Fun Day Shirt Update

CURRENT ORDER INFO: If you'd like to place an order, please send me an email (see profile). We have t-shirts in adult and youth sizes, as well as adult hooded sweatshirts and full-zip hooded sweatshirts!

Guide Dogs' Fun Day in San Rafael is only 3 weeks away! Our puppy group will be selling t-shirts as pictured above (mens/unisex S-XXL and youth S-XL) AND hoody sweatshirts (mens/unisex S-XXL). The shirts are $15, hoodies are $25. All shirts/hoodies are in navy. Quantities are limited so stop by our booth early!

My family, Cabana and I will NOT be able to attend because we'll be out of town. Sorry to miss the opportunity to meet some of you!

Proceeds from our shirt sales will go toward harnesses for graduating pups. I'm HOPING that Cabana will have need for one of those harnesses someday....

Pictured in the photo above is my Daughter A who designed the shirt. Yay, A! I can tell Cabana is very sleepy in this photo--her ears hang low when she's tired!

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Coming Along

Although I wouldn't call them best friends, Cabana and Angie are learning to get along. If it were only up to Cabana, I might find the two of them cuddled up on her dog bed together, like in cute photos you see in calendars or on coffee mugs. But Angie is the one who'd have none of that. She's 14 years old and quite set in her ways. She tolerates Cabana, but she won't put up with Cabana's eagerness to sniff her posterior orifice.

Still, the fact that Angie is staying put on this lounge chair while Cabana sits beside her on the ground is tremendous progress in my book. And I didn't even put Cabana in a sit--she sat there completely on her own. We've come a long way since this photo, where Angie would beat a hasty retreat whenever Cabana was in the same room.

It seems like Cabana has learned to pay less attention to cats on our walks. In the past week, she either hasn't seen them or hasn't cared enough to see them. I hope it's the latter. If she can be less distracted by cats, MAYBE there's hope for her being less distracted by dogs.

I was pretty discouraged by a recent post on the Guide Dogs blog about career changed dogs. Sharon Davis of Aurora, CO, describes her feelings after her puppy Argos got career changed. She is a puppy group LEADER (i.e., she has much more of a clue about what she's doing than I do), and she was not able to help Argos overcome his dog distraction. She says, "...he just wanted to play with those other dogs." I know there's nothing more that Cabana would love than to play with the other dogs we see on our walks.

Still, I know it doesn't help to dwell on what may or may not be. I need to focus on doing the best with the puppy I've got, and I do feel encouraged when I see the teeny tiny baby steps of progress that Cabana is making.



Speaking of which, I've noticed my garden is progressing very nicely. I planted the veggies in this planter box on June 22. Click here to see how they looked just over a month ago. Last night, we had homemade pizza and salad. I used tomatoes, basil, lettuce and arugula, all harvested from my little garden. My zucchini plants are the huge leaves in the back. I think we're going to have zucchini coming out of our ears in about a week!

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Back to the Black Poodles

Not many folks ventured guesses on the baby/black poodle post. I drew quite a blank when I first looked at it myself, but here's how my daughter and I each interpreted the exhibit. Of course, there is no correct answer, and I'd still love to hear more of your opinions, if you have any!

My thoughts: Dogs' lives are centered around humans, so even a human infant exerts influence and control over dogs. The baby is powerful, while the dogs all have to obey. I didn't think of this as being a positive statement, but more indicative of how humans have too much power over all animals in general, not just dogs. We say what they can and can't do, whether they live or die. We try to create too much order by imposing superficial and unnatural behaviors, shown by the poodles standing in rigidly defined circles.

Daughter A: The poodles represent society since it is a breed that people exert a lot of control over, with their coiffed pompadour hairdos and oftentimes luxurious human-centered lifestyles. The baby in the center symbolizes purity, while the poodles symbolize social pressures, media, and other evils, waiting to manipulate and sully the purity in all of us.

To read a bit more about the exhibit, click here.

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Good Report from Sitters

This morning, I picked Cabana up from the puppy sitter's. She got a pretty good report. The puppy sitters said that she had very good house manners, but she didn't like getting into cars. In the past week, I have noticed that Cabana has been hesitant to get into our car as well--maybe she hit her leg getting in one day? Part of the problem is that she BOUNDS into the car, rather than calmly stepping up into it. We have a Toyota Rav4, and she sits on the floor of the middle seats, not the far back--so it's not a high step up. I need to work on getting her to go in more sedately this week.

