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My Garden

June 12, 2010 - View Single Entry

The past couple of years I've grown stuff in pots and planters on my deck. Most everything did OK and my fingers liked messing in the dirt, so when Sarah next door said she wasn't going to use the little boat garden out back, would I like to use it? I said sure. This was way back around March, long before I'd have to do anything about it (Grandma never put anything outside before Memorial Day). I missed the annual COMSOG (Community Solar Greenhouse) seedling sale, which runs from Mother's Day till the end of May, because I was too broke and too distracted. I missed it last year for the same reasons, plus last year it didn't feel warm enough to plant till about the middle of August.

I did, however, prepare my soil. After I'd raked out the leaves, pulled the weeds, and mixed in two buckets of composted manure and about half a cubic foot of potting soil, it looked like this:

Here's me taking a picture of it.

So the weather got warmer then cooler, then warmer and cooler again, and I kept putting off the next step, which was to buy some plants. This involves spending money and I don't know what I'm doing. This is a bad combination, so the procrastination went on for some time. Yesterday, though, I got myself to Heather Gardens, strolled up and down the rows pulling a little flatbed wagon, and wound up at the cashier's shed with cherry tomatoes, basil, parsley, coleus, and some pretty purple flowers that, according to the label, are phlox hybrids, "Intensia Lavender Glow." It only cost me 37 bucks and change. I feel like I got a deal, and without waiting for the half-price sale.

It was overcast, cool, and sometimes drizzly, but I set about planting my new stuff. Here's what the little boat looks like now:

Up on the deck, I've got coleus (I think it's coleus) in the terra cotta planter and Intensia Lavender Glow (aka pretty purple flowers) in the built-in planter box. Like this:

Now I've got several empty starter pots and flats, and some big pots that need filling, so my next step is to get some seeds and see if they'll grow. It rained last night, a nice soaking rain like we haven't had much of this spring. Feels like a good omen.

Inventory

June 11, 2010 - View Single Entry

One of the pressing tasks on my to-do list has been "horse inventory": sort through my horse stuff and decide what to keep, what to sell, and what to toss. Today I finally got around to it. It's a little weird. The space in my life formerly occupied by horses closed up almost as soon as Allie left. Maybe I'm in denial? Maybe not. Since last fall at least, and probably longer, that space was being held open by my daily routine: whether I rode or not (and I usually didn't), I spent at least an hour at the barn every day doing evening chores. Once that structure was removed, life filled in the gap. Scoop a cupful of water out of a pond and an instant later the lack is invisible.

Stuff, however, takes up space. It doesn't disappear just because I'm not looking at it. This particular stuff was taking up space in someone else's barn. Horse stuff takes up more space than dog stuff or people stuff -- not surprising, since Allie outweighed me by about 800 pounds and Travvy by 78 pounds more than that. More to the point, most of it is now of no use to me but might well be of use to other people.

I did horses about as frugally as horses can be done, but I still accumulated plenty of stuff that I didn't really need and rarely used. Horses generally come equipped with all the wardrobe they need, but you wouldn't be able to deduce this from current horsekeeping practices on Martha's Vineyard. As soon as the temperature goes below about 45 degrees, the blankets go on. If the horses are clipped, the blankets go on sooner. Clipped horses get less sweaty when ridden hard and take less time to cool out. I never clipped Allie. If I didn't have a lot of time to cool her out, then I didn't ride hard enough to sweat her up. To me this is common sense, but it's become less and less common on Martha's Vineyard over the 11+ years I was involved with horses here. We won't go into the people who clip their horses because they ride all winter in heated indoor arenas.

Short version is that my horse inventory includes a blanket, a rain sheet, a fleece cooler, and a fly sheet. The blanket Allie wore at most 10 days a year; this past winter she wore it once, and probably didn't need it then. The other stuff she wore much less, the fly sheet not at all. She had a regular sheet but she never wore that either so I turned it into Travvy's crate bed. He's chewed one of the straps off but other than that it's holding up pretty well.

Allie's saddle pads, however, got plenty of use. I've worn out a few over the years. Travvy's been using one for his "go to place" mat. I'm keeping the white monogrammed one I won as a year-end award almost 10 years ago -- Trav will probably get that one too -- but the rest are for sale. Ditto the miscellaneous training equipment that I used more often when Allie was younger but hardly at all in the last 7 or 8 years.

