The problems began when I got to Bergen.  I first got lost (I had to call my sister who went online and found out where I was and how to get to the boat I was supposed to take), and then I found out that I had looked at the wrong schedule for the boat. There was no boat on Saturday afternoon. Now, this is the problem with having such travel anxiety that you can hardly see straight. You’re sure to get at least some of your planning wrong.

Read more (PDF): The Odyssey, Part Two.

I am not a dog person. I love all animals (except snakes), but the only animals I worship and adore are cats. I also hate travelling. Which makes it even harder to understand why I would spend the last part of my Easter holiday travelling across half of Norway to get myself a new dog.

Read more (PDF): The Odyssey, Part One.

I didn’t start playing role playing games until I was in college. Note I said “playing,” because I owned a copy of Basic Dungeons and Dragons from age 12 or so. Read it til the pages fell out. Rolled the cheap dice–the color of blue chalk–over and over, and drew up elaborate maps of the dungeons I’d explore if I had friends who wanted to play. But that key element was missing–and in hindsight, it’s a little surprising my middle school friends and I didn’t play. We were the right sorts of nerds; we all played computer games, we watched Star Trek (original series) obsessively each day after school… Yet somehow, D&D never got on the radar properly, and I didn’t have my first taste of real gaming until I began working at a local store called The Game Preserve.

The GP, as it’s still affectionately known, opened my eyes to the wide world not only of games (board games, puzzle games, wargames, role playing games) but to the wide world of gamers. We run the gamut; even back then it wasn’t just the guys in black t-shirts who William Shatner famously railed at on SNL: “Move out of your parents’ basements! Have any of you EVER kissed a girl?!” There were and are plenty of folks like that in this hobby–but there are also lots of folks who come to it from different angles. People who like stories, and fantasy, and improv acting, and solving puzzles, and working as a team with a bunch of other like-minded friends. That was a huge part of the draw for me; when I got to college and fell in with a real regular gaming group, it was a rich part of my social life every week, to get together and tell a fabulous story each Saturday from 2 until 10 (pizza break at 6. Occasionally take-out Chinese, if we were feeling flush with cash.) We all turned out all right, too–a doctor, two lawyers, a writer, a poet, an archaeologist, an alt-medicine practitioner, a computer jockey…and me, a so-called museum professional.

So, gaming is a large part of my life–enhanced by the fact that when I graduated from college with no obvious job prospects (thank you, medieval studies degree) I went right back to work at the Game Preserve for a number of years. I continued playing my games of choice–RuneQuest, and Call of Cthulhu–in the ensuing years, and in the process discovered that if I was going to play the sorts of games I want to play, I was probably going to have to be the gamemaster. That is to say, I had to be the one in charge. In college, I was always just a player, acting out my character’s part in our increasingly complex adventures; but after college, I began to mastermind these things myself. This isn’t as complicated as you might imagine; while I come up with the basic thin lines of a plot myself, my players are the ones that flesh it out, making it into a real Story, so to speak. As an example, one year for Halloween I literally had nothing but the following jotted down on a bit of notepaper for our H.P. Lovecraft mythos-based horror game:
TRAPPED ON A TRAIN
ELECTRICAL MONSTER HIDING IN BAGGAGE CAR
SLOWLY WORKS WAY UP TRAIN ZAPPING PEOPLE
HIJINKS ENSUE
My players made those four sentences into an evening of fun for all concerned. For those who’ve never played these sorts of games before, essentially the gamemaster is the one who says things like “The train is 8 cars long, including an engine and caboose. You’re sitting in the dining car, eating dinner, when the porter says, ‘There’s a mysterious crackling sound coming from the baggage car.’ So what are you doing?” And the players are the ones who say, “I’m grabbing a fire extinguisher! I’m running toward the baggage car!” (Or, perversely, “I’m stealing all the silverware while the porter is distracted.” Part of being a gamemaster is being prepared to roll with it when your players do things which are, from a story standpoint, utterly stupid.) This is where the fun comes in–it’s up to me what the crackling sound is, and what happens when the players come running back with the fire extinguisher. But it’s up to them what they do when they see a horrible ball of blue hissing flame busily charring its way through their steamer trunks. Spray the extinguisher? Throw a mail bag at it? Run like hell? I won’t know until they do it, and this is what makes the hobby so much fun for me–the constant back and forth of storytelling, balancing the predictable against the unpredictable.

