Category Archives: Molly

google, Molly, weather

Unsettled Tuesday

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Today was full of ifs, buts, and maybes. And it must not have just been here that it was that way. How do I know?

First off, all morning and most of the afternoon, my iGoogle home page looked like it had been redesigned by a crazed color blind Tibetan monk. No info, no listing of my RSS feeds (all those lovely blog posts – ignored), no news, no anything like normal. Only a lonely search box begging forlornly for me to type at it. Worst of all, the problem seemed to be mainly affecting Firefox. Opera looked almost normal. Of course my internal ordering of browsers runs Firefox, Opera, and finally if life is nearing an end, Internet Explorer. So I was just one step away from the universe as I know and love it coming to an end.

I might have figured it was just me and my machines, but then on the Google developer forums there were confirmatory messages mentioning the same problems. So it must have been either Mozilla or Google having a bad day. Now this evening, all is back to normal and I am so happy to return to the news of Balloon Boy and all the coulda-shoulda-wanna-be sports stories written by the mid-week wound licking losers. (Anyone else notice how the Google news feeds seem to have a real emphasis on the negative slanted stories? Why is that? Have they joined the Fox News Network and I just didn’t notice?)

Then to add insult to injury, it was overcast and dark here all day. The sun seemed to run off and hide, afraid that the brown and gold and orange colors of fall just weren’t enough. It looked like a snow storm was eminent all day long. By late afternoon is was misting – you know, the billions of wanna-be snow flakes unable to make it in the real world and falling to the earth like a living fog bank. So it was damp and cool and breezy and dark all day. Weather ultimately conductive to lifting the spirit and making one happy to be alive – *not*. It was bad enough that by noon the normally chipper Molly had retreated to her bed and wasn’t going to pull her nose out from under her paws for anything short of Armageddon.

It seems that the gloom of the day must have infected others. Every call I got today had a note of gloom and doom and rant and rave in it. I can’t wait for the weather to turn sunny again.

Oh well, I have beans soaking to make soup tomorrow and Molly has decided she should come to life. So I leave you with Molly and the chew toy of death. Let the battle begin!

mama kat, Molly, writer's challenge

What I’d Really Like To Know

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Some more fun topics for Mama Kat’s Writer’s Challenge this week!

My time is short as I sort out junk priceless items for our garage sale this weekend. After all, who knew I had more than twenty old mice in a cupboard, even some that might be computer antiques. It is not like I will be using them in the future – some of them even have the old serial port interface. Try and find a modern computer with a nine-pin serial port in this day and age. {*grin*} But someone may find them useful for building their next robot!

Because of the time situation, I am going to break with my tradition and only going to address one of the topics this week. But you should hurry over to Mama Kat’s and join in the fun while I dredge yet more junk priceless items up to display and sell.

4.) If your pet could talk, what would you want to know? (inspired by KK from Kamp KK (but not the KKK))

First off, i suspect Molly would take issue with the idea that she can’t talk. After all, if someone can gaze at you with these guilt inducing peepers, how can you claim they can’t talk?



In any case, here are three things I’d really appreciate Molly deigning to answer for me. It’s not that I haven’t asked her, it’s more that I haven’t been able to grok the answer. (Go ahead and look that word up, we’ll wait. To all the Heinlein fans out there who caught the reference, let us share water!)

The first question is simple: Why do you find it vitally important to try and herd the birds and squirrels in the back yard? It’s not like you have any purpose in bouncing around like mad trying to get them to obey you. Admittedly, it may serve as your doggie version of a daily aerobics class – after all, jumping higher than your head a few hundred times a day has to keep you in pretty good shape. But you are a much smarter dog than that. You have to have figured out by now that you cannot reach the power line where the squirrels run to and fro and you certainly can’t catch the birds as they twit back and forth.

The second question is a bit more philosophical: What do you think about as you spend hours scanning the horizon? I know that you are hoping that a bunch of sheep will suddenly materialize in front of you to fulfill your inbred herding fantasies, but like me and my fantasy of a beautiful harem of lovely ladies suddenly appearing in my den, it just isn’t going to happen. We’re both old enough to realize that now. So why do you sit and stare for hours like this?

And finally, what is it that turns you from she-who-must-investigate-everything and she-who-must-protect-all-in-her-domain into the quivering mass of nerves acting like a needy 2 year old when there is thunder in the area. It’s not that I don’t enjoy the quivering wet nose on my leg. It’s not that I dislike the whimpering and the putting of your head and then paws on me to make sure I’m ready to give you reassurance. But it just doesn’t fit in with the fearless way you investiate every thing you see and the protective way you guard L and myself from the unknown. Besides, it leaves you so worn out after the storm. It’s really hard to see you looking so wasted after the storm has passed.

 
beauregard, dog, Molly, Sam

Meloncholy Fall and Dogs Of Our History

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A definite tang of fall was in the air today. The cold front came in and the temperature never got much above 60 for most of the day. To top it off, it drizzled for major portions of the day. So much for my plan to mow the lawn today! As I buried my ears in the joy of listening to a couple of football games and occupied my hands sorting out junk valuable stuff for our upcoming garage sale, fall was in my mind.

One of the more interesting pictures I came across as I sorted was of our first dog, Sam (short for Samantha). That set me to thinking of all three dogs we have had over the 30+ years we have been married.

