How Easily I Am Mocked

During our first term of vet school, way back in early October, our class established Thursdays as "snack day". We even keep a Google doc so people can sign up in advance. I did a snack day in the winter term--cut up apples and cubed cheese, pounds of both, plus three kinds of chocolate. Some people make muffins or cookies, some bring bags of chips and salsa, others bring bananas and gigantic jars of Nutella. Some of our classmates have dietary issues, and a couple are vegan. Most of us make some attempt to bring snacks that will cover all bases.

I sometimes bring snacks on Fridays for no other reason than it is Friday. Oddly, my classmates love those sour gummi worms--neon colored, coated in sugar. They fall on the bag like a pack of starving wolves. I also usually bring a bag of some sort of chocolate.

There is another Thursday tradition that I do not participate in: themed dress. Harry Potter, undergrad college colors, dress like a beaver, nautical themes, animal costumes, superheroes--I find most of it fairly silly. Pajama day was the worst. Most of my classmate already look like they roll out of bed and come to class. How could they get any more casual? Turns out a lot more.

Yesterday the theme was "twins". On Wednesday, my friend and table mate McKenna said, let's dress for twin day. Do you have two of anything?

I probably would have refused this request from anyone else but I like McKenna. So I thought it over, and realized I have two lime green Utah Tail Blazer flyball club tshirts. They are probably around 15 years old now, and are sweat-stained and getting a bit thready in places. But I have two of them.

I normally don't wear tshirts with writing on them to school. Heck, I don't even wear clothing with patterns. I wear sturdy cotton cargo pants, rarely jeans, and solid colored tshirts (blue, black, or grey) and solid-colored fleeces (blue, black, or grey). This way I can put on the tshirt that is on the top of the pile and grab a fleece on my way out the door and I never have to look at them. I wore one pair of dark green cargo pants for most of the past 7 months, washing them every week. The idea is to simplify my life as much as possible by removing sources of stress such as deciding what to wear. Everything always goes with everything.

So I told McKenna, this week it is tan pants (I bought a new pair to add to the rotation), dark tennis shoes, and a black fleece. I'll bring the Utah Tail Blazer flyball shirts.

Little did I know that McKenna had plans to take this thing all the way. She put her hair up in a bun, wore stud earrings (I also wear the same pair of earrings every day), and put on her glasses instead of her contacts. The results were spectacular, but I'm a little dismayed at how easily she was able to imitate me:

Achieving Satori

Skills that your dog learns in one context can often be useful in another, often in unexpected ways.

In Dhahran, me and P and M regularly walked our dogs together in the evenings. I've written before about our efforts to find empty houses with good yards so we could let the dogs run around and be crazy. The best houses were the ones with the water still turned on. Even better were the ones with a hose attached to the spigot. It was nasty, reclaimed water but the dogs were most appreciative of a chance to get a drink.

Over the course of a hot summer, P taught Azza how to drink from a hose. This was a rather laborious process starting with convincing Azza not to be afraid of the hose. By the time we left Dhahran, P could pick up a hose and Azza would stand in line for her turn.

My first satori moment occurred this weekend when I was hosing Mimi and Azza off after they had gleefully played in the leaves for half an hour. They were covered head to toe in mud. The path of least resistance for dealing with that is to hose them off outside then towel them off inside on the mat by the back door. I realized as I was rinsing mud off Azza's neck and legs that not only was she willing to let me do this, she even came when I called, standing there with a running hose in my hand. I don't think that even P could have predicted this back when she decided that Azza needed to learn how to drink from a hose.

My friend DSL came to visit me here in Oregon in September. She was goofing around with Azza and, noting that Azza uses her paws to request attention, starting casually playing a "give me your paw" game. She switched around her hands and asked for one or the other paw. Nothing formal with a clicker but DSL played this several times with Azza during her visit. Azza really took to this game. I decided to make it a little more formal so we now have the "give me your paw-give me your other paw" game. The satori moment? When we play this game, it can completely deflect one of Azza's meltdowns. The moment she gets worried about something, I call her over to play a few rounds of this. It takes a lot of concentration on her part because she has to completely shift her center of balance to give me alternate paws in quick succession. By the time we are done, she's forgotten all about whatever it was that set her off. Another unpredicted outcome of the original game.

Dogs are amazing learners. Azza isn't special--lots of dogs can apply a skill learned in one context to another. What's neat about this is that sometimes we get to learn new things too.

Boodle

Boodle, the companion of my friend Moya in Dhahran, died a couple of days ago. His big, loving heart couldn't keep beating for him any longer.

He and Moya were one of my first private training experiments, and a highly successful one at that.

Boodle and Moya were our regular walking companions. Boodle and Harry made up the grumpy old man contingent, mostly content to watch the pummeling and racing from the sidelines.

Boodle and Moya were part of my agility "regulars". It took a lot of hot dogs and a bit of pushing, but he did learn to enjoy tunnels!

The jump chute challenge.

Going in!

Coming out! He is so pleased with himself!

Boodle loved digging deep, pointless holes in cool, damp sand, usually in Penny's backyard.

He guarded the communal water spigot.

Mr B barked at the gardeners up until the very end.

He will be missed. 

Canine Chaos

I drove up to Anne's in Portland yesterday afternoon for dinner (reluctantly dragging myself away from a palate fistula repair in an elderly dachshund's mouth at the clinic). I took my three dogs. Anne has three dogs. A friend from Utah was visiting her who had three dogs. Another friend from Portland joined us with one of her dogs. Lost count?

The role call:

• Azza, 2 yr old desert dog
• Mimi and Harry, 8 yr old and 15 yr old smooth fox terriers
• Forrest, 10 yr old parson russell terrier
• Skeeter, 4 yr old parson russell terrier (since she is matter and Mimi is anti-matter, their meeting would annihilate the universe so Skeeter isn't in the video below)
• Rumble, 1.5 yr old aussi
• Bender and Tolt, 6 mo old B&W BC pups
• their dad, 10-ish yr old, and older brother, unknown age, also B&W BCs

Another way of looking at this chaos: four border collies, three terriers (four counting Skeeter), an aussie, and the desert dog. It was a seething mass of dogs.

