Polopony: the Horse that made me a Horsegirl.

Topps, in a very unattractive, but sensible winter trace clip.

For better or worse, I am a horse girl for life.

It’s all Topps fault. He was a 15.1 bay running Quarter who was originally supposed to be a very fancy polo pony for high goal polo. (For someone else, obviously. I develop terrible hand-eye coordination every time someone hands me a polo mallet.)

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My brother and I were kids when were lucky enough to start riding. The drive to Windy Hill Farms was the highlight of my week. Everything was possible; we were heading to ride! My stomach would flutter as we ran into the main aisle to see which of the patient school horses we had been assigned to get ready and ride.

I hoped it be Tiny or Tim, the two almost identical chestnut ponies with opposite personalities. I loved them both. I usually got one of them; they were small and so was I.

It was heaven.

Eventually we half-leased horses during the winter. Tim was mine for three months!

Obviously, by then our fate was sealed. Spoiler alert: my brother and I both still have too many horses.

When we discussed actually owning a horse, my father sat me down and told me repeatedly that a horse was not a pet. It was a horse. NOT A PET. I nodded my head like I believed him.

Hell, I’d have agreed with almost anything as long as I could have a horse of my own.

I was 12 when Topps came into my life. For some reason that was his barn name, but his ‘real’ name was Polopony (pronounced, Pa-la-pony like from the “Honeymooners” show. Google it.).

Shortly after Topps joined the family. I was about 12 and had a lot of hair.

We bought Topps from the Giant Valley Farm, a polo barn that also took in a few boarders. I kept him there and it quickly became my second home.

Topps in front of the cow barn for some reason.

The first thing I learned when I went out to try him, was that he had arrived there a few years earlier, shipped from out west loose (!!!!) on a train car with a dozen or so other future polo ponies. He had cost by the polo folks $5000, an astronomical sum in the late ‘60s. He was supposed to be great.

That plan went south during his training when someone, (first referred to as ‘a moron,’ which as we aged became ‘that stupid bastard’) hit a beer can with a polo mallet on the way to the stick and ball field.

The noise either scared Topps or just pissed him off. Both are possible, but the end result was that he wouldn’t tolerate anyone carrying a polo mallet, stick or whip on him. Ever.

Thus ended his polo career.

Typical of most polo ponies, Topps had excellent ground manners. That was ideal for a kid, especially a vertically challenged one like me. I had to fling my saddle up onto his back and straighten it and the saddle pad out after it (hopefully) landed on his back. He would stand like a statue with an exasperated look on his face while I maneuvered his tack.

We didn’t have mounting blocks, so it was also a struggle for me to get into the saddle. Most of the time Topps would stand quietly while I hopped around hoping to get onboard, but occasionally he’d bite my rear to speed the process along. I have to admit, it worked.

For all of that, Topps was a completely inappropriate riding horse for a beginner, which, no matter how many lessons I had taken on school horses, was what I was. He was sensitive, had a soft mouth and was super comfortable. But he was also almost as green as me.

He learned to jump by someone foxhunting him. That meant he thought jumping was his cue to take control and run like hell to every jump. Not ideal for a novice.

After years of lessons, we both figured out a better way to ride. When I had actually learned what to do, he was a hoot to hunt.

We had to trailer to lessons and I needed so much help. My trainers still have that look of exasperation.

He also had strong opinions. Really strong.

We should have figured that out when we heard his origin story.

Topps would have been a spectacular polo pony. He was fast, agile and could stop and turn on a dime. But when the polo mallet connected with a can, his fate changed. A life in polo was not going to happen, and that was that.

The polo folk never completely gave up on him. Every so often someone would pass hand me a mallet just to see what would happen.

What happened – every time – was that Topps would bolt and then spin and rear until I dropped the mallet or fell off, whichever came first.

Topps might have been my dream horse, but he was their White Whale. The one that got away.

Getting what he wanted was Topps’ specialty. The horses at Giant Valley were turned out all day in the winter, and all night in the summer. When I rode after school I’d have to go into the 10 acre field he shared with five or six other horses to catch him.

It sounds simple. It was not.

He would leisurely walk away from me and maneuver himself behind the one horse that would kick. After a half an hour or so he’d usually let me catch him. The grain someone finally told me to bring, helped.

But more than once he didn’t feel like being ridden and would sashay into the pond and swim out to the little island. Where he would just look at me.

I swear he was laughing as I plopped to the ground and cried in frustration.

The smart thing to do would have been to sell him and get something more beginner friendly. However, I loved him beyond reason, and I’m very stubborn. (I know, hard to believe). I also complicated things by getting very sick.

My parents simply didn’t have the bandwidth to keep me alive and get rid of the one thing that kept me going. The first place I’d go after the hospital, was to see Topps. Sometimes before we even went home.

Eventually I did learn to ride him. It was never a perfect partnership, but we were okay and I adored him.

One year I was lucky enough to take him to a fancy riding camp. Two lessons a day with good instructors, horsemanship classes and camp shows every weekend. I was in heaven.

Topps hated it.

He was used to spending 12 hours a day in turn-out. At camp, he was stuck in a stall except when I was riding or the few hours a day he was in a turn-out.

Not surprisingly, he objected and regularly broke out of his stall. Literally. If I walked him by a horse van with a ramp down, he would load himself. He wanted to go home.

Topps and I showing. I should have been mortified by those braids, but I was too ignorant to know better. Thank goodness.

We were asked to leave after only a few weeks. Not surprising.

A few years later we went to Pony Club camp. Topps approved of this. When we weren’t riding, he was turned out with the other campers’ horses in the huge cross country field.

Topps and me at Pony Club camp. He was way readier to do the cross-country than I was.

All of the horses’ grain and hay was stored in a barn in the field. One night Topps figured out how to get into the barn. In the morning we discovered him locked inside, with every grain bag ripped open, and scattered around.

He was very pleased with himself. The Pony Club people running the camp were not.

My current horses would all have died from colic or had some expensive veterinary problem. Topps was fine, if a little fatter.

I was blessed with the luck of the ignorant in my first years as a horse owner. Days into our partnership Topps foundered. Laminitis is a hoof disease that can be disastrous and is often fatal. At the time, the only treatments were anti-inflammatories and keeping the feet cold.

(Laminitis what eventually killed the Champion racehorse Charismatic. Thanks to him and his owners, there are now treatments that can help.)

Topps spent weeks with each front foot in a separate bucket filled with ice water. I left him loose while I sat nearby cleaning tack. Usually he fell asleep. When he could walk a little bit, we hobbled to a nearby stream and he stood patiently in it for hours.

He got better. I doubt this same result would occur today. Obviously at the time I had the luck of the ignorant.

That was proved the first week I owned him when he somehow got tangled in wire and nearly de-gloved both back legs. The polo people suggested cleaning his legs, covering them with Furicin and ridind. So I did.

He healed with barely a scar. My current horses would be have to be retired.

Topps even went to college with me, and my sister-in-law, (then roommate), rode him.

He was in his mid-20s when a pasture mate took him down. An overnight spat and kick landed, and Topps leg was fractured.

The polo guys wouldn’t let me be there when he was put down, they said it would too traumatic. They were right. They also gave Topps the honor of being buried on the property.

When I went out that night, the barn owner, who was by then in his 80s, greeted me with tears in his eyes and told me, “That damn Topps. He cost me $5000. He was the best damn horse.”

He was. And he made me a horse girl.

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Holiday Lights. I’m In.

I’ve always wanted an inflatable, but the dogs would pop it. Immediately.

Because we were Jewish, and in olden days there was no such thing as a Hanukkah Bush, my family never had a tree during the holidays. We used to drive all over our area of Southern Connecticut looking at other people’s Christmas Lights, which was super fun. There was one house that was magnificent. It had a Santa and his sleigh flying off the roof into space as well as multiple lighted trees and a variety of other decorations. They added new ones every year.

When I was a tween (which really wasn’t a thing back then), my Uncle’s girlfriend, who I always considered my Aunt Maud Ann, started inviting us to decorate her Christmas Tree. She had gorgeous family ornaments and had very elegant taste, but allowed us to dump tinsel on the tree, and my Dad who was usually snoozing on a chair. I’m sure she rearranged the clumps of tinsel later, but was gracious enough to never say anything to us.

It was New Haven, so we’d go out to Modern Pizza afterwards. As they sing in “Fiddler On The Roof,” ‘TRADITION!’

When I first moved to Los Angeles, my only holiday decoration was a particularly unattractive Menorah that I’d bought in Israel. In my defense, I couldn’t find one that was pretty, and really wanted a Menorah from Israel.

I still use it. It’s still boring.

After I moved into my first house, I started to embrace decorating for the holidays. I bought a tiny live tree sadly reminiscent of the one in a “Charlie Brown Christmas.” I bought a single strand of lights and a drugstore package of shiny ornaments.

The living room/dining area had a huge bay window, and I plopped the tree in front of it, and plugged in the lights. Every night I’d sit and bask in the festiveness. I’d plant the trees after a few years when they grew too big to remain in a pot. Most never survived, but I tried.

The front yard of my next house, the ranachette in Chatsworth includes a round pen that at one time apparently housed a hot walker. It is way too small for anything but mini horses so it serves no purpose for me.

But there are electric outlets and it is surrounded by pretty white fencing. It was begging to have lights strung around it.

That first year I was fairly restrained. I hung white lights along the top rail and bought a timer to turn it on and off. It was pretty and almost elegant.

Maud Ann would have been proud.

As time went on I bought a slightly bigger live tree and decorated it with a some colored lights and my ornaments. By this time I had acquired a few Breyer ornaments including Seabiscuit and War Admiral. Subsequent years have seen the addition of Zenyatta (of course!) as well as Justify and American Pharoah. I also hung some lights on the mantle over the fireplace.

After the holidays I’d always transplant the tree to a bigger pot and use it for about three more years. Eventually I planted it, probably a little too close to my fence line. That first one is now about 20 feet tall.

I planted the next tree (also three years old) in a corner where the dogs had already dug a giant hole. I was pretty sure that it would die. It hasn’t exactly thrived, but it is hanging on.

A holiday miracle? Maybe.

Eventually I hung a second and then third string of lights on the fence around the round pen. Three was too much, so I settled on two strands.

One year at Halloween, Home Depot sold live sized skeleton horses. I bought one, named him Otto put him in the round pen and covered him with orange lights. The next year I added a smaller horse, Chunky.

Instead of putting Otto and Chunky away after Halloween (the best holiday there is!) I just switched the lights to white and blue ones.

Ta da! Festivus horses!

The next tree went into the back yard. A few years later I saved a tiny live tree a friend was going to toss and planted it too.

I’ve run out of places to put live trees, so it became apparent that I needed to stop buying live trees. I have a big back yard, but I need to make sure hay trucks can still access the barn. Also I want to look out the window and see the horses, not a forest of scraggly evergreens.

Last year I purchased my first cut tree.

I have realized that there are certain things that people can only learn in childhood. One of those is how to do seasonal lighting. If, as a kid you don’t learn how to store and test lights, it’s a yearly nightmare when it’s time to hang them. They are tangled, and the one strand that doesn’t work is the third one you hung. To fix the problem, you have to disconnect them all and start over.

Swearing is involved.

The other lesson I’ve learned the hard way, is that you need a village to place a tree in a stand so it is straight. My first cut tree sported a definite tower of Pisa list. This year, I recruited some friend to help.

It made a huge difference.

This year’s tree was pretty big, probably five feet tall. I didn’t mean to get a big tree; it looked so much smaller in the lot.

Oh well, I bought a few more drugstore ornaments and moved on.

It was straight, but I placed in the room badly. Whenever the dogs charged through the room, they scattered shiny ornaments all over the place.

I didn’t care. I loved this tree and the warm light it threw every night when I plugged it in. I even lit a fire in the fireplace a few nights.

It was delightful.

Unfortunately, it’s time to put everything away. The outdoor lights go first. It always takes about an hour, including dismantling the horses and storing them in an empty stall.

The tree takes a longer, because I treasure some of the ornaments. I carefully store those including the ones I purchase at every racetrack I visit, the Breyers and the precious Yellow Duckie I was given this year.

Zenyatta and ornaments from Hollywood Park, Del Mar and Santa Anita.

When everything is put away, I’ll take the tree over to a barn with goats and let them go to town. Goats love eating trees. *****

That night I’ll be super sad. My front yard will be dark again. My living room and my life will be a lot duller.

But then I’ll remember it’s only 10 months until Halloween.

****If you do plan on giving your tree to goats or other animals, make sure it doesn’t have tinsel and hasn’t been treated with chemicals. You can tell if the branches near the trunk are greener than the ones on the outside.

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Breeder’s Cup is My Favorite Holiday

As I write this we are well into the holidays. For most people, the holiday season begins with Halloween in October. (Obviously this does not include Lowes, Home Depot or Costco, all of which start displaying Halloween stuff in August, and Christmas stuff in October, if not earlier.)

For me, the holidays are ushered in by the Breeder’s Cup World Championships, which is held yearly the first weekend in November. (A bonus for me is that it is conveniently close to Halloween; the only traditional holiday I enjoy.)

The Breeder’s Cup is comprised of 14 races held over two days and attracts the best Thoroughbred race horses from around the world. This year was 40^th Breeder’s Cup World Championships of was held at Santa Anita Race on November 3 and 4.

Of course I was there. This was at least the 19^th Breeder’s Cup I’ve attended.

I lose track of the exact number I’ve been to, which may be why this year one of the main sponsors was Pevagen, was perfect marketing. Prevagen is said to boost mental acuity while aging. Sadly to those of us who love it, horse racing’s main demographic is getting older by the minute.

Still if you ask a true racetracker who won the fifth Big Cap at Santa Anita, they will know immediately. Of course, there is a good change that they will also forget where they parked their car. Prevagen for everyone!

A group of my friends and I have gone to the last 15 Breeder’s Cups together. Breeder’s Cup shifts venues between the Kentucky and California. In the early years it Texas and New York were also part of the mix, but the weather in November at those locations was problem. This means we have been lucky enough to go to Churchill Downs and Keeneland in Kentucky several times as well as Del Mar and Santa Anita.

When we travel, we make a vacation of it. Last year BC was in Keeneland, and we took almost a week. We flew into Cincinnati, in theory, so we could get a direct flight from LA. In reality, it was so I could go to the Cincinnati Zoo and see the hippo bloat.

Fiona the hippo. I watched her and her bloat for hours.

I couldn’t be that close and not visit Fiona! I was in heaven. The other ladies were pretty charmed. Really.

After the zoo closed we drove to our rental house in Lexington and spent the next three days visiting as many breeding farms as we could. We also went to the early morning works, which is always one of my favorite things to do. The first year we went to Kentucky, it was like herding cats to get everyone up and out at 4:30 am.

Not anymore.

There is something magical about arriving at the track before the sun comes up and standing so close to the rail that the earth moves when the horses run by. Watching the works also provides a close up view of the horses, riders and trainers that are competing.

It’s a piece of heaven for me.

If we didn’t attend morning works we wouldn’t know that Aiden O’Brien always has his charges out at the same time, and they enter, work and leave the track in rigid and precise formation. They remind me of the Madeline stories. (“…Lived 12 little girls/ In two straight lines…”)

We wouldn’t have met Harley the gigantic appaloosa pony horse, as well as multiple other equine superstars. We probably wouldn’t have chatted with Bob Baffert and Donna Barton. We have gone to parties in Lexington and had the opportunity to chat with past and present heroes of racing. We danced in the streets of Lexington at street parties.

We had fun.

Everything (except perhaps meeting Champion Beholder at Spendthrift Farms) is just a lead up to the racing days. Friday is billed as the future of racing, and all of the Breeder’s Cup races feature the juveniles. Saturday is for the superstars of horse racing. The Dirt and Turf Sprints, the Miles, the Distaff (always in my opinion the best race of the series) and of course, the Classic.

Even before the first horse steps on the track, the site – it doesn’t matter which venue it is – is dressed up. Santa Anita is my stomping grounds and when it hosts Breeder’s Cup I can get lost. The place is decked out like a prom.

There are garlands of purple and yellow flowers, the Breeder’s Cup colors, everywhere. From the Grandstands, to the walking ring to the observation decks it’s a sea of purple and yellow. Even the Sally, the draft horse whose job it is to ferry stewards to their observations posts, has purple and yellow ribbons in her mane.

Sally is decked out in Breeder’s Cup colors and logos.

There are a ton of places designed to be featured in Instagram posts. There is a champagne lounge, several places to sip bourbon (Woodward Reserve or Makers Mark) and high and low end eating opportunities. There are at least three enormous merchandise tents stuffed with t-shirts, sweatshirts, drinkware and branded luxury items including Burbour , Lululemon as well as gold and diamond jewelry.

It’s enough to make your head spin. Most attendees take it seriously too. A lot of men come in their best bespoke suits and the women pull out their fancy dresses and jewelry. The hats would do Ascot, or a royal wedding, proud.

There are a fair share of dudes wearing their best bro clothes and gals dressed to catch or keep the attention of rich men. Those girls are the ones that after the second 12-hour day of walking on concrete, limp home in Breeder’s Cup branded flip-flops while clutching their stilettos.

All of that is fun, but the horses! The racing!

At best I’m a mediocre handicapper, but Breeder’s Cup races are tough for even the professionals. These horses are the best of the best. Even the horses with the longest odds are better than most Grade I runners.

This year the racing was spectacular. Even the best story of the week, Cody’s Wish who should be Horse of the Year, didn’t disappoint.

Cody’s Wish was named after a profoundly disabled child, Cody Dorman. Dorman was visiting the farm when the horse was a foal.

There was an immediate boy between the boy and the colt. Instead of being fearful of the little boy in a wheelchair, Cody’s Wish came right up to him and stuck his face in the kid’s lap and nuzzled him.

The farm honored the child with his name and the family became regulars when they could watch Cody’s Wish run.

Cody Dorman and his parents were in the Winner’s Circle at Keeneland last year when Cody’s Wish won the Dirt Mile. They were back this year when the horse battled to defend his title, winning by a neck. It was a spectacular race, and even the most hardened viewers choked up when Cody’s parents rolled his wheelchair up to the horse in the winner’s circle.

Cody Dorman passed away only two days later. I am positive he waited until after the Breeder’s Cup.

The Distaff was fantastic. Randomized broke in front and held the lead, but Idiomatic stuck to her hip like glue. When they hit the final stretch Florent Geroux opened Idiomatic up, and she and Randomized dueled all the way down the stretch only to cross the line almost in tandem. Spectacular racing.

The Classic is marquee race of the Breeder’s Cup but it lost a little luster this year when Archangelo, the winner of the Belmont Stakes, and the favorite, scratched on Tuesday due to heat in his foot. This left the field pretty open, with Arabian Knight and White Abarrio the co-favorites.

White Abarrio won with a calm and calculated ride by Irad Ortiz, Jr. The horse was trained by Rick Dutrow in his first year back after a 10 year suspension for drugging horses. I like the horse a lot, but call me cynical; his improvement was remarkable and possibly miraculous since he changed trainers in the spring. I have strong thoughts about Rick Dutrow, but I will keep them to myself.

The Classic was not the last Breeder’s Cup race of the day since organizers had to keep the TV audience in the East in mind. The last two are the Turf Sprint and the Sprint which were also superior racing.

And then it was over. There was a palpable air of sadness that it was over; after all, we had ordered our tickets in March.

Next year it is in Del Mar. Which means I need to get busy finding a rental soon.

In the meantime, for those of you who celebrate, Happy Holidays!

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My Reality Show Horse Life: Part II

When I left off, my four-year-old filly Layla had just given birth, as a surrogate, to a foal belonging to Taylor Swift. (She’s not Taylor Swift.) It was striking how much the foal looked like Layla since they were definitely not related.

Until then I always thought the idea that boys were slow was just a joke designed to trigger incels, but apparently in horses, it’s a fact. This foal took twice as long to figure out its feet and learn how to eat then either of my girls did.

The good news is that eventually he did learn where the milk bar was, and became adept at using it. I left the clinic that night around 3AM content, knowing that both Layla and the colt were fine.

I got back to the clinic the next morning and they were both well. The colt was zooming around Layla like he’d never not known how to use his legs and Layla was tired, but trying to be patient with the pesky little guy.

I knew that at some point Taylor was going to want to meet her colt, or there would have been no point to having it. But I was extremely concerned. Layla was a maiden mare we didn’t know how she would react to having strangers near her foal. Some mares are positively vicious. Think mama bears and their cubs.

Since I really didn’t want either Taylor, or, more important to me, the foal, to get hurt, I texted Taylor’s trainer and asked with her to let me know when Taylor was coming out. The trainer insisted that Taylor wanted private time to ‘bond’ with the foal.

If that’s what she wanted…. I saved the texts, just in case something bad happened and I needed proof that they’d been warned.

Thankfully it went okay; I found out because there were photos on Instagram. They were pretty, but definitely unsafe poses.

Sigh.

A few days later when I was making my daily visit to the clinic, I noticed a several black SUVs with tinted windows in the parking lot. These were not typical horse people cars. For one thing, they were sparklingly clean. They looked more like protection for the mob. Or something.

I called out to Layla as I entered the mare motel. She whinnied back and I noticed a bunch of people crowding in front of her stall.

It was Taylor, her assistant and the trainer, who was not pleased to see me. The guys in the cars were bodyguards. Protection.
K.

Layla whinnied again, louder so I gave her a carrot, and introduced myself. Taylor was very pleasant.

Inside the stall a vet tech was giving the colt a plasma infusion; this is standard with foals just in case they don’t receive enough colostrum after birth. At one day old, the colt was only about 60 pounds, but 60 pounds of confused, anxious and annoyed horse is still quite a handful. But this was not the tech’s first rodeo. She got the colt infused with a speed that was impressive.

While the foal was otherwise engaged Taylor asked a number of appropriate questions and carefully listened to the answers. Mostly we all admired the colt and I praised Layla for her good job.

After a while they needed to move on. I was giving Layla the rest of her snacks ,the caravan of SUVs peeled rubber out of clinic, spooking a horse a vet was treating.

After a week at the clinic Layla and the still-unnamed colt moved back to the field and joined the four other mamas and foals. Layla was thrilled to be out of a stall and back with her friends.

The other equines were not nearly as delighted to see Layla and the colt. The other babies were all a month or so older than the colt, and bullied him a bit. After the second time they chased him through the electric fence. Layla became a protective tiger mom.

The saying “don’t f*** with a boss mare” is based in fact, and Layla is nothing if not a wanna-be boss mare, happy to show off her skills. A few kicks and bites were all it took. After that, the baby-without- name stayed glued to Layla’s side and the other foals backed off until he approached them.

At three weeks old the colt still didn’t have a name. For reasons I don’t remember but I think has something to do with his breeding, we took to calling him Cooper. He learned it pretty quickly and figured out that he got head and butt scratches while Layla got her carrots and snuggles. When he saw me or heard me calling Layla, he’d come running.

All of the mares were used to me coming out, and didn’t care when I played their babies. Of course, they usually got a carrot or some peppermints and had been for months. Bribery works when broodmares know and trust you.

When the mares and foals know you are a human Pez despenser, they come running.

If they don’t, you can get double-barrel kicked if you get close to their babies.

Which was why it was just luck that no one got hurt when Taylor and her boyfriend, plus a huge entourage came out to the field. The bf, who I will call Travis Kelce, (It’s not Travis Kelce,) is a huge music star. I’m a fan, but it I was much more impressed that he made time to see his girl’s baby horse than anything else he has done. That guy is a keeper.

Unfortunately, no one was informed before their visit, and these are mostly people with absolutely no horse sense. None. We had visions of people being chased, kicked and trampled by a herd of pissed off mares.

Truthfully we were worried that the foals would be hurt in the melee.

Real question: are body guards required to throw themselves between their clients and a furious mare?

I was oblivious to all this when I came out a few hours later, but I did wonder why the mares were so unsettled. Thankfully, no one – human or equine – was injured during the visit.

Phew.

After that, there were no more celebrity visits to the field for a long, long time.

Most of the time when I visited I was the only one there, which was the best. The babies were all curious and friendly, if a little bit pesty. Being mobbed by foals three or four days a week is my idea of heaven.

When Cooper – Taylor eventually named him Columbia but Cooper stuck as his barn name – was four months old he and the others went to Oldenburg breed inspections and ratings. Judging is based on looks, conformation and way of going, ostensibly to maintain the standards of the Oldenburg breed.

I call it toddlers and tiaras for horses.

All the mares and foals were braided, bathed and impeccably turned out. They looked super cute and the the braids were all a bit wonky on the babies which it makes it hard for me to take it seriously, but it is.

The judges are very stern and surround the mares and their babies with a checklist and clipboards rating them on a number of different categories. The judges confer with each other, and then announce their results.

Toddlers and Tiaras, aka foal inspections.

Cooper’s bio mom, who is very cute, was recorded in the breed registry as a Premium Dressage Mare. (Huh? She is a jumper.) Cooper was named Best Dressage Foal (Also huh? His daddy is a fancy FEI horse.), and deemed Elite. He got a nice blue ribbon which he tried to nibble on.

Totally darling.

They all returned to the field as soon as judging was complete. The other mares are all older retired show horses, so travel, new environments and judging is old hat. Layla is a good traveler, and went through the judging herself as a foal (Premium), but she is only four and found the whole experience exhausting. She and Cooper napped most of the next day.

For the next two months things were pretty peaceful. But foals are weaned between four and six months old and the other foals were all a month or two older than Cooper. That meant that gradually the other mares left the field. Their babies were frantic for about a day, and then… just as quickly they got over it.

For more than a month, Layla was the last mare in the field. She looked like the Pied Piper of foals. The other babies were mostly independent by that time but they would check in with Layla regularly. Cooper split his time between playing with his friends and sticking with mama when he was hungry. At that point he was also eating some hay but still liked a regular drink.

Now when I visited I’d get even more surrounded by babies since they weren’t with their moms. They were looking for attention, scratches and the fly repellent that I’d slather them with. It was like wading through five 150 pound Golden Retriever puppies.

It was getting hard for me to get to Layla because, well, foals. When they got to be too much she’d chase a few of them off. Which left Cooper, and he was the biggest puppy of them all.

I’m not sure if it was all the babies glued to her like Velcro, or just Cooper being a pest, or just time, but Layla was mostly over being a mommy. I can only imagine.

On October 1, it was Cooper’s turn to be weaned. I was also time for Layla, now a solid four years old, to go to work for a living.

It took a village to maneuver Layla out of the field and keep all five babies inside, but we managed. The foals were curious but calm when she was on the other side of the fence and they could see her, but all hell broke out when she stepped into the trailer. When we drove away, they all began charging around the field bellowing.

Cooper and company were fine when Layla left the pasture. It wasn’t until she got in the trailer that they got upset.

Even though I knew that by the next day they’d all be fine, it was kind of heartbreaking.

Layla had no qualms about leaving. By the time we to her new home, all of eight minutes away, she had moved on. She unloaded like a dream and marched into the next phase of her life.

Cooper remained in the field with his friends before he was moved to another farm. I visited him one more time right before he left.

All the babies were glad to see me. They all looked fantastic, and it was very gratifying when he pushed his way through his buddies to give me a push and a nuzzle.

I am very grateful to Taylor for letting me play with him for five months. I know he will have a good life. I hope I see him again when he’s grown and working, but that’s a long time from now.

As I was leaving, he followed me to the fence. I admit I cried when I got to my car.

Featured

My Reality Show Horse Life

I have spent a lot of my life being famous adjacent. Sometimes more adjacent than others.

I’ve worked with a bunch of well-known people. REALLY legendary folks. You know the kind I’m talking about. The people you mention – I try not to- and others go, “OMG! What are they like?”

(Note: they may or may not remember me. Sometimes even while I was standing next to them. I spent a week doing radio/tv and other media with David Crosby who never bothered to remember my name. He called me “publicity girl.”)

These people have done stuff. Created timeless music. Written insanely good songs, books and directed classic movies and television shows.

Those kinds of people.

I have zero experience with reality tv stars. I’ve never watched a full episode of any of those shows, though I admit I’ve seen trailers of “F*Boy Island.”

They make me throw up a little in my mouth.

