Found the picture in my computer from exactly one year ago, today.

Some days, it's hard to think of Timmy in focus.

It's sort of blurry and foggy, trying to remember when he padded around the house, spinning his circles and wandering into walls.

Even harder to remember when he could run, through the house, on the beach, and in the forest. How he thought he was doing agility because he was tied up with the other dogs and barking with everyone and going through a tunnel. How he liked to wander around at the barn and sometimes just walked into a pasture already occupied by a mean horse. How he went everywhere with me, shotgun in the front seat of my truck. How we'd be walking and he'd find an old, moldy burrito and run away to scarf it down. How he liked to get out of the yard and wander around the neighborhood. How he knew dogs weren't supposed to step on paintings on the floor of the studio. Or bark in the mac lab at calarts. Or jump out of the basket on the back of my bike.

Timmy just did what he knew how to do best. Be the best dog.

When one of them just vanishes.

Someone asked me today, do the other dogs know Timmy is gone? I wonder that too. He was such a big part of our life, and really, so much of our life revolved around taking care of him. He was our clock. Not that they did anything to help, but they could only eat or walk at certain times based on Timmy being awake or asleep or up or down. None of them had a life with me that was a life without Timmy. We were a package deal. They never got asked, "You want fries with that?" No choice. You got what you got. That's how it goes when you're a dog.

So I made sure they all saw him that day. They were in the next room, locked in crates with chewies, the whole time the vet was over. I wanted it calm and quiet and no spontaneous howling events or frantic chases after stuffed squirrels. The other dogs, the vet, they all were subjected to my endless loop of slideshow on the computer that I made for Timmy. Come to my house, you will be sat down and perhaps tied to your chair through this parade of the endless photos I have of him while a special song loops over and over. It's sort of high tech moody teenager with a mix tape and photo wall, but you know. I may have sort of stunted developmental personality disorders.

Afterwards, his little chest no longer rising and falling, not moving in my arms, Gary let everyone out and they all came and saw him. Don't know what they thought. Actually, probably they thought, where did my chewie go? I got them really god chewies.

Gustavo? Um. His little world didn't much revolve around Timmy. The Timmy he knew was always old and sick and not a whole lot of fun to play with. Timmy was no Otterpop when it comes to bitey face and chasing and attack missions. He was just the dog that had the slimey food and the best food bowl to lick clean is maybe what he misses. Is the dog that got cheese for treats! Is the dog that walked so slow! Is the dog we needed to jump over because blocking where I would like to be running! Is what Gustavo knows of Timmy. Which is ok. Gustavo was my birthday present last year when I was worried I'd be losing Timmy sooner rather than later. Gustavo was got as a friend for me, not for Timmy.

Otterpop seems crabbier and a little meaner. A little quicker to trigger at stuff that bugs her. It's hard to tell with her though. She's always like that. But did have one helluva dog show over the weekend. I asked her at one point, "Are you doing this for Timmy?" Not sure if she comprehends sentences that don't have the word FRISBEE in them so I'll never find out. Maybe there's a secret competition going on I don't know about for someone to fill the position of Best Dog? Like going to be like Hilary vs. Obama, making Gustavo a John Edwards? Do I have to go through a year of dog primaries? Timmy was important to Otterpop, she could guard him against evil. I hope she's not mad because she thinks she failed him and he vanished. I didn't really get Otterpop to be anyone's friend especially, found her and kept her because was afraid to unleash her on anyone else. She became Ruby's evil other half, if a dominatrix loudmouth who won't let you have the tennis ball counts as that. But ended up as Timmy's protector, the one who was ready to kick some ass at a moment's notice if anything threatened her fragile charge.

Ruby is different. She is definitely acting weird. OK, she always acts weird, but it's different weird. She spent the longest with him after, sniffing and noticing that he wasn't really there anymore. Before running off to go look for her chewie again. She was with Timmy the longest, she is 7, almost 8 years old and had Timmy in her life all those years since I found her. I brought her home with the specific intent of a friend for Timmy and got that and so much more. This whole Team Small Dog stuff, we can blame that on Ruby. My introduction to dog training and aggression and prey drive and agility. She has never been a snuggly wuggly dog. Doesn't need a spot right by me on the couch, rarely wants a lap. Kind of does her own thing, is aloof, likes to sleep in a dog crate and not up on the bed. So ever since, she's up with us on the couch. On my lap. A better friend for me. She is the one I feel a difference from. Sticking closer. Knows he is gone, maybe that she could be gone too?

I have this video a friend took, of the one actual dog show Timmy went to with Gary to watch me and Ruby. One dog show forever was enough for Gary, and Timmy didn't need to sit in an xpen all day, could be at home with Gary on dog show days, eating pancakes. In this video, every time I call "Ruby!", you hear Timmy off camera start wild barking. Then you see Ruby start to run over towards the wild barking. Then you hear me holler "Ruby!" again. And she comes back over and does a jump or whatever as you hear Timmy start barking again, and you see Ruby start to run over there again. And so on and so forth, as we sort of stagger our way around a Starters course. Halfway through the course I was laughing so hard almost peed my pants out there.

Sincerely yours.

Thanks everyone, who sent kind emails and put in comments, and who had a kind word to say about Timmy at the dog show this weekend. You guys are a class act.

Yeah, I forgot to tell you we had a dog show, even did all the scheduling to have a free Saturday to go to 2 of the 3 days. Sort of forgot about it this week, but it was nice to go and do something with the other dogs. Maybe would be more useful to like, help stop global warming or something, but whatever. I'll tell you all about it later. Honestly, Q's and Super Q's sort of seem not so important right now. Just spending time with my dogs, a fine and valuable thing. Dogs don't have enough days in their lives.

Hypothetical conversation that you could have when your dog dies.

Husband is puttering around the kitchen shuffling stacks of paper about perhaps. Putter, putter, putter. Wife enters house.

Wife opens up refrigerator for a nice cold beer refreshing glass of anti-oxidant health juice.

Wife: Boo hoo hoo hoo blubberyglubbery sobsob a weepy sobsob huhhuh huhhuhhuhhuh.

Husband: What? What? What happened??

Wife: The dogfood glubblubsnifflewhiffle I see his Dooooggfooooodd snifflegliffleglubhuhuhuhuhuhuhhh.

Husband: Whaat??

Wife: The dooogfooood blubberysobsobsobsob I can see his Dooooggfooooodd huhuhuhuhuhuhhhsniffsniffsniff waaaaaaaaaah.

Husband: Huh? What the hell??

Wife grabs a can of dog food out. The special expensive senior kind that her voodoo belief thought perhaps would keep dog alive longer and give strong teeth and bones, etc. and also that dog would actually eat.

Holds up. Tears streaming, running, eyes a-red, sniffling, glubbering, making noises very unpleasant to hear and also make.

Then everyone is crying for a moment. The dog food even makes the husband cry! Or perhaps is just rubbing off of from wife. Weeping all around. Then everyone looks at the dog food can. Goddamnit. This is a dog food can and dog food should not make one cry and weep and so forth.