It was a little bit rough with Azza at first because she was overwhelmed by all those dogs. Lots of cringing, whining vocalizations, teeth baring and snapping, and generally not very nice behavior on her part. She's also not had the best experiences with black dogs so that might have played into her fear. Thankfully, the BCs and the Aussie were all well adjusted and simply turned away from her instead of engaging or escalating.

We ended up dumping Azza and Skeeter, who get along very well, in a side yard. That turned out to be a Very Good Idea as those sorts of random decisions can be. While watching everything for 20 minutes or so, Azza was able to calm down and work out that none of those dogs had any interest in harming her and might in fact have some play potential.

After behaving badly in the intro, it took Azza quite some time to convince the other dogs to play with her. They'd look at her and think "you crazy, bitch" and walk away. She kept trying though, and she can be pretty persuasive. She avoided the older dogs and eventually had great success with the younger ones.

I can only say this about the video, which I unfortunately shot late in the evening: Harry seems to at last be doing great on the Adequan (he's the only one who's barking, too), and that's a lot of dogs!

Dog Friends Come Through As Always

It is not uncommon for people to retire from Aramco after working here for 20, 30, even 40 years. In those cases, the home department can choose to host a ma’asalamah (farewell) party. Being a short-timer, I don’t qualify for a work-sponsored event. But two of my dog friends (PM and MW) took care to see that I had a ma’asalamah party anyway: a last day of shopping, food, and drink in Bahrain before I turn in my passport and iqama.

Mmm.

We got an early start to beat the causeway crush and headed to one of the big malls for coffee. Once the stores began opening, we began shopping. I wouldn’t say that my friends are women who live to shop, but they clearly know more about the entire process than I do. We ended up in this small shop where they began trying on tops and each ended up buying one. I didn’t try anything on but they kept pushing this top or that dress at me. I felt a bit churlish for not getting more into the spirit of things but I rarely shop for clothes precisely because I hate trying them on and dealing with the inevitable disappointment when they don’t fit. 

MW and the G&T that she'd been drooling about for days.

Cheeseball! PM.

Next we headed over to M&S. I was extremely pleased to immediately score some cheap flipflops (HellBeast had managed to get at my current pair one too many times and I needed replacements) and I suppose this shopping success put me in a different frame of mind. 

I ended up trying on a few pieces of clothes at M&S including a pair of black leggings. I’ve never tried on leggings before. I’ve never even envisioned myself wearing that particular fashion trend: tunics and leggings. You see it everywhere on women young and old, thin and round, but for some reason I never pursued it. But watching PM and MW spend an hour trying on tunic tops that morning must have planted the idea in my head. The leggings fit so I bought them. But what to wear with them?

We spent about an hour looking at carpets. The shop owner was surly and his selection was poor. Despite being perfectly able and willing, none of us bought any carpets that morning. His loss.

We headed back to the first shop where we proceeded to engage in a frenzy of fitting room madness. Those two crazy women had me trying on dresses and tops and all kinds of weird things that I would have never even given a second glance to. All three of us tried on a couple of the dresses, the same dress, in fact, because although we are very different in size and shape, we wear about the same size. And I ended up buying a very cool tunic top to wear over the leggings. Who knew I could look so fashionable? It's certainly not my normal mode of dress!

I’ve had a number of close women friends over the years but for some reason I don’t usually go shopping with them, certainly not clothes shopping taken to that level. So the morning at the mall with PM and MW was a surprise and a pleasure.

We closed our day in Bahrain with an excess of food and drink at Trader Vick’s where we sat on the patio overlooking their landscaped lagoon backed by the Arabian Gulf. PM and MW wouldn’t take a single hallalah from me for the driver or the meals or the alcohol (including two bottles of wine and a couple of B52 shots each!), insisting that it was all their treat. It was the best ma’asalamah party I’ll ever have!

View of the Arabian Gulf from Trader Vick's patio.

We made a quick run to Al Osra (home of the famed pork store) on the way back. The situation in Bahrain remains unsettled and we ran into a minor roadblock of burning tires and debris. A quick detour and some equally quickly snapped photos and we were on our way again.

Training Azza 11

Azza is now about 10 months old. It’s hard to remember that she is still a baby because she is so large, 15.7 kg. Perhaps she’s grown a neuron or two recently, bringing the grand total to about five, because she has been noticeably behaving better the past couple of weeks.

Mimi chomping on Azza's head during play.

What do I mean by “better”? The most obvious change is a reduction in some of her fear responses. While we were on a walk last week, a stroller passed us twice and she did nothing. Nothing. Just a couple of weeks before that she saw a stroller approaching and totally lost her shit, lunging, barking, showing teeth, hackled up. Another example: I bought some flowers from the Garden Club yesterday at lunchtime and left the flat on the porch in the shade. When I took her out to potty, she noticed this new thing right away but instead of growling at it, hackling up, and backing away like she usually does, she cautiously approached it and sniffed it (I was giving her the command “what is it?” to encourage her).  She has ignored it on subsequent trips out whereas in the past she’d show a fear response for a couple of days every single time she encountered the new thing. Ignoring it! That is a gigantic leap forward for Azza. 

Joyful.

Happy Harry. He's been sprayed with the hose, nibbled on bits in the grass, and generally enjoyed his morning out with the pack.

Yet another example: Aramco is making a mysterious construction project involving a 3-foot deep trench across the full length of my building. Harry ignores the trench but likes to pee on the orange fencing and on the boulders that get dug up and tossed to the side. Mimi immediately wanted to jump into the trench—of course, she’s a proper little terrier and no flimsy orange fence can stop her. Azza gave it all a good sniff but not once did she show fear. I had literally steeled myself when I opened the gate to take her out to potty that first time with orange fencing and piles of sand and rocks and trenches ringing our little sidewalk, fully expecting to have to drag her past all that mess to a patch of undisturbed grass. She didn’t react at all. 