Basically I try to live by the rule that if I want to waste time with useless creatures, I play with my dogs and horses.

Strike that; the horses and dogs aren’t useless. They make me laugh and bring joy into the world.

But sometimes being an adult means you have to be tolerant, and do cringey things to ensure that everyone eats.

I HATE adulting. Really, really hate it.

About 16 months I had a come to Jesus moment and had to deal with my reality. That is, I was (and still am) barely working. Being a woman of a certain age, with no discernable skill set, I’m not exactly in demand by anyone for anything.

Though I now walk dogs for money, this is and wasn’t nearly enough to pay for anything necessary.

Like food.

But mostly hay and kibble.

Most pressing was what to do with Layla. She was three, and it was no longer sustainable for her to sit around in a field looking pretty. She needed to learn her job and then something that I’d figure out.

A smart person would have sold her immediately, and that would be the end of it. The fact that I have four horses should prove I’m not smart. Or practical.

Layla is Lucy’s biological daughter, but my late Faith, her half-sister, was her surrogate mother.

Faith and me the morning Layla was born.

The idea of losing Layla, and my last connection Faith, was unbearable. It still is.

Enter a celebrity. We will call her Taylor Swift. (It’s not Taylor Swift.)

Janis rides a little. (She is a model and spends her time getting paid huge sums to wear fancy clothing in exotic locations and shill dull products on commercial sets.)

Her former riding teacher convinced her that breeding her older, saintly, mare would be fun and Instagram worthy. Taylor planned to keep the mare and hopefully photographic foal at my friend A’s farm, where Layla lives.

But horses are not reality shows, and even with the best veterinary care and expensive stallion sperm, Taylor’s mare could not stay pregnant. The search was on to find a young, healthy mare to act as a surrogate so Taylor could fulfil her momentary dream of breeding her own foal.

I got a call from A, who was well aware of both Taylor and my situations.

“Have you thought about using Layla as a surrogate? Taylor needs one. She would pay a small fee, and pick up all of Layla’s expenses until the foal is weaned.” Then A added the kicker, “It will save you a lot of money.”

I didn’t have much time to think it over, but I consulted with my horse trainer and my conscience -putting my filly at risk for someone else’s foal was hard to justify – but ultimately, I agreed.

The fee was enough to send Layla to a trainer for three months while she was newly pregnant, and then give her a full year to mature before she went to full-time work.

It also took her off my bill for a year. A had me at “It will save you a lot of money.”

Technically horse surrogacy is the same as for human surrogacy. After hormones sync up the donor mare and the surrogate, a fertilized egg is removed from the donor and implanted in the surrogate. Then everyone holds their breath until the 45 day mark, when an ultrasound shows if the embryo is still viable.

The world learned about the results days after I did when Taylor teased it on the family reality show. (Doesn’t every family have one?)

“There’s an embryo!” Taylor crowed in clips that went viral on the internet and The Post’s Page Six. Of course when it came out that what she was expecting, was a foal, not a new Swift, there was an onslaught of memes and disappointed fans. Someone called Layla an equine version of a handmaid.

I had rented my horse out to a reality show. I hang my head in shame.

My phone started pinging immediately with text notifications to watch “Access Hollywood.” The last time that happened to me, Billy Bush was blabbing with Trump before he grabbed a friend on camera.

A great moment for all of us. This time was slightly less traumatizing, at least for me.

Meanwhile, Layla was living her best life. She was residing at the farm where she was raised, sharing a field with four other pregnant mares. I visited four or five times a week.

My only contact with Taylor was having to harass her people to pay me. I don’t blame her; like most really rich folk, she has money managers who pay her bills I wasn’t high on the list. But there were a few months that it looked like I would own the foal.

If only.

Eventually it was straightened out and I didn’t have any interaction with Jendall or her people for the next 11 months.

You read that right. The gestation period for horses is 11 months.

Layla’s due date was late April. The great thing about artificial insemination is that you know exactly when the foal is due. I cleared my schedule for four weeks around the day, since babies still come when they want. Layla was born four weeks late, hence her registered name, Fashionably Late.

I started to worry about month 10. Layla was huge. Unlike Lucy, she didn’t moan every time she moved, but I was a wreck. In the weeks before Layla was due, three very high profile and valuable racehorse broodmares died giving birth.

I was feeling better and better about this deal. Not.

Layla went to the veterinary clinic a week before she was due, and I visited her every day with carrots.

There were a few glitches at first. Mostly paperwork, but important paperwork. Like if there was a problem and a choice had to be made, it had to be clear that Layla would be saved, not the foal.

I also needed to make sure that when Layla went into labor, I would be called immediately. No matter what time it was.

Horses are prey animals, and tend to give birth at night. Unlike the Swifts, they don’t like an audience. Wild horses can literally stop labor in emergencies and wait until it is safe to deliver.

On April 22 at midnight I got a call from that Layla was in labor. I arrived at the clinic 20 minutes later. She had just given birth to a colt.

He was still wet when I walked into the same stall where four years and three weeks earlier, Layla was born. Layla was relieved to see me and nearly stepped on him to get to me.

That would have been bad.

So I sat in a corner to allow them space. Some mares are viciously protective of their babies and will kick and bite anything that comes between them. Layla has known me since she was mere minutes old; she desperately wanted me to comfort her while she waited for the wet lump to do something.

Anything.

We all waited.

Both my foals were girls, and were on their feet, if shakily within an hour. After the first hour, the colt was still struggling to straighten out his legs while lying down.

Cooper didn’t know how to use his legs for the longest time.

I asked the vet tech who was waiting with me if I should be concerned.

“He’s a boy,” she said, as if that explained it all.
“Colts are slower?” I asked. She burst out laughing. “Oh, yeah!”

She was right.

I spent the next few hours taking tons of adorable video, for Taylor since she was out of town attending the Met Gala. (That’s not a sentence I thought I’d ever write about anyone.)

Her trainer didn’t want me to have Taylor’s number (Really? Okay then.) and acted as an intermediary. Or translator. Or something. So I sent about six of the videos to the trainer and she forwarded some to Taylor.

A few turned up on Taylot’s Insta a few days later.

Almost two hours later, we were all losing patience with the colt. He was barely trying to get up. When Layla went over to him to give him a gentle nudge, he bit her. The tech tried to pick him up, but he kept crossing his front legs seconds after she uncrossed them.

Just as I started to think he was a dummy foal he sort of figured it out. (It’s a real thing. Dummy foals cannot stand up, stay up or figure out to eat on their own. They can and often do, die.) He uncrossed his legs and wobbled his way upright before falling over. This time he kept trying, eventually started hopping around like a bunny.

It took another hour or so before the colt figured out how to eat. At first he would grab Layla’s elbow, which obviously was pointless and just pissed her off. Then, when he did discover where the milk bar was, Layla was super sensitive and kept squealing when he tried to drink.

Around 3 am they both got the hang of it and he had a real drink and I finally took a breath.

I thought the hard part was over. I was wrong.

End Part 1

Featured

Piggy Love

It’s not exactly a state secret that I love pigs. One of my dreams when I moved to my ranchette in Chatsworth, was that I would have a porcine. I love almost everything about pigs. They are smart, adorable and surprisingly clean.

I even went so far as to find a breeder for Kune Kunes.

My dreams crashed into reality when my brother’s rescue pig was attacked in his yard by his own dogs, aided and abetted by a neighbor’s dog. The pig was so badly injured that it had to be euthanized.

Pigs don’t have a lot of defenses. Some pet pigs have tusks and they are sharp. But most people keep them clipped so handlers and other pigs don’t get stabbed.

Pigs also scream when they are angry and upset. This sounds trivial, but the sound can reach up to 115 decibels which is three decibels less than a supersonic plane. So their voice is somewhat effective in keeping them safe. At least from humans.

The sound is god awful, but it won’t dissuade a real determined predator. Mostly pigs screech to complain about pushed around, like when they are getting shots, or their feet and tusks trimmed.

Basically domestic pigs are very vulnerable to predators..

There is a special horror, guilt and lingering PTSD that occurs when one of your pets kills another. A newly rescued dog of mine murdered my feral kitten. I’ve never gotten over it, and will do everything in my power from having it happen again.

I have three Great Danes. Great Danes were originally bred to hunt boar. That’s the reason that their ears were cropped. Natural floppy ears are easier for hogs to stab with tusks.

All of my Great Danes have floppy ears and not one of them has a prey drive. Most of the time they can’t find a hot dog unless it is right in front of their noses and I point it out.

Recently Pen discovered a cricket in the house and was horrified and confounded to discover that every time she got near it, it leaped away. She chased it around my room for ten minutes before Tuff, the foster Brittany stepped in squished in mere seconds.

Still, I wasn’t going to take any chances. I put my piggy dreams in the rearview mirror.

Then the pandemic hit. One of my friends who runs a animal rescue got a call about a potbellied pig. The poor thing had been dumped in a vacant lot. This happens more than you can imagine.

Potbellied pigs are not small. Adults are usually between 100 and 150 pounds. They are called ‘mini pigs” because normal domestic pigs can easily top 1000 pounds. In comparison, they are downright dainty.

In reality though, no matter what someone tells you, there is no such thing as a “micro-pig.” Tiny pigs are either piglets, or have been starved to keep them small.

That’s why, when potbellied pigs turn into normal hogs, bad owners get rid of them. Which is probably how Pepe ended up abandoned in an empty yard. For months he survived on scraps tossed over the fence by concerned neighbors. Eventually someone caught him and brought to the East Valley Shelter. Once there, he attracted the attention of a caring volunteer, who contacted my friend.

It is also no secret that during the best of times the LA Shelter system is broken. If possible, it was even worse during the pandemic.

The shelters were closed to the public. If you wanted a pet you had to choose from their website, make an appointment and commit to taking it. You couldn’t look around, temperament test them or meet it in person to see if it was a good fit. (Is it any wonder that a huge percentage of those animals have been returned? But I digress.)

Given that, it’s no surprise that no one even bothered to list the Pepe the pig on the shelter website. (Or a horse they had during that time, but once again, I digress.)

About this time, Tracy ,the owner of the ranch where I keep my horse, mentioned that she too, liked pigs. She had recently adopted three abused mini horses and three abandoned sheep and had a small flock of chickens. Tracy is my kind of person.

Naturally I put her in touch with the rescue.

Because the shelter was closed to the public, Tracy couldn’t just walk in and meet Pepe. But with a little help from the volunteer working on the inside, the Tracy was smuggled in, a la James Bond, and met Pepe.

He was a mess. His feet were so overgrown he could barely walk. His terrible diet meant his coat and skin were a wreck. His tusks were long and fat rolls covered his eyes.

It was love, or empathy at first sight. Pepe arrived at the ranch the next day.

He was quickly installed in an in-and-out stall bedded with straw located next to the goats. A veterinarian specializing in pigs came out. Pepe’s feet and tusks were trimmed and he was put on a pig appropriate diet. Pepe knew he was safe. You could literally leave his pen open and he wouldn’t leave. He had found his home.

I began to visit him every day. Pepe was originally quite shy, and scared. But it didn’t take long before he would waddle out of his newly built house inside the stall when I called him.

Pepe waiting impatiently for his peppermint(s)

One of his favorite activities is to get forked. Forking is a thing with pigs. If you want a pig to swoon and grunt with pleasure, take a fork and run it up and down their backs.

Seriously.

It took about a week for me to teach Pepe to sit for a peppermint. (I had permission to give him the snack – I didn’t want him to go off his diet.) I admit that he does get a little pushy if I don’t give him as many mints as he wants. And there is no limit to how many mints he would like.

Not long after Pepe’s arrival, the Tracy rescued two more pigs. First came Don Julio. He is about Pepe’s size and coloring, but younger and in better condition. He does not like peppermints, but will follow you to the end of the earth for a cheerio.

The youngest member of the pack is Taco. She was raised as a house pig, but when she started growing, as all potbellied pigs do, the owners dumped her. Tracy took her in, spayed her and added Taco to the group. Taco was quite young when she arrived and has since doubled in size. I still call her the little pig.

Taco with my foot. She nudges it if she thinks I’m holding out on peppermints.

The pigs now share a double in-and-out with the goats and a flock of chickens. They have fans to keep them cool in the summer. They used to have a wadding pool, but these pigs don’t like water. Go figure.

Now when I yell “Piggie, piggie, piggie” all of them come running. Okay, Pepe isn’t so young anymore, so he doesn’t run. But he always wakes up from his nap and meanders his way over to me.

I love them all. But my heart belongs to Pepe.

Pepe usually watches me and my peppermints walk away.

Featured

Toddlers and Tiaras for Foals

It’s that weird time of year in the horse breeding world: Foal Inspections. Or, as those of us with no sense of decorum call it, Toddlers and Tiaras season.

I get that there, are and should be, standards for purebred animals. Otherwise some idiot might mix a Great Dane with a Poodle and call it Greatdoodle and charge $5000 for it. Just kidding, no one would want that.

Unless it’s already been done. Then it’s still a stupid idea.

Everything from Lionhead bunnies to Bactrian Camels has very strict breed regulations. So it’s no surprise that different types of horses do too. Arabians have certain requirements, Quarter Horses have others, and Paso Finos have their own specifications.

To be registered in the Jockey Club and therefore eligible to race, Thoroughbreds must be live covered which means that the mare and stallion actually do the deed. With witnesses.

(Almost every other breed, including all Warmbloods relies on artificial insemination. It’s so much fun waiting at airport cargo terminals late at night to pick up semen straws packed and shipped as carefully as transplant organs. The cargo handlers always eye me suspiciously when they hand over containers marked “FRESH SEMEN.”)

I don’t understand breed standards other than some for Thoroughbreds and Warmbloods, specifically Oldenburgs. Even so, I only comprehend bits of the Oldenburg Horse Society (aka GOV) rules, because they are written in German. (Google translator was hilarious and not helpful in this regard.)I wouldn’t even know that much, but I’ve had two homebreds. Three if you count Cooper, who is only mine emotionally.

Each foal going through Inspections gets judged and rated on conformation and movement. In theory they are also evaluated on how well they are built for the job they were bred to do: jumpers, eventing or dressage. (They are supposed to also consider hunters, but the Germans don’t show hunters and are pretty clueless about them.) Most judges are specialists in a single division. So if you have a foal bred to be a jumper being evaluated by a dressage judge it might not go well.

Dressage is not my thing. See where I’m going here? Story of my life.

This year the GOV approval season in the US and Canada runs between August 4 and September 22. In other words, right now.

The horse version of Toddlers and Tiaras came to my little portion of the world on Monday.

The foals are between four and six months old and still with their mothers. Imagine Mama June on stage with Honey Boo Boo. That helps make it a full-on spectacle. Occasionally it’s also a shit show.

Before the presentation, it all starts with the horses. Foals are naturally more gorgeous than any four-year old child wearing more make-up than Tammy Faye, but a little zushing up never hurts.

So they all get spa treatments. There are pedicures, baths, and manes braided all to impress the judges with clipboards and German accents. (This year there was a, gasp, American judge.)

Monday’s inspection featured ten pairs of mares and foals. It was loud. It’s always loud. The foals scream because are away from home and separated from each other. The mares may be agitated by strangers coming up and fussing with their babies. (Or not. Some of the mares are sick of their foals and are grateful for anyone, or anything that keeps the little monsters busy.)

Full disclosure: Layla was out of sight of the other mares and screamed constantly from the moment she got off the trailer until when she went back in the field. She settled when I hung out with her. But I couldn’t stay all day, so who knows what she did when I left. But I can imagine.

It takes a lot of work to get the foals in pageant- ready shape. Many have been living in fields, so they look scruffy. Hopefully the foals have shed their baby fuzz, but sometimes they look a bit moth- eaten. They also have the nicks and cuts that inevitably come from living in a group of horses.

At Three Wishes Farm, foals where my babies grow up a baby whisperer starts work when the foals are barely a week old. They are handled, haltered, brushed and learn to pick up their feet politely. My job is spoiling the little buggers and playing with them constantly. Sometimes I overdo it. Sorry, not sorry!

That isn’t the case for a lot of the foals. A lot of them are practically feral. Some have never been brushed, bathed or worn a halter. They don’t know how to lead. That works out as well as can be expected.

At our place, the day before the Inspections looks like backstage at Little Miss America. All the horses get a bubble bath and their manes braided. The broodmares are usually retired show ring superstars, so for them, this is just another day. They practically sleep through the whole thing.

The foals, not so much. Not only are all their manes more like mohawks than manes, but they aren’t used being braided. Cue more screaming, wiggling and temper tantrums.

Eventually everyone is for their close-up. The arena has a tent in the center where the judges hang out. Banners line the ring walls, and the ground is freshly dragged. Outside the ring is a viewing area with risers where the breeders, owners, future trainers and interested outsiders can sit and watch. I usually hang out by the portable rail that separates the judging area from the staging section of the ring.

The Inspectors are (usually) German men sporting crisp, clean, white uniforms. One or two stand safely in the center with clipboards and pens barking orders. On cue, the handler holding the mare starts to run. If all goes well – and it sometimes does- the mare trots off and the foal, who is loose, trots along with them both, showing off its way of going. That’s mostly a fantasy.

More often the foals zig and zag around the ring, kicking or mowing over the mare’s handler. Sometimes they stop, and then race after its mom in a full gallop. Then they notice the crowd. Some are terrified.

Mine had a habit of running around the ring or crashing through the portable railings to visit with me. This was frowned upon but I thought it was funny.

The foal has to trot long enough to be evaluated. Ideally that is the length of the arena. In reality the Inspectors take what they can get: sometimes only a couple of strides.

This is not an exact science.

Next, the foals have to stand so the clipboard guys can walk around them to appraise their conformation. Remaining still around strangers is not always a thing for foals. Moving around and leaping in the air happens. A lot.

Eventually, the Inspectors leave the ring to confer with one another. Eventually the judges pick up a ribbon. They then address the crowd and announce whether the foal is Elite, Premium or, gasp, unrated.

Cooper became an Elite foal. His bio mother was a Premium, and the judges strongly urged that she be used as dressage broodmare. (Huh? She was a 1.30 jumper back in Germany.) Layla was a Premium foal. They told me they liked her confirmation, loved her trot and didn’t like her walk. Which is fine. As a hunter, she shouldn’t be walking much in the ring.

Then it is over. Braids are pulled and the horses all go back to their field. The babies pass out. It is a big two days for them.

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We’re Having A Heat Wave and it Sucks.

When it was hot in the past, my late Desi wanted in the house. He wasn’t subtle.

Like all of the Southwestern US and most of Europe, my little ranchito in Chatsworth is baking hot right now. It went from it being Chamber of Commerce weather, slightly overcast and 71 degrees, to sizzling sun and 105 degrees overnight. I am not exaggerating. I wish I was.

But, and this is just one of the many, many reasons, I am grateful that I live in Los Angeles and not Phoenix, it does cool off at night. Usually summer evenings temperatures drop to a delightful 65 to 68. This gives us all a chance to recover from the daytime sizzles.

That’s not happening much right now. It gets cooler, but only to the mid to high 70s.
It isn’t much, but I’ll take it.

Obviously, this nasty heat has changed my life. I suddenly feel deep kinship with vampires. I try to do everything very early in the morning or after the sun goes down. If I can avoid the sun, I do.

But because I have far too many animals, that isn’t entirely possible.

Keeping them comfortable takes a lot of time and creates a fair amount of anxiety. I worry about the dogs, the cat, the horses and even the Mourning Dove that is currently on her THIRD nest of the season on a beam over my patio.

Sigh.

I have three Great Danes. Danes are gorgeous, sweet and delightfully loyal. They aren’t, however, always smart. For instance, they tend sunbathe when it’s far too hot to do so.

Pen, the Dane puppy is not only completely black, but she is a Velcro dog. Where I go, she goes. Even when it is steaming hot outside.

Pen ignores the pool but likes to bake on the grass.

Thankfully, I’ve discovered that her adoration does have its limits. It is when the thermometer hits 98 degrees. She still goes out with me every time I do barn chores, but by the time I’ve cleaned the first stall (and during the summer I muck out three times a day so we are talking about five minutes) Pen has disappeared. She dives through the dog door that was designed for a miniature Schnauzer like her tail is on fire. It just may feel that way to her.

Jasper is also a fan of the sun. and loves his pool. He spends a fair amount of time soaking in it, looking like a spotted alligator. When he has had enough, he runs to the patio where he stands around looking pathetic until I come over and open the door for him.

Jasper loves his pool. He soaks as much as possible.

Ruckus doesn’t even pretend to hang out with me in the heat. She stays in the house as much as possible. My bed has a permanent Ruckus dent right under the ceiling fan.

Ruckus stays on the bed to avoid the heat.

So I’m not too concerned about the dogs. Or even Tilly the cat. She hasn’t even gone out to her catio for over a week.

In contrast, I’m constantly worried about the horses. Lucy is in her late 20s and Talen is in his late teens. He also has cancer. Both of them tend to colic when there are dramatic weather changes. Or when it is hot for extended periods of time.

Like now.

You know that old saying, “you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make them drink?” It’s true.

But since hydration does help to keep colic at bay, I do my best.

I feed the horses breakfast at 6:30. They get their supplements, including electrolytes, in a bucket of bran soaked with water and topped with carrots. I also keep water buckets in the aisle because horses don’t like hot water and the water trough is in the sun.

They also have fans that go on around 7:30am. There is an industrial standing fan for the aisle and three smaller ones hanging from the stall rafters.

Hanging them was a whole lot of fun. Not.

I hate heights and I don’t have a tall ladder. That means that rigging the fans involves a lot of wobbling and hanging on while tying stuff up and yanking zip ties tight while creative cursing.

If you don’t hear from me in the late spring or early winter, there’s a good chance I fell off a ladder in a stall. There are worse ways to go.

While the horses eat their lunch, I top off the horse trough to keep the water cool. Of course they eat in the covered aisle in front of the fans.

I hose them every day off before their dinner, which Talen resents and Lucy appreciates. This is important because evening seems to be their witching hour for colic. One of them – they kindly take turns being sick – starts to get a tummy ache and they plop down in the paddock with their mouths twitching. They might roll if they really want to freak me out.

So I dig out some Banemine which helps for minor colic. It tastes extremely bitter, but Lucy is so good about meds that I can get it down her throat without a halter. Talen is more difficult, which is how I know what it tastes like. If I’m lucky, they are better in about an hour. If not, I call my vet.

So far this year I’ve been lucky.

If all is good, around 8:30 I go back out to take off their masks, fill the buckets and trough and turn off the fans. They get some carrots. So do the ponies next door. Call me a sucker, but they whinny plaintively when they hear my horses getting snacks.

Normally it’s a lot cooler by then, and the dogs LOVE carrots, so suddenly the Danes appear, all begging for their snack.

By midnight I can usually open the house windows, turn off the AC and put on the ceiling fans. That keeps it cool enough that we can all catch a few zzzzs before we start the whole process all over.

According to my weather app, it’s going to be miserable for at least another week. At least I don’t live in Phoenix.

P.S. I do put out water for the Mourning Doves every day.

Mourning Doves can have up to six nests with two chicks at a time. This is her third this year and the heat doesn’t seem to slow her down. I still worry.

Featured

Canary Dummy Eggs.

I got a package from Amazon the other day. It was the size and shape of one of Bob Dylan’s autobiographies, but it wasn’t. Tucked inside the box, surrounded by bubble wrap was a small package, about the size of a pack of cigarettes. Inside that were eight blue plastic egg, each the size of a jelly bean.

That’s a lot of packaging for eight jelly bean sized fake eggs.

This isn’t a story about the wastefulness of Amazon packaging; that’s for another time. The eggs came from Amazon, because that was the only place I could find dummy eggs for my canaries.

That sentence contains a lot to unpack. Let me start from the beginning.

Most people don’t know that I really like canaries. I do. A lot.

I got my first one at a department store’s pet department when I was about six. I’ve had at least one canary ever since.

One of the first things I did when I moved to across the country and settled in North Hollywood with Keeper the dog, Catcher the cat and Herbie the eight-inch goldfish was purchase a canary bird and a cage.

Some people love parakeets. No judgement here. Parakeets are super cheerful, friendly and attractive. I think of them as the Golden Retriever of pet birds. They are easy, people pleasers and live a long time.

They are great birds; I just don’t want one.

Canaries are a little trickier. They are a bit high strung, mostly indifferent to people and often delicate.

But the thing is, they sing. Like seriously SING! Both sexes warble, but the females tend to be a little more nuanced, trill-ier. The males have powerful, showy voices. Think Taylor Swift vs. Mick Jagger.

All of them sing along with other music.

Back in my music critic days, my canaries were particularly fond of metal. They didn’t care if it was good, like Metallica, or god-awful crap from that Christian band that dressed in yellow and black stripes like demented bumblebees. (Stryper maybe?) It didn’t matter. My birds would start belting it out as soon as it the music began.

At some point I had a four-foot flight cage built and filled it with a lot of gorgeous birds. There were a mix of males and females. I picked the males for their voices and females because they were pretty. (Yes, I am an avian sexist.) I had yellow ones, orange ones, green ones and even a white one and a few with little feather hats called Glosters.

I left them alone to do what birds do, which meant in addition to singing, some of the females got broody and built themselves a little nests in their food bowls until I bought them real nests. Then they’d lay eggs.

I am convinced that it is a miracle that the canary species exists. Canaries don’t have an abundance of parenting skills.

The females would lay an egg or four and dutifully sit on them for a bit. But, more often than not, when the hen flew off to eat, she’d blithely knock the egg to the ground.

Splat.

Occasionally a miracle chick would manage to hatch only to end up knocked to the ground overnight. That was sad. The hens never cared.

I did have one baby hatch and manage grow to be an old canary. I named it Tweedy after Jeff Tweedy. Tweedy outlived all the rest of his family and died at the ripe old canary age of eight.

Then I took a bird break. I maneuvered the cage out of my bedroom and put in the barn for storage.

I missed the canaries, but I made up for it by obsessively feeding the pack of hummingbirds that frequent my yard, and watching the sparrow that vindictively nested on the top of Tilly the Cat’s Catio.

I didn’t’ think much about canaries for a few years.

Until this fall when I walked into my local feed store where a magnificent canary was singing his heart out. He took my breath away.

It was a cold wet day and not ideal for transporting a canary. I decided to wait, and if he was still there the next time I came in, he’d be mine.

Who was I kidding?

As soon as I got home I dragged the cage into the yard, scrubbed it down and set it up back in the bedroom. Two days later I returned to the feed store.

The bird was gone.

It was a minor setback. I was on a mission. I drove across Los Angeles to the bird store that decades earlier had built the cage for me. They had canaries. Dozens and dozens of them.

Sigh.

I stood around for about a half hour trying to catch some of them singing over the din of the screeching Parrots.

It was hopeless.

Eventually I picked out three that caught my eye. I knew one was a female, but she was so pretty and sweet I couldn’t resist. The other two were guaranteed to be male. (The males are always guaranteed. If they don’t sing you can return them. Like that ever happens. What kind of monster returns a pet?)

Two were bright yellow, the friendly female I named Adele. The other had a dashing grey spot over its eye so he became Spot. The third was a red Gloster with feathers on its head that looked like a red beret, so naturally he became Prince.

All was quiet for a while. Literally. None of the boys were singing, but Adele had a pretty little whispery song.

She also had a number feather cysts, which meant I took her to an avian vet. Since she is a tiny bird, there was a good chance she’d die at the vet office, but I figured if I didn’t take her she would definitely die. The vet surgically removed the cysts, and told me they’d probably return and she still might die.

No one told Adele. Her tail feathers remain scraggly, but the cysts have not come back and she still sings.

With the arrival of Spring both Adele and Prince, who was absolutely not male, became broody. Prince is quite the little nest builder. Using strips of burlap, torn tissues and feathers, she built nests that the Princess on a Pea would find restful.

Prince filled the nest with tiny blue eggs. The first batch didn’t hatch, so I removed them. She promptly laid some more.

Apparently canary hens aren’t territorial. Adele prefers using a food container as a nest, but she isn’t fussy about using the same container. The girls regularly play musical nests. Sometime Adele sits on Prince’s nest, and Prince occasionally tucks herself into Adele’s feeder.

Sometimes Prince moves into Adele’s nest, just to see how the other half lives.

