K-9 Cognition

Yesterday, it was raining across South Florida.  For most of the day.  Which isn’t so bad when you can curl up inside and read a good book or watch a fun movie.  But when you have a dog who needs a walked, it’s not that awesome.

Akela = likes walks.

 

For the first of Akela’s two rainy walks, I called her to the door, leashed her up, and we proceded to the garage, where I put on my rain gear: rubber boots, giant poncho with hood, and baseball cap to keep the rain out of my eyes.  And then we walked and did all the usual peeing/sniffing/etc stuff.

For the second walk, I decided it was too big of a hassle to put on my rain gear and hang on the leash at the same time, so I put everything on beforehand and then called her to the door to be leashed.

And you know what?  Akela was sorta scared and reluctant to come close.  It was still me, with my same smell and same voice, but in rain gear.  She did eventually come to me after a timid pause, but it surprised me that she thought I was some foreign creature for a bit.

Which is one reason of, like, a zillion, why I’m looking forward to reading this book:

Inside of a Dog by Alexandra Horowitz

 

I’m not sure if it’ll answer all my questions, but maybe I’ll have a new understanding of what it’s like to be furry with four paws, an obsession with squirrels, and a killer sense of smell.

 

And, if this NY Times article is to be believed, our canine companions may be sort of geniuses.

 

I’m not sure about Akela, though.  Hers is a more subtle genius.  Even though she does know sit/stay/come/catch/hi five/etc, her best achievements are in the arts of napping, shedding, and having a seemingly bottomless pit for a stomach.

🙂

 

 

Green Update

Yesterday, I mentioned how the neighborhood had spray painted the grass green.  Do you think the Queen of Hearts ordered the cards to paint the grass green after they painted the roses red?

 

Well, two days later, it rained.  Now, the grass is a more uniform, normal-looking green color instead of the splotchy too-green-green.

Hopefully none of the gardeners lost their heads over it…

 

Anyhoo, now that the paint chemicals have (hopefully!) washed away, Akela is allowed to play on the grass again.  Happy puppy! 🙂

It’s Not Easy Being Green

I’ve got a weird observation for you guys.

But first, some backstory.  My husky mix Akela has this weird emotional state we call “party time” where she gets super excited and runs around in circles like crazy.  She does this about once a day, or every couple of days at least.  If she doesn’t get her “sillies” out during “party time,” she’ll often get kinda crazy inside the house and bark and do laps on the couch (which she is NOT supposed to do).

There’s a large patch of grass where we regularly walk, and I try to play with her to get her to go into “party time” mode.  If I’m successful, she’ll run in circles around me while I rotate in the center, holding the long leash.  It’s hilarious.  And awesome, because I get to be lazy and she gets exercise.  Brilliant.

But apparently, this patch of grass wasn’t green enough.  Because somebody from the neighborhood maintenance spray painted the grass.

Seriously.  You can tell just by looking at it.  There’s blobs of fake-green-colored grass interspersed among the regular-green-colored grass.  The spray painted grass is, like, TOO green.  Weird.

And now poor Akela can’t party on the grass because I won’t let her run around in spray paint chemicals.

Couches beware.  Dun dun DUUUNNNN.  It’s gonna be time for laps any minute now.

 

 

New Dog?

Since I technically made the decision to move back to South Florida a couple months ago, I decided it was time for Akela, my husky mix, to get a new tag with a local number.  (Additionally, her old tag also had my ex-bf’s CA phone number underneath mine, so it was definitely past time for that to go.)

Thanks to the awesomeness of the internet, I found a very reasonably priced tag with 4 lines of free engraving.  Score!

The weird thing is that her new tag does not jingle the same as her old one.  It throws me off when I hear her moving around.  Is there a strange new dog in the house?  No, just the same one with a new jingling noise.

 

Doesn’t she look pretty in her new tag?  It matches her eyes!  Lol…

Jingle jingle

 

 

 

We Interrupt for a Special Announcement, Er, Blog Post

We had some fun weather in South Florida–thunderstorms with crazy rain, huge gusts of wind bringing down branches and sending palm fronds skidding across the road like tumbleweeds, tornado watches (or maybe they were warnings?)…

Anyhoo, the internet is down, and it is a pain to type blog posts on my phone instead of my laptop.  So in the meantime, please enjoy this photo of my dog Akela as she tries to strategize how to catch the falling water in the fountain.

She likes to “stalk” and “catch” falling water from sprinklers, drainpipes, etc.  I, of course, find it adorable, and I’m not biased at all.

 

We will return to our regularly scheduled blog posts on Monday.  Happy weekend!!