Nellie is fast but Azza is faster. Azza can change directions in a flash. My little camera can't keep up.

I classify these types of incidents as “fear of new things.” She is behaving better by showing more tolerance of (and indifference to) “new things.”

She’s also doing much better at ignoring people who pass us on our walks. I still have to shorten her leash a bit when people pass us to prevent her from doing anything unexpected and to keep her on a straight path but in between sightings of passers-by, she is able to walk along on a loose lead, her head even with the terriers. Almost like a switch has been flipped, she has been doing far less of the obsessive head-turning and staring at people coming up behind us.

I was horrified to realized when I cropped this photo that Mimi has a mouthful of Azza's skin! Man, those terriers are ferocious! Azza puts up with this and more.

I call these types of behaviors “misinterpreted threat”. She is behaving better by showing a better understanding of the fact that there are other people in the world and most of them have nothing to do with her in the potential or the actual.

As an aside, I hold the leashes in my left hand. Harry and Mimi know they are to walk to my left or in front of me. They usually walk side by side. I hold Azza’s leash in my left hand as well but I trained her to walk to my right. This prevents “braid-o-matic” action and keeps her from crashing into them in her random flinging about. I extended this concept so that Azza’s heel position is on my right. Yeah, not kosher for formal obedience but who cares. In fact it makes for a great parlor trick. I can put Mimi and Azza in a sit/stay, walk to the other end of the room, turn and face the dogs, and call Mimi to a heel on my left while Azza remains in the stay then call Azza to a heel on my right to end up with a dog on either side of me. I use the same command “get ready” for both of them but they know which side they are supposed to go to.

Happy Azza covered in water, sand, and dog spit.

One of Azza’s biggest training issues right now (besides the accursed tippy board) is greeting transitions. She isn’t able to calmly greet other people or dogs then continue with whatever she was doing before. When greeting, she goes into meltdown mode, thrashing and flinging herself around with the fit usually ending with her literally melting into a puddle on the ground. She frequently pees when greeting. But even her reaction to greeting transitions is slowly changing. When we meet up with MW and Mr. B or PM and Azza’s BFF Nellie, Azza still does her meltdown act. But I’ve trained my friends to simply continue walking after we humans greet each other (and the terriers and the other dogs give each other polite sniffs). I keep a good grip on Azza’s collar and we all ignore her thrashing. The time it takes for Azza to return to normal is getting shorter and shorter. Two months ago I’d spend up to 10 minutes trying to prevent her from throwing herself bodily at the other person or dog, all the while dragging her forward in some semblance of a walk. She is strong and remarkably lithe. It is like holding on to a giant orange centipede. With teeth (she can be mouthy when frustrated). Now, in just a minute or two we are all calmly walking in a group of four dogs and two people.

PM, Nellie, Azza, Mimi, and Harry. They think she has a treat but she really doesn't. She was trying to lure them all closer for a photo.

I mentioned this to PM the other night as we were watching Azza and Nellie chase each other around a backyard: I was not sure that Azza was ever going to become normal enough to keep. I was afraid that I might ultimately have to put her down. With those fear issues and the great ignorance of dog behavior around here, I couldn’t risk that she’d end up in a family with kids or with Saudis. But there she was, playing with Nellie with full joy and abandon, using proper signals to start and stop play, drinking from the water hose (I give full credit to PM who patiently taught her how to do that), coming when called, standing quietly with no restraint while I hosed the sand and dog spit off her before we started for home. 

Azza and Mimi sharing the hose for a drink. PM spent months teaching Azza that the hose wasn't a thing to be feared.

In short, like Pinocchio, she’s becoming a “real dog.” 

A Tired Dog is a Good Dog

PM got back from her summer leave on Wednesday, and the first thing on her mind was scheduling a walk/play date with her yellow lab Nellie and my dogs.

We usually let Nellie and Azza race around in an empty yard but I suggested that we meet very early this morning and take all of the dogs to a nice big yard. It took us a bit to find one. I had spied out two very nice empty houses in anticipation of PM's return but their yards turned out to be less than desirable: one had a massive sprinkler leak and standing water at one end and the other had a pool. It would have been so easy to let the dogs loose in the pool but we like slipping into the yards of empty houses and messing up a very nice pool with dog hair is one way to jeopardize our ability to continue to do that. So we marched on to my third choice. And as they say, third time's the charm.

This house is being readied to put on the bid list and a worker had turned on a sprinkler at one end of the yard (which surprisingly didn't have an underground system already installed). We decided to leave it on, a good decision since it turned out that the sprinkler became a focal point for the dogs' play. PM made a quick recon of the yard looking for feral cats (too many bad experiences have made us a bit cautious, right, Mimi?).

Nellie immediately pounded Azza to the ground and then they were off! Mimi tried to start some shit a couple of times but she eventually calmed down and joined in the chase but not the pounding. The dogs were running huge, looping arcs down and back, swooping in and out of the sprinkler. Even Azza is starting to appreciate the joys of spraying water (due in large part to the persistence of PM in getting her to drink from a hose). When it came time to catch their breath, they'd take a roll in the wet grass (Nellie also like to walk over the sprinkler so that it sprayed directly on her belly) followed by a nice, long roll in the dry, sandy grass at the other end of the yard. Chase and wrestle, get hot and out of breath, roll under the sprinkler, roll in the sand, repeat (for this post, I decided to use the "roll in the grass" label which I have only used once before in what is truly a different lifetime).

After half an hour, the girls (Nellie, Mimi, Azza) looked like they'd been living on the street for weeks: white parts smeared grey, bits of dry grass and sand stuck to their fur alternating with patches where they were soaked to the skin.

PM and I stood in the shade, drinking coffee and gossiping (she brought the coffee, two bananas, and a prezzie: dog cookies from Harrod's!). I had to laugh! I don't need a bribe to meet up with her and Nellie for dog walks and play dates. On the other hand, it's nice to be looked after!

