A hundred or so dogs later

When Ann and Pat married, each brought along a dog.  The dogs hated each other when they met in Ohio and moving to a farm in Wisconsin didn’t change their attitude.  Ann and Pat went for dog counseling, which tapped into their latent dog sensibility, I suppose.  I don’t “get” dogs, but I do get what the two of them have done for dogs in the more than twenty five years I’ve known one or the other of them.

Everything I know about handling a dog I’ve learned from watching and emulating the two of them.  A visit to Ann commences as the spoke of a friendly wheel and generally a new dog to meet and an old dog to sadly (or not) miss.  Ann has never given up on a dog, but I have not missed some who have gone on to their reward.

So, how did they come to have all those dogs?  I understand it started the first winter they were married.  A co-worker of Pat’s, knowing he liked dogs, called him late one night and said something was wrong at a house with an outdoor kennel of Malamutes he passed daily.  He investigated, found the house empty, the dogs apparently abandoned and no authority wanting to intervene.  The dogs needed rescued.

There were four or six Malamutes, as I recall, moved to a makeshift kennel on the side of the Pat and Ann’s granary for the winter. They were not indoor dogs!  They all earned names and one name included Psycho.  In the spring Pat built a proper kennel behind the granary, and while he was about it, big enough to house say ten or twelve dogs.  The beginning of being the farm that acquired homeless dogs.

The first Wisconsin dogs of their own were a pair of rangy Doberman mutts they named Motz and Colby.  The start of the pack.  Pat and Ann each have their own favorites at all times.  So do I.  My current favorite is a husky named Bandit.  Ann is between favorites; she recently lost her beloved Shepherd mix, Ginger.  Her favorite before Ginger was Whoopi, a black lab Ann and Pat rescued from death row.  Whoopi bit the child of her former owners, who not only brazenly bestowed the name, they brought her into a house with a two year old and expected the best.  As Ann said, it was not Whoopi’s fault.

I made a list of the breeds and names of all the dogs I can remember, and it is long.  Breed is a loose word at the house; Pat and Ann usually are able to identify the several strains apparent in the dogs in their house and in their kennel.  From the list I have to pick Herman, a long legged, short hair white terrier with a pointy nose.  Probably the smallest dog they ever took in, Herman spent his years before I met him as a homeless man’s dog.  He lived in a shopping cart, which kept him at eye level with much of the world.  When his owner died he moved along to the farm house, where every other dog occupied the windows along the drive way to see what car was coming in.  Herman had to jump four feet up and down to catch a glimpse out the back door window. A couple of summers ago Herman was no longer there when I visited.  I missed him.

The house dogs right now are Seamus, a collie mix that looks like a Holstein cow.  He and his mother ran away from a neighboring farm when he was a puppy.  They were returned, but he made his way back alone and the farmer said just keep him.  Seamus is good at keeping new dogs calm and helping with the rules.

Zoe is also a house dog.  She’s mostly Akita, and usually twice as puffed up, but still growing out her summer shave.  Zoe is extremely needy and oozes into the verboten kitchen frequently.  She’s a dog who outlived her mistress and was abandoned by the heirs and assigns. In their wills Pat and Ann have provided for their dogs.  It’s something people should consider.

Freyja is the current rescue.  She was abandoned, together with a litter of pups. The puppies all were placed and the mother taken in by Pat and Ann.  She is named for the Norse goddess of fertility, although she won’t be having any more puppies.  Freyja is about a year old and just learning her place in the house and the pack.  Out of the kitchen still doesn’t mean her, to Zoe’s great dismay.

Bandit has been my buddy for several years.  He’s a ten or eleven year old Husky and I don’t recall his history.  He parks his head on my lap when I sit on the counter stool and doesn’t leave.  Pat says that is bad behavior and I told him to humor us.  Bandit arrived a scrawny dog with every bone protruding.  I’ve watched him fill out over the years.  Last summer Bandit was loping along, caught his foot and went down.  When he couldn’t get up Ann helped him, then scooped him up and went to the car.  I trailed along and opened the door.  They went to the vet.

Bandit not only suffered severe osteoporosis, his compound fracture of the femur could not be set. Pat and Ann looked at each other.  Well, that’s his fifty dollars (the amount in veterinary costs they tell each dog it is allotted).  Bandit’s back right leg was amputated, and he came home to spend his last several years.  He’s quite protective of one of his two beds, and he still puts his head in my lap.

  

Swiss boarding school

My friend Ann’s pragmatic father sent her off to Switzerland and boarding school so he would know what she was up to between the end of school and when he returned from work.  I do have a lovely mental picture of a twelve year old Ann buying a ticket home to demand of her father why he was ignoring her.  He, in the meantime, was winging it to Switzerland to have a stern fatherly talk with her.  Yes, their planes crossed somewhere over the Atlantic.

