See you on the other side

Yeah, so, for a long time I kept this blog and a separate one with much the same content.  The idea was, here, I would kind of be unedited, where the other, currently called The Dog's Breakfast, was kind of a sanitized version for consumption by those with more tender sensibilities.  I can't be arsed (Australian term) to update two blogs anymore these days -- I can hardly be arsed to update one.  But I've posted some updates there recently, and will probably just stop updating this one.  So if you're one of the... one or two people left who still follow this blog, please switch on over to the other.

The problem with having an ongoing blog is that when you haven't posted in a while, it means you have a lot to post about, which makes putting it off that much easier. So to heck with it. If there's some big things I didn't post about -- like, say, a trip to Europe -- I'm just going to forget about them and move on.

I will at least mention that the book I contributed a chapter to -- Mindhacker: 60 Tips, Tricks, and Games to Take Your Mind to the Next Level -- is out. I think it's even better than the first one (Mind Performance Hacks (that I contributed a couple of chapters to)) and the reviews seem to bear that out.

Not to be outdone, a high school friend of mine has written a whole book, and the reviews have been phenomenal. I knew him when.

Oh, and somehow all the comments you all submitted recently were sitting there waiting for me to approve them for months but I never got email notification. So they're approved now, sorry.

Mid-summer here now but it's been a pretty cool season so far. Lots of fun parties and such, and trips to the park with Hamish. He's settled in and accepts us now as his pack, but is still pretty cheeky. But he has lots of dog friends at the park. His favorite game is chasing other dogs who are chasing a ball, and try to run ahead of them and cut them off. It's good because it means other dogs' owners exercise our dog for us.

Sandwich

I was lying in my lounge chair.  Marjorie came and laid on top of me.  And so Hamish decided he had to be on top.

Okay, cobwebs are forming here. Let's dust things off a bit. Even if no one even reads this anymore, it's still been an invaluable resource to refer back to over the years, so I really need to get back on it.

We took a trip to Europe, which was great, but I'll get back to that eventually. As for now, the big news is a new pup in our life!

His name is Hamish, and we got him via Pet Rescue, though they were calling him Roger at his foster home. We think he's painfully cute. He's smart and funny and has lots of personality, but is still rather laid back, especially compared to Laika. He's different in several other ways to Laika too. We're still trying to figure out all his quirks but we like him a whole lot.

We decided to sign him (and us) up for obedience classes, just to be sure we could take him out to cafes and such. We had the first class on Saturday (my birthday). The instructor was good, but strict. So far the biggest result is a lot of stress in our household -- it's hard to be strict and you can bet Hamish isn't a fan either. We're wondering whether we want to even pursue this route. I mean, the instructor was able to get instant results with Hamish (even when we couldn't) but will we still like the dog that he becomes? Or are we just being soft because we don't want to dole out punishment to our cute little doggy? The whole thing is just not a lot of fun.

Since the class yesterday we've been defying our instructor a bit. We've found we've gotten better results with a little bit of sugar anyway instead of the hard line approach. Or maybe that's just us being manipulated. The instructor did say that Hamish is smart and is going to be a handful to train.

Some more pictures!

Laika is no more - Part 2

The other horrible thing I had to do on Friday was to dig the hole in the backyard. My hands got fully blistered from the shovel, but I didn't care, and it was cathartic in the end.

On Saturday the vet was scheduled to come by at 2pm I think, but in the morning Laika seemed a tiny bit brighter so we decided to take her to another of her favorite parks, Edinburgh Gardens. She had a last jump at her favorite tree, the one with the hole in it that she would always check for possums. She didn't have a lot left after that so we just sat in the grass with her for an hour or so and let her sniff the wind while we cried. We eventually took her home, and gave her all the little bits of kangaroo jerky -- the only thing she would still eat -- that she wanted.

The vet came by on schedule, and of course Laika had a bark at the door, which we didn't think she still had in her. We knew we had to go forward with it though; she might've held on for another day or two, but it wouldn't be happy times for her, especially through the nights. Laika went back and flopped down by the back door while the vet explained the procedure to us. She was really outstanding and compassionate; I don't know how people can do that for a living, but I'm glad there are people that are willing. She started things with an IV that first made Laika unconscious, and as she was putting it in, heartbreakingly, Laika put her head up and gave her a kiss. From there we only had a minute or two and so we went out on the back porch while it took effect. The neighborhood dogs gave one last bark at a passerby, and Laika gave a last bark with them, defending her territory to the last. She went to sleep lying on the back porch, with the two of us holding her and telling her what a good girl she is, while the vet came and administered the final shot that would stop her heart. We took a snip of her fur for a keepsake, and each took a last deep smell of her. Our baby was dead.

