Animal greeting protocol in the new digs

The animals are blurred apparently because they are constantly either emerging from or entering into their own personal tesseracts.





Photo credit: Carrie

Summer uniform

Bella and the deer

There's a trio of female deer who pass through our back yard on a pretty regular basis (I only caught two of them in this picture). My home office has a nice view of the yard, but even if I'm not gazing out the window when they arrive, Chow Bella always lets us know when the deer are visiting. (Lots of barking.)

I knew it would happen sooner or later, and as it turns out, it was sooner: I was out in the yard with Bella this afternoon when one of the hooved ruminant trio poked her head into the yard, followed closely by her traveling companions. (They really seem to enjoy eating the clover that grows in abundance where the yard verges on woods - a better setup, if you're a deer in the 'burbs, can scarcely be imagined.)

Oh boy, I thought - here we go. Bella was off the leash (one of the little luxuries rarely afforded her outside a dog park, while she lived in NYC) and I wasn't sure "voice control" was gonna work all that well up against some actual Wildlife On The Hoof.

But Bella surprised me. She trotted maybe a dozen feet closer to the deer and then stopped in her tracks and barked.

Yeah, she barked - but from a posture that every dog owner, and any other student of canine psychology, professional or amateur, would instantly recognize: head down, ass up and wagging her tail furiously as she vocalized.

My newly suburban dog, having spotted three deer in her yard, wanted to play with them.

Happily (I think) deer don't "speak" dog, and they certainly don't grok dog body language. We saw some nice flashes of white deer-tail as the whitetail deer fled. And I cursed myself for leaving the house without my cell phone, or any other camera-bearing instrument, such as a camera.

P.S. I have decided to name the deer after the Andrews Sisters. Henceforth they shall be known on this blog as as LaVerne, Maxene and Patty.

Happy realization about the new place

"We're basically across the street from a 20,000 square foot dog park!"


About to become a very happy camper.

We honestly had no idea.

Relocation trip report

The team of movers packed up fifteen years of our lives and loaded everything onto a truck in about six hours, starting at 8:30 Monday morning.

Carrie, Mister Gato, Chow Bella and I were on the road to North Carolina around 3PM, pulling into the driveway at the new place around 12:30 this morning. We drove through a torrential rainstorm for over half the trip, making I-95 even more disagreeable than it usually is, but we all made it in one piece. :-)

Gato, who was not as wigged out by the road trip as we feared, has in fact been pretty comprehensively discombooberated by the actual move. He is currently hiding out in the laundry room, which must feel like a safe place to him (cats hate change, and moving a cat to a new place, if memory serves, usually involves a lengthy adjustment period.)

He is coming out periodically to love on us and munch a little cat food; he'll figure out that this is his new place soon enough.

Meanwhile, the Chow seems to have figured out that she owns a yard now. :-) Lots and lots of grinning and wagging.

We're drinking coffee and shaking off the stiffness of the road. Slept on air mattresses and sleeping bags last night (and slept *well*, once I got to sleep... Carrie can sleep under any circumstances, bless her heart; I am almost sick with envy in situations like this.)

In another three hours or so, the guys will be pulling up with the entire contents of our one-bedroom Manhattan apartment, which we'll be distributing across roughly three times the square footage we used to have.

Life is (provisionally) good.

A 2:1 Chow:door ratio

As a Chow owner, you learn to expect that one or more Chows will always be positioned between you and the door. If there are multiple doors and multiple Chows, they will be distributed approximately according to a 1:1 Chow:door ratio. Where there is but a single door, they happily double up.

The Chow is always between you and the door.

Chows Guarding the Entryway July 2008 by enrevanche, on Flickr

Good companions

Chows Bella and Fun, left to right, 1997:



Chows Bella and Fun, left to right, 2008:

The loyalty and devotion that dogs demonstrate as part of their natural instincts as pack animals closely mimics the human idea of love and friendship, leading many dog owners to view their pets as full-fledged family members. Conversely, dogs seem to view their human companions as members of their pack, and make few, if any, distinctions between their owners and fellow dogs. Dogs fill a variety of roles in human society and are often trained as working dogs. For dogs that do not have traditional jobs, a wide range of dog sports provide the opportunity to exhibit their natural skills. In many countries, the most common and perhaps most important role of dogs is as companions.

"Dog." Wikipedia.

Gato on guard duty

Been a while since we've had any Mister Gato photos around here. Time to rectify that.

Our menagerie includes not only one irascible tomcat, but two Chow Chows.

An important part of a Chow's job description is to always be between you and the front door. They were bred as guard dogs, and those instincts run deep. Chow Bella and Chow Fun trade off on door-guard duty as a general rule.

But now that Mister Gato is a full-fledged member of the household pack (and universally acknowledged feline badass) he takes regular shifts guarding the door too.

Mister Gato on door duty.

Of course, he's not without backup. Here's a little more context on that photo:

Chow Bella has Mister Gato's back.

Be sure to check out The Modulator's Friday Ark for other pictures of bloggers' pets... and the Carnival of the Cats, this Sunday, at Bad Kitty Cats.