We still have snow sharing our space here at The Golden Plot, with frozen ground and frigid temperatures. “Unseasonably cold weather.” Granny would ask how cold weather is unseasonable for winter. Yep. Good question. In a typical winter here in the mid-Atlantic, by now, there’d be mud for the girls to squish their paws through, so I guess I can thank Mother Nature’s wrath for that one accommodation.

Some school systems adjusted their opening times today for the extreme cold. I don’t have to go on social media or stand in line at the Giant to imagine the comments that decision prompted. A lot about “today’s kids,” and “if I was in charge,” and the old(e) fashioned tale of “uphill both ways.”

Incidentally, the last one always makes me smile. My dad once told me that his walk to school in the mountains of western Maryland did indeed take him uphill, both ways. And in winter, ropes were tied to the trees or posts along the route so kids could find their way to and from school in the snow on dark mornings and even darker walks home. Dad didn’t tell these stories to make his childhood days seem tougher, or to minimize today’s kids’ experience. These were simply the facts of life, and he was grateful that his own kids had paved sidewalks, predominantly flat, for our school commute. After all, his childhood was nicer than “the old country,” and ours was nicer than his.

When I became a mom, our commute included Blizzak winter tires (often unnecessary) on a Volvo station wagon. Albeit an old one even by the time we bought it, the car was a solid Brick. If you’ve driven an old Volvo wagon in snow, you understand the need to equip it with snowshoes even for one bad storm each winter. Picture that scene in Frosty the Snowman with the kid riding down the hill on Frosty’s back. I love those cars, but they are toboggans. Ours, however, was tanklike as heaved its heavy body across the snow, and the heat was (overly) warm. Our commute was safe and toasty.

Where was I going with this? Cursed perimenopausal brain.

Oh, yes. Snow related school schedules. My mother had the same plaid Better Homes and Gardens cookbook that resided in most kitchens, and it now lives in mine. I pull it out of the cabinet each December for her shortening based cookie recipes, and each time I look through the yellowed sheets of paper, crimp-edged notes, and shabby newspaper clippings she tucked in over the years. My favorite is a school newsletter from the 70s that gained its place in the cookbook by donating its whitespace to her notes on how to make a chipped beef rollups. A staple at my aunt’s parties, the recipe was most likely jotted by Mom as they talked on the phone, curled wires stretched across their respective kitchens. My second favorite sheet of yellowed paper is a recipe for which she’d sent a SASE to the People are Talking television show. Yep, the early days of Oprah.

The newsletter’s language on school closings and weather-related absences is as emotionless as every other bit of information that filtered into homes from our Catholic school office. “Since you, the parents, have a basic responsibility for the health of your child.” In other words, send your child out on a frigid day and ye shall be judged accordingly. Keep them home, and they will miss out on work that they may never catch up. I can’t count how many days I slipped on the icy hill outside of that school. Pancake sole saddle shoes have no traction. Lit-er-ally none.

Sister Kathleen later reminds parents not to send their children back after winter break if their tuition remains unpaid. An improvement over Mom’s school days in which the nuns told children in class, with their peers as an audience, not to come back the next day unless they brought their past due tuition money. Ouch. But those are stories for another day.

It is these frosty days that bring me back to childhood snow days. To sharing an extra scarf with a snowman, to mittens drying on the radiator, and to cocoa too hot to drink. Stay warm, my friends!

Okay dog friends, I usually leave the writing stuff to Mom, but this was a necessary takeover to share some tips. This is the secret to beating the human at their sneaky bafboozle game.

First, don’t rely on any hints. My mom accidentally said “bath” today, so I knew. But sometimes they spell it. Like v-I-w-o could be bath or vet. I love my vet and I have a thermal chip to avoid the temperature taking part, so I don’t worry about getting vetboozled, but baths are a bad day.

My trainer says my personality is phenomenal, and my exuberance is really high. Based on my understanding of higher education, this means 300-400 level college smarts, so I know things.
Now, here’s what to do to at least delay a bafboozle. Your human will want you to go potty before the bath. When you get outside, don’t go potty, even if you have to. Wander around. I recommend going near the garden. If you waste time there, your human will start picking the wrinkled blooms off the plants, giving you more time. Pretend you’re going to eat a bumblebee. This adds time.

