Stuff Dogs Like – Music vs. Talk Radio!

When Clover was a puppy and in the process of destroying my home piece by piece, someone at work told me that if I left the radio on for her, the music would “soothe the savage beastie.”  At that point, I decided “what the heck, it can’t hurt.” The first day, I tuned the radio to a classical music station, patted Clover on the head and went to work.  When I got home from work, I was greeted by Clover and a completely shredded telephone book.  Strike the classical music.

I moved to Country & Western.  The results with C&W netted me new holes in the drywall, and a couple of destroyed shoes.  Strike the C&W.  From there, I worked my way through the music choices, all of which provided Clover no comfort at all.  As a matter of fact, I think the music might have even spurred her on in some cases.

Then, I found Talk Radio.  I can’t remember the station that I tuned into, but this genre  seemed to help.  The sound of human voices seemed to have a positive effect on Clover.  It wasn’t a cure-all, but it helped.

Now, fast forward 8 years to Northern Virginia.  I still leave the radio on for her when I leave the house, and have it tuned to WTOP so she can listen to the weather report, Traffic on the 8′s, and stay up-to-date on Washington News and Sports.  The one and only thing I wish is that they would ditch the commercials that use the sound of fireworks in them, usually around any holiday like the 4th of July, Memorial and Labor Day.  Drives poor Clover crazy.

There are all kinds of “music for dogs” CDs out there, some of them backed by “studies” made by veterinarians, experts in dog behavior, and so on.  You can spend lots of money on music for your dog(s).  I am not saying whether they work or not.  What I am saying is you should put that Visa card back in your wallet, and put on a Talk Radio station.  Your dog(s) wont care what they’re talking about, but they may just enjoy the sound.

My younger (and only) sister was a very precocious child.  She is four years younger than me,  and she loves to remind me as often as possible that she is the “younger” sister and that I am the “older” one.

Way back in the day, as I was approaching the age of 11 or 12, my mom made a point of putting some time aside for the two of us to watch a special on PBS about pregnancy and babies.  It was an hour show, and it was all about the birds and bees.  Afterwards, my mom asked me if I had any questions, and I can’t imagine that I did.  I was probably in shock!

My sister, who was deemed too young for the content of the show was banished to the bedroom with a bribe of some Oreos.  It wasn’t until the show was over that my mom realized that Little Sister had been eavesdropping from the hallway and that she got her “birds and bees” lesson a lot earlier than my mom had intended.

A couple of weeks later, my parents had some friends over for drinks and cards.  My sister, suffering from an upset tummy is sitting on the toilet in our bathroom.  She opens the door, sticks her head out, and hollers: “Mom!  Come quickly!  I have gonorrhea!”

Everyone at the table stopped, and turned to my mother who had turned a bright shade of red.  Mom goes in to see what was wrong with Little Sister and make sure she was o.k. , and asks her where she had heard “that” word, to which my sister said that she had overheard it on the television.  At that point, my mom tried to explain the difference between gonorrhea and diarrhea!

As you can imagine, the adults at the table all had a great laugh over this.  And, 40 years later, it still makes me laugh.

My dad is one of six kids, and was born in 1927 in New York.  One of his first jobs at the very young age of 5 or 6 years was to sweep the floor of the candy store below their apartment.  You had to know my grandmother to understand the rest of this story.  She worked full-time for many years, as did my grandfather.  Her kids were often left to their own devices, and my dad says that “the best dressed kid in the family was the one that got up first.”   She could handicap a horse with her eyes closed, and she knew the season’s racing schedule by heart, but she herself would have told you about her lack of cooking skills.  She could burn water.  Grandma was no Suzie Homemaker.

My grandmother’s one claim to culinary fame was her pot roast.  My mom makes it from time-to-time, but it really is a lot of work and the onions really stink up the house.  The pot roast is always yummy, and if you didn’t know that it had ginger snaps or vinegar in it you would never know!

So.  Back to my dad (and where I’m going with this) …

I was about 10-years-old and very interested in cooking and baking.  I remember one Saturday asking my mom if I could make a cake.  She said sure, and got out a box of Duncan Hines cake mix.  My dad, sitting at the table having his coffee and reading the newspaper, was horrified.  He launched into a story about how he used to bake cookies and cakes when he was my age and he NEVER used a mix!  So, me being the brat that I was, I challenged him, “So, dad, why don’t you show us how to make a cake from scratch if you can remember how.”

My dad rose to the challenge and said, “Sure!  Why not!”  I remember my mom saying, “Great.  Just clean up the mess when you’re done.”  I asked my dad if he needed a recipe from one of mom’s books, and he said “Recipe? Now way! I remember how to do this from memory!”