None of this stuff is priced at more than $10 or $20. My only pricier horse possessions are my saddle, which I got used for $900 and will sell for $400, and my bridle, which I bought with the gift certificate Jay McG. gave me for helping looking after his wife Joan's ponies after Joan was killed in a (horse-)driving accident in her own pasture in November 2006. It's a nice bridle, far nicer than the one it replaced, and I thought of keeping it for sentimental reasons -- but I'm not sentimental enough to watch a good bridle mold away in my closet. So it's for sale too: $85. I'd almost forgotten the never-used leather halter I bought at Campbell & Douglas (which closed for good last winter); right after I bought it, Barbara D. gave me the nearly new halter she'd bought for her Arab mare, Muffy, who died of colic not long afterward. That's the halter that Allie wore to her new/old home.

I didn't have much to throw out. Various lotions, potions, brushes, etc., I bequeathed to my barnmates; whatever they don't want, I'll chuck. I'm keeping my riding helmet and my spurs -- I still enjoy riding, and won't turn down a chance to ride someone else's horse. My grooming kit bag is a handy item; if I clean it up, it might do as a carry-all for Travvy's go-to-trial stuff. It has pockets to tuck small items into, the items that tend to slip to the bottom of the big canvas bag we're using now. I'm keeping Allie's shampoo to wash my own hair. It's much better stuff than I buy for myself.

Rally in Wrentham

June 05, 2010 - View Single Entry

The first ferry of the day leaves Vineyard Haven dock at 6 a.m. That's the boat you take when the 7 and the 8:15 are fully booked and you have to be somewhere off-island before noon. I took it this morning because it was the only one that would get me where I was going by the time I needed to be there.

Where I was going was Wrentham, Mass., specifically the Crackerbarrel Fairgrounds, where Travvy and I were signed up to make our first attempt at Rally Advanced. More about that later. To get on the 6 a.m. boat, you're supposed to be at the dock by 5:30. I live 20 minutes max. from Vineyard Haven, and given the traffic at that hour I could probably make it in 12, 15 at most, but traveling with a dog, like traveling with a kid, involves a lot of stuff. Since I was going to be getting up at 4:30, when there's a little light in the sky but not much, I did as much prep-and-packing as I could the night before. This included setting up Travvy's new soft crate in Malvina Forester's cargo hold, and dismantling the wire crate that is permanent furniture in my apartment and stowing it in the car. Trav would ride in the soft crate, and the wire crate (which is about an inch too tall to be set up in Malvina's cargo area) could be used outside the car. Predicted temps were warm, and on a warm late spring day, the inside of a car is not a good place for a dog, even with all the windows open.

All non-perishable supplies went into a canvas bag: a horse sheet that Allie almost never wore that has found a second life as Travvy's crate bed; another horse hand-me-down, the well-worn and faded green saddle pad that serves as Trav's "go to place" mat and doubles as a bed for his soft crate; a space blanket to be used as a crate cover, shiny side out to deflect the sun's rays; and filled water bottle and empty water dish; plain web collar (collars with jangling tags are verboten in the Rally ring), two old chew bones, an orange Bento Ball, and a blue Kong Wubba. Into my brown messenger bag went the folder with vital statistics: copies of Trav's registration certificate and proof of rabies vaccination, along with info about the show, including how to get there. I put an unopened jar of Skippy's chunky peanut butter into the canvas bag -- Trav can entertain himself for a long time licking peanut butter out of the inside of old bones -- but as soon as I turned my back Trav liberated the peanut butter and busied himself trying to get the top off. I retrieved the jar, put it back in the bag, and put the bag up higher than Trav could reach.

By 4:35 a.m. I was out of bed. I fed Trav, got dressed, and threw the perishables -- a big zip-lock bag of chopped turkey dog bits -- into the canvas bag. In the pre-dawn light it was hard to tell what the sky was saying, but my skin knew the air was saturated with moisture. I loaded Trav's bag and mine into the car, took Trav for a short pee walk, and we were off. By 5:25 I was checking in at the Steamship dock and rolling into lane 8. Most of the other vehicles on the six o'clock were pickups, some towing boats on trailers. Once on the mainland, we pulled off Route 28 at the Falmouth Ice Arena, behind which is a good place to allow dogs to do their serious business -- even if you're on the seven o'clock boat, never mind the six, the chances are slight that you've had time to do this before rushing for the boat. Next door is a Dunkin Donuts. I'd thought to get some coffee and either a bagel or a breakfast sandwich -- no time for tea and oatmeal when you're trying to get out the door by 5:15 a.m. -- but the line was too long and I wasn't that desperate. Off we went.

