It's Not Halloween Yet

Sorry it's been so long between posts but it is October after all. And everyone knows October first always marks the start of Halloween decorating season. The beginning of the month started with temperatures in the 80's. That was just too hot. I got the ghoulish gear out of the attic but had to wait for more seasonal weather to start transforming the yard.
Then, overnight, our temps dropped to 40's and 50's. Now I was ready. Unfortunately, Mother Nature still wanted to challenge me. As soon as the temps got to the 50's, the wind increased to the 50's too. At least it felt like 50mph. So now my orange lights are tangled and falling off the trees. Styrofoam tombstones are threatening to blow away.
I've got one more week to stake, hang and plug in before All Hallow's Eve. If the wind doesn't take everything away before then, I'll post some pictures.



Meanwhile, our new puppy Ruby has been helping around the house as well. She is now seven months old and is really excited for Halloween. Honestly, she is really excited for everything. She likes to chew her toys. She likes to chase balls. She especially likes to be chased. Which is why she is still on a leash when outside. She got away from us outside a few times which resulted in a chase three neighbors over. She has trained us to get the treat bag and kneel in the grass until she decides to stop running circles around us and get her treat.
She answers to her name. She just doesn't answer to 'come'. She has also obtained many names which may be confusing her.
Along with the name Ruby, she has also heard the names,
Ruby Duby
Ruby Doobs
Rubes
Ruby Dooby Doo
Ruby Tuesday
Ruby Begonia (That's from Grampa Gary)
Ruby Poo
Ruby Boo
And any other cutsie bootsie name that rhymes with ooby you can think of.
In addition to playing with her toys, she also likes to play games with us.

When she isn't playing or playing games with us, she likes to hang out under the couch. She will scooch her puppy butt underneath and peek out with her little black eyes.

She also likes to torment her cousin Rosie by taking her toys and then jumping on her face.


So far Ruby is working out to be a pretty good puppy. We often compare her unfairly to our previous puppy, Liberty. I'm not sure if she will ever measure up to Liberty. Liberty set the bar pretty high. Although, I think our memory of Liberty's first few years are a little fuzzy when it comes to her puppy naughtiness. We tend to compare Ruby now to Liberty when she was ten years old or so. When we could let Liberty run around the yard and not worry about her coming back or getting into something she shouldn't.

One thing Ruby does that is reminiscent of Liberty is her napping. For some reason, Ruby at seven months, will actually take multiple naps throughout the day. I don't think Liberty left us alone for a minute her first few years.
So, I guess, Ruby isn't too bad after all. We can probably be patient enough to see how she turns out in the next fifteen years or so.

In case you're wondering, yes we still have two kids. Just because I don't mention them in every post, doesn't mean they aren't doing something interesting too. Once I find where they are I'll ask them what they have been up to.

Our Fifteen Year Journey

We have had some sad news in our family recently. Our 15+ year old puppy, Liberty, passed away last Monday morning. Based on the pain we are all feeling, she was truly a member of our family. I know some people will say she was only a dog, but Lady Di recently heard a wise saying stating "Some people love their pets, some people have pets."

Lady Di has had dogs as pets her whole life. Liberty was my first dog. We got her from a farm in South Dakota just after we got married in 1995. She has lived with LD and I in each of our four homes together. We house trained her in our first rental home when she was a little ball of black fur. I can remember tiring her out before bedtime just by running with her to the end of the block and back.

She was always a smart dog. She learned her tricks quickly. She had a basket of her toys that she knew by name. If we told her to get her rope, she would sort through her basket until she found the rope. We tried a few times to give her squeaky toys, but she was always determined to work on that toy until the squeaker was removed.

There were also many Christmases where Liberty would sneak under the tree, remove only her present and start unwrapping it. This last Christmas was the first one that Liberty started unwrapping one of N1S's gifts. She must have had trouble reading the tag with her poor eyesight. In 1998 Number One Son arrived and Liberty needed to stay with Gramma and Grampa for a few months while Lady Di was on bed rest and N1S grew in the NICU. When N1S finally came home, Liberty would take her naps under his crib as if she was guarding her new brother. Shortly after, Liberty's walking on the leash time decreased due to a new baby in the house. But she quickly learned that her table scrap opportunities greatly increase beneath N1S's high chair.

