Cookie Elves

'Nuff said.

Angus and Fiona work the studio

At the peak of our weaving business we had ten weavers and three sewers.  It was win win for all of us.  It was a full time job for Jan and me and part time for those who worked with us.  We live in an arty little pocket of Ohio. Artists, artisans, and dabblers.  I was always proud that we could offer part time work to people who wanted only part time work, for a decent wage and a fun environment.  Or, as I used to say, it’s not a sweat shop, we have an air conditioner in the studio.

Waiting for weavers

Angus arrived here in 1999, Fiona in 2000.  Calling them people dogs is an understatement.  From the first morning, Hi, I’m Angus.  Let me escort you into the studio.  OK, I’m leaving now, I hear someone else coming in.  I’ll be right back with them, you just wait here. Fiona, of course, took her greeter responsibilities equally seriously.

Hard work

Angus never was a foolish puppy, but Fiona was, and led Angus on many memorable chases through the studio, squeezing through the narrow spaces between our back to back looms, and especially through the tiny triangle formed by 360 warp ends passing from the bottom of the creel over the back beams of the rug loom.  If only they could have warped looms and wound bobbins and shuttles.

Waiting for Sue

They had favorites, of course.  Angus loved Jeanie, who took him outside on smoke breaks.  But both of them adored Sue, and it wasn’t just the biscuits. There were two Siruba sergers, an industrial Singer (it went fast!) and a Consew.  Fiona and Angus climbed over each other to sit on Sue’s station.  Fortunately Sue wasn’t on piece work.

Turkeys redux

I asked Jan for more pictures of Angus and Fiona.  I got the contents of her bottom desk drawer, a haul I have spent the afternoon selectively scanning.  We have actual photos of the turkey invasion:

In the side yard, featuring the compost bin Bill didn't burn down.

In the front yard.

Possibly too late for bed check.

A true cat fantasy.  No, Purrl didn't do it.

Angus and Fiona

Angus and Fiona were once in a lifetime dogs.  After little Poppy II, the Yorkie, we didn’t have a dog for a awhile.  It transpired Jan was researching, and settled on a Cairn. She followed up on a newspaper classified and found Angus and his littermates living in a cage in a strip mall hairdresser shop.  With hairdresser kids tormenting them.  She sat down on the floor with the lot and studied them for some time.  Then she picked Angus.

None of us are dog behavior experts.  As when dog does this, human does that.  Somehow we’ve muddled through it, together with a little coaching from our dog rescue friends, Ann and Pat.  Angus was three or four months when he came home.  House training was an exercise in overcoming his extreme separation anxiety.  He stuck to Jan so fiercely he had no time to stop and do doggie business.  But, stuck to Jan, he never got into any trouble on the side.  Almost like the first kid.  Be quiet.  Look around.  See how it’s done and then make them proud. 

Well, scratch the quiet part.  He loved the weavers and the sewers who came to the studio.  He greeted each at the door with HAR-rrrooouuuu, and escorted them to loom or sewing machine.  He was always up for a biscuit from the jar and sat on his hiney to let you know.  “Like a Teddy Bear,” Tom said.  He had that Cairn lilt to his walk and tilt to his head.  Then those big brown eyes…..

Angie was so used to getting his biscuit at the bank drive through we almost lost him in the New York Thruway booth the first year we went to Syracuse to Linda’s for New Year.  Hi!  I’m Angus!  You know me!  Why isn’t there a biscuit for me?  To anyone in the car:  She must be new.  Set her straight.

He was little that first time to Linda’s, not a year.  Angus and Tom sat in the living room watching football.  Then Angus disappeared.  He’d followed his nose to the pot of venison chili and struck up a lasting relationship in the kitchen with Linda.  It didn’t hurt that Linda ate anise cookies in bed at night and Angie’s nose took him there, too.

Alberta, Joanne and Angus at Linda's, 1999

Fiona arrived a year later, to keep Angus company.  Jan wanted another Scott name and I suggested Fiona.  “Not if you call her Fi-Fi!”  That never crossed my mind.  Tom and I always called her Flony, or Fony.  She didn’t care.  She looked up with her big Betty Davis eyes and wiggled.  She was energy on wheels.  Trouble, too.  She chewed every table leg and a hole in the back door.  But we got over it. 

Flony went to Syracuse, the next New Year’s Eve.  Together she and Angus converted Alberta, who doesn’t quite like her own daughter’s dogs, but brags on those two little dogs “who know what you tell them and DO IT.”  That because at meal time Tom would say “Get in the room” and the two little beggars would retreat to the dining room entrance and lie there with noses on paws extended less than 1/16” into the dining room.  “Bring the ball” was another example of their post graduate education for Alberta, but to Fiona was her end of keeping the human tossing it.  She really got Alberta with the game of rolling the ball down the steps for the human to throw up to be caught at the top and rolled down again.

