A couple of years back, Cait was facing some difficult changes. No amount of putting a happy face on how it would all work out made a dent. She was focused on the loss and the feeling that she couldn’t control what was happening to her. I watched my happy-go-lucky, optimistic daughter turn into a despondent worrier.
Having spent my professional adulthood looking deeply into people’s lives, I fully understood how, sometimes, it only took one life event to cause … Read More
I started my first garden when I was twelve; I went out to the back field and dug myself up a quarter acre. I’ve rarely missed a summer since. I do some of my best thinking digging in the dirt.
This picture is of two of my garlic plants nuzzling each other. Aren’t they beautiful!… Read More
When Caitlin was little, she liked using me as her jungle-gym. She still loves to sit on my lap and cuddle, but lately I’ve been telling her she’s getting too big, and the weight of her is starting to hurt my legs. I make her sit next to me instead.
When Kiera was little, she liked to lean against me and use my feet as her personal headrest. As she’s grown, she’s gotten into the habit of lying on my … Read More
When I’m training, I’m always thinking about why Kiera does or doesn’t do what she does. I’m always trying to see if I can understand it from where she is and go from there. For example, once upon a time, I wasn’t having any luck getting Kiera to remain calm when people came over to our house. Whenever someone would arrive, Kiera would go into overdrive to make sure everyone in the house was safe for posterity. I’d tried the … Read More
Yesterday, I had the good fun of speaking with a terrific group of kids who were spending their week at Mahogany Ridge KidsCamp. It’s a camp where kids and their dogs get to play and learn together. Theresa Richmond, the camp director and trainer, (whom some of you may remember from Dogs of Dreamtime) invited me to give a talk on what it’s like to write about dogs.
As with training dogs, writing about dogs is best learned by … Read More
One morning, as I watched Kiera and Graidy zooming around the backyard together, it struck me how much of Kiera’s play was really herding behavior. Graidy would float around the yard like a piece of newspaper blowing in the wind– fluttering this way and that, skipping and hopping, twisting and twirling. Kiera would conserve her energy as long as Graidy stayed within a certain range. She’d stay in a semi-crouch position with neck stretched out and down, watching. Once he’d … Read More
Funny the memories that stick with you from childhood… This one’s been tucked away since I was a little girl. I’m riding in the back seat of a convertible. My hair is flying back and whipping around, slapping my face. The concussion of the wind makes my eyes squint and water, and tickles my eardrums. I can’t see the car, or even who’s driving. And I have no recollection of where we went. I do remember the feeling of the … Read More
From the Mail Bag: M.M. wrote, I experienced your search for Kiera as very single-minded and focused–bordering on obsessive (and definitely annoying to me). It seemed to me that you were too caught up in “looking for something to fill a need (for Kiera) rather than for someone to help.”
Dear M.M.: I can see why you’d view my search for Kiera that way, but let me anthropomorphize for a minute to better illustrate how I experienced it. Let’s say … Read More