Where was old man Harry during all this ruckus? I was a bit concerned about turning him loose with the crazed beasts but it turns out he is far more sensible than I gave him credit for. He's getting a bit fragile and if they were to run into him at full speed, he could really get hurt. But he never strayed more than a few feet from me and PM. He nosed around in the sand and grass for bits to nibble, came over for pets now and then, and more or less occupied his time quietly hanging out.

I mentioned to PM that it looked like his frisky days were over. And she said, well, he doesn't seem to be fretting that he can't go run about with the others. And that is exactly true. Harry was as wild as any terrier can be in his flyball heyday but he appears to be happy now simply being around his people and letting the young'uns have their play time. 

Portland: Mountain, Ocean, and Agility

As part of my long leave that spanned nearly all of August, I spent six days in Portland catching up with an old friend. She was quite the host, cramming non-stop fun into my visit.

One of the many highlights was a hike that A, I, and her two terriers made to Burnt Lake located near the foot of Mount Hood. It was a rather warm sunny day even by Portland standards and even though I was just a bit disappointed by the weather (I can get hot and sunny any time here), the blue sky and the bright sun made for a great walk in the woods.

Too bad those terriers couldn't pack their own poop bags back to the trail head!

We saw this little guy on our way down: a flying squirrel perched on the side of a dead (burned) tree.

Ironically, we almost missed the stupendous view of Mount Hood! We didn’t even realize it was looming over us the entire time until we stopped on our way back down above a small group of hikers on the trail in front of us taking pictures. What were they looking at? Oh, at that gigantic snow-covered volcano up there! The fabulous view was over our shoulders the entire way up, and even though we stopped in that very same clearing to admire some dead trees, we never looked behind us! We stopped at the lake and didn't go all the way up to the saddle at "Zigzag Mountain" from which the view of Mount Hood would have been a lot more obvious. 

Mount Hood.

The next day we headed the other direction to the ocean for a leisurely stroll in the surf. The fog and mist and surf (the tide was low when we arrived then coming in so the waves got bigger with time) combined with the nearly empty beach and sunny, clear sky made it an extremely restful morning. And of course, for a couple of terriers, a beach is an endless source of things to sniff, put in one’s mouth, or pee on.

A and Skeeter in the surf and Forrest with me attached at the other end.

Forrest with real treasure: a deliciously crunchy but very dead starfish.

Mist. Wet sand. Reflections of the trees. And a clear blue sky over it all.

Me with Skeeter and Forrest.

A generously indulged my pork and wine needs. We managed to eat brats (first boiled in beer with sweet Walla Walla onions then grilled with more of those fab onions; apparently a northern/midwestern recipe) three nights in a row (although the middle night was leftovers from the first night but it still counts)! And homemade berry jam on very good, locally made, whole grain bread. Decent bread is nearly impossible to find here in KSA. I refuse to eat that soft, mushy, sugary stuff they call bread and do without until I head to some place that isn't KSA. 

A is rather crafty. She knits and crochets and felts and makes dog tugs and leashes from fleece. I had no idea she had such skills. I don't do those sorts of things. Oh, sure, I can make jumps and pause tables and such but that's more engineering and less crafting. A makes cute purses and totes and even small bowls out of felted wool. We were in a pet store and I pointed out these catnip-laced body pillows for cats made of fleece. They look fun, I said, but not for 7 bucks each. Oh, A said, we can make those in no time at all! And so later that week we did just that using fleece scraps and some catnip that I bought for the purpose. I left one of the body pillows with Bhumi, the Siamese mix that I rehomed with my mother, and brought three home for my two feline beasts. I can't leave them out all the time since fleece equals dog toy in Azza's head and all she wants to do is eat them.

My mother's ancient cat Freckles (he may be 18 or 19 years old) curled up with Bhumi. They became BFF nearly upon sight. I always suspected that Bhumi was gay. Sorry, A, no pics of Bhumi slobbering on his catnip body pillow! I owe you a pic of Kinky and Tsingy slobbering on theirs.

A particularly memorable part of my visit was the Saturday we spent at a local agility trial. When I was corresponding with A to arrange the trip, she casually mentioned this local trial was going to be held the weekend I was there, and said, oh, would you like to run Forrest at the trial?

I know I have some non-dog-sport readers so let me take a moment to elaborate on this. Very few dog sport people are willing to let someone else run their dog. The reasons usually come down to “you might break my dog” and “you might make me look stupid.” Yeah, I know, not logical or even particularly sporting but that’s how it is.

But I guess I’m pretty lucky. I’ve got some amazing dog friends who don’t let that kind of thing get in the way of a good time. For example, there’s DW who let me run his beautiful red BC Eris last year for the entire weekend of a flyball tournament. And now A offered me her PRT for a full day of agility!

The second point to be made explicit here is that I am blessed with amazing dog friends who say, hmm, what would make CircusK9 happy? Oh, I know, how about having her run my dog! Friends like that are treasures indeed.

The amusing part of the agility affair is how many hours A and I spent trying to get into Forrest’s fuzzy little brain. We set up a course in her backyard and during the week I ran him through it several times as well as working tricky sequences such as dogwalk/tunnel discrimination and sending to the back side of a jump. He worked fairly well for me in her yard, and whenever we went out and about, A handed me his leash and said, you’re in charge of him! She coached me on her routines at the crate and at the start line, at contacts and even for the end of the run (she taught Forrest to jump into her arms). I practiced them all.

The trial was held outdoors in a covered horse barn. It was hot and dusty...just like most other horse barns that I've done agility in. When it came time to actually do agility in the ring, Forrest wasn’t particularly sure he liked his new handler. For the first run, he did six obstacles before leaving the ring. On the second run, we managed to get to the 10th obstacle before he shut down. A said that he had ring nerves and used to do the same with her so this wasn't new behavior. Before the second run, I bought him super special treats (dried lamb lung, mm!) in a shameless attempt to bribe him, but even that wasn't enough to convince him that I was worth the trouble. 

