Synchronicity

Synchronicity

I have been having a very difficult time dealing with the loss of my heart dog Girly Girl. She’s been gone since mid-October but it’s still painful to me on a daily basis.

Christmas came and I felt her absence keenly. Then her birthday rolled around on February 15th. She would have been 8 years old. I’m pretty angry that we didn’t get anywhere near the time together that I wanted.

It’s hard with Girly Girl’s cancer to know if you made the right decisions. Even though all the books and articles tell you not to spend time Monday morning quarterbacking your decisions; and you know in your head there is no point in it, your heart still asks those “what if” and “should I have” questions.

I had also held out hope that our connection was strong enough that I might continue to feel her presence even if only every once in a while. So far that hasn’t happened.

I do believe that Girly Girl has returned once to let me know she is OK, and I’m also convinced that my sweet girl had everything to do with Bettina’s joining the family.

And then there was Saturday March 12th. I received an unexpected package in the mail. It came from a friend I know through my connection with greyhounds named Peggy. She lives in Vermont but volunteers for Maine Greyhound Placement Service. One of the most beautiful things she does for us every year is partner with another volunteer to create a greyhound themed quilt which they then donate to MGPS. It serves as one of our major fundraisers as tickets are sold and at the end of the year the quilt is raffled off. The quilts are always stunning and I buy tickets every year hoping to win one.

For the past two years the quilts were composed of photo squares. The photos were submitted by MGPS adopters and printed on fabric. The finished quilts were absolutely amazing. The first year, a photo of Girly Girl was included in the quilt. The second year, Blue made the cut and appeared on the quilt. Unfortunately for me, I have absolutely no luck at all when it comes to contests and raffles. Needless to say, I did not win either one.

I took the package with me from the post office to my car and opened it. Peggy had a left over photo block of Girly Girl which had been printed but not included in either quilt. She had finished it as a small banner with beautiful hand quilting. The back was finished so that I could hang it. She had added a heart to the back side noting Girly Girl’s birth and death dates and that she had been my beloved companion.

This was so unexpected a gift that I was glad to have opened it in my car because it took me a while to recompose myself after seeing it.

Later that same day the kids and I had stopped by Grammy’s house to show her Girly Girl’s quilt square. It had the same effect on Grammy that it had on me. When she had composed herself, she handed me a bag with something inside wrapped in tissue paper. I opened it up and found myself holding a wonderful photo frame with “Girly Girl” in rhinestones across the bottom. It truly couldn’t have suited my brindle diva any better.

It was a gift from one of my mother’s co-workers, Ellen. Ellen had found the frame in a local store and bought it for us.

Receiving two unexpected meaningful gifts relating to my girl on that Saturday was both touching and comforting. That they came at a time I have really been struggling to come to terms with Girly Girl’s loss, well, it just may be synchronicity. Possibly a gentle nudge from my baby girl letting me know she is there.

School Daze

It occurred to me that Bat Girl might benefit from a little time spent at charm school. She is a lovely hound but a little lacking in basic manners so I hopped on Google to find a training class for us. A little research and we were soon signed up for a basic obedience class. I was quite excited by this prospect as I had visions of an obedience champion just waiting to be discovered.

Soon the day of the first class arrived. Bettina and I headed out to meet our destiny. There were about 10 other dogs in the class with us. It was a good mix of breeds (though heavy on the hound family) and ages (just over a year to nine years). Class was held in a middle school gym. Surveying the scene that first day, I thought to myself that this would be just the thing to calm Bettina down, give her a “job” to do, strengthen our bond and improve our communication.

Bettina, on the other hand, seemed to have completely different ideas about her goals for class. She is, apparently, a bit more of a skeptic than I am. Some things were not included in the equation when I made plans for the class and Bettina very quickly began practicing her “communications” with me just moments after we got through the door.

To get into the gym, one must descend a flight of stairs with roughly 15 steps. I have been a bit lax and Bettina has not really mastered stairs yet (I know, shame on me). We have just 4 steps leading in and out of the house. Her method of traversing those has been to go down one step, maybe two on a good day, with her front end. The back end stays firmly planted on the top step. After a moment’s reflection, she hurls herself out into space hoping to simultaneously clear the stairs and land on four feet. She has had moderate success with this technique at home. Occasionally she will bang her hind legs on the bottom stair or end up fighting for footing because she landed on an ice patch or other slippery surface.