Next, wander around more until a neighbor comes out to chat with your human. More stalling accomplished.

Your human might get frustrated, but they don’t want a nervous pee incident when they do your bath, so they’ll wait. Stay strong. You can easily drag this out for an hour, and if you time it right, it may be time for your human to cook dinner or watch a sportball game.
In the end, I still got a bath, but my human told the neighbor that she knew I was on to her plan, so I’m calling it a win. And I got a treat for finally doing a potty after 40 minutes in the yard. Score!

Hmm . . . now that I look at this post-bath garden photo, I could have brought Mom here to stall and she might have stopped to remove those pesky weeds. Next time . . .

Coming back to the blog feels like stepping from the car after the last leg of the vacation drive. The end of semester still hovers on my back, while summer heat glows in the haze of midday. Despite tired eyes and achy joints, I stand a little taller.

I look toward a summer of writing in the same way I’d see a summer home. Looking at the unwritten words through a window dusted with salt spray. Like the first day of vacation, my head is full of the wish for time to move slowly, and the words to come freely.

Moving into this metaphorical summer place, I bring an old leather suitcase, its seams splitting with the weight of all I carry into this writing trip. Stories of months gone by, folded neatly, waiting to be unpacked.

In the garden, the perennials have survived the winter, and stretch their leafy fingers toward the sun. New plants draw strength from the ground. Emmy’s garden flourishes, even though we said goodbye to her that harsh spring night.

By my side her little sister, Bea, stands quietly as I open the window to let in the words. We catch a scent of roses and hope blooms.

After food, Emmy’s favorite parts of the day are her walks. The neighborhood is her Oz. Her own walk of fame on sidewalks lined with invisible “Emilia” stars. She is a neighborhood celebrity—“The Barbie Dog” to the little girls who run to see her as she passes their yards. Cars stop on the road for their occupants to call out high pitched hellos. Neighbors wait on porches to bring her a treat. She is in her element, and she is golden.

The lead up to the morning walk, however, is an Olympic level challenge, requiring speed, patience, and all the endurance a bowl of Cheerios can give.

You see, Golden Retriever puppies make the most advanced AI systems seem lacking.

Here is how it works:

Each night, put clothes out for the next day, so the ginger haired octopus doesn’t need to be near the closet while you decide what to wear. The closet holds special treasures. Sandals with dangerous buckles, long plastic dry cleaning bags, winter boots stuffed with tasty tissue paper, unworn suede Papillio wedges that you fell in love with just before the puppy fever, and the Holy Grail: extra toilet tissue that if she grabs it just right, she can unravel the roll, be out the door, around the corner and halfway downstairs before you can say the second syllable of “EMILIA!”

Then, after breakfast say, “Ready to go for a walk?”

Emmy responds with the circle dance, tail wagging, front paws bowing, and a single bark.

You then say, “Okay, I need to get dressed.” This innocent statement begins the morning dash.

Emmy darts upstairs to the bedroom, stopping in the hall bathroom to check that no one left a facecloth or a curling iron cord within reach, peeks behind the shower curtain in case anything changed since last night, and grabs the bathmat, which is never interesting enough to take further than the doorway.

Once in the hall, she’ll pause, survey the other rooms in case the office is open, which it never is, but she knows one day she’ll get back in there. The room where you keep so many pages of delicious paper. The room where the paper shredder lives, and despite its claims to crosscut fifteen pages at a time, it is rookie level compared to Emmy’s ability to destroy Shakespeare’s entire writing career in seconds.

Office door secure, she remembers why you’re upstairs. Clothes.

She’ll grab your discarded robe, prepared to hide it under the bed, when she remembers this is the room where the hamper lives. Innocent ovals decorate its sides, just enough open space to dislodge a sock, and she’s on her way, prancing to the hall, doe legs extended beneath a wagging tail.

