The Dog Chronicles: Andie Sunday 11/1/2015

The rain is coming down, finally, after all these drought months. How perfect is this first taste of El Ninyo, as the furious patter of wet drops  falling on piles of garden leaves crackle and rustle. Then it suddenly stops and the silence is breathtaking. Is this the  hint of a new beginning in the continuous cycle of new beginnings?  The tsunami of seasons brings a future and leaving behind the past makes me wonder at the swiftness of it all. Perhaps it is the mind of grief that sees this rain, not so much as nourishing, but mourning the loss. That is to say, standing alone at the window, wanting to turn and say, “Look. look. Isn’t it beautiful.” The room remains empty. “Tears in rain” he said, and the moment passes quickly when Andie bounds into the room with her yellow squeek dog. Time to play!

Andie seems OK with wet, water, and the distinct possibility for treats in accepting it all. The other night, Halloween Eve, she got her ears cleaned and a warm bath, which she seemed to enjoy, especially being brushed wet and dried with a big fluffy towel. After that she went in and jumped on the bed for a major post bath ‘rolly dog’ dry off.

Halloween has come and gone. Andie and I tried to get in the spirit, but it wasn’t very successful.  I tried to make a pumpkin costume out of an old T-shirt of mine, but she would have none of it and proceeded to make a nest out of it, like all my clothes she manages to snatch, when I am otherwise occupied. In fact, she’s a bit of a dog ninja in her stealthiness.

To wit, about a week ago I noticed some strange goings-on, when I took my  hot bath, as usual. ‘As usual’, because I suffer arthritis, tendinitis and host of other maladies of interest only to other old men. So dear reader I will spare you the usual complaints, except to say that as I drew back the bathtub door a bit and sunk into deep, smoothing , steaming water I noticed my floor towel, slowly, but steadily in increments, move past the opening from which I viewed and disappeared out the crack in the bathroom door. What seemed to be a poltergeist was Andie deciding to make a nest, while waiting for me to come out. She seemed to want the whole business to be surreptitious, because when I said, “Hey, Andie what are you doing?” she ran out of the room. It’s a ritual now, so I say in mutual agreement, “Nice work Andie.” And, so it goes.

Back to Halloween——We went to Safeway at the crack of dawn to buy candy. We go early because Andie likes to ride and at that hour I feel comfortable leaving her in a cool car. Andie insisted that part of lucre should include rawhide chew bones, because I kept annoying her by removing garden bark and acorn shells from her mouth. She NEEDS to chew.

Apparently, nice people buy ‘Greenies’ for their dogs, but for some reason our other Cockers got sick eating them. In all fairness, we learned later that China had been exporting fake Greenies that were made of plastic and mortuary remains. Well, maybe not mortuary remains. I guess Halloween still hangs about. So, Andie gets hoipolloi rawhide’s.

First I tried the small, thin, short ones, which she was polite enough to take and run off to deposit somewhere and not eat. The were perhaps too boring compared to the hunting finds of path bark. So I tried some that look like crenelated logs and she likes those. I suspect Andie has more class than her dogdad and is more attuned to wine country tastes and habits than I. I have much to learn from her, clearly.