All posts by Wildtrumpetvine

The Joys and Travails of Walking our Strange Little Dog

Every weekday morning, as my daughter heads to the bus stop, Kiko and I are off on our morning walk. He is eager to sample the wealth of smells, sights and sounds the new day brings. His peppy, prissy little walk resembles that of a prancing circus pony. We’re usually out for nearly an hour, and we move quickly. We often meet friends, both two and four-legged; Kiko is an enthusiastic greeter of all fellow walkers. His exhilaration is contagious. Even on those days when I’d rather be sleeping, once out with my little dog, there is no place I’d rather be.  (Here he is, ready to go.)

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Later in the day, Kiko’s joie de vivre is considerably diminished. He has passed a demanding morning sleeping soundly on the playroom sofa. He’s restless, and it’s time for a walk. But he is ambivalent at best. Does he really want to go? Wouldn’t it be better to sleep a little longer? Have a snack? Play with foxy? He is uncertain; he is bored. Perhaps I’m reading my dog too deeply, but sometimes his attitude seems to be one of profound regret.

Only a ride in the car can lift Kiko out of his funk. The slightest jingle of a car key awakens him from dreams of successful squirrel hunting. His favorite sentence is: “Kiko, do you want to take a ride?” These words are the equivalent of the reset button. Upon hearing them, he tilts his head, stretches, shakes vigorously, and he’s recharged. His greatest desire is that the ride will lead to a walk in another neighborhood, one more interesting than our own. When this happens, his exuberance is as boundless as it had been in the morning.

I try to accommodate him. When the weather permits, he goes with me on errands. But even I find it ridiculous to drive the dog around every single day to elevate his mood. There are afternoons when I insist we walk along our own street.

It’s during these walks that Kiko tends to flaunt his array of annoying tactical maneuvers. They include:

• Scrambling like mad as though to avoid an approaching predator, straining sideways at the leash so his body forms a sharp angle to the road. (This requires a great expense of energy for both him and his walker.)

• The sudden dead stop, feet splayed out, head down, collar puffing out the sides of his face dramatically. (He used this move often when H tried to jog with him.)

• The missile launch leading into a fast sprint, best performed after the dead stop.

• The exhausted plop-down, usually attempted in the center of the road.

• The pause to eat grass, which he chews with the thoughtful delicacy of a connoisseur. (More frequent during periods of pouring rain.)

• The double back: once moving, a quick turn-around to head in the opposite direction. (Especially popular when time is limited.)

• The serpentine: darting impulsively from one side of the road to the other, typically attempted when cars are approaching quickly. (Is he suicidal?)

It would seem that simply turning toward home would put an end to some of these behaviors. Unfortunately, Kiko differs from the horse that runs only in the direction of the barn. He remains conflicted no matter which way we’re going. Sometimes it’s necessary to pull him repeatedly by the collar. If worse comes to worst, he can be carried, because he weighs only twenty-five pounds.  I’m very glad he’s not bigger.

An Evening of Discontent, Part II (The Big Family Dog-Walking Fight)

We may never attempt another family dog walk. Kiko, who looks like a fox and acts like a cat, tends to be ill-behaved on the leash. Four years ago, before we got our new puppy, I read Cesar Milan’s books. I was determined that our dog be thoroughly leash-trained. My faithful little friend would walk beside me in an orderly fashion, never lurching or tugging. But of course Kiko lurched and tugged. As Cesar the Dog Whisperer instructed, with each pull on the leash, I stopped abruptly. I maintained this practice for quite a while.  Our “walks” consisted of standing by the road, me angrily fuming, and Kiko coughing, choking and looking bewildered. With each start he shot off again like a rocket. Kiko’s determination outlasted mine. Now I let him go just about anywhere he wants, as long as it won’t get him killed.

H and D, however, are less complacent. They still try to control Kiko, who is dogged and refuses to be controlled. They blame me, rightly enough, for his lack of training. But neither were they willing to do the training.

The night walk is typically H’s responsibility, and he held the leash. Kiko was straining to go just beyond the reach of the cord. Seeing that he was heading toward a fence he finds attractive, I commented, easily enough, I thought, “Why don’t you let him sniff the fence? Sometimes he pees there.”

At this, H bristled and replied testily that he needed no dog-walking tips; he knew how to walk the dog.

I should have left well enough alone, but instead I forged ahead, foolishly. “No wonder he doesn’t pee for you. If you’d let him go where he wants, he would.” Now, I’m not making this up–there have been times when H storms in after the evening walk, griping that the dog wouldn’t pee, even though they went down the street and back.

H did not appreciate my valuable offering of constructive criticism. He rather vigorously handed me the leash, saying something to the effect that if I was the expert, I was welcome to walk the dog.