But you know better. This is a ploy, a distraction that a seasoned Golden mom can ignore. If you choose to chase her for the sock, she will loop around, go under the bed, hide the sock, and dart out the other side to grab the day’s outfit that you have left unattended. You’re taking stock of the detritus under the bed—at least five socks, a slipper, two dish towels, and wait . . . a mason jar ring??? and she has darted to another room where she finds a basket of clean laundry and is dancing down the stairs, teeth clamped tightly on a bra while she struggles to untangle her paw from the strap without tumbling headfirst to the linoleum below. Bras, she has learned, are an important treasure. She has no idea of monetary value, but is aware that you WILL chase her for this. As she does the brassiere ballet, you can slow her down by calling out, “I don’t care, keep it,” which is a lie, but gives her pause and you time to get dressed, remembering to put socks on, or the process starts over once she’s caught. But don’t take too long—the paused dance will quickly turn to destruction, which is expensive and a choking hazard.

Pilfered undergarment retrieved after the bribe of a high value treat, and the repetition of “drop it” 1,470 times, you are almost ready to go. However, in your haste, you’ve left the gate to the living room opened, and she’s grabbed a throw pillow from the dogless years and is swinging it like the overstuffed suede owes her money. It’s dry clean only and is now adorned with webs of saliva and bits of kibble from her as yet unbrushed teeth. The pillow, at least, is awkward and cumbersome and she quickly abandons it when it slows her down. You toss the gooey disaster onto the chair where it lands with the lame promise that you’ll do something to clean it up later.

Is it time for a walk yet? Almost.

Now you need to grab a snack bag of cheese bits or chicken. Emmy is in a fear imprint stage, and you’ll need to understand how she processes the world around her. You will need to get her to walk past the driveway where the bounce house was three weeks ago (screaming kids probably warning her of puppy-eating monsters), and past the house where the roof was repaired last Thursday (workers yelling—large pieces of roof sliding on a giant tarp that even from across the street could fly at random and land on unsuspecting puppies), and the house where the English Bulldog runs out to the edge of his invisible fence, barking like a hell dog and warning of the puppocalypse.

While you’re setting up the bribe treats, she’s forgotten there’s a walk ahead and is holding fight club with a stuffed bear that you now realize is unravelling at the neck, so you’ll need to discreetly hide him until you can do surgery, or she’ll literally eat his stuffing.

Finally ready, you grab her leash, but this whole process has made her thirsty. She stops at the bowl stand for a drink. Once finished, in a single movement she grabs the water bowl, puddling the contents onto the kitchen floor and darting onto the couch, knowing you’ll chase her because there’s still water in the bowl.

So once you’ve caught the bowl, and used your best choreographed wrestling moves to keep her from grabbing the towel while you dry the floor, you realize your socks are wet.

And you need to go

back upstairs

to change.

Again.

I stand at the kitchen sink, hands slippery with dish liquid, body tired from puppy chasing. My brain is fuzzy from cataloguing the myriad of dangers from which I need to protect a four-month-old golden retriever. In one day, she’s tried to chew three electrical cords and licked numerous outlets. My girl is obsessed with power.

I am the kind of bone deep exhausted one gets from a day of plowing fields . . . barefoot . . . in a hurricane.

Behind me, I feel movement against my ankles, and she’s settled there, just close enough that she can fall asleep and know when I move away. This is the delicate choreography of the kitchen, constantly watching for a leg, an ear, or a tail within inches of whatever area of where I’m working. When I prepare dinner, a soft toffee-colored head pops between my arm and waist, ever ready to lick the cutting board or snag a morsel. Goldens have tongues that stretch like a chameleon’s, faster if the food isn’t dog safe.

A bowl taps the sink edge and she stirs a little, sighing, annoyed, at the interruption of her puppy dreams. In the past six years without a dog, I’d forgotten how it is to have a canine sous chef always nearby. Already everything that resides on the counter is pushed back against the wall in a necessary clutter. The blender and stand mixer have been evicted to make room for treat jars. No more kitchen towel hanging from the oven door handle, and if I forget, I’ll need to look behind a chair, under the table, or in her bed to discover where she’s left it. I’ll find it, sometimes a little soggy, always a little hairy. Diligent housekeeping can’t compete with the biscuit crumbs and mini waterfalls she creates after a drink. She is, above all, a water dog. I wash towels as often as my grandmother must have washed diapers.