The drive was uneventful till we hit a torrential downpour with thunder and lightning accompaniment somewhere past Taunton. Malvina's windshield wipers could barely keep up, and I could barely see the white lane lines or even the edge of the road. Evidently other drivers couldn't either, because the prevailing speed in the middle lanes dropped to about 50 mph, which is downright cautious for breakneck 495. The storm hit the Vineyard about 45 minutes later, cancelling agility class, flooding the roads, and bringing a freak lightning strike at some neighbors' up the road: the lightning jumped from a parked car to a string of Christmas lights that hadn't been put away, thence into the house, where it destroyed the TV and did some other damage. No one was hurt and nothing burned down, but the smell of burning was enough to bring out the West Tisbury fire department. I didn't learn about this till I got home.

Judging by the puddles, the storm had passed over the Crackerbarrel Fairgrounds too. I found Wrentham, and the fairgrounds, with no trouble (and no GPS -- you really expect a girl who won't have a cell phone to come equipped with GPS?). It's a big show, featuring not only Rally and Obedience trials but an all-breed show, and a well-organized one. I figured that out from the clarity and friendliness of the parking attendants. When I told them where I was headed, they pointed me in the right direction. Pretty soon Malvina was settled in the general parking area closest to ring 18, where the Rally trials were being held.

I sprang Trav from his crate and gave him water, then off we went to explore the grounds. He's always excited in new places, and new places with lots of dogs around are at the very top of his excitement list. This was the most exciting place he'd been since the two shows we went to at the Barnstable County fairgrounds last September. We kept our distance from the main event until he started to settle down, meaning that he could hear me when I said his name or asked him to sit, and he again showed interest in the hot dog morsels I offered him. We also kept our distance from other dogs. When I was pretty sure that his mind and his brain were in sync, we went back to the car. I set up the big crate, put Trav in it with peanut-butter-slathered bones and a treat-enhanced Bento Ball, covered all with the space blanket, and went off to check in at the Rally tent.

The walk-through for Advanced didn't start till about 10:20, so Trav and I took another walk. He had calmed down enough to be paying attention at least 50% of the time. Then he went back to his crate (I reloaded the bones with peanut butter and the Bento Ball with bits of biscuit, hot dog, and kibble) and I went to walk the course. The course wasn't too scary. The obstacle I least wanted to see wasn't there: the broad jump. We've just started to practice with it, always with a bar over it to impress the dogs with the idea that they need to jump. At this stage, Travvy would probably treat an unaugmented broad jump as a bridge to be walked over, and walking over a jump is an automatic NQ -- the dreaded Not Qualified. There's always one jump in an Advanced course. This one was a bar jump, and it looked pretty sturdy. Whew.

The other obstacle I didn't want to see was the off-set figure 8. Making a figure 8 around two cones is pretty easy. What makes it hard are the two dishes set on either side of the 8's middle: they've got kibble in them, and maybe a toy. Yeah, the food is covered, but dogs don't need to see food to know it's there and keep in mind that Advanced is done off-leash. We've practiced this at home and in class, but in this high-intensity environment I really didn't want to see an off-set figure 8 in my first Advanced course. I lucked out again: it wasn't there. Just before the walk-through, I met a young woman who, like me, was making her first attempt at Advanced. Broad jumps and off-set figure 8s were her least favorite prospects too. Her number was 29. We wished each other luck.

The course did include both a 180-degree left pivot and a 90-degree left pivot, not to mention a sit–stand–walk around dog, but Trav and I are pretty good at those. It was pretty tight, but our practice area is tighter. I went back to the car, sprang Travvy again, and we went for a little practice walk under the trees, arriving at Ring 18 when it was almost our turn to go in. Last September the thought of competing in a Rally trial, period, was pretty damn scary. Competing in Rally Advanced, meaning without a leash, hadn't made it to the thought stage because it was totally unthinkable. Now we really were about to go into the ring and do a 16-station course -- without a leash.