Soon, the whole family had jumped heatedly into the squabble. We spoke at once, our voices raised and tense. We used a variety of forceful gesticulations. I have no idea what was said, but it was impossible to miss the animosity that swirled around us, as sudden and destructive as a flash flood.

I’d had enough. I put the leash down. And we NEVER let go of the leash. Kiko may be badly behaved on the leash, but running free he would soon be dead. D looked at me with horror. It was the same look she gave me when I hit her in the head with the Frisbee at close range. (This was accidental, but she couldn’t believe anyone could be that bad at Frisbee.) It was a look that says she has realized her mother is a monster. But she quickly grabbed the leash, and Kiko lived on. I set off in the opposite direction.

H followed, telling D to get the dog walked. My instinct was to walk somewhere, anywhere, by myself, lengthily, exhaustively. Instead, H and I found ourselves at home together, still too furious for coherent speech. There was much stomping and banging as we ostentatiously performed our respective household chores: H took out the trash and I loaded the dishwasher. Too restless to stay in the house, I went back out to check on D.

I found her trudging morosely toward home, pulling Kiko unwillingly behind her. She played the child card. How did she get stuck with the dog, she asked, when she had been an innocent bystander to her parents’ bad behavior?

The evening was a loss. We all recognized the truth in that age-old pearl of wisdom, “Don’t go to bed angry.” Yet we couldn’t follow it. There would be no healing birthday cake that night.

An Evening of Discontent, Part I

Because of the early surprise party, we had been polite, considerate and somewhat uncharacteristically jolly for over a week when my real birthday finally arrived.  All that good behavior evidently took its toll. We were a tad grumpy that evening.  I didn’t feel like cooking—it was my birthday, after all. We were drawing a blank on meal ideas.

After much aimless avoidance and procrastination, we opted for our Sunday-night default setting and ordered Chinese food, which we ate in front of the TV. We had run out of conversation. We couldn’t eat in the kitchen, as we were battling an onslaught of ants, and the table was piled with the usual contents of the counters and cabinets. It was getting chilly on the screened porch. Despite an excess of cable channels, Tivo, Netflix DVDs and the vast possibilities of streaming video, there was nothing we could all agree on. Not even an old Seinfeld or Raising Hope. H commandeered the remote and persisted in not hearing the program requests made by D and me. Segments of House Hunters, 60 Minutes, and AFV interspersed with annoying commercials proved to be an especially unsatisfying combination. We were grumpier after the meal than before. It made me wish we had eaten on the porch in cold and silence.

There remained, though, the chance that birthday cake and ice cream would offer, if not real fun, then at least some solace. D and I had baked and iced a beautiful cake with snowy meringue frosting.

At H’s urging, we decided to walk our dog Kiko before dessert.  This would prove to be a most unfortunate choice.

Crab Feast

The night before my actual birthday, we had a fun family dinner at a local restaurant specializing in Chesapeake Bay blue crabs.  The elemental, primitive experience of steamed crab eating was new to our daughter.  She wasn’t expecting the Formica tables spread with brown paper or the absence of plates and utensils except for a sharp knife and wooden mallet.  My husband was unprepared for the garage-like atmosphere of the place, its worn linoleum floor and cinder-block walls covered with signs advertising bail bonds and auto-body shops.  But I had heard that the focus was on the crabs, not the décor, and I found it rather charming.  It reminded me of the blue collar bar in Princeton that H and I used to frequent when we first met.  D has always been an adventurous eater, and it didn’t take her long to get into the spirit of the meal.  Soon she was delving into the pile of crabs before us on the orange plastic tray, banging cheerfully with her mallet.

Crab picking is slow going, especially for those like us who are out of practice or novices, and it brought home to us how easily consumable the typical meal is.  We are accustomed to food that has been removed from its inconvenient exterior casings and arranged in neat, extra-large portions.  Completely fork-ready, it can be eaten with haste and ease.  No doubt we’d all be healthier if we weren’t such effortless consumers.

A Pre-Birthday Surprise

My husband (H) and daughter (D) recently threw a surprise party for me. I was completely shocked, but in a good way. My birthday, which is best described as a significant one, was still eight days away, and I suspected nothing that evening.

I had never had a surprise party before. I hadn’t had a real birthday party since I was twelve, when I invited ten friends for cake and ice skating. That was somewhat of a letdown, and it made me appreciate my family’s typically low-key marking of birthdays. H’s family, however, takes the opposite approach. They retain a remarkably resilient enthusiasm for celebrating all of life’s events. This includes the birthdays of the middle-aged, which are considered by my side of the family to be, at best, an excuse to go out to eat. While I thought I would be OK with a subdued acknowledgment of this birthday–I had said I didn’t want a party–I was glad to be overruled.

