Digging for Bear

Remember that post a while ago, with Bear inside of the Rubbermaid tub? Well, there were *other* videos taken that day. Videos with... ahem... MOI... in them. I'm the Princess, after all. If I ain't in it, it ain't happenin'. Bear is cute, yeah, we get that part. But he's Bear. And I'm ME.

So below, from the secret archives of Allison's camera, rescued from the darkest corners of obscurity, here I am, Digging for Bear:

An Eskie head in every pot

Mommy loves to cook. We love to watch. It's the "Cooking Show", complete with Smell-o-vision and sometimes samples for the audience.

We keep our toes just on the edge of the carpet, so that we are technically in the dining room. Eskies are good about figuring out the technical angles. Toenails can hang over the carpet, and noses can be a little farther into the kitchen, but anything else and Mommy says, "Dogs out!". The offending dog(s) creep back into the dining room and lost their good spot to the better behaved. When food hits the floor, however, it's every dog for themselves.

Sometimes the casserole, or whatever, gets really stuck to the baking dish. Mommy doesn't own a dishwasher (well, she actually owns three, but we aren't the kind of dishwasher she wants to use) A while ago, the lovely smell wafting from the oven was a Shepherds Pie. With LAMB. Real ground LAMB.

Nothing brings out the Wolf in a dog like lamb. It is an incredibly compelling smell, and it gets right into the dogs most primal neural network, causing all of the synapses to fire at once. I'm drooling just thinking about it. If they sold lamb on ebay, dogs would learn how to bid. Most dogs would figure out how to be smarter just to get some lamb.

Anyway, the Shepherds Pie often sticks to the baking dish. This time, in an excess of bonhomie and general good cheer, Mommy sat the dish down for us to clean. She doesn't do that often, but that means it's even more special. And if anyone is reading this who has, in the past, eaten at our house.. or who, in the future, may possibly do so...well, soap and good hot water do wonders. And if it really freaks you out, next time take Mommy out to dinner instead. You can bring us home the scraps.

So, the dish hit the floor, and we all three went for it. We never fight... we just sort things out in a growly, posturing way. Generally, Casper gets his first when it is food related. Casper is SERIOUS about food. He says that it's from his Mysterious Past, but then he stops talking and gets that Look. Like he's an ex-CIA agent and if he tells you, he would have to kill you. So we don't ask. He's just jerking our choke chain, so to speak. We think. Maybe.

Casper hogged the dish, this time, until he almost licked the glaze off of it. Maybe in the future Mommy will divide the Shepherds Pie into three smaller baking dishes, so that there can be an Eskie head in EVERY pot.

My Best Day

Life is good when you're a dog. Someone else hunts for the food, someone else picks up your poop, and Mommy randomly takes you Next Door to play in Granny and Gram's back yard.

Today started out like any other day... wrestling with Bear, then a nice nap, and barking at dogs walking by outside. Then we put our harnesses on, and went Next Door. We run and pull when we are going Next Door, it's so incredibly exciting. We never know what we will find there... food? Another dog to play with? A big party of family? Since no one tells us anything, going Next Door is always a surprise.

We were pleased to run in the yard, and then Mommy started the barbeque. The meat smelled so rich and... and... meaty. Pork spareribs, lots and lots of them! And the best part of this meat is that there were Bones. We hoped that they were the good kind of bones that we could have. Our whole focus changed from running around in the yard, to praying for bones.

Mommy pulled a piece off of the fire for us, before anyone else got to eat, and let it cool off. She wouldn't give us Bones, but she tore meat off and told us to dance for it. Boy did we! Bear wouldn't sit down, he was so enthralled with the smell.

After dinner, we took a Walk. Down to the beach! We love the beach, but Mommy doesn't take us very often because she can't handle all three of us. She should just let us off of our leashes... we know the way! But she's funny that way, she likes to control how fast we are going and which direction. People are so hard to understand sometimes.

The Allison puppy and her Thomas went with us. Allison took pictures of us having fun in the sand. I rolled in the sand and seaweed, which smelled just delightful. There were subtle nuances of dead fish, with a tickling of grey seal and dolphin, finishing with the scent of a yellow lab that had been by previously and rolled also. Then, I ran. And ran. and ran. Even Casper, fat thing that he is, ran and capered. Bear runs up to the water, but doesn't go in very far. I go in up to my belly. Casper is the fat square one, Bear is wearing the blue harness, and I am in pink. Of course.

Here is the video of My Best Day:



Yasha

When we were pups...

Now that I figured out how to embed video from YouTube (pretty good for a dog, eh?) here is a quick video of our first day home. It was July 1st, 2006 and we were just eight weeks old.

Three days later, everyone celebrated how cute we were. There was a parade, and a BBQ, and fireworks at night. At least, I'm pretty sure that it was us they were celebrating. Everyone loves us.



Casper makes a cameo appearance, but I am definitely the star. Mommy says so, and Mommy never lies.

My Silly Brother, Bear

His official name is Klondike's Dancing Bear, but mostly we just call him Bear. Or Bear Bottom. Or Mr. Bear.

We were playing in a big Rubbermaid tub, and Bear stopped to take a little panting break. Here's the YouTube Video:



It's hard to admit, but he is rather adorable!

Yasha

Yasha of the Trees

We named her for a Japanese half-spirit, InuYasha. Inu-Yasha is the protector spirit of the forest. Although bearing little resemblance to the InuYasha of legend, she seemed to grow into the name. She was just a tiny white puffball when we brought her and her brother home, but even then she developed a fondness for the bonsai.

She sits among them, in the growing beds, and watches graceful butterflies dip and flit among the lantana flowers. On warm days, she lays on the wet redwood chips under the benchs, where shade protects the maples. As a puppy, she sometimes did harm to the trees that she was meant to protect. Finding sweetness in the heartwood of liquidambar, she chewed a whole flat of cuttings into useless tinder. Once she lay on the soft perlite-plumped ground and chewed a small quince into pencil sharpness, and later pulled the same quince out and carried it around the yard as a prize.

Protector spirit of the forest? Not always, certainly. She is a half-spirit, after all... caught between two worlds. She cannot be entirely one thing or the other. Sometimes she is the Inu, and sometimes she is the Yasha. She can walk among the trees so carefully that they hardly sense her presence, when she is being protective. Squirrels, cats, and birds avoid her trees when she is guarding them. Her shining eyes miss nothing.

When she is the Inu, the dog, she can dig and chew and destroy. Unerring in her instinct, she finds the trees that are special to her Master, and with paws, teeth and wet nose she undoes the careful work that her Master has done. Sometimes the damage is not found for days, and the tree doesn't survive.

We named her for the half-spirit of the Japanese lore, and in the naming she found her path. And like so many other half-deities, her reckless moments can mean the difference between Life and Death. Her power over the trees is absolute and utterly without comprehension.

Maybe we should have named her Lassie.

(first published in Joanie's Journal, BonsaiTALK forum)

A Plate of Puppies

Silly Yasha! I forgot this picture. A Plate O'Puppies. Crunchy doggie goodness. Okay, actually dogs would see no merit in these. Now if they were made out of liverwurst... or vanilla ice cream... or bacon drippings... THEN they would be worth something.

Mmmmm. Bacon drippings over ice cream, with liverwust on top. And peanut butter. Stuffed in a Kong ball. WOW. Why aren't there Cold Stone Creamerys for dogs?

Maybe because dogs don't have money.

Or cars.

Or thumbs.

Yasha