Sunday, December 23, 2018

Our Christmas Miracle

Those who have been following along this year, will remember we adopted a greyhound in March.  Many of the qualities we had been told about the breed are simply not turning out to be true in our (limited) experience.



Faith is NOT lacking in brain power.  She may not be as smart as Dudley (our lab mix) was, but she's no slouch.

Faith is NOT a couch potato, any more than Gunner is.

In fact she has been getting into quite a bit of mischief the past couple of months that has been getting me pretty worked up.  She IS food obsessed.  Even more so than our foodaholic Dudley, which I didn't think was possible.  We are now hiding anything remotely deemed edible -- in the microwave, in the oven, behind closed doors.  In the recent past she helped herself to candy (yes, including chocolate), cake, soup, and most delicious of all, compost.  Those are just the edible items.  I can't keep yarn anywhere she can reach.  And now the Christmas tree ornaments are getting chewed.


This used to be round
Another wood car wasn't remotely salvageable

I consulted with her foster (the greyhound rescue organization we went through places dogs off the track into short-term foster homes until adopted) and she (brilliantly) suggested putting Faith's muzzle on after catching her in the act.  That has now become the new operating procedure.



Anyway, the biggest transgression (although I can't really call it that) came about last Monday.  I was up first as usual and let the two dogs out at 6:00 a.m.  Gunner returned, but Faith remained out.  At 7:00 I awoke Rick and said we had to go out and look for her.  The dogs have about an acre of fenced woods surrounding the house in which to noodle around.  Looking for her in the dark was not going to be easy...

I was panicked to find she had gotten out of the fenced in area.

I took the car, driving down our dirt road, stopping every couple of minutes to call.  Rick took off on foot looking in yards and calling.  I drove down the way-too-close busy road, looking for a dead dog.  Finally I returned home.  Rick took up the road patrol.

About 8:00, little miss princess came to the back door, as they've been taught, to come in.
  
Let me just say, others who know greyhounds better than we, say they never come home.  They take off like the wind, end up far away from home, and lost.  Her return was a godsend.

Within minutes she was cuddled up to me on the couch.





Wednesday, December 12, 2018

Two Splendid Books

With your kind indulgence, I am diverging from the normal topic of donks and clucks and am
offering up two book recommendations; one I happened to hear briefly mentioned on NPR and the other is penned by a cherished author.

The nonfiction first.


Two 30-somethings living in Cambridge set a goal to live in the woods of Vermont.  Frugality becomes their norm.  They saved enough to purchase their new Vermont house with cash, buy two used cars with cash, etc.  The philosophy behind their move to frugality rang true with me. 


"Our unifying activity as a culture is shopping and the one thing we all are is consumers.  Consumption has become our spiritual outlet, our means of building relationships, of identifying ourselves by the brands emblazoned on our clothes, cars, shoes, laptops and it has supplanted our interpersonal dependencies."

Ain't that the truth, and one I have been guilty of.

"It [frugality] guides my decision making by encouraging me to simplify, to be grateful, to never deny the abundance that surrounds me and to recognize that there is very little I need in order to live a meaningful, fulfilled existence."   

This feel so very right, I'm trying to adopt it as my own.

Book #2


If you'd like a wonderful fiction read, please dip into this author.  This is the latest in her Inspector Gamache series, sometimes also known as the Three Pines series.  

Friend Carla clued me into Louise a few years ago and I will be forever grateful.  The writing itself is just complex enough, the storyline always engaging and the characters those you would wish to meet.  If you choose to dive in, please start with her first book, "Still Life".  You'll want to get to know the group of characters as they evolve through the series.

I'll return to the chonkeys next post.  I promise.  

Monday, December 3, 2018

Blink the Weather Away

We live in Michigan, southeast corner, about an hour north of Detroit.  Sometimes we all joke about the weather.  Blink and it changes.  Yup, it's the truth.

In the span of roughly 10 days, we've gone from mud, to snow and frozen donkey hoof divots, back to mud, and then to snow.  As I write this we're losing our little warm spell and I'm sure I'll be faced with frozen divots tomorrow morning.  Definitely, not my favorite.  Treacherous to walk on.


Yesterday during the (yet again) mud phase


We're all just tolerating it