Tag: Airedale

My barketing team, yes, barketing!

I have a barketing team, yes a barketing team. I have a chief barketing officer and a vp of barketing. The barketing team has many opinions, they usually love to have their opinion heard during zoom meetings when I have to speak or when I am on the phone for any reason, As I mentioned before they are very opinionated.

Luckily they are cute, so on internal zoom meetings people love to see them. The problem is when it’s not internal  or I am on the phone. My home office is in the family room. This is where I was relegated to when everyone had to work from home, I love my home office. It is warm , has great acoustics and is close to the coffee machine. It is also where the barketing team sleeps, eats and loves to bark.

I have to say that they are a great barketing team, they listen to my ideas,don’t interrupt me when I talk and are great one sided sound boards and even better lunchtime walking partners.

However cute they are, they have demanding compensation requests- scratchies, snackies and walks. Not as demanding as hi tech cafeteria and gym benefits but quite demanding. As I am writing this  there are loud protests from the barking team, so I shall go answer them before the union rep arrives.

When you finally have weather

We have been having some weird weather in california lately, we actually are experiencing a winter. I know, shocking! I guess this is payback for the great weather we had on Christmas day when the rest of the country was freezing. I knew  posting those short sleeve pictures will come back to haunt us.

Yes, we need the rain as we have had a drought for the last couple of years. But as we were on  day10th of the rain with no end in sight it really was starting to affect my doggy and me. I am originally from a country with cold winters and extremely hot and humid summers, so living in California for me is great. It’s either t-shirt weather or t -shirt with a cardigan weather. I do have some rain coats but their primary purpose is to look cute.

I was starting to get Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), this is common in places where sunlight is limited, places with real winter and not so much in California where we have lots and lots of sun and natural vitamin D. Even if it was real or perceived, so much rain and clouds is not good for my mental health plus I really hate being cold.

I keep thinking about Dr Suess -The cat in the hat. I wonder if he had the same dreary days that we were having. The sun does not shine and it’s definitely too wet to play, but as opposed to him I am not writing a book about it, I am just complaining about the rain!

We got sun yesterday and the next couple of days as well, so for now I am just going to enjoy it!

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Beach walks

My husband loves long walks on the beach, yeap really. I know it sounds like a dating app description but he really does  love long walks and he really loves the beach. Luckily for him we are 15 minutes drive to the beach and a 35 minute bike ride (bike ride timing is by his account, definitely not mine). I don’t love long walks on the beach, I just like them. In our family group chat there will be a once a week question from him -anyone down for a beach walk? Every once in a while someone appeases him and joins him.

If you are a romantic, you could ask why don’t you join him? Truthfully, I do enjoy walking especially since our dog loves these walks. The issue is that he is tall with long legs and I am what you consider vertically challenged. Every step he makes is 3,4 steps that I make so even if he tries to walk slowly I still need to catch up. And really that means I have to run. Unfortunately for him I really hate running. Hate it so much that when I broke my foot last year I was happy that my Dr. did not allow me to run. This is funny because I was never a runner.

So how did we solve his long walks on the beach issue? I got him a girlfriend, a lovely 65lb Airedale. Big brown eyes and  loves walks. He has to hold her leash when we walk as this slows him down to do the dog sniffies and this slows him down  enough for me to be able to keep pace and actually  enjoy the walk instead of constantly feeling like I am running a marathon.

The difference of perspective

My husband recently discovered that our dog knows how to get water from the fridge, the rest of us knew that she could do it at 5 months old so when he came to  tell us we all shrugged our shoulders and said what else is new.

Our dog is wicked smart from a breed of self sufficient and smart dogs that was used during world war one to send messages, the breed used to be police dogs as well, but they are very independent and don’t always or really rarely listen unless they want to.

But I digress, my husband was very shocked that she can do this, while we all knew about this for 5 years, and started getting very worried about all the other stuff she knows to do and how much damage she can do. The rest  of us looked at him and smiled, not because we think her eating chairs is funny or because she knows how to use a fridge, but we saw this as a sign of intelligence and were trying to figure out – how can we use her abilities for the good while my husband only saw the negative aspects of her capability and all this is a matter of perspective.

Thoughts during walks 10/3/22

I live in a suburban neighborhood, families, kids walking to school or riding their bikes, dogs being walked everywhere. We have big dog poop trash cans and dog bag dispensers everywhere. There are so many dispensers that you can almost always find a bag. There are some instances that the dispenser is empty for some reason or another but they are really far between. In our many years here I think this happened only twice.

We have a neighbor who walks her dog every morning and passes by my house on the way. I know this for several reasons, my dog really hates her dog, no rhyme or reason she just hates that dog so when they pass my chief barking officer starts. If for some reason my chief barking officer forgot to bark I still know when she  passed by as she always carries a gazillion dog poop bags and leaves them on her trail like  Hansel and Gretel leaving bread crumbs so they can be found. I never understood people who carry that many bags or feel the need to grab all the  bags in the dispenser. Even on any of my dogs’ bad days there really was no need for more than 4 bags max, you can also buy bags on Amazon, pretty cheap as well. I bought a huge box 4 years ago for probably 10 dollars that I still have.

Going  back to the dog poop bag situation and knowing very well that I am weird, everytime I see these bags all over the path we take on our walks I wonder- why have so many bags if you leave them all over the place? Or better yet, what is the need to grab so many bags out of the dispenser when there are dispensers everywhere?  Does the woman have bag anxiety?

 Most days I just pick up the bags that she leaves all over the place and just put them in my pocket without even realizing it (thank god for yoga pants with side pockets), today i actually felt good about the bags all over the sidewalks, I haven’t seen the dog’s owner for several days and didn’t realize that , I know she lives somewhere in the neighborhood but not exactly where, but  this way i knew she was ok. Yes, we do  have a neighborhood busybody who knows everyone and everything and I will catch her later to see if everything is ok  and if our bag lady needs anything.