In 2002 Liberty finally got a little sister, Sweet Pea. Liberty's play time took another hit as the kids tended to monopolize most of our time.

So this is the first time in the kids' life when they don't have a dog. News of Liberty's death affected each kid differently. N1S was quite matter of fact about the whole thing. He woke up Monday morning and saw her lifeless body and came to tell us without shedding a tear. We found out later that he broke down once in school but luckily he had some great support there.

Sweet Pea was quite emotional. I woke her up for school on Monday and told her I had some sad news. She guessed what happened and we both sobbed on her bed for a few minutes. Now SP goes around the house finding things that remind her of Liberty. She also wants to make a scrapbook for her puppy.

Both kids however are handling it well in their own ways.

Lady Di and I are having a more difficult time of it. When you have a dog you treat as a member of the family for 15 years everything reminds you of her. Having crumbs on our kitchen floor for the first time in a decade and a half is one thing you don't realize will trigger so many memories. Each room in the house has it's own special moments that make them seem incomplete now.

Included among the many things I will miss is having a lap warmer on cold Minnesota winter evenings. I will miss her whenever I do yard work in the summer. She won't be contentedly sitting in the shade keeping one eye on me and the other on the neighborhood. I will miss the merest whisper of the word 'popcorn' making her ears prick up instantly from the deepest of naps.

She was what I call a low maintenance dog. She didn't eat much, didn't poop much. She didn't shed, didn't chew and didn't run. She could ride in the car for five hours at a pop without a stop. I can't say that for anyone else in the family. Even when LD and I brought up, on Sunday night, how we would decide whether or not to put her down, Liberty seemed like she wanted to take the burden of deciding from us and passed on early Monday morning.

We can find some solace in that we were with her until the end. With tears flowing I was able to feel her last heart beat.

Our brother-in-law, a multiple dog owner of many years, believes that you get one really good dog in your life. We were lucky to hit the jackpot with our first.

We will place her collar and a few toys in a box and bury it next to Grampa's lake up north where she liked to swim and where she just about drowned one summer trying to swim out to our boat in the middle of the lake.

Hopefully, she is being a good girl where she is now and can wait patiently for her family to come home.

Liberty Bell

7-4-1995 to 1-24-2011

All in the Family

Of the many posts I've written over the past year or so, I haven't dedicated one yet to our first baby. Before you get the wrong idea, we don't keep her locked away in a tower or have her clean the 'cinders' from our fireplace. She is our dog, Liberty. What more deserving subject for my 200th post?

We got Liberty in 1995, three years before Number One Son was born. So she is really our first child. And when she was a puppy, we treated her like a baby. We addressed each other as Mommy and Daddy when talking to her. We had some cute sweaters for her to wear in the winter. We even ordered a small vanilla cone at the Dairy Queen drive thru for her. Yup, we were pathetic.

But once the first human baby came along, Liberty found that the time for walks, playtime and attention took a nosedive. However, her table scraps volume increased greatly underneath the highchair.

But back to Liberty. She is a Yorkie-poo, (Yorkshire terrier/poodle mix) When we got her she was a small black fur ball that fit in my palm. The seller and everyone we talked to said she would not get much bigger. She ended up growing the same size as a poodle. But back in her cute days we would take her for walks on a little leash and she would have to stop every three feet or so to put something from the ground in her mouth. She once found a cigarette butt on the street and held it in her mouth just like she knew what to do with it. After a block or so we had to scold her for being too young to smoke.

She was a pretty smart puppy too. We of course spoiled her with many toys in her toy basket. We would ask her to get a toy from her basket and she could retrieve each toy by name. She was pretty quick at learning to sit, roll over and speak too. She can catch a piece of popcorn thrown from any angle. Even when she is sleeping, she is always ready for popcorn. She will often nap on the couch and snore loud enough to wake the dead. But just whispering the word 'popcorn' will perk up her head from the deepest of dreams.

Now that she has reached geriatric age (13 years) we have to treat her differently. She can still catch popcorn but now we have buy the high fiber brand. Sometimes we need to lift her up to our bed at night. And with Sweet Pea's improvements, we now have to lift Liberty up to her own bed too.I'm not sure what SP was thinking when she stacked all these pillows under Liberty's bed. Perhaps it is fun to have a bed that can topple at any moment.