Bettina was quite excited to see what sort of adventure we were going to have as we approached the gym. We got through the door and she stopped dead at the top of the stairs. This was something she had never been confronted with before in her limited experience and she didn’t know that stairs came in different configurations. She stubbornly held her ground as I tried to coax her down. She fixed me with a hairy eyeball that clearly said I had betrayed her. Deeply. Other class members began to pile up in a line behind us that stretched out the door as I, to no avail, tried to reason with a two year old. I ended up hoisting her up as best I could and schlepped her down the stairs. An auspicious beginning.

No matter, I thought. A few stairs won’t stand between us and obedience glory. After all, I had been the one remiss in not preparing her for differing flights of stairs. I set her down at the bottom of the stairs and headed off to the opposite side of the gym to check us in. It was only a matter of seconds before I realized something was very wrong with that picture. I was heading for check in, but Bettina was not. The leash pulled me up short and I turned to see a small black greyhound, legs locked, leaning backwards against the tug of the leash with all her might. Good grief!

I spent some time pleading with her to come. Two embarrassments in the first 5 minutes. My dream of obedience gold was growing a little hazy. Eventually, she decided to trust me and tentatively took a step…and froze again. The gym floor was a surface she had also never encountered before and by the looks of it, she wasn’t finding it very much to her liking. Another baleful hairy eyeball for mumma.

With the prospect of standing in that spot for the rest of class, the instructor kindly rolled out a rubber matt for us to use. This was just wonderful with Bettina, but not so much for mumma. The matt was set up down the exact center of the gym. Everything we did, all our practice, was done in the center ring.

As the classes progressed, Bettina was proving to be a genius. She mastered down, sit, wait, touch, target, loose leash walking, leave it and paying attention. She was a rock star! I was so proud the first time we were called to demonstrate our prowess for the instructor and the whole class. I stepped forward. I turned to Bettina and firmly asked for a down. Just moments before she was running through sits and downs over and over again, perfectly. She was even offering them spontaneously in the hopes I’d give her an extra treat. But as all eyes were on us, she stared at me like I had three heads. I waited a few endless seconds and asked again. I know you are not supposed to ask for the behavior more than once, but it was very quiet in that gym and I felt compelled to repeat my command. Maybe she hadn’t heard me. She blinked a few times and then decided to wander off towards the instructor to see if perhaps she had a spare treat she wasn’t using.

I called her back and asked for down a third time. Third time is a charm, right? Not so much. She began an inspection of the terrain in her immediate vicinity, checking to see if any extra treats had dropped to the ground. The instructor finally said that perhaps we should move on to someone else, and we did. As the next dog was dutifully doing his downs and sits every time he was requested to do so, Bettina sauntered back over to my side and dropped into a down position. Everyone was looking at the dog currently demonstrating his skill. No one was paying us any attention to see Bettina’s triumph. I swear I saw her smile contentedly to herself.

As we progressed through class, Bettina continued to behave like a model citizen when no one was looking. When people watched she dropped all pretense of civilization. Still, she did enjoy class, if only to see the other dogs, spend some quality time with mumma and stuff herself with cheese and hotdogs. On our very last day, we had a “final exam.” A miniature version of a rally obedience course had been set up, with each station requiring one of the skills we had learned in class.

I knew Bettina was ready. We had been working for weeks for this very moment. My girl would finally be able to show her inner canine Einstein. A couple of dog/handler pairs went through the course before us and they passed with flying colors. Then we stepped onto the course. I looked at Bettina. I could just see in her eyes she was ready to do this in a big way. The first station required us to demonstrate our skill at down. This was an easy one for Bettina. I had been asking her for downs before giving a treat, before getting out of the car, before eating, just about any time. She would automatically anticipate the down most of the time and drop before I could ask.

I turned to her and asked for a down. She felt it might be more fun to say hello to the instructor. At the next station, “Sit”; she tried to jump into my treat apron pocket and get her own treats to save me the trouble and both of us the time of performing a sit. At the next station, “Wait”; she headed for the nearest dog to renew acquaintances. At “Leave It” she went immediately for the lower level treat concealed in a dog bowl and attempted to eat it. By the time we got to the end of the course, anyone watching us would have had to assume that this hound had not attended any of the classes and simply showed up for the exam. My nerves were shot. Bettina was thrilled with herself.

