Two Dogs In Mud Time

(My apologies for the title to Robert Frost, who used to live around here.)

Last summer, to keep our dirt driveway from washing away, we had our "driveway guy" cover it with a load of crushed granite.  Now, every time the temperature rises above 30F the dogs return from their walk with their feet, bellies, and tails coated in a kind of gray cement that resists the most vigorous toweling.  I hate to leave them for hours in the garage, so I let them in the house where, for the rest of the day, they shed sticky grit on any parts of the floor and furniture not already covered in a light film of wood stove ash.

I could avoid the driveway by taking the dogs into the woods, but when my CFS is acting up, as it has lately, taking a walk is something  that I know will have repercussions if I force myself do it.  One option is to throw balls with the ball thrower, which enables limp-wristed me to throw with the speed of a major league pitcher.  I could do this in the backyard, where mercifully the winter's crop of dog poop is still covered with snow.

Ball throwing, however, is fraught with conflict.  It is Bisou's favorite thing in the entire world, and  given the chance she would chase balls until her last dying breath.  Wolfie likes to chase balls too,  but even after three courses of antibiotics his anaplasmosis (a tick-borne disease from which may the gods spare your pets) has kept him from regaining his former stamina.  As a result, after half a dozen throws he snatches the ball and refuses to give it up, which means I have to isolate him until he changes his mind.

All this is way too emotional for me, especially on bad CFS days, so I have acquired a soft frisbee, which Wolfie has no trouble giving up.  Bisou, bless her heart, runs after the frisbee too, and lets him catch it, but I can tell that she is longing for the speed and excitement of the ball.  I think she should have something of her own to run after, so I pick up the frisbee plus a weird s-shaped toy that they both like and slosh into the backyard.

I put Bisou on stay and throw the frisbee for Wolfie.  He runs after it, and she breaks and runs after it too.  I put Bisou back on stay and throw the frisbee for Wolfie.  This time she holds the stay, and then I throw the weird toy for her.  Meanwhile Wolfie is ready for me to throw the frisbee again.   This time it goes into the woods.  I praise Bisou for waiting and throw the weird toy for her.  Frisbee, toy, Wolfie, Bisou.  How long do I need to keep doing this?  Wolfie is slowing down and my fingers are freezing from picking up the snowy toys.  But Bisou is barely warmed up.

I do a few more throws.  The familiar cloak of lead is on my shoulders and I know that every minute of additional effort will cost me hours of recovery.   As I take the dogs into the garage to dry them off, Bisou sees the ball thrower hanging near the door and jumps up, trying to knock it down.  There is nothing she would like more than a solid hour or two of running after that ball.

I pick up each of Wolfie's saucer-size paws and dry them while he moans his doleful moan.   I call Bisou away from the ball thrower and swaddle her with the big towel.  Despite her disappointment, her tail wags and wags.  Inside, the minute I stretch out on the sofa she jumps up and reclines on top of me.  Her ears spread out moth-like on my chest, she looks into my face, and in her orangey-brown eyes I see perfect happiness.

Sidewalk Nostalgia

This is the season when I yearn for sidewalks.  Lovely flat, hard sidewalks that don't give way under your foot.  Sidewalks on which you can wear regular shoes instead of boots.  Sidewalks that your dog can walk on without dragging home half a ton of--you know, that brown stuff that the earth and the clouds make together.

Its name is mud.

Mud season is in full swing in these parts, and our long, steep, unpaved driveway has never been worse.   Our Subaru is coated to the roof with a thick layer of mud and road salt, but I don't feel too bad about that because all the other cars (ninety-five percent of which are Subarus, the state car of Vermont) look the same.  I have often stopped myself just in time from getting into somebody else's mud-covered Subaru.  Recently my husband left ours--unlocked, of course, because there are some advantages to living in this mud-spattered state--in a parking lot, and when he got back found that the driver's seat was pushed all the way up.  Some poor woman (or a very short man) had gotten in by mistake, adjusted the seat, then realized she was in the wrong car and got out in a hurry.

The first winter I spent in Vermont I wondered why natives walked around with horizontal stripes of grayish, crusty matter on the back of their pants, right at calf-level.  This condition seemed to affect women in particular.  It wasn't until these stripes started appearing on my own pants that I realized that they were due to the back of the legs hitting the edge of the floor when one exits a  mud-and-salt-covered car.  Women, having shorter thigh bones, find it more difficult to get out without touching the edge.

But one good thing about mud season is how madly it makes one long for spring.  As Tristan and Isolde knew so well, half the fun is in the longing.  Accordingly, I bought three packets of spinach seeds today.  They are sitting on my kitchen counter waiting for tonight's snow.  If we get even an inch, I'll go out and plant them tomorrow.  I don't know for certain that planting spinach in the snow yields an earlier crop.  But I do know how good it makes me feel.

I also went into a frenzy of houseplant TLC. I installed a humidifier (better late than never) in the sun porch where my plants live.  I watered and spritzed and fertilized the geraniums which, bless their hearts, have bloomed non-stop all winter.  I did the same for the jade plant, the orchids, the lemon tree, and the giant pony tail plant which is beginning to look worried that its top is about to hit the ceiling.  I also watered the rosemary, and as usual it overflowed its drainage dish onto the slate floor, which I then mopped.

It was while I was mopping that I saw the ants.  A barely visible but determined column of them was marching up the side of the rosemary pot.  I don't normally rejoice at the sight of ants in the house, but today I did because, like the mud, they are an unmistakable sign that things are waking up out there.

Doesn't it make you crazy, how relative happiness is?