In my kitchen of today, lower cabinets are toddler-locked with plastic contraptions so frustrating I find myself debating how much I really need to bring out the toaster. Untoasted bagels aren’t so bad with cool coffee that stayed too long on the table during our morning walk. It is always a slow go with so many neighbors popping out to pet her, share a treat, remark on her lanky doe legs, or ask what on Earth I’m feeding her. Miracle Gro?

She is a celebrity and pleases her public.

Dishes done, I move to the recliner, finally, where she’ll follow, scooting into a space beside me where she no longer fits. She’ll sigh again, this time content, and close her cocoa brown eyes, back to her puppy dreams while I rub her soft ears knowing that my tee shirt speaks the truth. Life is good.

We have made the jump. Our family will welcome our next puppy in a week. This is scary and exciting and more than a little overwhelming. Emilia’s arrival will prompt a change in the Twitter name I’ve had for so long. But before I make the change, I want to share a few thoughts. A bit of history.

Summer of 2011. I was standing firm, trying not to join social media–missing family news because I wasn’t on Facebook. In the way that I look at the world through the lens of academia, Facebook sounded like a giant campus with too many buildings. And I didn’t really care to reconnect with the cousin of the husband of a girl I went to high school with. Still don’t. I wanted something smaller. Something safer.

So, I thought, what if I get a Twitter for my dog? Abby, my sweet, amazing golden retriever, was eight years old at the time. Where I went, she went. So we decided we’d go on Twitter. I felt silly at first. Who’s going to talk to a dog on social media? Even a dog so full of personality?

Then, she got a few followers. DOG followers. Others who, like me, had tested the waters with the help of their canine life rings. Then, more followers. And thus began our life on Dog Twitter.

Abby was among a generation of dogs that grew together. Imaginary road trips to Tim Horton’s and Starbucks, debating whether it was safer to allow a young golden doodle pup to drive the car, or let one of the seniors risk the road.

Through these dog connections, human connections grew. Holiday cards, birthday wishes, and picture after picture of our furry friends.

Our dogs grow older, new puppies join families. We laugh together, share ideas, cheer each other on. We worry together over mysterious lump biopsies, share the joy when it isn’t the C word. We cry for each other when it is. We are from many different countries, but when one of our pups crosses the Rainbow Bridge, the miles disappear, and we are one in heartbreak. Sometimes we just exist in cyberspace to prop one another up.

When Abby crossed the bridge, I kept her Twitter open because I grew to love her friends, and I needed to see dogs. A year later, Frasier joined our family, and his brief time here was full of photos of a beautiful soul lost too soon. His pictures and stories are still too heartbreaking to share. If I can say one thing it’s this–know your breeder–puppy mills are everywhere, and they are evil. Okay, two things, because I know this is important–thousands of dogs need homes and rescues have the biggest hearts and will love you forever. Okay, one more. Pick the dog that fits your life. And that is all.

Now it’s a little over five years since we lost Frasier. We have opened the rusty doors of our hearts to Emilia. From the first time we met her on Facetime at three weeks old, she has wrapped us around her tiny paw. I don’t know what it was about this particular puppy that helped us make the decision. She’s just right. Everything fell into place with odd coincidences and perfect timing. I guess one could say she found us.

It hurts my heart to change Abby’s Twitter name, but I suppose it’s time. I’ll have enough trouble not calling Emilia “Abby.” Maybe that’s why I picked this name. If I mess up and call her Abby, it sounds a little like Emmy. Dogs tend to respond to treats and tone anyway.

Dogs never truly leave us. Just like we’ll always find stray hairs on random sweaters in the closet, and poo bags stashed in any pocket, tote bag, or other place we might need one, they’ll always be nearby. A shadow in the hallway, a rainbow reflection through a chandelier, the sound of jingling tags we know we heard.

So . . . if you’re following me for dog stuff, there will be plenty. In fact, I guess I’ll have to use my own Twitter for book and writing posts, or they’ll be buried in puppy paparazzi. Feel free to follow that one–@jloccowrites.

If you’re reading this, the Tesla gods smiled on me and the change in handle name didn’t send our Twitter followers into a black hole. See you on Dog Twitter.