 

 

Stinky Puppy

Ok, you guys.  It’s getting pretty bad.  My dog smells, well, like a dog.  Since she discovered the joys of swimming, she’s periodically been trying to jump in lakes, and apparently my dad let her do it recently.  Pee-yew!

She’s also a bed hog, because of course.

It’s bath time.

It was a terrible experience for both of us the last time I tried to bathe her myself, so we’re going to a professional groomer again.  She HATES groomers, and it makes me feel like such a bad mama for dragging her there.  But the alternative (me being in charge of clipping her toenails and expressing her anal glands–um, NO) is not really an option.

To the groomer’s we a-go.  Wish us luck!

 

 

Water Water Everywhere

Ok, ok, you guys are probably sick and tired of the weather-related posts.  But I’ve got one more, so bear with me.

 

To recap for any new Thought of the Day Blog followers (hi! welcome!! so glad you’re here!), I live in Los Angeles, but I took a road trip to South Florida for the holidays to visit my parents, and I’m still here.  Eventually I’ll drive back, honest!)

So…  Last night, the sky opened and the heavens just came cascading down.  I was debating how my husky-mix Akela and I were going to do our pre-bedtime walk in the downpour, when my phone rang (it’s that awful, scary, alert like when your tv broadcasts the emergency messages) with a flash flood warning.

Photo by Damon Higgins of the Palm Beach Post.  He snapped it shortly after the flash flood warning went to my phone.

 

Oh great.

I hemmed and hawed and dawdled some more, hoping the rain would let up.

Fortunately for me, there was about a 10 minute window where the rain slowed to a heavy drizzle.  I immediately threw on my borrowed FSU poncho (go Noles!), a baseball cap (to keep the rain out of my eyes), and my mom’s flip flops (a full 2 sizes too big… I have tiny feet, but I didn’t bring any shoes appropriate for water), leashed up the dog, and headed out.

In the end, it wasn’t too bad.  I slipped in the mud a few times but didn’t fall, and my flip flop got stuck once, but we survived.

Cue the next morning.

The sun is shining, the birds are singing, the schools are closed.  Wait, what?  Yep, they closed the schools.  According to the Sun Sentinel, one of the local papers, we got between 13-18 inches of rain overnight, and up to 20 inches in some areas.  On my dad’s back patio, there is a water mark maybe about 6 inches off the ground, and some muddy twigs and minor debris stuck to the lawn chairs.  But fortunately, the water receded overnight.  Hooray for drainage systems!

The neighborhood?  Not so much.  There’s a bunch of small lakes scattered throughout the community, and as I walked my dog this morning around the main loop, there were 6 areas where the lakes were so high, they were covering the main road (and it’s only about 1.5 miles long).

The first flooded area was the deepest.  It was actually above my knees!  And my diva dog who hates baths and is sometimes scared of water, followed me about 1/3 of the way across the big lake-puddle, and then decided it was too high for her to continue.  So I picked up the 40 pound furball and hauled her across until it got shallower again and set her down.

At the next lake-puddle-road hybrid, Akela got distracted while stalking a duck swimming on the other side of the lake, so she fell in.  (Don’t worry, I wasn’t going to let her catch the duck.  Or drown for that matter.)  She sorta panicked, but immediately got out again.  Ok.  Phew.

But by the 3rd or 4th lake-puddle, Akela must have decided that this water thing wasn’t so bad after all.  Because she willingly started swimming, even when she could have easily walked around the water.  And there wasn’t even a duck (or ibis or egret or seagull) to try to catch!  And then she decided to jump in the lakes we passed that weren’t even flooded.

I probably shouldn’t encourage this habit, but I was just pretty excited she wasn’t afraid of water any more.  Hooray for small victories!

 

Anyhoo,  have a great weekend, folks!!  Hope that you, too, will be able to find the fun in something you once thought was scary or otherwise negative.  It’s a good approach to trying new things, huh?  Maybe Akela is on to something…

Rough Life

For those Thought of the Day Blog readers who are in the vast parts of the USA facing the oh-so-fun polar vortex currently driving temperatures dangerously low, I am sending you warm vibes and encouragement with a picture of my dog Akela here in South Florida yesterday:

It’s a rough life

 

It’s actually a lot cooler here today than yesterday.  I might have to go put on a sweater.  Good luck out there, guys!!

Local Color

Even though I grew up in South Florida, I’ve lived in California for a little over a decade now, which gives me a unique perspective on reviewing the local flavor.  I have a few SoFla-related anecdotes I’d like to share with you.