The time for our third run was approaching and we had tried just about everything we could think of. That left only the unexpected. I asked her if she had ever done a “drop and run” with him. Yes, she said, when he was very green she did that a few times. Drop and run is when the handler holds the dog in her arms at the start line, then drops the dog to the ground and both take off at the same time. It is often used by handlers when their dog doesn't have any control at the start line. It can also be hugely motivating for some dogs--it's really just a chase game. She also felt that I was being too soft with him. Me, a soft handler? "But, but, but," I sputtered, "he’s not my dog!" It’s really hard to get tough with someone else's dog! In the end, though, that is exactly what I did, drop and run at the start and became the drill sergeant handler. I badgered him all the way, staying in his face, clapping annoyingly, doing front crosses way, way late, but by god, we completed that third course. In the video, which I present with no editing, you’ll see that I bailed on the weave poles. Forrest has lovely, fast weave poles but he simply wasn’t prepared to do them with me that day. Pfft, no matter, it was all for fun. And at the end, he jumped into my arms like he'd been running with me for years.

A note on this video: because I am now using a wireless internet connection instead of fatter, faster DSL, I couldn't push the original video through. I had to cut way back on the resolution to get it to load. Still, I think that you'll get the idea. 

What's the message here? Well, Forrest is a fast, happy dog who enjoys agility (especially at his new jump height of only 12") and while he wasn't too thrilled to be out there with me, he's still gave it a decent try. And A generously allowed me to fumble my way around the ring all day long with her dog...because she thought I'd enjoy it. And I did.

Coming here to KSA has been a lesson in what is truly important in life. I lost many things...and in the end discovered that I could live pretty well without them. They were just things after all. I instead gained some perspective on what you can't live without. Pork, good wine, good friends, and happy dogs all go on that list (perhaps not quite in that order). It's a good holiday when I can combine all of those things together.

Flyball! (appendix)

Here are some photos that I wasn't able to muster at the time of the original post.

Kim and Stella with Lauren's back and Duwain's headless body. These photos are out of focus and very dull because we can't use a flash during racing.

Lauren and Ryp and Duwain, generous owner of flyball whore Eris.

Karl Ruetz's back (he is so dedicated to flyball that he went through all of the training to become a judge!), Danielle and Makena, Valeria and Steve (box loader extraordinaire), and Alyssa and Mika.

My coach's notes for the A and B teams, respectively. The circled numbers are the race numbers. The columned numbers are the passes in feet (W is wide, AJ is around jump) and the numbers below the total line are the total race time in seconds with W (win) or L (loss) indicated. The notes are crumpled up from being alternately crammed in my pockets and yanked out to record results.

DR! races for the two-day tournament. This little scrap of paper looks a bit beat on because I carried it in my pocket all weekend, pulling it out frequently to check on what team was coming up.

Flyball!

The heady mixture of dog hair, dog pee, fritos, doughnut sprinkles, half-drunk sodas, dregs of wine from the night before and dregs of coffee from this morning...the cacophany of dogs on the edge of meltdown and people taking a game we play with dogs far too seriously (and themselves too often on the edge of meltdown), the shriek of the judge's whistle, the snap of the box ejecting a tennis ball...it must be flyball!

It was a real stroke of luck that my November leave, timed to take place during the Muslim eid holiday when Aramco is closed, coincided with the flyball tournament hosted by my old club Dogz Rule!, about whom I have written many posts. The lovely Bell County Expo Center in Belton, Texas, located about 60 miles north of Austin, is a perfect venue for running flyball.

This is a good point to clearly state for the record that I flew halfway around the world just to go to a flyball tournament (literally halfway around the world, because I traveled about 12,900 km and the diameter of the earth is 12,750 km!).

When I told DR! that I could come help with the tournament, I expected the club to ask me to help with scoring. That's not a high profile job but a properly run score table is critical to running a flyball tournament; a typical tournament has multiple divisions containing four or five teams each, up to six dogs on each team, and multiple judges, all of which is organized and managed from the score table. I would have been happy to sit at the score table and in between recording scores and printing race results, watch the racing all weekend.

But to my complete amazement, when I showed up I was listed as coach or pass caller for all three DR! teams! I immediately demurred on pass calling. That's a skill that takes regular practice to do well and I've not practiced it for two years. So I ended up as coach. For three teams!

I have to confess that I harbored a secret hope that DR! would ask me to coach their C team. I coached that team for most of the time I was with DR! The C team is a team for green dogs who are testing their tournament readiness, older dogs who may be slowing down a bit, dogs who may not be able to run an entire weekend. Unlike the A or B teams which have relatively fixed line ups, the C team always went in with a second goal (besides winning, of course): to give all six dogs as much mat time as possible (only four run in any given race so there is lots of lineup juggling). The dogs assigned to the C team changed from tournament to tournament making it quite a challenge to coach! But I'm proud to brag that we usually finished first or second in our division. Sure, sure, the dogs and handlers were doing all the work, but I like to think I had a little tiny bit to do with it! The C team may not have set world time records but getting good passes and clean runs were often far more exciting for all involved.

So I was utterly thrilled that I not only had an opportunity to coach them again, but I was also going to be working with the A and B teams as well. I couldn't believe that DR! had that much faith in me.

But wait, there's more! DR! whipped out some club Tshirts--can't do flyball unless one is properly attired in club colors and logo. One of them was even an old shirt that I donated to the club when I left!

Finally, in an act of incredible generosity, Duwain offered to let me run his beautiful red BC Eris (as in goddess of discord). Eris was on the amazing team (the "well oiled machine") that took Harry all the way to his ONYX title at his last flyball tournament in August of 2009. She is lean, barky, and utterly obsessed by flyball, so consumed by the game that she will run for anybody, a charming behavior flaw. I didn't get to run Eris in just one or two races, I ran her all weekend long. I didn't do much coaching for the C team after all!

Rrrreeeeaaaaaadddyyyyy! Loud, barky dogs like Eris (and Harry in his day) are often useful in getting other dogs revved up. We are just inches away from the start dog.