Thus it happened that Robin and I came around to New Thing. As she said in her blog a few nights ago, I’ve been regaling her with stories of my players’ foibles for years now. It makes for great re-telling afterwards; Greg Stafford’s RuneQuest, which is the world I chiefly game in these days, is a lush and varied mixture of high fantasy, low fantasy, and Joseph-Campbell-esque mythology, making a fabulous backdrop for the ridiculous situations my players get themselves into and out of on a regular basis. As she also said, we’ve talked many times about ways to make a McKinley-based RPG happen on the website–but thus far, most of the ways to do it up right would involve a LOT more work on her part than the blog does now, not to mention skirting the edges of copyright disaster. But then she came up with the brilliant thought of approaching it from a different angle–we’d play our way through a story of Robin’s own devising, with me contributing unexpected situations and characters for her protagonist to encounter. But it’s all very fluid–each of Robin’s episodes influences what I may or may not toss into the mix for the next go-round. It’s less a game (no dice rolling, and as she says, the protagonist is NOT allowed to die) and more a cooperative storytelling experience in which Robin writes something amazing, and I keep monkeywrenching the works at key points in the plot. So we’ll see how it goes. I’m delighted to know that people are enjoying it–it’s fun to do! I love serials myself; Plot Without End is an appealing format for me (obviously) and so I’m excited to see where New Thing goes. Hope you are, too!

* * *

Note (pant, pant) that we haven’t got to Cathy’s first monkeywrench yet.  I’m SLOW.  –ed.

It’s a year, now, since I first started looking after a colony of bees. The year has been notable in many respects, mostly to do with my repeated feelings of ‘Why did they do that?!’. It is said among beekeepers that beekeeping has a 30-year apprenticeship and I suspect that may be underestimating the time required to gain a reasonable degree of understanding about what a colony of bees does in different circumstances, and how best to look after them.

When one is a novice in any area of reasonably complicated activity, one expects to find the early stage a steep learning curve* but when that activity involves looking after live beings of some sort the learning curve also involves large amounts of ‘am I doing it right for them and will they survive?’ With bees – and I don’t know if any other beekeepers reading this have experienced anything similar – I’ve found that thinking about how a colony of social insects will react as opposed to how one interacts with (typically) small mammals, one has to recognise that what is being looked after is a) a collective mind rather than a lot of individuals and b) there is no evidence to suppose the colony realises that one is trying to do the best for it. For me, and I realise it may be different for other beekeepers, the interest lies in watching the complexity of how the colony manages itself, in trying to work out from the various clues available what I need to do to help them do their own thing, in learning more about a fascinating creature, and in perhaps being able to harvest some honey if there’s a surplus. There is no personal relationship with the individuals or the colony – none of the bees is ever going to fly to me for a cuddle, or a grain of sugar fed at fingerpoint, or a game.

So, what have I learned over the past year?

I think respect would be the first thing. It’s not that I didn’t have a great admiration for honeybees (and other bees) before this. I appreciate this may sound strange – after all, they’re just doing what their genes have programmed them to do, without any conscious choice or intent involved. However, a closer acquaintance with the intricacy of their lives, their ordered activity, and the beauty of what they produce – whether that is wax comb, honey, or propolis, has given me the utmost respect for them as a species. What extraordinary creatures they have evolved to be – and how much we depend on them for so much of our food production.

Next, I’ve learned that bees don’t read the manuals. This fact may not come as a total surprise to anyone, but the multitude of ways in which a honeybee colony can react to their habitat and conditions has been a source of puzzlement, frustration, and sheer amazement to me over the past year. My new colony started off, last May/June, by being unhappy with their new young queen. There was nothing wrong with her that I or my beekeeping mentor could see but they kept trying to get rid of her by raising new queens. They had plenty of space in the hive (cramped conditions can lead to a new queen being raised and the colony splitting), she was newly-mated and laying evenly and well, and there was nothing wrong with or in the hive that we could see. Yet every 2 – 3 weeks I’d find another couple of queen cells being built and with eggs and once (when I was a few days late inspecting one week) the cell had been capped. Eventually my mentor suggested that I just let them get on with it and accept that, as I didn’t want to start a second colony in my first year, it would be best to let them sort themselves out without my regularly removing queen cells. So that’s what I did – panicking slightly one week when I couldn’t find a queen at all (the new queen must have just hatched and was lurking in a quiet corner, while the ‘old’ one had gone) but slightly comforted by the fact that the colony was not agitated and upset as they would be if there was no queen in the hive. That is not in the least how a new colony with a young queen is supposed to behave, according to the books, but hey…

The third thing I’ve learned is that belonging to a local beekeeping association is a great help in retaining one’s sanity and not having to spend mega-amounts on such things as a honey-extractor in one’s first year. Not that I had much honey to extract – I wasn’t expecting any, to be honest, as a colony’s first year energies are usually employed in building themselves up and making new comb (needed both for raising new bees and storing supplies) takes a lot of bee-hours. Being able to borrow equipment from my local association (and asking the experts how it worked) was extremely useful. Mind you, if the expert who lent me the radial extractor had mentioned, at the time of my collecting it, that it was not a good idea to have eaten supper just before trying to clean it (and pass it on to the other member who needed it urgently) after extracting honey, so that one wasn’t head-down and bottom-up in a large stainless-steel drum on top of a fairly full stomach, I would have been even more grateful. That, and learning that if you don’t have the honey-frames loaded very evenly around the extractor drum, then it will try to waltz rapidly round the kitchen when you turn the dial up to extracting-speed, so that you have to fling your arms round it in a fond and stabilising embrace while your husband makes a wild dive to turn the power off! And has anyone else noticed that honey is sticky?

