one labrador’s view on life….

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                Mousse is my parents dog.  He has to be one of the most agreeable guys i know.  there never seems to be a waiver in his cheery disposition.  even when he had to give up his hunting duties to the the new spastic chick that came to live with him a couple of years ago, he didn’t make a fuss or go around pouting, he just utilized the down time with some much needed napping.  he loves to have company around to screw up his routine, and he can even come up with some energy to pull down some playtime with the previous mentioned spastic chick a couple of times a day. (that says a lot about an eleven year old dog with bad hips!)

anyway, the reason why i bring him up is because i have been trying to channel my own ‘inner mousse’ these days.  i have just come off of the crabbiest month that i can remember having.  in reflection it appears to have been caused by the delay in spring.  for some reason here in the upper midwest, we have been unable to shake winter off of our backs.  some would say that it’s in true geographical fashion for it to be 60 one day and then snowflakes falling the next but to the best of my knowledge i don’t think that i have seen snow in may before.  i am sure there is proof but nonetheless, like a captured mustang, this lack of sunshine in my life appears to be breaking my spirit!

i have taken assertive action and tried to look at things from mousse’s side of the road and it appears to be helping. now i am not sure exactly what mousse is thinking but i like to presume that he weighs the pros and cons and manages to manipulate it enough that he comes out with a rosy conclusion.  i have chosen to skip the thinking process and just force myself to smile.  one of my favorite sayings is ‘fake it till you make it!’

 

Drama in the schoolyard

when we were kids the distinction between good and bad was as clear as a game of cops and robbers. things were stereo-typed and condensed to help us make a bit of sense out of the tremendous amount of life learning that we had in front of us. the undertones of morality in every story we were read and told were designed to help us form a solid central idea of how a ‘good’ person behaves. i was listening to a radio program a couple of days ago and they described children as sociopaths until the age of 10, because we actually have to become ‘civilized.’

as interesting as all that may be, i happen to find the thing most interesting is that after we have been given this foundation of knowledge do you remember the first time it failed you? whether it be doing the right thing and having someone take advantage of you, or expecting someone to be something and finding out that they aren’t, on both sides of the coin. it’s a huge wrench in the plans. all of a sudden we had to stop and reevaluate our view of the world. to this day i have a lot of the values my parents and various childhood stories have taught me, but i have other values that i have gained through the process of being wrong about things i at one time thought to be true. those are the ones that my father calls life lessons, and the ones that keep me on my toes.

The Waiting Game…

                                   

i was reading an odd book a while back about animals and how some of them have the ability to be extremely in tune with their human counter parts to the point that some people have claimed that they have a talent for telepathy.

for those of us that have lived closely with animals, we all know that they thrive with routine, and if you flip that observation back at ourselves you’ll notice that we work the same way. expecting something and having a sense of what’s to come are two entirely different things. to my rational mind i ran with this excuse, and let this ’silly’ idea fall to the wayside, but i did still take notice every time i came home and who was waiting for me. to my surprise, the majority of my arrivals kept in line with this outcome: ella(dog) taking a few moments to rouse herself from her dreams stumbles out of the bedroom with a yawn and lack of energy; henry(cat) does the same except sometimes he comes to greet, sometimes he just stays asleep; miss kitty(duh! cat)takes the responsibility with pride and is always waiting for me by the door with her tail high. if anyone was the telepathic option, it would definitely be her.

of all the animals i live with, miss kitty seems to be the most tempestuous and independent of the pack. we initially met up in college where she moved in with me due to a roommate who had brought her straight from the farm. i had never lived with cats before and didn’t think much of her due to the fact that she spent most of her time hissing and hiding under her owners bed. then one day as i was drawing a large charcoal piece in my room,(yes art school students don’t mind sleeping in charcoal dust, it just adds to the depth of passion that we have for our trade!) i looked down to see this beautiful white cat rolling and purring in the black dust below. it was kismet, we were like two peas in a pod, from that point on. she slept with me, we had breakfast together and continued our charcoal indulgence a few times a week. i guess you could say that she adopted me! she still remained sassy, and hasn’t lost that appealing quality in the ten years we’ve been together, but she has her moments and you can’t deny that she has chosen her position in our lives.

which brings me back to the telepathy thing. i don’t believe in things that aren’t proven, but i have impulses to dream and i like to think that miss kitty just might have hidden talents…

nature vs. pack order…

sherlock, oliver and isabella…

they automatically bring to mind the question of whether we are a result of our own dna or of the circumstances of our upbringing.

they are all three the same breed of dog, scottish terrier, that’s where the similarities end.

