get up, sweet slug-a-bed, and see the dew bespangling herb and tree
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Pundit the River Otter

February 8th, 2013 | Posted by sweet in Dog Days | Nature - (0 Comments)

If Pundit wasn’t a dog, I think he’d be a river otter. Scrappy, self motivated, and above all, playful. I was at the zoo last weekend with the kids. It was cold, even snowing a tiny bit, the best type of day to go to the zoo since almost nobody else goes. The river otters were out in the cold, doing what they do best–back flipping over and over into the water just because they could. Play river otters, play –river otter 1river otter 2river otter 3river otter 4

Also, check out this duck. I’m pretty sure this is a wild duck who just happened to choose the beaver pond with its mate because it liked it. The symmetry and coloration is so beautiful — duck

And here is another duck that I believe is its mate. The photo is a little blurry and doesn’t do it justice, but aren’t the head feathers just stunning? duck 2

These creatures remind me, just as Pundit so often does, that it’s always worth it to go outside into the magnificence that surrounds us; and it’s always worth it to play.

catch the falling snow

Pushing Update 4: Hide and Seek

January 28th, 2013 | Posted by sweet in Natural Dog Training | Nature - (6 Comments)

The East Coast has had a cold snap, even bringing a tiny bit of snow to Washington, D.C. And Cholula and I have been out in the cold, pushing, keeping my New Year’s resolution. I’ve been mixing it up a bit, trying to increase the intensity of Cholula’s pushing. These are the events that successfully increased the intensity of Cholula’s push:

• A rat ran across the sidewalk in front of us late at night. When it disappeared, I pinched Cholula and she whipped eagerly around and pushed with at least some of the intensity she’d been sending the rat.

cholu on top of her nail trimming wall compressed • A nail trimming: inspired by natural dog trainer Kevin Behan’s recent blog post, in which he describes using a nail trimming to bring out the energy in a repressed (and therefore problem) dog, I gave her nails a long-overdue trim. To trim Cholula’s nails, I take her to a wall at the park where I can sort of copy Kevin’s wall method. (For more on Kevin’s method for using a wall exercise to trim a dog’s nails without trauma, see Cholula Meets Kevin Behan—Post #1-the Nail Trimming from my and Cholula’s visit with Kevin in Vermont (complete with video). The photo at the left shows Cholula standing at the spot where I trim her nails. Since I’m hardly taller than Cholula when she is on her hind legs, I have found that the best way for me to copy Kevin’s wall climbing challenge is for me to stand on the bench, giving me height over Cholula, while I pull her up the wall, simultaneously making it more challenging for her to get there. I can’t do it nearly as well as Kevin (see above link to my previous post), but nevertheless, in the excitement of making it to the wall, Cholula lets me trim her nails. By myself, with no restraint–in complete contrast to my horrific two other nail trimming experiences with Cholula detailed in the above link, where it took several people to hold down a wild, thrashing, beast in order to trim Cholula’s nails. This time, I brought my fanny pack and food, and immediately after the nail trim had her jump down and push. Sure enough, she pushed with extra excitement, happiness, and vigor.

M in a tree 2 compressed• Hide and seek. Kevin has recommended playing hide and seek with your dog in the woods in many contexts. The first time I tried it, I had Pundit with me, and since Pundit never leaves my side when we are outside, especially if I’m holding treats, his butt was sticking out of every tree I hid behind, but that didn’t seem to reduce Cholula’s excitement over finding me and pushing. It worked so well I went back a couple of days later with no Pundit, a hungry Cholula, and my son. We hid. Cholula found. She loved it! We loved it. And while M was disappointed that Cholula wouldn’t seek him separate from me—I’m not sure how to get her to see him as the prey to find—he had as much fun being out in the woods and looking for places to hide as Cholula did trying to find us. At one point, a massive, muscular dog whose bottom teeth stuck past her lips as she ran intimidated M, and he cried and backed up, which made the dog hone in on him with scary excitement. Cholula flew down the path to us and saved the day—not by attacking the dog but by turning herself into an irresistible prey dog, by racing towards the dog with a puppy zippy gait that made the dog chase her instead of my son. And then later it happened again, and Cholula did the same thing. I never know quite what to make of Cholula’s take on our kids. She has always been completely gentle with them, and yet this gentles is combined with a quietly insistent avoidance of too much interaction with them. Although she’ll stay on her couch if I sit on it, she usually jumps down if one of the kids gets on. And although she’ll sneak on my bed when I’m not around, she will never, ever, jump on any of the kids’ beds, even they are not there, even if we try to get her to do it. And one of the reasons I’ve been thinking of getting a third dog is that she won’t play with them (eg. My inability to get her to seek M). However, when M was emitting cries of fear at this big hulking dog threatening to run him down, Cholula came through. She usually won’t ever try to get a dog to chase her, and so I interpret her brief transformation into an irresistible object of attraction to that big dog as a selfless act to protect the family. Is this possible? What do you think? And how crazy an idea do you think it is to get a third, playful dog to play with the kids and hopefully bring out the play in Cholula?

