Paper covers Rock and Pink before Purple

Have puppy, will travel -- with lots of towels!

Yesterday, somehow, Tango got into some wet red oil paint during painting class. We have no idea how. No one was using red paint, there was none on the floor, and the only places we found paint were on the dog, primarily his left rear leg and, of course, his chin!

Baby wipes didn't work. A wet, soapy corner of a towel didn't work. So Carol and I (thank you, Carol!) put him in the bathtub and did a leg bath. Now he's only slightly pink.

Tango must have known about Chuck's plan to dye him purple and decided to take matters into his own teeth. Paper covers rock, and pink before purple!

I'm sorry we didn't take photos of Tango before the bath. It looked like blood was gushing from his leg. That's probably why we didn't think immediately of cameras... it really did look like blood. Thank goodness, just paint.

Who? What? Where? When? How? and Why?

I must remember this list of interrogatives from grammar school: they are the elements they taught us to include in the first paragraph of a newspaper article. As I type this, I wonder how one could possibly know why something happened, but there speaks the person who naturally asks Why? three times...

For Tango, each of these interrogatives has a special meaning.

• Who is that white puppy in the fireplace?
• What is this thing I'm sitting in? It moves around and makes funny, shaky noises, and people keep cooing at me because I'm cute.
• Where did the person inside go?
• When will Anya get home?
• How should I know that that scary puppy is a stuffed animal?
• Why did Mom snatch that cigarette out of my mouth? It had an interesting smell and taste!

Tango tests the world.

He is really confused by the white puppy in the fireplace, ("Who is it?") which is, of course, his reflection in the glass. He dances with it the way he dances with Anya, but a whole lot more tentatively.

I took him on a long socialization outing today to Pittsford Plaza. He had his first ride in a shopping cart, and was cooperative and well-behaved, but confused. What is this thing?

He ran up to a display outside Snow Country: ski clothing, looking from puppy's eye level like a complete person... until he got close enough to paw it, when it gave way. Confusion! Looks like a person but, well, there's nothing there! Where did the person inside go? No smell, either. The second time we passed this display, he ignored it: boring.

"When will Anya get home? I've been sleeping and storing up energy so I can pounce on her, bite her ears, chase her tail, steal her bones, and all. I have an edge tonight, since she is tired after spending the day at Kirkhaven! Can't wait!" says Tango.

Snow Country must be in the business of teaching young dogs because they had a second display, this one with three mannequins and a stuffed animal. I told Tango that the stuffed animal looked a lot like him. ("Well, Mom, how should I know that that scary puppy is a stuffed animal?") It took Tango quite a while to get close enough (advance, sniff, scamper backwards, repeat) to the stuffed animal to discover that it couldn't threaten him.

Meanwhile, he attracted the attention of two salespeople, both dog people, who came out to tell him how lovely and soft he was.

And then there is that awful moment when a parent first sees her child put a cigarette in his mouth! Open up! Give! ("Why did Mom snatch that cigarette out of my mouth? It had an interesting smell and taste!") I know you can't do this with a human child, but it still works with puppies. Apparently the smoking ban in buildings results in people discarding mostly unsmoked cigarettes, and Tango found one. White cigarette coming out of both sides of his mouth, the paper dissolved in the middle, and tobacco on the little tongue. YUCK! I hope he hated the taste!

Anya the Nanny

Tango is growing. Two weeks ago he weighed 12 pounds; yesterday he was up to 16 pounds. And his ribs still feel like a washboard. I think he might be 2 or 3 inches taller.

Here are two photos, for comparison.

Tango and Anya, Day 2


Tango and Anya, Day 21


This morning when I went to the back door to let them inside, Anya was sitting patiently, just like in the photo above. A little distance behind Anya, Tango was also sitting patiently, also like the photo above. I don't know whether I believed that one dog could teach another, but I'm pretty sure that Tango did not teach himself to sit patiently like this!

Last night, after our long walk in Webster Park, Anya, Tango and I were really tired. (It's not clear whether exercise EVER makes Chuck tired.)

Eventually I gave up trying to do anything useful, and went into my recliner. For a while, I was reading, but the next thing I knew, Chuck was removing the book from my hands and saying, "Tango really wants to be on your lap." So he put Tango on my lap and Tango and I dozed there while Chuck worked on his mother's bills.

In the park, it was fun and interesting watching Anya with Tango. For one thing, she only runs as fast as he can run. She keeps him (mostly) about 6 inches from her tail. Once, when she misjudged, he got hold of her tail with his teeth and held on fiercely. Sometimes he get hold of her collar or her leash and tugs. It's cute, but Anya didn't like Tango's teeth holding onto her tail. I can't imagine why not!

