My dog, the natural sidekick

A month or so ago we went on down to the best little winery, River Run, out on Rogge Road in Watsonville. For the first time we took Truffle, because we thought it would be a good outing for her. And it was. The dog there -- whose name I remembered until just this minute -- was a little grouchy with her at first, becaause she is an elderly dog and didn't want no young'uns getting no rambunctious ideas. But Truffle, who can seem pretty well dominant on the dog field, knows how to kiss ass, and the old dog tolerated her well after the first moments.

However, their relationship cemented when a couple of neighbor dogs went walking through the fields just below the winery (deeply plowed with square tops to the rows, so I think it's going to be berries). Their person was heading for the beautiful Pajaro River at the other side of the field. The dogs were fun to watch, especially the poor dachshund who kept disappearing into the cuts and reappearing with his ears all a-flutter.

Ginger, that was her name (she's a mutt but she looks -- and acts -- more like a Chesapeake than any other thype of dog), didn't take these dogs well at all. She had some harsh words for them. Truffle took her cue from her new-found friend, and barked her fool head off in the classic lieutenant position -- a little ahead on one flank, but clearly oriented to pick up any more cues.

So yesterday at the goodbye party for lovely Rosemary, Truffle met a lovely white white standard poodle named Nicky. They sniffed butts and declared amicability. They did not declare association, as I discovered when Truffle's prior friends Andie and Bradlee (expensive dogs, both. I wish I made in a month what one of those dogs cost). Andie's a Wheaton terrier, a lovely apricot thing, and Bradlee is a very expensive dry mop. Andie, who will always remain clueless and juvenile, rushed Nicky with her head in a submissive drop, working that tongue to inspire kindness, but Nicky took offense to something about this action -- maybe the suddenness of it, and maybe the fact that Nicky's twelve-year-old girl was behind Andie -- and roared quite definitely, raising her front feet to push Andie down.

Andie was also alarmed by this turn of events -- again, the unexpected response to her approach, or maybe the crowded quarters there in the kitchen doorway, and instead of rolling over like she might usually do, she talked back, making Nicky angrier. Just as the people were leaping to separate the dogs, here comes Truffle -- who moments before had been delighted to make Nicky's acquaintance -- ready to defend her friend against the relative newcomer. She actually pulled back her lips in a true snarl, which I've seen maybe four times in seven years. I've seen the half-snarl which means "pretend you are Darth Vader, and I'm Inigo Montoya! This pull toy is the key to the kingdom of Westsylvania! You'll never get it from me, you dastard!" But that's clearly different if you know dogs. If you don't know dogs don't assume a damn thing. Yell and flap your jacket, and then go away calmly from a snarling dog the same way you would from a mountain lion. Seriously. The domestic dog is prone to all sorts of dysfunctional upbringing, most of which is not at all dangerous, but don't count on catching the subtleties of dog communication. For one thing, people who raise dysfunctional dogs are unlikely to be effective at recusing you if things go awry.

On that note, I'll return to my stated theme: my dog is a natural sidekick!

Writer's Block: Deck the Halls!

[Error: unknown template qotd] So the nice fellow senses that Christmas time is coming and he starts scouring the mixed mostly-evergreen forests around here. He's been scouring them since a couple weeks before Thanksgiving anyway, looking for the elusive edible wild mushroom. In "normal" years, and even more so in "wet" years, this is a rich, colorful bounty, fragrant and delicious. We're having a dry year, but we've gotten a few dinners of chanterelles.

A week or so before Christmas -- sometimes a little earlier, sometimes a little later -- he goes to those same woods and he brings home a treelet. He looks very carefully through the undergrowth. What he wants is an "ethical catch" -- he can't get a legal one in these woods. An ethical catch is a treelet that would wither where it stands because it is too crowded and overshaded by grownup pines and manzanitas and things. It's really a good thing to remove baby trees of this nature because otherwise they add to the dry stuff that might catch fire in the late summer.

So this tree -- if you've seen "charlie Brown's Christmas" you know what it looks like -- usually so small in the trunk that we have to bolster it with pieces of crap wood before the smallest tree stand will hold it. We also tie it to the curtain rod. Now it is too delicate to take the huge glass balls that are all the rage now, and decorating it in a mono-or dichromatic style like so many people do these days is right out because really, who could take that in anything other than a risible spirit?

No, we have a pretty big box -- by my standards -- of small ornaments we've gathered over the years. Most are no bigger than seven centimeters, most are a little less. None of them are proprietary ornaments -- no Goofies sporting their Black and Deckers, no Minnie Mouses drinking Coke, no Bettie Boops in Chevrolets.

What they are, mostly, is lovely little representations of fruits, bells, musical instruments, stars, and animals, largely birds, but there's no limit on what they can be, or of what material, so long as they are not too heavy for the tree. So there's a Guatemalan painted tin monkey brought by my friend thirty years ago, a satin penguin which was on sale the day after Christmas, some of the Italian blown translucent glass fruit I got almost forty years ago at Cost Plus, a flat wooden duck I painted with the kids, and a whole raft of mostly wooden musical instruments from the drug store one year. Not to mention the ugly plastic horns.

My daughter honestly is not into that spindly tree. It frustrates her. She wants a medium-sized normal tree. We did get one of those one year. My son was going to the grocery store one night in the season. There was a notorious drop and a huge puddle originating at the bottom of the driveway, and he lost traction and had to terraplane across the parking lot to get traction again. To hear him tell it, it was scary for him but he never really lost control. Anyway, the guy at the tree lot in front of the grocery store applauded his finesse and gave him a tree.

It's usually me who does most of the placement of ornaments on the tree, and consequently the top third of the tree is a little scanty. We get the Ukrainian angel doll given to us by the nice fellow's brother up top, though, which is a major feat of engineering.

I used to put boughs and mistletoe when I could get it all over. More than one year the nice fellow took a ladder and my son about a hundred and fifty miles south of here to an oak meadow very rich in mistletoe. I would not make the fancy kissing balls you see in sentimental illustrations, but I would dress them up. Lately I'm sort of more scattered than I used to be, so I don't have time.

This year the nice fellow brought a thing home from work. It was supposed to be a table centerpiece, I think, but it made a nice door decoration. Other years I make a wreath of extra pine twigs and other random vegetation and fight with it for its lifetime to keep it symmetrical and whole.

Other than that -- every year I say the house and porch is going to be clean for the holidays, and every year I don't make it.