Ann met girls from all over the world while at school, making lasting friendships.  She thinks nothing of making a trip to help a friend in England, celebrate a milestone birthday in France, meet a friend in Germany.  A wonderfully cosmopolitan woman lives in an old farmhouse in Wisconsin, on a road that isn’t plowed in the winter, and has an oak tree saved from power lines.

A couple years ago I visited at the right time and went shopping with Ann for little gifts for her goddaughter’s Advent calendar.  I only learned of the tradition when my daughter began the tradition for her children, in recognition, I assumed, of the Lithuanian heritage mixed with her Irish.  The calendar had little doors that opened on little chocolate rewards, the largest behind the 24^th door.

But, Ann wasn’t buying chocolate, and for the rest, well I’d just have to wait and see.  She bought practical little things I would consider stocking stuffers, and one pretty little necklace in a box.  At home she produced the Advent calendar.  It had been a gift to her, from her Danish friend, Annette. Some of the gifts on it in 1984 are still in her kitchen-- crocheted potholders and a woven wheat cross.  It remains a tradition between herself and her oldest goddaughter, Olivia.  Every year Olivia returns the emptied calendar and every Thanksgiving Olivia takes home the current calendar, which her father hangs in her bedroom door.

Ann keeps a list of what gift is tied to which day, and much of her pleasure lies in wondering if she will get a “how cool is this” text from Olivia that day. 

The Advent calendar was mentioned to her friend in England last summer; Ann was over seeing her girlfriend through a tough medical procedure.  “How sweet,” her friend said, and Ann’s project for us last summer was to duplicate the old Advent calendar for two little English goddaughters.  We did, they were a hit and being refilled by their mother this year.

We haven’t exactly created a monster, but two more Advent calendars for nieces were on the agenda for this year’s visit.  Ann does not sew, but laid out for me the sewing machine her husband knows how to run and her tin of threads and needles, accumulated during her school and college years in Europe. 

We used narrow bias tape to bind the burlap calendars last year, but my hands can’t turn a neat edge anymore, so I went for blanket binding this year.  Last year we used some pretty iron on winter motifs Ann had picked up on close out; this year we found heavy felt designs that required a glue gun.  Another skill mastered. And finally, the last time I knew of the little round rings that hold the gifts I stood next to my grandmother who was asking the clerk for bone rings.  I said that to a clerk last year and she almost choked on spittle.  This year we knew the exact notions aisle we needed.

So, here are the current advent calendars from Wisconsin, after the Danish original gifted in Switzerland.  With apologies for lack of flash, which would have made the pictures much better.

The original 1984 calendar with felt figures and felt numbers.  I repaired the elf's beard again this year.  Ann has just begun snipping off last year's ribbons that tied the packages.

If you sew, or ever did, smile with me at Ann's sewing supply stash.

Putting on the numbers.  Last year we used fabric paint.  This year we upgraded to magic markers.  Ann said they worked better; she could go over the number and make it fatter.

Gifts all sorted and ready to wrap.  The blue potholders over the stove were on Ann's 1984 Advent Calendar.

Tying them on.

Frea inspects.

Wisconsin miscellany

A quiet, busy week in Wisconsin.  I helped Ann with a project, read Annie Dillard’s An American Childhood, a couple of Darcy Regency novels and took a chunk out of George Stephanopoulos’ All Too Human. I thought about bringing it home to finish, but it will be there when I go back.

The road noise will settle and the project will be a fun topic.  In the meantime, I carefully took these pictures on the Ohio turnpike.  And yes, the speed limit is seventy miles per hour:

After the power blackout of 2003 that left much of the East and Midwest without electricity our power company, Ohio Edison, and probably many others, undertook a brutal attack on trees as part of preventative maintenance.  Any tree limb capable of falling on a line had to go.  This preventative program keeps  Asplund and other tree management companies in the green to this day.  As soon as the leaves are down the big orange trucks line the road and branches are dispatched. There are no spreading oak crowns, or maple or any other sort along Ohio’s streets and roads.  They sport horizontal and vertical shears, to keep them away from power lines.

I’m not against this maintenance in the aggregate.  In fact, I have no say in the matter whatsoever.  But then I noticed this tree, across the street from Ann’s home.  The power lines go right down that side of the street, up to the oak.  Look at the two lines in the upper right corner.  They come off the last line before the oak, cross the street to the only pole on Ann’s side of the road, cross back and continue down the rest of the poles on the oak’s side of the road.  Ann said their power company did that to spare the oak.

Toothbrush ablutions

Settling into life with two young girls has been little trouble.  Bed time happens with fair regularity.  Chores have been divvied out and get done.  Mothers of the regular age may be stunned to learn these two take care of the kitchen after supper AND sweep the floor.  Just get up and do it.  Janice is in charge of her kitchen and I don’t intend to look into her methods.