The stair games at Linda's

Angus was the best big brother.  He let Fiona get to the ball first, almost every time.  If he picked it up and stood on four legs with the ball in his mouth Fiona would feint and dart, snatching the ball from under his whiskers the instant he slackened his jaw.  Angus was so fond of Fiona he took her to the kitchen in Syracuse to make friends with Linda and venison, and then upstairs in the middle of the night when he heard anise cookie crumbs falling onto a bed. He knew the toll lady was too cheap to hand over biscuits and told Fiona, We don’t bother ourselves for her.

Angus

Fiona

Poppy I and II

Poppy, Yorkshire Terrier.  Long ago, in the beginning, when Jan ran away from home and then lived with me, hopefully easing the mind of our parents, she had a friend who had a loveable little Yorky and who also knew the breeder.  I think Jan spent her first two or three paychecks on Poppy and the little terrier came to live with a couple of women, two little girls, some cats and a standard collie named Duke.  Poppy was the star.

Both dogs had access to the fenced back yard. Poppy followed Duke around and learned manners the first summer.  Talk about the odd couple.  Duke was an extremely large standard collie, 36” at the shoulder and over six feet on his back legs.  Poppy was, well, a dot on the ground.

That dog lived with Jan in her car, out with friends every night.  He went camping with the gang in their favorite field near Jamestown, New York.  The architectural feature of the field was a door frame, standing, with a working door.  “Hey, Poppy.  Want out?”  Someone would open the door, Poppy went through and waited on the other side for the question to be posed again.  If that amused them, he could play along.

The extended family vacation in 1976 was the Grand Bicentennial Tour.  We had all my parent’s grandchildren, plus a couple of spare kids, as usual.  We went first to Niagara Falls, not bicentennial, but on the way. 

Mom and some grandkids at Niagara Falls

Then Valley Forge, then Philadelphia, then Boston, Lexington, Concord…the Grand Bicentennial Tour. 

Dad stayed home that year; he was out of stamina. Mom drove the big Dodge Polaris, with Walt and Hazel and several grandkids and pulled one pop up camper.  It was a mobile living room.  Jan and I were in my Dodge Colt station wagon, with Poppy, the balance of the kids and the other camper.  Poppy sat on the front seat with me.  He’d noodge me a little to get more comfy.  I’d shift.  Later, another noodge.  Another shift.  By the time we stopped, I generally sat on the door handle and Poppy on the seat.

Poppy at Niagara Falls

Niagara Falls could have been a disaster.  Poppy was put down and charged straight into the river.  Jan had a firm grip thereafter.  Poppy was a pro by the time we’d toured our way to Philadelphia.  But he was stopped at the door of Liberty Hall.  No dogs.  Jan went to the park across the street and waited.  At the very next stop I purchased a book bag and letters to spell his name down the side.  We sat down and explained the bag to Poppy.  “Your personal conveyance, old boy.  Here’s the deal.  You can ride here for the rest of the trip and watch the scenery go by.  But, if we say ‘Get Down,’ you get down and wait for the all clear.”  That was agreeable to Poppy and he spent the balance of the Tour riding in the bag on a shoulder.  He toured buildings. He didn’t have to walk Concord to Lexington, he rode!  He went to restaurants, parked under a table.  A clean ashtray of water and tidbits.  What a life.  We were found out once, but only by the next several tables.  “Is that a dog?”  “Look at that cute dog.”  “Mabel, there’s a darling dog under that table.” “There’s a little nose and eyes inside that bag.”

Poppy was the grand master of tricks at home, too.  When Jan had to pack for a business trip, Poppy lost the use of one leg.  We almost fell for it the first time.  With that faint hope to buoy him, he found more and more serious injuries to feign when he saw the suitcase.  Jan moved back home in 77 to stay with Dad and Poppy took his winning way with him to Akron.  Sadly, too winning.  He discovered the next door neighbor would feed him just for the asking.  Nothing Jan said to Mrs. Smith made an impression.  Jan put Poppy on a run to keep him in the yard and the treats were tossed over the fence.  Soon the three pound dog was a ten pound lumbering caricature of a Yorkshire terrier.  In desperation Jan gave him away to a couple who kept him to the end of his life, returned to his original handsome self.   

Poppy did not know, of course, he was Poppy I.  Neither did Jan, until she got a new Poppy just before we moved here.  Poppy II was the spitting image of Poppy, but entirely more fragile.  Two knees had to be repaired.  He was a sweet little fellow, but accident prone.  Fell right off the deck one time, chasing a squirrel and went fifteen feet down onto bricks.  He was not deterred; he could chase any squirrel up the oak in the front yard and keep it there for hours, as there were no trees nearby to escape to. 

Jan and Poppy II

Perhaps we didn’t give him the opportunity to brilliant, but I think he really preferred being a sweet little dog who loved life, laps and people.  There was not a devious bone in his body; he would never have agreed to the bottom of the book bag trick.   He did hornswoggle mom into making him a place at the end of her bed and putting him there every night.  That would be the mom who trained every cat in the house, including the ones who loved her, to stay out of her room. On the other hand, he wouldn’t have hogged the car seat or jumped into the Niagara River.

Poppy II and Bekka enjoy lunch