So, a year after starting and with a colony that has survived the winter reasonably well, I now find myself contemplating my second year as a beekeeper. I hope to observe more, to learn more, to be able to keep my charges free of the various horrible pests that try and get them, and – possibly – to get a second colony started in a couple of months’ time. If anyone wants me, I’ll be out at the apiary, watching my precious bees. :)

* * *

* And that, possibly, it’s not a great idea to try and learn two complicated and demanding new activities at the same time. Beekeeping and bell-ringing, for example (though at least I know who to blame for the second of these!).

 
************************************

Steps on the way to beekeeping III

Steps on the way to beekeeping II

Steps on the way to bee-keeping I

I’ve got the ratbagging lurgy again.  Arrrrgh.  Although I admit it’s a bit of a relief that there was more going on on Thursday than sorrow, loss and existential dread—it seemed to me I was overreacting a bit even for me.  But if there were germs involved. . . .

            So what possible better excuse than to give you the rest of Peter’s story? 

The Third Dormouse, part two 

The boat didn’t look nearly big enough from the outside, but inside there seemed to be room for everyone, and what’s more in one place it was cool enough for the polar bears and in another place it was hot enough for the salamanders.  Strange. 

            Then the rain began.  Rain like no one had ever seen before.  Rain like buckets being emptied, like baths being emptied, like swimming-pools being emptied, like ponds and lakes and seas being emptied out of the sky.  Soon Grandad’s boat was floating.  Soon the water was over the tree-tops, soon it was over the fields and over the hills, soon there was nothing but water as far as Anna could see.  The waves bellowed and the wind howled and the thunder roared and the lighting flashed and flashed again.

            Anna was scared by the lightning, and wondered if she hadn’t better throw Perhaps over the side after all, but it didn’t seem fair, and besides the lightning kept missing Grandad’s boat, and she felt quite well and she couldn’t see any sea-beasts, so she went off to look after the rodentia instead.

            The animals didn’t seem to mind about the storm.  They ate and slept and dirtied their cages as if they’d lived on Grandad’s boat all their lives.  It was a lot of work feeding them and cleaning the cages.

            That was the great thing about Possibly and Maybe (and Perhaps).  They didn’t need any feeding or cleaning.  They just slept.

            Then the rain stopped and the clouds blew away and the sun came out and the wind died and the sea stopped surging around and everything was calm and still, as if winter was over, and at that point the animals started getting interested in each other.

            The elks got very interested in each other and the mandrills got very interested in each other and the sloths got slightly interested in each other and the hedgehogs got very interested in each other and the giraffes got very interested in each other. . . .

            “Don’t look,” said Grandma, on her way round checking the cages.  “I must say Him up There isn’t wasting much time about starting over. . . .”

            “The dormice aren’t,” said Anna.  “They’ve woken up, but they’re just sitting in their corners yickering at each other.”

            “Waiting for a bit of privacy, I expect,” said Grandma.

            “You don’t think they’re both boys?” said Anna.  “Or both girls?”

            “Nonsense,” said Grandma.  “Him up There wouldn’t get a thing like that wrong.  It’s probably just something dormice do before they get started.”

            She checked the rest of the rodentia and hurried on to the artiodactyla.

            When she went back to her cabin Anna heard a scratching and squeaking coming from her knapsack.  She realised that Perhaps must have woken up, but she wasn’t qick enough when she opened the pocket.  Out popped Perhaps, dropped to the floor and scuttled out of the door.  Dormice aren’t sleepy when they’re awake.  This one was really nippy.  Anna tried to catch it, but there was a lot of clutter in the corridor and it kept slipping behind things and darting away.  Anna chased it all along the corridor and down a flight of stairs and into the animal quarters.  At least its hurt leg looked to be all right now.

            It seemed to know just where it was going, and scuttled and darted among the cages until it reached the rodentia, where it climbed up the bars of the red squirrel’s cage and started yickering at Possibly and Maybe.  They got wildly excited, so Anna grabbed Perhaps, opened the door and popped it in.

            The first thing that happened was that Possibly and Maybe started fighting each other.  They really went at it.  Perhaps just sat and watched, but Anna was afraid one of the others might get hurt, so she grabbed the nearest one—she didn’t know which it was, maybe Possibly, possibly Maybe, but it wasn’t at all happy about it—and shut it in an empty box which had pine nuts in it for the squirrels.

