of our long-distance move, I suggested that she should drive down with the breakables and Cuca, while I would take the train with the dogs. That way, we’d be assured of the least damage to the most important things. She agreed.

This week, I contacted the train station for more information regarding Fergus and Cai. One of the things the baggage people recommended was that I take a couple of plastic margarine tubs, fill them with water, and freeze them overnight. That way the dogs wouldn’t spill their water, and it would last for hours. Great idea! I immediately set two small food containers in the freezer, eager to test the procedure.

The next morning, I presented the Cardis with the frozen water dishes. Well! This turned out to be the greatest treat they’d had in ages. In five minutes, Fergus had his ice flipped outside its container; in ten minutes, all the plastic tabs had been chewed off; and in twenty minutes, half of the ice in each of the two-cup containers was licked away.

Hmmm.

Out I went to the pet store, and returned with a twelve-ounce rodent bottle-feeder. Sitting on a stool, I licked the tube, and then invited the boys to try. It was a hit! The feeder is made of indestructible glass and metal, and fits perfectly on the inside of a crate door. So out I went to buy a second one for the other crate.

Just glad I didn’t have to show them how to eat liver biscuits.

A Sitty Lesson

 
“Learn to heel!” “Stop bein’ such a slowpoke!”  Photo by E.g.

.
We pet owners tend to make a lot of jokes about our animals’ urinary and fecal elimination. This is because – if we are vigilant dog owners and tidy cat owners — we must rub our nose in it (so to speak) numerous times daily. Hence the title of this post, which is — gasp! — not about elimination. 

It’s above freezing and very grey today, so I decided not to chance going far afield, but simply walk the boys around the city blocks near home. The furchildren get muddy enough without being rained upon.

In an effort to get Fergus to heel, I’ve been halting whenever the leash goes taut; or at least, I like to think I have. It’s very hard (read: tedious) to stop consistently; and besides, does Fergus really understand why I’m stopping? Does he get the connection (as it were) between his pulling and my stopping?

This morning, about halfway along our circuit, I decided that the boys should learn to sit whenever I halt. That way, the leash would go slack before we continued walking.

And so Cai got a lesson based on Fergus’s double lesson. Every time Fergus pulled on his half of the double leash, I halted and said, “Sit.” And I made sure both boys sat. If Fergus was where he should be, with his head level with my left leg, and it was Cai lagging behind who made the leash go tight, I ignored it. Conversely, if Fergus was right out in front, even if the tension on the leash wasn’t so bad, I might halt as well. When we crossed streets I would tug him back instead of stopping; safety before manners.

Now, picture the length of a typical slab of city sidewalk. What would it be, about six or eight feet? That’s how far we would get before Fergus would be pulling. Every time he pulled, we stopped and the boys sat.

For nine blocks.

It was a very sitty walk.

We walked and we walked and we walked and we slept and we slept.

Fergus in High Park, but not today. Photo by E.g.

We left the house at 08 43 this morning. Cai and Fergus were each wearing their harness. This harness, originally bought for use in the back seat of the car, has a large D-ring at the foot of the loop through which the seatbelt is threaded, just behind the shoulderblades. To each D-ring was clipped an end of the double leash. The double leash consists of two 14-inch straps and one 18-inch strap attached to a central metal ring. The longer length is the leash’s hand grip, while the other straps terminate in clip hooks. Boots laced, gear on, leash in place, away we went.

The plan was to walk to that nice park in Rosedale for some off-leash fun. Well! The off-leash fun lasted less than five minutes, before a local resident warned me that the City has changed its mind, and this park is no longer leash free. On went the double leash again.

The nice thing about this park — for about eleven months of the year — is that it abuts a ravine walking trail. The one month of the year in which this is not a nice thing is the one in which the snow has gone and the ice remains. Snow makes for good traction; ice doesn’t. This morning, the beginning of the trail combined the best challenges of a skating rink and a ski jump.

About this wide and smooth, but on a 30-degree slope. The ice was even smoother. Photo by E.g.

But what the heck.

There are two ways to get onto this trail, called “Milkmen’s Road”, from the park: through the north side of the fence, or out the front gates and up the street about 50 paces. Since the path through the fence is a short, sharp drop, I opted for the other connection, which begins as a wide, gentle roadway slope.

It still wasn’t easy; the dogs were raring to go, and impatient with their two-legged companion. By reaching for saplings and keeping one foot on bare ground as often as possible, however, I managed to get down to a place where a side trail has been etched through the snow. The snow at this time of year is about as yielding as cold pahoehoe, but at least the path was level until it reached the creek fence, at which point I had some chain linking to cling to as we made our way down to join the main path again.

When we came to the signpost at the bottom of the slope, I opted for the Moore Park Ravine trail. This brought us to the Brick Works, home of the very nice Dogpatch doggie park. Instead of entering the off-leash area, though, we wandered the paths of the Brickworks park together. I saw half a dozen birds and only two people! Sweet serenity.

Hawk’s-eye view of the Brick Works in Autumn. Photo by E.g.

The Don Valley Brick Works is a former quarry with cliffs on three sides. We wandered up a path to the top, and from there watched a Red-tailed Hawk leave a branch and circle over the grounds below. There’s something magical about watching a bird in flight from such a height; maybe it’s easier to imagine myself flying too.

Back down in the lower area there are walkways looping around a set of ponds. I have seen a muskrat here on a summer’s day, so this morning I looked for push-ups, and finally found one.