There are a few things Liberty has taught us too. Her food and water bowls are in the laundry room and she has a clever way to let us know when refills are needed. She will stand just outside the laundry room door in our mudroom and paw at the springed doorstop on the wall sending out a 'boing-ing' sound just like she's ringing her own dinner bell. So then I'll get up and fill her food dish. When she 'rings' again, I'll usually have to check to see if her water is cool enough. She likes ice cubes in her bowl. There are times when she boings a third time. When this happens, we have to turn on the laundry room light for her. Once the lights are on, she will go in and eat. Then there are times when she just wants to frustrate me by signalling a refill of her food, and then turning and walking away as soon as she sees me fill the bowl.

So that's the story of our 'first'. She has been a happy part of our family for 13 years. She still likes to chase tennis balls and chew bones. The kids are now gentle enough to her that she will let them pet her. She will always be the big sister and hopefully she will continue to help us to keep the young ones in line.

Picture This

Here's what you get when a six year old gets hold of your digital camera.

You get lots of pictures of her favorite puppy, named Puppy. Puppy was then photographed at all of the 'hot spots' around the house. She's seen here on the hearth.

This is how her puppy gets around. In her 'Paris Hilton' carry bag.

She even got a closeup while helping Number One Son with his homework.

Here's another interesting location shot. It must be at the health spa. Celebrities are always concerned with their weight.

At last, a picture of her real favorite puppy, Liberty. Liberty is just as hungry for attention and loves the camera. I don't know why dogs always have flash eyes, though.

I see a real career for Sweet Pea in photography. She has a good eye for composition, color and centers her subject pretty well. She must really enjoy it too, because Lady Di said she could hear SP giggling out loud after each shot she took. So as long as someone needs puppy pictures, she will be happy to supply them.

Self portrait of the artist.

Unwelcome Winter

I'm glad to see that the weather is changing from frozen nose hairs and painful breathing to something more civilized, but it is sure taking its sweet time doing so. Lady Di saw her first robin of the season, so real Spring weather can't be far. Since the big thaw is still about a week away, I have had time to anxiously anticipate the benefits of suffering through a long winter. Winter sure does a good job preparing you for the joys of Spring.

One fun Springtime tradition for Lady Di and myself, is to go on our second Easter Egg hunt of the year. This yearly ritual starts as soon as the snow melts in the yard, exposing a bounty of brown 'Liberty eggs' hidden there, throughout the winter, by our family dog. Timing is important in that you want to start the collecting after the snow has melted, but before the 'eggs' start to dissolve. Rubber gloves, a bucket and a clothespin are required equipment.

Now, on to more pleasant Springtime bonuses.

I love the smell of Springtime. After, the 'egg' collecting, of course. When the ground softens it lets loose an earthy smell that tells you that winter is over.

I can also look forward to the trees and bushes budding. The lilac bushes already have swollen buds and need just one really warm day to start leafing. The cranberry bushes and maple trees are also ready to go. Pretty soon the oak and pine trees will follow suit.

It is amazing how much you miss hearing songbirds chirping outside, until you welcome all of the migrating species back to your backyard in the spring.

Another Spring smell is the smell of backyard grilling. Lighter fluid and thick steaks tell you outdoor fun can now be started.

Other things, like sidewalk chalk, kids on bikes and sunshine in the morning and evening also help to break the winter chill.

Finally, the best part about Spring and warm weather is.......getting the mower ready for lawn season. Once Liberty's free fertilizer is cleared, I can put down some real lawn food and grass seed to fix the spots Liberty killed this winter. Soon, the vibrant color of green appears for the first time in five months. In a typical Minnesota winter, the dominant colors of the landscape are white, gray and dirty white. So green is a pretty important color for our sanity. Once enough green grows, the first smell of fresh lawn clippings soon follows. I seem to use my nose quite a bit in Springtime. It must be because my nose has been abused all winter by Kleenex and Vick's.

So there you have it. The calendar and the seed catalogs in the mail both tell me that Spring is here. The snow that is left on the ground is putting up an argument to the contrary. I sure hope the thermometer settles this disagreement and lets Spring do what is it supposed to do.