            By the time she got back to the cage, Perhaps and the other one were very interested in each other.  Perhaps was the female, it turned out.  That’s nice, thought Anna.  I shan’t have to call her “it” any more.

            She went on to clean a few more cages, but the next time she came past she heard an amazing racket coming from the pine-nut box.

            It didn’t seem at all fair, so Anna just swapped the males over.  Perhaps didn’t seem to mind, nor did the one in the cage with her.  They were still very interested in each other.  But the one in the box set up a terrible scratching and squeaking.

            Grandma will be sure to notice, thought Anna.  I’ve got to get it to go to sleep somehow.  So she took it along to the polar bears’ cage and hid it in the coldest place she could find.  The dormouse in the box decided it must be winter again and went to sleep.  Anna asked her cousin Josh, who looked after the ursidae, not to touch it, but she didn’t tell him what was in the box.

            So the voyage went on.  From time to time, trying to be fair, Anna swapped the males over.  Perhaps was perfectly happy with either of them, and there were always just two dormice in the cage when Grandma checked them.  Soon it was easy to tell which was the female, because Perhaps started getting fatter.

            “Told you so,” said Grandma.

            Then there was a lot of business with Grandpa sending ravens out to look for land, and them not finding any.  And then it was a dove, and it came back with a bit of twig in its beak so they knew there had to be land somewhere, and then they came to an island and the humans all landed.  And the water went down and down, and they saw that the island had to be just the top of a mountain, and Grandad said it was time to let the animals go.

            So he and his sons lowered the gangplank and Anna and her cousins went through the boat opening the cages one by one so that there wasn’t a mad scrum.  When they did the polar bears Anna took the box with the dormouse in it and put him back in the cage.  Perhaps was really pregnant by now, so the other two weren’t interested in her any more and didn’t start fighting.  Anna left them to the end before she let them go.

            When she got to the entrance Grandma was busy checking the animals, but everybody else was staring at the sky.  Anna looked, and saw a wonderful rainbow arching right across from one horizon to the other.

            “Look, Grandma!” said Anna.

            Grandma looked up, and the three dormice went scuttling out.

            “What does it mean?” said Anna.

            “It’s Him up There,” said Grandad.  “I’ve just heard him say that’s it.  He’s not going to try this washing out and starting over stuff again.”

            “I heard him too,” said Anna’s cousin Sara.

            “Me too,” said everyone, except Grandma and Anna.

            Grandma was looking at her lists.

            “I seem to have missed the dormice,” she said.  “Did anyone see the dormice go?”

            “I did,” said Anna.

            “How many were there?” said Grandma.  “Just the two?”

            “Probably,” said Anna’s mother, not thinking.

            Now Anna thought she heard something.  It might have been distant thunder, or it might have been somebody laughing at a private joke.

            She watched Perhaps, very fat and pregnant, with Possibly and Maybe yickering beside her, scuttle down the slope and disappear into the clean new world.

Peter found this in a drawer a few days ago.  He wrote it yonks and yonks ago*, for a magazine, and neither of us (!) can remember (!!) seeing it in any less ephemeral form, so he said yes, I could have it for the blog, since he hasn’t written me a guest blog in, like, years.  Even if you’ve read it before, you probably haven’t read it in yonks either, and I like it, and it’s my blog.

            And I badly need a night off, so tonight’s the night (as they say).  I’ll tell you tomorrow about ringing at my old tower.** 

The Third Dormouse

 Anna lived on a farm with her father and mother and three brothers.  One day soldiers came.  They said they were soldiers, but really they were just robbers.  They drove all the farm animals away while Anna and her family hid in the desert beyond the fields.

            When they had gone Anna’s family went back to the farm and worked in the fields, which were full of melons and corn.

            “At least you can’t drive melons and corn away,” said Anna’s father.

            The melons grew and the corn grew and they harvested them and brought their crops into the barns for the winter.  While they were harvesting the corn Anna found a dormouse with a hurt leg.

            “Can I keep it until its leg’s well?” she asked.

            “Perhaps,” said her mother, not thinking.

            “Will it go to sleep for the winter?” said Anna.

            “Perhaps,” said her mother, not thinking.

            “Is it a boy or a girl?” said Anna.

            “Perhaps,” said her mother, still not thinking.

            So Anna took it home and called it Perhaps.  When it started to get sleepy she made it a nest in a pocket of her knapsack, which her mother had told her to keep packed with anything she wanted in case the soldiers came again.

            They did.  They were different ones, but still just robbers.  This time they took all the stores they could carry and burnt the rest.  They burnt the barns and the house too.  Hiding in the desert Anna and her family watched the flames.

            That night they slept in a cave.  In the middle of the night Anna had an odd sort of dream.  It was just a voice saying in her head “Go to your Grandad’s.”

            When they woke up next morning Anna’s mother said “I heard a voice in the night, telling us to go to Grandad’s.”