All the experts recommend taking the eggs away when they are laid and replacing them with fake eggs until there are four eggs in the nest. If the fakes remain in the nest, the bird will stop laying. If you want chicks, you put all the real ones back. Or so they say

This brings me to the over-packaged eggs that arrived the other day. Your average Petco doesn’t even carry canary food, much less dummy eggs. Hello Amazon!

Yesterday I removed Prince’s eggs while the hens were eating their snacks and slipped in the plastic eggs. Neither bird seemed to notice that jelly-bean sized eggs weren’t real. I figure either I’ll have some baby birds, or at least happy broody hens. I don’t really care.

Spot doesn’t know what’s going on most of the time.

Meanwhile the wild birds are busy; the sparrow that nests on top of my Catio is back. She is driving Tilly crazy, and it will get worse when the sparrows hatch, which since they aren’t canaries, they will. Last year there were two sets of four.

No dummy eggs required.

Last year the sparrows nested in the corner of the catio. This year they are dead center, the better to annoy Tilly.

Featured

Covid Outlier No More

I am always late for the party. If the cool kids do something, eventually I catch up. Usually when most people have moved on to the Next Big Thing.

This time that meant I got Covid in March of 2023. I feel a little like Paul in All Quiet on the Western Front.

I mean isn’t Covid over?

I didn’t even feel terrible. Other than one day when I only got out of bed to feed the horses and dogs, and never changed out of my pjs, it wasn’t that bad.

The dogs LOVED sleeping on the bed with me for nearly 24 hours straight. So there’s that. (Let me bust one myth: Covid did not interfere with my sense of smell. At all. That would have been a plus, since I was sharing close space with three extremely farty Great Danes.)

Ruckus refused to accept responsibility for her gassiness.

As for me, I was just tired. I also had leg cramps from being squashed by the giant immobile dogs, but that is a whole other story.

I felt like I had a bad cold. You know, stuffy head, an occasional cough, sneezing and a runny nose. So very sexy, I know.

Because I was pretty good about wearing masks in public, I hadn’t even had a cold since before Covid started. Which was why all of the test kits that the government sent out in 2021 were sitting untouched in my medicine cabinet. I used one. It lit up like a Christmas Tree.

Naturally, I didn’t believe it.

I had a COLD damn it! Anyway the tests had expired. Normally I don’t believe anything goes bad on the expiration date, but since I was grasping at straws, I checked online and sure enough, the internet said that expired tests often give false positives.

The internet is always correct, right?

Still, the next day when I ran out to pick up a few essentials at the store, I wore a fresh new mask. And bought a thermometer. (Side note: I have THREE horse thermometers, but none for humans. Horse people understand.) And a new test kit. Just in case.

I had a lot to do that day so after I shopped, I cleaned the barn, spent a few hours mowing the grass, and a few other equally necessary tasks before it was scheduled to rain again.

I was tired, but it’s a push mower. (Don’t judge me: it was cheap. And so am I.) Finally I sat down and took the test.

I set a timer and then my sister-in-law called. I assured her that I didn’t have Covid, but I was being cautious. We talked for a few minutes, hung up and the timer went off.

Two dark lines.

NOOOOOO!

I was so incredibly pissed.

For one thing, I had been so careful. Not only was I still the Queen of the Masks (in stores and other crowded places) but even more important, except for going to the barn, which is outside, I rarely did anything involving other people. (Anti-social? Or just careful? You decide.)

I do know exactly when I got Covid. I had to fly back East for the funeral of my beloved uncle. When my sister-in-law met me at the airport I told her that I was the only one wearing a mask and someone a few rows behind me hacked up a lung the entire way across country.

At the time it seemed funny. Now, so much.

It’s well-known that I’m not a hugger, but funerals are an exception. So I hugged everyone.

This meant that my positive test had greater implications than for just me. I had visions of being Patient Zero at the funeral. This was not a pleasant thought.

Thankfully, neither my 92-year-old Mom, nor my Aunt, who looks and acts like she is in her 40s, but is almost twice that age, seemed to have picked it up. Nor have any of the other attendees, geezers or whipper-snappers.

One day post-positive, I spent an hour trying to connect on a video call with my doctor to see if, in the words of the slogan, “Paxlovid was right for me.” After the technology failed numerous times we ended up connecting on the phone.

I was already getting better and had no pre-existing conditions, so apparently Paxlovid was not right for me.

But I was giving instructions to quarantine for a few more days, drink liquids and rest.

At least the dogs were happy.

As usual a little late to the party/ So far 2023 has sucked too.

Featured

Meet Penelope, My Latest Dumb Decision

Because I am not known for thinking rationally when it comes to animals in need, I have acquired a Great Dane puppy. For those keeping track, she is now the third Dane living with me right now. She is the product of an irresponsible backyard breeder. (Is there any other kind?)

By the time the litter was five months old and the breeder had sold only two of seven pups, he saw the light and thankfully, instead of dumping them at a shelter, called a rescue for help. The rescue, Hand in Paw (consider giving them a donation please!) posted a notice about them and three of my friends immediately sent it to me. (With friends like these….Just kidding.)

Pen. Or one of her siblings, three were identical, at the breeder’s house.

Fast forward a few days and a friend and I were driving home from El Monte with a terrified puppy in the back. Puking.

Multiple times.

The puppy had never been out of her kennel except to explore the breeder’s yard while glued to the side of her identical twin this made sense. The puppy had never had a collar and didn’t know how to walk on a leash. The breeder carried to my car, all 71 pounds of her.

She was absolutely freaked out. Commence vomiting.

Back at my house, it took us almost 45 minutes of half carrying, and half dragging to get her into the house. Obviously this traumatized her even further, but it was late and cold and she couldn’t stay in the car. I fed her in her crate and she passed out on her new fluffy pillow.

Pen’s first night. Showing of one of Ruckus’ baby collars. It only took 15 minutes to get it on.

This led to a new problem. Once she was in the house, she never wanted to leave, but eventually she followed Ruckus out to the back porch and peeked out to the yard. For the first week she hid behind a potted plant and quietly took everything in.

The horses terrified her. Grass terrified her. Basically, everything terrified her.

Thankfully, she adored Ruckus immediately. Ruckus was thrilled to have a playmate, which helped the pup, now dubbed Penelope (Pen, never Penny) settle in. The first time Ruckus took T-boned Pen while they playing, Pen tore in the house, ran into her crate and wouldn’t come out for an hour. Eventually she cautiously came back out to play. Now she takes down Ruckus regularly.

I’ve always found Danes super easy to housebreak, most of mine are trustworthy by about 10 weeks. I expected Pen to be difficult since she’d never been indoors before coming to my place and had no clue about potty training.

But she absolutely loves Ruckus and Jasper and follows them everywhere including out the dog door. By the time we were together a month, Pen was house trained.

Phew.

Dogs are incredibly resilient, but I am astounded how quickly Pen adjusted to my house. While initially she would hide when new people came around, now she goes directly up to new people, and asks for scratches and pats.

Since Pen hadn’t had puppy shots or ever seen a vet I didn’t start working on leash training immediately, though I dug out one of Ruckus’ old collars for her to wear. She instantly learned how to slip out of it, so I bought a harness that could grow with her.

Not so easy for a Great Dane puppy gaining almost 10 pounds every two weeks. But with a lot of dedicated searching, I found one. Yay!

The biggest issue I’ve had is getting her to gain confidence outside my yard and walk on a leash. Parvo is rampant in Los Angeles so until she had her second puppy shots, I didn’t even try to take her outside my yard. This was far from ideal, and I’m paying for it now.

She is incredibly frightened of leaving my yard on a leash. After a week of trying, bolstered by lots of treats (for a vegetarian I buy a ton of Farmer Johns wieners) and patience, we had got almost half way around the block. She had even overcome her terror of the very scary fire hydrant. On the way home she was almost strutting.

She isn’t sure that the fire hydrant wasn’t going to eat her.

I was so prouder than a certain puppy was after digging a hole the size of the Grand Canyon in my backyard.

Then my neighbor’s dog ran up its fence barking. Now this was an itsy bitsy Chihuahua, and the fence was a good thirty feet away.

My now 90-pound, six-month-old puppy didn’t wait to check out where the scary barking was coming from. She literally turned tail and ran in the other direction. Since I was on the other end of the leash she didn’t get far. So she sat down refusing to move and shook like a little black leaf.

Now she will only comfortably leave the yard if Jasper accompanies her. He loves babysitting for a good reason: whenever Pen gets a snack, so does he.

It is slow going. After two weeks, we have only gotten three houses away.

Some days.

Other days a dog will bark or a car will pass and she sits won’t move even for a hot dog.

This too will pass.

I hope.

Pen has turned out to better than I had dared hope. She is a loves snuggling, plays until she is exhausted, adores Mighty and sleeps through the night.

A squad of Danes. (L to R) Pen, Mighty, Ruckus and Jasper in back.

Except for eating my brand new glasses, (all my fault, but still!) she is been pretty perfect.

I wish all my dumb decisions ended up this well.

Featured

Join A Parade!

Parades have never been my thing. I tape the Macys Thanksgiving Day Parade strictly so I can fast forward to the giant balloons trying to escape their tethers and fly free over New York.

I do, however, like weird parades. Like the one in August held near my Mom’s place in the Berkshire. Back in the day it used to be a pretty hoity-toity area. Actually it still is.

Anyway, before horseless carriages became affordable even for common folk, at the end of each summer season the super-rich would close up their forty room ‘cottages.’ They would literally parade through town in their fanciest carriages pulled by their snazziest team of horses on the way to the train depot. In the fashion of the ultra-rich they called it the Tub Parade. These days, the New Lennox Tub Parade continues, but most of the people aren’t one percenters, just crazy horse people.

I can relate to that.

There is one parade I try to never miss: the annual Chatsworth Xmas Parade. (Excuse me, the Chatsworth Holiday Parade. Even though there is nary a snippet of Hanukkah, Kwanza, EID or anything but Christmas. I guess they are trying.)

The route travels right by my street. But most importantly, it is full-on peculiar in the best possible way. Which is to say it reflects Chatsworth perfectly.

It usually begins with a fly-over by a bunch of old military planes. This is amazing, mostly because most Los Angelenos couldn’t find Chatsworth even with GPS. If they’ve ever heard of Chatsworth, it’s because Charles Manson originally set up shop here at the old movie ranch.

This year about 15 minutes after the flyover, the shenanigans began with a pair of six-foot tall T-Rex dinosaurs waddling down the route roaring and kissing kids. I have no idea why they were there, but it was super cool. None of my photographs came out, so you have to take my word for it.

Next up were the first of six or seven high school marching bands. The groups come from all over Southern California. I think these teams are pretty impressive, but they don’t march in solid formation. Someone is always musically out of sync and there’s often a straggler or two.

None of these bands are going to punch a ticket to the Rose Parade, but they are having a blast and are super enthusiastic. So here they are. In Chatsworth.

Enthusiasm seems to be the only requirement of participation in this event.

There are a sprinkling of local celebrities chauffeured in sparkling convertibles. They drive down the street waving and grinning at the people lining the curb. Thankfully, the cars carry placards identifying the passengers, because most people don’t recognize the Principal of the Urban Planning Charter School. Maybe that is just me.

There are always a few Girl Scout Troops too. The little ones wander behind a couple of older girls carrying a banner. One kid pulls a boom box strapped on wheels blasting Christmas Carols. Trudging behind them are parents, usually carrying coats and sneakers for the kids to change into as soon as the marching is done.

There are also floats. Oh, my! The floats! They are mostly pick-ups covered with tinsel garlands pulling dressed up trailers packed with kids or adults from the sponsoring group. This year those included a group of girls readying for their Quinceanera, a bunch of small and possibly suspect churches, the local PTA, and my favorite, a flatbed featuring the members of a local karate studio who were practicing flinging each other around. To the tune of “Jolly Little Christmas.”

Usually, since this is Chatsworth, there are horses. It seems like everyone who owns a horse, mule or donkey hits the street. There are the people from ETI (Equestrian Trails International), Charros dressed in their finest gear, some actual parade horses covered from rider to hooves in sequins and of course a few mini horses pulling carts, zig-zagging down the street.

(I was extremely disappointed and annoyed this year the horses were missing. I’m hoping that it’s because it was pouring rain in the morning and they scratched out of fear that the horses would slip on the pavement.)

Near the end come the dogs. Search and rescue dogs, bloodhounds and drug dogs represent. Why? Why not?

Following the dogs and closing the parade is always Santa Claus. He doesn’t have a sleigh, but rides a beribboned, garland-covered hook and ladder fire truck.

Hot on the heels of Santa’s firetruck are always two street sweepers. Chatsworth doesn’t dick around when it comes to closing time.

Next year I swear I’m going to borrow a pick-up and some lights. Twinkle, Corrine and I are going to glide down the street with Jasper, Ruckus and Mighty in the back. We will be the Old Lady Dane Walking Society of Chatsworth.

It will be epic. We will fit right in.

Featured

Jiminy Cricket is A Fraud

Most people do not like bugs. Obviously, there are those odd ball folks who are etymologists, scientists who study bugs, but we all know they are, well buggy.

I realize that some insects are wonderful: bees, butterflies, lightening bugs and ladybugs… That’s about it.

I despise most bugs. They are icky, they make weird noises and they usually chomp you at every opportunity.

One of the reasons I can’t stand living in New England is that the summers are chock full of bugs. Everywhere. There are ticks, mosquitos, deer flies, horse flies and more ticks and mosquitos.

Much to my mother’s disgust when I was a kid I kept a can of Raid on my nightstand. I couldn’t sleep if there was a mosquito buzzing around. I’d rather keel over from pesticide poisoning then be hyperaware of buzzing all night. That noise still makes my skin crawl.

Other than Jiminy, the one bug I have never given a second thought about was a cricket. They are the background sound of summer nights at Mom’s farm. I hear them outside my windows almost every night in California, but they never mattered.

Until last month.

The first night I heard a cricket in my house I thought it was kind of sweet. Like everyone, I’d heard that having a cricket in the house was good luck. The second night it occurred to me that while having a living cricket in the house was lucky, a dead one probably wasn’t so good.

But I thought it would get itself out, the same way it got in, however that was.

I was wrong.

The third night I spotted the cricket on the floor, after it gave a few lethargic hops, I managed to trap it under a glass with a piece of paper slid underneath. I threw the furious bug outside into the garden and felt pretty good about myself.

Sharon Liveten: bug saver!

That changed later when I was reading in bed, and a giant cricket hopped on my bed. It surprised me and scared the crap out of Jasper. By the time I ran to get another glass it was missing. But I could hear it.

All night long.

The next night I caught three of stupid bugs. I’d throw one in the garden, and by the time I got back I’d find Ruckus staring at another. Every night one would leap on the bed. I don’t think it’s the same cricket, but the creepy thing could just be taunting me.

This went on for a few week. My friends thought I was overreacting. They have all had crickets in the house too. They thought they were charming.

When I pressed my friends for details about their bugs, it became apparent that they had had maybe one cricket in their houses. Once a year. Maybe.

I apparently had a thriving cricket farm. I started getting pretty good at capturing the things. They aren’t exactly smart. For almost a month I was catching and releasing anywhere from one to five crickets a night. Sometimes I’d still hear one in the house.

I am proud that I didn’t pull out any Raid inside or out in the garden to exterminate them. But I did think about it. A lot.

It’s been a couple of cricket free days, which have been lovely. But I haven’t let down my guard. I still keep a glass and a piece of paper next to the bed. I feel safer that way.

###

Featured

Meta, You Hardly Know Me!

I was sitting on the back porch on a recent Friday evening wearing my usual evening attire: ancient jeans, a t-shirt and worn sneakers. I was typically dirty after a day spent caring for the two horses in the backyard, the two house-horses, Jasper and Ruckus, as well as Bella the French Spaniel and Tilly the Cat.

That is to say, I was appropriately dressed for what passes for my life.

It was a lovely night in California. Temps were in the mid- 70s and there was nary a bug to be seen. If not for the ominous billowing black smoke clouds in the not-far enough- distance, it would have been completely delightful.

Black smoke less than two miles away is never good.

As I sat with an eye on the fire, my soundtrack was the reassuring and constant whine of nearby firetrucks and low flying, water-dropping helicopters. As one does in these situations, I scrolled aimlessly through Facebook and Instagram.

They are loud, weird looking and fight fires.

Obviously I was looking for distraction. But instead of news from friends, or photos of Great Danes, horses and memes, I was hit with a barrage of advertisements.

It dawned on me that considering all of the noise about the precise algorithms social media platforms use to snoop on and target consumers, mine don’t know me at all. Which, considering the time I waste on these platforms while avoiding doing anything useful, is remarkable.

Meta, (Instagram and Facebook) in particular has obviously confused me with a really old, very rich woman with exceptionally bad taste.

Definitely worth over $1000. For someone else.

There was post after post of really expensive, yet frighteningly ugly dresses. I cannot remember the last time I wore a dress. It probably was last summer when the temperatures hovered the hundreds. The outfit in question was a cheap little sun dress that I bought a dozen years ago. Possibly at Old Navy.

Meta apparently also believes I need to accessorize the hideous clothing I would never buy. So there were dozens of commercials for pricey, horrendous looking sandals with towering heels and peek-a-boo toes.

I rarely wear heels these days, mostly because they get stuck in the sand when I take care of the horses. More importantly, I have never, ever, ever worn open-toed sandals. I have a weird phobia about my toes.

If Meta paid attention, it would know this.

Moving on.

Meta also offers me a zillion links to exercise apps. I will give them a little leeway here because I do online workouts. But only the free ones. (Shout out to “Yoga with Adrienne!”)

But apparently Meta not only believes I’m ancient, but that I’m virtually incapacitated.

As I scrolled I came across pitch after pitch for chair yoga, and seated aerobics, which I didn’t even know was possible. All were set to a background of what Meta must think is soothing music. It isn’t. It made me grind my teeth.

Which may be why they also send me meditation apps. Wrong again. I hate meditating. I get anxiety from Yoga practices that include it. So fail.

Perhaps that is why I also get the medication ads. Constantly.

I don’t know how to pronounce most of these wonder drugs, nor do I understand what they are for. But apparently Meta thinks I need them.

By now Meta should be aware of the fact that unless I can buy it in bulk at Costco, I rarely purchase medication. If do get non- OTC medication, it is usually a pain reliever prescribed by a doctor after a riding accident.

Meta doesn’t care.

It should. Because if it actually targeted me – rather than an arbitrary person my age – they might sell something.

I promise I would click on equestrian geared ads. Companies like Samshield which sells luscious horse show clothing or Helite which makes air bag safety vests for equestrians are things that make me drool.

Oh baby, baby! If I get three is there a discount?

Images I’d open would include photos of stern but serious veterinarians pushing expensive, trendy and often worthless horse supplements. Dramatic photos of before and after pictures of previously drab, but now glowing horses would totally suck me in.

The drug ads I’m interested in include Adequan and GastroGuard. You know, really expensive medications that I do purchase. For my horses.

If Meta’s fancy algorithms were accurate, I’d receive repeated offers from dog and horse insurance companies. There would be seductive ads showing brand new pickups pulling gorgeous shiny horse trailers.

Sigh.

Since I had time, I tried deleting the ads. Meta gave me a bunch of choices to click on telling them why I was doing so, but none included the option of, “this is a butt-ugly product” or “there is nothing about this that relates to me.”

Moreover, the more ads I deleted, the more they sent me similar ones.

After an hour or so down this rabbit hole, I was getting really annoyed. I looked up. The fire was almost out.

Phew.

What I’d really like from Meta would be a link to the amazing LA County Fire Department to thank them for keeping us all safe. That I’d use.

Featured

Bella My New, Perfect Old Dog

Bella the French Spaniel and perfect old dog.

About a month ago I got a new dog. Bella is actually a very old dog; she’s just new to me. At 14, she’s a super-senior.

I admit I don’t actually know her entire background, but she had been well taken care of and loved. I got her from NBRAN (National Brittany Rescue and Adoption Network) where she had been surrendered. Bella came with a sheaf of medical records dating back years.

My friend Monica regularly fosters for NBRAN. She had Bella for about six months and Bella was initially in rough shape. She was obese and could barely walk. According to the vet records, euthanasia had been discussed. Monica and her two younger Brittanys were up for the challenge. They got Bella walking, and eventually she lost some weight.

Bella is not a Brittany, she is a French Spaniel. And, let’s face it, she is really, really, old.

This is a photo of the breed standard of French Spaniels. Bella looks just like it.

Those were two big strikes against her when finding a forever home. People tend to go to a breed-specific rescue for that breed, but NBRAN is cool about taking almost-Brittanys. They have a lot of skill placing Brittany-mixes.

But rehoming old dogs is almost impossible. Most people want puppies, not elderly dogs with health issues. Potential adopters look at old dogs and worry about the loss, not what they bring.

Not me. As much as I love puppies, I adore old dogs. For one thing, geezer dogs have manners. They are housebroken. They don’t chew. And, if you are busy or lazy, they need far less exercise.

They are also very resilient. In my experience. I’ve adopted five extremely senior dogs and they just adapt. They show up at their new house, look around, settle, in and usually take over. They don’t have time for histrionics.

That doesn’t mean that they don’t come with strong opinions. Old dogs, like old people are bossy. But in a much cuter way.

Every elderly dog I’ve ever rescued had a very strict idea of when bedtime falls. Hint: it’s early.

My first elderly rescue Morgan, used to stand in the hallway around 8:58 and bark at me until I caved and went into the bedroom. Then she’d happily climb on her bed and go to sleep.

Bella is a little more subtle. Now a true Jewish dog, she uses guilt.

Around 8:45 she wakes up from her post-dinner nap and wanders around. She is 100% able and willing to use the doggie door, but when she believes it’s time to hit the sack, she ignores it. She walks around the kitchen –past the dog door- and strides back into the den. There she stops in front of me and looks pleadingly into my eyes. She repeats this behavior about four times or as long as it takes.

Eventually, I get up and ask her if she needs to go out. This brings the Danes out of their slumber, and a small riot occurs at the front door. I force my way through the scrum and the Danes fly out and get to business. Bella, the catalyst of all this, pauses on the stoop and looks at me like she has no idea why we are here.

I coax her out by walking down the driveway. She slowly inches her way onto the lawn. If I wait long enough, Bella will do one of two things. Either she will meander around and pee. Or – and this is far more likely – she makes a U turn and trots back inside.

Then I have two choices. I can go into the bedroom where she waits patiently for her nighttime snack. Or I can try to be the boss and keep watching tv causing the whole dumb charade to repeat until I give up.

For a dog that used to have serious mobility issues, Bella loves her walks. Almost every day she goes out alone with me, or when I walk Jasper and Ruckus. Initially Bella liked to lead. She didn’t know where she was going, but she was marching there. Now she lollygags around, sniffing with the rest of them.

Before I adopted her, I introduced Bella to Jasper and Ruckus. I wanted to make sure that they’d all get along. It was a non-event; they all totally ignored each other.

My next concern was Bella and Tilly, my once-feral cat. Bella is old, but she is a Spaniel and they are bred to have a strong prey drive. If Tilly and Bella have not bonded, they have become comfortable roommates.

It was Jasper, and Ruckus who got crabby when Bella walked in and stayed. The first day Ruckus followed her around and yanked a chunk of fur out. Bella is exceedingly fluffy and wasn’t hurt.

She was scared, which is reasonable.

That first week I never left the dogs alone together. Whenever I left, I put a baby gate between them. Soon Ruckus stopped following her and Jasper stopped grumbling.

Jasper and Bella work hard in my office.

One day I returned from the barn and the baby gate was down. Only Bella could have knocked it down. All three dogs greeted me happily at the front door. We were on our way to a peaceable, if not quiet, kingdom.

She doesn’t care about Talen at all. He is careful around her.

Bella had never seen a horse before, but they barely register on her radar. They are very aware of her. When she wanders into the paddock they always – even when she is practically under their hooves – step carefully around her.

The only time I’ve seen a typical Spaniel reaction from Bella was when she noticed my neighbor’s chickens. She was fascinated. It’s a good thing there was a fence between them.

Bella’s eyes got huge and she tried to push toward them. Since chickens are chickens, the whole flock crowded up to stare at her, clucking away. Then Ruckus ran over and scared the birds.

Chickens fascinate Bella. The feeling is mutual.

Now, the first thing Bella does when she is out, is trot to the back looking for chickens. Sometimes she does. The chickens never remember her.

Pretty much everyone who meets Bella loves her. Well, duh, she’s a pretty awesome old dame.

My heart will break when she dies. But I knew from the beginning that our time together was limited. I know that when every creature– young or old – enters my life. I never get to keep them long enough.

To me, it is always worth it. This is particularly true when it’s an old animal, coming from a rescue or the pound. All I want is for them to have a comfortable place where they are loved to spend whatever time they have.

I don’t think I have failed my oldsters. I KNOW the only time they have ever hurt me is when they leave me.

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A Clean House is the Impossible Dream.

It just seems like the horses live in the house. If they did the house would probably be cleaner; my barn is always cleaner than the house.

It should be obvious to everyone by now, that I am not exactly a domestic goddess. Unless by that you mean a collector of domestic animals. And, since I’m being honest, I can’t control most of them.

The really odd thing for someone who lives with a bunch of dogs, a cat and at least two horses in the back yard, I really love a clean house. In fact, when I had a real job that paid me on the regular, I hired an amazing lady who came every other week and made me place sparkle. It helped that she and my dogs had a deeply felt mutual admiration.

It was awesome. I’d leave a dump in the morning and return to happy dogs and a fresh smelling shiny house. Ah, memories.

I not only hate to clean, but I don’t cook. It’s not that I can’t – every two weeks I whip of two trays of turkey loaf for the dogs. I just find cooking pointless. I mean obviously I do eat and thoroughly enjoy it, especially if it’s bad and fattening. But to sit down, pick a recipe, go out and buy ingredients and take bunch of time just for me to eat in five minutes seems well, dumb.

I completely appreciate people who love to cook. They find it soothing and cathartic.

Not so much for me.

I tried it once. I did a trial run of one of those meal services. Every week I’d get a box with all of the ingredients for three meals and simple to follow recipes. Each meal was enormous, so I would divide all of them and be good for at least a week. My freezer was never so full. In theory, it was cheaper than shopping.

There were two problems. First, I’m a pescatarian, so I don’t eat meat (fish and dairy are okay). This wasn’t an option, so I chose vegetarian, because most of the time I am. The food lived up to every cliché about vegetarian eating. It was dull, boring and tasteless.

I am not a foodie, but yick.

Also, and I don’t know if it was just these specific recipes, or all recipes, because as I said, I don’t cook, but it took a huge number of bowls and prep containers. Literally every bowl and knife in my kitchen was in play. Which meant a ton of clean-up.

After a few weeks I cancelled and went back to my normal life.

One of my conundrums is that while I dislike housecleaning, I really enjoy having a clean house.

I’m not a pig. Mostly I’m pretty tidy. I never leave dirty dishes in my sink. Living in an apartment with a roach issue cured me of that. I learned really quickly to wash up immediately. Even so, every night my cat would go into the kitchen and bat around the bugs for fun.

Gross.

How can I have clean sheets? Please note that Monty is stepping on Jasper.

I also do laundry regularly. That includes changing and washing my sheets weekly. I love clean sheets. If I wasn’t so lazy I’d be like Oprah, and change them every three days. I suspect she has someone who does it for her. Sigh.

Sadly for me, tidy is not the same as super clean. I vacuum several times a week (remember all those paws that run in and out a will?) and throw out papers. What I don’t do often enough, is wash floors and dust my tchotchkes.

I can almost get away with it during the winter when the windows and doors are closed. But this year we barely had winter. It was 90 degrees for a few days in January. I left doors, windows and the catio open a lot. So a ton of dust and dirt from the paddock and yard migrate into my house. (A hummingbird flew in too, but that was kind of cool since I got it out unhurt.)

All of this is yet another reason to worry about climate change.

I went into a cleaning frenzy this week. I really did it up. Washed the floors. Scrubbed the bathrooms. All the dog stuffies went into the toy box. I even washed the shelves in the fridge and took out the produce drawers and washed them. Who knew that it was possible to take them out?