 

1.  My dog (husky mix) tried to climb a palm tree.

Unfortunately, canine paws are not meant for tree climbing.  But there was a squirrel that Akela really, really wanted to chase (eat?) who ran up the tree, so she tried to follow it.  It was adorable.  And hilarious.  I’m sure it was funny for the squirrel, too, since he was mocking her from safe in the palm fronds.

 

2. People in South Florida have fahncy cars.

I passed a house that had a Bentley and a Porche parked in the driveway.  You may or may not be mildly impressed to hear that.  However, know that this house also had a 4-car garage.  If the Bentley and the Porche have to be parked outside, I can only imagine what’s IN the garage.

 

3. Speaking of fahncy cars, people are sort of ostentatious.

A guy down the street from my dad has a white Tesla.  There was a mobile Tesla service van with two technicians working on his car, and I was walking my dog, so I got to be nosy without being super obvious.  He parks his Tesla outside every. single. day.  But the charging station for his electric vehicle is INSIDE the garage.  So do you think he parks it outside just to say to the neighbors, “Haha, look at my fahncy Tesla, you suckers!  You don’t have as awesome as a car as I do!”?

 

4. South Floridians make, um, interesting fashion choices.

Approximate 2/3 of white people aged 15-50 seem to wear workout attire as their primary uniform.  There is no way that THAT many people are on the way to the gym or just finishing a jog or a yoga class.  I mean, SoFla has always been casual, but there is a LOT of spandex going on here.  Hmmm…

 

5. Really interesting fashion choices.

I passed a foursome of 50-something golfers, and I kid you not, 3 of the gentlemen were wearing pink.  One had on a fuchsia tee, another had a BRIGHT magenta polo, and the third had baby pink shorts.  (The 4th was wearing an orange and white striped polo.)  Don’t get me wrong, I totally think that real men can rock pink and look awesome doing it.  But 3/4 middle aged men?  Do you think 3 of them called each other to ask what the others were wearing, like teenage girls do?  Here’s how I imagine that conversation going:

<<ring ring>>

Bob: Hello?

Irv: Hi Bob, it’s Irv.  Say, what are you wearing to golf today?

Bob: Oh, I was thinking about my fuchsia t-shirt.

Irv: Oh perfect!  I’ve got on my magenta polo, and Stan says he’s wearing his pink shorts.

Bob: What about Harvey?

Irv: I didn’t talk to Harvey.

Bob: You didn’t talk to Harvey?

Irv: Yeah, I’m mad at Harvey.  Don’t tell him we’re all wearing pink.  He gave Pearl down at the club his phone number even though he knew I liked her first.

Bob: Ok.  Say, we should make Stan ride in the golf cart with Harvey, and you can ride in mine.

Irv: Sounds like a plan.  See you at 10.

<<click>>

 

So there you have it: my notes from out in the field.  I know Austin’s slogan is “Keep Austin Weird” but I gotta say, South Florida is a little odd at times, too.

 

 

Transitioning

Akela the reindeer dog says, “What up homies?  Who’s got leftovers to share?”

She also says, “Get these stupid antlers off me!!”*

 

Hope you all had a great holiday and/or a great nonreligious day off.  For a lot of people, today marks the return to normalcy.  The frenzy of Christmas planning, shopping, baking, wrapping, unwrapping, cooking, and eating is over, and it’s back to the grind.  (Except for holiday leftovers…  The eating of various treats and leftovers will continue a little while…)  For others who are lucky to have an extended winter break, it’s just time to count down the days till New Year’s.

For me, it’s a time to buckle down and refocus on my goal for 2014: opening my own business.  Between various holidays and driving across the country, I’ve been absorbed in planning and driving and, well, basically what I just described as the Christmas frenzy.  But the best part about coming home to Florida for the holidays is catching up with friends and family I don’t see very often.  As a result of our gabbing, I’ve been describing my future business plans and getting excited about them all over again.  (Well, and also a little nervous.  It’s a BIG career change for me, but one I feel compelled and inspired to implement.)

I know it’s a little early to make New Year’s resolutions, but I say there’s no time like the present!  So I’m gonna ride this wave of momentum and hopefully get a lot done over the next week, so that maybe, just maybe, by New Year’s, I will have a lot of research under my belt and hopefully more definite plans.

What about you guys?  Have you started thinking about New Year’s resolutions?  Does anyone even make them anymore?  I historically haven’t, but I think this 2013-14 transition is gonna be different for me.  I think there’s some good stuff on the horizon.  I’m looking forward to it!

 

 

*No dogs were actually traumatized in the making of this photo.  However, one was bribed with yummy treats to sit, stay, and not to shake off the antlers.