            “So did I,” said all the others.

            “It must be Him up There telling us,” said her mother.

            “It will be a dangerous journey,” said her father, “because of the soldiers.”

            But Him up There had told them, so they set out, carrying their knapsacks.  The soldiers were everywhere, fighting each other and burning and stealing and murdering, but they didn’t seem to notice Anna’s family trudging quietly along.  It was very strange.

            At last they came to the valley where Grandad lived.  The soldiers didn’t seem to have noticed him either.  He was busy building a big boat.

            “Ah, you’ve come,” mumbled Grandad with his mouth full of nails.  “High time too.  The others will be here any moment.”

            “What’s going on?” said Anna’s father.

            Grandad took the nails out of his mouth.

            “It’s Him up There,” he said.  “He’s sick of all this murdering and robbery and stuff, so he wants to wash the whole lot out and start over.  But we’ve never gone in for any of that in our family, so he’s letting us stay on and help him.  That’s what the boat’s for.  The grown-ups can give me a hand with that, and the kids will have to look after the animals.  Grandma will tell you what to do, kids.”

            “Can I look after the dormice?” said Anna.

            “It’ll be more than just dormice,” said Grandma.

            Next day Anna’s two uncles and her two aunts and her nine cousins arrived, and the day after that the animals started streaming in.  Tigers and bats and mongeese and lizards and wombats and rattle-snakes and tree-frogs and sheep and moles and porcupines and warthogs and . . .

            Anyway there was a list, and Grandma checked them off as they came.  Two of everything. 

            Yes, two dormice.  They were very yawny and cross because they’d been woken out of their winter sleep.

            “What would happen if there were three of something?” said Anna.  “I mean, if you took an extra warthog aboard because you were sorry for it?”

            “Him up There wouldn’t like it,” said Grandma.  “He was very definite.  Two of everything he said.  One male, one female.  No more, no less.”

            “But what would he do?” said Anna.

            “Strike us with lightning, I shouldn’t wonder,” said Grandma.  “Or plague.  Or send a sea-beast to gobble us up.  You can’t tell with Him up There.  Mysterious ways are what he moves in, and no mistake.  Anyway, you’re doing the rodentia, so you’ll be too busy to ask any more questions.”

            And that was true.  The rodentia were the agoutis and the bamboo rats and the bandicoot rats and the beavers and the birch mice and the cane rats and the capybaras and the cavies and the chinchillas and the chipmunks . . . all the way through to the viscachas and the voles and the white-footed mice and the wood rats.

            And, yes, the dormice.  They weren’t any trouble.  They curled up in opposite corners of their cage and went straight back to sleep.  Anna couldn’t tell which was the male and which was the female, so she called them Possibly and Maybe.  She didn’t tell anyone about Perhaps, in case they made her leave it behind.  It was still asleep in the pocket of her knapsack, so she just hoped it didn’t count.

            The sky darkened, thunder rolled round the hills, Grandpa banged the last nail in and everyone went aboard.  Grandma stood by the gangplank and checked the animals off as they passed.  The only one she missed was Perhaps, asleep in Anna’s knapsack. 

TO BE CONTINUED*** 

* * *

* On a typewriter.  Remember typescript?  Which is bumpy under your fingers, and the ‘d’ or the ‘a’ or something is a slightly crooked, and the quote marks are straight up and down and there’s only caps and underlining, no bold and no italic?   And you make corrections by painting over them, or by cutting and pasting pieces of actual paper?  Nostalgia.  

** Nobody died.

***I know.  Famous last words.  But this story exists.

I had shown Teddy in our club’s rally trials two years ago, at which time he had refused to go into his portable canvas crate because it was new and therefore scary.  Since it was too cold for him to wait in the car, he had to be held on lead all day, which was a nuisance.  So in addition to a quick private obedience lesson, we had crate practice at home for a week before the trial.  This consisted of setting the crate up in the living room and giving him a chance to find out that it wasn’t a death trap.  Luckily, it worked; the rally trials were scheduled in the morning on both days, and the Novice class was, as usual, scheduled last in the obedience trials, so he really needed a comfortable place to spend the day before competing.

Saturday started out well.  Teddy waited nicely in his crate during the rally trial, and when I took him out to warm up once the obedience trial started, he was paying attention to me pretty well.  (Ted loves all dogs and wants to greet every one he sees, so I am not necessarily his main interest when there are new dogs to be investigated.)  I was happy to see that the obedience judge handed her clipboard to one of the stewards before approaching the dogs in the stand for examination exercise, because Ted doesn’t like clipboards* and might well have edged away from it, thus failing.  When we entered the ring and started the heel on lead, he stayed in good position and gave me quick, fairly straight sits.  He did a beautiful fast recall with a straight front and a perfect finish.  When we left the ring to wait for the group stays, he was working on a very nice score.