Seriously, I might have had a weird new variation of COVID. (COVID-Cleaning?)

I even emptied the cabinet where I keep staples. That was eye-opening. I discovered I had two cylinders of salt. I don’t use much salt. In fact, I use so little that I realized one of the containers was a store brand from where I went to college.

Does salt go bad? I didn’t know, so I put it back on the shelf.

There was also an unopened package of food coloring, and three boxes of brownie mix. I like to bake occasionally, so I kept those too. Ditto for the vanilla, the cupcake tins and birthday candles.

As I looked around my clean house I was so pleased with myself that I took the dogs for a walk.

We were only gone for about an hour, but when we returned the place was covered with dust and ripped dog toys.

I blame Tilly the cat.

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Ruckus is a Big Girl Now

A lot of people think I’m a good pet parent. I guess I am, but mostly I am just a worrier. A big ole’ Jewish Pet Mother.

Ruckus is 18 months old, which for me – and most responsible Great Dane owners- means one thing: it is time to get her spayed! In Ruckus’ case, she will also have a gastroplexy. Gastroplexy, or stomach tacking, is just that, the stomach is surgically attached to the body wall, to help prevent bloating.

Bloat is a particularly nasty condition where the stomach fills with gas and can twist, causing extreme pain and necrotic tissue. If not treated promptly, and sometimes even if it is, the dog can die. Large breed dogs are particularly prone to it. When I was researching dog insurance I discovered that bloat is so common in Danes that it is almost considered a pre-existing condition, and therefore rarely covered.

Dandy.

I didn’t do a gastroplexy, on Murray because I’d never heard of it. He was the only Dane I’ve ever has that bloated. After a terrifying (and super expensive) week at the vet, he survived, but I’ll never chance it again.

Murray post surgery just because he was gorgeous.

Because it is major surgery, I usually do the gastroplexy when my dogs are being spayed or neutered. That way we both only have to recover from surgery once.

There was never a question that I would fix her. I love puppies, but there are already far too backyard breeders which leads to way too many Great Danes looking for homes through no fault of their own. (Interested in one? Call me I can recommend a rescue in your area.)

Ruckus as a puppy from a responsible breeder.

Also, who am I kidding? As I told the neighbor who has never forgiven me for neutering Jasper, I’d keep all the puppies! Which would lead to an entirely different set of problems.

There are also serious health reasons to spay and neuter as well; it greatly reduces the probability of breast cancer. Fiona wasn’t spayed when I got her and her death from breast cancer gutted me. I would do anything in to prevent that from happening again.

Fiona wasn’t spayed until I got her when she was at least six. Metastatic breast cancer killed her.

Great Danes generally shouldn’t be spayed before they are 18 months when their growth plates close. This meant, in Ruckus’ case, we both had to go through one heat cycle.

Yuck.

It had been about a decade since I’d had a dog in heat. I had forgotten, if I ever did, that a Great Dane’s heat can last four weeks. I considered myself lucky that Ruckus’ was only three and a half weeks.

23 days. Almost a month.

I thought I was prepared because gone online and compared doggie diapers. I ordered a huge box of disposable XXL disposable doggie diapers, thus proving that had I had children, I wouldn’t have been a ‘green’ mom.

Ruckus hated them, and they fit awkwardly. Even the hole for her tail wasn’t big enough. She learned immediately how to yank them off.

I got back online and after some research on Dane sites, ordered nine pairs of patterned, washable, Dane-sized XXL diapers. I paid extra for overnight delivery. These fit better, and actually stayed on. She went through a minimum of three pairs a day. Thank goodness I have a washing machine.

While she was in heat, Ruckus was confined to my house and back yard. The front yard has high, secure fences but I didn’t want any horny dogs breaking in to visit her. Specifically the aforementioned next-door neighbor’s somewhat mean, intact Anatolian Shepherd.

Ruckus couldn’t go to the barn to play with all her dog and human friends. She couldn’t go on her daily playdates with her bestie Mighty. She was miserable.

Ruckus looked cute in diapers but hated them She even went to Tilly for comfort and she’s afraid of Tilly.

She did not keep it to herself.

When I got Ruckus I circled mid-March 2022 on the calendar as the earliest she could be spayed. In early March I called my trusted vet. All those decades ago when Dalai was spayed, he spayed her and brought in a surgical colleague to do the gastroplexy. That was pre-Covid and pre-veterinarian shortage.

This time he recommended a couple of surgical centers where both operations could be done simultaneously. They were both great clinics – unfortunately I have had pet patients at both. I picked the closest one. I called to make an appointment and scheduled an evaluation that Saturday.

Like so many vet clinics in LA, this one is in a sprawling non-descript mini-mall near the freeway. It began as one office and had taken over the entire space. Except for a small laundromat and tellingly, a cash machine.

Because Ruckus has spent her entire life under Covid restrictions, she is a little less socialized than I like. She has gone to obedience classes and walks or goes to the barn almost every day. She travels with me a lot and has gone to horse shows with success.

Ruckus is still a full-blown mama’s girl. She is super clingy around strangers. The most she does is bark, but most people and dogs are justifiably intimidated by 120 pound dog barking ferociously at them. Even thought she usually hides behind me while carrying on.

Ruckus has never had a bad vet visit. She has only been a few times for exams and shots. But she is very suspicious. So when the vet tech – all five feet of her – came to collect Ruckus, she was not happy. Ruckus barked, whined and whimpered. I escorted her to the clinic door at which time she plopped her butt on the ground and refused to budge. I gave her a shove and pretended to walk into the building. When she got through the door, I turned and fled.

While Ruckus was getting blood tests and an EKG, the surgeon came out to talk to me. She was very nice, if a bit young. Okay, very young. But she came highly recommended, so I felt okay.

Shortly after I heard, well, a Ruckus. I could swear that the vet tech’s feet never touched the ground as my girl came flew through the parking lot to me. It’s a good thing that the tech thought she was wonderful. I guess she was;, when I wasn’t around, Ruckus had perfect manner.

The surgery is scheduled for Friday. I suspect it’ll take a lot out of me too and not just financially.

Not that I’m a worrier or anything…

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Talen: It’s A Good Thing I Love Him

There is a grisly old horseman’s rhyme that goes:

One White Sock, Buy Him,

Two White Socks, Try Him,

Three White Socks, Deny Him,

Four White Socks and a stripe on the nose, cut off his head and feed him to crows.

Anyone that has been to Wellington, Thermal or just watched a super flashy hunter with lots of chrome win everything, knows the above is pure BS. Still, I am starting to believe line three, if not four. (That is just nasty.)

Case in point is my dear sweet, beautiful, pasture ornament, Talen.

I bought Talen in 2017. He was supposed to replace Mickey, who, for a lot of complicated and bullshit reasons, was not working out. (That itself is a long, long, story that I am still too traumatized to discuss. I still own Mickey. Enough said.)

Talen came into my life as a unicorn. He was stepping down from his job as an International Derby horse. Miraculously, he was also a super easy ride who could, in the parlance, take a joke. That means amateur-friendly. A horse that wouldn’t hold dumb mistakes and miscues against me. I need that. Badly.

It’s a bonus that Talen is pretty. He is a 16.2 chestnut warmblood with four white socks and an adorable broken white stripe on his face. See the above rhyme.

Talen should have been the perfect AA hunter for me. And he was. Until he wasn’t.

Because unicorns don’t exist.

Four months after I bought him – the day before we were leaving for our first show together – he came up lame. Really lame.

He stayed that way.

Months of lay-up, vet visits and tests followed. On the advice of my vet, I he shipped up to Alamo Pintado Equine Medical Center for even more high quality and expensive exams. I am, extremely lucky to have access to Alamo. It’s an incredible clinic with amazing vets, surgeons and the latest in diagnostic equipment.

Alamo Pintado is a beautiful place. Just the name gives me PTSD.

Unfortunately, I have never sent a horse to Alamo and had it come home with a positive diagnosis. I realize that’s because Alamo is usually the clinic of the last resort. My horses go there with difficult cases that my regular vets either can’t quite pin down or don’t have the equipment to confirm.

But still whenever I speak to Dr. Carter Judy, I descend into a downward spiral. It’s not his fault; he is kind, thoughtful and a great vet. He just never gives me good news. Never.

That trend continued with Talen. Turns out he has a progressive degenerative disease in his pastern. The disease has a name -because I definitely Googled it – but my PTSD made me forget it. In layman’s terms, his pastern was collapsing.

All sorts of things can go wrong in a pastern. Talen has several.

This is not a good thing. The pastern joins the foot to the leg. If it’s broken, so is the horse.

My vet tried hard to fix him. She even accosted speakers at veterinary conferences looking for cures. That led to a bunch of experimental treatments, but after nine months, there was no improvement in his condition. ( But I believe he is a subject in a peer reviewed veterinary paper. )

At least he didn’t continue to deteriorate. He can walk, but has a significant limp at higher speeds. He seems comfortable which is all I care about now. Besides, moving fast was never his preference.

Luckily I was already living in my little ranchette in Chatsworth. So I loaded him up and trailered him to Seven Hills Farm (West,) to spend the rest of his days with my other pasture ornaments, Lucy and Desi.

The view from my office: Talen and Lucy waiting for lunch. No matter what time it is. They are always ready.

Talen is an easy going horse and quickly found his place with the others. He also has a sense of humor. I can always catch him but he makes the farrier chase him around for a while. Once he decided to be caught, the game is over, and Talen reverts to being the perfect gentleman.

He knows the sound of my cars. Even though he can’t see me, when I pull in the driveway, he whinnies to greet me. I think he is grateful that I didn’t put down, which I could have.

For Talen, every day is a gift. In that way he is kind of inspirational.

But lately, keeping him healthy – and alive- is a challenge. During the pandemic he got so fat – I know that is my fault – he foundered, which can be a death sentence. A strict starvation diet – at least he thought so – and medications were prescribed. I got almost 200 pounds off of him in six months.

He is bitter, but breathing.

Last summer, he colicked for the first time ever. Four times. Colic sounds simple and can be just a gas-caused stomach ache. Or it can be an impaction. Either way, it can kill them if it isn’t resolved quickly.

The first times it happened was at 6:00 PM on a Friday night. Of course it was, because means that vet’s emergency farm call was super pricey.

Repeat my new mantra: it’s a good thing I love Talen.

The vet and I decided that his tummy troubles were relatively mild and caused by wild summer temperature swings. He could be treated with medication. She left me with with potions, pastes and injectables. For the rest of the summer Talen couldn’t take an evening nap without me running out to take his temperature.

All went well until January, when the vet came for some routine health maintenance. Both horses needed their teeth checked and vaccinations. No big deal.

Since Talen was drugged for his teeth, I asked the vet to clean his sheath. I went into the house to get something, and when I returned the vet looked worried.

“Um,” she said. “There is something really wrong here. Come and take a look.”

Those are words you never want to hear from your vet.

Talen had contracted Equine Papilloma Virus. On his penis. EPV almost always develops into cancer in, and he had a number of suspicious spots. The poor guy had to have biopsies taken. On his penis.

Ouch.

The biopsies results were deemed ‘worrisome.”

I was presented with three options:

I could do nothing, and let nature take its course. Um, what are my other choices?

I could amputate his penis and do a resection of his urinary track. It’s a huge, major, painful surgery with no guarantees. Nope. Not doing that to my old man. I didn’t even consider that one.

The last alternative was chemotherapy. It seemed reasonable: slathering cream on the affected areas every two weeks for a total of seven treatments. That one! I pick that one!

Thankfully, horses (and dogs) do not react to chemo like people. They do not get exhausted, nauseated or just plain ill. They have few side effects, and rarely react in a negative way. But, like for people, chemo doesn’t always work.

It was worth a try. You know, because I love him.

The vet did the first two treatments to show me how. It seemed simple. All she did was tranquilize Talen, clean his sheath and wipe it with chemo cream. Easy, peasy.

Not so much.

Talen is a shy pee-er. He doesn’t like to pee in public. When he has to go, he runs into a stall and does his business in private. He is exceedingly suspicious about anyone grabbing his dick. He would have been a terrible breeding stallion.

I was dreading treating him because, yuck, but a horse girl has to do what a horse girl has to do. So every two weeks I pull on my big girl boots, dig out rubber gloves and get to work.

This involves a process: Take a deep breath and give him an oral tranquilizer. Wait ten minutes and follow up with a tranquiliizer shot. But not enough to make him lose his balance.

Then ignore him while he gets sleepy on the crossties. After 40 more minutes, get out a bucket of warm water, set out cotton for cleaning and the chemo cream. Finally pull on the gloves.

I look exceedingly professional.

Looks are deceiving.

Talen gives serious side-eye when he suspects it’s treatment time.

Then it goes like this:

His eyes shut and he starts to snore a little. I give a quick peek at his undercarriage and see the tranquilizers are working. I gently start to wash his sheath. His eyes jerk open and he pulls it up with as much horsey outrage as he can muster.

I walk away and begin grooming Lucy to give him some space . Meanwhile I keep looking over at Talen. For the next 30 minutes we play peekaboo. He relaxes, I drop Lucy’s brushes in the dirt and dash over. Talen tenses up. I walk away and the whole process repeats itself.

It takes about an hour before I manage to get the chemo cream on the required areas. Finally, to the relief of both of us, I put him back in paddock and clean up.

As I head into my office to do real work, I glance over at Talen. He stands in front of the gate where I’d left him, fast asleep. Completely relaxed. Totally dropped. Not a care in the world.

I told you he had a sense of humor.

We only have to go through this four more times. It does seem to be helping. Cross your fingers.

That nasty poem reverberates in my head every time I do this. Truth be told, I probably will never buy a horse with four white socks and a blaze again.

I really do love Talen. Even in a wooly winter coat.

But I really do love him.

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The Best Laid Plans- Part 2

We left the hotel promptly Sunday morning. GPS told us that the farm where Layla was staying was just 15 minutes from our hotel. We celebrated; we were on track to easily make it back to Three Wishes before dark.

Naturally we got lost. It was the GPS’ fault; it kept directing us down closed dirt roads.

When it became obvious that we were going to be 40 minutes late, I checked in with Leah who owns the farm to keep her in the loop. That gave her enough time to lightly sedate Layla before we left. (Layla IS only two and had never traveled alone or in a two-horse trailer before). After a false start, and some encouragement from an elderly Quarter horse that Laurie wanted to keep, Layla stepped in in my trailer and we were on our way.

I’m a neurotically careful driver when horses are onboard. (Kristin Mulhull claims I drive like an old lady when I have horses in back. Since we’ve hauled her horses cross-country four times, I guess she would know.) This time was no different. Whatever GPS said our time would be, I allowed two additional hours to include gas stops and my general pokiness. We were still on track to be home before 5.

Laurie plugged in the audio book of Trevor Noah’s “Born A Crime” which distracted me from my shipping neurosis. I even managed to keep to a fairly consistent 70 mph while listening to my future ex-husband. (Sadly, Trevor doesn’t know this.) If you haven’t heard or read it, do. It’s brilliant: entertaining and educational.

We stopped for gas every few hours and I checked Layla who was quietly munching her hay. I guess she was resigned that this was her new life. She seems to be that kind of horse.

Around 4 o’clock we came to the base Grapevine. It’s really, really, really steep. Most people know of it because whenever it snows, the CHP closes the road because so many cars and trucks get stuck on the climb.

The sign of big fun ahead on the Grapevine.

I moved to the far right lanes to join the slow big rigs chugging up the hill. Slow and steady. We were doing fine.

Until almost the crest of the hill.

Suddenly my coolant light went on. It became more and more insistent as I continued, and began flashing at me. I saw signs for a rest stop in a quarter mile, and pushed on. I was damned if I going to be stuck on the side of the Grapevine with a horse in back.

My Aunt always said god protects children and idiots, and so I guess I agree. Somehow we made it to the rest stop. As we limped into truck area of the rest stop I was peering smoke billowing from the engine.

Even I knew this wasn’t good.

I am pretty calm in an emergency. Denial helps. A lot. To that end, I initially convinced myself that I when the engine cooled off, I could add coolant, and be on our way.

A lovely trucker who was in the same situation, said we could use water instead of coolant. This was good because I didn’t have any coolant and the AAA dispatcher firmly told me that their drivers could not carry liquids of any kind. Huh? But I hadn’t the energy to question her.

I just happened to have a crate of Fiji water in the back that was given to me by a friend. (Sidebar: It’s not that my friend loves Fiji water; though it is tasty. Her home was previously owned by an Influencer sponsored by Fiji. Crates of the stuff have magically appeared at her door for more than a year.)

I will always be grateful to Fiji water.

While we waited, I offered Layla some Fiji water. She wasn’t interested. Simultaneously, Laurie poured a bottle of it into the radiator. The radiator didn’t want it either; it ran right though and created a puddle on the ground.

Definitely not good.

I called AAA and for the first time ever, got a rude dispatcher who informed me that none of this her problem. After I begged, the she did give me the number for a local company that might be able to help.

Wrong. That woman wished me a snarky ‘good luck” before hanging up on me.

Annaliese was going to meet us at the farm, so I called to warn her that we were in trouble. She’s also good in an emergency, and gulped and quickly texted me a list of haulers to call. (Normally she’d have come herself, but she is recovering from a fairly horrific arm injury.)

The first person I called to was super kind and willing to help, but didn’t have a hitch that would work between his truck and my trailer. He turned out to be a neighbor. We are going to meet up for some beers soon.

I sounded better than I was. It was pitch dark and giant big rigs were flying in and out of the rest stop around us. I was verging on a panic attack, but I couldn’t lose control. I still had a two-year-old in the back.

I needed to fix the problem but I was at a complete loss.

So I called Mark. Technically, Mark is our farm manager. He is married to my horse trainer and didn’t get the memo that when I joined Team Edelweiss that he got me as a questionable bonus. In the four years I’ve been there, Mark has rescued me and my horses a lot. A whole lot. Way beyond the call of duty.

When I called, he had just arrived in Thermal, so he couldn’t come get us himself. But being Mark, he took control of the situation. Within 15 minutes, Cassie and Darren of Haulin’ Hooves were one their way to rescue us.

Thankfully, Layla had fallen asleep. At least one of the three of us was completely unfazed by all of this.

Proving that not all superheroes wear capes, Cassie and Darren pulled into the rest area less than 90 minutes later. After they unhitched my trailer. I limped my SUV to auto parking and stuck a note on the windshield pleading with the CHP not to impound it.

By the time I got back, Carrie and Darren had attached a hitch that worked between my trailer and their truck and were ready to go. Laurie and I climbed into the nicest truck I’ve ever seen, and the five of us were on our way.

It was an uneventful drive, though I think Cassie and Darren got tired of me thanking them every thirty seconds.

The only glitch came when it was time to get Layla out. My lead rope was in my truck at the rest stop, so when it was time to unload, I borrowed one. Unfortunately, in the dark Cassie grabbed a dog leash with a quick release, and as Layla was exiting the trailer it did. Loose, she trotted off in the dark before stopping to graze. It took about a minute before Darren caught her.

Honestly, after traveling for more than 11 hours, I think Layla was just glad to be out of the trailer and moving under her own steam.

Layla is prettier than this photo shows, she has serious winter hair.

I’ll say it again: she is an amazing two-year-old.

Annalise tucked her into a stall for the night and generously gave Laurie and I a ride to my place. The next day the ever-kind Laurie drove me back to the rest stop to rescue my car. A wonderful AAA driver picked up the truck and brought me to an amazing mechanic. He told us that the Grapevine was known locally as The Car Killer, which explains the six service stations at an exit in the middle of nowhere. Then the mechanic replaced my radiator on the spot, and we were on our way.

That night I finally lost it. I shook, and shook and shook. And then got some bourbon.

I did learn several lessons from this debacle.

You never save money when you think you are going to.
I have amazing, terrific friends.
All of the truckers we dealt with -including one who saw the trailer and pulled off the freeway to check that we were okay- were incredibly kind.
I owe Layla’s life to Mark, Cassie and Darren. Animal people are the best.
I am never, ever going back to Sacramento again unless it is in an airplane.
I don’t think Laurie will ever travel with me again. I hope she is still my friend.

I was – am—very, very, very lucky. It could have been so much worse.

Gratitude is real.

Layla is fascinated by the foals in the next field.

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The Best Laid Plans (Part One)

It seemed like a good idea in the beginning. The worst plans usually do.

Obviously, I’m not too smart. I have five horses; two are ridable.

Because of all of those horses, I was trying to save money.

Which is why instead of having a commercial shipper bring my two-year-old filly from Sacramento to Los Angeles, I decided to haul her home myself.

A little background is probably necessary.

About four (ish) years ago, my heart horse Lucy’s first foal was coming three. Faith was big and looked like a five-year-old. I was concerned about putting her in a training program that would push before she was physically ready.

In the convoluted way my mind works, I decided to breed Faith. Sort of.

Bear with me. I adore foals! I really loved having Faith as a foal. She was a hoot to play with! She came when she was called and loved attention. She was like a giant dog I didn’t keep in the house. But because Lucy could no longer carry a baby and I knew she was talented and well-bred, I used Faith as a surrogate to carry Lucy’s baby. But with a different stallion. It was a little weird, but it gave Faith an additional year to mature before going to work for a living,

All went mostly well – there were a few hiccups along the way; she was a horse. Faith gave birth to a lovely filly; Layla.

After Layla weaned, Faith went into real training. Just as I was starting to ride her regularly, Faith developed neurological problems (likely from her sire,) and had to be put down.

I have still not recovered.

Thankfully, Layla has been great. A bay with a single white sock and a few white hairs on her face and a troll-doll forelock, she initially remained at Three Wishes Farm where she was born, in nearby Santa Rosa Valley. It’s close enough for me to visit a few times a week.

Bliss. I brought carrots and played with her a few times every week. That constant handling, and some professional training is way Layla is super friendly, and mostly well-behaved.

But last year around this time Layla was asked to leave. It wasn’t because she was a pain in the ass – or maybe it was. She had taken to jumping out of the pasture when the broodmares bugged her. Or she bothered them. I only have her word that it was their fault.

Good news: she can jump. Bad news: neither Annaliese -who owns and runs Three Wishes- or I liked finding Layla on the wrong side of the fence along the road.

Layla needed to find a new place to live.

I moved her to where my show horses live. It’s a gorgeous place, and there were three other babies to share the field. Granted, those were ponies and Layla towered over them. In the beginning they shunned the big girl, but after a while, they became a tight herd. And I got to play with her every single day.

It was too easy. But then the farm’s owner wanted all of the babies out. A nice place was found, with the bonus being that it was a lot cheaper. The downside -for me at least – was that the new ranch was in Sacramento.

That’s a really long way from Los Angeles. Like five to seven hours away.

I wasn’t going to be able to visit her every day, or even weekly. Or monthly,

Five months later, I realized I missed her desperately. Layla needed to come back.

By this tie Annaliese had a new place with bigger, much higher fences. We were invited back.

It was going to be really, really expensive to hire a hauler to go to Sacramento to pick Layla up. But I have a trailer and an SUV to pull it, so I conned my dear, long-suffering friend Laurie MacDonald that spending a weekend driving up and back to Sacramento would be an entertaining jaunt.

Road trips usually involve fun stops at weird roadside attractions like the biggest ball of string. Or the avocado museum or something. The 5 North from Los Angeles to Sacramento – it’s the 5 the whole way- has none.

Zilch.

Some people stop at Harris Ranch, a BEEF restaurant located literally next to the stockyards, but both Laurie and I are vegetarians. As we passed thousands of cattle squashed into pens waiting for their demise, I focused on the road and Laurie closed her eyes.

We did make one one stop that didn’t include gassing up: Pea Soup Anderson’s restaurant. Anderson’s, for those who don’t live in SoCal, is sort of a Danish version of Cracker Barrel. And they have great veggie pea soup.

And a windmill. And an insane gift shop. It’s legendary.

We made it to our hotel near the Sacramento Airport. We wandered around the weird location (six hotels, some very odd townhouses and acres of sprawling big box stores) before returning to the hotel to eat a Jimmy John’s veggie sub Johns and a suck down some white wine while watching the Janet Jackson special. Team Janet!

According to GPS, the Ranch where Layla lived was less than 15 minutes from the hotel. Easey Peasey!

END PART 1

Featured

Happy New Year! And other Resolutions

With the beginning of 2022, a lot of folks have once again decided to make New Year’s resolutions. The things I swear to do every year are typical: lose weight, exercise more, eat better, make more money. You may have noticed that I have the same promises Every single year.

Obviously, I am sucky at this.

During the beginning of the pandemic (I call it 2020.1. For reference, we are now entering, horror of horrors, 2020.3), I, like everyone else was in lockdown.

Unlike a lot of people, I technically live alone. I say technically, because I share my domicile with two Great Danes, a fat cat and the backyard houses two spoiled equines. While I talk to them all constantly, and the dogs in particular talk back, none of them speak English.

During strict lockdown, it would have been nice to have an actual conversation with a human.

That led, over the past two years, to occasional thoughts of dating. I didn’t do anything about it, because dating sounds like work, and in some ways (okay, many, many ways) I am exceptionally lazy. But I did consider it. And then moved on.

It crossed my mind again during this latest holiday season. I went to a few, small, fully vaxxed and boostered gatherings. I observed (again) that my friends’ partners, are all extremely nice people. Granted, most of them have been married or together for decades, so I suppose if they weren’t good folk, they’d have been given the boot long ago. But still.

The fog of time has whitewashed most of the particular reasons I jettisoned most of my past boyfriends, or they did the same to me, but the one strong memory I have of them all is this; they were jerks. I stand by this as fact.

Still, if you watch (or write) enough Hallmark or Lifetime movies, you start to believe in the ‘power of holiday love.’ Which is insane.

This tree could be in a Hallmark Holiday movie.

While everyone will acknowledge that there is no home in the universe that has at least one Christmas tree in every room (it’s a Hallmark rule that t a fully decorated tree must be visible in every shot. And not the Melania Trump Games of Thrones kind either!), if you watch enough of these shows one might start to believe that there is a special someone out there for you. Even if you don’t own a bakery or flower shop in a picturesque small town.

Right.

Since I don’t own a bakery or a flower shop in a quaint small fictional town one of my big problems in dating is meeting someone.

Even before Covid, I never went to clubs (music venues don’t count) and barely venture out of the confines of my very comfortable home. (Didn’t I mention that I’m exceptionally lazy?)

When I do leave the house, it’s usually to the stable to ride. Fact: there are very few straight, single men participating in my sport. And none my age. Zero. Zip.

I also used to go to classes at the Y. Again, not a lot of gents in the desired demographic are taking yoga or Pilates classes. These days I work out online. My regular companions are the dogs or the cat. Sometimes both.

Dating apps are the go-to for most people. One of the big issues for me is writing a profile. In the past, when I have attempted to create one, I bored myself and gave up.

The slightly enticing thing about dating during lockdown was that it was on Zoom. This was great news: it was possible to do from home, and you only had to dress up from head to waist.

Still. I resisted.

Naturally, there is a book for people who are as clueless as me. It promises success. It’s called 121 First Dates.

121 dates? Hell to the no! Hard no!

I would have to meet 121 people! I do not like most people, and 121 is a shit ton of people. (And that’s making the huge assumption that there are 121 men out there that might be interested in dating me. Which is a big leap of faith.)

When I think about it, the best definition of what I would like, is an old-fashioned word: a helpmate. I interpret that to mean someone to help me fix shit.

For that, I can find a handyman. Also online.

Happy New Year!

Featured

Addicted to Brittanys: Jake

AKC Perfect Brittany Spaniel. NOT my dog. Notice that it is looking for trouble.

The AKC definition of Brittany Spaniel is okay as far as it goes: “The Brittany is lively and smart and has an upbeat, willing disposition.”

Hmmm. I’d take issue with a lot of that. They are “willing” as in if your wishes and theirs coincide, they are right there. But if they are busy (and they are always busy) when you call a Brittany,they will acknowledge you and keep doing what they were doing. (“S’up? I’ll get to you when I’m done. So, I’ll get to you eventually.”)

Brittanys are super smart, not average dog smart which can be frustrating. Who wants to have their furry friend constantly outsmart you?

Me apparently.

