October 21, 2022

Leafing Through It

Just when you think you know everything there is to know about your four-footed companion, they go and do something different. Little Ms. Four-Feet has always enjoyed the outdoors and loves finding a patch of sun to stretch out in. I also know that the four-footed one loves to investigate different plants and insects when she’s in the great outdoors.

I didn’t know that the four-footed one loves the sound feet, particularly her own, crunching all the fallen leaves. On our outings today, some fallen leaves were crunchy enough to be noisy but not so crunchy to become a crumbly mess.

The four-footed one will sometimes walk ahead of me but wait, so she’s not too far ahead, partially because we’ve trained her to do this, and her leash restricts her ability to go. However, today she didn’t bother getting too far ahead. Instead, she was like a puppy running back and forth through the leaves. She seemed to delight in the noise she made, as well as the slight scuffing sounds the leaves made as they moved across the path.

She had so much fun and used up so much energy that napping was required to recharge for her next adventure!

June 22, 2021

Puppy Love

Sometimes I will catch the four-footed one settling down with complete abandonment. She’s not one for attention when she’s getting ready to rest, but some days she can’t help but be a bit of a diva.

Earlier today, after an already busy morning and afternoon, the four-footed one curled up on the love seat, rested her back against the seat cushions, and sighed the most resounding sigh.

She rarely sleeps on her back, but when she does, it’s always funny. Her legs dangle above her body, twitching now and then. Her mouth is partially open, and minor snoring-like noises escape.

Her pink tummy is visible for all to see, and her ears look like bat ears with how they extend from her head.

In these moments, when she is entirely content, there are glimpses of the confident puppy who walked all over our hearts as she made our home hers.

She has us wound around her little paws, tail, and ears. She knows it, and more importantly, so do we. To be honest, we wouldn’t change it for anything in the world. Sure, it may mean she’s spoiled, but after how she spent her first months of life, we wouldn’t alter a single thing.

October 26, 2017

Nine, It’s Not Just A Number

Nine. As in the number. It isn’t large by some standards, and yet by others it sounds like a lot. Nine, as in nine little puppies. Just born. Nine wiggly and separate beings. Nine new lives. And one very exhausted mother no doubt.

I cannot imagine nine puppies in my house all at once. I think I would probably melt from the sheer cuteness of it all. I know I’d be a zombie from the lack of sleep with the noise they make and the worrying that comes with nine new lives. I cannot imagine the amount of cuddliness nine new puppies bring either.

Let’s face it, I struggle with one. One four-footed being who managed to sneak into my broken and hardened heart. I lost control of the house, my expectations and yes frankly my life as I used to know it, once one small, not exactly new-born puppy crossed the threshold of my doorway. And at the time, having had other four-footed ones in my life, I had thought that it would be pretty much the same as before. Some adjustments and getting to know each other and we’d kind of move as one.

I was wrong. This four-footed one is just as head-strong and stubborn as I am and that is where the problem kicks in. Because neither of us gives easily. And I am trying to imagine a life with nine new puppies just like my four-footed one. And the truth is I can’t. Not really.

I can imagine cuddles, and puppy piles. I can imagine wiggly bodies and boundless energy followed by necessary napping time. I can imagine clumsy movements as they figure out moving forward and backward on those oversized feet. These things I can imagine. But I can also imagine the drain of nine new beings in my current state of struggle with just one overly energetic being.

As for mom, well I cannot even imagine. Nine puppies. Hungry, curious and all the rest. For her to look after. Thankfully they are all doing well, according to my friend. And in time I shall summon energy or simply force myself to go and check out the puppy pile. Because nine is the right number for a puppy pile this time.

August 2, 2016

Petite Palace Uncovered

Now and then you read of a “lost” city, hidden force furies perhaps. Some person stumbles across this amazing lost treasure and suddenly lots of flurry, activity and work must be done. For a piece of history we never even knew was missing until that moment it found.

And now, dear readers, it seems a palace has been found within the walls of my garden. It isn’t large, not by the size of most palaces. It isn’t full of intricate carvings or amazing architect, but rarely can you see that kind of beauty when you first see something which has been hidden for so long. It needs some cleaning up, this discovered palace, but you can see it’s something special.

And we have the puppy to thank for finding it. You see she was digging around when she found the first wall of the palace. As she nosed around, she dug out more and more of the palace, complete with the former inhabitants.

It seems at some time in the past someone built a palace for tiny beings, gnomes I think. It’s hard to tell with what’s been left as most of them have degraded to the point it’s hard to tell. The palace was made of tiny rocks set built one on top of the other, complete with a tower of sorts, from what I can make out.