Things went downhill when we went back into the ring for the group exercises.  Once the dogs are lined up for the sit-stay exercise, handlers are required to place their leads and armbands behind their dogs; this allows the judge to identify any dog that breaks its stay.  I had removed my armband and carried it into the ring, but Teddy caught a glimpse of it as I set it down, and he wasn’t at all comfortable with this white paper menace behind him.  He didn’t want to sit with his back to it, and it took several circlings to get him to face out into the ring.  Not good.  The stay exercises require the handlers to leave their dogs and walk across the ring, then turn and face their dogs.  Usually the dog will look towards the handler, but Ted wanted to watch the armband to make sure it wasn’t sneaking up on him, and kept his head turned back like an owl.  But he held the sit for the required one minute and didn’t move when the handlers were sent back to heel position, so even though we had lost some points, we were still on track to get a qualifying score.  The final exercise is a three-minute down stay, again with the handlers across the ring from their dogs.  Teddy went down, but his ears were back and his eyes were nervous, and it was clear that he hadn’t become resigned to the armband.  He stuck it out for two and a half minutes by my count and then it was too much for him, and he came to me.  Failed exercise, NQ, aaargh.  Not unusual for a novice dog at his first trial, but still—AAARGH.

So Saturday night, after we got home, we had armband practice.

The Sunday judge had been the judge of a rally trial earlier in the year at which Teddy had NQd spectacularly**, so I really wanted him to perform decently in her ring.  The fact that she examined the dogs while holding her clipboard behind her back rather than handing it to a steward was not promising, but one can always hope.  So we went into the ring for the individual exercises hoping for the best.  I could tell that Teddy wasn’t performing as well as he had the day before, and he didn’t give me quick and reasonably straight sits until the end of the on-lead heeling exercise.  And he was lagging.  But he stood still during the stand for exam in spite of the clipboard—yay Teddy—and stayed with me during the off-lead heel even though a heeling pattern that runs down the middle of the ring gives a dog a lot of opportunities to stray.  He had another nice recall and good finish, so we were looking okay going into the group exercises.

I carried my armband into the ring again, and was careful to put it and my lead closer to the wall behind the dogs than I had done on Saturday.  I was hoping that this would keep Ted from seeing it out of the corner of his eye.  For whatever reason, he did sit in place immediately, and he did look at me during the sit-stay exercise.  This can be a long minute, because it’s easy for a dog to get bored and lie down, but it passed successfully for us and we had just the long down-stay to go.  Again he went down, again I crossed the ring, and if looks could nail a dog to the floor, mine would have done that to Teddy.  At the same time I was trying to count out three minutes, but I got well beyond 180 alligators before the judge’s stopwatch called time.  Hearing “Back to your dogs” was welcome, but nothing like as good as hearing “Exercise finished” with my dog still lying down where I’d left him.  YAY TEDDY!!  We qualified!!

At the end of an obedience class, all qualifiers go back into the ring to receive class placements and qualifying ribbons.  We didn’t get a placement, but qualified with a very nice score of 187 out of 200.***  When one is working on a title, a qualifying score is referred to as a “leg”.  I am happy to say that Teddy is now a one-legged dog with a green ribbon to prove it, and hopefully will be a three-legged dog with CD behind his name before he’s too much older.

Teddy relaxing at home with his winnings.

*********************

*   Remember distraction = paranoia?  This is more paranoia.  As far as I know, no one has ever tried to kill him with a clipboard.

** Grooming area with blow-dryers going full blast ten feet from the ring.  Need I say more?

***  This score also gave Teddy the award for high-scoring Great Dane in the trial.  Since he was the only Dane in the trial, this is less impressive than it sounds, but it got him a nice stuffed toy that lasted two entire weeks before he destroyed it.

My working-breed club holds two rally and obedience trials each year, one of each on both days of a weekend at the end of January.  Our entry is very small, as we restrict entries to working breed dogs (think Boxers, Great Danes, Mastiffs, Newfoundlands, Samoyeds, for example), and these are not the most common breeds in obedience competition.  Our exhibitors like this, as it gives their dogs a chance to win the highest awards at the trial.*   And the small entry means the room isn’t crowded and noisy, which makes it a great place to start an inexperienced dog in competition.  So this year I entered Teddy in his first obedience trial.

