Change Is Hard

…but change is certain.

Category Archives: Uncategorized


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Katie and her tiny teeter

Remember how scared Katie used to be of walking on her board, then we got her over that, added the 2 inch pipe under the board so it rocked and that was terrifying…then we got her over that, and made the pipe bigger  –  oh so scary!!!  And we got her over that…

Well NOW we can’t get her OFF of her tiny teeter!

I’ve been playing with her in the back yard, with her jumps and tunnel and chute…

And of course she has no problem doing chute at home (unlike when she’s in school where she avoids it at all costs)…

…but what she likes best is her teeter!  She runs out of the house and lands on the teeter each time we go out to play.

Silly girl.  I ordered her a teeter base so we’ll have a regulation size teeter soon.

Hope she’s still as excited about it then!


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It's challenge training Sunday! (1)

Katie the Sheltie-girl and I have accepted a challenge from Ricky to  head out each week and attempt to work on something that really makes her crazy.  We’re trying to do a bit of behavior modification and the challenge is helping us step up and get some much needed work done.

We’re not the only ones working on this challenge.  You can see the whole list of people and their pups that are working on tough stuff over at Ricky’s blog;  dogs like Sara’s Oreo and Misty, or Marie’s sheltie Dare,  Kathy’s Breeze or Patti’s Brutis and Tytus.  In fact there are so many people working on trouble spots with their dogs that you really need to go over to Ricky’s blog and look! The list is on the right side of Ricky’s blog and you can read all about everyone’s adventures on their blogs because we’re all going to write about our experiences each Sunday.

Soooooo….what did Katie and I do this week?  Well, you may or may not know that Katie lunges at cars, and if she weren’t always on a leash I’m afraid she’d run right out into the street after them.  She barks hysterically and is pretty hard to handle whenever we’re out and a car goes by.  She doesn’t like bicycles either, or joggers, or anyone or anything that goes by fast, especially if they make any noise.  So Friday we headed to a park where the first mile of the path runs parallel to the road.   I don’t usually take her there for a walk because it’s just no fun, worrying about her lunging and barking, and possibly pulling out of her collar.

The first thing we did was hang out at the top of the path, where it crosses the road.  Each time a car went by I’d tell her to sit and stay.  If she managed to do that without barking or lunging at the car she’d get a treat.  As the first car went by she took off barking; she got a correction and no treat.  And she knew I had treats with me!  She’s used to getting something if she sits and stays, but she blew it when she took off after that car.  And she knew it.

As the second car approached I told her to sit and stay.  She sat, looked at me, looked at the car, looked at me.  I reinforced the word “STAY!”  She looked at the car.  You could see the muscles in her shoulders bunch up.  But she didn’t move anything except her head as she watched it go by.

Well GOOD GIRL Katie!  She got lots of praise and treats.  And the light bulb went off, you could actually see her think about what was going on.  We started down the pathway which descends a long hill.  Lots of people were out on their bikes…

…each time one came past I’d pull her off the path and put her in a sit.  She watched them go by, wanting to bark, but not doing it.  She got treats.

See her ears go flat?

That’s because two little boys just went by on razors which made loud clacking noises.  She sat still for them as they passed us, but just after she couldn’t handle it anymore and reacted with flattened ears, running up to me.  She got a treat because she came to her mama rather than chasing the children.

And of course when I saw a woman on roller blades coming down the hill as we were headed back up I put Katie into a sit.  It wasn’t fair though because Katie had her back to the woman, and just after this picture was snapped she leaped into the air, surprised as the rollerblader swooped past.  My fault. Guess the mama needs to work on stuff as well!  But Katie didn’t bark at her, nor try to give chase.

We spent a good couple of hours walking up and down the path, watching people go by.

We even sat under a tree across the street from the golf course where lots of cars were coming and going.  She watched, once in awhile she checked in with me, and I kept saying “good stay Katie!” and she chose to stay.  Good girl!

I don’t know if she’s broken the habit.  I’ll have to proof her in a few more places.  Like in our driveway where she’s at home and feels a bit more like Queen of the Hill.  I think in the park she felt slightly out of place, was more intimidated and more likely to follow directions.

I’ll have to see if all this translates to behavior at home.


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Define versatile blogger

I’ve won an award – someone thinks I’m a “versatile blogger!”  Check out Carol’s (my nominator) blog to see her own list.   Hmmmm.  Here I always thought I was just a somewhat disorganized and scattered blogger – you know, talking about whatever whenever.  Versatile is such a better term.  Don’t you think?