Our first dog was Sam:

 

We got Sam from the Los Angeles dog pound as a puppy. She was a mixed breed pit bull who was extremely loyal, like most of her breed. We choose her because she looked like she needed us the most – turned out that she was sick and the vet had to give her a few shots to bring her roaring back to full on friskiness.

The first night we had her, we put her in the kitchen with a plywood barrier to keep her in the kitchen since the rest of the place was carpeted. When we got up in the morning and came downstairs, who was out of the kitchen but Sam. She had considerately jumped over the barrier so she could poop on the carpet rather than dirty the kitchen. {*grin*}

We thought we’d lose Sam when she went through teething. She ate an entire wooden doghouse and didn’t leave a scrap. We spend days anxiously waiting for her to die from an internal splinter. Sam was with us for years, until a bit after the the birth of the Son. Arthritis finally cut her spine and we had to put her to sleep.

Next came Beau (King Beauregard III):

The story of how Beau came to be with us was told here. Beau was with us from the time he was about three until his death of old age. He went from normal to deathly ill in just a couple of days. Beau lived a very long life for his breed and when he went down, it was fast. This was the dog that the Son was most deeply attached to.

Finally, we come to the current dog, Molly:

We got her from the local humane society. She is a border collie mix and quite a change from the sight indifference of Beau. If she can see it, she thinks she should be able to herd it. So not only is she the first sight hound we’ve had, she is also the first long hair. The long hair I could live without, but even short hairs of the breed shed a lot. I guess you just have to live with all the hair to have one of the most intelligent dog breeds. Sort of like people – you might have to live with a few warts to get the other good things.

Time to get back to the junk valuable stuff sorting. {*grin*}

beauregard, Molly, thoughts, weather

Have You Ever …

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Have you ever wondered what is going through the mind of your pet? Do you ever wonder if they think along lines recognizable by the human thought process? I do.

This particular revery was brought on by Molly the dog’s reaction to the thunder this evening. We had a couple of pretty good booms after a quiet day of overcast. When the booms happened, Molly sprinted into my office, put her paws on my leg, and stood up with her head buried in my chest. She was literally shaking like a leaf. So my first thought was that she was frightened. But then I began to wonder if that was just my human brain thinking. What makes me think that the thought processes of a dog should follow my expectations of human norms?

In any case, Molly has not ventured more than a foot from me since the incident. I suspect she can still hear subsonic rumbles from the now distant storm. If I stand up, Molly is right there with me. If I sit down, Molly is laying at my feet (but only after first pawing my leg and making sure she is not going to get more head rubs first).

The “attached at the leg” syndrome makes me think back to the Son’s toddlerhood when there were the days that you could not be separated from him by more than inches without a fit being initiated. I am sure that all parents have been through those tag-a-long days where there is no relief from the continuous attachment of the young ones. Somehow, it is a bit more tolerable when it is your child attached to you than when it is your big strong dog. Not only that, but this is a new behaviour for Molly compared to last year. So this summer when the thunderstorms really fire up should be an interesting experience.

Back to the initial topic. I am really curious as to what goes through the mind of Molly. Given she is at least partially a herding breed, it is tempting to attribute thoughts to her as she sits with her ears alert scanning the yard. Likewise when she is trying to herd the squirrels on the powerlines in the alley.

Oh well, at least Molly hasn’t picked up the habits of her late predecessor, a Bassett Hound named Beauregard. Beau used to go out in the back yard and come back with his jowels full of crickets, which he would then carefully release alive in the house. Once Beau finally caught on that the crickets were verbotten (Bassetts are not the worlds brightest dogs, it only took him about five years to get that idea), he switched over to bringing the occasional live toad in and letting it go in the house. So far Molly has been much better behaved than that.

I’ll leave you with this picture of Molly huddling at my feet:

Molly, weather

Over the River and Through the …

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Yesterday it snowed a bit. Then it snained a bit. Then it snowed a bit more. All of it didn’t amount to a hill of beans, but it sure raised my hopes while it was happening. The dubious weather people have once again predicted snow and wind for the weekend, so we’ll see if they come close to getting it right.

Molly enjoys any occurrence of snow or water, so she was once more overjoyed to get outdoors to play as it tried to snow. She likes to go out and jump around trying to catch the snow flakes as they fall. When there is enough snow on the ground, she likes to burrow into the drifts and then come exploding out like she is a hunter in a blind. But that means she gets all that long fur of hers wet. And muddy. And then she comes inside and tracks the water and mud all through the house. She knows it is wrong, but she just has to do a few victory laps on first coming back in and can’t be bothered to wipe her paws. After the victory laps, she retreats to the back porch and gives me a look that screams:

 
“Don’t look at me, I don’t know who left those puddles on the floor.”
But the flattened ears signal guilt as clear as day. So she then looks at me and says:
 
“Well, are you going to forgive me?”
And to seal the deal, she moons me with those big eyes as if to say:
 
“Come on, you know you want to!”
Which is immediately followed by the look that says:
 
“If you don’t, I’m going to feel soooo bad.”
So of course I forgive her and we resume our normal daily routine (with a bit of added mop action from time to time to get the worst of it off the floor.)