Adventure Dog!

Despite questioning looks from friends and family about our sanity, Michael and I decided to order a full contingent of gear for our puppy, Veli. We’re on our way to Yosemite for a backpacking trip and, naturally, she needed a backpack. First we looked at inexpensive ones. Then we decided that for a little bit extra we could get her an expedition backpack. It’s waterproof, has all kinds of compression straps and pockets, and reflector strips. We deemed this necessary for our pup.

We call this Standard Issue Adventure Dog:

Then we went a little further out of bounds; we got her booties.

They make her run funny.

We call this Special Issue Adventure Dog:

The booties are even called Adventure Dog.

Then we got waaaay out of bounds. We got her Doggles:

The Doggels caused her to scrunch up her face and flap her ears.

We call this Deluxe Issue Adventure Dog:

Now, I know there are dogs who need nothing at all to be comfortable, even in bad conditions. And our dog is probably one of them. But we couldn’t resist. Plus, Micheal has a special thing for eye protection. Don’t get him started about eye protection.

She’s our baby and she just might be in conditions that require booties and Doggles – like the jagged rocks and burning sand in Death Valley we had to turn around on because they were cutting her feet, or the blinding snow of Yosemite.

So: we’re obsessed parents.

And as much as she doesn’t really want the Doggles or the booties on, she’d swim with them on anyway: if we’d let her.

Swim machine.

Here is Veli’s first swim session. The take-off in which she launches herself and belly flops becomes a signature move. And all that splashing? That’s before she learns to use her back legs. About halfway through the movie you can see she figures out how to swim correctly, though it takes her a few more days to adopt the custom permanently. Today – less than a week later – she’s become a strong swimmer, able to maneuver quickly, vary her speed and attack Cleo like a battleship whenever she pleases.

Wait a minute…

…is this an approved dog perch?

The pool dogs.

I joked to my parents that we’d better hurry home from dinner out together to see how many dogs were in the pool. It was a joke because the pool was covered and two of three dogs lived in the backyard without giving the pool a second glance.

But when we opened the gate to the yard out rushed three soaking wet dogs. After swimming they had wrestled in the garden, so they were not only wet, but muddy, too.

The pool cover floated in a heap just below the surface of the water and all the sand bags used to secure it were lying like sunken ruins at the deep bottom.

The last time this happened, Cleo, my parents dog, was a puppy. She fell on to the cover, hit the water and instantly lugged herself out at the side. We thought it was a mistake and that she had learned her lesson. But, minutes later, she fell in again. Then again. And again until the whole cover was under water.

At that time she was small and cute; we called her The Wiggle or The Noodle due to her flexible, energetic nature. She is the reason we got Veli, since we fell so in love with Cleo. Here she is as a puppy:

Now Cleo is a big dog. She is full of spunk and energy, and she’s strong as a bull. These days, we call her The Torpedo.  She can go from crazy to gentle giant in six point two seconds flat. She may be a Torpedo, but she’s loving and sweet.

I guess we thought she’d forgotten about the big hole of water in our backyard because this time we did nothing to stop her from doing it again.  But of course she hadn’t forgotten.

Michael cleaned up the pool and now the dogs have a huge, perfect toy in the backyard that they are completely smitten with.

Every morning they go down in a hurry. Veli shakes with excitement. She stands on the first step then launches herself into the cold water. She stays in and does dozens of laps, whimpering with happiness.

At first she only swam with her front legs, beating at the water and splashing like a wild dog. Then, after several laps she relaxed, her back legs began kicking and she became fluid. And all the while Mattie runs around barking madly at her while Cleo, the instigator, chases her around from the safety of the patio.

To be a good sport, Cleo takes a single lap once or twice, but she’s quick to turn back when little Veli kicks in her turbo motor and comes over to attack her.  Cleo’s favorite kind of swim is one in which she pushes gently off from the steps, gracefully, then does a quiet, majestic lap where she shows you how powerful she is by stroking at the water slowly, as if not putting any effort into it at all, but traveling at a speed close to the speed of light. She is an incredible swimmer when she goes in; I think she’s just waiting for it to heat up a little. And maybe for the little battleship to finish her laps.

Glazed and confused.

The kiln burned red-hot all evening and into the night. I set the alarm over and over to wake me at intervals so I could check out the progress. At 2am I couldn’t see a thing through the peep holes, just a blinding white-hot glow. Finally the switch popped off.

This is the view into the peep hole early on in the firing. The red blurry thing right in front is the cone. I’m watching the cone to see when and how much it bends.