Wife: Oh my GOD! Dog Food. Dog food! Weeping caused by dog food! (Note to actors playing this part, assuming role of wife played by Courtney Love here, have to make sure to use correct inflection which mixes sort of SoCal surfer accent with ranch lady voice ala Luz Benedict from the movie Giant. Not really sure how to explain that accent in writing. I think you have to actually hear. Is an accent inflected with random and useless "likes" and "totallys" and I think you go, like, UP, at the end of the word when you say it? But also sound a teensy bit mean like you can kick some serious bad horse ass.)

Then everyone starts sort of giggling for a moment. Goddamn it. Nothing is funny about dog food and nothing is funny about the best dog in the whole world dying. On cue, add howling starting sort of quiet then all of a sudden, the sound of 3 tiny and loud jackals or perhaps coyotes swells up like in a sort of orchestral way if orchestral can involve tiny, piercing banshee sounds which are pretty funny for a while until Wife goes over and starts yelling at all the bad dogs to shut up and can't you guys be more like. Oh shit. Like Timmy.

Husband: I'll throw it away.

Wife: Like hell.

Now I'm like a CIA conspiracy ranter.

I had a dream. I won't tell you all the details because it was, you know, crazyland.

But long story short, Timmy had made it back home. So I woke up explaining to Gary either angels or zombies delivered him home to me or could he have woke up at the vet's office and escaped and walked home even though he could barely walk?

Also I was slightly worried in the dream, besides the possibility of all of the above, a terrorist plot had organized his safe delivery home and then Timmy and I were embarking on some kind of new adventure as CIA covert special agents and we were going to have to go on the lam. That is exactly the kind of mess Timmy would get me into. So in the dream part, I couldn't tell anyone he was home.

You never know. CIA, zombies, angels, miracles, everyone says those are all real and actually exist, even though you never meet them. As far as you know. Like this lady I saw 3 times walking around my neighborhood yesterday, I'd never seen before. My first thought is she's lost. My next thought is she's shifty. But like, maybe a zombie? Or miracle granter? Or CIA agent? And like, the whole zombie angle, bummer man. Flesh-eaters.

Gary says it's just a dream. Because I miss him. I still had to look for him all over the house. But he wasn't there.

Timmy Best Dog

I got Timmy when I was 26 years old. Kurt Cobain and Princess Diana were both alive, and I wished they were my friends. I ended up with Timmy instead. Walked into a dog pound out on some country road identified with only a number, and picked him out. Scrawny and unsocialized and shivery in the back of the cage, I crouched down there and he slowly came forward and sniffed my finger. Was probably wearing paint splattered cut offs with black Converse one stars, same shoes they found Kurt dead in when shot himself in the head a couple years later. Opened the chain link door on the big dog cage holding a little dog, and that was that. Was the kind of dog pound that didn't care I was a grad student without an address, didn't need to know I lived on the sly in an old metal building that was supposed to just be a painting studio. Walked Timmy out of there and never looked back. Who knows you're having a day when you just picked out the best friend you will ever have?


After that, never went anywhere without Timmy. Maybe never really trained him, he just stuck with me. Rode in a crate on the back of my bike, next to me on the seat of my old truck, and if I needed to go somewhere no dogs allowed, just shoved him in a duffle bag and in he came. That's just how it was with me and Timmy.


Was Timmy perfect? Far from it. He would bark with the best of them. Sort of his signature. Bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark and then some. Could sniff out a rotten burrito in the street a mile away then scurry away with it and could never catch him til it was scarfed down his little garbage swilling gullet. Sometimes walked slower than everyone else just because he wanted to, creeping like a turtle. And had a wandering gene. But pretty minor things and his real name was always Timmy Best Dog.


Timmy didn't go in dog shows, didn't have fancy toys and accessories. Liked to chew on pens and little sticks for a hobby. Once I had to duke it out with an old homeless dude on Market Street who grabbed Timmy up from the sidewalk and started running with him, screaming at me that I stole his dog. I did, man. I pounced on that old guy and grabbed him back into my arms so tight and ran with him running after me, lunatic screaming I was stealing his dog. Ran fast and far away from him. Once was walking him down some other street in San Francisco, late at night, and a drunk got throw right out the door of a bar, right into me. Timmy went shutzhund on him, barking and lunging and biting and all 20 some pounds of him keeping that drunk guy at bay. Guy never knew what hit him. Me and Timmy, we did stuff like that for eachother.


Don't really know what else to tell you. Timmy has been everywhere I have in the last almost 16 years. Been through a slew of careers and back again. Lived in cities and forests and ranches and by the beach. Ate a bunch of pancakes and tacos and burger and fries the last few days. I know he needed to be all done with this life but doesn't make it any easier yet. I hope he finds Princess Di and Kurt and my sister and Anthony whose triple expensive Italian couch he peed on once and they all hang out together sometimes, walking up a long beach somewhere at low tide, watching him run in the water and chase birds, barking like a maniac, waiting til I get there too someday. That's what I need to believe.

In his world, we are the ghosts and he is trying to be.

Timmy walks up to the open back door, I can see him from up on a ladder where I'm painting a ceiling out back. I am so weirdo obsessive about painting and stupid underpainting colors with plaster and I don't know when I'll ever get the damn thing done. I hate these colors now. He walks up to the back door, and stands there and looks surprised for a moment. Then blank. Looks to his right, his eyes open wide again, just surprised for a moment, then keeps standing there and sniffs the air. Then lets out a big sigh, only sound he really makes now, and eyes go back to cloudy, not seeing. Stands very, very still in the doorway, not moving for a bit. Not sure what he was seeing there. Could he see out the door to where I was on the ladder? Did he just think of something and smell the air?

I sort of wave my arm, sometimes he can see motion. Maybe playing with fire because sometimes he just without warning flings himself down the porch steps. Lands in a roll and always finds a way to stumble off. I wave my arm around because it's been a while since he's tried a step launch, now just waits to be carried down. So he just stands there without moving, except sometimes the head turn. Always turns right, standing in the doorway. Remember Timmy, all the time I used to spend up on ladders with a paintbrush? We both always had paint in our hair. And you would just lay there and wait for however long it took to finish. Days, weeks, months, and you were so good about not stepping in paint. No dogs since have that concept that you don't step in the paint. Sometimes chewed up the ends of paint brushes is all.

I go over and carry him down the steps and let him spin around in the yard for a while, he bumps into plants. You can't let him do that for long because he'll get stuck and the get anxious and the spinning becomes frantic panting which might start up a panic attack. Have been trying to keep those from happening. At night, when they seem likely, instead of tranquilizing him, now I try to stay up, carrying him in and out, trying to figure out what it is that thing that would make him happy. Sit with him, or just sit near him to send psychic brain waves that I'll keep him safe and wake him up from this shadowless world he inhabits now. It doesn't seem so bad, sleeping a couple hours then getting up at 1 or 2am and staying awake with him, just me and him while everyone else is asleep. But I think he doesn't see it like that. Even my touch makes him twitch and recoil, like we're all ghosts and he's not sure where we're coming from. He see's dead people and maybe they are me. I think all he knows is he is lost inside our house again and can't find his way out.