Anyhow, Anya runs and runs, but just fast enough to challenge him. Then a larger dog comes along, in this case a 4 month old English Springer Spaniel, and Anya does two things: she guards Tango from the larger dog AND she turns on a bit more speed, to challenge the larger dog.

She still hasn't started to lope.

When she's going full out, I think she may cover 6 or 8 feet of ground between her feet touching down, and she looks like this long black dancer, much the way I imagine a panther running. A black streak that barely touches the ground.


Elaine is rearing one of Tango's cousins, without the benefit of a nanny-dog, and I think she is finding Pierre more work because she doesn't have a full-time Anya to watch over everything.

Names

Anyone who ever tried to read a Russian novel knows that keeping track of Russian names is tricky. Well, that's an understatement.

Russians name their children by a formula that results in a large number of absolutely identical names. For instance, we have two Natalia Sergeevnas in our close circle. (BTW, congratulations to the taller NS and her fiance Joe! The предложение was made and accepted last night!)

So, what are they called? Nicknames, among friends and family.

To make things simpler for us, one NS (Soboleva / Perfilyeva) is called Natasha except in a hurry, when she is Nata, or Natashka when she has been cross or difficult (rare).

The other, taller, NS is usually called Tasha, a name she adopted when she moved to the US, but her mother calls her 'Natasha.' As far as I can remember, I have not invented any other names for Tasha. That's Joe's job.

Now, Anya comes with the full complement, already put together by generations of Russian speakers: Anna, Anya, Anyushka, Anyuta, Anka.

But what about Tango? Well, of course: Tango, Tangushka, Tangulya, Tangle, and 'TANG!'. What would you expect? And that is the list so far.

(Right about now, I expect Carol to chime in and say that we would have a standard set of nicknames for Tango if I'd taken her advice and named him Ivan: Vanya, Vanushka, Vanka, etc. So if you ever see me refer to 'Anya and Vanya,' 'Vanya' is really Tango. Confusing, no?)

Sasha had remarkably few names: Aleksandra, Sasha, Sashka, Sashenka... Also, of course, Tsaritsa (Empress).

And Pippin had QUITE a name: Philip George Henley, Earl of Overshot and Duke of Thatchbottom, commonly known as Pip or Pippin, but also known as Pipkin, and Pipsky-pupsky.

My favorite pair of dog names belongs to 'the boys': Mishek (aka Sharkey) and Brutus (aka DiggerDog). The nicknames tell you much more about the temperaments of those two than their given names do.

And then there was the dog who was headed for the name 'Tasha,' lo, these many years ago. A weekend with the puppy convinced Al and Lynn to rethink that name, and 'Tasha' became 'Taz,' short, of course, for Tasmanian Devil Dog!

Back in the good old days before computer-generated mailing lists, I often included our dog and cat on the list of members of the household: T. M. Watson (retired) and Philip Henley, Security Guard. When mail arrived for T. M. Watson or Philip Henley, I knew that Toi Ming, the cat, and Pippin, the dog, had been mistaken for humans by the data gathers, and that someone had sold our names!

Full Circle

Yesterday I 'discovered' a great blog on the Democrat & Chronicle website. I've been staring at the name of the blog for a LONG time, but yesterday I clicked on it... finally.

Bob Marcotte writes The Word on Birds. Unfortunately, it doesn't have an RSS feed, at least not yet!

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I started sketching because I have seen, and admired, the field notebook of a man we encounter occasionally at Island Cottage Woods. He sits down and sketches the birds that come to him. Then he goes home and colors in the sketches... and has a great journal of his time in the woods!

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Life at our house has its amusing points. This essay is about birders and optics, and marriage.

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Every article on optics for birding recommends buying the best-quality optics straight-away. Usually the writers also concede that almost no one is capable of taking that advice, and that most birders buy three pairs of binoculars to end up with the expensive -- and right -- pair...

Chuck and I are no exception. We own three high-end binocs, plus several mid- and low-end models, and one Spacemaster telescope.

I remember two amusing observations by Thomas Connor, in his book "A Season at the Point":
Rule 1: "Real birders don't share binoculars."
Rule 2: "If you don't want to spend the better part of a month's mortgage payment, try not to have this experience [ie: don't look through someone else's high-quality optics]."

I didn't believe this second statement, until I looked through a pair of Zeiss binocs at Ramsay Canyon one evening. I lifted the binocs to my eyes, whereupon God turned the light back on in the canyon, and I went quietly crazy in front of my poor husband's eyes. Worse, the woman who owned the Zeiss binocs said that her husband's B&L Elites were even BETTER...

A few weeks later, I spent an hour trying to show a friend a Great Blue Heron. The bird was in an open marsh, not too far away from us, on a scrag, with a Flicker pointing at it! She didn't see it until I handed her my Nikons...

We went home and ordered the B&L Elites...

