July 1?

If I set out thinking I was going to write in this blog on a daily or even weekly basis, I was pretty far off base. So here I am, nearly 6 months later, July 1. Meaning there are only about 6 weeks left of summer. I'm sitting here next to my "to do" list - blogging is not on that list, but it's preferable to everything else that IS on the list. What I should really be doing is cleaning out my car, because I think my car has waited even longer than this blog. (And the other thing that has waited even longer is my hair - which is getting longer and longer and longer. I did put in a call to my stylist, but while she's great at hair she's not so great at returning phone calls.)

Last time I wrote, I was trying to teach Tally to use her new bell. The secret was butter. I'd put a tiny dab on the underside, and when she stuck her nose in to get at the butter, the bell rang and I'd open the door and let her out. Of course, that put her on the opposite side of the door from the butter so it may not have felt like a reward, but it did work and she rings pretty consistently now when she wants to go out.

And on a sad note about dogs, Tally's good buddy Tres had to be euthanized yesterday. He was an old, old guy and has been having trouble breathing, so yesterday was his last day. He spent the day with us while Brooke and Paul were at work, and we spoiled him nicely. Tres enjoyed much of the day on the deck, chewing on a new knuckle bone in the shade. Doesn't get much better than that for a lab.

Shopkeeper's Bell part ll

Still working on this bell thing with Tally. The problem is, she has about a 7 second memory. So she goes to the door and looks at us, wanting out. I'll go over and say, very encouragingly of course, "Ring the bell, Tally!" which translates to her as "blah blah blah, Tally!" I try to point to the bell, but she thinks I have a treat in my hand, so she goes after my hand instead of the bell. Sometimes she kind of knocks the bell in the process, but it usually isn't enough to make it ring. I end up ringing it FOR her and opening the door. So if she's learning anything, it's that she can go out if she can get me over to ring the bell.

But this is all just the first step in reaching those closer and closer approximations, until, ta-dah, she rings the bell on her own. The challenging part is running through this process in 7 seconds or less, because any longer and she forgets that she wants to go outside. If we go 8 seconds, 9 seconds before I ring the bell and open the door, she just looks at me and walks off.

But...tonight she rang the bell! I'm 99.9% sure it was purely accidental, but that bell rang loud and clear. She managed to hook her nose inside the bell, so when she pulled it away the bell gave a clear, loud ring. Any shopkeeper would have come running. I praised her, praised her, praised her - but quickly so I could get her out the door before 7 seconds was up. Tally just looked confused, but I shoved her out the door before time ran out. Of course, she wanted right back in. She keeps forgetting it's really cold out.

Shopkeeper's Bell

I'm liking this blogging thing. I really don't have anything to say, but it's still fun to say it.

We got a new bell for the back door. More accurately, we got a new bell for the dog. We want her to ring the bell instead of paw at the door when she wants to go out. Our dog Tally is a beautiful labrador with a coat as white as a polar bear's. She has more champions in her pedigree than Wheaties has for their ads, and she is a sweet, sweet, sweet. With a preface like that one can pretty easily infer that she doesn't have so much going in the brains department. It's not that she's downright dumb, but she's nothing like Murphy or Lucky, her predecessors. So, we're trying to teach Princess Tallia to ring the bell.

Now, this really isn't complicated and we've done it before. For three years Tally successfully rang the last bell every time she wanted to go out, but we took that bell down last summer before remodeling. And because this was a complete remodeling, we needed to remodel the bell, as well. The new bell is a "shopkeeper's bell", designed to hang from an arm over a door and ring when the door opens. It replaces the old bell that hung on a wide, flowery, frayed ribbon tied around the door knob. Over time, that bell etched a groove in the door from Tally's innumerable nosings, so we really weren't going overboard in remodeling the bell. We have the arm mounted in the wall next to the door, at dog nose height. And we were really encouraged the first time Tally wanted to go out and we showed her the bell (with a treat cupped in the hand, naturally). She nosed the bell. Imperceptially. I don't think the bell even moved. Maybe she just nosed AT the bell. Anyway, it seems the bell was held rather rigidly in place and needed a pretty good smack to ring. So, we did a little remodeling to the remodeled bell so that it can ring a little more freely, but it still isn't quite working. Tally noses at the bell, it swings ever so slightly and completely soundlessly, and I let her out since, after all, she's got the general jist.

So now we've got to try to get her to nose harder, but painlessly! Or find a way to get the bell to ring even easier. Or maybe just change the bell. You know, that old bell might be just the thing...

Naming my Blog

I'm the one who, as a kid, reached the end of the buffet line with nothing on my plate. Too much to choose from. Couldn't make up my mind. If I took this then I couldn't take that. Might be something better down the line. And so I passed by the salads, then the breads, then the vegetables and the meats, and finally the desserts. I needed more time but the line kept moving me forwards. Decisions were not my forte.

I decided to create a blog site this evening and proceeded to figure out how. No problems. And then I got to the part where I had to choose a name for my blog. Great. Whatever I chose would commit a url address to my blog that couldn't, I figured, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever throughout all eternity be changed. Dang. The line was pushing me forwards and I'd end up with nothing on my plate.

So I grabbed a note card (leaning forwards, messing up the pixels on my screen because something is wrong with this computer) and started writing some words that I associated w/journal writing, even using the online Thesaurus hoping to come up w/something interesting. I love Amanda's blog title - MizeTimes has that wonderful alliteration and I love playing w/sounds in words. Not much I can do w/Beth though. (I also use the online rhyming dictionary...I get death and meth.) Since it's probably not smart to write my last name given that this is the internet, I can pretty much assume anyone reading this knows me, so you realize my last name doesn't rhyme w/much and the "org" in it just doesn't dance over the lips. Rhyming and alliteration were out. So the Thesaurus led me to some nice words like "inklings," "notions," "musings," and "reveries," but those all sounded like words someone who takes him/herself too seriously would use.

Then I thought, "Hey, maybe I'll use an acronym!" After all, acronyms are fun, right? So...I'm a Middle Aged White Woman... And now you know why I decided not to go w/an acronym.

Maybe I'd call it Say What? (influenced, maybe, by thinking "it's just a blog. It doesn't matter. So What?") But Say What was taken. The computer suggested beth-say what as a substitution but that was very lame.

Meanwhile, that line is pushing me forwards and I'm getting a little frustrated by my empty tray. I have to choose a name and that NEXT STEP icon is really big.

Back to the rhyming idea... maybe I could rhyme w/initials. bj's day? Sounded dorkey. Maybe the In a Fog Blog? cuz that was how I was feeling, but it was also one I knew I'd immediately regret, like nearing the end of the buffet line and quickly grabbing the chocolate pie that was made with instant pudding.

So I went back to the idea of a journal. I like etymology - the history/source of words. The word journal begins with jour - the French word for day. Jour is also the beginning of the word journey. Journal, jour, journey. I liked the connections. On a whim, I used the online dictionary for jour and that cinched it. Not only is jour the French word for day, it is also, I learned, the abbreviation for journal. So, my blog's name would be bj's jour. It even has a little alliteration.