The other thing Cabana didn't like there was getting into her crate, whether at night or during the day. They said she was fine once she was in--she didn't bark or whine. But they had to push her to make her go in. I wondered if this might be because they have 2 other dogs and a cat, and maybe she didn't want to be confined when the other animals were on the loose. At our house, although I can't say Cabana is eager to get in, she does enter of her own accord.



Two days before I took Cabana to the puppy sitter's house, their cat had a litter of kittens! Now, at 5 days old, they are beginning to open their eyes. They were adorable mewling little things. Cabana even got to "meet" one of them--she sat very still and seemed highly intrigued. They've already got homes for all of them, so thankfully, there was no temptation on our part to take one off their hands!

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What's with the Poodles?

Cabana is at a puppy sitter's house this weekend. To be a GDB puppy sitter, you must attend half the puppy meetings (or something like that). Our group had a puppy sitter for a while, but then she stopped coming, most likely because no one ever used her services. Not as a reflection of her abilities, but more because no one needed their puppy to be puppy sat. So earlier this summer during my week of alone time, I would have loved to take Cabana to the puppy sitter's, rather than the GDB kennels--but she hadn't been coming to the meetings and wasn't eligible to puppy sit. Last week, she started coming back to the meetings, and I felt that it would be nice to utilize her services. It would be encouraging to her, a respite for me and my family, and good practice for Cabana.

So today, being puppy-less, we decided to spend the day in San Francisco. First, we went to the Renegade Craft Fair, where my daughters and I drooled over all the fun items (and my husband patiently humored us). We stopped at Emily Martin's booth, The Black Apple. For anyone familiar with Etsy, Emily is one of Etsy's top sellers with over 23,000 sales! She's what every Etsian aspires to be. She's even been on Martha Stewart's show. And when I asked if I could take a photo of her and her booth, she gave me the sweetest pose! I felt so privileged to meet her.


Then, we went to SFMoMA (Museum of Modern Art). I personally enjoy abstract art and the way its message is left open to the beholder's interpretation. The exhibit that attracted me most was a pristinely white baby doll, lying on an 8-pointed gold star, and surrounded by hundreds of black poodles.

It was so interesting! I asked each of my family members to tell me what they thought the artist was trying to convey. And I'd like to ask you all the same thing. WHAT does it mean--the white baby, the black poodles, the star, the concentric circles?

In a few days, I'll post what my family members said. Of course, there's no right answer, and I'm not sure what the artist herself meant by it. Please don't do any online research--just post from your own gut feelings!! I'm curious to hear what you think!

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Murphy's Law

Today, a friend invited me, my daughters, and Cabana to her house for lunch. She has a lovely swimming pool in her backyard, so my daughters got to swim. But my friend asked that Cabana not be allowed to go in the pool (she didn't want dog hairs clogging her pool filter). Since Cabana doesn't like to swim anyway, I said that's totally fine, not a problem!

So of course, today, since Cabana wasn't ALLOWED in the pool, she decided she WANTED to go in!! I was flabbergasted. She kept putting her paws down onto the first step in the pool and would have gone in further, but I kept pulling her back out. We've been to this friend's house before, and Cabana didn't show ANY previous interest in being in their pool--so who on earth knows WHAT made her decide that now she wants to be a "real Labrador" and go for a swim.

But my friend's garden is beautiful, so I took a few pretty pics. Too bad I couldn't take any action shots of Cabana in the pool (or even BY the pool; I just didn't think of it at the time, don't you hate it when that happens?).

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Tuesday Topics 20 - Topic-less

On the occasion of my 20th Tuesday Topic, I have realized that my topics are running dry! Although I may resurrect Tuesday Topics in the future, they will be more sporadic instead of weekly.

THANK YOU to all who have answered my questions, whether they were no-brainers, silly, introspective, or personal. I have learned so much, and although I've said it before, I'm so blessed by this online community who have taken time to read my blather and post such helpful comments and encouragement.

But I'm not going anywhere. Tuesday Topics was a good way to ensure that I published a post at least once a week, but I'll still post on a fairly regular basis.

Update on my discouragement post of last week: As your comments predicted, things have been going better with Cabana. Funny how when life is stressful, our dogs pick up on it, and it shows in their behavior as well as ours. Now that this week is a bit calmer (although only just a bit), Cabana seems more relaxed, too. I appreciate everyone's encouraging comments. I think I do forget how far Cabana has come, and it helps to be reminded.

I took the above photo this afternoon. I realized I hardly ever take photos of Cabana in her jacket. This one (in my opinion, if not anyone else's) might even be worth entering for the calendar!

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