My worst fear was that with the leash removed, Trav would immediately race out of the ring. After quite a few practice sessions and much work on the West Tisbury tennis courts, I didn't think this scenario all that likely. Travvy was, however, very distracted at Start. In practice, he snaps to my side, leash or no leash. This morning the world was much more interesting. He drifted toward Finish on the opposite side of the ring. I coaxed him back and into a less-than-snappy, less-than-straight sit. The judge -- a wonderfully encouraging and patient woman -- asked the ritual question: "Is the team ready?" "We're ready," said I.

After Start, the next station was Serpentine Weave Once: four cones in a line that you weave in and out of till you get to the end. Travvy still wasn't focused. Between cones 2 and 3 I called for a redo. You can call for a redo at any time as long as you haven't finished the station. It costs you 3 points, but blowing the station will cost you 10. In this case we probably wouldn't have lost all 10 points, but we seriously needed to regroup. It worked. We progressed to the next station. Travvy sat when I halted, he stood when I asked him to, and he stood still while I walked around him. Whew. We did the 270-degree turn to the right quite nicely, followed by the jump. In the corner was the 180-degree pivot to the left. We've done better in practice, but this was pretty good. We struck off on the diagonal for the 360-degree right circle, made the right turn, and had no trouble with sit–down–walk around. Next was Left About Turn, where handler turns to the left while dog comes around to the right behind her. We're very good at this, but having a distracted dog out of sight behind you is always risky. When we finished the maneuver, Trav was in heel position just where he was supposed to be. On we went to the 360-degree left circle.

At the next station, the 90-degree pivot left, Travvy's focus was going south. In practice I would have produced a piece of hot dog from my mouth, pocket, or bait bag. In AKC competition, no food is allowed anywhere near the ring. No food, no leash -- that's why it's Advanced, right? We did manage the pivot, and the left turn that followed, but at the Slow Pace sign Travvy didn't notice that I'd slowed down till he was halfway to the Normal Pace sign that followed.

After that was Finish. We made it -- then the fun started. Travvy started to walk out of the ring before I could call him front to wait for his leash to be returned. If your dog goes off-course, including out of the ring, you NQ if you or anyone else touches him. I forgot that it's OK to touch your dog or grab his collar after you've passed Finish. So I was trying to call him back, he wasn't paying attention, the ring steward was trying to block him and get me my leash, and in the confusion I tripped over Travvy and we both fell into the ring fence, Travvy first. When I got up and reached for his collar, he growled at me, one fang exposed. I was cautious but not alarmed: Trav was stressed, cranky, and on the verge of a tantrum. Once he was back on his own four paws he was fine.

The judge told me to check in with the Rally and Obedience chair to let her know that we were both OK; the steward would take me to her after I'd taken Trav back to the car. I didn't know if we'd qualified or not: was Travvy's growling at me a deal-breaker? By the time I got back to the ring, having left Travvy in his crate with more peanut-buttered bones, the class was over and qualifiers were being called into the ring. My number, 33, was called. That was a pleasant surprise, but when 33 was called for second place, with a score of 92, I thought they'd made a mistake. Nope: along with my dark green qualifying ribbon I got a red for second place and a big squeaky stuffed tomato for Travvy. Number 29 had apparently NQed. I was sorry not to have had a chance to catch up with her.

I then assured the Rally/Obedience chairperson, Julie (who's also a judge and an instructor), that Trav and I were both fine, no big deal. She said she had to fill out an incident report, but she didn't seem worried, and she gave me a big biscuit for Travvy. I was thinking that the big problem was Travvy's growling, but several people later thought it might be liability, e.g., they wanted to cover themselves in case I sued. The idea of me suing anybody because I tripped into a two-foot-high fence was almost as silly as me getting hurt because I tripped into a two-foot-high fence -- I mean, really, don't they know that I've fallen out of haylofts and had a horse flip over me, without getting hurt or suing anybody? No, they don't know; that's the point.

I watched a couple of the Novice runs -- those lucky people who get to use leashes! -- but once the sun came out in earnest it was beastly hot and we were on the 2:30 boat. I packed up the car, tucked Trav into his travel crate (with more peanut-buttered bones), then pulled out the Subaru manual and figured out how to turn on Malvina's air conditioning. I hadn't used it before, never had a vehicle with A/C, but nothing's too good for my dog, right? Once back on 495 I discovered that A/C has another benefit: with all the windows closed, I can actually hear the music coming from the CD player. Hmm. I might have to get over my reservations about burning extra gas for comfort I don't need. Later someone suggested that open windows promote extra gas consumption by increasing the drag on forward motion. I love ideas like that.