I am a Brittany addict.

I got my first Brittany -then called Brittany Spaniels- thirty-something years ago in the same way I have acquired most of the quadrupeds in my life: because I’m a sucker.

Jake had been adopted by an idiot friend and his stupid wife in the misguided attempt to save their marriage. Like many jackasses before them, and a zillion people during the pandemic, they didn’t think adopting a pet through. All they saw was that Jake was adorable, friendly and housebroken.

They didn’t consider that dogs need exercise, (Brittanys are HUNTING dogs. They need a ton of exercise) as well as food and water. My loser friend worked at home but he was lazy. Extremely lazy.

So when Jake, then barely a year old – a puppy really- needed more stimulation than a twice daily walk, and started to destroy couches and anything he could wrap his teeth around, they yelled, hit and confined him to the kitchen.

As I said, they were geniuses. Not. (And, I might not have to add, former friends.)

When they announced he was a bad dog and going to the pound, I stepped up to take him.

My exact words were, “I have no life anyway; so what difference does another dog make?”

That has apparently become my mantra. I might have it tattooed on my arm.

Jake and Keeper loved each other . A lot.

Jake’s entrance to our lives was dramatic. The first night he was in my apartment he chased Catcher the cat, scared my canaries, barked at Keeper the dog, ran out the front door (through the screen) and tore down the street with me running after him.

I eventually caught him, and with regular walks (about six to ten a day), a bunch of obedience classes, constant work and a lot of love, Jake became a charming, occasionally obedient dog. I adored him.

He was never the easiest dog: Brittanys never are. They are super sweet, and love deeply, but they are never going to be a Labrador. You either love them, or are exhausted and exasperated by them.

Personally I find them hilarious.

A few years after Jake joined the family I moved into my first house. He may or may not have been the driving force behind home ownership.

Regardless, the selling point of my new house with the giant back yard. The previous owners had left a kid’s fort behind. It was a nifty thing, with a ladder to the top deck with a slide on the front.

Within days Jake learned that if he climbed the ladder, it brought him closer to the tree branches, where the squirrels hung out. However, he didn’t like the slide and couldn’t go down the ladder.

This meant that inevitably, I’d be working away in my office, which had a window facing the yard. Just as I’d get really deep into a piece, the sharp bark of a Brittany would pierce my concentration. I’d look out and there would be Jake, stuck on the top of the fort, screaming his head off, with Keeper barking at him from the ground.

Obviously I’d have to stop working and go outside to help., I’d climb the ladder and with Jake in my lap, slide down. Except since it was a child’s slide and I had an adult butt, it wasn’t much fun.

More than once we’d get stuck. He thought it was a blast. Me, not so much.

I found a nearby preschool that wanted the fort. It was gone within the month. Jake missed it.

Jake was the itchiest dog I’ve ever had. Naturally we went to a veterinary allergist. (I have 13 vets listed in my phone. Including the canine allergist, the small animal ophthalmologist, a neurologist etc. There is one human doctor’s number.) Turns out Jake was allergic to almost everything in Southern California, including dust, grass, and smog and native pollen.

I had a couple of options, the doctor mused. I could have him had a series of allergy shots, but given the breadth of his problems, it probably wouldn’t work. Or I could re-home him, to some place far from Los Angeles.

Neither were options. But, my parents had a lovely farm in the Berkshire Mountains of Western Massachusetts. The vet thought if he spent the summer with my Mom, it might help disrupt the allergy cycle.

Which is how Jake started going to summer camp.

I stayed almost a week to make sure he was going to be okay. I shouldn’t have worried. Jake settled in pretty quickly with my parents and their three dogs and several horse boarders.

In fact, he settled much faster than my folks. They weren’t used to a dog as clever as Jake.

The first night they left him in the house with the other dogs when they went out to dinner. They carefully closed up the house and drove away. Three hours later, when they returned, he was sitting on the front porch happy as a clam.

That first week I saw a chipmunk running across the porch. I told Jake to “go get it.” I never expected him to listen. But apparently he’d been waiting for that moment his entire life. That poor chipmunk never had a chance. Decades later I still feel horrible about it. Jake was ecstatically happy.

He loved his summers at the Farm. It also worked. He never had severe allergies again. And as a bonus, most of the chipmunks and squirrels that plagued the farmhouse moved on.

He figured out how to open the gate to the pool. He’d get out of the main house unless every door was closed and locked. And of course, no food could be left unattended. He’d never steal food while you were watching. Instead he’d pretend to be otherwise occupied. But once you looked or stepped away, the food was gone. Swallowed in a single bite.

Mom used to say that you could watch Jake figure things out. He’d just watch and look, and then – bam, whatever he was working on, he’d have the solution. If Jake had opposable thumbs he could have solved a Rubic’s Cube.

I have no doubt she was right.

Keeper and Jake were two of the cutest holiday Rein Dogs.

Featured

Spotless Dalai, The Bestest Girl. Part II

Dalai, proudly registered with the AKC as Spotless Dalai (I named her after the Dalai Lama in the hope that it would inform her behavior) settled easily into the household. Murray’s grudging toleration of her grew to fondness.

Eventually they developed into a gang. As long as Dalai realized Murray was the mob boss.

Murray liked Dalai, but not enough to give up his ball.

The only time I recall that they got into a bad spat was when we were loading into the SUV for agility class. Dalai pushed past him and started to jump into the truck. The Boss was having none of it. He grabbed her by the back leg and dragged her out. Instead of going to agility, we went to an emergency hospital to get her leg sewn up.

She deferred to Murray from then on.

Agility is not the default dog activity for Great Danes. Danes were originally bred to hunt boar in Germany, but sport is not the first thought when someone mentions Great Danes. Couches arIn my house dogs do agility. All dogs. I started with Murray when got bored of obedience classes.

Agility requires a lot of obedience, but it’s fun. And he loved it. So I did too.

My trainer was originally skeptical of Danes doing agility, but he was won over by Murray’s devotion to the sport. (Except for dog walks. Murray hated and feared dog walks.) By the time Dalai came along, Poppy had been going to class regularly, and depending upon her mood of the day, was either spectacular or spectacularly bad. More than once Poppy leaped off of the top of the A-frame to chase a squirrel. Her weave poles were spectacular.

In my house everyone goes to agility class.

So Dalai did agilty. She nailed jumps, turns, the tunnel and tire. Even the dog walk didn’t faze her. She was no Poppy on the weave poles, but was getting the idea.

We were at class one day when Dalai started limping. When she climbed into the car, she cried. We went directly to the vet.

By the time she got there, she was unable to move without howling in pain.

After a barrage of tests and X-rays, it was determined that she had severe disc issues so we were off to a specialist. The vet thought surgery was in order, but wanted us to see a neurologist first.

I was numb. By this time, my barely three-year-old dog couldn’t stand without pain.

As soon as I got home, I called the neurologist who was part of a snazzy emergency /specialty hospital in Santa Monica. She was booked for the next two weeks.

Dalai couldn’t wait that long.

I called the surgeon again, hoping she could pull some strings for an earlier appointment. She couldn’t.

One more call to the hospital, this time in tears. The receptionist took pity on me when I said that Dalai couldn’t wait two weeks. I’d have to put her down; leaving her in that kind of pain was unconscionable.

“Well…” she said. “You could bring her in as an emergency. Then she’d already be a patient and the neurologist would see her.”

With tons of tears (me) and crying (Dalai), we headed back to Santa Monica I got there and called to tell we were there and needed help. It took a bit to convince them that I needed someone with a gurney since Dalai couldn’t walk.

I signed a ton of paperwork and handed over my credit card. The neurologist would see her that day.

I wasn’t sure if I would ever see Dalai alive again. Or if I was doing the right thing.

By the time I got home (traffic on the 405 IS that bad), the surgeon called me to schedule for the surgery the next day.

Of course there were caveats. Usually this surgery is done on small dogs so there was no guarantee it would work on a dog Dalai’s size. (It wasn’t until much later that I learned that this was the first time the surgeon had done this on a giant breed.) Dalai would have to be confined and kept very still for months.

I gulped at the cost estimate and gave my credit card number.

I set up an X-pen in my bedroom, to keep her contained, but I never even closed it. Dalai was a perfect patient. She took her daily 12 (!) Tramadol, and tons of antibiotics without a problem and never moved unless she had to potty. She never used a towel sling to help her walk – instead she chose to hop and cry. It broke my heart, but that’s she was still stubborn.

A vet friend who came to the house to do acupuncture and laser treatments on Dalai’s back and wounds and I moved my office into the house so she wouldn’t go outside.

It worked. She started to heal. Six months later she could wag her tail – something the surgeon told me she’d probably never do again.

She also could finally go for walks again. That’s how we met Werber family. They had just adopted Blue, a year-old blue merle Dane. Blue and Dalai bonded quickly and deeply. Most afternoons we’d either walk the Danes together, or Blue would come over to play. They’d chase each other around at astounding speed and leap and jump in the air. When they were tired of the zooms, they’d chase Poppy until she had enough and went into the house with Murray.

When Murray died, (at the age of 11 ½!) Dalai and Poppy bonded even more. They also fought. Poppy was a third of Dalai’s size, but four times as tough. Dalai occasionally thought she could push her little sister around.

She couldn’t.

The fights were short, dramatic and thankfully rare. They always ended the same way: a frantic drive to the e emergency vet with me explaining that my giant Dane had not only started a battle with a small spaniel, but had lost badly.

When Dalai was six, I decided that it was time to add a new Dane to the pack. Dalai didn’t so much jump with joy, when Jasper came home from Kentucky with me, as sigh in a ‘there goes the neighborhood’ way.

But they did play together. A lot. Their zoomies were something to see. Dalai was older but wise and Jasper was young but a dumb puppy. He’d run around the yard and she’d cut him off at the pass every time. They loved each other.

At some point Dalai had moved from sleeping on my bed into Murray’s big crate. She’d occasionally sleep with Jasper and I, but seemed to genuinely prefer the crate with its many orthopedic dog beds. She looked a little like the Princess and the Pea. Appropriate.

Dalai started being a geezer about two years ago. She had the lumps and tumors of old dogs, and her back legs were occasionally wobbly but she wasn’t in pain.

She was still Dalai. She ate, barked at whomever had the nerve past our yard, chased squirrels and ran out back to fuss at the horses. She still played, even when Ruckus arrived last December, Dalai would zoom around with Jasper and the puppy. She was just more strategic than fast.

That couldn’t last forever though. Last month she cried when she struggled to stand up in the morning. It wasn’t the same as when her discs first blew out, but for the first time since then, she was in pain.

Covid meant my regular vet couldn’t come to my house but I found a kind, gentle vet who did in-home euthanasia. I bought Dalai a McDonald’s quarter pounder with cheese which she ate daintily, then she sighed and passed peacefully in my arms. She was ready.

I wasn’t. The thing with the Bestest Dogs, and they are all the Bestest Dogs, is they just can’t stay with us long enough. 11 years is a long time, but it’s not nearly enough time.

Featured

Spotless Dalai, the Bestest Girl, Arrives

I don’t remember what fueled my search to get my second Great Dane. It might have been that I lost my latest foster-fail, Annie-the-Brittany. It might have been that I was worried that Murray-the-Dane was at six, aging, and I wasn’t at all sure I’d survive losing him.

(It wasn’t just me; one of my friends who was a shrink, used to shake her head and tell me I’d need to be institutionalized when he died. Not a particularly helpful statement I might add.)

At the time I didn’t have the connections I now have within the rescue and breeding communities. So I went to the three-day AKC Great Dane breed show. I was in heaven.

There were about 300 Danes of all colors and types. I saw some dogs I liked and talked to a lot of breeders. The two that really impressed me didn’t have any litters planned until the following Spring and already had long waiting lists.

I turned to breeders listed in an AKC forum that were in the general vicinity of California. I discovered a breeder in Northern California in a place called Grass Valley.

I talked to her a few times. She had two puppies, a stunning male, which I had to pass on because Murray, was, well, Murray. No males. She also had a delicate female with a lovely spotted head and just two spots on rest of her snow white body.

Done.

The world was very big. Dalai was very small.

According to my crack map skills, Grass Valley was just a smidgen north of San Francisco. Which meant that I could spend the weekend with my sister-from-another-mother, Tracy, and her partner who lived in Pacifica. I’d drive up Friday and on Saturday, we’d cruise up to Grass Valley and I’d pick up my puppy.

Easy peasy.

I managed to convince another friend, Kathy to go with me. She had never taken the 101 to Northern California. It’s a stunning drive filled with roadside attractions. It was going to be fun.

Our first sign of trouble was when we had difficulty locating the rental car company. It was supposed to be onsite at Burbank airport.

Nope.

Multiple phone calls and several U turns later we picked up the car and dropped off Kathy’s. We were on our way.

Road trip!

The drive up was indeed pretty. But it took forever. And ever. I also discovered that when I am behind the wheel I turn into a crazy suburban man on a family car trip circa 1962. That is, I don’t stop.

Kathy spotted a few places that, in retrospect would have been a hoot to check out. Those included the Garlic Festival. Unfortunately, I was in driving mode; there was no stopping allowed.

Did I mention that this was the beginning of September? Traditionally that weekend is miserably hot, and this was no exception. It was at least a zillion degrees. Something I mentioned every time Kathy pointed out a place to stop.

“That looks fun! Let’s check it out!” she would say.

“Too hot,” I’d reply as we whizzed by the exit.

This went on for many hours. Many, many hours

Eventually we got to the glorious coolness that is Tracy’s house in Pacifica. Wine and air conditioning were enjoyed.

Over dinner her partner Tyler asked where exactly we were going the next day. That is when I discovered that what is a mere half inch on a map, translates into three hours in the car.

Oops.

Not surprisingly, Tyler took over the driving. She got us to a nondescript home in Grass Valley with nary a U-turn or missed exit.

The breeder introduced us a gorgeous Mantle mom, who was the puppies’ mother, and then led us to the puppy pen. I bent down and before I even hit the ground, a mostly white Harlequin female jumped in my lap. That was that.

Dalai picked me.

She slept the entire ride home, except when we stopped for lunch. Since she didn’t have her shots, I carried her out of the car to a deserted area while the others picked up food. I plopped her on the ground where she immediately peed. I snatched her up, and she fell asleep.

When we got to Tracy and Tyler’s place, their two Dachshunds had mixed feelings about the large, clumsy puppy. The older Doxie ignored her; the younger chased her up and down the hallway till Dalai got tired.

I’d brought a crate for her, and I set it and a place for me on the floor in the living room. I expected Dalai to cry for her littermates, or whine all night. Nope. We slept till morning.

Or she did. That’s when I discovered that Dalai was a floor-rattling snorer. Most Danes are, but she was the loudest I’ve heard. I think Tracy and Tyler could hear her from the other end of the house.

The drive home was hot.

We only stopped when Kathy’s insane and hysterical employer called and we needed a cell signal. That happened regularly because a birthday cake was not what she hoped. Apparently was a life-changing disappointment and she felt it the need to rant. Incessantly. Her temper tantrum went on for hours (It was another clue that the rich are different from you and I.)

Our other sign it was time to stop was when Dalai would wake up and fart. I’d pull over, take her out, she’d immediately pee and we’d be on our way.

By the time we got home it was dark. I put Dalai in the backyard and tried to let the other dogs out individually for polite introductions.

Great idea. Not so realistic.

Poppy, Quattro and Murray barreled outside and surrounded her, sniffing intently. Naturally, the two Brittanys tried to play with her.

Murray was not thrilled. In fact he was a little shocked by her appearance. Shocked, I tell you.

Big surprise.

Dalai, on the other hand, loved him.

END PART 1

Featured

Ruckus Meets The World

I’ve been working hard to ensure that Ruckus the Great Dane puppy has as many new and varied experiences as possible. Covid lockdowns slowed us down, but now that things are opened up, we are going places.

Literally.

At eight months, she hasn’t been to a restaurant. Yet. At that age Jasper was a regular at a few LA dining spots. Taking a Great Dane to eateries is a little more complicated than, say, bringing a Chihuahua along for the festivities, but we got pretty good at it.

In before times, not all eating establishments had outside dining areas, and what they had was usually fairly small. While a small dog can tuck under a table, a Dane, even a young one, tends to sprawl into the aisles.

Which means that the dog in question has to be incredibly good natured and agile, because they may get stepped on. They also should be super cute, so the wait staff turn to mush when they dodge around them, rather than get angry and bitter.

Jasper is charming, and let’s face it, he is adorable. Wait staff melt at the sight of him.

Jasper at eight months eyeing a glass of Chardonnay in an LA restaurant. Wait staff love him.

Whenever I take my dogs anywhere, it’s like travelling with a toddler. While I don’t need a bassinet, or a car seat, I bring practically everything else. I have the doggy equivalent of a diaper bag even if we’re just eating out or going to Starbucks. Bowls? Check. Chew toys? Check. Bully stick? Check. Poop bags? Never leave home without them.

Ruckus was six months when she went her first out–of-town horse show. This meant we were going to have to stay overnight somewhere. The show was located in one of California’s wine regions, which meant that there were a lot of hotels and Air B’n’Bs. Once I added Ruckus to the mix, the choices dropped dramatically.

I had a pick of three.

One was a suite at a resort located on a gorgeous vineyard. It featured a variety of well-reviewed restaurants, a spa and a pool. Nightly wine tastings. It sounded dreamy. All for a mere $600+ a night.

Next.

There was also a La Quinta, which are decent hotels and the entire chain is dog friendly. It was, however, almost an hour away from the show. I had a few 7:30 am classes and was planning to stay to watch the late classes.

Nope.

Then there was an Air BnB listing. Located on a small ranch, just minutes from the showgrounds, it was just a room and a connected bathroom. There was a $50 dog cleaning fee, which is normal at hotels if you bring dogs. There was no size limit on the dog, which can happen.

I booked it.

While I was packing the car the night before we left, it looked like I was getting ready to move. Or were bugging out in a war zone. All my gear fit into a small duffel bag and a hanging bag for my show coats, shirts and breeches.

Ruckus? Her kit included three bowls (one water and food bowl for the room, one food bowl for the show); a large container of kibble; a cooler to keep her turkey loaf chilled until we got to the room; a bag of toys; biscuits; two dog beds, dog towels and a sheet to cover the bed to protect it from dog hair since of course she sleeps with me. And of course, poop bags.

At the last minute I looked at the listing again to ensure there was a small fridge and coffeemaker. But I was horrified to notice that the space featured a spanking new beige carpet. Beige! I added a painter’s drop cloth to cover the rug. We were going to be spending our days at a horse show, even the best of which are filthy, dusty and often muddy all at once.

Ruckus being a Very, Good, Dog at the Temecua Horse Show. Photo by London

When I arrived and the Air Bnb host watched with amusement that slowly turned to terror as I unloaded my clown car of stuff. I think she was afraid I never going to leave.

It was all good. We got a rave review because that room was spotless when we left.

Ruckus on the drop cloth that covers the Air B’n’B bed. And her own blankie.

I don’t always bring that much stuff when I take her out in the world, but there’s always a lot. Last week my friend Twinkle and I took Ruckus and her puppy, Mighty (also a Great Dane) to the amazing dog beach, Hendry’s just north of Santa Barbara.

We weren’t sure how much the puppies were going to enjoy it; sometime the waves and the noise upset dogs. But it was crazy hot in the Valley and we figured if we spent 45 minutes there, it would still be better than being at home.

We packed a bucket for water; five bottles of water, four towels, poop, sunscreen (for us and the dogs) and a sheet to spread on the sand while we all rested.

The latter was unnecessary. They never stopped. As soon as we crossed onto the dog part of the beach and removed their leashes, they were off.

Ruckus ran straight into the water with Mighty at her side. They jumped over a wave, landed and bounced into the air and chest bumped each other like drunken frat boys. About that time Mighty realized he was neck deep in water and practically levitated out, and ran for the beach. Ruckus followed but stayed in the surf.

About then the puppies noticed that there were packs of dogs playing in the water and zooming around the beach. So they just joined in.

Most of the dogs were good-sized, Labs, Goldens and big mixes, none were as large as our house horses. A couple of the dogs stopped and stared, but soon they were all tearing around after each other like lunatics. Mighty stayed on the beach as did a few of the other dogs. Ruckus was all about the water. Beach to water, water to beach. The zooming never stopped.

When their playmates owners took them home, I thought our puppies might need a break. They had other ideas and found different friends further down the beach.

Much to our surprise, both dogs came instantly whenever we called them. But they never stopped running. Even when they knocked me into the water, they just leaped around me. Ruckus was pretty excited that I’d joined her in the surf.

(Pro tip: my Samsung phone was in my back pocket. I immediately ran for the towels and removed the case and dried it off. Except for a few glitches that didn’t last, it was fine. A friend tells me if it was an iPhone, it would have been done.)

They were the absolute epitome of doggie delight.

After a couple of hours, we clipped their leashes and literally dragged them away. If I didn’t insist on taking her home I was afraid Ruckus would play till she collapsed. She had such intense FOMO that she didn’t even take a drink until we were back at the car.

Ah, the car. Oops.

She leapt in, and while I was trying to dry my butt off (I hadn’t brought a spare pair of shorts and I was still soaked from hitting the water) she saw a small dog being led by a proper looking lady. Delighted to meet yet another pal, she leapt out of the car to greet it.

In the ensuing 30 seconds, she terrified the owner, spooked the tiny dog, who then growled and confused Ruckus. Her feelings were hurt, but she came right back to me.

The lady was incredibly nice about the whole thing.

Lesson learned. Never leave the tailgate down with Ruckus in the car. Even if I’m standing there. Even exhausted, she is fast.

That was practically the last time Ruckus moved all day. As soon as we started moving, she fell fast asleep. Mighty took a little longer to get comfortable and spent most of the drive home struggling to keep his eyes open.

So far, she has had a blast and been pretty good every time I take her somewhere new. Next up, a restaurant.

They almost all have outdoor patios now.

Featured

I Need to Socialize. Or, The Things I Do For My Dogs

Ruckus on arrival at eight weeks fit under a chair.

When the pandemic started getting real, and lockdown hit, the biggest complaint lots of people had was that they missed other people. I couldn’t relate.

I don’t think of myself as an introvert, but I was positively giddy that it was literally against the law for me to attend a party just to spend my time nursing a single beer, and hanging with the host’s dog until I could sneak out.

I like some people, but I have yet to meet a dog I hated. Or one that made me feel bad about myself.

During the worst of the pandemic, a lot of people became lonely and got dogs to keep them company. Obviously, I didn’t have that problem. In March 2020 I had four dogs, a cat, a canary and five horses. I had almost too much company. Almost.

Even a year into the lockdown, I wasn’t talking to myself. If there were no people around and words were coming out of my mouth, I was speaking the animals. Does it matter that most of the time they don’t listen?Neither do most humans.

Since Dalai the Dane and Poppy the Brittany have transcended into “ancient dog” territory, I was thinking about adding a puppy to the mix long before the pandemic. Jasper was four and a half; that’s the when I like to introduce puppies. He was no longer a puppy himself, but he still liked to play and would enjoy having a playmate.

By the time when Ruckus the eight-week-old Great Dane joined my pack in December, I had really thought the whole thing through. I was ready.

I might have been ready for Ruckus to join the pack, but Jasper took a little convincing. Here he is trying to hide from her.

Ruckus came from the same reputable breeder as Jasper. I had my terrific dog school on standby for puppy classes. Also, by happy accident there were three puppies (two cattle dogs and a black and tan coonhound) at the stable that she could meet up for playdates. My friend Twinkle has Mighty the Great Dane puppy, who is two months older than Ruckus and always up for playing.

Mighty and Ruckus were pooped out from a playdate at the barn. But dang, they are good in the car!

Ruckus also came almost everywhere with me so she’d be comfortable in the car and for long drives.

This puppy was going to be great with other dogs, used to being left at the barn while I rode, at ease in the car. I was pretty darn smug about Ruckus. I was so busy patting myself on the back for socializing her properly that I missed the big, giant elephant in the room. The Pandemic.

D’oh.

In California, Covid-19 was rampant during the winter of 2020-21. The hospitals were packed. Every day the number of infections and deaths from the virus – contrary to what some Fox News/ Newsmax hosts and a certain orange president would have you believe – rose exponentially.

So, while Ruckus went everywhere I did, we weren’t going very out very much. We went to the barn and she played with Mighty almost daily, but she didn’t meet a lot of people.

On a good week I’d see maybe eight people mask-to-mask. During the worst of the pandemic, the only people stopping by my place were delivery drivers, and they just tossed packages over the fence and ran away.

Ruckus wasn’t getting well socialized.

I’m particularly touchy about socializing Danes because of my dearly departed Murray. Murray was a lot of things: gorgeous, devoted to me and an agility beast. But a lot of people just he was just a beast.

It was completely my fault.

I was so terrified of Murray contracting Parvo, which is/was so out-of-control in Los Angeles, that his paws never touched the ground outside of my yard until he was fully vaccinated. This was not a good thing.

He became a somewhat fearful dog. He was dog reactive and terrified of children and men. The former because I am also terrified of kids, and the latter because even then I had no social life. (Sensing a pattern here?)

At his peak Murray was about 140 pounds. While that’s a medium sized Dane, it’s still a lot of dog. Especially when he was scared and wanted to get out of Dodge. I was lucky; his go-to was to run from his fears, not towards them. He once nearly dragged me into traffic because a woman wouldn’t believe that Murray was terrified of her five-year-old.

So I worked with him. A lot. I learned how to distract him. I learned how to keep his attention on me at all times. I learned that his love for agility gave him confidence and he became less reactive. He was always a lot of fun, but always being on alert was exhausting for me.

I never wanted to have an even partially un-socialized dog again.

When I got Dalai I took her everywhere. She went to the barn because there were only a few dogs and they were all vaccinated. As soon as possible we went to training classes. I walked her daily to the nearby Elementary School at the end of classes. (I was worried that I’d get called out as a predator: “Hey kid, would you please pet my puppy?” No one ever noticed which is a whole other problem…)

That was all great until the newest tenant in the apartment building next to my came with a sociopathic little kid. The brat would call Dalai to the fence and then throw shit at her. Needless to say, in no time Dalai became a child hater. Unlike Murray, who would pull me into the street to get away from small children, I have no doubt that Dalai, if left to her own devices, would bite them. Even in her dotage, I never leave alone with people under 15.

right to left: Dalai, tiny Ruckus, Jasper on what my bed.

By the time Jasper came along I had moved to my current place. The neighbor kids are great and willingly patted him every time they crossed paths. So did everyone else. Jasper is a little skitty when he first meets new people, but never, ever scary.

Now that things are opening up, Ruckus is going out and meeting more people. At six months, it’s a little later than I’d planned, but she’s getting there. She goes to dog school. She goes to Tractor Supply. To Petco. To Lowes.

Intermediate Dog School Graduate. She even got a star!

The big test will be in a couple of weeks. We are both going to a horse show. When I’m riding, she will be with her buddy Olive in a pen. The rest of the time she’ll be with me. We’re staying in an Air B’n’b. I’ve warned the host, and have paid a dog fee.

I figure by the time the weekend is over, both Ruckus and I will be completely socialized. Or at least as good as either of us are going to get.

Ruckus is ready to meet and greet! Jasper has to stay home though.

Featured

I’ve Forgotten How To Behave In Public

Los Angeles, where I live, is starting to open up a bit! Yay! On top of that, I’m vaccinated! Double yay!

I’ve come to the conclusion, that as much as I have supported the closures and definitely kept up pretty strict protocols for the safety of myself and others, this couldn’t have happened a moment too soon. I fear that I forgotten how to behave in public.

I’m not quite at the completely inappropriate stage yet – I’ve yet to mouth off at idiot strangers , but a few more months of quarantine and all bets would be off. Especially at the chin maskers.

The first time I entered a Target store in more than a year, I walked around with my mouth gaping (but covered.) I felt like a refugee from a Third World country. So many products! So bright! I was in sensory overload and wandered around for an hour before leaving without buying a single thing.

I personally don’t care that Dodger Stadium is allowing fans inside, and I’m not really ready to hit a movie theater, but I was giddy to head to Santa Anita. The track opened to the public for the first time in over a year on two weeks ago on Friday. The next day was the Santa Anita Derby.