Still, we received our diploma of graduation from basic obedience. I suspect you get one just for attending class, like when they give every kid a ribbon or trophy for participating. It was a great experience and I think Bettina enjoyed herself immensely, but I definitely feel like it left me in a school daze…

There’s No Business Like Sew Business

I have a bad habit of conceiving of grand “do-it-yourself” and craft projects, buying all the necessary components and tools, and then never starting the project. I have a room in the basement littered with the detritus of countless unfinished or never begun projects.

Being the kind of mumma that “dresses” the kids in cute coats or holiday themed frocks, one of the projects waiting to be started was the sewing of dog coats. Understand that the last time I tackled any sewing project was in high school in home economics (Do they have that sort of thing these days? I’m dating myself here). I began a quilted tote bag which my mother completed for me at home. I got an “A.”

Since I had that huge sewing success under my belt, I was very optimistic that I could easily create a pattern from one of our existing coats and free form some cute fleece into a smashing coat for Bettina. I am very, very optimistic, what can I say.

I started by improvising. I traced the outline of an existing coat onto the back of wrapping paper. (It was the only paper in the house large enough to trace and cut the pieces as a whole.) Once I had my pattern pieces, I laid out the Christmas fleece. I didn’t know how much I would need for the coat so I got 2 ½ yards. Those of you who sew are probably laughing right now. For those of you who don’t sew, that doesn’t sound like a lot but I had to rearrange the living room furniture to spread it out.

It was right about here that Bettina, being the beneficiary of my creative genius, decided to assist me. She sauntered over to the spread out fleece. Seeing something nice and cushy on the floor, she promptly lay down on it for a test feel. Finding the material to her liking she resolved to stay right there in the center of the fabric. Excision of a medium sized greyhound from cushy fleece is not easily accomplished. I tried cajoling. I tried begging. I tried reasoning. I even resorted to trying to push her, if not completely off the fleece at least to an end so I could still cut out the pattern. She dug in with her saber-like claws and I feared for the continued integrity of my fleece.

I resorted to prying her off the floor and dragging her to a carpeted space. Bettina immediately headed back for the fleece. But I was ready for her and protected the perimeter like some demented Twister player. Only it turns out it is humanly impossible to protect the full square footage of 2 ½ yards of fleece.

In a show of good judgment on my part, I conceded one end of the fleece to Bettina. I laid out the pattern and worked on cutting out the fabric pieces for the new coat at the other end of the fleece. In my peripheral vision I could see Bat Girl slowly edging closer to get a better observation position.

I was forced to switch to alternately cutting a little, then giving Bettina the hairy eyeball which would temporarily freeze her in place. I’d return to cutting and Bettina’s nose would stretch out, followed soon by the rest of her scooching forward a few inches. Another hairy eyeball would freeze her in her place again. Eventually, and no thanks to Bettina, this part of the project was completed.

That was followed by an epic struggle between me and the sewing machine. This is a machine that I begged for one Christmas and had never used until this moment. I got to work on piecing the jacket together. The majority of the jacket was completed with amazingly little difficulty. I was so pleased with myself. I’m a frickin’ genius when it comes to sewing. Then I got to the Velcro. I had been lulled into a false sense of security. Oh accursed Velcro! In the process of trying to get the bleeping Velcro attached to the jacket, I broke two machine needles as well as being stopped short countless times due to the thread breaking or balling up.

After two separate trips to the craft store to purchase various kinds of heavy duty needles and several types of heavy duty thread, I remained stuck. Nothing worked. So I cursed and raged while sewing a couple stitches, then stopping to re-thread the machine when it broke again. A few more stitches, rinse and repeat….

Bettina and Blue opted to keep their distance while I was sewing this part of the coat, much to their credit. Sweating and swearing I finally got the Velcro secured. Convincing Bettina it was safe to come near me again in order to try the coat on her was almost as challenging as the Velcro.

The end result actually looked pretty good for my first try. I also think, after consultation with my mother who is the real seamstress in the family, I may have the Velcro problem licked. Last night I created a pattern for Blue. I got the cutest green plaid fleece on one of my trips to the craft store for stronger needles and thread. It will look perfect on him. I must admit, standing in the craft store, fabric bolt in hand and gazing at a wall of sewing notions, I did seriously consider putting snaps or buttons on his coat. But I’m a glutton for punishment and as they say, there’s no business like sew business.