Obedience competition is not a dog event that is often shown to the general public.  It doesn’t have the glamour of conformation shows like Westminster or Crufts, or the excitement of agility trials, with dogs running through obstacle courses and leaping over steeplechase jumps.  I like to compare obedience work to the school figures that competition figure skaters used to be judged on in the Olympics: a set of formalized exercises that must be done with great precision in order to obtain a top score.  The basic, or Novice, obedience exercises are heeling (both on and off lead), standing for examination, recall, and sit and down stays.  These sound like basic good behaviors for dogs, and so they are, but obedience competition requires that they be performed in certain very specific ways.  Heel position is strictly defined, and the dog will lose points if he forges ahead or lags behind the handler.  He is supposed to sit in heel position at every halt, and will lose points not only if he fails to sit, but if he sits slowly or crookedly or anywhere other than in heel position.  He is supposed to come straight to the handler when called, sit in front—squarely in front, not crookedly—and return to sit squarely in heel position (“finish”) when told to do so.  And the handler is not allowed to speak to the dog after giving a single  command for each exercise.  The sit and down exercises are performed in a group, with all the dogs in the class lined up against a wall or ring gate.  There are many opportunities for the average well-mannered dog (or his handler) to fail to qualify (or “NQ”) in an obedience trial.

The first-level obedience title is Companion Dog, or CD, and requires the dog/handler team to get three qualifying scores (170 points out of a perfect 200) in the Novice class under at least two judges.  I have obtained the CD title on one** dog, my bitch Zinka, who didn’t go into obedience competition until she was six years old.  Zinka was a singleton puppy, so in order to socialize her with other dogs her own age I started her in puppy kindergarten at eleven weeks old, and she continued training throughout her life.  But she showed in conformation until she earned her championship, so she had to remain intact—the historical reason for dog shows was to select the best breeding stock, and in American Kennel Club competition, dogs and bitches must be intact in the conformation ring.  And her co-breeder and I had planned to breed her after she finished her championship, so it wasn’t until after she had had her puppies and was spayed that I showed her in obedience.***   After training for six years, Zinka was totally bored with Novice exercises and didn’t display much enthusiasm in the ring—she specialized in sluggish heeling and the death march recall—but she did qualify three times in spite of herself.****

Zinka at 3, finishing her championship.

Zinka at 6, getting her CD.

I had great hopes for my last boy, Zinka’s son Atlas, who was a willing and enthusiastic obedience dog, but he lost a leg to cancer at age three and was then ineligible to compete.  So I was very pleased when Teddy turned out to be a good worker.  He started competing in rally obedience events when he was a year and a half old and earned two rally titles^, one requiring off-lead work.  I had planned to move on to the third level of rally competition before looking for a CD, but found that Teddy had a big problem with distraction^^ in the ring when off lead.  Given that obedience competition is more structured than rally, and that much Novice work is on lead, it seemed like a good time to get him into the obedience ring.  So we entered the Novice B^^^ class to test the waters and see how he’d do.

********************

* In an all-breed obedience trial, it’s possible but unlikely that a working-breed dog will win the top award of Highest Score in Trial.  Our dogs are big (and so slower on sits) and were generally not bred to work closely with a human partner like herding dogs or gun dogs were.  Border Collies, Shetland Sheepdogs, and Golden Retrievers are the usual stars of obedience competition.

** In 17 years of training.  This tells you that I am not a hotshot dog trainer.

*** It’s not easy to do obedience work with intact bitches.  They can’t train effectively or compete at all for the three weeks that they’re in season, and even if they haven’t been bred, they have more or less symptomatic false pregnancies which definitely affect their behavior.  If you have a bitch who takes her false pregnancy seriously, you can lose three months out of every six.  Zinka took her falses very seriously indeed.

**** In her last trial, she followed the off-lead heeling pattern about fifteen feet behind me.  I think she caught up with me on the halts, but I don’t recall that she sat once.  I believe she was trying for a score of 165, but she didn’t quite make it and qualified with 171.  You bet we got a picture!

^ Rally obedience, or rally, is a relatively new event that was designed to bridge the gap between basic good behavior training and competition obedience.  Rally exercises use obedience skills in various combinations; less precision is required when performing the exercises, and the handler is encouraged to speak to the dog throughout their time in the ring.

^^ Let’s be honest and call it paranoia.

^^^ The Novice class is divided into two sections, A and B.  The A section is open only to people who have never put an obedience title on any dog.  I used up my one and only shot at Novice A with Zinka.  The B section implies that even though the dog is green, the trainer is not, and handler errors are scored accordingly.  You will always lose points if you screw up, but you’ll lose more in Novice B.

Last weekend, I went on book tour* with three amazing authors: Brodi Ashton (EVERNEATH), Courtney Allison Moulton (ANGELFIRE), and Cynthia Hand (UNEARTHLY).

I was warned about going on tour.

When I found out I’d be going on one of the Dark Days tours, I researched author tours. I saw warnings about eating when you can, sleeping when you can, and making sure you pack a carryon bag in case your checked bag gets lost and you can’t change your underwear until it catches up with you — which it won’t, because you are constantly on the move.

Dutifully, I prepared myself for starvation and sleep-deprivation, and made sure I had all my clothes packed into one bag that could fit under the seat in front of me on an airplane. (You know how those overhead compartments are always full of, like, someone’s sweater they can’t be bothered to hold on their lap.) I was ready to be in public-mode for all hours.