Naturally, I went.

Because of the social distancing and capacity rules – it was only open to 25% capacity – reservations were required and My friends and I reserved a table in the usually hoity-toity Terrace Turf Club.

Well, la de da, you might be thinking. Maybe not.

At least temporarily, Santa Anita has dumped the dress code requirements for the Turf Club, so we were free to wear anything our hearts desired. Since this was practically my first foray out of the house, I decided to up my game. A bit.

I dumped my tired jeans, trashed sneakers and ratty Breeder’s sweatshirt and instead pulled out black pants, a nice sweater and Doc Martins. I felt like I was dressed for the Met Gala.

In normal days a snooty ,old and male maître di would have led us to the cloth covered table with decent china, fresh menus and crisp Racing Programs. This time, a bored, masked teenager pointed us vaguely in the right direction and wished us luck. Ordering would be done via an app.

It should have been smooth as silk. We only needed to download the app to access the food and beverage menu, and then take a photo of the QR code glued on the table so the server would know where to deliver the items. It was simple. Not quite.

Santa Anita has notoriously bad cell service, particularly when there are crowds. The overwhelming comment during most Breeder’s Cup events is “can you get service?” The answer is always “no.”

It took us the better part of a half hour, working two phones with different carriers before we could download the app and order our now badly-needed drinks. Finally we got confirmation that the order had gone through. Success!

It was finally time to focus and get down to the business at hand. Horses were coming onto the track for the second race. Unfortunately, programs, like the china, silverware, napkins and menus, were missing. So was the incredibly helpful person who usually floated around giving betting information and handing out extra programs.

No worries. I figured, the maître de would have a pile of them. Nope.

The only place to get programs was back at the admission gate.

I’m glad I didn’t go for the Met Gala stiletto heels. (That’s a joke. I don’t own any. But plenty of people were tottering around on them.) I jogged back to the entrance, grabbed three programs and ran to the Turf Club.

I got back just in time to get to the betting windows, exchange pleasantries with one of my favorite tellers and place my first losing bet. We were both so relieved that we were back after a year’s absence he didn’t give me a hard time about my picks. In retrospect, I wish he had.

Back at the table, I squished past the people in the next table – six feet apart my ass! and settled in.

Gone were TV’s on every table of the Turf Club that broadcast not only the Santa Anita races, but the Saddling Barn, the Walking Ring and many other tracks. Which is how the Wood Memorial, an important Derby Prep race running in Aqueduct was almost half over before we realized that it was being shown on the infield Jumbotron.

No wonder the man in the next table was so grumpy when I blocked his view as I pushed past him to my chair.

Oops.

After the Wood concluded, (whoopie Bourbonic!) a masked server brought our bottle of Procecco and three glasses. In an attempt to be attractive, the disposable glasses were tall and had slightly rounded bottoms. This might have worked if they were made of hefty glass, giving. It didn’t work so well with plastic.

Remember those children’s toys, Weebles? (“Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down!”) Except these glasses fell down really easily, sending alcohol everywhere.

Almost before the server had disappeared, taking extra napkins with her, the first glass tipped over. Okay, somebody accidentally hit it with an elbow. Turf Club tables are pretty small. They are especially tiny when crowded with programs, Racing Forms, eye glasses, bottles and drinking glasses.

We mopped up the mess, carefully drying what we hoped would be winning tickets. (They weren’t.)

It wasn’t long before another full glass hit the deck. And then another. The good news is that with the spectacle we were making, the people in the table next to us moved as far away from us as they could. Social distancing achieved!

I’m not sure how I became the designated bettor, but I was the one who kept running back and forth to the ticket window, clutching everyone’s money and scribbled notes. Most of the time I did it correctly. In my defense the two times I screwed up someone’s bet (wrong horse, wrong placement) the mistake came in, so everyone was happy.

We were pretty careful about masking. The Turf Terrace is outside, but when we weren’t drinking or eating, we masked up.

Expect for that one time I ran to the window moments before post time. It wasn’t until I returned and sat back down at the table, that I realized I’d forgotten my mask. I was mortified. And yes, the next time I bet, I tipped my friend the teller well.

Being back at Santa Anita was so incredibly comfortable and at the same time, completely weird.

We even found our car in the gargantuan parking lot immediately. A first for Derby Day.

That’s why it kind of made sense that a guy on a motorized skateboard wearing a jet pack passed us as we drove home.

LA is getting back to normal. Thank god.

Featured

The Further Education of Ruckus and Me

I am a huge believer in education, particularly when it comes to my animals. (We won’t even discuss the constant training my horses receive, other than to point out that it mostly serves to repair all of the damage I do every time I ride.) Every one of my dogs — except for Keeper, who pretty much arrived trained at birth — has gone with me to dog school.

As has been repeatedly pointed out, it’s not just the dogs that need to learn.

The late, great Murray the Dane, was so well-educated that he had the equivalent of a canine PhD. That was primarily because while Murray was super easy to train, he was extremely dog reactive. Dog school, particularly the terrific one I use, (shout out to J9sK9s !), was a safe, smart way to teach us to work through it.

While Murray never got to the point that he loved strange dogs, with hard, constant work, we were able to go anywhere safely. He was once attacked by a pack of Chihuahuas and pugs — yes, I know- but instead of killing them – which he had every right to do -I put him in a sit- stay until I dispersed the nasty, biting monsters. And he did.

Murray competed quite successfully in agility, which is all off leash. More than once at competitions other dogs went after him, but he never responded. It was always the littler dogs. Napoleon syndrome? Or was it just that all the dogs were smaller than he was.

Naturally, I signed up Ruckus for classes as soon as she was fully vaccinated. Her best buddy, Mighty, and his person, Twinkle, also signed up for the class.

This was either the best, or worst idea either of us have ever had. They definitely have less interest in listening to us when they are with each other. Who can blame them? We are so much less fun.

This school believes only in reward based training. This is not only more humane than the old dominate/alpha dog methods of the past, but is scientifically proven to be more effective. That makes sense – a happy pup is much more likely to enjoy and retain training than a fearful, terrified one.

We started school a couple of weeks ago. It meets on Tuesday nights at 8 pm.

This is a problem.

Ruckus is very much a morning puppy. She wakes up plays, naps, goes to the barn with me. plays there, and then naps again. She usually has a late afternoon burst of energy and dinner. After that, she’s pretty much down for the count.

This means that I after I pack her stuff for class, which includes a water dish, training treats, toys, poop bags, etc. (taking her places is like moving a human baby), I -have to wake her to put her in the car, where she promptly falls asleep again.

Ruckus is never pleased to be woken up for class.

Twinkle and Mighty live a block away from us so we carpool. When Mighty and Twinkle join us she wakes up and two of them wrestle the 15 minutes it takes to get to class.

The school we attend is over a laundromat. The parking lot is busy even at night and is not particularly well lit.

The first night we unloaded the dogs and their accoutrements and all four of us briskly walked to the door. I opened the door with the one finger that wasn’t loaded down with stuff. At which point Ruckus slammed on her brakes, spun out of her collar and fled into the parking lot.

A black dog in a dark parking lot filled with people and cars. Fun!

I dropped our crap and purse and ran after her. Thankfully, she is a big mama’s girl and was terrified; after what might have been the longest minute of my life she let me grab her.

I carried her wiggling, miserable, deadweight into the hall and slammed the door behind us. Together we climbed the stairs with Mighty bringing up the read.

We were late, and class had begun, but everything stopped as we walked in.

No one can say we don’t know how to make an entrance.

She freaked out again when the teacher – a lovely lady, but a stranger – bent down to pat her. When Ruckus recovered from the shock, she realized there were four other puppies in the room. They were all accompanied by strange people. Who were looking at her.

We maneuvered into our space while Mighty, who has regular visits from family and grandchildren, and is not quite as delicate as Ruckus, went to his spot on the far side of the room. He wasn’t happy either. Until the assistant put screens up blocking their view of each other, they locked pleading eyes and paid no attention to us.

The dog nearest us was a lovely, 10-month-old yellow lab puppy. It might be half kangaroo. It kept bouncing up over its screen to check out Ruckus.

I thought it was hilarious, but Ruckus, never having met a marsupial dog before, was scared and quite vociferous. Her barking set off Mighty, and immediately the room was filled with all the other puppies leaping and yowling.

Okay, not ALL the others.

There is one mini Australian shepherd that is perfect. It does everything with grace and style. Quietly and the first time. I think it’s judging all of the uncouth puppies and their owners. Mostly the owners.

I don’t want to spread conspiracy theories, but I believe it’s a ringer. It’s not really a puppy and I am certain its owner is professional dog trainer. Just saying.

Honestly, during class I don’t have time to worry about it. In that room, Ruckus has full on puppy ADD. What we can do somewhat effortlessly at home is a no- go in school. 30 seconds is the longest she can concentrate.

The only comfort I have is that Mighty is equally distracted.

I spend most of class getting her attention away from the full length mirrors (she can’t figure out who that other black puppy is) or trying to keep her from crawling over the screens to find Mighty.

The class is only an hour, but by the time it’s over, we are both exhausted.

I’m pretty sure the instructor needs a drink when we finally coax Ruckus and Mighty down the stairs and the door slams behind us.

I get it. But she might want to get over it; Ruckus is definitely looking at following in her in Murray’s footsteps. I see her on a doctoral track.

Ruckus is a genius. I see a future PhD candidate.

Featured

My Animals Are Not Out To Get Me. I Think.

Several of my friends swear by animal communicators. You know, those people that say they can speak to animals. I have my doubts, but after hearing the reports from some of my friends after these readings, it seems some of these Dr. Doolittle heirs may be on to something.

My question lies more with my friends than the psychics. My pals really want to hear their pet’s opinions.

Not me. What if I found out what my animals really think? What if they hate me?

Animal Psychic: Mickey, why did you blow the left lead at the horse show? Sharon is worried that you are hurt.
Mickey: If you had to schlep that blubberbutt around a course and try to decipher what the hell she is asking me to do, you’d miss the lead change too. Tell her to lose a few and learn to ride. And more snacks might help. Lots more.

AP: Okay…

Mickey: Tell her verbatim. And I need a new halter.

That’s just Mickey. I tremble at what the dogs might have to say. I think the discussion might center primarily on goodies, or lack there of.

However there is one thing I do know. Contrary to what some of my friends and family members believe, I don’t think any of my fur family are actively trying to kill me. It just sometimes appears that way.

There is an old joke about Great Dane owners based on the idea that we will all be found dead on the floor after tripping over our dogs in the dark. That is not as funny as it sounds.

My late beloved Murray probably did more damage to me than all my other dogs combined. It was never, ever, on purpose.

It’s a fact that Murray loved me more than life itself. But stuff happens.

Dog agility is not usually considered a dangerous sport. Yet I have a scar on my face from teaching Murray to run through a tunnel. Someone held him in front of the tunnel entrance while I stood at the exit, calling him. If I had stopped to consider how terrified he was of strangers, I might have calculated the speed he would use to get through the tunnel to me when they let go, and I’d have stepped back a bit. Instead as soon as he was released, he ran as fast as a giant dog doing the army crawl through a tunnel could go, and knocked me down. I walked away with a nasty cut and a bloody nose.

You would have thought that experience would have taught me something. But no.

When we taught him to climb the dog walk, Murray made it to the top before he realized how far off the ground he was. He looked down and saw me alongside him, albeit, five feet below. He made the obvious Murray choice, and jumped down, fully expecting me to catch all 145+ pounds of him.

To say that he flattened me, is putting it mildly. I had a few impressive bruises but his trust in me was shaken for a long time. He only did a dog walk once again, four years later at a trial. I was so shocked I forgot the rest of the course.

My riding accidents are usually my fault as well. If you are sensing a theme, you are correct.

People ask me, since I have been riding horses since childhood, why I still take lessons. The simple reason is that I am an idiot. As shown above, I never seem to learn.

No matter how many times I ask Mickey to do the impossible and leave a stride (or two!) out before a jump, he wisely ignores me and chips instead. Plop, I fall off. D’oh.

As I said, I’m not bright.

The only time I have been hurt by a horse on purpose was as few years back. I was jumping a horse I had leased that morning. The jump was perfect. Then he propped hard on landing. Naturally I flew off and landed really, really hard.

It was not my fault that I broke my pelvis. It was a deliberate move on his part.

That’s not normal. Most my accidents are more like the incident last week.

I was lifting Ruckus, now 50ish pounds, into the SUV. Since I needed leverage as I picked her up, I put the bulk of her weight on the cast covering my wrist. She chose that precise moment to push off and leap in the air to reach up and lick my face.

Instead she clobbered my chin with her surprisingly hard head. The impact split my lip.

Not her fault. Or at least not on purpose.

If I do go missing, please have someone check my house. More than likely, I tripped over a dog, who then sat on me, and I passed out while they were licking me.

I don’t think the pets are intentionally trying to hurt me. But you might want to call an animal psychic just in case.

####

Featured

Sleep? What’s that? I have a super cute puppy instead.

In the five weeks since Ruckus flew into my life and took over, I’ve been reminded of several facts:

I need a lot of sleep.
It’s a good thing I never had children.
This is most important. All animal infants and most human babies are adorable. This is so adults are less likely to murder their young due to exhaustion.

Jasper was my last puppy. That was four and half years ago. He was the easiest puppy in the world. Ever.

That is my story and I’m sticking to it.

It helped that he arrived mostly housebroken and immediately slept through the night. If he did wake up before I did, he played quietly with his toys until I got up to feed the horses. He also never, ever chomped me with needle-like teeth while he was playing or because he was overtired.

None of that may be true, but that is how I remember it. The fact is, when babies grow up, all we remember is that they were cute they were and how adorable their pink tummies ad paws were. I am sure that human parents have similar memories.

With that in mind, Ruckus has been a shock to my system.

To her credit, she also arrived mostly housebroken. She pees immediately when she goes out, and usually poops. I can count the number of accidents she has had in the house on one hand.

I am not discounting this in any way. I have had terriers. They become housebroken if, and when they feel like it, and they usually don’t. I know I am super lucky.

But.

Jasper slept on my bed from the moment he arrived. I crate Ruckus because of Jasper. He’d have had a fit if he had to share his space as soon as she arrived. By the time she moves out of the crate and onto the bed, he will be fine. I hope.

Ruckus has been great about going to bed, at least after the first few days. She is very vocal, and at first, shared her disapproval of her den by screaming herself to sleep. Because she is so young, that didn’t take long.

Now she walks into her house, moans and groans for a minute and then literally starts to snore. Great Danes are intense, world champion snorers. I have three. It is very loud at night.

If Ruckus wakes up and has to go out, she moans louder and barks. Once outside, she immediately takes care of business and goes back into her crate and back to sleep. This is pretty amazing.

Unfortunately, in her first weeks in California, she woke up to potty three times a night. Occasionally, just as I finally fell back asleep, one of the other dogs would have to go out. There seems to be some canine rule that prevents them from waking at the same time. There were a few days I was up five times.

I understand that humans with infants can go through this for years. This is another reason why I don’t have kids. I don’t know how mothers of infants survive until their children are grown.

I realize that most of those people are young. Obviously, I haven’t been young for a very long time. Lack of sleep made me feel even older. I was taking more naps than my 90-year-old Mom.

I could barely function. I was exhausted all of the time. The bags under my eyes had bags.

I spent most evenings propped in front of the tv. Reading was beyond me. I simply could not process the printed word.

I was reduced to watching things like the “The Nanny” and “The Big Bang Theory” because they used small words and spoke clearly. Still, some of those episodes were beyond my feeble brain’s ability to process. I mean, why exactly did the rich guy hire a fired beautician off the street to be a nanny? And what’s the deal with the rich guy’s business partner? Oh never mind. I’m overthinking.

The other thing I forgot, and no one reminds you about, are puppy teeth. This is an important omission.

Like most babies, puppies discover their world by sticking everything in their mouths. Once they have grabbed it, they chomp . Human babies do not have teeth, they have slimey gums, which may be gross, but are not painful.

Puppies actually don’t have teeth either. They have a mouth full of razors inside a Pac-Man head that aims like a laser for any exposed hands or appendages nearby.

Dog trainers tell you to always carry a toy and stick that in the puppy’s mouth. Maybe that works for a particularly slow or dumb dog. Ruckus however, can spit out a toy and grab a hand at lightning speed.

For weeks my hands, and occasionally my face, looked like I had been playing catch with barbed wire. The only good thing about having a broken wrist is that even puppy teeth can’t penetrate a cast.

Last week a miracle happened. Ruckus slept through the night.

It was like a rainbow ended at my house and the pot of gold was on my pillow.

Of course, she was the leprechaun guarding the pot with knife-like teeth when she did wake up.

Kidding. She is biting a lot less.

Soon I will forget this whole time. Except for the super cute pictures, of course. Those are forever.

Featured

I Got A Puppy For Hanukkah.

The puppy I bought from Jasper’s breeder.

A friend recently called me the voice of reason. I laughed, and laughed and laughed.

I’ve been called a lot of things, but, considering I could practically open my own petting zoo (doesn’t that sound awesome!) reasonable, is not one of them.

The latest example of my lack of, um, clarity, is my decision to get a fourth dog, a third Great Dane, to add to my pack.

I deluded myself into believing that I needed this puppy. That part was easy.

There was one serious bump in the road. In addition to, well, THREE Great Danes.

Obviously, I needed a black Dane to fill the huge hole left when Fiona died.

The problem was getting her from her bucolic origins in rural Kentucky, to my crazy homestead in Chatsworth.

With Covid raging, picking her up myself, was not an option. Due to financial and moral considerations, I wasn’t going paying someone else to fly her either. Apparently “puppy escorts” are a thing among people of a higher economic echelon than me. (Note to self: check out possible job option.)

That left me the horrible realization that my 7 ½ week old puppy was going to be in a crate and transported as cargo from Nashville, the closest airport to her home in Kentucky. There are no direct flights from Nashville to LAX, so she would go first to Dallas, and from there land at LAX. At 6:20 PM.

There were no less awful alternatives, so on the day she was due to arrive I swallowed deeply. Xanax washed down by my less-good bourbon worked just fine.

I started getting the house ready for the first puppy in four and a half years. I pulled out a smallish crate, washed it, added a few blankets and a stuffed doggie with a heartbeat and heating pad.

I put it in my bedroom between Dalai’s huge crate and Poppy’s medium one. Nothing says sexy like a bedroom with three huge dog crates. And dog slobber on the walls.

I checked with the breeder to make sure I was supposed to pick them up at the cargo area, not the main airport. I was.

That all took about a half hour, which left me plenty of time to I sit around and chew my fingernails.

At 5 PM Twinkle picked me up. She said it was so I could put the puppy—who I thought I’d name Maeve- on my lap for the drive home. I think it was really so I wouldn’t cause a crash since I was such a wreck.

Either way, I was super grateful.

We arrived right on time. The one good thing about Covid is that rush hour traffic, even a week before Xmas, is almost no-existent.

American’s cramped cargo building was filled with people, waiting in a line. When I got to the front, the guy gave me a form to fill out with all of the puppy’s flight information, her shipper, breeder and everything but my social security number.

Without looking up from the computer, he told me that there were two puppies, and that it would take about 20 minutes for them to be transported from the airplane to the cargo area.

I waited. And waited.

By 7:30 most of the room had changed over. Even the lady from the funeral home claiming human remains had come and gone.

It was strangely reminiscent of being at the DMV. It smelled the same too.

The guy behind the desk stopped meeting my eyes.

was getting frantic.

I didn’t want to piss him off, so I turned my freak-out down to a seven when I approached the desk.

“Just checking on my puppy.” I said.

He looked up without making eye contact, before he started hitting the computer keyboard in what appeared to be a completely random manner. “Hmmmmmm.”

“Hmmm?” I said, trying not to panic.

“Hmmm. Let me call over there and try and find it. One of them is here.”

“What?!!!!” It came out as a squeal. I do not think I have ever made that sound before. I’m not sure that humans have ever made that sound.

He glared at me. “I’ve located it. The dog is at priority parcel. It is over at the airport. Baggage area 4. That’s where you should have gone.”

It was now close to 8:30 pm. My poor terrified puppy that had been in a loud, scary crate for more than 12 hours.

Normally, the week before Xmas, particularly with the monorail construction, it takes an hour to get around the circle at LAX. We made it in 15 minutes.

I zipped into the priority area, and saw a small crate with a cowering, exhausted puppy. I checked that the pup was alive, which it seemed to be.

A smiling gentlemen came out of the office, “They told me you were on your way.” He had sheaf of paperwork which he matched with the paperwork on the crate. I signed a bunch of things and grabbed the crate.

At the car I pulled the puppy out, popped a tiny collar on her and tossed the crate in the backseat. I settled her on my lap.

She was scared, cold, and shaking like a leaf. So was I.

I gave her some of the food that she came with, and a little water as well. She gobbled it and passed out.

Twinkle looked at me as we drove. “She doesn’t really look like her picture. She doesn’t look black. She looks like Mighty.”

Practically the only picture I have of Mighty standing still. Nine weeks old here.

Mighty is a beautiful silver with tan points. In the picture my puppy was black with tan points, and had a white stripe down her chest. This dog was light and had no strip. I wasn’t worried.

I was just glad she was here and alive.

At my place Twinkle carried her in the back yard, while I let the dogs out to meet her. They were unimpressed, and she was thrilled. Big dogs she understood.

By the time everyone got settled, it was about 11. She was definitely silver, not black.

When the phone rang, I didn’t recognize the number, and didn’t pick up. Two minutes later, it rang again. This time I answered.

“This is (mumble) from the airport.”

“Uh huh.”

“You took the wrong puppy. Your puppy is here. The other people are mad.”

It took a second for it all to fall into place, but it made sense. This puppy was not the one I thought I was getting. But all the paperwork matched…

I assured the guy that I’d take the poor thing back, but it would be at least another hour. He said he’d tell the people.

I threw the filthy crate in the back of my SUV, plopped the exhausted, confused puppy on my lap and headed back to LAX.

The puppy immediately fell asleep and as we passed the Getty Center, the guy called again sounding slightly desperate. I assured him that I was on my way, and asked him to make sure that my puppy had some water and food. He told me that the other people had taken her out, so they probably fed and watered her.

When we arrived the guy met me out front. He was practically apoplectic. I handed him the sleeping puppy, but he asked me to put her in the crate.

“We’re not allowed to touch the dogs.” As he walked away with her, I remembered the collar. He said the people would take it off. He disappeared into the airport.

I waited. And waited. And waited.

Eventually he came back out with a crate. Inside was a black puppy, shaking with fear. She was cold and soaked in urine. I pulled her out of the crate and was wiping her off when what appeared to be a homeless woman with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders and hear ran up to me. Screaming.

She kept yelling, “You have dogs don’t you? “ She also cursed. A lot.

I ignored her until it finally dawned on me that she was the other puppy’s owner. Maybe she was worried that it had come in contact with unvaccinated dogs. I assured her that I had dogs, but they were all up to date on their shots, so the puppy would not get ill.

“That crate was filthy! How could you leave a dog in that filthy crate for two hours?”

“Huh? I just got home when I got called. I didn’t have time to clean it. I barely had time to feed, water and clean the dog before I came back. Besides, the puppy was on my lap except when we got here and the man had me put her back.”

She kept screeching.

If I hadn’t been holding a limp, obviously dehydrated, starving, cold puppy I’d have said more. Possibly I’d have slugged her.

I was pissed. It was obvious she had not given the dog water or food. She took it out and shoved her back in her filthy soaked crate for those two hours.

Instead I put the pup in passenger seat and offered her food and water. She gobbled some kibble, drank and whimpered I put the seat warmer on and she curled up and went to sleep.

We made it home around 1 AM.

My dogs were shocked and disappointed that the first puppy, which they were delighted to see leave, had been replaced with another one.

I stuffed her into her crate, and we all went to–sort of – sleep.

Poppy ignores the puppy, in the hopes she will go away again.

By morning, it was clear that the puppy’s name was Ruckus. That is certainly what she had created upon arrival, and for the foreseeable future.

Dalai spends a lot of time trying to hide from Ruckus. It doesn’t work.

I got my puppy for Hanukkah.

With that, I guarantee no one will ever call me the voice of reason again.

Right now, three Danes on the bed is simple.

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I Want (?) A Puppy for Hanukkah

I had no plans to get a puppy. And, even though I enjoy the video, I really didn’t plan for a Hanukkah puppy.

With three dogs (and a cat, a canary and two horses) already sharing my little homestead in Los Angeles, more than one of my friends have questioned my sanity. It’s a fair query. But we all know the mental health ship sailed long ago.

But honestly, I didn’t expect to get a new puppy. Yet.

That isn’t to say I didn’t have puppy fever. I always have puppy fever. Doesn’t everyone? Their smushy puppy faces, pink tummies and new puppy smell… Who doesn’t swoon at a puppy?

Puppies are adorable. They are happy, innocent beings, full of joy and life. They wake up every day excited for what great, new things they will discover. Mostly they discover the joys of ripping up paper, chewing sneakers and passing out twenty minutes after eating.

Everyone needs a little of that in their lives.

I sure could. Particularly after 2020.

The pandemic, which cost the lives of family and friends and kept me from seeing the living ones since March, has been devastating. I also lost my five-year-old horse Faith, who had been with me since conception, and my dear Great Dane Fiona, who I’d only had for nineteen months. They died the same week.

But did I need a puppy? Need is such a loaded term.

People need food and shelter. But some of us also need dogs.

I had planned to wait until my two ancient canines, Poppy and Dalai, passed before I got a new dog. Dalai is a 10 ½-year-old Great Dane. Her hind end is weak and getting worse, and she has many small tumors, some of which are probably malignant. Understandably, she is occasionally grumpy. She is the Queen of Seven Hills Farm West.

Poppy is a 15-year-old mostly deaf Brittany with Cushing Disease. Last year she had a dramatic case of glaucoma that resulted in an eye removal. She tolerates other dogs, but her playing days are years behind her.

All old Ladies need a recliner of their own. This is Poppy’s.

Given all that, I was going to wait on an addition to the family.

Additionally, my friend Twinkle got a Dane puppy. Twinkle is a teacher, and her classes on Zoom coincide with my morning ride times. This meant I could take her puppy, Mighty, almost daily to play with the barn dogs, several of which were puppies. This is my idea of heaven.

I got my puppy fix and she could concentrate without worrying about Mighty tearing the house apart or driving her older dog Blue, crazy. Win-win.

Mighty should have fulfilled my need for a puppy. Perhaps if I was a normal person it would have. I have already established this is not the case.

I am very conflicted about purchasing a dog. I am a supporter of rescuing dogs. I know that shelter dogs are rarely dumped because of anything they’ve done. Somewhere along the line their owners have failed them. Badly.

All eight of my Brittanys, and two of my five Great Danes were rescues, but I knew my next would be a puppy. I had too much death in 2020 to adopt another ancient dog, and I believe that my grumpy old dogs would more easily accept and train a goofy puppy, than a confused, disoriented, senior. Since Great Dane puppies in rescue are slightly rarer than unicorns, I would be buying a puppy.

I had no plans to purchase a dog any in 2020.

Man plans, God laughs.

About three weeks after Mighty’s arrival on the scene, Dalai’s health declined drastically. Coincidentally, Jasper’s breeder posted photos of her four-week-old puppies.

At four weeks, the breeder called Ruckus, Zada.

This complicated things.

I like this breeder. She is super-responsible and only has a few litters a year. It helps that Jasper is the whole package: he is gorgeous, has a great temperament and so far (knock wood) has had no health issues.

The breeder had two females, and I had already decided on a girl. I told her to pick out the most passive of the girls, and I’d put a deposit on it.

Venmo sent, the deal was done.

There was still one more kink in the chain. The breeder and the puppies are in Kentucky.

In November when this was all coming together, I still believed that I was going to throw all of my dogs into the car and drive cross-country to see Mom for the holidays. I’d make a side trip to Kentucky to pick up the puppy, just like I had done for Jasper. Easy-peasey. And fun! (I LOVE Kentucky, if not their politics.)

Plans….

In December Covid-19 cancelled non-essential travel for everyone except selfish jerks.

The puppy needed to leave the week before Xmas, I needed a plan B to get her to Los Angeles.