When Timmy was young, every morning we walked to the duck pond and along this landscaped path near a creek. I didn't think much that it was a bad thing to let him chase the ducks. I am pretty sure this wasn't a sanctioned acitivity at the duck pond, but no one was every around there as early as me. He'd pull and bark and run all the way down the duckpond. "High strung" was how some people described Timmy when I first got him. And every morning, off we went, down the grassy lawn, possibly was a no dogs allowed grassy lawn, and off he ran, down to the manmade pond, and all the ducks flew up in a burst and he'd run around and around and around. Sometimes couldn't catch him, would just sort of hang out and wait til he was all run out and hope no duck lovers show up til ducks all flown and then we'd walk back or down that path a ways.


Today we just walked up to the corner. Past super old and deaf Richard's who still drives house, past the house that looks like a mobile home but isn't with people who have a baby but we never see, past the vacant rental house with the nice gardener and a jaguar statue on the porch. Real slow, brought along just Otterpop. Takes a while to walk past those 3 houses. He walks a few steps, stands there and looks around. Like he's not on our street anymore, I don't know where he is. He stopped under this low tree shaped like a lollipop they all like to sniff around and just stayed there. Eyes vacant, was sunny and breezy and not too much smoke in the air. Stood still a while til I turned him and walked back the 3 houses or so to our driveway, where he stopped, turned toward the street. Everything so hazy until I slowly walked him back up the driveway and carried him into the house.

It is so hard to get nice tourist shots of black dogs.

When we drove to Colorado a buncha years ago, we drove by this sign that said Goblin Valley. Maybe this was in Utah. It was somewhere hot. But how do you pass up a place called Goblin Valley? We totally went there. It was this giant desert covered with blobby little red rock formations that looked like little goblins. Possibly disapointing in that no actual goblins, but I do believe it was one of the groovier places we discovered on that trip in the scenic nature genre. It must have been 6 zillion degrees, but the dogs just went nuts in there. Tearing around the goblins in the heat.

I think Ruby was a newish friend for Timmy. Seems weird we only had 2 dogs, and before that just Timmy.

Black dogs driving across the desert in the summer. We spent a lot of time looking for shade in places where there wasn't a lot of it. It's just what you do when you have black dogs.

In this episode, cable tv helps us wax on wax off.

So we had to get this new cable thing at my house. I am not really the one in charge of these decisions. It is sort of like when a new bicycle appears in this special hut we constructed called the bike shed. There are many, many bikes residing in this palace of sorts, and it was not really my decision to purchase them. They just multiply and collect in there. Like are breeding and I believe the technical term for some of them is other than just bike. Is something like Bike. But you know how that old saying goes. There are too many damn dogs around here and people who live in dog houses shouldn't throw rocks at the guy on the bike.

The new cable thing was purchased due to sports. What happened was the Giants, who you can spot from the orange and black lettering on their uniforms that look like fluffy bunny legged pajamas, changed their channel. And lost Barry Bonds. The Giants are the favorite show in my house. But you are not supposed to call them a show. Even though they live in the tv and are on all the time on their special channel, are not a show. Are REAL. This is an argument that could go on for days, trust me on that one. Real or show, real or show? A show with a ball built on the backs of buckets of billions of dollars. Karl Marx would certainly have something to say about the baseball show.

But mostly, is a show that gets screamed at way more than bad dogs. Not normal screaming. Yelling, horrible brutal sounds guttering out of certain family members who should not be named but I will just say are actually my husband who is usually a perfectly nice guy except during his show on his special channel. During the show, these sounds come out of him. Like maybe they sound like elevators being cut off their cable, the loud hydraulic whoosh then screeching and sliding then plummeting and clanking. And smashing and breaking and slapping and flapping.

The Giants, we believe, are having a bad time on the Giants show. I do not think this is a healthy, glowing channel to watch and generally makes everyone that watches it cross and snitchy and drives the watchers to drink. Especially if someone turns off the sound tries to demonstrate how Snoop Dogg dances in his Long Beach ghetto cowboywear when he is channeling Johnny Cash. Also, fyi, apparently dog agility has nothing on the Giants show, even though one may be participatory and one may be directed soley at the consumer. But also dopestick pimpin on a one trick pony isn't neccessarily a nice thing to say or imagine and if you're not producing the culture, you're just consuming it. So there.

So anyways, along with this special Giants channel, we inherited a new one known as HGTV. Do you have this channel?

On any given time, you switch from the screaming channel to this channel, and you will be soothed by some kind of show where either a bald guy with earrings or a tall blond lady or a tall blonde guy with earrings will waltz around a house with some swatches, talk about the power of neutral, rich colors, and take some really crappy tract house house with R11 siding and make it look like a Pottery Barn catalog. It usually takes exactly one half of an hour to do this neutral, non taxidermy magic, and when it's over, a new bald or blonde or whoever person comes on a does it again. Or sometimes they are shopping for a house or trying to sell one but it's all about the neutral colors and rich colors and shuffling around the furniture.

No matter how smokey it was at your work, how much your back hurts from sitting on certain horses, or how late you stayed awake the night before watching out for an old sick dog, if you switch on this magic channel you will be soothed into a sound sleep on the couch. Pottery Barn catalogs used to be the thing of nightmares in my life, but now having a whole channel of them is soothing and perhaps a bit like living in purgatory. There are no shadows in purgatory, right? At least the coffee tables and classy candles bolted onto neutral toned walls and contrasting throw pillows don't make me wake up twitching and retching, now just send me into a trance when they break out the circular saw and start cutting something up to be the new shelving unit. Because all the blondes and balds tote around their own carpenter, who is usually a hottie if a retro and ironic t-shirts from Abercrombie dingle your dangle.

But I guess what we take from our different preferences in Spectacle, I mean show, are one might be sort of more real time, and even if it makes you scream and holler, is not a taped delay. And having your show in the real time might make you more in the present. Where you might have to look at who all is in their own little ugly tract house of purgatory, and where no neutral colors gonna paint you out of it. Isn't right to exist in a land with no shadows. You gotta actually take a cold, hard look at the unpleasant staring you in the face, or staring off in the distance at a wall with a panicky look. When someone's days are reduced to never, no more rainbows, they might have had enough days. Maybe then, they get the rainbows or their own special Paradiso. Rainbow bridge crap and all that.

Right? What was I getting at here? Let's just step away from that HGTV channel for now, I guess is what I'm saying. Let's just turn that cable off for now and come out of Spectacle and just come over here in the Real because that's what it's time for right now.

Where you didn't think there was danger before.

