Winter wet and windy

It’s the Fourth of July. Today, all over America, people are preparing picnics and cookouts, planning trips to the park or the beach, and looking forward to firework displays. Tomorrow they will b nursing sunburns and hangovers, traditional legacies of America’s celebration of her independence from Britain more than 200 years past.

It is almost 10 in the morning here in Cape Town and it is the dead of winter. The rain alternates between downpour and deluge and, with no central heating, the doggies and I are tucked up in the bed with the mattress pad heater beneath us and a duvet topped by a boutis quilt, weighty and warm, on top of us.

The light is dim, more like immediate post-dawn than approaching noon, and the best news is the infamous Cape Doctor…that stiff and bracing wind so characteristic of these parts…has not decided to pay us a visit concurrent with the monsoon. I’ve never been fond of extreme weather, and one form or another at any given time is all my nerve will take with equanimity. I especially dislike heavy winds and coupling them with a torrential rain is my particular idea of hell.

But, ever the seeker of the silver lining, I will say this for today’s dim and soggy state: the wind is tolerable, there is no thunder, no lightning, and if I go outside for a bit of a stroll, I won’t get sunburned, only damp…and between the clothes dryer and a cupboard full of fat, fluffy towels, that is quickly and easily remedied…and without lasting ill effect.

But the doggies seem to have the right of it, tucked up warmly in the bed, snoozing the foul weather away. Perhaps I should join them…

Winter mornings

A few years back, when Nash was our only dog, we fretted what to do for him on rainy days when we were out. We were living in the cottage when had only a narrow strip of pavement for a back garden, and no shelter whatsoever. We settled on a little doghouse made of a resin-like plastic, reasoning that while it wasn’t the Ritz (as Nash seemed to view the inside of the cottage), it was a roof over his shaggy little head and shelter from the brisk wind.

Nash, of course, disagreed, He determinedly refused to consider the structure, preferring to stand pathetically at the back door, dripping wet, those big brown eyes silently pleading for us to let his shivering little dog body into the warmth of the house. It worked every time and the doghouse because one of this bits of flotsam that we all accumulate until we eventually gave it away and it became the white elephant of another person who had a similar back garden…and a similarly inclined dog.

We moved to this house three years ago and put a bed on the tiled, covered, lighted patio for Nash. Now, you must understand, Nash (and all additional doggies) sleep inside the house at night during cool weather, but when we go out, we feel obliged to provide a comfortable, sheltered place for him to rest until we get home. He took to that little basket and pad and made it his own until Candy joined the family and promptly chewed it to bits.

Subsequently, a couple of old carpets served as an insulation against the cold ceramic tile floor and the dogs seemed happy enough with their indoor and outdoor beds until Trinny came along. The other dogs, being Maltese, are fluffy little creatures that need monthly grooming and haircuts. Top their natural fuzz with a fleecy little jersey, and they stay warm and happy on all but the coldest days. Trinny, on the other hand, is a long-legged fox terrier with a coarse, close coat and no winter undergrowth. When the weather turns mild, Trinny quakes like an aspen and clatters those big teeth of hers resoundingly. A jersey helped, but didn’t solve the problem, so we looked into the matter of a new dog bed.

We scouted around and settled on a large hard-plastic bed that was vented at the bottom and had a rim around the base to keep the bed up off the ground. This would prevent cold from so easily leaking through the base of the bed and, if wind blew rain onto the patio floor, would keep the bed dry. With an assortment of old blankets, pillows and mats, along with each other for body heat, we expected them to make a little dogpile for warmth and live happily ever after.

Have you ever considered how amazing it is that these little creatures whom we presume to be so much less intelligent than we are, stymie us at every possible turn? The bed was plenty big for Trinny and the Maltese Mafia, but they didn’t see it that way. Night after night either Hubby or I would have to go out onto the patio and scold the growling little white thugs into letting Trinny into it. And heaven forfend she should have to get up in the night and make her way out to the doggie loo…Nash and Candy would rearrange themselves to take up all the space in the bed and warn off poor Trinny when she got back from answering nature’s call and she, not a stupid old girl, would begin a rather ritualized bark that would not only awaken us from a sound sleep and notify us of her predicament and her need for our intervention. The big doggie bed, as a means of canine social engineering and shared warmth, was a bust.

Winter is fast approaching and not only are the nights cold, the days are beginning to have a decided nip to them. Trinny comes to the kitchen door, clattering her teeth and trembling pathetically in an attempt to gain admittance to the doggie bed in the cubby in our bathroom, but we want the dogs outside during the day. So, yesterday, we made another trip to the pet store, looking for an “igloo” style dog house that might do a better job of retaining doggie body heat during the colder days and evenings. Nash, we knew, would probably turn up his little nose at such a structure, since he had adamantly refused to use the original dog house, but maybe Trinny would find a measure of comfort there.

