WESTWARD HOME!! Daisy's 2014 Holiday Greetings

Hi everybody! Daisy Jones-Klein here, reporting from sunny and kinda cold Santa Fe. I know I haven’t exactly been the most prolific dogblogger lately, but the holiday season and upcoming New Year tend to put me in a reflective and sharing mood.

Santa Fe is a special place around the holidays. As the days get shorter, nighttime temperatures dip below freezing more and more regularly. The drought, so persistent and threatening for several years, has eased up some, and the summer rains have turned into winter snows. The aspens higher up in the mountains have lost their autumnal blaze of color, and now offer space for the snow to turn the hillsides white. 

We’ve had a few snowfalls already this year. I love our walks in the snow. Sometimes it’s up past my knees (and the knees of the lady holding our address marker!), making it a little tougher for us low-riders to be nimble. But fresh snow is like a mysterious white blanket over everything, making us sniff and guess at what lies beneath. And we get to see the tracks of all the critters that sneak around when I’m not looking: mostly deer and bunnies and birds, but occasionally some bigger and scarier beasts. But I usually keep Dad on a short leash; he’s safer that way.

  

As the holidays approach, the pace of activity around town slows, and decorating, entertaining, and comradery move to center stage. In the Plaza, the physical and spiritual heart of The City Different, lights go up the day after Thanksgiving, marking the start of the season.

And on Christmas Eve, everyone heads out for the walk on Canyon Road. Long a Santa Fe tradition, tens of thousands of folks turn out to walk up and down the narrow street that’s home to over 100 galleries. But this is an evening of fellowship and good cheer, not commerce. Thousands of faralitos, those sand-filled bags with votive candles, line the streets and walkways and rooftops. Shopkeepers offer hot apple cider and biscochitos to passersby, and street musicians provide a background of music. Small bonfires, or luminarias as they’re called here, help warm cold hands and toes, and provide light for the carolers. 

Looking back over the year, we reflect on both changes and things that remain the same.

• Did you hear the one about a Jew, a Hindu, and an Elvis Impersonator? They all piled into a pink Cadillac convertible in Las Vegas, and then Elvis drove them right into his wedding chapel and got them all married up. TRUE DAT! Congratulations, Matt and Suj! Check them out at http://mattandsuj.com/.
• And just last week, two dear friends, together for 20 years, decided to get married. Because now, they could.
• Our good neighbor down the street is Cuban-born, and came to the US in the early 1960s. Now, more than fifty years later, her two homelands just might learn how to get along. As every Rescue Dog can understand, sometimes even countries need a second chance to get it right.
• But we’ve also lost a few friends over the year, some two-legged and others four. They are missed. And while those voids are not easily filled, we’ve had some new friends come into our lives, reawakening us to new possibilities in each dawning day.

As for your Faithful Correspondent, I can report that things are mostly the same here. Yes, it's still good to be Daisy. I still haven’t been eaten by coyotes, extending my personal best by yet another year. And it’s now been nine years with my Forever Peeps, also a personal best. I’ve ended the year with the same number of teeth I had at the beginning; I had a few nice stays at Camp Barkaway; and I only got tricked a few times into taking a shower. All good stuff!

And professionally, even though I consider myself a semi-retired pup, I still reign as the Internet’s Favorite Dogblogger! Check it out here. It’s Readers like you who make it all possible. (Well, plus my Peeps who work the keyboard.)

And we JRTs are still as cute as all get-out. FUN FACT: If you Google "lovable Jack Russell Terrier", in quotes, you get 75,900 results. Dang, that’s a lot of cute doggies! But if you then change “lovable” to “unlovable” and search again, the Google tells you “No results found.” So for you scorekeepers out there, it’s 75,900 to zip. Try to top that, you pesky cats (20,900 to 232), or poodles (3,610 to 2), and even YOU, Taylor Swift (7,720 to 1). Surely, the Internets have spoken.

And speaking of cute doggies, I’ve discovered I have a near-twin, a Doppelganger from Down Under! On Christmas Eve, my Peeps were down at the Plaza and met a couple from Australia. They’d been in the US for a few years, and had come to visit Santa Fe with their JRT. Like Yours Truly, this one was smooth-haired, brown-faced, and uber-hyper. Très chic! But get this … when asked what her name was, they said she was Daisy! Really, what are the odds?

But as you can see below, there are some key differences. 

     The Original!!!

     Daisy-Come-Lately

     

Daisy II’s tail is a little long for my preference, but live and let live, I say. And she seems to be more vertically inclined than moi, perhaps an age-related phenomenon. Also, her big brown spot is more to her left side than her right, like mine. Maybe that’s because she hails from below the Equator? (And thinking out loud here, do Australian JRTs spin counter-clockwise when they’re curling up for a nap?) 