Here are some other hiding spots we found:

Behind the roots of an uprooted tree

Behind the roots of an uprooted tree

Inside a hollow tree trunk

Inside a hollow tree trunk

Behind some fallen trees that make a bridge

Behind the bridge of some fallen trees

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Blossoms: Sow Thistle (?) October 17, 2012

October 17th, 2012 | Posted by sweet in D.C. Flowers | Nature - (0 Comments)

I think this might be a sow thistle, but sow thistles are usually yellow, so maybe it is something else. Maybe it is a type of dandelion. If anyone knows, please tell. It was growing in a field in Maine. Clearly a weed, and oh, so pretty.

Thursday Inspiration: Dad

October 4th, 2012 | Posted by sweet in Nature - (1 Comments)

This week is my Dad’s 77th birthday. Thus, this Thursday inspiration.

Sometimes, my Dad is the slowest person I know. My sister and I burst out laughing when my mother told us that on their more recent tour-group travels, everyone else in the group was invariably waiting on the tour bus while my father finished looking at the art works in the museum, or the ancient ruins, or the mountains at a scenic overlook. We remember too well being stuck in the car or walking behind him in various nature preserves while my father stared raptly through the binoculars at a bird on a far away branch. At the time it seemed absurd. We wanted to get back to the hotel, to a pool, and snacks, and t.v. Now I wish I had his patience, his ability to take the time to absorb beauty. It is a gift, something for the rest of us to cultivate as best we can.

My Dad is also one of the most active people I know. Whenever he hears about something to go see –an eclipse, a fallen tree, a new park, a new exhibit, a parade– he goes. Once he brought back an alligator skull from a work trip to Florida. “How did you get that?” I asked. “Well, I had a couple of hours between meetings, so I went for a walk along a canal behind the hotel. I got a little lost and went father than I meant to, and I saw some bones sticking out of the mud, so I scraped away the mud and found this amazing skull. Then I had rush out of the canal and I wans’t sure where I was. Thank goodness a cab came by or I never would have made it to my next meeting.” How many of us, with a couple of hours between work meetings in a strange locale, with a nice hotel room and t.v. waiting, would find our way to a deserted canal path on which there just might be a alligator skull? And yet which is the hour better spent? It is an inspiration.

He is a hobbyist and as I get older, the more of his old hobbies I find I take up. Photography, aquariums, the treasures of the ocean-sea glass or shells. I don’t play bridge. I don’t race sailboats. I don’t have any cacti–but ask me in 10 years. As well as passing on full-fledged hobbies, he brought me into some of their beginnings. We windsurfed together when hardly anyone did. I dabbled in windsurfing over the years while my father ranked in eastern championships for his age group (getting old can be advantageous). The two of us took our first scuba diving course together. I was in high school and didn’t follow up with it much. He dove in many of the beautiful dive spots of the world. While I’m completely at peace with the tiny amount of scuba diving I’ve done, I’ll always remember driving out to the suburbs of D.C. as a 10th grader to sit at the bottom of a pool with my Dad, practicing breathing through the contraption.

My Dad brought me and my sister into the world with him, confident that we could take the time he could to appreciate the beauty around us, even when we couldn’t fully match the depth of his absorption, and confident that we, like he, could always take the time and energy to break from our daily routines to see what there was to see. It wasn’t always easy. We didn’t always want to follow his lead. But I’m pretty sure that we were always glad that we did.