And look!  I was even able to get this lovely versatile blogger thingy to show up as well!  Amazing.  Perhaps what I actually am is a technically versatile blogger.  OK.  Maybe that’s a stretch.  Now stop laughing!

So anyway  I’m supposed to tell you 7 amazing and previously unknown things about me.  Right.  Like you don’t already know all the amazingly interesting things about me and my life.  Especially about my dog.  Of course there are some of you, the “newbies,”  who haven’t been around for my  entire blogging ride.  So I might cheat a tiny bit and throw in a few things that some of you might already know.   Or I might not.

Here goes:  Seven Amazing Things You Don’t Know About Me! (This feels somewhat like standing on the high dive above a high school pool)

1.  I don’t really have a favorite color.  When asked that question I always stall and then say ‘blue’ because somehow that seems to be the color expected.  But really I can’t pick a favorite, they are all so special.  Just like kids, each is exactly right.

2.  I wish I could have a second dog.  Without a fenced yard we have to take the one we have outside on a leash to do her jobs or play.  She’s somewhat of a full time job and I can’t see us doing all of this times 2.  But still.  This is why I’m afraid to volunteer at a shelter; the risk of adding to our family is so big.

3.  If I could do anything at all without regard to responsibilities or relationships or commitments I’d sell everything I had…well I’d probably have to give it away because it’s not worth anything…and buy a small recreational vehicle and just travel.  I’d stop at anything that looked interesting but I wouldn’t live anywhere at all.

4.  I wish I could paint and draw the things that are inside my head.  What’s there just doesn’t translate onto paper.  Alternatively I wish I could accept that what does transfer is still art.

5.  I think soup is the perfect food (other than the fact you can’t eat it with your fingers) and like to collect wonderful recipes.  I like to make the soup too and even better, share it with family and friends.

6.  I never had children, but I would like to put a child through college.  Somehow.  More than the education, the college experience is such a life-changing experience and so important to the total growth of anyone.  I’d like a child somewhere to know that if they stay in high school, get the grades that are required for college, then they’re going to be able to go.

7.    Sometimes I  forget  how old I am.  Most of the time I still believe I can do all the things I’ve ever dreamed of doing.  And when I take a moment to look back I’m kind of amazed at all I’ve already done.  But I’m not finished.  Not by a long shot.

So thanks Carol for asking me to play!  I think I’m supposed to name some new people to pass this award to…but I’m not good at that.  So I invite all of you to sit still for a moment and think of 7 amazing things about yourself.  It’s a good exercise – to take the time to think positive thoughts about yourself.  Can you come up with 7?  It’s not that easy;  most of us were brought up to be modest – not taught to toot our own horn.  But it’s worth a try.  Because each of you  have way more than 7 interesting and amazing traits that you could explore.

And if you want to share them –  cool!  I’d be eager to learn more about you all.


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And the decision is….

You can see that the blog is looking traditional again.  I lived with the big formating changes for a couple of days, but looking at it made me feel sort of frenetic, less peaceful and even slightly stressed.  So I changed it back. Thanks, Spike, for making me consider something outside the box!

Partly I changed it back because I liked the idea of putting my own photo at the top.  This one is a photo I took from the boat of the mountain where we put my parents’ ashes.  It’s a beautiful place and I think I’ll enjoy looking at the photo each day.  Eventually I’ll change it to something else, probably just as pretty!

The good news in all this is that I was able to change it back all by myself!    WHOOOOHOOO!  If you really know me (Susie, Spike, Erin etc) you’d know how this computer stuff has been elusive for me; it’s all a bit of magic black box hocus pocus and not something that is intuitive.  So it took a lot for me to even try to change something – to poke around at what was admittedly a pretty easy formatting software site to add specific widgets in order  to make this blog a reflection of me.

So much of the time our fears are truly just that – ours.  Things that seem insurmountable can actually be handled by just trying to make one decision at a time.  Or a piece of one decision.  Or the decision to just try to make a piece of a decision.  If we don’t give up, if we don’t allow ourselves to be overwhelmed by the big picture – which I agree is often REALLY big and scary – if we just move one foot in front of the other…well…eventually we can all get to where we want to be.

And if we pay attention, we’ll learn a little bit about the world and ourselves along the way.


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Technically challenged – everywhere

I am feeling overwhelmed by change.  First we changed our cell phones, dumping our land line but keeping our land line number on my husband’s cell.  Seemed sensible, but the new phones we got have me confused…so far…and sometimes I can’t pick up a call or make a call when I want to without a lot of fumbling around.  And it seems like whenever I open my phone I’ve inadvertently hit the camera button and it’s a camera not a phone.