Sherlock- (1st Born(?)) is self assertive, confident, and genuinely good natured with a bit of a corny sense of humor.

Oliver-(2nd Born(?)) is shy, yet congenial. he seems very happy to please people yet at the same time extremely sensitive to criticism. he also happens to be the most unique character in appearance due to silver streaking through his coat from an allergic reaction to some type of food he ingested in his earlier years, which is very fitting for this clown of the family.

Isabella-(3rd Born(?)) the baby. she is the shyest of them all. she seems to flourish with the family but has a bit of a time coming out of her shell around strangers. she definitely gains strength from her brothers, but doesn’t feel bad about telling them when she has had enough as well.

i think about my own siblings and the fortunate and unfortunate characteristics that we all have, and wonder in retrospect how we all helped to shape each other. i have a hard time remembering if we ever really gave each other any votes of confidence or even a simple gesture to instill a knowledge of camaraderie. it’s easier to recall the dismissive and sometimes downright mean actions that we took to make sure that we kept our positions separate. human family dynamics are complicated, but are they any different than the hierarchy rules/patterns in a pack of dogs?

 

 

what is perfect?

 

 

Perfect, there are some things that come to us that way, but they are few and far between if ever at all. the beauty of perfection is that it lies in such unexpected packages that we sometimes don’t even notice that it is there, and perfection, much like beauty, is always in the eye of the beholder. all we can do is hope that we see it before it has already past us by.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An Apple a Day…

 

Who was it that first told you that an ‘apple a day will keep the doctor away’? i can’t remember who told me, but for some odd reason i associated it with the cleaning of teeth rather than the absorption of important nutrients. i figured that if i ate an apple every day before i went to bed i wouldn’t have to brush my teeth. i would like to think that i had misunderstood, but i honestly think that it was just one of the first signs of my varying ability to rationalize things away.

that’s probably why i don’t really like apples unless they are cooked and in a pie.

 

 

Havashit…no it’s not what you think it is.

Zeek & Lilly.

A Shitzu and a Havashit.

i had to look up what a havashit was!  i had no idea!  thank goodness they are doing all this cross breeding to keep me on my toes!

Ambitions of the Misguided…

have you ever worked so hard to get somewhere or do something, and then after it was over found out that it wasn’t what you wanted at all?

is it our lack of observation in our intimate world, or is it laziness on our part from having to start over?

whose dreams are they?

mine or theirs?

it should probably be a biannual ponder…

or monthly.

either way i will probably still have trouble deciding if it’s really mine or not.

eventually as i get older i think that they have become one in the same,

or am i just really good at rationalizing?

Just like a big stuffed animal…

when i was young i was bound and determined to grow up and become a vet. that’s all i wanted, and surprisingly enough sense came into my seventeen year old brain, and i instead followed a passion.

now mind you, i use the term ‘passion’ loosely.

i have never felt like i fit the typical ideal and stereo-type of an artist. maybe i should hold summer solstice parties and wear more tunics. maybe then i would feel more like the person i have chosen to be. is that what it takes? fitting into a mold? ’cause right now, i am playing the part of ‘a girl that never made it to vet school and is coping by creating larger than life animals and studying their communicative habits.’

now that i think about it, i like it. i think that i will form my own stereo-type version of that mold. there have got to be others out there like me… and no, i don’t want to meet them. one of me is by far enough for one person to handle.

the reason i bring this up is because i was thinking about mozart, the dog in the piece, and i had no idea what i wanted to say about him. not that he didn’t make an impact on me, quite the opposite. i immediately fell smitten with him. he was getting on in years and i had the privilege of meeting him before his life was over. despite the health problems he had, he still had a presence of a puppy. bright eyes, fluffy face and an eager disposition. such a charmer. i think that the reason i felt so strongly about him, is that he was an imposter as well.

despite everything that i know and saw, i believe that mozart was actually a stuffed animal impersonating a dog.

that’s what ideals are all about.

she was an itsy bitsy…

ramona is 3/4 of a pound.

what more can you say?

3/4 of a pound…