Until the B&L Elites arrived, Chuck didn't understand why I had gone crazy that evening in Ramsey Canyon, he just suffered my moaning.

Before the new binocs arrived I warned him: "Refuse to hand them over ONCE, just ONCE, and a second pair will be in the mail within 24 hours."

Obviously, within a month, a second pair arrived, (he ordered them himself) because, well, rules 1 and 2 are TRUE. If you have the passion for birding and can get your hands on the cash, the general outcome is assured.

However, starting with good-quality, moderate-cost optics helps you figure out what you really need in optics before you spend lots of money.

For example, I have a very small interpupilary distance. My husband's car binocs, Swifts, serve him very well, but for me they are monoculars. OTOH my car binocs, my trusty Nikon Travelers, work great for my interpupilary distance.

Our Rule 3 (or corollary to Rule 1): "Real shore-birders do not share telescopes."

Our Spacemaster has served us well for > 20 years! But we have looked through the Kowas and the Swarowskis... We really need a second, better, telescope. Or maybe two excellent scopes and another Bogen tripod... I suppose this means that I need a job.

How to get onto a bed, and other mysteries of life

Before we found Sasha, our first poodle, the people who gave Chuck the name and phone number of the breeder said, "Make sure you get a small Standard: they take up a lot of room in bed!"

True.

Sasha had her own unique way of joining us in bed. She waited until we were sound asleep, and then she began the process of pouring herself onto the bed. First one paw, then a second. Then slowly inching forward, between our feet, until she could put her hind feet up on the bed. Then carve out room for herself, constantly putting light pressure on us so we made way for her (similar to tightening the wires on braces!)... and in the morning, we woke up with her head between us on the pillows. We never caught her in the act.

Anya's approach is more straightforward: Step up, preferably turn around a couple of times, and then FLUMFP! down into a curl, with her head facing the door. At least, we like to tell ourselves that she's facing the door rather than facing away from us.

We have tried to teach her to shnuggle, which specifically requires that her head be on one of our shoulders and that we get her soft back against us, not the pointy feet... It works, sometimes, and then it turns into the next story, from our friend Al, about his Schipperke, Ike.

"I remember Ike trying to make the jump, it took him awhile. He has a rather odd sleep pattern now. Every night he jumps up on the bed and checks in with us. Shortly after turning out the light he jumps down and goes to sleep in his favorite corner of the master bathroom (tile floor). Then sometime during the night he comes back on the bed, and that's where we find him every morning curled up between us."

And now, we have Tango. He has mastered the art of throwing himself headlong into the challenge, and he makes it up onto the bed almost every time he tries. Sleeping is the last thing on his mind, although sometimes he will cuddle for a few minutes. But this morning, for instance, my head was under the covers when Chuck let him back into the bedroom after his morning outing. This would not do! and Tango set to work sniffing and digging to find me, following up with a few exploratory nips at my ears and cheeks. Fairly soft teeth, but still teeth.

Then off the bed to tussle with Anya...

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I was reading a blog (Living Fragance) and found this citation for a site where you can spell words using all sorts of letters: http://metaatem.net/words/. Give it a try.
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Then there is the latest painting obsession.

I am only posting the original photo and the latest false-color attempt to capture value changes.

Not so satisfied. I did a nice charcoal of the photo, but need to try again with the paint!

Chuck has posted a nice little video of Anya and Vanya (aka Tango) playing in the library. Doggy exercise x2! http://fdsailor.blogspot.com/

Strange Pleasures

Around 3:30 this morning, the motion detector, aka Chuck, alerted me that Tango was restive and probably needed to go out. So, out we went, Tango and I.

I turned on the spotlight on the deck, but even so I cannot see anything once I get into the side yard, which borders the designated dog 'spot.'

So, I'm standing out there in the dark, trying to see a small white bundle, and listening to and feeling the wind. The wind at night is more mysterious than the wind during the day, when you can see the leaves moving. At night, it's even more like music.

I stood there for a bit, enjoying the cool wind, the fresh air, the darkness, and then we went back indoors, upstairs, to sleep, each in his (or her) own bed.

Another day, another goal

This is day 16 of our life with Tango.

Each of us has goals for Tango, including Tango himself. For the last week, Tango has been watching Anya get onto our bed and has repeatedly hurled himself at the bed and blankets, trying to get up there with the big folks.

(Click on the thumbnail above to go to our blog and see all Tango photos so far.)

Today he succeeded. It was, after all, only a matter of time.

Fortunately, he succeeded in this goal after meeting one of our goals for him: he slept through the night without needing to go out and without any accidents!

So everyone except Anya is satisfied. She is waiting for him to grow up into a respectably behaved Poodle. Right now, she spends a lot of time telling him that he's out of line!