Then my laptop has been updated with Windows 7.  The good news is that it’s WAY faster.  The bad news is that sometimes it jumps around when I least expect it.  Probably I touch something that I don’t realize I’m touching.  And there are other things that seem weird that I will have to get used to.  But it’s all good.  I think.  Except I can’t figure out how to download pictures from the camera anymore.  I think I can download video now, which I couldn’t do before…but I’m not sure.  Husband will have to show me.  So that’s why the new pictures of Katie remain on the camera and are not in this blog!

Then today I updated my blog to the newest WordPress, and noted that there was another header thingy I could use…so I tried that, and as you can see it is different.  I think I can customize the header but I haven’t worked that out yet.  When I first switched to the new look I lost my blogroll and a bunch of other stuff over on the right.  Now I’ve gotten the blogroll back, and added a cluster map and a tag cloud and and and…I’m pretty proud that I figured out how to do that through the “widgets” on the dashboard.

But here’s the rub.  I can’t figure out how to get into the administration of my blog again now.  Used to be there was a spot down at the bottom where I could log in…and that’s gone and I don’t know the html to get that back.  So when I sign out of this I might not be able to get back in until I get my administrator (hiya Spike!) to fix this problem for me.

Kind of scared to log out now…


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Around the lake

I have a major (for me anyway) 10 mile “race” coming up the last weekend in July.  Not that I race, but I used to be able to run most of this race, and I did it every year, a sort of tradition for me and many of my friends.  Anyway, in years past I’d have been training all winter, all spring, and certainly all summer for this 10 miler. This year’s Crim  will be the first race I do since I was injured in 2008 while training for a half marathon.   And frankly even before that I’ve been somewhat of a slacker in the running department which is probably why I got injured in the first place.   So I’m very worried about being able to complete 10 hilly, hot, humid miles in approximately 27 days.

When the trip to Alabama came about I thought I’d at least run the 1/2 mile out to the main road and 1/2 mile back to the house every day.  Right.  There are three huge hills between the house and the main road, and all I managed was to walk it every day for the first week.  And that was the end of that.  I blame humidity, but really it was that slacker thing overcoming me again.

So this week I decided I needed to make an informed decision about whether to do this race or not.  I went out on Thursday to run/walk 4 miles, just to see how it felt.  I was near the end of mile 1, running up a short, steep hill when a little red car popped over the top, headed down my side of the hill.  I instinctively moved to the edge of the road, which unfortunately, or fortunately as it turned out, was soft sand, where recent rains had run, filled with some large stones.  My toe caught on something and I started to go down.  Somehow I saved my hands, head and knees and did a giant, undignified belly flop into the sand.  The car stopped to make sure I was fine.  I was, just embarrassed.  But my 4 miler turned into a two miler as I walked to determine if that twinge in my left ankle was really anything.

Saturday morning I headed out to Kensington, my favorite park that has an 8+ mile paved bike trail around a big lake.  I decided that if I drove 30 minutes I needed to do at least 5 miles…but I’d see how I felt.  The left ankle twinged again when I  put my running shoes on, so I didn’t know how it would all turn out.  l have to admit that most of my work out there was walking with a bit of running thrown in.  At worst case I needed to know if I could walk the 10 mile race.

At the end of two miles I wanted to go back to the car, but I convinced myself that I didn’t drive all the way out there just to do 4 mile – I could have done at home.  I’m glad I made that decision because around the next corner, walking about 3 feet off the path were two sand-hill cranes!  I didn’t have my camera (more weight I didn’t want to carry on this official “run”!) but you might remember from a previous post that I took pictures back in October of 2006 for you of these beautiful birds.   (If you click on the October link, scroll down to Oct 5 to see the birds.)   I stopped to watch them, and noticed the woman running up behind me never saw them, she was so focused on the two feet of pavement in front of her.  Neither did the group of four women walking the other way and talking furiously.  Nor the bike riding couple, intent on speed.  People miss the best stuff when they aren’t paying attention to where they’re going!