Blossoms: Early Autumn Leaves, October 2, 2012

October 2nd, 2012 | Posted by sweet in D.C. Flowers | Nature - (0 Comments)


While walking around D.C. these days, there are treasures to be found underfoot. For example, the perfection of the first orange/red maple leaves to to fall from the trees. I gave the first one I found while walking the dogs one morning last week to my three-year-old son. He put it in his backpack and, at the end of the day, he gave it to his teacher. She blushed with surprise and delight. Then, the next morning, on the same block, I found another. This small maple tree, bestowing its bounty slowly, giving us time to appreciate the transformation.

Later, along Rock Creek, I saw the small indentation in the rock that had come to hold water, which in turn had caught three falling leaves. Such gifts are everywhere these days.

Taking Flight in Othello

April 16th, 2012 | Posted by sweet in Nature | Poetry | Travel - (0 Comments)


While we were in Eastern Washington state to visit my father-in-law, we went to Othello to see the Sandhill cranes, which stop there every year in late March on their way from Texas to Alaska.


We found them, hundreds of them, in and above a cornfield off the highway, along with geese and a huge flock of little black birds. The field was fenced off from us, but we stepped out of our rented Minivan into the rain to watch them.
On the ground, these hundreds of birds, at least three different species, created a tremendous cacophany. But when they took flight, they soared, shape shifters in the air, seeming to mimic and re-mimic the mountains behind them.These birds, so loud on the ground among the dry corn husks, irritated, chatty, frantic, seemed in the air to have no trouble forming and reforming their lines, working within the air space, rising and then settling again.
The cranes fly from Texas to Alaska, and then back again, every year. We stepped out of our minivan to watch them.
Simultaneously many birds and one bird, they soared. These four seem to inhabit the position of the bird in front of them in the space just left, as if the image could be of one bird over time.
Not touching, in the air they communicate through sound, vision, and motion,
creating, breaking, and re-creating different alignments that serve their purpose.
Sometimes they floated in pure, effortless motion, at one with the air, the mountains, the fields, their hollow dinosaur bones exquisitely perfect for their mission, to take this long journey and to raise chicks who in turn will take this long journey. They live to move. They move to live.
How do they know where to go? How do they get there?

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Bad Samaritan (how we almost ended up with another dog)

November 13th, 2011 | Posted by sweet in D.C. Life | Dog Days | Natural Dog Training | Nature - (0 Comments)

Last weekend my cousin was in town, and we had dinner plans with my parents, but in spite of the fact that it had taken us a long time to get out of the house after all the afternoon naps, I wanted to take my cousin and the kids to the park for a brief walk along the creek in the early evening light with the leaves at peak color, and so I pulled into the parking lot planning to hustle everyone out and down along the path.

By the time I got the kids out of the car, my husband was holding onto a strange dog’s leash, deep in conversation with a woman I’d never seen before. The dog, a burly, broad shouldered, sway-backed lab mix with a brilliant blue black coat and a broad, snubbed forehead and snout, was wagging its tail as my husband coaxed it towards him. I did not immediately go over. I wanted to get our walk in and was hoping my husband would conclude whatever this was and come towards us. But he didn’t.

It turned out that the woman had turned to him in tears as soon as he got out of the car—offered to give him her dog—“DO YOU WANT THIS DOG?”—and told him she’d been trying unsuccessfully to get her dog back in the car after a walk—for an hour and a half!!!

Being the natural good Samaritan that he is, he was giving it a valiant try. He suggested that the woman get in the car and start it, thinking that the revving of the car engine would convince the dog it was time to go. The woman backed her car up slightly and my husband coaxed the dog towards the car and almost got it to jump in when the dog balked, utterly refusing to move forward. Clearly, at that moment, it had decided it would rather lead the nomadic life we were apparently offering it than get in the car with its owner.

The woman got out of her car and when my husband asked, assured us the dog would not bite—she said it had never bitten anyone before—and so my husband tugged harder, but the dog was big enough and low enough to the ground that when it set its shoulders and dug in, it couldn’t be dragged.