Located deep in Kentucky but a few hours from Nashville airport, the breeder has shipped puppies all over the country, so that seemed like a plan. She also had another puppy coming to Los Angeles.

This would be a no-brainer for most people. Most people are not neurotic freaks. I however, am.

I am no fan of flying dogs in cargo. With the help of Xanax and an elaborate strategy I have flown with Poppy in the belly of a plane. My tactics involves kissing up to the pilot, flight attendants and cargo people by bribing them with expensive candy and charming notes.

That only works if I’m on the plane.

I flew Jasper home on my lap, but, Covid. There was no way I was flying back and forth to Nashville pick up a puppy, even for this puppy. Nor was I, as a friend from a obviously different economic situation suggested, going to pay a human to fly her to me.

(Full disclosure, 15 years ago I did fly back and forth to Albuquerque on morning to get Poppy from the American Brittany Rescue. That was pre-Covid and I had a zillion frequent flier miles. Neither of which count now.)

The little one was going to have to go it alone.

To Be Continued…

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I’m Getting Dumber. It Must Be the Pandemic. Right?

Jasper spots Talen minding his own business.

I swear I’m not a frivolous asshat whining about having to wear a mask and social distancing during the pandemic. Believe me, with more than a 300,000 Americans dead, masking up and maintaining space is the least I can do to help keep people safe.

But there is one issue that is grating on me. I’ve never exactly been a genius, but I swear, the longer this pandemic lockdown goes on, the dumber I’m becoming. It’s getting embarrassing.

(I’m not as stupid as the man screaming, “Wearing a mask is a muzzle.” Hey dickwad, I can hear you. You are not muzzled. Unfortunately.)

I haven’t descended into complete that jerk’s level of dumb yet, but I can see it coming. For instance, let’s look at a purely fictional situation. Let’s just say Jasper is being particularly annoying by barking at Talen to try and get him to snark back. The barking goes on. The horse’s ears pin and he shakes his head at the dog. This continues for a while. I honestly think this is how they play with each other, since either of them could easily walk away.

It would be cute, but it gets loud and I have neighbors. So I yell at Jasper.

Nothing makes a dog shut up faster than someone yelling at them, said no dog trainer on the earth. But it does make me feel better. And quite obviously, I’m not a dog trainer.

What doesn’t make me happy is that I run through a list of names, many of them belonging to long-dead dogs, before I remember the dog’s name.

Jasper: Bark! Bark! Bark!

Talen: Snort! Stomp!

Sharon: Damn it Murray, Rocky, Fiona, Poppy, Dalai! God Damnit Jasper! Yes, Jasper! Shut Up!

Naturally the dog keeps barking and the horse keeps snorting. However, I’m so mortified that my neighbors may hear this insanity, that I go silent.

It isn’t just names that are disappearing.

I have driven past the freeway exit to my house three times in recent memory. I like to believe that this is because I have BIG, IMPORTANT THOUGHTS happening. That would be a lie.

It’s because I’m trying to recall something really vital, like the last time I saw the Rolling Stones. (The only thing I do know it that it wasn’t at the Geezerfest in the Desert a few years back. So maybe it was Dodger Stadium? Or one of the club dates? Who knows? Damn it. But I do believe the opening act was Lukas Nelson and the Promise of the Real. Or not.)

I admit I do have one huge fear about my memory. I envision that I’m old and stashed in some old people’s home and visited by absolutely no one. It will be my own fault because I won’t be able to place anyone’s name. I’ll recognize (maybe) my nephews, but their names will be gone.

Instead, all of the circuits in my head will be clogged with minutiae about bands, like the line-up for the initial line-up for the Hothouse Flowers. (Liam O Maonlai, Fiachna O Braonain, Peter O’Toole), the lyrics for “Angel From Montgomery,” and every song ever recorded by The Replacements (not including bootlegs- no one except maybe Bill Holdship knows that.). I’ll also remember names of Grand Prix riders of the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s and of course their horses (Rodney Jenkins, Anthony D’Ambrosia, Frank Chapot, Idle Dice, Sympatico and Good Twist.) There are also major racehorses and riders from decades past as well (Cigar, Ruffian, Zenyatta, Shoemaker, Jerry Bailey and Julie Krone.) filling the empty gray matter.

As I consider this, it’s not all that surprising that I have to go into the house three times to grab my mask before going out, and that I rarely know my right from my left. There is an almost limitless amount of useless knowledge filling my head.

I may not remember any of my passwords, but the stuff I do know is highly entertaining. At least to me.

And, since in the days of Covid-19, I’m my main audience. So I guess I’m good.

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2020 the Gift (???) that Keeps on Giving

I think we can all agree that as years go, 2020 is the worst. Even Donald Trump, who was looking at this being a banner year for him to grift and screw everyone but white, rich, Christian, men, is finding 2020 problematic.

Sad. Let’s hope that November brings him great misery. (Vote blue and early!)

I digress.

2020. A global pandemic. A worldwide economic crisis. Innocent people are shot simply because they are trying to protect themselves and others from said pandemic. (See: idiots who think mask wearing is akin to being neutered without anesthetic, something that should happen to most of them.)

There have been a few signs of hope amid the horror, and it’s come from unexpected places. I hate people who film EVERYTHING, instead of actually experiencing it. You know the ones, they watch entire concerts through the lens of their phones. As if they will ever look at that video again.

Yet, we have those ubiquitous camera phones to thank for actually proving to the disbelieving public that police are killing black people willy nilly. Do you think anyone would know George Floyd’s name, or the officers would be charged without the film? If so, look up Brianna Taylor.

We can also thank the selfie generation for publicizing and shaming all the entitled white folks- the Karens and Kens, who I prefer to call Ivankas and Jareds.

Are you pissy because some underpaid, overworked retail worker who daily puts themselves at risk for Covid-19 politely asks you to wear a mask? Start ranting? Pull a weapon? Fine, go for it. Now you are viral and have lost your job! Buh-bye.

Otherwise, 2020 has seriously blown chunks.

Climate change has flipped the seasons. In the East it barely snowed all winter. Here in California now every month is wildfire season, except when we are having torrential rains and floods. Tornado alley has moved from the Mid-West to the East Coast, and the North Carolina triangle is having earthquakes.

We’re still having earthquakes in California. Sometimes we even have the trifecta of weather problems: Santa Ana winds, temperatures reaching 110 and wildfires. Now there are these things called fire tornados. Add in the pandemic and whee! Some big fun!

My personal 2020 started out strong: I got to visit some friends and wild horses, and my homebred Faith went to a horse show to hang out. She was perfect in almost every way. (Okay, she had some fear issues with stacks of shavings in the aisle ways, but it was practically her first time away from home. She was scared.) I saw friends and visited Mom in Massachusetts. All looking good.

Two days after I returned to LA, the safer at home order was given. Not much changed: I work at home (duh), and my barn remained open with mask and social distancing rules in effect.

Then Fiona developed a tumor on her breast. Because vets were closed except for emergencies I kept an eye on it. It got larger. Eventually I had it removed but it was malignant and bad.

Faith had what seemed to be a one-off weird neurological issue. The vet came and on her advice we gave her a month off. She seemed to be getting better.

Until she wasn’t. The day I put Faith on a van to go to the clinic for more tests I had a vet come to the house to put Fiona down. Her cancer metastasized she was failing fast. I couldn’t control her pain.

A week later I had to put Faith down. Her tests all came back with bad news. I drove the two hours to the clinic in to say goodbye.

The clinic is in Santa Ynez, where she and I had so many happy memories. She was started there and showed such incredible possibilities. Every new challenge she was given by the trainer she met and exceeded. She went to her first young horse show there.

Now she wasn’t coming home.

When I got to her stall, she didn’t recognize me. We had been together since she was 20 minutes old. In her five and a half years, we’d never been apart for more than a week. She always screamed and whinnied when she saw me. Now she didn’t react.

Except she did. My quiet happy girl was spooky. She was head shy, and jumped when I broke a carrot. She too was failing fast.

I’m not a big crier; it’s hard for me. But Lucy, Faith’s mother and my heart horse, lives with me. That night when fed her and Talen I lost it. I threw my arms around Lucy’s neck and ugly cried. For the first time in our 16 years together, Lucy let me hug her without chomping me.

I was numb. Too brain dead to read or watch movies, I started binge-watching really stupid Western soap opera-like television shows. “Yellowstone” is fab but there are only two and a half seasons. T he one that worked for me, is “Longmire.” On Netflix, it has seven seasons, with plots simple enough to follow with one brain cell.

One problem with the show is that it’s set what is supposed to be a tiny town in Wyoming, and has what I refer to as the Cabot Cove, “Murder She Wrote” problem: a whole lot of murders in a very small town. By series end, the place should be a ghost town.

I’m nitpicking. I’m nearing the end of Longmire’s sixth season and I’m almost able to carry on an occasional conversation. Mostly these discussions center around the pandemic, booting Trump and just how awful 2020 has been.

I miss Fiona and Faith something awful. But I’m looking forward to a fresh start.

With any luck, 2021 will begin on November 3, 2020. It can’t come soon enough.

Mourning Doves Made Me Trendy

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As any good journalist (and most really bad ones) knows, if something happens once, it’s interesting. If it occurs more than three times, it’s a trend. So it’s official: according to the LA Times, The Washington Post and the New York Times, birding is a thing. A big deal. I’m sure if I read the tabloids I’d discover all sorts of celebrities doing it.

Okay then.

I’ve never been a serious birder. I own a pair of binoculars, but I use them mostly for watching horse races. Nor have I never visited to any of the big spots on the migratory routes but I do know that there are four central flyways that birds use. They are creatively named the Pacific Flyway, the Central Flyway, the Mississippi Flyway, and the Atlantic Flyway.

That’s all I got.

I do like birds. I have always had a least one pair of canaries. One of my current duo was born at my house. That’s a first – canaries are terrible parents. If they manage to hatch a chick they often knock it out of the nest and then ignore it. Nice.

While devoted ornithologists travel the world in search of rarities like the Ivory-Billed Woodpeck or the Bahama Nuthatch, my birding is primarily done out my window. I don’t even have a seed feeder for songbirds because Brittanys are bird dogs, and it seem cruel to both the birds and the dogs to set one up.

An Ivory-Billed Woodpecker. I’ve never seen one and neither will you. It’s rare.

I do have two hummingbird feeders. Three years ago, my now- resident male Anna’s Hummingbird (or maybe it’s a Rufous Hummingbird. They look exactly alike to me) drove away the almost dozen other bitty birds noshing at me feeders by attacking them relentlessly. Hummingbirds are MEAN! Now I’m down to one pair: him and this year’s lady. They are gorgeous and tame enough to squawk around my head when they think I’m late with their fresh juice.

I am also super fond of Mourning Doves. They are very common, but they make me happy. They coo cheerfully, they mate for life and are just pleasant to have around. Some become quite tame.

Bright, they are not. They make chickens look like Einstein.

At my former house there was an overhang by the back door. It had a single four-inch wide support beam for the roof. That narrow precipice apparently screamed “home” to a pair of young Mourning Doves. They would bring a single stick and carefully place it on the plank. Then they’d look at each other and their work approvingly, and fly off excitedly, knocking it down. Every single time.

After I discovered a huge pile of sticks on the ground I gave in and nailed up a platform for them. Almost instantly they moved it and built their nest. I swear they didn’t notice what I’d done.

They were not thrilled that the nest was above the back door, but by the time they laid their eggs, they stopped panicking and knocking the nest down every time we came opened it. They would simply scold us as we passed. That worked.

Mourning Doves will nest anywhere. Usually badly.

By the time they returned for a third year in a row, (the female had a distinctive scar, so I could recognize her among the billion or so Doves in my neighborhood), they ignored us completely. The babies (there were always two) grew up with us and probably thought we were funny looking member of their flock.

I never saw fledglings. One day there were noisy, begging birds in the nest, the next it was deserted.

In Chatsworth I have at least one large flock of Doves that roost in my giant pine trees. Unfortunately for all of us, there is also a huge hawk of some sort. (Maybe a red-tail – according to my Audubon app, they live around here. But it could be any kind.) I just know it’s big, and hungry.

Mourning Doves are fat, juicy and dumb. Circle of life.

More than once I’ve heard a kafuffle in the tree, seen feathers rain down and the hawk land on a nearby pole with the unfortunate bird in its talons. I understand that mice are difficult prey, but it would be nice if the hawk would vary its diet occasionally.

The other day when I let the dogs out Fiona caused a major traffic jam by slamming on her brakes. (Literally the three other dogs crashed into her. My own version of the 405.) She was staring into the little front garden which is surrounded by goat fencing to keep the dogs from digging the plants up.

It took me a minute to locate them -their coloring is camouflage perfect- but I finally noticed two very young, very scared fledgling Mourning Doves. They had obviously just left, or fallen out of, their nest. They were huddled as close to each other as possible, their wings were still spotty and were half the size of a grown bird. Their mama was on the roof screaming at them. Occasionally they would flap their wings weakly.

It was a very hot day and I worried they would fry, but that garden is pretty scraggly and only gets late afternoon sun. Still, I put a bowl of sugar water out for them. It scared them, and they ran through the holes in the fence onto the driveway. They came back in when I walked away.

Phew.

I named them Bert and Ernie.

The plan was to just leave them the heck alone and make sure the dogs only went out in the backyard. That way they’d be safe.

But since they are Mourning Doves they didn’t follow the directions. That evening around dusk I went out to throw some trash out. The birds were waddling around far from the safety of the fenced garden.

Sunset is prime hawk feeding time, so I tried to shoo them back into the ‘pen.’ Much to my surprise – and theirs too from the look of shock on their faces – this time when they flapped their wings they took flight.

One ended up on the roof with its parent. The other made it to the fence line.

I sighed with relief. Bert and Ernie were their parent’s problem again.

By morning they were back.

That night they left again, and I realized my garden was their safe zone. The dogs, even Poppy the Brittany ignored them and all was good.

Until the next day. That morning Bert came back alone. He was terrified. I suspect Ernie became hawk food.

This was our new routine. Bert left at dusk and fluttered back to the garden every morning.

Two days ago when I went to get the paper (yes, I still get a print paper) he was perching, somewhat drunkenly on the gate. He let me get quite close before he weaved into the garden and tucked in for the day.

He spent his days nibbling grass and bugs and snoozing. You had to look really closely to see him, but he was there.

Every day he got a little bigger. Yesterday afternoon he flew out to meet his parents on the tree and didn’t return. I miss him, but who knows, maybe he’ll come back next year with his own family.

I guess I’ve become a birder. Which is exactly the first time I’ve ever been on trend.

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Lost in the Supermarket

I am not a good food shopper. My excuse is that I barely cook so I have no idea what ingredients I might need to make actual food.

The only thing I make with regularity is turkey loaf for the dogs. I started doing it when Dalai was a skinny puppy. I do it now because she is a skinny old lady.

In my first house I had a gorgeous, vintage Wedgewood oven/stove. Because I don’t cook, I used the oven maybe twice a year. (This was pre-turkey loaf.) After I’d lived there a few years I had a repairman come out because when I did turn the oven on, there was a horrible smell. I thought it might be a gas leak or something.

He took one look at the oven and stared at me in shock. “It’s the dust,” he said. “The oven is filled with dust. That’s the smell.”

Oops.

I digress.

Obviously I’m not one of those smart people who plans their meals for a week and goes shopping with a list. I’m more of the ‘what can I zip into the market and grab and make tonight’ kind of cook. In a normal week I may fly in and out of the store three times, buying just enough to last for a couple of days.

What with social distancing and safer at home orders, this no longer is a viable method of survival.

I have tried to change. I actually attempted to think about eating before I’m hungry, which I hate to do, and went into the store armed with a mask, gloves and an actual list.

Yeah, that wasn’t so successful. I waited until mid-morning in order to avoid the lines. (I haven’t been to Trader Joe’s since the lockdown. At the TJ’s near me, there are literally lines around the block; I love the place but nothing is worth that.)

Unfortunately that means that by the time I got there most of the things on my list were sold out. Carrots? Nope. Beyond meat? Nada. Pasta? Not a chance. Shit.

As always, I just wanted to get out of the store as quickly as possible. But now shopping brings an element of panic as well as boredom. Since the items on my carefully prepared list were missing, I found myself randomly grabbing stuff so I could stand in the socially distanced line and flee to the safety and peace of my car as fast as I could.

This meant that when I arrived home and opened my shopping bags it was a little like Christmas: a surprise. But not a good in a good way.

I came home with cans of tuna, which was okay, I like tuna. There was also a loaf of nasty white bread, a head of cabbage that I snatched thinking it was iceberg lettuce, and a red pepper. I’d also bought a dozen eggs to add to the carton I already had in the fridge. And five lemons.

I ended up making a really good, easy, tray of shortbread lemon bars (from Sally’s Baking Addiction). They were delicious, but didn’t solve the meal issue.

I ended up on muddling through with an ancient can of soup (is there an expiration date on lentil soup?) which, if I do say so myself, paired nicely with the lemon bars.

In short, I am still going to the grocery a couple of times a week, which is less than ideal. I reassure myself that I’d have to do so anyway, since in the summer I pick up 25 pound bags of carrots twice a week for the horses.

I tried getting 50 pounds once, but they went bad before they could be eaten. There is truly nothing more disgusting than 20ish pounds of rotting carrots. Ew.

What all this means is that I’m going to have to get creative. So if you need me for the next week I’ll be combing the internet for recipes that use cabbage, eggs and a lemon.

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Wild, Wild Horses

Even before the lockdown, it took a lot to get me to leave my house. Even for a weekend. It isn’t just because I love my place and the quadrupeds. With four dogs, a cat and two canaries there are a lot of moving parts.

Occasionally I’d like to get away. Frankly, sometimes all of those pushy fur people get on my nerves. But if I go, it means someone else has to stay and take care of them.

It isn’t easy to find someone who is not intimidated by all of them and their quirks. Luckily, I have a great house sitter who I trust completely, with good reason. Last Fall she managed to get everyone evacuated in the fires. Understandably though, someone with her abilities (she’s also a vet tech) doesn’t come cheap.

So I try to limit my time away from the house to sporadic trips East to see Mom, and horse shows.

My college friend, Debbie, moved to Tehachapi from Vermont three years ago. Tehachapi is only about two hours and a million light years away from Los Angeles. I really wanted to see her and her lovely husband Kevan, but I was n’t moving fast or going anywhere. Then she mentioned the magic words.

Wild horses.

That got my attention.

The closest I’ve ever been to wild horses was a trip to Chincoteague and Assateague Islands when I younger. (C’mon, you remember Misty of Chincoteague!!!!) Visiting the ponies was a bucket list trip.

There is something about wild horses. I wanted to see more.

So I jumped at the chance.

Finding the right time was a little complicated. When I go away, I have to leave my SUV just in case someone needs to go to the vet, or evacuate. That meant I had to drive my 23 year old BMW Z3.

I love this car beyond words, but it is a two seater convertible. It leaks in the rain and I’ve never driven it in the snow. Tehachapi is in the mountains. Where it snows. It was January.

We picked a weekend when the worst of winter was technically over. Debbie called the lady to make an appointment to see the herd, and I was on my way.

We met in nearby Bakersfield, because the zoo there puts on the most insanely, fantastic holiday light display I’ve ever seen. Or heard about. I’m a sucker for twinkle lights and this lived way up to the hype.

Worth a trip. But the best was yet to come.

On the way to Tehachapi from Bakersfield, Debbie gave me the scoop on the horses. There were about a hundred of them, spread through three or four bands. They are not BLM managed horses, on public land. Instead they live on private property owned by a turbine power company. You’ve probably even seen them in a million or three car commercials. You know, the ones with windmills and horses in the background. I don’t remember the cars.

Technically, the Oak Creek Wild horses are not even ‘wild’ horses. They are more likely feral descendants that escaped or were let loose by different breeders about 100 years ago.

But make no mistake, these are wild horses. They are handled only when absolutely necessary, such as for medical needs, including gelding some of the colts to manage the size of the herd and to capture some of the weanlings for adoption.

Diana Palmer has been the caretaker for the herd since the late ‘80s. With the droughts and wildfires, she also provides supplementary hay for the bands. In fact, that is the price of admission to the wonderful world of the Oak Creek Wild Horses.

The morning we were to going to see the horses we stopped at a feed store and picked up about six bales of hay (the feed store knew what kind they eat) and we were on our way.

We met Diana in front of a chained and super-muddy roadway, surrounded by giant wind turbines. (Those things are HUGE when you are close.) We passed through a few more access ways and followed her to where she figured a group of the horses might be.

Bingo!

At first they were tiny dots in landscape, but those horses know trucks mean easy eating. We stopped the trucks and they appeared out of nowhere, running straight for us. Within moments we were surrounded by about 30 pushy horses. I am comfortable with annoying, careless foals, so I didn’t find them intimidating, but I wasn’t stupid enough to get between them and their snacks.

Adults. Foals. Geezers. All shades of black and bay with definite Morgan characteristics. They were healthy and wild. You can get deceptively close to most of them, but only a few allowed a human touch.

Diana could pick most of the individuals out, including one distinctive filly that had already been chosen for adoption. We hung out with the first group for about 45 minutes and then reluctantly left to search for another band, which we quickly discovered.

I am a sucker for foals, so I began following a few around with big dreams in my head. Morgans are small, compact obviously tough, horses that are so very different from my large, hunky, chunky Warmbloods or svelte Thoroughbreds.

A lot of the adopters ride their babies, but an equal number drive them. While we surrounded by them, I remembered that I have always sworn when I was too old to ride, I’d get a pair of matched Hackneys to drive. In my musing, I switch out the hackney for an Oak Creek Wild Horses.

Never mind that the extent of my driving ability was the day before when Debbie let me drive her mini-horse. I was terrified I’d break it. Still.

How the heck do you hook up all that harness?

The dream lasted exactly as long as it took me to drive home that day and look at my FIVE hay burners. Two of which earn their keep.

Still, there’s always time, right?

****

If you’re interested in learning more about the Oak Creek Wild Horses, or helping or adopting Creek please go to their website: www.OakCreekWildHorses.com

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BFF Friends, Canine and Otherwise

I’ve often mentioned that my dogs have a better, more active social life than I do. It’s funny- and sad- because it’s true.

Pre-pandemic, my social butterfly, Jasper had regular playdates with numerous dogs including Damali the GSD and Olive the Black and Tan Coonhound. But his absolute bestie, hands down, is Blue the Great Dane.

I met Blue and her people, the Werbers, not long after I’d moved to Chatsworth. I was walking Poppy the Brittany, and spotted Matti walking Blue.

It’s not often that you see Great Danes, so of course I introduced myself. When Matti accepted an invitation for a Dane playdate neither of us had any idea that I wasn’t getting just a playmate for Dalai and Poppy, but an urban family for me. Whether or not they wanted us.

At the time Blue was about a year and Dalai was four. They hit it off immediately, chasing each other around and tormenting Poppy. (No worries – in those days Poppy gave as good as she got.) When Poppy was sick of being harassed, she just came over to us and sat down. Game over.

When Jasper came into my life, Blue would come over and play with him and Dalai. Life was good.

Dalai has aged, and is now a very wobbly 9 ½. Poppy is now 14, has only one eye and is mostly deaf. Neither of them run or chase around much anymore, so it’s mostly just Blue and Jasper on playdates, and if they are left to their own devices, they just lie next to each other and sleep like big Danish lumps. Not much playing or exercise going on.

These days, particularly with social distancing, Blue, her (and Matti’s) mom Twinkle, and Jasper and I mostly go for walks. That’s fine for the Danes. They just want to hang out together. I like catching up with Twinkle, so it works for us too.

Even on days when I’m not walking with Blue and Twinkle, Jasper tries to drag me down her street and walks past under protest. When they are waiting on the corner, he goes nuts.

Jasper, who is normally a perfect gentleman, yanks the leash out of my hands when he spots Blue and gallops over to her squealing. In turn, Blue starts leaping and diving like a dolphin until they catch up. They spin all over each other and run around in a circle.

It’s adorable.

Lately thanks to the quarantine, we have been walking together almost every day. The dogs know the route and sometimes make questionable decisions while Twinkle and I are talking.

Lately the hounds have been deciding when it’s time to cross the street. They gently pulling in that direction until we find ourselves where they want to be.

Then there is the weed shop. The outer door is usually open (weed is considered an essential business in Los Angeles) and almost every time we pass, Blue and Jasper take a hard turn inside. Apparently they have an order waiting. The stoners inside don’t seem to care.

Both dogs are mostly very well-behaved. They like almost all people and dogs, though occasionally Blue will take offense to something (a man’s ugly hat, or a particularly annoying little yappy dog) and will clearly voice her opinion. Jasper is usually willing to participate in mayhem, but on the whole they are both mellow dogs.

Pedestrians react in distinct ways when they spot a pair of giant dogs. Some folks are pretty sure that the dogs, who usually haven’t even noticed their existence, are going spring to life and eat them. Others are fascinated by them, and can’t keep their hands off the dogs. Blue and Jasper generally like that a lot.

There are also those people who shout, “Are those horses?” None of us like them.

The dogs seem to believe that it is their civic duty to check out every smell and gobble up all trash and food they can seize. Recently Twinkle got a piece of chicken out of Blue’s mouth, and Jasper swallowed it before it hit the ground. Blue was obviously wounded by Jasper’s traitorous action. There was a lot of side eye given, but she forgave him.

One house along the way has a particularly lush lawn. Every day both dogs collapse on it in ecstasy and roll around moaning in pleasure. We have to tug them, leaving two huge Great Dane sized dents in the grass. I wonder what the homeowner thinks happened.

When we get to Blue’s corner, I usually have to drag Jasper away. Blue stands and watches until she can no longer see us.

Great friendships are rare. Jasper and Blue are lucky. So am I.

When Shit Gets Real

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In all major crisis’ everyone has their moment.. For most of us it was helplessly watching the Covid-19 tragedy unfold in Italy, Spain and China. For Mr. Trump it was the idea of losing the election and watching the stock market crater.

For me, it was John Prine, and Marianne Faithfull were reportedly in the ICU with the virus. (Not together, but both would probably find that a hilarious image.)

That Prine is a genius singer/songwriter/composer/influence is a given. After beating cancer in the 90s, it seemed that there was nothing he couldn’t do. Hell until a few months ago, that old geezer could still probably knock out a mail route if he wanted to. Singing while he did it.

Last week it came out that he was in critical condition and on a ventilator from Covid-19. The latest update from his wife Fiona, is that he is now stable. But that doesn’t actually mean much.

There is even less information about Faithfull. This is not good. If she was doing well, we’d hear about it.

Both Prine’s self-titled debut album, and Faithfull’s “Broken English” are absolute musical touchstones to me. (If you know those records, not only should you it will explain a whole lot about me. Probably more than you need to know.)

Anyway, now it’s personal.

I already was following the safety at home order. I mean, realistically, that is my normal life. I LIKE being at home and alone, but the shopping for a couple of weeks at a time thing was new to me.

I barely cook and I hate to shop. Which means I usually go to the market every couple of days to rush in and out as fast as possible, with little or no thought. The only thing I do know is that I have to pick up a 25 pound bag of carrots.. I also go through about 75 pounds of carrots a week. So I average three swift trips to the store a week.

A weeks worth of carrots for the horses.

These days like everyone else, I’m a homebody. I leave the house only to walk the dogs, ride and occasionally to go to the store to pick up carrots. Those big bags don’t fit in my fridge if I put anything else in it and carrots go bad.

I went to Smart & Final today. It was the first time I’d been in over a week. (See! I really am trying!) I was pleased to notice that some of the craziness has settled and there were a lot fewer shortages.

The shelves were stocked with lots of fruits and vegetables (of course they were!), and all kinds of meat which I don’t eat. For the first time in three weeks there was ground turkey which I use to make the dogs’ turkey loaf. (The ONLY time I cook regularly is for the dogs. But you knew that.) Score! And a giant jar of peanut butter which I use to give the dogs pills. Double score!!

There were the usual empty spaces where the paper towels, disinfectants and toilet paper used to be.

I expected that. What I didn’t expect were the vacant shelves where the carrots and apples should be.