I pulled into the Burger King in Falmouth with plenty of time to get to Woods Hole by two, but while I was giving Trav water, a couple stopped by to admire him. "Malamute or Siberian?" they asked. "Malamute," I said. "That's what I thought," said the woman, "but I wasn't sure." Turns out they have three Sibes. We talked dog for at least 20 minutes. One of their dogs they've had from a puppy; the other two are both rescues. Travvy was a model friendly and patient dog throughout.

The ferry docked at Oak Bluffs. Travvy back in his usual shotgun position, we headed home. Dog buddy and Rally classmate Julia lives on the way and I couldn't wait to tell somebody that we'd Qualified. Fortunately she was home. She called teacher Karen on her cell phone so I could give her the news. It was sort of sinking in that we'd really pulled it off: Travvy, the class wild man back in our Novice class, was the first of the group to get a leg on his Advanced title. We've got plenty of work to do, but we've worked hard, come a long way, and boy, does it feel good.

Allie Left Yesterday

June 02, 2010 - View Single Entry

. . . for her new home, which was also her first home: Hartland Morgans in Windsor, N.Y.!

In mid-April I e-mailed Christine, who owns and manages Hartland with her husband, Steve, to let her know that Allie was for sale. She e-mailed back about an hour and a half later that she and Steve wanted to buy her back. Buying a horse was way, way down their list of priorities, but Allie was her dam's only filly. They didn't know this was going to be the case: Bess's breeding career was cut short when she foundered badly after being seriously overfed at a barn where she'd gone to be artificially inseminated. She wasn't sound enough to carry a foal after that, and within a couple of years she was so lame she had to be euthanized. Other than Allie, all of Bess's produce were colts, and all are geldings.

Allie is 14 and never been bred, but she's sound, sane, and healthy, and Steve and Christine thought she was a pretty good bet. The local vet who did her rectal exam agreed.

Getting a horse to and from Martha's Vineyard is always expensive, given the ferry fare for truck and trailer, esp. between mid-May and mid-October. Often it involves two haulers (one local and one not) and a layover of several days at an off-island boarding barn. But Christine and Steve have friends on the Vineyard who for years have been urging them to come visit. So they arranged to have the farm looked after, and Saturday they drove to Mashpee (in southeastern Mass., on Cape Cod but just barely), where Christine has relatives; crossed Vineyard Sound on Sunday afternoon and left their trailer at the barn where Allie's been living for the last year; and went off to spend a couple of days with their friends.

Their ferry reservation going off was for 4 p.m. yesterday. You have to be at the dock a half-hour early, and post-Memorial Day traffic is getting heavier, so we agreed to rendezvous at the barn at 2 p.m. When I got there, Steve already had the trailer hitched up and ready. Christine had bought a copy of Mud of the Place and asked me to sign it for her; I forgot to bring my copy of her new poetry book, Appetite for the Divine (Ashland Press), which I haven't had a chance to read yet.

Allie walked right onto the trailer, even though she hasn't been in one in two years. And they were off. The plan was to lay over with friends in Connecticut last night and then go the rest of the way today. (Steve said it was a nine-hour trip altogether, from Woods Hole, Mass., to Windsor, N.Y., and they wanted to give Allie a break.)

The whole thing has gone so smoothly and we're all so happy about it that I know it's worked out just the way it was supposed to. (Allie's registered name is Hartland All for the Best.)

It's going to take some readjusting and selling off/giving away/throwing out a lot of stuff, but I've been gradually withdrawing from horses over the last year or so -- I could write or I could ride, but not both (not unless I hit the lottery, which I don't play). The energy drain, the time and the money, has been making it too hard to do what I'm supposed to be doing. So on to the next . . . I've already had several "If you ever want to ride" offers, which I'll probably take people up on eventually, but for now horses are fading into my background and new possibilities continue to open up.

P.S. 4:30 p.m. Steve just called -- they got home safely, and Allie was a trooper all the way. Not surprised, but it's still a relief!

May License Plate Report

May 31, 2010 - View Single Entry

Oregon and Wyoming. Finally the west coast is complete! YTD total is 31.

I'm trying to catch up on my blog archiving. I'm so far behind that I just reached the May 2009 license plate report. Funny thing: I colored in the last west coast state in May last year too, but last year the late arrival was Washington and the YTD total was 33.