I kept walking, throwing in some running as I went.  I tried, during mile 6, 7 and 8 to run a quarter of a mile without stopping, but nothing doing.  Legs just aren’t there.  Plus it was HOT, but it’s going to be hot here at the end of August.  I remember running this race in prior years when the temps and the humidity were over 90.   Saturday I finished the 8 miles, enjoying memories of other times I’d run around the lake, the big tree that used to stand there, the running partner’s funny story that she told here, the time I got stung by a bee as I rounded that corner.  I saw bits of people I know, the eyes of my runner friend Cheryl in the eyes of a woman running toward me, the stance of my runner friend Jane coming over a hill, the face of a blogger friend Melanie in someone’s  face.  It was like running down memory lane.

I don’t have any pictures for you today, they’re all stored in my mind.  Maybe someday I’ll go out there and walk the 8 with a camera.  I wish you could all see this wonderful park.  There is a millage election this Tuesday to renew the park millage.  As I looked around and saw the park, packed with picnicking families, runners,walkers, people on bikes and roller blades, the swans sharing the lake with people fishing in boats, those in canoes, on pontoons, rowing, I thought; “How can we NOT agree to renew the park millage.   How can we not.”

Now I’m going to go register for that 10 miler coming up the end of this month.


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Someone's mother

Someone’s mother died yesterday.  Though it wasn’t unexpected it must have been heart-wrenching. She was a warm and funny lady with many many friends and though her name was Virginia everyone called her Boom Boom.  Evidence of her personality I guess.  Once she was sort of related to our family but divorce changed the relationship.  Still.  I feel for her daughters and  her son, for her close friends, her church, her grandchildren.  Tonight  I sit on my deck and think  about her… what a wonderful day she missed today… and how much she is being missed by her family.

Then I realize that perhaps she did have a wonderful day today – wherever she is.  And that life after this was enhanced measurably yesterday by the arrival of a woman named Boom Boom.

God speed.


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Adrift

Did ya’ll see the full moon last night?  It made me nostalgic for the lake.  You see, the last night my husband and I were there we went “bobbing” at the end of the dock.  Bobbing is our term for floating using noodles.  You can sit on the flotation devise, water up to your shoulders, and chat or contemplate or just enjoy the warm water.

That last night we took a bottle of wine down to the lake, bobbed in the 80+ degree water and watched the moon rise.  We were tired and cranky from spending the day working on the house; cleaning, doing the laundry including sheets for all the beds, installing new lighting and a new ceiling fan, pulling the wave runner out of the water, locking up the other boats.  All jobs that sadly reminded me I was leaving soon.   So it was nice to take some time and finally relax together.

We decided to go down to the water with our bottle of wine in early evening when the sun was still up, but two hours later, having watched the sun set and the moon rise, even though we had turned into prunes, we were reluctant to get out of the water.  What is it about bobbing around in warm water in the dark with the bright moon overhead that makes life just seem so right?

Now I’m back in the real world and am resisting it, unsure of myself, not certain that I want to be here.  Tonight as I’m watching the moon rise, this time through the bedroom window, I remember how it was to be bobbing in silky waters of a lake in the deep south;  the shimmer of the moonlight on the water, the bugs humming in the trees, the ducks murmuring to each other in the shadows.

And I wish I was floating there under the moon this evening.


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Reunion

My reunion with Katie was something of a disappointment.  I waited patiently in my reading corner for Katie and her Dad to return from the kennel and  I was excited when I heard them drive up.  Katie wandered around the kitchen for just a moment, then ran right over to me.  But instead of jumping on me with welcoming kisses she dropped into a “down” and began to bark at me.  Her little yips were hoarse and I’m guessing she barked pretty much the whole week she was in the kennel.  She wouldn’t let me touch her; each time I reached out she backed away and commenced to barking again.  So I sat still and let her decide on her own what to do about me.  She ran up to her Dad when he came in as if to say “There’s this LADY over there Dad but don’t worry, I’m taking care of her!”

Husband said the kennel told him Katie had been very good.  She liked their bed; apparently some dogs preferred to sleep on the floor.  Well of COURSE she liked the bed, this is Katie, the princess who hogs as many pillows as she can, even if she’s already on the couch.  And they said she had to “think” about things before she’d follow or go with any of them.  But once she decided she wanted to go outside she’d be happy to go.  That sounds so much like our little stubborn, mind-of-her-own, Katie girl!

This evening Katie and I went for a walk in her favorite park while we got reacquainted and bonded again.  I think she’s over her initial suspicion but she sure is barky!  I’m used to peaceful evenings filled with reading, napping, swimming …not the constant barking of a Sheltie recently home.  I think she had free reign to bark as much as she wanted in the kennel and she’s not yet quite under control.  Not even close.  But that’s OK…we can start training again.

As long as she’ll give up on her grudge against a wayward mama.