Alanis redecorates

She has been very well behaved, so well behaved that I worried about her. Then, she struck.

I was lounging on my bed reading a book when I heard a curious smacking sound. I looked toward the doorway where Alanis stood. Catching my thought-beams, she lifted her head from the spot where she had been grazing. The evidence, a string of red wool, dangled from her mouth.

Normal corner



"You didn't," I said. Her tail wagged once. An expression of puzzled amusement on my face, I walked over and we stood looking down at the formerly pristine corner of the little Gabbeh style rug (a thick, coarse Oriental rug) kept on the upstairs landing. It was now a chewed and ragged corner.

Must not laugh, I thought. "What was so tasty about that particular corner of that particular rug?" I asked. I don't carry dripping hamburgers upstairs or wipe butter on the corners of rugs. Did something about that corner offend her? Is she planning to round off all the corners of that rug? Or is this the mere beginning of a massive redecorating project? All I know for sure is that she has begun normal Airedale procedures.


The chewed corner

How to clean chicken poop off the crazy-paving of the patio when the chickens have been out of the pen

Leaf blower turned on high.

On the patio, not the chickens.

The human handkerchief

It began when I squatted down to put a paper in a bottom file drawer. Alanis, having just finished dinner, decided the back of my sweater made an attractive target. Sniff, sniff. Rub, rub. Ooo, great place for wiping the wet beard and the nubby texture of the sweater felt good against a fuzz-face.

What can a person do at a time like this? Fall over laughing, becoming an invitation for Alanis to wipe her face all over me so that I totally smell like wet Airedale beard and she is clean and dry.

Then she settled in for some serious work on the squeaky fleece toy.

Exciting fossil news

As a result of living with Matilda the cornsnake, I became interested in snakes. Cornsnakes are constrictors with slender, pretty heads. They grow to about 3 feet long, which is a nice size for a pet snake.

A news article about a newly-found snake fossil from 60 million years ago caught my eye yesterday. Found in Columbia, the fossil indicates that the snake was 42 to 45 feet long, weighing over 2.500 pounds. Related to modern boa constrictors, the snake spent most of its time in the water like an anaconda. Hard to imagine the size? This quotation helps:

"This thing weighs more than a bison and is longer than a city bus," enthused snake expert Jack Conrad of the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

"It could easily eat something the size of a cow. A human would just be toast immediately."

Good thing we weren't around at the time. We'd be like cookies to an Airedale or bugs to a chicken--it would take a lot of us to fill that tummy.

There are lots of articles about the find. Here's one:

BBC news

Airedales and Physics

I posted this on the Airedale list.

A few days of sunny, mild weather have made everyone lively and Alanis showed her stuff by doing playbows and tuckbuttruns at the same time as we chased around the yard this afternoon. I've read that people don't truly multi-task at work; they simply switch from one task to another very quickly so that they appear to have their attention on two things at once. I think you can DO more than one thing at the same time even if you don't think about what you're doing. Otherwise no one would be able to raise children.

But back to Alanis. I suspect she might have been switching from one move to another so quickly that she appeared to be doing both at once. She practiced this morning. Early in the day when it was just getting light, I watched her take a show stance at the edge of the patio, which looks down over the lower yard. One second she was facing east and the next second she was facing west, having whirled in an instant and stood again at attention. I'm naming that trick her Spy Move.

A person who knows more about this stuff suggested it's more of a Stealth Move. Others maintain that the laws of physics do not apply to Airedales and they can be in two places at once. Still another theory posits that Airedales are adept at magical illusions. I don't know which is correct.

Grooming

I put Alanis in the grooming table this afternoon for a bit of toenail trimming and coat stripping. The grooming table sits in the living room where there's so little light that I work more by feel than sight. (Chalk up another reason to hate winter.) I tried rigging up a desk lamp to see her feet in order to Dremel the toenails. Then I had to scootch the table closer to the outlet, with the poor dog clinging like someone on a tossing ship. That was only close enough to do the front feet. The back feet will have to wait, not that Alanis minds.

She has lots and lots and lots of fur, a coat much denser than my other Airedales had. I brushed and combed and stripped and voila! I had filled only a third of a bag with fur and she looked exactly the same as she had when we started.

She gave me The Horse Look: the turned head, the rolled eyes showing an edge of white, the ears down. "You're torturing me but I'll accept it patiently because I am a good and humble dog. By the way, it has been an entire two minutes since you last gave me a treat for my excellent behavior and I need another to give me the strength to keep standing here." Like I could refuse.

Darwin

If he had lived a couple more months, my best boy Darwin would have been thirteen this January. This photo was taken last June when he was 12 and a half. He still knew how to have a good time rolling on the grass.

Alanis overcomes her fear of the kitchen

Not sure if it's safe in there.


The smell entices.


Is that sardines in the water?


Oh, yes.


Yes, yes, yes!

News Flash

At 9:45 pm Alanis drank from her cream soup bowl water dish like a normal dog. That is, she drank more than just a few dainty laps and went glap glap glap glap and got her beard wet the way an Airedale should.

A little less stern