I know for sure that I would probably have ended up in a corner at least once that weekend with tears in my eyes because I was missing my fabulous boy Harry, who lived for flyball. But because I was able to regularly put my hands on a dog, a bucking, leaping, excited, barking dog and work the passes and run up and down the lane with my team, the weekend felt exactly like it was supposed to.

I've written before about the strange sport of flyball, how it draws groups of disparate people together with a common love of dogs and a bit of a competitive streak (and in the case of DR!, a propensity for foul language and starting on the wine a couple of hours after lunch, excepting the Ruetz family, who have stuck with DR! through thick and thin even though they don't engage in ANY of these questionable behaviors), and how the social aspect of the sport has as much appeal for the humans as the tennis ball part of it does for the dogs. That really struck me again as DR! members, both new and old, welcomed me back, well, like I was part of the family. And several other people from other clubs came up to me that weekend and said, hey, I noticed you've been gone. When I explained that I had been gone, that I was just in for a visit, to my surprise they all said, well, it's really good to see you here. Many dog sport communities are like this, and NAFA Region 5 flyball clubs are no exception.


After it was all over, Kim casually mentioned that it was as if I hadn't ever left. It meant a lot to me that she felt that way. It meant a lot that Duwain trusted me with his beautiful but crazy dog. It meant a lot that the club had enough patience to let me stalk up and down the lane yelling at everybody all weekend.

Get it! (No, I have no fingers on my right hand, apparently.)

Dog friends have been my truest friends over the years, and DR! folks are some of the best friends anyone could hope to find.

Emergency Immersion

Nothing like a little crisis to hone one's language skills.

 While we were in Burgundy, my mother became very ill. As it turns out, she required surgery and ended up spending 6 days in the Centre Hospitalier in Macon, France. The details are not important here. My aim with this post is to thank the army of people who helped me and Judy get through that mess.

First and foremost, I want to thank Kim. She is a doctor and was monitoring my mother's condition and she was the one who said, we need to take her to the emergency room. And Kim stuck by my side for those very long 8 hours as we began our navigation through the French health care system. Kim was professional, focused, and calm. I would have been much more stressed if she hadn't been by my side for those first two days.

To give you some feel for our experience, the staff at the hospital, most of whom had no English at all, referred to my mother as "l'Anglaise," the English woman. The fact that the usually fastidiously polite French chose this name over Madame B. told me that having a foreigner as a patient was a pretty unusual event.

I also have to thank Madame Hala and Madame Rita, the two women from whom I've taken French lessons through Aramco Community Education. I've had over 100 hours of classroom instruction and speak only the barest of French. If they hadn't drilled me over and over in class, I might not have had the confidence to keep trying even though I was perfectly aware that I was barely communicating at all. Forget articles, forget gender, I was just trying to string together the right verb with the right pronoun with something like an object. I quickly realized that as long as my pronunciation was correct, I was being allowed all sorts of egregious grammatical sins. I did learn many new words, including lots of medical terms I never planned to have to know (le vesicule bilaire and the conjugation of the verb vomir [to vomit], for example), but some of them are quite useful, such as l'attestation de paiement (receipt).

We were so lucky to have an emergency room doctor with a bit of English who called in a specialist who has, as it turns out, quite a lot of English. In fact, I met the specialist's English teacher one afternoon! Dr. O. was kind, caring, and professional. His advocacy and support were amazing.

I have to also thank the ladies in the hospital billing department who spent hours with me while I was on the phone to Judy's insurance company, translating faxed documents from English into some sort of French that made sense to them.

Marc and Karen, the owners of Le Nid, threw open their house, their computer, and their internet connection to me, gave me a cell phone when mine was out of money on a Sunday, and even a couple of supportive hugs. They went far above the normal call of hosting guests at Le Nid.

Judy and her husband Dave's neighbors Karen and Greg deserve a mention too. Because Dave didn't have an email account of his own, I got their email addys and flooded their inboxes with flight reservations and other information that Dave needed to get to France.

Dave also gets a nod because I called when Judy was in surgery, waking him up and giving him about 30 hours notice of his departure for France. He managed to pull everything together and arrived in Macon more or less on schedule. Not a feat to be dismissed.

And I want to thank all of my friends who were with me in France. They shadowed me for almost three days before I was able to give them the slip (by getting up and leaving before they were up!). They came to visit Judy in the hospital the afternoon she was out of surgery when tubes were coming out of her in all directions! Now that is a group of good friends! These same friends also handed me glasses of wine in the evenings and even offered to play more Uno (not sure if they actually liked the game by then or if they were just being nice).

I barely remember sitting in the McDonald's in Macon using the free Wifi on my iPad to look for a hotel near the hospital while Duwain and Kim were struggling to get their locked devices to surf on the 'net. I know they were frustrated and jonesing for their email. Still, everyone kept a decently good perspective on the situation.

And Duwain, bless him, said, there has to be a silver lining to this mess: it may result in Judy being able to put a chronic health problem behind her entirely. And that is indeed how things are looking now. Oh, there are a few arguments still to be had with the insurance company. And my mother is still mending, by no means back to full health. But she is at home and doing well.

I am very lucky to have such good friends, both new and old.

Burgundy in March

View of a small village in the area around Le Nid, located WSW of Cluny in central Burgundy, France.

I'm back from another adventure in France. We made a good sized group: Julie from Nashville; Kim, Duwain, and Barb from Austin; Kelly, Kim's sister, who now lives in Italy; and my mother Judy from Virginia. Duwain is a very brave man to spend nine days with all of these opinionated women.

Our first night in Le Nid. Kelly hadn't joined us yet.

And what did we all have in common? Really, it was me and dogs! I know Julie from our love of smooth fox terriers (and our trip to Paris in 2002 and our co-ownership of Jack and our interest in conformation and of course Jack and Jen's litter from which came Mimi and the ever awesome Gracie), and Kim, Duwain, and Barb from Dogz Rule! flyball (I know Kim from agility too), and of course my mother Judy who gracefully took my sweet pea Dyna and young Bhumi into her home as two more rescues in need of some TLC.