Someone must have had a reason to cover this up and keep it safe. Safe until the puppy came along. She was hunting for mushrooms and bugs, two favourite pastimes of hers. Beloved is taking pictures of the find while I’ve kept the puppy occupied. I don’t hold out lots of Hope that we will learn much about the find, but it’s worth a try. As clearly at some point, someone took a great deal,of the to painstaking create this palace and then place little beings in it as well as around in the landscaped areas just outside of the palace.

July 27, 2016

Chomp

When you stop and think about, teeth are amazing things. They allow us to eat all manner of food. They help us breakdown food so we don’t choke. They help us to form words by how we use our tongues. The add a certain something to our smiles and it’s always a bit odd when people we expect to have teeth don’t have them.

Yes friends I’m not against teeth. Other than puppy teeth. During teething time. When apparently we must use our teeth on absolutely any surface. Especially my toes, fingers, hands and well basically any body part. Because you see I’m pretty sure I wasn’t meant to be a teething aid for puppies or people. And I have to admit, I’m not a fan of being a human pin cushion. I like keeping my blood inside me thank you very much.

Our puppy apparently doesn’t seem to care. All she cares about is making her mouth feel better. And I can appreciate this. I don’t remember my own teething thankfully. And my wisdom teeth never came through so I can’t honestly relate exactly. But I can understand it. And of course it will be worse for the puppy as she has more teeth in her mouth than I do.

I am sympathetic, but only to a point. The point of her teeth is where it ends. When those teeth puncture my soft, yielding, defenceless human flesh. So for both our sakes, I’ve bought teething toys, some I can freeze so she can find relief. See I’m not completely horrible. Am I?

July 24, 2016

Didn’t Notice Until I Was Forced To

I was supposed to grab a few items from the market today. The schedule called for an early trip to the market. Not normally an issue in account of the fact that no one sleeps in around here. Until they do.

We were up around 6:30 this morning, which is fairly typical. But I felt less than well. So Beloved thought a wee bit of rest was in order. That wee bit of rest took me until almost 10:00 which was unheard in my world. And I still didn’t feel well.

I managed a shower, and then was better much flat-out of energy. But we had plans for today. Plans that I had already messed up. So I thought I could push through the lack of energy, pain and general unwell feeling. Heaven knows I’ve done it more than once before.

After a few hours of thinking I was doing a good enough acting job, I sat down. For a moment. Except the moments stretched into two, then four. Then it was Beloved’s voice on the phone, cancelling our plans that I next remember. Apparently I had fallen asleep without realizing it.

Also unknown to me was the fact that the butterfly rash was back in full force and my joints were swollen. As Beloved was reassuring me it wasn’t a big deal that we had to cancel our plans, I was trying to figure out how lupus had grabbed the upper hand.

The only thing I could think of was puppy. Not that the puppy had triggered this glare, although she has helped eat away my sleep time. But the puppy is a bundle of energy. Energy that likes to be outside. And outside for the last bit has been the most amazing weather here. No rain, very nice warm temperatures. Just lots of sun. Sun that I stood in without a thought while playing with the puppy.

And there it was. Once again that weird relationship I have with lupus. Because I adore the sun and the heat. But I hate how it fuels a flare in lupus. And being rather preoccupied with the puppy I was in the sun far more than I had thought. Far more than any of us realized. Until today.

Now Beloved is using the items he had to get at the market to make a scaled back version of his dinner party. It will be a party for two, and possibly served in bed.

July 21, 2016

From Flowers To Painting, or An Innocent Accident

I only wanted to bring some of the beautiful flowers from the garden indoors. Nothing too extreme, just a few blooms here and there. So I could enjoy them and let them perfume the house.

I forgot some of the flowers I brought in, if brushed against something would leave their mark. White walls suddenly had a small dusting of orange/yellow smears here and there. Try as I might to wipe that stuff off, it didn’t work. Washing the walls didn’t work either. The mark stayed.

Long after the flowers have faded and the smell has disappeared, the marks will be on the wall to remind me of the flowers I once brought into the house I guess. And the ants that hitch-hiked on the flowers and are trying to find a new home. I guess if the dog doesn’t eat them all first, some of them may establish a colony in the house.

The house spider won’t complain though. She will be happy for a more steady supply of food, although how much food the ants will give her is left to be determined. Then again the puppy might eat her too.

Come to think of it, if the flowers had been at a level where she could have grabbed them, she probably would have eaten them too. Because puppies eat things. Everything. They work off the theory that if it stays down it must be food.

Shame the puppy can’t eat the marks off the wall. But that would require the puppy eating the wall and that is not going to happen. Now I know some of you are saying just paint the wall and be done with it. But you see painting the wall never turns out to just be a case of painting the wall.

Sure it starts off that way, just fixing that little incident. But then you pretty much have to do the whole wall, and if you do that wall you have to do all the walls near it. And well if you do all those walls near it, they end up being near other walls. And on and on it goes. And while you are painting you could patch up the holes too.