When I got home from work last night, the house was really empty. Some punk rock show on the college radio station I leave on for Timmy to have a friend all day. Even though he's deaf. But no Timmy laying on the floor or pacing back and forth or dancing in a puddle of pee. We looked. You can tell Ruby to Go Get Timmy and she always does. But she didn't. Was like he was gone. Not a peep anywhere. I worried maybe Gary forgot him outside when he came home to take care of him at lunch, but wasn't outside either. Started looking under things for stuckness. He has sometimes gotten stuck at night under furniture and it is a sad thing to happen to a dog, mistakenly wedged under a couch or a cabinet where dogs don't fit and where dogs don't belong.

Yes. Was stuck. All the way wedged under my giant heavy armoire in the bedroom. Couldn't see much but little tufts of fur that maybe came off in the tussle with himself to undo what he did. Must have slid out on the slick hardwood floor and slid right under then that was that. Stuckness. It's a beautiful old primitive armoire, heavy distressed pine boards, roughly painted white and holds all my clothes just about. Sits a few inches off the ground and he was just flattened under there, on his side, soaked in pee. Like was quite a million evil clowns in a volkswagen trick to get under there but tricky he is. Started pulling and could feel he was still warm and breathing. Pulled him out enough to see his eyes, just kind of vacant but maybe a glimmer of relief. Pulled the rest of him out gently, not sure what I was going to get, but he was weirdly calm, had a eerily calm bath, and sat with him outside under the creepy orange light from the latest mountain fire up the hill from my house so he could dry off in the air.

We have veered off the dog agility course again.

All right my friends! Did I open the can of whoopass or what? You guys keep hashing it out in there about the AKC. I will surely stay out of that for now because for all I know, you are all lawyers or in law school and boy have I learned not to get in an argument with you attorney types because of the whole whoopass thing. Here are a couple little things I thought you might like to hear today.

Yesterday afternoon, I went to a memorial service for a super beloved elderly neighbor who died last month. She was one of those ladies who was sharp as a tack into her upper '80's and who lived a wild and eccentric lifestyle, most of which I didn't know about until the stories came tumbling down at the memorial. I just lived across the street from her for about 10 years and used to help her out with little things that someone in their 80's might need help with. And contribute to her wicked addiction to high end candy bars. Her memorial was up on someone's property in the mountains, and opened up with a bagpiper in a kilt marching super slow through the property, playing some of her favorite bagpipe tunes. I had no idea people had favorite bagpipe tunes, maybe some of you do and you are also attorneys and off you can go about that!

So have you ever been in close proximity to a bagpiper? He has on a kilt and knee socks and he blows on a tube in the side of his mouth that fills up the bags I guess and plays a little keyboard attached to the whole crazy looking rig and the sound is pretty unique. He had to be careful walking under the oak trees because those pipes kept whacking the branches, and somehow he could keep bagpiping and walking with his tiny little steps and tree branch smacking all at once. And someone had their dog in their truck parked up near the ceremony, and eventually, that dog figured out this was howling music and I thought, thank god I did not bring the small dogs and park up here and be racing out of this beautiful ceremony and down to the car hissing "STOP IT NOW YOU BEASTS!"

So there were so many pictures and stories and it was actually a happy event in so many ways to remember her and for some of us who didn't know her so well to hear about her colorful and wild past. And the photos, all these old photos when she was a young girl and so very beautiful and photos of the people who spoke when they were kids and now they were grandpas and grandmas. You look in the mirror sometimes and you wonder how that is going to work out, then you see a grandpa in his clean navy blue sneakers and checkered shirt and baggy khaki pants and his socks sort of falling down, and his photo from the time they had to sneak around the great aunts to clean up the whiskey bottles and cigarette butts and you wonder how that was ever possible. And you are thinking, maybe he had those same sneakers on THEN too? And now his head is so wide and speckled and he can only move with tiny little steps like the bagpiper.

So we stayed a little longer than we thought we would, and were late for Timmy and there he was, spinning around and had an accident and was just there still spinning when we walked in the door. Boy did I feel bad for Timmy. The only way he can show you he is upset is by spinning and panting and pacing and when it's really upset, turn into running and bashing into things. He's had a few bad days again, Timmy, days that might end up with a tranquilizer and I ask him again, "You still OK here? You still want to stay?" Maybe he can't answer just then, but then later on he might come and lay down under my chair and collapse there with his head on my foot.


I found this picture of Timmy. It might look like I am training him, but I think what I am doing is having an art show. Except for that Karl is somewhere off camera, doing all the work because likely a motor is broken, and it is likely in the middle of the night and likely the show opens the next day. And Timmy was at every moment of every art show, sometimes sleeping in a corner on a piece of cardboard while I was up on shakey, half assed scaffolding I made myself out of ladders and a table and a trash can lid painting a wall pattern or maybe he was running around barking for no good reason except we were boring him or maybe he was being a model dog, in the actual opening where probably no dogs were actually allowed.

Here is a whole thing on an agility blog about not doing any agility.

For the first time ever, I guess, I bailed on agility all week. I didn't stop at the field to practice. I did no weave poles or contacts in the driveway. We're on a hiatus from Dirt Nite for a few weeks. I'm not going to practice on the way out to work today. I just want to spend that extra little bit of time around the house with Timmy. He seems to be perkier in the morning so maybe it helps him if me and the other dogs are around for just a few minutes longer before we drive out to work. Not sure. But that's just how we're playing it this week. It sort of creeps me out, like what is my next phase in all this? Like then I have to start canceling work and not leaving the house and dragging Timmy around in a baby stroller and never get out of my bathrobe and stacking newspapers in towers all around my house? Whispering to strangers the life story of Timmy, Best Dog, with a sort of glazed over look in my eyes?

I think I might be playing mental voodoo roulette about him. Like if I leave 25 minutes later for work, when I get home tonight he will be 67% better! If I skip agility practice, he will notice and be so thankful that he will be able to walk and see the stairs he is about to fall down. If he spends an additional 15 minutes around the other dogs, he will be revived to a more youthful status, say that of 3 weeks ago. This is probably not a healthy way of thinking. Is probably sort of grasping at straws. Apparently I am at the graspy stage of dealing with the future of not having Timmy, a future that just seems so very sad. Is sort of like when you are driving, and you think for a moment, death is the best thing for him. His quality of life is very low, he doesn't do anything he used to enjoy. It is time. I am OK with this. And then, in a blazing second later, as soon as you think I am OK with this, then you think, I am Not OK with this. I am not going to end the life of him if he wants to have some more life even if it is a peeing on the floor and dancing around in the puddle kind of life then running top speed across the kitchen floor and crashing into a wall. Then unable to walk 5 minutes later faster than a drunken shuffle like an old guy sitting in front of the Vets Hall with a cold one in a brown bag. Who drops the beer and starts to yell to no one in particular about something incomprehensible but possibly involving South American rodents. Little dribblets of saliva all over his chin.