I was pretty amused that everyone kept asking me, what are you going to write on your blog? It only took a few hours for me to figure out that traveling with a group presents very different dynamics than traveling with just one other person. So some things that happened in Burgundy are going to have to remain in Burgundy...but there are plenty of tales left to tell.

Le Nid, located in a tiny speck of a village outside Cluny in central Burgundy, is a fabulous place to stay. It is surrounded by lush green fields dotted with white Charolais cows, sheep, and goats. One of the interesting features of this area is the use of bocage, or natural hedges, to enclose and divide the fields.

Utterly pastoral.

 Every view was its own postcard. And Marc and Karen were welcoming, thoughtful hosts. They have created a wonderful house that feels like home as soon as you walk in.

One of the bedrooms in Le Nid. Julie took this room. I thought it was particularly pretty with the afternoon sun streaming in.

View of the former stables at Le Nid. We rented the entire main house, which is behind me. View to the northeast. You can see the bell tower of the old church on the hill in the background.

We spent most of our time in the kitchen/dining room, a large open space with a small wood burning stove. If there were any themes of this particular trip, they would be drinking wine and eating cheese and bread--which we did nearly every single night! We were very lucky to also have an abundance of good cooks. We didn't eat an evening meal out even once!

Julie and Barb preparing bread and the evening's cheese platter.

Cluny is located in the middle of Burgundy. Northern Burgundy is known for its heavy, full bodied reds. And south Burgundy is Beaujolais country. But tucked in between, right in the middle, is an area where white grapes, mainly Chardonnay varieties, are grown. In fact, the reds from this white grape area are terrible! Our group unanimously dismissed one of them, not even finishing the bottle. All of us were amazed at how inexpensive the wines were in the store. And while we did do a winery tour, we got most of our wine at the local grocery store in Cluny (we regularly descended like locusts on the Intermarche).

Julie and me in the Intermarche in Cluny.

I am not sure if anyone did a final cork count but this is a shot of the dishwasher after one evening's festivities in Le Nid.

The remnants of our first night. Despite the evidence, I assure you that there were only six of us!

We arrived to stupendous sunny weather which we enjoyed for almost a week before the clouds and light rain rolled in. It was warm enough during the days for short sleeves but as the sun set, the temperature quickly dropped to 2 or 3 degrees C and the fire in the kitchen/dining room was always a welcome addition.

Le Nid is located in the center of the photograph. View to the south.

As usual, I don't have that many pictures (this time I can claim as an excuse having to always drive when we were out and about; at least DSL was driving half the time we were in Limousin last winter). I'm waiting for the rest of the group to post their pictures on Flickr or Picasa (hint hint....HINT HINT) so I can steal their best ones for the blog. The pics I've posted here are only a taste of what is to come!

The Grand US Tour

In just about a week, I'll be heading over the causeway to the Bahrain airport for a sorely needed excursion out of the Magic Kingdom. I haven't been OOK (out of Kingdom) since February--and believe me, six months is far too long to be here without a break. I'm getting twitchy.

It will be a short trip, just 14 days on the ground in the US, but in that time I will be visiting friends in Utah, Texas, Tennessee, and Virginia (in that order, actually!). I have a matrix of plane and rental car schedules: drop the car off in one state, catch a flight, pick up a car up in another state later that same day. Some of those 16 days I'll be doing nothing but flying.

I found out that nearly all expats do this in their first year, make a grand tour of family and friends. But most do it only once because it is a marathon of plane travel, an unpleasant experience even on good days. Once we get it out of our systems, we settle down to a more leisurely travel schedule in subsequent visits.

Blog readers on my itinerary, you already know when I'm coming. Looking forward to seeing you!

Starting The Countdown

I will be getting on a plane about 2 1/2 days from now. Almost everything has been taken care of. Oh, there are few loose ends but I'm whittling the list down every day.

Today my car is being washed and detailed. I will take some photos of it and create an online ad for it before I leave. Given the popularity of Honda Elements (try to find a used one--they are pretty rare), I don't expect my mother to have any problem selling it. (If you know someone in the Richmond/Williamsburg/Norfolk Virginia area who might like the car, have them get in touch with me!)

My Element was a really great car. I got a bit teary when I was taking out the dog crates for the last time yesterday. I'll miss it.

On a more positive note, I think that we may have found a home for Jack. It's not a done deal yet, but my SFT friend Julie is confident that our lovely Mr. Jack is going to charm his way into his new family's hearts in short order. The plan is for her to drive him to meet this new family this coming Saturday.

I have been so worried about Jack and since I left him with Julie in Nashville, he is never far from my thoughts. In the past few years, he has mellowed, calmed, and become the most loving, sweet dog, perfectly happy to float around in the middle of the pack getting pushed around by all of my bitches. I know that I've mentioned in other posts how in the past couple of years he and Harry frequently slept spooned together at night. Jack deserves his own perfect new family. It has been hard for me to be patient and even harder to think that I might have to get on that plane not knowing what was going to happen to our Jack. I had to reject several leads that Julie came up with because it always seemed something squirrely came up once I started talking to them. But so far, this new family in Alabama sounds perfect, "smooth fox terrier heaven."

Just to make sure I don't jinx anything, I'll move on to other topics but say that I hope to be able to post photos and good news soon.

I spent the weekend with another of my dog friends, DSL, who lives in Fredricksburg. She also has a smooth fox named Meggie as well as a big BC named Crash. On Saturday I watched DSL do some herding practice with Crash. Here is a picture of them with a small group of sheep. It was raining lightly but of course that never stops herding practice!

DSL's Meggie is a littermate to one of Julie's bitches, so it's all one big happy smooth fox family!

Shelob in the window.

I'm staying these last few days with my mother and her husband in Williamsburg. A small sunny room upstairs has been designated as the cat room. It took no time at all for Mimi to figure out that she could watch the front of the house and the driveway from the cat perch. Every time we leave the house, she is in the window watching us, and every time we return, Mimi is in the window still watching. We think that she stands there the entire time we are gone! As soon as she is sure we are heading for the front door, she streaks out of the room, down the stairs, and sticks her long nose out the door as soon as it is cracked open. She's a very silly girl.