Why Vermont Should Change Its Name With The Seasons

Driving to yoga this afternoon through the annual foliage follies, it struck me that at this time of year the state's name, which means "the green mountains" (les verts monts) becomes a misnomer.  "Vermont" is only descriptive of the state in summer. 

During the fall woodland pyrotechnics, there is precious little green around, so the state name should change to Rougemont, or Montorange, shifting to Beigemont during stick season.  After the first snow, Beigemont would become Montblanc.  In March,  the state should be known as Montboue.

And when spring finally comes, and lilacs burst into bloom, Vermont should be called Montlilas.  Which is rather pretty, I think.

Chilly, Muddy, Windy, Rainy

This is the time of year when many people flee Vermont. They can't stand it that, after months of snow and cold, when they feel that they deserve the reward of warmth and sun and time outdoors, the weather becomes more intractable than ever, so they take off.

Not me. These are the birth pangs of spring, and it's the least I can do to stick around. The labor is progressing well, and the baby will soon be crowning. For a couple of weeks now, with above-freezing days and freezing nights, the sap has been running and people have been making maple syrup. Gardeners have been sloshing through the mud, loppers in hand, and pruning apple trees and blueberry bushes. And Christmas decorations have finally been disappearing from the less carefully maintained house fronts.

The dogs were itching to go out today, and I figured the front field would be the least muddy. It was raining, and the sun was shining, and, like the dogs, I didn't much care how wet I got. We walked around amidst the little mountains of deer poop--that field is like a deer feeding lot--and were buffeted by strong winds and serenaded by a red-winged blackbird. He was at the very top of a tall, bare tree, singing his telephone ring-like song, but nobody was answering. Too early in the season.

It was so windy, so wet and sloshy, that even the dogs seemed glad to turn towards the house. It took two extra-large bath towels to dry them off.

Cavaliers In Mud Time

Took Bisou to the dog park this morning, for the bi-weekly Cavalier play date. The mud in the park was even worse than the mud at our place--well over the ankles of my wellies. The moment I arrived, the eight-or-so Cavaliers in the park did what Cavaliers do when they see a human being: they rushed over and stood on their hind legs and pawed me lovingly with their front ones. Bisou, not wishing to be left out, joined in. By the time the greetings were done, my right leg was covered in mud from hip to boot.

All the dogs there today, except for Bisou, were males. All except one were neutered. The one exception is a handsome one-year-old ruby who has been trying to make babies with Bisou ever since she was ten weeks old. Today we found that his feelings had not changed, even though he hadn't seen her in six weeks.

What had changed was Bisou's speed, and she realized that if she kept moving, he couldn't catch her. She ran for a solid hour, non-stop. She ran more than all the other Cavaliers put together. And she wasn't running because she was afraid. She was running because it was spring, and because any day now, she will come into heat (one of her litter mates is in that state right now), and because the mud felt wonderful between her gorgeous feathered Cavalier toes.

She tried her best to get her would-be lover to play. She pranced before him with a stick in her mouth; she did play bows at him; she stood on her hind legs and tried to get him to wrestle with her. But nothing worked. He was fixated on only one thing. He was all...business. I was struck by the look on his face: it wasn't romantic, it wasn't lustful, it wasn't playful. It was purposeful and businesslike. He had a job to do, and he wanted to get on with it.

I found that a bit depressing. I would have liked a little flirting, a little courting--but then I'm a female. I wonder--I've almost never been in the presence of unneutered dogs--are there male dogs with different courting styles? Are there male dogs who know how to court, period? With goats, the buck has a little repertory of amorous tricks: he lifts up his upper lip, he sprays himself with urine (yes, I've seen it with my own eyes), he makes little chattering sounds--all this, from an animal who looks like Beelzebub and smells like hell itself. So you'd think that a dog as cute as Bisou's Cavalier boyfriend would be more interesting as a lover.

Speaking of cute, though, I could see how people get tricked into letting their dogs make puppies. Bisou and her guy, both red haired, long-eared, and mud-spattered, looked adorable together, and I could just imagine what their puppies would look like...five red ones and maybe one tri-color, sort of like in "Lady And The Tramp," remember?

But this is all mere spring feverish ravings on my part. I have signed a paper swearing never ever to breed Bisou--at eight weeks of age she was deemed not show-worthy. And the boyfriend's owner signed a paper promising to breed him, but only to bitches approved by the breeder. So it will never happen, but in the meantime the dogs had a good time playing in the mud, and we, the owners, had a good time projecting onto them.

January Meltdown

The technical term, I know, is "January thaw." But what's happened here today goes beyond that. In less than 24 hours, the landscape has gone from pristine white to horrid brown. The skies have opened and let down tropical--well, almost--downpours. Weird warm winds have blown and the snow has disappeared, replaced by mud. Dirt roads and driveways (the majority of Vermont's roads are dirt, and we're fighting to keep them that way) have become brown rivers. And below it all is that stubborn layer of ice, growing thinner but no less treacherous by the minute.

Our backyard is one of Dante's circles of Hell. You think I exaggerate? Picture mud, and dirty snow, and places where the water is up to your ankles, and deadly hidden ice, and a winter's worth of dog poop.

The hens went outside for the first time in months today. When I gather the eggs tonight they will be smeared with mud from the hens' feet.

If this were March, we could look forward to warm sunshine, and less snow, and the end of mud season. But that is a long way away.

The good news is that tomorrow it will freeze again, hardening the mud so it doesn't get tracked all over the house, and it will snow, covering up the dog poop and other yuckies. Mud season without the consolations of spring is an abomination, and I for one will welcome the return of winter.

Mud Faerie

Her kind is all over the place in Vermont this time of year.