Like yeah. He is crazy. He is a mess. But really. He used to be someone else, and he's still here, and maybe we need to just let him hang on a little bit longer. Because no one is talking about euthanizing the drunk guy in front of the Vets Hall. All the old folks we visit in the old folks home, they aren't who they used to be. But we let them go on and live out their lives, even if they are sort of weird and crappy lives that really suck compared to who they used to be. This is not Logan's Run. Remember? Farrah Fawcett is in that. And at the very end, instead of everyone dying before they get old, they find out they actually get to live to become old homeless guys sitting in front of the Vets Hall with a beer. I think the sun comes up on their Logan's Run future city like it's a new day. It's just a new day that someday is going to really, really suck.

He is our own ghost, but he is not so much like Casper.

Timmy is still here. His lows are lower and his highs are pretty uneventful. But I have this idea that he doesn't quite yet want to go. I listen at night for the fast little clack clack clack of his too long toenails pacing around on the floor. We keep all the lights on all night like we are having a fun and super party so he can see as he makes his circuits around the house. Sometimes I wash the floor at 2am if he couldn't wait for me to get him out. Then I never know if he's going to sleep or frantically make his circuits again. Too frantic and I tranquilize him when it seems neccessary.

I take him out to the yard and sit with him in the night. You have to watch him so he doesn't get stuck and start to freak out. I sit on our porch steps at 3am and see cats, or shady guys up at the payphone at the corner store. I don't think he can really see hardly anything at all. Sometimes one of the other dogs will walk up to him and he looks like he's seeing a ghost. They don't seem to know what to do with him anymore and pretty much treat him like the ghost, as if he wasn't there.

A walk up to the corner isn't so fun anymore, it takes about 10 minutes to go past 3 houses. The list of things he can't do keeps growing, but then later on he seems content to just lay there at my feet. This kind of Timmy means I stay up a lot of the night. During the day it's like I'm the ghost now with the fuzzy memory and slow moving. Except I'm allowed to drive a car.

We have a winner of the contest now.

Well, hmm. That was some kind of a contest. Mary was the only one who could find any kind of sign from the tall husbands on the right, but Lexi was an excellent reader of signs and I do believe hers makes perfect totally insane sense. But that is the kind of sense that works for me so Lexi will soon be adding a beautiful portrait on a neighbor note to her collection of paintings from back when Laura Hartwick was an artist. Maybe this one joins the refrigerator art. My friends who enjoy Team Small Dog cooking shows would probably like her yelling and boozy cooking show, Marsha Hubert.


But I do thank all of you for the very nice ideas and emails and concerns. I know. We have all been here. I have with other animals too. It's always different and it always sucks. But it's Tuesday and Timmy is still with us and Lexi says his Spirit Guide is a Slug and we'll just go with that for now. They're slow, so Timmy is just slow. And all of you who are worried about him going in to the vet and such, don't worry. It's all handled. And I will not be taxidermying him myself. I swear. Timmy will not have to go to the afterlife stuffed and mounted or freeze dried or cryogenically preserved.


Have you ever been driving through Utah and there is the Hole in the Rock cave tour? I prefer visiting places like this over scenic natural beauty when traveling. The kinds of places that have their own bumper stickers and turquoise jewelry in a case and usually involve caves or snakes or things in jars that one usually doesn't find in jars. Albert Christensen, the man who made his home in a cave that he kept blasting and chiseling out of a mountain to add rooms, learned to taxidermy himself on his beloved pet burros. With visible stitching. When you go there to visit, you will see them. Albert was a man who knew what he was looking for, and he blasted and stitched his way to that thing until he died, back in the '50's when his cave turned into a roadside attraction.


I wish I had a giant mountain for Timmy. And I would paint on it, in giant white letters, HELLO TIMMY. And I would get Joel Warner to chisel a portrait of Timmy out of the mountain, with giant chisels and blasting powder, and the portrait would be Timmy except he'd be the size of a motorhome. Up there on the mountain. No. He would be BIGGER than a motorhome. He would be the size of my house. Exactly to scale. And I would drive by on my very own giant backhoe, and see him up there, every day. I would have skills in grading, and I would dig out flat paths and places for us all to dig up gems. Someone asked, would I save a lock of his hair? His collar and tags? Well, yeah. And figure out a monument for him that has the grandeur of a steamboat sized stone dog, careening down a mountain with boulders and white letters more beautiful than even the Hollywood sign or the biggest floating donut sign in the world.

Waiting for a sign.

Augh. It is too morose. And morose isn't fun. And you know I'm all about Fun. Life goes on. Jenna Bush got married! My mom's roses have something like slugs which is not slugs but seems like slugs! The whole former Burma debacle with cyclones and military dictatorships and such! And here I am. Just waiting for some kind of green light in a crystal ball that says, "Hey, It's a SUPER time to euthanize your dog RIGHT NOW!"

So, like I so dramatically told you I would do yesterday, I thought maybe it would be a sign if I took Timmy up to Pogonip, where he used to love to walk. And the sign would be that he'd perk up, and sniff the air, and a spark would come back into his eye and it would be a sign that he has a lot more days, rather than fewer days. I'm rubbing my hands together, I'm rolling those dice and I'm ready for my sign Now!

So we packed up all the dogs and drove them up the hill. Pogonip is a green belt of open space; redwood forests and old oak meadows. It borders on the University and some Nice neighborhoods and people with homes in the neighborhood run in there and homeless people make their homes in the forests there. Maybe you might remember the old Pogonip club house down at the bottom near Goodwill Bargain Barn from the Lost Boys. A big event when that was filmed in Santa Cruz back in the '80's. I am featured in it as an extra, although you can't see me because I'm in a car driving by and it's dark and the vampires are on the motorcycles and I don't think I ever even saw me in it. I still think vampires and Corey Feldman when I think Pogonip. So dogs go on leashes in Pogonip unless they don't then maybe they get a ticket. From the City ranger, not the State Parks ranger.

And we park up at the end of the Nice street, 20 yards from the trail head. In front of a Nice house. It's a Nice area. More square footage per garage than my whole house. Big front yards with professional landscaping. Milguard windows. No junker trucks and whole families packed into trailers in driveways. We get the dogs out, takes a moment because Timmy is slow and make our way to the path and start down the path. It's a sunny day and couples are out walking their dogs and the women all have sensible sun hats and the dogs are all golden retrievers. On the way there, Gary wanted to listen the to the Giant's game but I made him listen to songs from the Timmy playlist on the ipod because we are waiting for a sign and that seemed like a useful way to see it, me being knowledgeable of the gypsy ways for sign searching and all.

We make it about 20 more yards down the trail and Timmy has a panic attack. In front of golden retrievers and moms for mother's day and I have to grab him up and tell everyone walk is over after a grand total of about 3 minutes that's that. Back we go to the car. So much for a sign. So much for the whole Timmy standing in the meadow business and maybe a hawk will fly over in the breeze and spirit guide in a can anyone? I am restraining a squirming bundle of panic in my arms and people are looking and we just need to be back in the car and get home.