Our last loop of the park took us along the western edge, above which the Moore Park Ravine trail continues. This quarry wall gets a lot of runoff — there were great thick icicles lining most of it — and includes a culvert which diverts Mud Creek and, in the Spring, provides a small cascade. At the foot of this frozen cascade this morning, some of the ice was slushy. I scrabbled at it with my bare hand, and Fergus and Cai drank their fill. Then we headed for the metal staircase that would take us back up to the Ravine trail.

The western park cliffs looked kinda like this. Photo by E.g.

When we arrived back at the point on Milkmen’s Road that we had earlier skipped, I was doubly glad we had detoured. It was solid ice. Nevertheless, instead of going offtrail to the right to repeat the detour, I decided to go offtrail to the left, climbing straight up the side to the recently leash-free dogpark. (Perhaps on our next walk I should bring water for myself, crazy old Coot hen.) Fergus lost his footing and slipped once, but I never did, and not once did I let go of the double leash. When we got to the dog park we were about 20 brambly paces from the side entrance. So I skipped over the low fence, grabbed one dog by the harness and then another, and popped them into the park with more ease than moving a hay bale.

Steeper than this, but similarly vegetated. And then add in the icy patches.

We got home at 10 37, six minutes short of three hours of adventure. The pupsters drank some water, chewed a steer-stick snack, and are still sleeping off the hike five hours later.

Now that’s a walk.

Two Out of Three

After Fergus’s run-in with the Husky the other day, I was pretty upset. I still don’t think “Who started it?” was the question to ask at the time, and yet it’s very much the question in my mind. Why does Fergus get into these tangles, while Cai never does?

There are a few possible answers:

1. Fergus is still very much an in-your-face kinda puppy; Cai is more mellow.

2. Fergus enjoys playing with other dogs; Cai has never shown much interest, preferring to play ball.

3. Fergus was formerly wary of big dogs; Cai has never noticed size differences.

4. Cai sometimes intercepts when Fergus starts playing with another dog.

Actually, come to think of it, that’s a pretty decent list.

The answer I do NOT want to hear is:

1. Fergus is a sociopath.

George the pharmacist on Desperate Housewives, now THAT’S a sociopath! Not Fergus.

Anyway, yesterday we went to a different off-leash area, one that isn’t fenced in, on the theory that fewer badly-behaved dogs might be there in the first place. In fact, the park’s visitors at that hour were about 90 per cent Golden Retrievers. I walked the perimeter, and the boys followed at my heels or dolphined on ahead.

Everything was fine until (PennyCat! John Deere alert!) Fergus got too interested in the small tractor that was ploughing the sidewalk. Off he bounded. When I called his name in sing-song fashion, he took one glance over his shoulder and continued toward the tractor (which had already halted at his approach). When I growled, “Hey!” in my biggest meanest Bull Mastiff voice, Fergus cowered and stayed still until his leash was on again. Then we all continued around the park a couple more times, Fergus on leash and Cai free, before heading home. So Fergus hadn’t been perfect…

But there were no dogfights.

This morning I decided to try yet another dogpark. As soon as he set paw to sidewalk, however, Cai started limping from the salt, so I took him back inside and continued on with Fergus. When we arrived at this park, completely new to Fergus, there were no other dogs. When I bent down and unsnapped the leash, the little dog stared at me a moment, incredulous — then he threw himself into the snow, leaping and licking and rolling and bouncing all over the place.

Soon a pair of dogs showed up. Then another dog came, and a few more. Fergus played with most of them, including a three-year-old Shipoo named Tofu who was wary of Fergus at first because he was so big. Fergus got 45 minutes of joyful play, no altercations, no snarls, no trouble at all. I even tried calling him a couple of times, in sing-song voice, to which he responded immediately, charging across the snowy field like he hadn’t seen me since July.

That’s more like it.

Aroo

Fergus got attacked by a husky.

No, he’s fine, but… it just really sucks.

The boys have been working on a double leash all week, learning to heel (still working on that one) and sit-stay. I was so proud of Fergus, the chaser, the other day when we did a Sit-stay with Pigeons. He stayed! The Sit-stay with Nice Lady Who Hands out Beggin’ Strips to the Neighbourhood Dogs needs a little refinement yet. That’s okay, puppy steps.

This morning, as a treat, I took the furchildren to the nearest dogpark. It took us over twenty minutes to make the five-minute journey, because every time they pulled too hard, I stopped; knowing where they were going, they couldn’t help trying to hurry me along.

We stepped through the first gate, and Fergus started growling at a pair of huskies who had rushed over to check us out. Cai barked for a throw toy. I unsnapped their leashes.

We stepped through the second gate into the play area. I pulled out a ball and tossed it to Cai. One of the huskies did a play bow and he and Fergus ran about 15 feet, and then he or maybe the other husky pinned down Fergus and was at his throat, Fergus yelping with fear, unable to right himself.

I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to grab the other dog. Cai and the second husky were mixing around, barking and trying to physically interfere.

Finally the husky’s owner sauntered over, took his dog by the collar, and asked me, “Who started it?” Eh? Who started it? Your dog is terrifying mine the minute we arrive, and you want to know who started it?

“I don’t know, but your dog attacked mine!” I snapped the boys’ leashes back on and we left the dog park. Fergus threw up twice before we got through the gates, and defecated just outside. We went back to the place a few blocks away where we’ve been practising the sit-stays, and did some training.

Fergus is fine. But he’s been watching me these past fifteen minutes, as though he knows how sad I’m feeling. E.g. wants to have a chat around 21 30 after she finishes watching a movie, but I just want to go to bed now (20 00). And maybe sneak the dogs onto the bed, too. Just for a break in the routine.