Reluctantly, after much badgering by my husband about how here was my chance to show off all my dog training practice for a practical result–more practical to his mind than finally getting Cholula to play tug of war –I left my cousin and kids and my plans for a quick walk along the creek and came over. (My husband claims I was as reluctant to offer up my dog training assistance as the dog was to get in the car.) The woman had some kibble she’d been trying to tempt the dog with, so I took a handful and got the dog to follow me as I backed up towards the car, doing my best to entice it with a prey-like manner as I waved the kibble for added motivation–and indeed, the dog came forward as I backed up as if indeed I was exerting a magnetic pull that might overcome the fear of the car until–just as for my husband—the dog got within a foot of the car and balked.  This time, though, my husband lifted the dog up from behind just at that moment and shoved it into the car. Whereupon I reached in and gave it the kibble.  It ate happily, as if all the trouble had been for nothing.  

The woman was very grateful. I recommended she look up natural dog training on the Internet, and she drove off with her dog.  I hope they are working things out.  And we went up along the creek after all, a little ways.

Camp Slugabed, Day 5

July 21st, 2011 | Posted by sweet in Nature - (0 Comments)

Buy them water shoes,
And take them to a creek
Where they can splash,
Rock hop,
Climb,
And cross.
Let them be explorers,
The creek a path
They cannot lose.
Let them help each other,
Rather than looking to you.

We parked at the Tilden Street parking lot
In Rock Creek Park
And hiked along a feeder creek.

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Camp Slugabed, Day 4

July 19th, 2011 | Posted by sweet in Nature - (0 Comments)

Take them to an urban garden,
Preferably one that is old, with surprises hidden along narrow paths.
We went to the Bishop’s Garden, tucked below the National Cathedral.
They walked along the stones I’d tripped over as a child
Were enchanted by the same secret fountains,
burbling over the same mossy basins.
They played that they were singing princesses in the old stone gazebo
I’d played in with my friends when I was young.
The sun was bright,
The roses fragrant,
The stones cool,
The gazebo shaded.
The gulf between my youth
And theirs
Vanished.

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Camp Slugabed, Day 3

July 12th, 2011 | Posted by sweet in Nature - (0 Comments)

Take them on a hike,
And let them lead.
We brought a friend along
And left little brother at home.
We drove up the Clara Barton Parkway
And parked in the Angler’s Inn Parking Lot
On the Canal Towpath, named for the restaurant
across the street.

We went on a good hike for young kids—
Heading up the canal towpath until we reached Widewater,
Where the canal opens into a lake, marked by small rocky islands.
Then we turned right, into the woods on a blue marked trail, the Billy Goat trail.
It travels up and down ravines, along an inlet of the Potomac, up again
over steep-but-not-too-steep rocks, and then leads to a high rocky place that
Opens startlingly to the rapids of the full Potomac River.
We stopped there, made that our destination, and turned back,
Although the path continues, steeper and rockier, with increasingly beautiful views, up the Potomac Gorge almost to Great Falls.
(that part is for when they get a little older).

This is what they found:

An elongated yellow and black spotted wasp (according to my biologist friends, most likely a Megarhyssa. The long pointy spike on its back end is not a crazy-long-hard-to-maneuver stinger but an ovipositor, used to bore into dead wood and then deposit an egg on beetle larva that have, in turn, been placed there by their mothers in hopes of avoiding just such predatory insects like these.)
A butterfly wing, lying abandoned on the towpath.
Freshwater clams
Fish, darting shadowy along the canal and the shallow inlet
A great blue heron
Spiral shells
Two toads
A millipede
A deer
Water turtles.

They touched things I wouldn’t touch:
The millipede (which pooped on S)
A toad
They paused for longer than I would have paused,
And, trained by their school on how to hunt for insects,
Let other families with children race past.
They abandoned lunch to
Sift through the cool shallow water along the inlet of the Potomac
For small shells, empty of animals,
Perfect spirals,
Perfect treasure.
They challenged each other up rocks
And helped each other down them.
They skinned knees,
Got hot and dirty,
And then wet and cool
In water of questionable cleanliness.
We were next to the city,
But for a while, no longer of it.
It was good to get out of the city.

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