So there's this note on my windshield when we return to the car after our big 5 minute walk. Aha! It is a sign! Is my first thought. Or it is a fan letter of Team Small Dog! is my second thought. Or third thought is just some flyer about a fish fry. I have all those thoughts almost all together. Sometimes I think fast. Rarely when I need to. Gary has the small dogs and he pulls the note off and I am holding the panic attack and he shows me the note. Printed out from the computer in a stately Times New Roman, 14pt, double spaced. Which says:

Please keep the volume of your tunes down (and keep your dogs quiet) when you park in the neighborhood. We can hear the noise clearly from inside our houses.

Thanks for your cooperation.
The neighbors

Some f**ing sign and you know how I get when someone tells me what to do that is plain craziness from neighborhood facism. My mind gets this weird japanese animation image of thunderbolts and spinning teacups and speed racer and astronauts and robots hurling things all in red and black and giant eyes and screaming. That's all I see for a moment then all I can do is, swaddling my panic attack tightly in my arms, holler, "This is a public street and public land and this is normal neighborhood noise. This was normal neighborhood noise and now it is not because what kind of insanity comes from..."

I am cut off. Gary is shoving me and my big mouth into the car. I have Timmy on my lap. I can tell you exactly what Tunes I had on conservative volume when we pulled up. The Mescaleros Silver and Gold, a slow and quiet song with strumming guitars and HARMONICAS for gods sake. You know the first thing I did when we started the car to leave. Put on Led Zeppelin and put it on LOUD and put down all the windows and Gary is trying to get us out of there fast before I get in a fight with some neighbors because I stick my head out the window and start hollering something, I don't know what now, about crackhead asshole neighbors because the animae is still running in there and I am just mad.

So we got him home. Back down to our neighborhood where you can have your Tunes on whatever volume you want and everyone is ok with pretty much whatever you want to do until it involves guns. Or leaving their dump truck in front of your house for a week when they're on a surf trip using up all the parking spaces. Timmy was ok after I got him back in the house and let him bounce off the walls for a while and pumped some treats into him. I'm not really sure if I got a sign or not now. I kept looking for one the rest of the day and you know, he just slept and paced and the only thing out of the ordinary that happened was I went to the grocery store, and the husbands of people I know kept appearing to my right, saying hi and how you doing and they were all really tall. By the third time this happened. I was sort of dumbstruck and just stared at the guy like I am in a fog and tell him how the tofurkey is on sale and he meanders off and I'm like, HELLO, maybe that's the sign? The husbands and their tallness and always appearing in a grocery aisle to my right, peering down into my basket and asking hows it going?

So here's what I ask you, if you made it to the end of this story. I never know if you do. If you can tell me if THAT was a sign, and what it meant, I have a nice note from a neighbor for you, with a hand drawn by a former artist portrait of team small dog for you on it. Comment me your thoughts, and if you win you send me your real and genuine address and I send you some real and genuine former art. Maybe was worth something once, probably ain't worth nothin' now, but you deserve a prize for being a better gypsy than me.

I don't have words to give this a title.

When Timmy walks, his legs don't bend anymore. So the reason he shuffles is he moves each leg very slowly at the shoulder and either slides it across the ground or lifts it an impercetible height, brings it forward, and lowers it down and ahead. This takes a long time to do, and when he is doing it to spin in tiny circles for no reason I can figure it out, gives the impression of a little toy bear that is short circuiting in some kiosk at a second rate mall with dirty tile floors but no one can figure out how to turn off so they just let it stay on. Not great advertising for those little toy bears but it's that kind of mall. He spins, gently bumps in to a wall or piece of furniture or a planter, redirects like a pin ball in the slowest and most broken and dusty pin ball machine that no one ever uses tucked into a corner at a desert roadhouse under the taxidermy, and begins to spin again. To lay down, he finds a patch of slick floor and just lets his legs slide and fall, and he goes down with a thump. It's almost graceful for a moment, a short legged ballerina covered in pee stained black fur, then he hits hard, and sighs, and rests in a heavy way, eyes open but we believe to be asleep.

We saw a movie last night called the Visitor, about a depressed and lonely man in New York who becomes a really good friend under weird and sort of improbable circumstances. The man's name is Walter and he reminded me a little of Timmy in his quietness and politeness and slow, robot ways and I think you might like this movie, you will look the other way when it gets shallow and contrived because you like the characters. It involves guys sitting around drumming in the park which, if you are driven crazy by all the guys drumming in the park and the street in Santa Cruz, involves a suspension of reality and irritation for a bit to make sure you like the drummers in the movie because they're the good guys, not the irritating, balding hippies that make your ears bleed here. I liked the movie, drummers and all, and didn't come anywhere near to falling asleep in it, even though I was stressed out about leaving Timmy alone at night since he had never wanted to get up to eat dinner or take his walk to the corner and back.

The movie didn't have a happy ending, I'll tell you that now because I'm that kind of person, but I won't tell you why. Our friend Walter, who is bald in a very touching way, doesn't die in the movie though. No one does. Not that kind of ending. It was one of those hard endings with a bit of redemption and renewing, but in a saddish way because of US government immigration policies. So a bit of happy but a bigger bit of sad. A great shot at the end sums up that kind of ending neatly and elegantly and then the screen goes back and you go home and make sure Timmy is ok. Which he was. I got him to eat some dinner and he had not had an accident and seemed content to be left with all his dogs.

I guess I should tell you I am trying to make sure Timmy does as many things as he used to like right now. I will take him up to Pogonip today and carry him out a ways into the meadow and let him stand there. He'll have some pancakes. I just sit with him when he rests and put my hand under his head. I guess I should tell you I don't believe that his life is measured in years or months any longer. I believe that it is measured in days right now. I can't count them, I don't know how many there are. But it is probably a number that we will count to a lot quicker than we ever believe is possible.

A walk around my block in haiku.

homeless guy with your
big growling rottweiler
wants to bite my dogs

girl in your white car
drives way too fast on my street
loves playboy bunnies

you are gardening
and your ass is in my way
i guess you can't move

drunk guy on his porch
AA pamphlets on view
will always say hi

shiney land rover
grateful dead stickers on it
don't know who drives it

this part of the block
has many cats and squirrels
small dogs scream and pull

abandoned old car
spray painted bright neon green
no one will tow you

we have lots of time
to think about syllables
timmy barely walks

It is easy to just pretend Courtney Love is Laura.

In Marfa, you should have your dogs on a leash only if you are visiting the Marfa Prada. It is on a highway. It is some Art. Even though I believe it may not be on a busy highway, if any of your dogs tend to chase trucks, you might as well leash 'em up there. But everywhere else, I believe it's ok to just let 'em run.

This is what I look like most every morning when I walk around the block. Today it involved the Timmy shuffle backwards and forwards, Ruby sort of 3 legging it, Otterpop REALLY disgruntled about going slow, and Gustavo howling and flying at cats and squirrels. Because you know on a day like this, you will see EVERY cat and EVERY squirrel. And, just when you think it can't get a lot worse than that, a lady with a reactive dog walks up to us. Otterpop, who usually is not reactive to other dogs or leashes, starts to react to her already melting down dog. The lady stops. Right in front of us. Wearing a flowery sun hat with a string around her chin to wedge it tightly on her head. And says, "Oh, is one of your dogs like that TOO?"