Very Happy Holidays to everyone, whether you’re celebrating Winter Solstice, Hanukkah, Christmas, or Festivus for the Rest of Us. And now let us welcome the New Year, full of things that have never been. May your trips to the vet be few, may the coyotes keep their distance, may the bellyrubs be plentiful, and may there be plenty of plates to lick. And even if you’re finding bunny-catching to be just a bit harder this year than last, may giving chase always be joyful.

Daisy Jones-Klein, and her Peeps

Santa Fe, New Mexico

December 2014

Daisy’s Road Trip!

Hi everybody! Daisy Jones-Klein here. Gosh, it seems like forever since I last wrote to y’all. As the Internet’s favorite dogblogger (YES I AM still #1! Check out what the Google says!), I try to tell everyone about all the fun things we’re doing out here in New Mexico. Publish or perish, they say …

But for this canny canine, it’s been kinda quiet lately. Sure, there were a few trips to Camp Barkaway while my Peeps flew all over, but generally I’ve been a Santa Fe-bound hound. Don’t get me wrong; life’s pretty sweet here and I love my routines. There’s certainly lots to do, like taking my walks, barking at Carl the UPS Guy, cleaning off plates, scaring away dogs on the TV commercials, and in general turning kibble into poop. It barely leaves time for my naps! But you shouldn’t feel sorry for me; they say that if you really love your job, it hardly seems like work at all.

But the Call of the Road and wide open spaces remains strong, ever since we started our Excellent Adventure two years ago, leaving our forever home in Virginia to drive to our new forever home here in New Mexico. There are so many really cool places here in the State and in the rest of the Southwest. And even though some of those places may not be all that welcoming to us finer critters, there are many pet-friendly places to be found.

So for Mom’s birthday last week, me and Dad thought it’d be a good time to take a road trip, even if only for a couple of days. So, it’s heading north to Taos we go! (FUN FACT: Even with Mom's recent birthday, in dog years I’m now older than she is. How does that happen? Math is hard!)

First, though, we had to wake Mom up. But finding her and waking her up happen to fall squarely within my skill set. And in this case, she didn’t do her best job of hiding:

And when it was time to pack up the car and head out, I was super-ready. You didn't have to ask me twice:

We hadn't even driven one mile before the excitement started. A coyote ran across the road in front of us, jumping onto a high wall to stare at us. I’m pretty sure the coyote was thinking “I’m’ no match for Daisy; I might as well run away while I can.” (PEEPS' NOTE: More likely, the coyote was looking at Daisy and thinking “Mmmm …  snack!”

We took the High Road route to Taos. This scenic byway spans hundreds of years of history among the Native Americans, Spanish, and other cultures. Pueblos, churches, and artisans populate the route as we wind our way through towns like Nambe, Chimayo, Truchas, and Placitas, weaving among red rock formations, river valleys, and mountain peaks.

 

Late in the afternoon we pull into Taos and find our hotel. We check in, and just outside our door there’s a large lawn for us critters to sniff around and conduct our “business,” and I think you know what I’m talking about here. I call it “P-mail”.  

But did you know that with all of our sniffing around and doing our business, we’re actually partaking in a very sophisticated and witty banter? Here’s one of the P-mail discussions I had with another fine critter up there in Taos.

Taos is a neat old town. With only about 6,000 people, Taos boasts hundreds of years of three cultures living side by side, along with world-class art, skiing, and outdoor activities. Lots of fun walking around there!

On the next day, we headed west out of Taos. About 10 miles out, that took us to the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge. The land is pretty flat there, so you don’t even notice it until you get right up on it. But then it's Whoa! Hold onto that leash! Looking down it’s 565 feet above the Rio Grande, and the seventh highest bridge in the US.

Driving south back towards home, we next stopped at Ojo Caliente, a famous mineral springs. Now a resort and spa, Ojo Caliente has been used for hundreds of years for its healing properties. I was pretty skeptical at first, seeing as how my Peeps try to trick me now and then into taking a bath. But when I learned that they even had mud baths, I said “Sign me up!”

Well, that mud bath wasn't going to happen. Apparently mud-covered dogs and riding in Mom’s car are not exactly considered a match made in heaven. So we drove back home, with me regrettably still kinda clean, and made it back in time to see another kick-ass sunset, as the summer monsoons often leave just the right amount of clouds for us to enjoy. 

All in all, it was an excellent weekend, a fun time for Mom’s birthday, and a good test of a certain quadruped’s road-worthiness. But like Dorothy said in that movie a long time ago: There’s no place like home.

Yup. It’s still good to be Daisy. I hope it’s good to be you, too.

Daisy Jones-Klein

Santa Fe (and points north!), NM

August 2014