Yeah, the Dark Days tour was not like what I had prepared for. While my first day was a 4AM day–I had an early flight–the tour itself was not filled with 28-hour days. (I’m sure they could have managed if they’d wanted.) We had time after flights to hang out with one another, talk, eat, even visit with family.

Our days went like this: get up, eat breakfast, take an airplane, freshen up at the hotel, go to the event, and then eat dinner. (Lunch was kind of hit or miss, since we were usually in the air at lunchtime. One of our media escorts threw snacks at us as soon as we got in her car, though. She should get a raise.) Not a bad day, right? The events were pretty awesome, too.

First, we had interviews with local book bloggers. I think that helped us loosen up a little and got us ready to answer questions in front of dozens of people. Then, we headed into the store where they’d set up tables and chairs. Someone from the store introduced us, we each spoke or read for a few minutes, and then we answered audience questions until it was time to sign books.

One of the strangest things was how the audience kept looking at their cell phones . . . but not because they were ignoring us. After the event, when I looked at my phone, I saw dozens of tweets repeating things I’d said during the Q&A. And photos! (Thing I’ve learned: photos of people speaking are almost always awkward looking. *mouth hangs open weirdly*)

Overall, I had a lot of fun and loved meeting the other authors and all the readers who came to see us. It was a great experience.

My post.

Recap of the Dallas stop.

Recap of the Austin stop.

Another recap of the Austin stop (with some great photos).

Recap of the Houston stop.

Courtney’s “behind the scenes” video.

* Yaaay Jodi!  –ed.

I’ve loved sheep since I was a little kid. Drysdales (the breed) are wonderfully calm sheep with a lot of personality. Unfortunately, there aren’t many left in Australia (although there are still reasonable numbers in New Zealand.)

Firstly – gratuitous Die-Of-Cute pics.

"Awwwwwwww"

Due Date approaches.....

Lily’s Story 

Lily

Lily was an orphaned lamb that we bottle-reared a few years ago. She was always of a very sweet temperament – never becoming demanding and belligerent like some hand-reared ones can be.

Last year she had twin lambs and then tragedy struck. A fox attacked both lambs and then stole away with one, leaving Lily to stand mournfully over the remaining dead lamb.

This is what then happened (taken from my journal entry at the time):

“… there was a new – tiny – set of twins born to another ewe and while I was checking them out Lily came over and… tried to steal a lamb…

I’ve never actually seen a grieving ewe do this before. Ewes often will thieve prior to when they lamb but not 24hrs later after they have bonded with their own lambs.

So, Lily is trying to steal a lamb and I saw it was going to be a real problem for the new mum.

I wonder if…….

I raced back to the house to get little Imogen^ who, unfortunately, had been fed not long before so was not starving hungry.
As I went back to the paddock with Imogen trailing along after me I was calling out to Lily and she came over to meet me at the gate. Lily is baaing and Imogen is baaing.

This couldn’t work. Imogen is nearly 2 weeks old. No way.

Through the gate and Lily is checking out the lamb that is baaing. Oh, not hers. Imogen has forgotten a little what the other animals are besides the dogs and the 2-legged-mummy.

But still, I walked up the hill and Imogen followed. And Lily followed as well. I got them into a small yard and then went to get some reinforcements for the next challenge.

With Mum’s help I held Lily still while Imogen fussed about and “remembered” what the teat on the bag was. Imogen drank. Lily stood reasonably still – when held.
Lily was certainly interested in Imogen but the smell wasn’t right. For her to be interested at all though was amazing. She wasn’t butting her away which I would expect.

Next phase: Transfering the dead lamb’s smell.

It’s a very old shepherd’s trick to cover a lamb with the dead lamb’s pelt to fool a ewe into accepting a lamb. I’ve actually never tried it before. First time for everything.

I moved Lily out of sight of the lamb/Imogen while I strapped the lamb pelt onto Imogen. It’s not a super fit – she’s nearly 2 weeks old and the dead lamb was small. She ends up with bright blue baling twine and looks oddly like she’s wearing one of those stereotypical caveman outfits.

Lots of baaing going on and so I let Lily back in Imogen.

She sniffed the lamb’s back and she got excited, poor darling, then she got confused because the head and bum of Imogen doesn’t quite smell like her lamb.

Desperation to have her lamb won.

She let Imogen drink.  ”

I spent an anxious night wondering how things would go. Would I have a very hungry and confused lamb in the morning? Maybe I shouldn’t be too hopeful?

In the morning I discovered this:

Lily accepting Imogen as her adopted daughter

:) :) :)

And then they lived happily ever after… :)

_________

^Imogen was abandoned by her first-time mother. She was being bottle-reared just as Lily had been several years before.