You know, the ones where Beloved thought he had the right spot to hang the pictures and masks, but actually had the placement wrong. He found that out after he hung said items and didn’t like where they were so what’s another hole. He promised he’d fix it when it came around to getting fixed. I reckon that will happen with the painting.

And honestly if you can fix those few holes surely we can get some other things done at the same time…

See it all started with just a few simple flowers being brought into the house. No one will believe it though.

July 20, 2016

Terror In The Garden

Terror stalks my garden. The flowers tuck their blooms in close, the grass doesn’t seem to grow as tall and the birds are basically doing very quick stopovers. And I don’t blame any one of them.

We thought we got a puppy, but we may have gotten a hybrid of some sort. She is part anteater, minus the long sticky tongue but with a taste for ants all the same. She likes the refreshing taste of mint after some crawling ants, but if she can’t get to the mint she will settle for the subtle refreshment of grass.

She is part bee, pollenating flowers as she pushes her turned up face right into the blossoms as if to absorb all their perfume before moving on to the next flower with a repeat performance. She also likes to roll on the petals, as if to get the very essence of the flowers into her fur.

Birds are provided a time limit of no more than 15 seconds in the grass before they are chased out. I suspect she wants to ensure the worms remain for her delight although I haven’t seen her eat one yet.

I’m sorely tempted to take her truffle hunting because if there is just the beginning of a mushroom growing, she’s on it like there is no tomorrow. She will try to dig it out too if you let her.

All the raspberries of a certain height have been picked off the canes and consumed. Now she is going after ones that require a bit of a stretch. Because the strawberries has vanished. Blackberries are also disappearing at an alarming rate and I’m sure soon the entire garden will become an endangered place.

The vet assures me she isn’t goat, not even a small fraction of one. He said she is simply exploring her world and enjoying the fruits of the season. Evidently none of it harmful. She may even dig up carrots he said.

I’ve asked for signed documentation that she is a dog, just in case someone sees her bounding across the lawn because she will run, but she also likes to jump. Long quick jumps that seem to require no preparing. The way deer jump.

She is, he vet assures me, a lovely puppy who is starting to enjoy the adventures of her new home. Now if only she didn’t find toes to be tasty!

July 13, 2016

Of Floors And Magic

The floor can be a magical place when you are a young child. When you are the parent of a young child you can rediscover the magic of textures to your floor and how everything is always right here besides. Heck you can simply stretch out on the floor and sleep if you are so inclined or so exhausted.

But small children don’t stay small and the floor loses its magic to the mystery of furniture. Of course as adults we don’t mind when the floor is no longer the play area. It can be hard, after all, to get up off the floor when you reach a certain stage in life. We breathe a sigh of relief when the floor is no longer play area and toy storage area because stepping on some of those toys is a whole new level of pain. Most people will tell you, stepping on a Lego with bare feet is something that should only happen once in your life…if ever.

Now I don’t have children of mine own. I do, however, have a tiny puppy who stays on the floor. Her tiny toys are as bad or potentially worse than Lego. You see she has a teething ball that has all these hard little nubbies for her to bit. And well sometimes let’s just say her people don’t put the ball away before bed time. Which means that of course when we have to go outside at one am her people will no doubt step on said hard bits of the ball. So i get the Lego thing. I really do.

And I’ve discovered crawling again. Perhaps really not something I needed to discover because my knees sure as heck weren’t meant for this endeavour. I’ve also discovered certain parts of the floor are more pleasing to me than others. Basically the soft sections of the floor, also known as plush carpet. I am not cut out for hard floors, not for sitting on them or resting on them.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I see a spot here on the floor we need missed vacuuming. I need to call a crane to get me up so I can reach the vacuum….

July 12, 2016

It’s All Fun When You Are Young

Having a puppy back in the house has reminded me that there are things puppies need to learn besides potty training. Things such as where to eat and when. That night-time is the right time for sleeping, not playing! Toes are not appetizers and pants aren’t chew toys.

The world is a big place with scratchy junipers, spiky roses and hard rocks. There are bugs to try and catch, birds to watch and mud to squish under your paws. There are puddles to pounce on and grass to roll in. There are just so many places to explore and learn about that time doesn’t have the same meaning.

And there is the real thing I forgot about with a puppy. Sleeping through the night is not always possible. Sometimes it’s the call of nature that means getting up in the darkness. At other times it’s discovering no one else is in your puppy kennel with you so you call out in loneliness seeking reassurance and some cuddles. Other times you are called to play regardless of how dark it is.

Neither Beloved nor I happen to be puppies so it can be more of a challenge for us than for the puppy. We can’t seem to grasp that sometimes even though it should be sleeping time, you simply can’t do it. We forget all the fun you can have with a rope or a ball.

We forget the rules: play hard, eat with gusto, drink with delight and sleep to gain energy to do it all over again. And again and again. 😊