But there were no igloos that would suit our purposes and disheartened, we started to leave. Out of the corner of my eye, however, high up on an overhead shelf, I spotted some objects that looked rather like denim cocoons. Shaped rather like WWII Quonset huts made of channel-stitched and fluff-filled denim, they had a circular doorway and a padded floor and looked to be just about the size of the travel kennel that our groomer uses to transport the furbabies. It took only a quick examination to determine that these might just be the answer.

Sure enough, Trinny took to it like a duck to water. After I tossed in a smelly little rug from the old doggie bed and a treat, she clambered in, dragging her long legs behind her, and curled up for a snooze. When she pokes her head out to see what’s going on she looks rather like a turtle with a blue denim shell, but she’s obviously quite pleased with her cocoon and, most importantly, isn’t shivering every time I see her.

The Maltese Mafia, however, are rather a different kettle of fish. Candy dislikes the thing intensely and, rather than crawl inside to escape the chill, climbs on top of the thing, collapsing it into a close facsimile of a regular soft-sided dog bed. Nash is not so reluctant to climb in and take a snooze, but he’s not exactly thrilled when Candy climbs on top while he is inside and collapses the whole thing on top of him.

The chill of early morning, however, has a way of overcoming even the strongest resistance. We let the babies outside at about 6 in the morning to do their doggie business, after which they usually hop into the big doggie bed together for another snooze. But now the mornings have a deep chill to them and the open bed has been stored until the warm mornings of summer return. And today, despite her reluctance, the morning cold drove Candy into one of the cocoons to snuggle up with Nash, and this was the scene on the patio as hubby left for work this morning:

Old dogs, new tricks, and hadeda birds

I usually park in the drive way, so the doggies don’t realize I have arrived home from a jaunt until they hear the garage door motor grind to life. And, ordinarily, they wait until they actually see me before they start their chorus of greetings. It was with great surprise…and a secret soupçon of pleasure…that I heard their little barky voices as soon as the garage door began its torturous journey upwards.

My joy, however, was short-lived. I stepped out onto the patio not to the expected milling of little doggie bodies milling about my ankles, but to the sight of all three of them milling about a hadeda bird they had managed to surround on top of the pool cover!

I enticed them away with the magic word. “Goodies!” I warbled. “Who wants a goodie?”

Six big brown eyes turned instantly in my direction, twelve little doggie legs churned madly off the pool cover and onto the patio, all making an eager beeline directly in my direction. The bird staggered around the patio cover for a few moments, then folded her ruffled wing feathers neatly against her body and then slowly, with great dignity, stalked her way off the pool cover, onto the lawn, and around the corner of the house where the little pack of goodie-snarfing wolf-descendants could no long see her.

Biggie-dog, the Foxy, had a harder time relinquishing her hunting instincts than the little white Maltese fluff balls. She dithered a couple of times at the ironwork that surrounds the patio, taking a step back towards the pool, but the lure of goodies is strong. She could see me standing at the kitchen door, my customary spot for dispensing dog treats, where the other two little miscreants were already bouncing up and down, loudly demanding their promised boon. Eventually the certainty of the treat won out over the potential fun of continuing to torment the bird and she, too, squeezed herself between the iron bars and presented herself at the kitchen door for the dog biscuit.

Treats in hand, I led the dogs through the house and out into the front courtyard and, once they were unable to return to the back garden and resume harassing the bird, gave them the promised treats. Checking through my bedroom window a few minutes later, I could see the bird indignantly striding back and forth across the lawn, occasionally stopping to twitch a ruffled feather into place with her long dark beak, her continued aggravation obvious. It wasn’t until she considered herself sufficiently presentable to rejoin her brethren that she powerfully flapped those long wings and, with a raucous cry, lifted off for less dangerous pastures.

Biggie-dog has been having difficulty integrating with the others and we have begun to grow concerned. At 14, she’s always been an “only dog,” and while she is friendly to other dogs, really has had no real experience in the group interactions and sharing that is part of being a multi-dog household. We do not allow our dogs to fight…aggression between them is swiftly and soundly discouraged…but you cannot force acceptance on them. At night, when there is just one large bed for the three of them, Biggie-dog often barks for us to come out and force the other two to let her into the bed, and if she gets up in the night for a drink of water or a pee break, the other two will spread out and growl at her on her return, prompting her to make that single yark, repeated incessantly, that brings us out to silence the growls from the Maltese Mafia.

But yesterday I saw them working together in a remarkably well orchestrated show of cooperation, as if their differences had been laid aside in order to pursue a common goal. Old dogs can learn new tricks after all!