I have this insane clown posse of a pack either shuffling, 3 legging it, howling and flinging, or growling and pulling. And hers is lunging towards my whole mess.

I sort of look at her, thinking, well, she is a smart lady no doubt. Just move along, smart lady from around the corner with your own dog problems to take care of. Kind of a no brainer. Bad dog lunging=move away smart lady with your ugly ass hat.

But no. She inches closer. I believe to chat about our dogs. I back up. This is just too much of a circus to have some kind of weird leashy dog fight start. Otterpop has a rockin' Leave It and she does that and comes in to her close position. The lady is staring at me, wanting to chat about bad dogs I guess. I just need to keep this rolling party of freaks moving. I have eye contact of love with Otterpop so she stares at me and not at the bad dog that is calling her out and throwing out some Them is Fighting Words.

Likely, Otterpop is bodyguarding Timmy, a new development we got with Timmy's descent into the decrepit. In a sweetly endearing, yet frightening and pack-like way, Otterpop protects Timmy against all evil these days. If I take Timmy somewhere, I take Otterpop. We had a couple of bad Timmy days this week, horrible panic attacks where something unknown scared the pants off of him and he was literally climbing the walls until I could jam tranquilizers down his gullet and corral him in a padded cell until he jonesed his way down. Otterpop stayed by his side the whole time, his calm in the storm, just me and her waiting it out with him when he didn't know us from the furniture he was bashing into.

Hat lady with the dog finally assumes I am a mute freak with my freak show of black dogs and makes her way down the street, away from me, tugging her own lunging bad dog along behind her.

Wave real hard when you see Timmy.

I haven't been telling you much about Timmy lately. See, some of you, my friends, are new friends and you love to hear about agility. And some of you just love me for my Project Runway. But some of you remember back, before the days of agility, when there was Timmy. And he didn't drift along in a fog, and he would likely bark at you and run around in circles and do some tricks.

That seems like it was a long time ago. When you look into his foggy eyes and you see, well, just fog, it's hard to remember the old Timmy. Not for me, but if you were to just see him shuffling along on the street, and then falling off the curb into the gutter and leaping up and starting to fly around on the end of his leash like a jacked up wolverine, you would probably never believe me how he used to be.

Here's the part where you good dog trainers can go tsk-tsk-tsk at the kind of dog trainer I used to be. When I got Timmy, I was in the part of my life where I quit riding horses. I "Lived" in a big warehouse that was also my art studio where you weren't supposed to live. I slept on a futon on top of a packing crate in the corner, and kept some big paintings over my little corner so no one really could tell. Timmy came from the kind of animal shelter that didn't really check on stuff like you don't have a real address. And he was so sad and pathetic and afraid of people, yet high strung and barky at the same time that I think anyone that would take him was one step better than the inevitable euthanization that was just down the road. So Timmy came home with me and learned from an early age that dogs are not allowed to step in paint or eat pieces of motors or plastic flowers. And that was pretty much it for rules from me. He had his own rule that if someone comes in with a motorcycle helmet and their keys on a big fat chain, to run and hide under a table and not come out.

Timmy was a Go Everywhere dog. He went everywhere with me, and a lot of places with his old friend Toby, another dog that sort of "Lived" in the warehouse. If he wasn't with me in my studio, riding around in a milk crate on the back of my bike, or sitting in the front of my truck, he was off with Toby on adventures such as The Time the Dogs Tried to Get on the City Bus By Themselves or The Time The Dogs Crossed the Busy Street to Join a Fraternity By Themselves or The Time The Dogs Discovered That The People That Work In The Kitchen of the Coffee House Will Always Feed Them Muffins When They Show Up in The Kitchen By Themselves. Those are all true stories and Timmy lived through them all.

The only training class he took was once with this old guy, who was The Guy you went to near San Francisco to take dog classes with at the time. He tried to sell me a pinch collar and wanted me to throw a coke can with pennies inside at Timmy. Like so not the me and Timmy vibe. So I just trained him tricks like Dancing Dog and How to Look Like Princess Diana and that was pretty much it. I just took him everywhere with me at a time when I was an artist having art shows and then being a graphic designer that somehow understood What the Kids wanted, because if you were that kind of graphic designer and artist you could get away with bringing your fluffy black dog into all kinds of places. And if no dogs were allowed, say, at a casino in Reno when you were there to see Johnny Cash, well, Timmy fit neatly into a duffle bag and knew when to keep his trap shut. The most agility he ever learned was to do one jump and one tunnel then just get some treats. It wasn't really his thing.


Timmy's been with me for 15 years. Every single day of his life since he was about 6 months old, except for once when Karl took care of him and he thought he was being kidnapped and sat by the door for the whole weekend. Oh yeah, and Camille took care of him one week when I went to Paris and he barfed on her zebra rug and she gave him to Charlie and Brody. I can't really tell how much time I have left with Timmy. Maybe months, maybe years. He had his first ever accident last night. No matter how sick and frail and dementia-y he's been, I've always been able to wake up to know somehow I need to get Timmy out, even if he's not scratching on a wall that he perceives to be a door. I just seem to know. So that freaked me out. Somehow he was lucid enough to know to go pee on the bathroom rug. The only other time I remember peeing in the house was on Halloween at our old house, and the boys came in the living room in rubber Ronald Regan type masks and he peed all over Gary's wall of records, on that old red carpet with the horsehair carpet pad.


I just thought I'd give Timmy a reason to look so surprised. He just looks like that sometimes and then maybe will go crashing through the house and slam into a wall. Also because that's so Juvenile Photoshop 2.1 and guess who was laying there by my side, when I was right there with Photoshop 2.1. Putting extra arms and warts and stuff on the whole art history database when I was supposed to just color correct. Yep. That was a long time ago.

Timmy goes for a ride.

Last night, while me and the small dogs were all at Dirt Nite, Gary tried to take Timmy for a ride in the car. Timmy started the ride by launching from the back of his car-it's a Volvo wagon-straight forward, through the seats, into the dash. Wham. He pulled over, put him in the back again. He seemed ok. He went a couple miles and then all of a sudden, Timmy had this total freakout of flying around in the back, bouncing off the walls and the ceiling and the windows and barking (he never barks anymore-since he's been old, he just stopped barking). Just total, batshit crazy flying around in the back.

Like remember the molecule ride at Disneyland? Where they shrink you in your little haunted mansion wagon? And you enter the land of the atoms and they are flinging themselves about, creating fission or fusion or a nuclear explosion or some kind of Monsanto chemical? And the molecule ride is gone now, replaced with something fancier. He was like an atom. Flinging and smashing, trying to make something happen.

So he pulled over and kind of grabbed him somehow from the front seat and just held on to him til he settled down. It took about 5 minutes and he was only a few blocks from our house but he was afraid to drive with him. Finally it seemed like he de-freaked, so he drove home. Timmy couldn't stop pacing and freaking out. But as soon as I got home around 10 with the other dogs, he seemed normal. Which for Timmy now, is pretty bizarre and demented head in the mailbox most of the time but it just sort of seems normal now.

