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Halloween–As I Remembered

/ Cait and Me / By / Leave a Comment

Cait and I went Trick-or-Treating with friends last night, and, for the first time in decades, I experienced Halloween as I remembered it as a kid.

For a time, when I was young, we lived in a great neighborhood where everyone knew each other and the kids all played in one big pack. In that neighborhood, Halloween was celebrated with as much fanfare as Christmas. Everyone decorated their houses. Costumes were thought out and planned in advance. Halloween night had … Read More

Dear Dogs

/ Dogs in General, Funnies / By / 2 Comments

A pet-loving friend sent this to me and cc’d a copy to Andrew. There’ve been several versions that have made the rounds. It still cracks me up.

Dear Dogs,

When I say to move, it means to go someplace else, not switch positions with each other so there are still two dogs in the way.

The dishes with the paw print are yours and contain your food. The other dishes are mine and contain my food. Please note, placing a

… Read More

A Great Day to be a Student

/ Cait and Me, Nature / By / Leave a Comment

groupwoods.jpg CaitRock racoonfeet.jpg

Cait has been pretty lucky with her teachers so far; they’ve all been good for her. This year is her luckiest yet. She has a teacher who loves the outdoors as much as she loves teaching kids. Every year, this teacher takes her class to the Nature Trails as part of her science unit. She uses nature to help bring science alive.

Today, for the second of several trips, Cait’s class spent an hour hiking through the woods, observing and … Read More

Buffalo Girls

/ Cait and Me, My Favorites / By / 4 Comments

One of the last books I read just before Caitlin was born, almost eleven years ago now, was Larry McMurtry’s Buffalo Girls . How do I know that for certain? Because in that book is the chorus to the song, Buffalo Girls. It goes:

Buf-falo Girls won’t you come out to-night,

come out to-night, come out tonight,

Buf-falo Girls won’t you come out to-night,

and dance by the light of the moon.

And why would that chorus be memorable … Read More

Looking Up — The Orionid Meteor Shower

/ Cait and Me, Nature, spirituality / By / 2 Comments

Like dogs, I find that people fall into two main categories–those who look down and those who look up. By down I mean looking at what’s in front of us–the earthly things. By up I mean looking at what’s up in the sky–the vision of things happening overhead.

Like Graidy, who, as part bird dog, instinctively looks up to find movement (as contrasted by Kiera, my herder, who instinctively looks down and around for movement) I’ve always been drawn to … Read More

Our Third Dog

/ Finnegan the Coon Cat / By / 4 Comments

finnegan.jpg

We got a new dog about three months ago. He’s six months old now. Isn’t he gorgeous?

What? You think he looks like a cat?

Rub those eyes one more time, please, because I’m telling you Finnegan is a dog — through and through. So what that Mother Nature screwed up and put him in a cat’s body; he knows he was meant to be a dog, shoulda been a dog, is a dog in his own mind.

He follows … Read More

Cesar Millan

/ Dog Training, Dogs in General / By / 1 Comment

Okay, I have to say it. I don’t like Cesar Millan’s training methods. He’s set dog training back about 20 years.

The Alpha Roll?! Come on, really. And I don’t know of any good trainer who would EVER say, “Don’t try this at home.” Then what’s the point, I ask you? Showmanship, ego, and money. That’s the point.

It’s not that Millan is wholly without merit. There are some training techniques that even Millan doesn’t have to turn into an … Read More

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