There were none. Nada. Not even a single crummy one pound bag of carrots or any nasty Red Delicious apples that no one eats willingly. Come to think of it, my horses don’t even like Red Delicious apples.

I suspect this is a temporary glitch, one that has hit my neighborhood grocery stores harder than others in less equine infested areas.

But still.

While I did raise my eyebrows at the cranky man screaming about how we were now living in a communist society where you can’t even get the basics, a part of me nodded. I’m not proud of this.

I think I’m dealing with the quarantine (after the gut punch about Prine and Faithful) pretty well. Or at least like most people.

Somedays I am fine. I know life goes on, most of us will make it through, and move on with our lives.

I do smile when see all the young families in my neighborhood out for walks with both Mom and Dad, I hope that the kids will remember the closeness they had during this time. (Hint: they won’t. But The Great Toliet Paper Shortage of 2020 will certainly become a part of their family lore.)

I am hopeful that all of us on the financial bubble will survive. I worry a lot about the people I see hanging at the U-Haul place looking for work as day laborers. They have no safety net.

Somehow this will pass. Right?

I also swing wildly the other direction, right smack into complete terror. (If I survive this, the economy is going to tank and how am I going to feed my quadrupeds and keep my house?)
But that isn’t a sustainable way to live.

I can only deal with one disaster at a time, and right now my focus is that my friends and family stay healthy.

I know a bunch of people who are, well , catastrophizers. They can’t think past the worst possible outcome.

I can. In fact, for years I made my living doing just that, as a publicist. When things go according to plan, any duffus can handle it. I got paid to be prepared for the cataclysmic disasters. For better or worse, my nature and profession, lend itself to being a problem solver.

It’s working for me so far.

I mean really, If you can’t go to the store or are concerned about it, hey, thankfully you have enough money to use Instacart. (Tip WELL and say thank you!) If it takes a couple of days to get there, well, there’s probably nothing you can’t survive without for a bit.

No paper towels? Use dish towels and wash them! Worst comes to worse you can do the same for toilet paper, at least if you have easy access to a washing machine.

Deal the fuck with it. It’s not like you don’t have a ventilator and the federal government is hoarding them. (That’s a whole other issue and for Congressional inquiry to decide. (I’ve got your back Rep.Schiff!).

I find myself becoming a new cliché. I have learned how to use Zoom and done hangs with some of my dear friends. It’s not the same as being there, but it’s okay.

Since I can’t go to the gym, I’ve trying online exercise classes. Some are good. Some not so much.

I’m a hard pass on future Dog Yoga classes. They sound like a blast, but are designed for people with short dogs. But Fiona and I did laugh a lot. Okay, I laughed. She snored.

Fiona and I doing yoga. See the problem?

None of this is fun, except maybe me trying to do a downward fold over Fiona. But I’ve learned a little about myself and the world. Including that my internet is not as reliable as I previously believed. (It’s awesome to have the yoga video freeze in chair pose! Feel the burn!) And that toilet paper is a bankable commodity.

Thus far I haven’t lost any loved ones. That’s a huge win. So, with a big nod to several of my former therapists, this is my mantra and I’m sharing it with you: “You can’t control most situations. You can only control your reactions.”

Nice to know I learned something from the zillions of hours I spent in their offices.

Stay safe friends. And listen to John Prine and Marianne Faithful.

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How Is Your Year Going?

I’ve been out of touch for a while, cause, this year has been so perfect and dull I have had nothing to say…I’ve never had so much fun as over these past three months. How about you?

Just kidding. I’ve been cowering in the barn grain room wondering if Covid-19 can find me there. It’s pretty dark and dusty.

Still kidding. For me the truth lands mostly in the middle.

Some days my mind spins out of control: Trump! Covid-19! The Stock Market!

Others I just stick my fingers in my ears yelling LA! LA! LA DEE DAA!

Whatever works. That’s my current motto.

Three Danes on a bed and a Brittany on the floor. That’s normal.

That and “STAY THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME! Please?”

I was lucky enough to fly to the East to visit my Mom in the Berkshires a week or so before the virus exploded in the US. It was already being mismanaged terribly – no tests, White House denial etc., but for some reason I thought everything was going to be okay. After all, we are the USA and have the CDC on it they managed to keep us safe from Ebola. And a whole Pandemic team and plan.

Oops. That was in 2016.

Anyway, by the time I came back to Los Angeles five days later, it became obvious that nothing was going to be the same for a while. I wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

I wasn’t consciously planning to stock up on things, but looking back that’s sort of what I did.

I needed hay, so I ordered a lot – about 50 bales – which should last the two fatsos in the backyard quite a while.

Yet even then, because it had been raining a lot, I was more concerned that the delivery truck would get stuck in my yard, than acquiring the trump virus. I actually considered this: it would be handy to have a giant truck of my very own. Then I could pick up my own damn hay and shavings.

Luckily, the driver/delivery man is a much better truck driver than I am. He was in and out of yard in less than two hours. There were only a few nasty ruts. Winning!

I also did some shopping that week, since as usual I had nothing in the house. That forced me to visit Costco just as the madness and hording was ramping up. I bought a few extra bags of dog food at Costco mostly because I wanted to postpone a return trip as long as possible. People were insane. Even though Los Angeles’ water is just fine. Every cart had cases of water.

And toilet paper. There was a whole separate line, with line monitors for toilet paper. For toilet paper? This is a respiratory virus, so Kleenex maybe. (And what was up with the guy that literally had a huge basket filled with lettuce? I have so many questions…)

Anyway, while I was out I picked up dog food, cat food, canary food and extra grain for the horses. So I’m pretty good.

In fact, since I work at home and don’t go out much anymore (times have changed from the days when I would see three bands a night!) my life is pretty unchanged from the pre- “safety at home” order.

I am lucky and oh, so incredibly grateful to live in California. Here, it is up to each barn to decide if they want to remain open. (For all of you who are allowed to ride, all together say a big “Thank you” to the horse racing industry who made the legitimate argument that horses need to be worked every day. Otherwise NO ONE would be riding.)

Mickey and Faith are at a single trainer, private stable that has remained open. (Thank you Heatherly Davis and Tracy Saunders!) Heatherly staggers riders so there are rarely more than three around at any time. Everyone is extremely respectful about staying at least six feet away. And it’s California, so we ride outside. In a ring that is about an acre in size. Have I mentioned how lucky I am?

Layla is often ridiculously happy to see me. Foals.

Layla lives about ten minutes away. She’s out with one old mare and four other yearlings. There is rarely anyone there when I visit so that’s not a problem either. Actually that’s not quite true, if I’m not careful I can get run over when they mob me, because, foals. Not a bad problem to have. Foals give the best hugs.

Layla (she’s the one with the Troll forelock) and her BFF Haly

I am more than a little thankful to be able to ride and do it in a place that is stunningly gorgeous and so visually distant from the city that I while I’m there, I can pretend that nothing has changed.

Except it has.

I still walk the dogs every day. Usually I’m the only one. Now there are other people walking too. Lots of them.

People are mostly nice. They say hello and keep a safe distance. That might also be because many days I walk with my friend Twinkle and her Great Dane, Blue. Nothing will make dog-fearful people get out of the way faster than two fat Great Danes heading their way.

When people cower in the street, it hurts Jasper and Blue’s feelings, but they survive.

Lately I’ve also spent a ton of time pumping the water out of Lake Liveten, which was formerly known as my horse paddock. It was literally an ocean back there.

A few of my rubber duckies made a break for it and adopted Fiona as their leader.

I was lucky enough to borrow a pump and it works beautifully. It just takes a while and I’m not going to leave it unattended cause, you know, horses, dogs, water and electricity. What could go wrong?

The water is almost gone now. Except we are expecting another huge downpour.

So I repeat, how’s your 2020 going?

Stay safe and happy folks! We will get through this. I’m throwing a huge party to celebrate! See you soon!!!!!!

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The Dark Months

I don’t know why we turn the clocks back every Fall, and I’m not even sure what it’s called. (The dark time? When everything goes bad? Months of depression?) I know I could just Google the answer to both questions, but that’s a digression I’m not willing to make right now, when I’m just warming up to a good rant.

You may have guessed that I hate it when it’s dark in the morning and pitch black at the crack of 4:30pm.

No one else in my household like it either. Every morning the horses begin milling around, looking for breakfast at what they think is their normal meal time, except instead of 6:30, it’s now 5:30.

At about the same time, Dalai wanders over my side of the bed and stares at me looking for a flickering of my eyelids which might mean I’m awake. If there is none, she leans over and breathes on me until I blink. As you can imagine, that works. My movement causes Fiona and Jasper to wake up and they in turn stir up Poppy and the birds.

If I’m lucky, by now, it’s 6am. Arguing with them does not work. Neither does pleading.

“C’mon,” I beg, burrowing under the covers. “Just ten more minutes.”

That is Dalai’s signal to take her paw and yank my covers off. She’s not kidding anymore. She’s awake, hungry and has a full agenda. She has stuff to do.

So up I stumble and let them all outside. Before I even make it to the bathroom, they are all back and surrounding me. Staring.

Owning Great Danes means never peeing alone.

The thing is, once I’m up in the morning, I don’t even mind being awake. I actually kind of like it. The neighborhood is quiet, and if I don’t turn on the TV or check my phone, I can pretend all is right with the world.

Right.

The worst part of the time change comes later in the day. In what used to be the afternoon. Like say 4ish. When the sun is already setting.

During most of the year I feed and then walk the dogs around 5. It gives my brain a break, and since I walk each dog separately, I get some bonding/training time with each one. It’s somewhat meditative. (Until Fiona spots the dog up the street and tries to fence fight. Then it’s loud and aggravating for everyone.)

Unfortunately, since dogs do not carry time pieces, they start nagging me for dinner about the same time as I feed the horses. Even if I can fend off the pathetic looks of four starving canines for another hour or so, by the time we start walking, it’s dark outside.

I live in an area of Los Angeles that was once more rural than urban. It’s not like that anymore, but sidewalks are still far and few between. This is not good, because even with speed bumps in the road, people drive really fast. I guess they are in a rush to get home before their bedtime.

Additionally, a long time ago, Murray the Dane and I were hit by a car while we crossed the street (in a SCHOOL ZONE, no less). So I’m a little gun shy about walking at night, even though I deck out the dogs in reflectors and carry a flashlight. If someone could smack into a giant black and white dog and me in broad daylight, it could easily happen again at night.

Oh, and my big brave Danes are generally afraid to walk at night. There are scary things out there in the dark. Like coyotes, hawks and squirrels. Or blow-up Santas.

I can’t help it, but once it’s dark outside, it feels like the day is over. Literally, I’m ready to eat dinner and go to bed. Except that it’s 8:30 pm.

The dogs don’t help. Instead they (I mean Dalai and Jasper)often go into the bedroom, and hop on the bed and start whining for me to join them.

I know I’m being difficult but I don’t want to go to bed at 8:30. Or even 9:30. But I’m embarrassed to tell you have many times I’ve given into to them, just to shut them up.

I gave in and Googled it. Apparently this period of the year is called Standard Time. Which makes no sense, because under what lunatic standard does a day end at 4:30?

Changing the clocks was first suggested by Benjamin Franklin to give everyone more time to work in the summer. So we can thank him for that. Moving the time back was apparently the work of someone who owned a candle factory. Why else would they want us in the dark endlessly?

Sigh. I have plenty of time to ponder this

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Man Makes Plans, the Universe Laughs

My favorite saying, because it’s true, is ‘man plans and the universe laughs.’ (My second favorite is courtesy of my Papa Harry, “Everyone in the world is crazy except you and me, and I’m not so sure about you.”) But I digress.

The first was made clear this past weekend. Most people have favorite sporting events, the World Series, the FIFA World Cup, or the Olympics. The day after the Super Bowl, the US practically comes to a standstill because so many people call in sick with hangovers.

For me, the event of the year is the Breeder’s Cup. The Breeder’s Cup has been around now for 36 years. I’ve watched and/or been to the last 20 years. It’s two days and 14 races of absolutely spectacular competition. It’s the best of the best from all over the world.

Over the last decade, six of my friends, all women who I’ve ridden with, so they pass the crazy test, have watched or gone with me. We’ve gone to Churchill Downs, where I cried when Zenyatta lost to the aptly named Blame in her second Classic, to Del Mar, and always to Santa Anita. When we couldn’t travel (Kenneland you were too damned expensive) we watched at whoever’s place had the best TV.

When it’s possible, I go watch the horses work in the mornings at least twice. I pretend it’s to watch and size up the visiting horses, but it’s more than that. It’s amazing. Disneyland for horse people.

This year I really needed some fun. Two weeks prior was my screwed up trip home, and on Monday morning as I was driving to the works at 5AM I heard about the Getty Fire. Wednesday, I got up to go, turned on the television and there was helicopter filming a fire surrounding the stable where I board Mickey. Okay, they were zooming in on the Reagan Library. That matters to me not at all, but at the base of the Library’s hill is my heart and soul – Lavender Creek Ranch, and it was literally surrounded by fire. Circled.

I ended up hitching up my trailer and helped evacuate some of the 1000 horses nearby. (My barn didn’t need my help. They make the Army look unorganized.) I’ve been in a lot of active fires, but this was among the worst. Eventually all of the horses, even those that were let loose to flee from active fire, were saved. A few goats and pigs weren’t.

When the Ventura County Sherriff’s’ Department sent us all home, I collapsed and called my mom. Her ancient little dog, Monty, who lives with me often, had gone missing the night before. As we were talking they found his body.

Good times. Not.

So I really needed some fun. Luckily, it was Breeder’s Cup 2019.

I had the weekend planned down to the moment. Friday, is the shorter program, with a handful of decent stakes on the undercard, and home to the Future Stars races: the Juveniles. It was a glorious day at the track, and I even won a little (very little) money.

Everything was set for the next day. The whole card was fantastic, but the race I was looking forward to the most was The Mile. It was set for the 6^th. One of my favorite horses, Omaha Beach, was going out as the odds-on favorite.

On Day Two, because racing starts earlier and lasts later, I decided to bring Jasper to Kathy’s homes to play with her dog, Damali, while we were gone. The dogs have known each other all lives and play together often. I hadn’t left Jasper there in almost a year, but he’d visited there just two weeks ago when we were evacuated. (See my disastrous trip to New England.)

The yard where we left them has a ten-foot wall, and we opened the guest house so they could get away from the sun. There were three or four buckets of water, since Jasper likes to stand in it, and Dalmali follows his lead. It was kind of a spa day for dogs. Or so we thought.

The dogs were the farthest things from my mind as we made our way to the Santa Anita betting windows for the first race at 11. I placed my bets and noticed that Kathy was on the phone, and Lise was quietly calling my name.

“Ah, Sharon,” she said in her best super-calm therapist’s voice. “Kathy’s neighbor just called. Jasper is loose and is running around the neighborhood. They can’t catch him.”

It took me a moment to process, but then we running through the parking lot. As we ran to the car (Kathy, poor thing was dressed for the day in heels and a big beautiful hat. I was in combat boots and a dress).

I heard her say to her phone. “His name is Jasper. He’s’ big but very friendly. Don’t chase him.”

It’s important to note that her street is just off a major cross street – Laurel Canyon Blvd. And Jasper had gone around the block, with several people in tow at least once.

I am very good in crisis. It’s later I fall apart. Instead of blacking out at the thought that Jasper Johns was running into traffic trailing a bunch of well-meaning people, I stepped on the gas. Hard.

We made it back to Kathy’s place in Studio City in less than 20 minutes. It’s usually about 35 minutes and change from Arcadia.

During that time I was calm. Kathy was not, and for some reason kept apologizing. It most obviously was not her fault. We were trying to figure out how he got out. The only thing I could imagine was that he climbed on top of a garbage can and jumped over the gate. It kind of seemed plausible.

Nope.

As we flew down the exit ramp to her house Kathy spoke to her neighbor again. Apparently Jasper ran back to her house, with the Good Samaritans following. Then he slithered under the gate. Like a snake.

The space between the gate and the driveway is less than five inches. Jasper is a full-grown, 135+ pound Great Dane. Okay then.

I started to laugh manically as we shoved them in the guesthouse. Jasper was shaking a bit, but otherwise thrilled we’d come back. We literally locked the door to the guesthouse with the dogs inside, and booked it back to the track to try and see the 6^th.

I predicted that we’d be pulling into the parking lot as the 6^th went off. It was one of the few things I got right that day. But Kathy got the race on her phone, and just as I parked, we watched , Omaha Beach fail to rally and lose.

The whole trip took about an hour. We missed three races. I had a couple of bourbons, maybe more. It helped.

Planning is overrated.

I Need A (Handy) Man

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I need a man in my life.

Not that kind of man, though that might be nice. What I need is someone to do some of the heavy lifting at Seven Hills Farm West.

Now you might think that a ‘gentleman friend’ might be useful. You would be wrong.

The last time I was in a serious relationship and needed a little help changing a screen. Seriously, just a screen. My ‘man’ didn’t miss a beat, “You need to hire a man for that.” Coupled with the fact that he was jealous of my dog, he was gone not long after.

This is what I really need: a full-time, mind-reading, incredibly useful handyman. Preferably one who comes with his own tools. Who would go away before he annoyed me. And looks like Idris Elba.

That shouldn’t be hard to find, right?

Obviously there is no one in the world like this, so like a lonely child who creates a non-existent friend, I invented my handyman. (It could be a woman, but since this is my fantasy, I want eye-candy.) I call this person my invisible, but hot, mindreading handy man – IMRHM.

I used to think of myself as pretty self-sufficient. I am. Most of the time. But sometimes, you need a little help.

I realized this the other day when I was on the top of a six foot ladder trying to replace a fan in the horse stall. This sounds like a dumb idea, and it is, but the old fan was broken and it was going top 100 degrees that day. My horses (and everyone else) were melting.

So there I was, the only human around, standing on top of an old, wobbly ladder literally hanging on to the roof beams while tying the fan up with one hand. My loud cursing attracted my two aging equine retirees.

They gathered around the ladder to observe and critique my work, and poke the ladder. Had I fallen, perhaps they would have raced underneath me to have soften the fall. Or they would have stomped on me in fright and disgust. Probably the latter.

I didn’t fall, so there is that.

But while on the ladder, I glanced out at their paddock from above. The pipe fence is listing dangerously. This is their fault. They lean on it while trying to nab an elusive sprig of grass. The hot wire that is supposed to prevent that from happening (and in general does) is loose so they can work around it. I can’t fix it by myself without getting regular shocks. So I haven’t.

This is a perfect job for my IMRHM.

One morning I’d stumble out at 6am in my pajamas to out to feed the beasts and I’d notice POOF! The fence line is straight and secure, with the wire tight and clicking. He’d fixed it overnight. Without me even asking!

Sigh.

The horses themselves are in pretty good shape. At 20+ Lucy has Cushing disease, which has impacted her once trim figure, but she is still glossy and alert. Talen also looks fantastic, as long as he keeps to a walk. Watching him trot is painful. Still, they are happy.

I’d be happier is when I pat them, huge puffs of dirt didn’t rise off them and choke me. I wash their faces every night when I remove their fly masks. But in my dream, IMHM would chase the almost-feral Talen down and bathe and groom him completely. I’d never have to wash Lucy’s butt again, because IMHM would have already done it.

Working with the horses is actually fun, so maybe I’d keep doing that. But IMRHM would definitely have to handle the rest of the property.

The back yard that is not paddock is relatively small and mostly covered with wood chips; a lawn would cost a fortune to water, and the hay/shavings trucks would destroy it. Still, the chips are a little thin, and aren’t keeping the dust down the way they should.

I need to contact someone to bring in another truckload and spread them before winter rains. That sounds like fun during the summer right? When it’s 103 degrees in the shade?

My handy man wouldn’t care. The chips would be delivered and perfectly spread. The bonus is that whole yard would smell like pine trees. Ahhhh.

In the front, the driveway would magically be replaced. Instead of a deathtrap mix of cracked, uneven and missing concrete and blacktop, there would be even, flat DG. The tiny grass area would have more grass than dirt. The track around the yard created by three Great Danes, a Brittany and their various playdates would be erased.

Naturally, this would all be free. That’s the whole point of the IMRHM.

While writing this, I heard a crash. I walked out of my office next the paddock. Lucy was banging on the fence, because apparently it was a few minutes past her dinner hour.

Reality infringes again.

The fence leans, grass grows only where it’s not supposed to and someday I will fall and break a hip on the driveway. Still, I’m pretty lucky to live here.

However, if you find a living breathing candidate for the position of IMHM, please send him my way.

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Small But Mighty

In a family of wildebeests with huge personalities, the smallest one occasionally gets overlooked. Recently that’s been Poppy, the Brittany’s story.

It didn’t used to be like that. She was small, but in charge.

Poppy was the latest of a string of seven rescue Brittanys. I was down to an elderly boy Brit and a two-year-old Great Dane. It was a change from the days I had four Brits. It was quieter, not better.

I did something I’d never done before: I went on the American Brittany Rescue page and started looking for dogs.

All of my Brits had sort of shown up. Occasionally with a push from the folks ABR. The call usually went, “I know you don’t really have room, but we have a very elderly, desperate dog that needs a home. She/he is perfect.” I always said yes, and they were always perfect. (I’m talking about you Rocky and Annie.)

This time I had a list of requirements. I wanted someone who could play with Murray, the rambunctious, big Great Dane pup. The new dog needed to tough and feisty. I saw a listing for a young, wild-eyed girl with a long fluffy tail (!) in New Mexico.

Soon I was cashing in my frequent flyer miles for a round trip to Albuquerque.

I got there in the morning and was picked up by the dog’s excellent foster mom. After a lunch that was mostly an interrogation to make sure I was good enough for Poppy, we went to a pet store and I bought a crate. Then we picked up the Poppy (then known as Brighty, Yuck) and headed to the airport to catch a flight home. I was in New Mexico for three hours.

A quick flight later, the newly christened Poppy and I were inside an LAX parking structure. The baggage people, apparently blind or oblivious to the FIVE signs reading LIVE DOG THIS SIDE UP had flipped her crate. Poppy was tangled in her blanket. As I opened the crate to unravel her, she leaped out and took off.

Welcome to Los Angeles.

While I was dodging cars and chasing my new dog around the lot, all the horror stories about foster dogs getting lost forever were looping in my head. Did they ever find that show dog from Westminster that got loose at JFK?

Thankfully, true Brittany that she is, Poppy was fascinated by the crazy person yelling after her waving snacks, and allowed me to catch her.

She and Murray took to each other immediately. She loved that she could hide under him; he loved her boundless energy. When he was tired, he just put a giant paw on her head to hold her still. Mostly though, they zoomed around the yard in an endless game of tag.

Most Brittany’s don’t have tails. They are either born without them like Quatro, or have had them cropped as infants, like all my other Brits. Poppy is an exception, and her tail a luxurious flag. One time I looked out my office window to see her digging a giant hole. The only thing visible was her wildly wagging tail. Of course I didn’t have a camera or phone.

I once had a really angry man dressed in camo scream at me because he was offended that I told him she was a Brittany. Apparently he was a hunter and used to own several hunting Brits.

“Brittanys do NOT have tails!” he hollered. I explained that she was and did, but he was having none of it. Okay then. Poppy and I finally just walked away before things got out of hand. She wasn’t in New Mexico anymore.

I began taking her to agility class with me and Murray. My awesome trainer, Terry Simons, was only slightly less annoyed about taking on a headstrong Brittany pup with ADD than training my lumbering Great Dane, but he’s a good friend and didn’t give me too hard a time. Terry’s always up for a challenge. Poppy certainly was/is challenging.

Initially Poppy didn’t understand the game. At our first show-and-go, she popped out of the ring and ran into the middle of a soccer game the next field over. As I was panicking that I’d lost her forever, she zoomed toward me, ball, in her mouth and followed by a pack of angry players.

So sorry guys! Who do I pay to replace that ball?

Not long after that, agility clicked in Poppy’s mind. She suddenly understood that if she did the dumb things I asked, snacks were distributed. Soon she was zipping through the weave poles, playing up and down the dog walk, and generally, putting me to shame as I trailed behind her, trying to keep up.

Poppy did really well in her first shows, and nearly got her titles. But Murray (and I) hated the heat, so we only competed in the winter. When I show my horses. So we never finished. But we both loved it.

Poppy is staring down her 13^th birthday. She is definitely slowing down. Instead of literally climbing trees to nab the squirrels in the front yard, she’s now content to acknowledge them, but can’t be bothered to chase them. She does still bark at the horses to show them who is boss. They don’t exactly run away, but they do slowly meander in a different direction.

Two weeks ago she developed what I thought was a burst blood vessel in her left eye. I took her to the vet, and he diagnosed a blood clot and the possible early onset of glaucoma.

Days later we saw an eye specialist. Poppy was already blind in that eye –within seven days – and she was in agony. The phrase, “the worst migraine you can imagine,” was thrown out. We tried additional treatment.

For a week Pop was extremely patient about getting 20 different drops in her eyes and four different painkilling pills. It didn’t help.

She went to the vet to have the eye removed, which will solve the pain issue permanently. She looked just like she had gone a few rounds with a heavyweight boxer and took all the blows in her face. But she is recovering remarkably well, and is already barking at the horses.

My biggest concern right now is keep a cone on her head so she can’t screw with her incision. In the past when she has had to wear one, she has managed to get it off immediately. Usually before we leave the Vet parking lot.

But I saw this weird ball cap/visor thingie on a dog at the eye doctor’s office. It might work. So I ordered it. I’m hopeful.

When she’s healed, I’m going on Etsy to buy a bunch of blingy eye patches because my little Poppy girl will rock the hell out of them. I see her as Wonder Dog.

**Poppy is definitely a Wonder Woman Kind of Dog**

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Job Seeking While Old(er)

I’ve been trying to find work, for a while now. I don’t think it’s easy for anyone to get a job, but when you’re considered a senior citizen, at least by AARP standards, it’s almost impossible.

It is legal to ask a job applicants age, however it’s illegal to discriminate against because of it. It’s a Catch-22. (Oh, crap you have to be old to even get that reference.)

This reminds me a lot of job seeking while female in the 80s. It’s bad, immoral and stupid for companies to use age or gender against job seekers, but good luck proving it? Especially since there are no longer any real people involved.

I never thought I’d miss actual human resources departments staffed by humans and living, breathing head hunters. But I do.

Job seekers are now sorted through preset algorithms, and older people’s resumes are longer, which used to be a good thing. Now it triggers a hard pass. The virtual trash can.

Except for Uber. Every single day I get pitched to be an Uber driver multiple times. This would be a problem: my cars’ average age is 23, gas costs more than I’d earn and I get lost a lot.

Then there are bait-and-switch jobs. There are entire websites of them. These have multiple interesting posts, and one is encouraged to apply. If you pay them $15 a month, or $69 for three months. Apparently the geniuses behind these things think that in addition to an inability to get a job, unemployed people can’t add.

The algorithm gods are far from perfect. I’ve The AGs can’t tell the difference between a film editor and a word editor. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten letters from ZipRecruiter asking, no begging, me to apply to an amazing opportunity editing film for ESPN or Disney. If only.

Some are gigs I’d love, but am clearly unqualified for. West Coast Producer for NPR’s “All Things Considered,” and Associate Producer for KTLA’s “Morning News” come to mind.

I have gotten a few positive responses to letters I’ve sent out. Several websites have been all excited by my resume and writing samples. Unfortunately they all want me to write for free. That won’t work until I get free water and electricity.

Some days, particularly after getting turned down for what are probably perfect opportunities, (freelance press release writing for an animal advocacy group – not PETA, I may be broke, but I still have a soul – or creating content for an instrument company’s website, etc.), when my depression starts to set in, I’ve taken to responding to jobs that are just wrong for me.

I’ve applied for accountant jobs (I can’t balance my meager checking account), fashion copy writing (my wardrobe consists of barn clothes. Unless you are Ariat, this isn’t good), and food creatives (I set off the smoke detector yesterday heating a frozen pizza.) Shockingly, I haven’t heard back from any of these prospects.

Which leaves me trying to monetize my current skills: driving horse trailers and writing snarky blog posts.

Let me know if you hear of anything. I’m available.

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Welcome to a few moments in my world.