In the morning I peeked under the door; heat rushed out and I could see things inside. Not exactly what I expected to see, though. The pieces seemed to have made it up to cone 6 without exploding. Good. The cone itself had flopped over completely and turned white, telling me it was plenty hot – too hot, maybe.

But it was the color of the pieces that bothered me; everything looked light, washed out. Everything looked, well, just terrible. Horrible, really. I’m serious. We’ve already established that I’m sort of a poor potter in general, but now it’s also clear that I’m a number-one sucky glazer too.

This is how they looked being loaded in:

Not too bad, right? Kind of fun and exciting. You can see the broken pot that I’ve striped with all the glaze colors so that I have a test piece to remember the glazes by.

And this is how it looked after:

Whoa. Not fun. No excitement. What happened here?

Huh. Ugly. Wasn’t that supposed to be green? And turquoise? What’s that gross muddy brown inside? How come it’s so pale outside?

Wow. This includes a glaze I’ve always considered my favorite: shino. But, damn, that’s ugly. Maybe slapping the glaze on in a hurry wasn’t so smart after all.

Hey! You guys were supposed to come out Turquoise. TURQUOISE! You look weak, I tell ya. Weak.

I have it figured out. I can fix this. It’s that I didn’t put enough glaze ON the pieces because I was being thrifty. And that I overcooked everything. And that I used really poor color combinations. And painted them messily. I can justify anything.

At least I know now and I can move on. I won’t let another failure stop me from making art. No, I’ll give the world more of what I’ve got. More sucky ceramics!

Another coat of paint.

For weeks the boat sat unloved and our household was on the verge of collapse.  Michael was pretty upset about having to watch rainfall instead of be outside painting the hull. But then the sun came out and the boat emerged from its chrysalis:

Michael put on a primer coat on the cabin – grey – then a first white coat and a couple more coats of white on the hull.

But today it will rain again, and rain is in the forecast for the next week. Prepare to be tarped, yet again, you boat! (and tread carefully for the Beasts will be back).

Daily Photo: Veli again.

Daily Photo: Veli’s trail.

Along the trail a huge oak was down, completely rooted up and pushed over by last week’s storms. The morning sunlight peeked through branches, making spotlights of golden color. The creek was full and gushing and the trail was pocketed with muddy spots. Until the next storm, we’re back on our favorite trail.

The old beach.

This is our beach.

But the storms washed the sand away.

I don’t have any pictures of it yet. It’s pretty sad for us.

Goodbye beach.

Raining Beasts.

The last storm was dramatic with its thunder, lightning, hail and mini-tornadoes that uprooted trees on Haley Street. Each afternoon the clouds parted after intense rain sessions and blue sky hovered above, dazzling us. Sunlight beamed down, spotlighting the snow on the mountains and making rainbows. The whole week was a showcase of beautiful rain.

I loved it. I know I’m supposed to hate the wet, the mud, the danger of slippery roads, the promise of disastrous mudslides. And I’ll admit that it does crimp my style here and there, but not enough to care.

The only thing that I have to worry about is the Beasts I live with. I was going to say just Beast, singular, but had to re-think that. The primary Beast is Michael, who is perplexed by the rain. He can no longer go out to the driveway and scratch the chin of his boat or whisper in its ear about the places he will take it. Instead it is tarped – swathed in tarps, really – and no work can be done on it. Inside Michael is irritable, he shifts his beastly eyes through the window, past the falling rain, and to his project, sitting neglected; and he growls.

The other Beast is Matilda, our Aussie Shepherd, who is firstly afraid of the storm and secondly afraid of the fires we have to warm the house up.  She paces the house whining, checking out all the options in the house – the office is too far from us, the couch is too close to the fire, her bed too close to the window where the storm is, the bedroom too cold; until she wears herself out.

The storm that arrived today is a contrast to last week. This storm is thick foggy clouds, a dismal pissing of rain, and cold.

Veli and I still can’t go running on the local trails because we’ll ruin them by slogging through the mud, so instead we’re going to her favorite place in the world: the beach. When we first arrived after the storms we were shocked; the sand had disappeared and jagged rocks were occasionally revealed beneath roiling waves crashing right up to the cliffs. But today we learned that we could go a different direction and find a little sand amid bars of round rocks and sections of rock reef.

In the light rain there was no one else out there, Veli and I had the place to ourselves. I ran as steadily as the terrain would allow while Veli streamed after birds, explored rocky pools and sniffed rocks. Neither of us even noticed the gloomy  rain.

Back at home we found the Beasts congregated in the kitchen and to our surprise they were happily making enchiladas. Should I wish for more rain?