I could wax poetic about how green everything is right now. I could contemplate Marianne Moore’s line about Ireland (or our tendencies to romanticize): “the greenest place I’ve never seen.” I could prescribe myself her fern seed “for unlearning obduracy and for reinstating the enchantment.”
Or I could just leave it at this: I think even the bears are turning green right now.
On my way to work out this morning, I noticed four nearby cars had been rifled. Luckily, our neighborhood has a few security cameras (and apparently a dearth of guard dogs).
Although he was dressed in dark clothing, the suspect has been positively identified.
I vaguely remember reading Tim O’Brien’s novel with this title a while ago, and recall it blurrily as a bunch of 50-somethings stumbling around trying to reconcile middle age with their dreams of youthful greatness. Good thing this is just a dog blog.
I’ve lost my grip on regular postings, so will post a bunch of photos instead of a bunch of words. (Amen, right?) I’ll squelch my Aldo Leopold wannabe voice by just saying that the dizzying speed of change and growth in late April-May-June seems to have slowed a bit in July. It’s as if we’re up on step, in a moment of equipoise, taking a giant green breath, and just growing berries. And whale calves into whales, and hermaphroditic halibut into freaky females.
And puppies into dogs, I guess.
Good enough.
There. I said it. It feels kind of good. Tempted as I am to make this post title the title of the blog itself–I was wrong to get Cedar with the understanding we’d be raising her together–I don’t think that’s what this post is about. (I’m so glad I made that mistake at least.) There are many other things–some very big and some very small–that I could apply this cathartic sentence to, but at the moment, I’m going to talk about Cedar training.
If there were readers of this blog, they might remember my debate over siding with the behaviorists (treats and “aversives”) vs. the Monks (love). I came down on the Monks’ side. Well here we are at 11-months-ish, and our girl isn’t all that keen to COME for the sheer bliss of pleasing me. I have had to reprogram her brain (sparingly) with treats. And dammit, it seems to be working.
If there were a reader of this blog named Ray Hudson, he might give a groan remembering my “Seven Steps to Survival” commencement speech in my early years of teaching at Unalaska. (I have a bounty out for any extant copies of the Betamax video in order to destroy the record of forcing a packed gym to listen to SEVEN lessons for how to survive a shipwreck when they really wanted to just applaud their graduates .) Maybe I should have stopped at one: Recognition.
Recognition is that “oh shit,” “Houston-we-have-a-problem” moment. Then you start Inventorying what you have to solve the problem.
In this case: treats. Case closed. Admission made. Catharsis complete. Readers gone.
As for the bigger stuff, I guess just recognizing we’re at Recognition is where I’ll leave it for now.
With enduring apologies to the Class of 1991.
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