Harry Houdini ONYX

We did it! Harry ended what may be his last flyball tournament with 20,021 points, earning his ONYX title in nearly the last race on Sunday with just 21 points to spare.

Harry started flyball in Salt Lake City in 2000. He's run with four different clubs and dozens of different dogs. He's raced in Colorado, Utah, Nevada, and Texas. But these are just details. Harry lives for flyball. For him, there is no other game worth playing.

He needed 611 points for the title. His team, Dogz in da Hood, has been running incredibly well, but that's a lot of points for a two-day tournament. So many things could happen. I kept telling myself the titles are for the people, that Harry didn't care about how many points he had, that he just wanted to run fast and bark loudly. I figured that he probably would not get the title and while that was tremendously disappointing I had already moved past that. I wanted to have a good time with my flyball friends and let Harry play the game that he loves more than anything else.


Perhaps the entire weekend was charmed.

It started when I showed up at the La Quinta in Huntsville to discover that my room had already been paid for. Really? I couldn't recall giving a credit card number for the La Quinta. A bit tired and road buzzed from the long drive, it took me about an hour to figure things out. While I still don't know all of the details, it seems that various sneaky members of Dogz Rule! and Utah Tail Blazers schemed and planned and emailed and got my room paid for. Duwain from DR!, who runs the lovely red BC Eris on Harry's team, got to the hotel around noon to make absolutely sure he would be there before me and get everything taken care of. When I called my friend Gosia from the Tail Blazers, she kept saying, we want you to race and have a good time without having to worry about anything.

It is simply impossible for me to thank all of you for what you did. Any words I can offer are inadequate, I think. Your generosity is amazing and I am blessed to have friends like all of you.

So what else happened during this charmed weekend? There are some highlights on the club blog but this post is all about Harry.


Hoodz' first race was a bit scary. We had an error in the first heat and lost, then broke out not once, but twice, losing the entire race and jeopardizing our team's ability to stay in the tournament. The dogs were on fire, passing was great, and, well, they were simply running too fast.

After some serious strategizing, we pulled it together and Hoodz proceeded to sweep their division, giving up only a handful of heats while winning all of their remaining eight races over the weekend. We stomped the competition early, easily winning on consistency and time again and again.

Of course, it would not do to make it too easy. We had a bit of a flutter in the first race on Sunday when we pulled in a time that was only 0.02 seconds over breakout. Still, it was technically over breakout. Whew!

At the end of racing on Saturday, Harry had earned 305 points, half of what he needed for his title. It was clearly going to a very tough go with only four races on Sunday.

By the fourth race on Sunday, which was nearly the last race of the tournament, Harry only needed 34 points for his title. We needed to run clean twice to achieve this--didn't even have to win, just run clean twice. I was worried. People and dogs were getting tired. It was late in the day and we had a very long day of racing on Saturday. A single early pass or dropped ball would be enough to prevent us from getting those 34 points.

I was trying not to be nervous. I knew the team had been running like a well oiled machine for two days and I trusted my teammates. Harry, Eris, Sisko, and Trixi are dogs that race to win. Duwain, Karl, and Ben are excellent handlers. It is an honor to be in the ring with such a tight team. Since Harry runs in start position, I get to see the entire team lined up to my left, and after I complete my runback with Harry, I turn and watch them complete their runs while I tug with him and tell him how awesome he is.


So we go in the ring for that fourth race, get lined up, and we're off. We won the first heat with a time that got us 25 title points. I started to cry because we were so close. He was so close. Could we do it? Flyball is serious business for Harry so I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, then nodded to the judge that we were ready to run again.

The entire run happened in slow motion for me. I released Harry. He had a good start and his usual solid race time and when he came back to me, I dropped to my knees with his tug at the back of the ring and watched as Eris and Sisko passed and Eris and Duwain came racing back beside us, then Ben released Trixi while Karl and Sisko came running back, then Trixi with her perfect turn and race back to Ben right down the middle of the lane. Then I held my breath because the race isn't over until the judge calls it. It's not very sporting to celebrate even when you know you've won because the other team may still be running. It was only when Lawrence pushed the button and the timer displayed our total time that I could get up, Harry in my arms, for our celebration.

Lots of hugging and tears. Even our boxloader Lauren came running all the way down the ring to join in!


But the race wasn't over! With a 3 out of 5 format, we had to run at least one more heat. Mike Smith from Texas Twisters, the team we were racing, said, you are going to let us win one now, right? And after all that, I looked at him and said, hell no!

Harry and I got into position but I must have looked a bit shellshocked because Kim, our coach, came over and asked me if I was okay. I said, yes, yes, I am okay. I can do this. And I proceeded to release Harry early and get our first and only false start of the entire weekend! It was pretty funny and helped release a lot of tension for me.

We started that third and final heat again. It was going smooth until Trixi had an awkward bobble at the box and ended up going entirely around the box chasing the ball rolling on the ground, but like the professional that she is, she managed to get in the lane and return over the jumps. Even with the bobble, even with a time over 24 seconds, we still beat the other team!

We cut it very close with only 21 points over the 20,000 that Harry needed for his title. But we sure went out with a bang!

Harry Houdini turned 11 years old this month. He ran several 4.8 second runs on Saturday, mostly 4.9 second runs. On Sunday, he slowed to consistent 5.0's with a few 5.1's thrown in. I was able to keep his starts between 0.1-0.2 seconds. Not super tight but perfectly respectable.

While he may be slowing down just a little, his enthusiasm and love of the game have never waned. Harry is so deserving of this title and I am so proud that I could accomplish it with my friends from Dogz Rule!


We could not have done it without you! It was not just a team but a club effort, a multi-club effort. Your support and love and encouragement and yes, even your money, have helped me so much during this particularly crummy time in my life. I wanted this tournament to be a time of celebration, and so it was. Thank you many many times over!