All we can think is he couldn't see when he was in the car because it was dark, got freaked out and if he's not with the other dogs he just totally loses any sense of reality and his mind explodes of freakout. If it's dark, and he can't see, then he gets demented and doesn't remember where he is and there's no other dogs around or me for a reality check, he just goes Helen Keller maybe. He's home alone all day without the other days when I'm at work, but he seems to just sleep in the day and kind of wakes up at night when we're all home. Poor Timmy. It's hard to be lonely and demented. At least he has his own whole herd of therapy dogs.

Dog Agility Fitness Challenge-a primer.

So remember how I will not show you the video from the Steeplechase Finals last week? Yeah. That's right. Because I made the dog hit a bar, blow a contact, and I looked really, really fat.

So next place we go is Madera in March. And I am not going to be so fat by then. Maybe I'll still make the dogs mess up, maybe Ruby will have a sore back, maybe Otterpop will be slow. But I am going to be skinny-er. Or at least less fat. So here's our new fitness regime. Of healthy exercise and diet. The diet part-let's get there later. But first, the exercise.


First of all. While checking the email, and doing the blog, there will be some madcap exercise. To get the blood flowing. In the fancy exercise studio. OK, the office. Well, OK, actually the spare bedroom with the piles of files and ugg boots and books. But there is a tiny patch of floor. We will jump! And twist! And listen to disco hits of the '70's until we are no longer so fat. It is important to exercise for more than one song-maybe a song by Gorillaz. Who are not even people that need to exercise but I believe are fictional animations. I don't get all that.


And we shall do some yoga stretching too. Right? Think about the cute yoga outfits available but only to the cute yoga girls. I go to yoga. Sometimes. Rarely. I went a few weeks ago. I wore sweatpants. I am wearing cowboy pajamas for my fitness challenge right now. Once we are skinny there could be tennis skorts and little capri pants with tiny tank tops that do not expose muffin guts that will make us feel chipper even when dogs are doing horribly at the dog show.


There is much dog assistance in the exercise. And my feet may get bit while they are doing a hip hop jig-like dance move. No one said this wouldn't be dangerous. Because it is the belief of the dogs that they should be on a dog walk. Which is sort of one of the exercise problems. I HATE leaving Timmy at home when I take the dogs somewhere. But he can walk about as fast as a 3 legged turtle pulling a birdhouse full of potatoes. We creep. We shuffle. And it burns absolutely no calories. In fast, I believe that walking Timmy actually adds calories to my self. Which is how the fat to skinny ration has grown against me this year. Of which I have actual scientific Proof.



So when it's time to go for a walk, everyone is waiting. They know. You have to wait for your name to get called or else it's mayhem.


Mayhem looks like this.


Except for Timmy. He doesn't know we are ready for the walk yet. Being nearly blind, completely deaf, and somewhat alzheimer's-esque in demeanor, he is still laying there. I'll go get him and carry him down the stairs. And off to the shuffle we go.

Team Small Dog Diet Tips coming soon!

I'm just getting rid of you today.

Timmy decided we all need to wake up at 4am today! Thanks Timmy! He has actually been having pretty good week, so if he wants us to all get up at 4am sometimes, then I just go along with it.

It was hard to go back to sleep due to the smoke filled house. Did you happen to drive by my house last night around 9pm? And you saw all the smoke pouring out of the house? And you probably saw me sitting on the porch drinking some wine, sort of deciding whether to weep, leave, or just drink some more wine. Because I forgot to clean the oven yesterday. After I forgot to read the pie recipe the day before. I have this recipe ISSUE. So I filled up most of the oven with the pie, instead of making a pie we could eat. So then when I made some dinner in the oven last night, our whole house was filled up with smoke all night! Do you see what happens when I actually cook? Thanks Take out Food!

Here. Go enjoy yourself on some other websites today.

How much do we enjoy this new agility hero? She has an ad for a seminar she is doing in Ohio next month in Clean Run and I saw this and maybe I can adopt her. http://www.silvia.trkman.net/

Read an article that features me that actually uses all my bad grammer in it. This is not glamourous, I can't believe I'm even telling you this, it's in the local dog club's newsletter and has little interviews with Rob and Dee and also me, all the agility teachers for their dog club. But it's something to read.

All right. Here's your last one. This girl seems to be a photographer who rides her vespa across the country and moved to a log cabin in Wyoming and started raising an abandoned coyote puppy. Wow! My life is so boring. http://dailycoyote.blogspot.com/

Timmy Best Dog.

I haven't been talking so much about Timmy lately. He had such a bad spell during the spring that I didn't know how much longer he'd be around. Which was almost to much to bear. But the new improved Timmy seems to be around to stay for a while, and every single day we have with him is a good day.

He gets a lot of pills. He thinks of them as cheeseballs. He loves to take his pills. He can walk all the way to the park now, without shaking too much or having to be carried home. He's got a little limp, but basically moves around just fine, unless he stumbles up a curb or forgets to use his legs going down some steps. His eyesight almost seems better, which a vet told me could from some of the cushings treatment. It may be that some severed blood vessels to his eyes have been able to re-attach, giving him a little more vision. We still stick real close to eachother at the park or at the beach, since I don't think he sees a whole lot. If he stops walking to sniff something or eat some seaweed, usually I have to go over and wave my hand in front of his face and yell real loud at him. And every so often, he gets a wild hair up his hairy butt and starts running around with the other dogs but in frantic little crazy circles all his own, until I catch him and convince him he might like just hanging out and watching them run instead.

His hearing is going, but there is some there for sure. You just have to talk real loud to him. He likes to spend his days laying on the floor or in his bed, and his nights going in and out the front door. I don't think it's because he really, really has to anymore, I think he's got access to someone that is glad to get up in the middle of the night and let him out, which he doesn't during the day when he's home alone. I'm used to it, and I'm happy to oblige him that one small thing.

He loves to be with the other dogs. Even if they are racing around him in circles, up and down stairs, thru the yard and back thru the house, and he is just sitting there in the middle of it. I hate keeping him seperated from them all day, but they are ranch dogs and he is a house dog. And now that he is walking so good, they always get to have their walks together, even if it's a hard day for him and the small dogs just walk around the block. I like the pack to stay tight.

I worry about him traveling, he's going to have to make some trips down to LA this month and that's a lot for him, but Timmy doesn't ever complain or whine or freak out. He's just happy to do what he needs to do. I just try to keep his life easy and stress free and medicated to whatever extent he needs. It was a little rough going to get him here, but in hindsight, boy am I glad I did. I can look over right now and see him. He sort of pops his head up out of his dog bed, with a confused look on his face and his cloudy little eyes. He's looking right at me, I am not sure what he sees or what he's thinking, but I'm pretty sure he's just making sure I'm sitting there too. If I keep sitting at the computer, he'll eventually get out of bed, shuffle over, and lay down outside the office door in a little while. Just to stay near.