At the Calendars' Ends

Hellllllllllloooooooo????  Is anybody out there???? Anybody????

Oh! There you are! Daisy Jones-Klein here. I wanted to give y’all a seasonal update, but with the end of the Mayan calendar and so much more going on, I wasn’t sure that anyone would be around to hear what I’ve got to say. But since you're still here, too, c'mon up!

Were you also surprised that the world didn’t end with the Mayan Apocalypse last week? I sure was. Just a couple of days earlier, my Peeps gave me a bath, which for some of us is pretty close to an end-of-the-world near-death experience, and about as frequent, too! So I figured, yeah, it’s probably coming. Plus, the weather forecast earlier in the week seemed pretty convincing:

But Saturday came and went, so I guess it wasn’t the end of the world after all. And a good thing, too! There’s been lots to do here. Cousins from Colorado came in over the weekend to visit, and now we’ve got friends from Washington DC in for the week. That’s a lot more barking for me, and a whole lot more plates in need of a pre-wash. Plus, the days are shorter, which means I’ve got to be a lot quicker in finding and pinning down the sunbeams. But I’m pretty good at that:

As the days have gotten shorter and colder, we’ve also gotten a couple of snowfalls. It was up to my armpits, which can make it tricky to get around if you don’t have four-on-the-floor!  But the snow and the winter light make for some nice walks, even when it’s cold and your undercarriage gets a little damp:

 

 

 

With all the snow, we can also see prints in the snow, telling us who else has been out and about. Apparently, it’s not just Peeps and doggies and bunnies; there are more kinds of critters than we thought. One of our neighbors set up a camera to see the wild vicious things. There’s deer and coyotes and even a mountain lion:

His camera even caught photos of something huge and hairy, which probably would’ve been terrifying if it wasn’t carrying such a cute package!

There’s also a bear in the neighborhood, though we haven’t yet seen it. But I’m keeping my distance, thinking it's better to play it safe. As I figure it, any animal that leaves a pile of poop about the size and color of a Jack Russell Terrier is probably someone not to be trifled with. Even my legendary fearlessness has its limits!

 
So having made it safely past the end of the Mayan Long Count Calendar, we’re now deep into the holiday season. Here in Santa Fe, the town Plaza is all lit up and decorated.

 

And on Canyon Road, with all its art galleries, is Santa Fe's Christmas Eve walk, and all the townsfolk and their better-behaved doggies stroll up and down, sharing cider and cookies and music, and admiring the corner bonfires and the farolitos all lit up.

  

Season's Greeting to all! Enjoy the holidays, be it Christmas or Hanukkah or Kwanzaa or Winter Solstice or even Festivus. Whatever works for you.  And try not to worry so much about the end of the Mayan calendar, or the Fiscal Cliff, or the Debt Ceiling, or the Zombie Apocalypse, or any of the actual things that really happened and are too sad to mention here.

“But Daisy!”, you may ask, “How can I not worry with so much going on?” If you asked this, Gentle Reader, then you’re probably a biped, since my fellow quadrupeds have long ago figured out chillin’. Just ask Harley, Blue, Bailey, Ginger, & Kayla in McLean VA, or Goldie in Atlanta, or Indy in Colonial Beach VA, or Madison in Deer Canyon East, or Rufus, Toby, & Maggie here in my Santa Fe neighborhood, or Boo Radley and Henry in Laguna Beach CA, or Sadie & Zoey in Leesburg VA, or Lucy in Mariaville ME, or Jackson the donkey and those noisy goats Grub, Blizzard, Brownie, Sebastian & Cormack in Asheville NC, or even pesky cats like Lexie and Sinatra in Littleton CO, or Jasper in Washington DC, or Roberto in Colonial Beach VA, or Hal & Sweetpea in Asheville NC, or Norman in Mariaville ME. They all know how to live in the moment. So as my holiday gift to all you Peeps, I’m sharing the following:

 

• It's okay to mess up occasionally. Every rescue dog knows that there can be second or even third chances to get things right.
  
• Remember that even most bad days with your Peeps are better than most good days in the shelter.
  
• You don’t always need a reason to bark. Sometimes you just need to let your Freak Flag fly.
• Try to make every walk a “meaningful” one.
• Let your senses be collectors, not filters. Look, listen, and sniff. Good stuff’s out there, just waiting to be found.
• Catching bunnies can be a thrill (or at least I imagine it will be, soon), but giving chase is its own reward.
• Go to sleep at night, and leave the old day behind you.
• Wake up in the morning, open to the possibilities of each dawning day.
• And if you like your Peeps and they like you, show your appreciation. A little lick on the nose works for me. My Peeps seem to like this so much that they rarely even think about the last place I licked.

