As Constant Reader has already seen in earlier blogs, I relatively recently adopted a completely adorable cocker/poodle mix from the local humane shelter. He stole my heart the minute I laid eyes on him and is still absolutely the object of my affection. He’s gained several pounds (from a nearly starved dog to a little round chunk, actually) and has easily settled in with my elderly dog and my adolescent cat. He is joyful, energetic and adoring, the happiest of happy dogs.

I, however, am not the happiest of happy dog wranglers. He doesn’t have the very best manners and insists on jumping up on visitors. Since the farm I live on has a U-pick operation and, therefore, lots of visitors, CP needs to learn to keep his paws to himself.

But the worst thing he does is get to my front door, get just about ready to come in the house, then look at me with complete joy and mischief in his eyes and gallop away. He wants to play, thanks. He doesn’t quite agree with the go-inside-now plan. To my enormous chagrin, this behavior most often happens when I am dressed and ready to drive into town to my job. So I am faced with two options: Chase him down or just let him stay outside all day and hope my neighbors will take pity on me and toss him in the house if they can lasso him once he’s worn himself out. Either way, I end up late for work.

So what I would love to know from our wonderful readers – so many of whom are dyed-in-the-wool dog people – is what I can do to break this bad behavior and get him to come when I call? The not-jumping-up-on-people thing would earn bonus points.

Help!!!!

I look forward to the weekend because I get to play. Not that we don't have plenty of fun at our actual weekday, paying gig – putting out GRIT and our other magazines – and I am eternally grateful for work I love that pays the bills. But weekend play is different. For one thing, I get to play music – at a couple of jam sessions that have been going on for years, and also in practice with my band, which has also been going on for years.

But my best weekend time is getting to play with my Little Guys, which these days include Bob Dog (above), Cutie-Patootie (CP, below) and the Ace of Kittens. I never intentionally set out to have an all-male pet herd, but right now, I'm surrounded by boy-ohs.

It's a bit annoying that they don't have the distinction "weekend" and insist that 5:30 a.m. is still a great time to get me out of the sack. I'm often able to bribe them with an early morning feeding and get an extra hour or so of shut-eye, but basically, with the boys, the day starts early.

And once I've had coffee, their noses take us all for a walk. They HAVE to get out and smell the world, in vivid detail, and for some reason, it all goes better with me walking along beside them. I sometimes throw them out the front door and growl, like a character from Dickens, "PLAY, dammit," but they just circle the door hopefully until I start putting on my outside shoes and getting my jacket. Then we're off and running.

This morning the weather was chilly but delightful, and they coaxed me into a walk around the entire perimeter of the place, which worked out to about 40 minutes at a good clip. When we got back, I gave them rawhide chews, which CP is much more interested in having me throw than in him actually chewing. So we played toss and find for several minutes. Then the cat decided that he needed to jump in the middle of things and he and CP went at it for a while, tearing around the house in hot pursuit of each other. I sat beside Bob Dog, who is very elderly and can neither see nor hear very well. Everything comes as a surprise to him these days, and a bullet-train encounter with a cat and a 30 lb. cockerdoodle is just no fun for anyone. So I took the opportunity to sit and brush him and deflect the worst of the rambunctiousness, and we had a nice visit while they went at it.

I ended up spending nearly two hours playing with the boys, including making their food for the week. I suppose some people might think all this is time wasted. But on several occasions during our morning romp, they made me laugh out loud, and during the whole time, I didn't think about bailouts or bombardments or investments gone bad. And that's very, very good.

On my way to work Friday, I found another sweet dog by the side of the road (a few weeks ago, it was a little schnauzer mix who who ended up in a "forever home" with two of my good friends at work). This week's find didn't have such a happy ending: Someone had just put this dog (an older yellow Lab) out, apparently because she was too ill or expensive or too much of a hassle to take care of anymore. My vet said there really wasn't much that could be done for her, so we mutually agreed that euthanizing her was the only humane choice.

I wonder this morning as I remember her sweet, confused face looking up at me from that ditch, if she ever brought anyone even a fraction of the pleasure and sweetness my guys bring me on a daily basis. And I wonder how someone could repay such sweetness with such harshness.  I sure hope life is kinder to whoever left her there than they were to her.

And I am even more grateful than usual for my sweet, exuberant buddies, who always get my body moving and my heart going again.

When I first looked out at the pond the other morning, I was peeved. It looked as though packing peanuts had somehow ended up floating on the pond's surface and lodged in some of the weeds along the perimeter. Having just come through the Christmas season and wrestled with a couple of boxes full of the little styrofoam version of cockleburs, I was pre-disposed to be annoyed when I saw them. (How DO you keep them from sticking to everything, particularly fleece robes and p.j.s? I walked around looking like I was covered with carbuncles for most of Christmas morning...)

As I got closer, I saw that these weren't styrofoam at all, but little islands of ice, left in this peculiar and wonderful pattern as the pond thawed that warm Sunday morning. Even though I had a meeting in Kansas City, an hour and a half away, I knew I had to get a photo (why I don't routinely take my camera with me when I walk the animals, I can't say. Every time I forget it, I see something I wish I'd photographed). So I left Bob Dog, CP and the Ace of Kittens standing by the pond's edge wondering why The Woman had suddenly galloped away.

I shot these photos so quickly I wasn't certain what I had because CP was making motions toward wading the pond, which at that particular moment of our lives simply would not do. But yesterday when I downloaded the images from my camera, I was happy to discover I had gotten a few shots that would convey some of the wonder.

What an awesome world.