Busy Days?
I guess I could take a break from my busy day and sneak a few words into the blog.
Did I say busy? Hmmm… Well, of course it all depends on your definition of “busy”.
“I’ve been so busy…” Well, you’ve heard that and you know how everyone says that – they’re busy doing this and busy doing that. Too busy to do this and too busy to do that.
But I’d be really surprised if that was actually the case. Busy is such a subjective word. What you consider busy I might think was an easy day and visa-versa. It depends a lot on priorities, too. What you consider important or what you actually want to do.
I’m pretty sure I was busy today, but of course it was a retired dude’s kind of busy.
For example:
My mornings are busy with the routines I’ve developed (fallen into) since I retired. Get up when I darn well feel like it. (Yay!) Clean up, dress and let the dog out of her crate. Feed her and let her outside to “decorate” the side yard as she sees fit. Pick up the decorations in a small bag and donate them to the trashcan. And of course she has to bark a bit, usually. Seems like it doesn’t take much to fire her up most days.
Usually something comes to mind. Whether it’s applying more paint to something that direly needs it, cleaning this or fixing that, going here or going there. Or it may just be a day where I write a nice letter to a friend or take the dog out for a long stroll.
However the day turns out, whatever I do, essential or seemingly frivolous, at the end of it I always want to believe that the day mattered and that it made a difference.
There is a lovely story that I want to share with you concerning this very thing. It goes like this:
“Once upon a time, there was a wise man who used to go to the ocean to do his writing. He had a habit of walking on the beach before he began his work.
One day, as he was walking along the shore, he looked down the beach and saw a human figure moving like a dancer. He smiled to himself at the thought of someone who would dance to the day, and so, he walked faster to catch up.
As he got closer, he noticed that the figure was that of a young man, and that what he was doing was not dancing at all. The young man was reaching down to the shore, picking up small objects, and throwing them into the ocean.
He came closer still and called out "Good morning! May I ask what it is that you are doing?"
The young man paused, looked up, and replied "Throwing starfish into the ocean."
"I must ask, then, why are you throwing starfish into the ocean?" asked the somewhat startled wise man.
To this, the young man replied, "The sun is up and the tide is going out. If I don't throw them in, they'll die."
Upon hearing this, the wise man commented, "But, young man, do you not realize that there are miles and miles of beach and there are starfish all along every mile? You can't possibly make a difference!"
At this, the young man bent down, picked up yet another starfish, and threw it into the ocean. As it met the water, he turned to me and said,
"It made a difference for that one.”
― Loren Eiseley
It mattered to that starfish.
And I like to think that most days mattered to me too, more or less.
And so let’s now divert from the philosophic portion of this particular blog and continue with some doggie stories.
You probably knew that was coming, didn’t ya?
For those of you not interested in more Trixi tales, I bid you an affectionate adios. I’ll see you back here sometime soon.
OK gang, you still with me? Then off we go…
For those of you who are keeping track of the “incidents” concerning our new dog Trixi, you might want to click off a couple more. As you might remember, she scared us a while back by slipping off her collar and making an unexpected sojourn to our neighbor’s front yard. She was just checking out their concrete goose, apparently. It’s one of those concrete goose statues you see all over, but this one happens to be wearing a red coat and that is, I’m guessing, what attracted her. She did came back when I called, so that’s a point in her favor. After that particular jailbreak I decided to replace her collar with a harness we’d bought her specifically for walking, an Easy Walk type. It has its leash link in the front of it rather than behind the dog’s head, so if the dog tries to pull away from you, its design twists the animal to the right and back toward you. It works pretty well, too. Anyhow, I decided to leave it on in place of the collar that she slipped out of. After a couple of weeks wearing it, I wondered if it might be a little uncomfortable for her as it was fairly snug, so I got a “regular” dog harness that I thought might be OK and feel a bit more comfy for her.
She figured out how to slip that harness in two days flat! Back on went the Easy Walk. Unfortunately she had apparently been pondering the angles and straps of the EZ Walk too and ended up slipping that one also. Again we were lucky and she returned from the neighbors when called.
What the heck do I do with this Houdini now?
After a hurried phone consultation with our vet, I got a recommendation to try asking a local dog trainer about collars. I called him the next day and he said to come on up and we’d do a “meet and greet”, the mutt and me.
Or is it the mutt and I?
We drove (actually I drove and Trix rode) up to the trainer’s place on that rainy, dreary day, parked my car and saw the trainer stick his head out the door and wave me and Trix to come in.
The dog and I scooted from the car to the building, trying our best to stay between the raindrops and not succeeding very well. Jim, the trainer, was a very friendly chap and we talked quite a while about collars and his training methods. I agreed to join one of his training groups starting up in a week and also wrote down some of his ideas of collars I might try. He first showed me a Martingale collar that is used on a lot of greyhounds. Those dogs have smaller heads and strong necks, so a regular collar will slip right off. That description sounded a lot like our buddy Trix. The Martingale looks like a regular collar except it has a chain loop in the front, so when the dog pulls, the loop contracts and pulls the collar tighter. It’s similar in effect to a choke chain except it shrinks the whole collar at once instead at one point like the choke chain and will not jam. He also showed me a Sprenger prong collar, a nasty-looking chain device that has, like its name implies, prongs that point into the dog’s neck. They are NOT sharp and are only there to attract the dog’s attention when it pulls. I slipped one on Trix and we walked around the trainer’s big room. Trixi was remarkably amenable to walking and NOT pulling when wearing that one! So when I returned home I ordered one of each off the Internet. Now we’ll see how things go when they’re delivered! We’ll also see how the training goes as Trix and I start next week.
So wish Trix good luck and wish me patience, fortitude, resilience, courage and… more patience.
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