There you have it! So to all you Peeps and to all you finer critters out there, a Happy and Healthy 2013 to everyone! It's good to be Daisy, and hopefully it's good to be you, too.

And if your New Year’s resolutions are like mine, may you also be bath-free, not get eaten by a coyote, lick lots of plates, stay away from the vet, wag more, nap in the sunshine, get lots of belly rubs, let your inner puppy play, and catch many bunnies. There’s treasure everywhere!

     
Daisy Jones-Klein

Thanksgiving Wishes from Daisy Jones-Klein

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody! Daisy Jones-Klein here, and still everybody’s favorite dogblogger. (Go ahead! Google it to check me out!) I know I haven’t blogged for a while, but there’s lots to do here, and, truth be known, my Peeps have gotten a little lazy in helping with the typing.

It’s Thanksgiving weekend here in sunny New Mexico, and there’s much to be thankful for. Actually – and you rescue dogs out there reading this will agree – any day you’ve got Peeps who care for you is a day to be thankful. FUN FACT!  IT’S TRUE!!! The Google says so:

• “grateful rescue dog” – 4,800 hits
• “ungrateful rescue dog” – 10 hits

But Thanksgiving is a special time for reflection and appreciation. And I’m talking about a lot more than just helping lick the plates. It’s been about six months now since we packed up and left our Virginia home, caravanned across the country, and arrived here in Santa Fe. In dog years, that’s over three years! That's a lotta time. And it’s been a good time to be Daisy! Why, here are just a few of the things I’ve done since I got here:

• Number of meals served: About 360
• Number of meals not eaten: exactly 0
• Number of walks around the neighborhood: About 360
• Number of walks that were “meaningful”: about the same
• Number of walks with eye-popping scenery: about the same
• Number of bunnies spotted and chased: about a thousand (but maybe some were repeat sightings)
• Number of bunnies caught: none, yet, but any day now ….
• Number of trips to the vet: 1 too many
• Number of baths: 4 or 5 too many
• Number of times I didn’t go into a frenzy of barking when the doorbell  rang: C’mon, you should know the answer by now.

Yes, it’s good to be Daisy.

And about that disturbingly low ratio of bunnies caught to bunnies chased. At first I thought it was just me, struggling to find my running legs at 7200 foot elevation. But then, thanks to the Google, I learned another FUN FACT!!!  If you Google “Jack Russell Terrier” (in quotes), and also “chasing bunnies” (in quotes), you get 444 hits. But if you substitute “catching bunnies” for “chasing bunnies”, you get only two hits across all the Internets! So I guess I’m not alone in my bunny-catching prowess – we can think of this as an opportunity for improvement – but it’s probably not the proudest moment for my breed.

But we JRTs are a proud breed, and cute as all get out. Google hits for "Lovable Jack Russell Terrier" are now up to 142,000, while there still hasn’t been a single instance of "Unlovable J--- R---- T----" across all the Internets. 

And people write about us a lot! "Jack Russell Terrier" in quotes gets you 9.1 million hits on the Google! Go team! Now I grant you, that’s not quite up to Beagle (49.6 million hits) or Poodle (39.9 million hits) standards, but at least it’s way ahead of Irish Setters (5.7 million hits). Take  that, Portuguese Water Dogs (2.6 million hits). In yo’ face, Labradoodles (3.3 million hits)!

Me and my Peeps have been doing lots of fun things here. Sometimes we all do our adventures together, but sometimes they decide that bringing along a certain noisy yappy Jack Russell Terrier wouldn't be ideal, and that I'm better off guarding the Homestead. Oh well, at least they usually take pictures to share. For instance, later in the summer, we finally got our address marker mounted, the one that Dad made back in Virginia, giving it its new Forever Home, too:

 

And while it doesn’t rain a whole lot here, we often get really neat rainbows afterwards:

And further up in the mountains, there are these huge forests of aspens that all turned gold in October:

And last month in Albuquerque, my Peeps went to the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta, with more hot air balloons than anyplace in the world:

The sunsets still manage to dazzle us in new ways most every night:

  

And in the middle of November, we had our first bit of snow:

And Friday night, right after Thanksgiving, they put up the holiday lights and decorations around the Santa Fe Plaza:

But my favorite times are the simple things: taking long walks, hanging around the house with my Peeps, finding sunbeams to pin down, napping in the sun, helping with the after-dinner dishes, and receiving the occasional belly-rub:

 

And when Mom and Dad are in their offices, I like to keep them company. Mom set up my travel crate up in her office, making it a second home of sorts for me. I guess you could call it my pied–à–terrier:

Yep. There’s a lot to be thankful for, this week and every week. For this lucky pup, it’s still a pretty sweet gig. Hope yours is too!


     
Daisy Jones-Klein