Laura’s room is so tidy and organized that some familial OCD genes may be popping out.  Emily’s room bears testament to teen age occupation, however, so there’s hope for Laura. 

When they changed last July from house guests to house kids we scrambled a little to get them up to snuff.  They can recite the number of past due vaccinations they were stuck with, I know, and we made sure there was enough underwear in the drawers, clean socks, new sneakers, stuff like that.

I did play office tag with their dentist before I was able to nail down an appointment earlier this month.  I met Dr. Bob, and he came right to the point.  Dental hygiene was in short supply in those two little mouths.  We knew our final evening admonition, “Brush your teeth,” probably was not well followed, and we were too right.

All teeth got a good cleaning, and Dr. Bob called in grandma and explained his findings.  A far better job must be done on both accounts.  Proper tooth brushing had been demonstrated and was required morning and night.  Dr. Bob told them their attention would become a good habit in less than a week.

Ah, good intentions.  They can leave like the morning dew.  Over the last couple weeks the old people in the house prodded and prompted, but young people evaded us as effectively as they evaded tooth brushing where they used to live.  As grandma parted with three hundred dollars to spring them from Dr. Bob’s office, and that was only for annual x-rays and semi-annual cleaning, grandma was not pleased.

After we all were seated and ready to eat recently, I opened the discussion again.

“There is a shortage of tooth brushing happening, as we all know.  We also know it’s a good habit waiting to be developed.  So, here’s how we’re going to do it.  You two will brush morning and night.  Before you go to school you will breathe toothpaste breath and dental rinse breath on the adult of the morning.  Before you go to bed you will breathe toothpaste breath and dental rinse breath on me. If you fail to do this one morning or evening between now and October 31^st, there will be no trick or treating.”

Emily grinned, and Laura’s eyes grew round.  But now they both smell like tooth paste at bed time, and I’m sure they will sail on through and past Halloween.  Going for the habit.  And the candy.  Both of them laugh so hard about breathing on grandma, who tells them they smell better than Dewars on the rocks, that I told them I would write a blog about them and toothpaste.  And I have.  Emily will read it, as she is one of my fans.

Two housekeeping notes:  Thank you to everyone for reading and commenting.  I enjoy your thoughts more than you will ever know.  I am going to Wisconsin for a week and probably will have dogs and cats and friends to talk about when I come back.

An A for a B

Yesterday’s story of a grade was not typical.  Here’s an offsetting story of my journey to a BS in Accounting.

I have always been fortunate.  Things work out for the best, on the whole.  I have one great example to prove this.

I went back to school for an accounting degree and added a new dimension to a complicated life.  In many ways life seemed roaring at me and I was going against the current.  My brother died one fall, my father the next winter.  I was in a new job, I needed to succeed, and I needed to add that BS in Accounting to my credentials.  I crammed all the courses into a very short time, two summers and one regular year of night classes, as I recall.

The absolute most hands down difficult course I took was Business Math.  It outdid even Statistics.  It was six weeks of Saturdays, eight a.m. to noon, in an elementary school, seated at a desk where my knees touched the underside of the writing surface.  The men in the class just sat on top of the desks and balanced their notebooks on their knees.

The first class covered resolving business models using algebra.  And I needed this to graduate?!  What was I going to do?  I last used algebra in the ninth grade. When the teacher galloped past proportions, which I still remembered, at about nine a.m., I knew I was a goner.  I kept turning the pages and taking notes, but I knew I would be found out the next Saturday when class would begin with an exam of the material covered the previous Saturday.

I went home that first Saturday and immediately called my best friend, Carol.  I needed to see Frank, the engineer.  Perhaps there was hope.  Nothing in that book frightened Frank.  For five Saturday afternoons he patiently explained what I was doing and how to solve the problems.  We’re talking matrices here, long before anyone made a movie.  I literally did a core dump for the exam each Saturday morning and moved on to the next phase of Business Math.  Calculus.  No problem.  A little trig.  Frank would explain it later.

The final Saturday morning would be the final exam.  In spite of Frank’s assurances I doubted I could reproduce the results of the previous Saturday mornings when I had only transferred a week’s worth of memorizing to a test paper.  I knew come that last Saturday I could hit all the wrong notes and expose myself for the math fraud I actually felt like.

Friday afternoon at work my phone rang.  It was my mom, who had my kids for the summer.  Shelly had jumped off the neighbor’s roof and broke her arm.  She was in the hospital; the compound fracture could not be set until Saturday, under general anesthesia.  Sometime that evening, going down to see Shelly and then resolving all the hospital details I remembered my exam the next morning. 

I cannot even remember how I tracked down that Business Math teacher in another county, after business hours, but I did.  I got him on the phone, explained I would be at the hospital at the scheduled exam time, and could we possibly find a time for me to have a make-up exam.

There was a very long pause.  Then he said if I were willing to trade my A for a B, he would waive the final exam.  And that’s how I passed Business Math.