Such a good dog. Half crazy, but that only made us love her more. I think we did everything we could for her, which is the least we could offer a dog that we had no doubt would have taken a bullet for us. I've had people I love die before, and have been greatly saddened, but this I would have to call my first experience with "grief". We spent days and days afterwards just going through the motions. To me, the world had a weird tilt on it, like everything was shifted six inches, and I had to force myself to do all the little things you do in life that typically come by force of habit. And there is no place within miles of here that doesn't have some memory of her associated with it.

We were, and are, still torn between wanting to run out and get a new dog, just to fill the hole in our lives, and wanting to hold on to her memory and mourn her loss. Marjorie goes back and forth between wanting to wait, and showing me pictures of cute dogs on dog rescue web sites. I suspect after our upcoming trip, we'll go inflict our lives once again on some unsuspecting dog.

Laika is no more - Part 1

(For obvious reasons, this has taken a long time to write. It's not a pleasant thing to relive, and so I've decided to just post what I've written so far and finish the rest later.)

Right. Well. Most of you will have heard the news about our beloved fur-child Laika. Sorry that it took me so long to write about it but I really just couldn't.

We learned she had cancer (of the worst sort) back in August and so knew we could only buy time for her. We kept picking dates that we hope she'd make it to -- first Christmas, which was a happy time, then her birthday in mid-February, by which time she was really struggling. Each new symptom or drop in her energy sent us deeper into sadness about the coming inevitability. By the final days she was not getting up when we'd come home; her breathing was labored and raspy, and she was not keeping her food down. She was still interested in food, largely because at that point shelved the standard dog food and were giving her nothing but the tastiest of treats.

On Thursday the 17th we took her to a nice park we had discovered recently, that had big wide open grounds (good for us to be able to spot problem dogs approaching) that she seemed to like. This place we had started calling the Island of Misfit Dogs as it seems lots of people brought their old or infirm dogs there. We let her do a bit of exploring, and she managed to find a nice pile of semi-dry horse manure to roll in. We can recognize her smile, and we saw it then for the first time in a while, so how could we be mad?

But we knew the end was nigh, so I took off Friday to spend the day with her. We went back to the same park, thinking it would be her last day. Indeed, she seemed a lot more listless than the previous day, and didn't manage to do much more than flop down on the grass. She seemed content enough to sit there and sniff the wind, but we knew things were over.

We had been in contact with the "Doggie Kevorkian", and so we arranged for her to come by the house the next day to put her down. (It's great that there are people who do that, I just don't know how they can do it; it would kill me.)

Jackpot

I had been pondering a subscription to ancestry.com to search out my relatives. They play a ton of commercials for them here (as I hear they do in the States) and it started to wear me down. I was just... suspicious of them, because they give you two weeks, and then it's so many dollars a month -- but they don't tell you that they charge you for a whole year when the two weeks is up unless you look at the fine print. Also, while you sign up online, you can only cancel over the phone, which is never a good sign.

I mentioned this all to a coworker, and he suggested checking out the library - he had heard that a lot of them had free access to ancestry.com. So I looked into it a little, and found that the State Library of Victoria here in the middle of Melbourne offered it. So I went to check it out today, and wow! They have a big beautiful room dedicated to genealogy, with lots of computer terminals, shelves and shelves of books, and a helpful staff of actual genealogists.

I only had a short time to do it today, so I availed myself of the ancestry.com access, and took some "screen shots" (literally, camera-phone pictures of the screen). Found this World War 2 draft registration card from my second great uncle, as well as this 1930 Census record showing my then-12-year-old grandmother and her family. (I found a 1920 record as well that I forgot to take a picture of that had most of the same people.)

I can't wait to go back. Clearly this is my obsession at the moment; I don't know why. I'm just fascinated by history, and researching my ancestry is just a good excuse. Like the commercial says, it's like being a detective. I will note that I'm doing this all with two main rules:

• No pride (or shame) at anything I find. My ancestors were all individuals who made their own choices through life and there's no reason I should take any credit for their successes any more than I should feel ashamed at their failings.
• No bias towards the patrilineal paths. The women in my family tree contributed just as much to my genetic makeup as the men, and I'm sure worked just as hard if not harder for their families.