My dad set out to make a complete mess of the kitchen.  He sifted flour, measured out this and that and mixed things up by hand (“The way I did it when I was a kid”).  I remember this like it was yesterday.  There was flour everywhere, egg shells on the tile countertop, and the oven heating up.  My dad greased and floured the two cake pans, filled them with a yummy chocolate batter, slapped the pans on the countertop “to get the air bubbles out of the cake,” and popped the two rounds into the oven to bake.

Hmmm.  The smell was divine.  The timer went off.  My mom and I came into the kitchen to check out dad’s cake.  He, with a big smile on his face, put on the oven mits, and reached into the oven to take out his cake pans.

Hmmm.  The look on his face!  It was as flat as his cakes!  He was horrified!  He looked at me and my mom and mumbled something about the oven, or the eggs, or the bad baking powder  … Oops!   Baking powder, you say?

That mishap occurred about 40 years ago.  That was probably one of the last things my dad ever tried to bake or cook aside from the occasional boiled hot dog.   I’m not even going to go into the time that he “baked the steaks” in the oven at 200 degrees for 4 hours or the fact that he still calls the microwave that “new fangled thing.”

These photographs were taken by my friend Danielle in or around Walla Walla, Washington this past Spring.  Danielle is a wonderful photographer, and I think she needs some encouragement to start her own photo blog.

Walla Walla Balloons by Danielle G.

This is a photo of Casey.  She grew up to be a lovely Golden Retriever.  She loved everyone, and especially anyone with a treat!  She is long gone now, but she holds a spot in the Our Family’s Pet Hall of Fame.

How much deeper would the ocean be if sponges didn’t live there?

I know with a lot of people, summer time means watermelon, but for me it means peaches.  I suppose I have a fondness for white peaches …

One summer my parents loaded my sister and me into the used early-1960′s Chrysler New Yorker that my dad had recently bought from his boss.  My dad hated that car.  He said it was ugly and that it drove like a giant boat.  This particular summer vacation, we headed from South Florida to a cabin in North Carolina which belonged to a friend of my dad’s.

I’ll never forget driving up the highway, when my sister who was about 8-years-old at the time, asked my dad “Daddy!  Is the car supposed to be making black smoke out the back?”  My dad cursed, and we ended up staying three days and nights in a Holiday Inn in Valdosta, Georgia.  This was back in the late-1960′s, and my dad tells the story about going with the local mechanic after he got off work to some juke joint to find the mechanic’s brother who had a junk yard and who might be able to supply a couple of needed parts.  My dad, however, had to wait at the bar in the old rural joint while the mechanic and his brother attended their weekly Ku Klux Klan meeting in the back room.  I think my dad won a few dollars in a dice game that night, but hearing him retell the story some 40-years later, he will tell you that he was scared to death, and couldn’t wait to put Valdosta in the rear view mirror.

While my dad was working at getting the car fixed, my mom, sister and I hung out at the wonderful swimming pool, and I even made a few dollars giving little kids swimming and diving lessons.

When the car was finally fixed, my parents reloaded us into the car and we headed toward the remainder of our vacation.  We stopped somewhere in South Carolina, and my mom bought a bushel of fresh white peaches.  Its the first time I remember ever eating a white peach.  It was one of those seminal moments!  Peaches come in white!   Who knew!

By the time we made it to the cabin, which was up a very steep and winding road, and required my dad to do some amazing maneuvers to get the car into the driveway, my sister and I had eaten about half of the peaches.  We were covered from head to toe in sticky peach juice and I thought my mom was going to kill us for eating so many of the peaches.  This transgression was completely forgotten when my mom tried to open the front door to the cabin.  The door would not budge.  It was one of the first times I ever saw my mom have a meltdown.  My dad got the door open after about 10 minutes of struggling, pulling, and swearing.   Mom’s meltdown was right up there with my dad’s when he realized the case of Carling’s Black Label Beer he had loaded into the car in Florida was almost gone, and that we were spending the rest of the week in a cabin on top of a mountain in a dry county.

So, there we all were.  My mom with a migrane and really pissed off at my father, my dad thirsty and without a beer in sight, all of our vacation money was used to purchase a gasket for a car that my dad really hated, my sister and me sharing a queen sized bed in a room with spiders on the ceiling, and a bathroom without any hot water.

Two things that saved the vacation from being a total disaster for me was the stash of really racy romantic novels I found in the bedroom closet, and the remainder of the bushel of white peaches.

Photo Courtesy of Fir0002/Flagstaffotos