H and D took great pains to organize the event and to keep it a secret. To their credit, they are usually terrible liars. Yet apparently, if justified, they can pull off any number of untruths. They set up a complicated scenario that ended with our wandering, somewhat aimlessly, I thought, into a local music cafe. I heard H say quietly, “Happy Birthday,” but I was still surprised to hear it echoed, loudly, by a fairly large group of my closest friends.

I was still soaking up the surprise when I saw Robin and Linda Williams (and Their Fine Group) on stage setting up their instruments. Their music is an engaging blend of folk, bluegrass and gospel. I had discovered it years ago as a grad student studying for exams. Since then, for nearly every emotion or major life event I experience, there is a corresponding song by Robin and Linda. Their melodies, whether hauntingly sad or exuberantly joyful, are matched by evocative lyrics and accomplished instrumentals on banjo, guitar, fiddle, mandolin and dobro. Their music is the soundtrack of my life, especially now that H and D love it, too. Each year as we cross the Sagamore Bridge onto Cape Cod, we sing Southern Shores, their song about escaping to the Outer Banks; it works for going north as well as south. The presence of the Williamses (who happen to be kind, friendly, and completely without pretense) and the promise of their music brought tears to my eyes.

Both H and D had prepared sweet and thoughtfully comical tribute speeches. As they spoke, it struck me that I am extremely fortunate to share my life with these two caring and admirable people, these two people who know me so well and yet still love me.

It was uplifting to see my good friends representing the various aspects of my life: neighborhood, church, and my daughter’s school. It brought to mind our small wedding, when H and I were surrounded by dearest friends and family. Our families had never met, and it was sort of magical to see, for example, my Uncle Bill laughing with H’s grandfather. I got the same impression as I watched my friends mixing happily together, some for the first time. Throughout the night, I was conscious of a powerful sense of community, a certainty that the issues that divide us are insignificant in the face of those that unite us. I found myself wishing that my parents could have come up from Atlanta to attend; they would have agreed that sometimes, indeed, celebrating in earnest is essential.

Names Not Chosen

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Below are some of the names I rejected, understandably, while searching for an appropriate domain name.  These are all real names of wildflowers that grow in Kentucky.  I had to create some special sentences to showcase them.

American Hogpeanut:  Granddaddy has a hankering for those boiled American Hogpeanuts they’re serving at the ballpark.

Bastard Toadflax:  Our new senator has turned out to be the Bastard Toadflax incarnate.

Butter Sneezeweed:  Jack, if I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times:  I’ll kill you if you get butter sneezeweed on the sofa!

Corn Cockle:  You’d better stop parading around town in those ridiculous high heels, or you’re sure to get a corn cockle.

Corn Salad:  The new austerity measures require us to eat corn salad three times a week.

Devil’s Tomato: The young minister’s wife has a dark past; it’s rumored that she’s a devil’s tomato.

Eastern Gray Beardtongue:  Don’t you dare come near me with that nasty eastern gray beardtongue!

Erect Goldenrod:  Tom’s erect goldenrod is the biggest in Polk County.  (No doubt this site is already claimed)

Hairy Alumroot:  Barney is notorious for chronic misuse of his hairy alumroot.

Hoary Poccoon:  Jimmy, that Delilah is nothing but a hoary poccoon, so don’t bring her round here no more!

Hyssop-leaved Thoroughwort:  The shyster lawyer over in Raywick is one hyssop-leaved thoroughwort, that’s for sure.

Marsh Fleabane:  Ellie’s tree-walking coonhound has come down with the marsh fleabane again; she needs to keep that dog out of the swamp.

Milk Vetch:  The baby has a touch of the milk vetch but Dr. Prosser says she’ll soon be on the mend.

Mountain Spurge:  Granny was spry and sassy until the mountain spurge took her away at 110.

Pickerelweed:  Don’t let the dog eat the pickerelweed under the porch, or he’ll be puking all over the house.

Pigweed: Don’t let the dog eat the pigweed out by the privy, or he’ll be pooping all over the house.

Pussytoes (the several varieties include Field, Single-headed and Plaintainleaf): The choir director stormed out of the Ladies Circle meeting when the new Sunday School teacher called her Prissy Pussytoes.

Showy Goatsbeard:  Our new congressman has turned out to be nothing more than a showy goatsbeard.

Soapwort Gentian:  The boy’s locker room at the high school is the perfect environment for the unchecked growth of soapwort gentian.

Sumpweed:  Don’t let the dog eat the sumpweed in the septic field or he’ll be puking and pooping all over the house.

Toothcup:  Aunt Bessie has run herself ragged looking for her toothcup.

Toothwort:  Uncle Tedd won’t be at the Elks’ Club tonight because he has a terrible case of toothwort.

Turtlehead: Johnny and his buddies skipped school to hitch a ride to the Turtlehead concert in Campbellsville.