By now you’ve heard from many midwesterners about the glorious sunshiney day that was yesterday. The sun, the blue blue sky, the warmth, the breeze….there are not the words.
Not wanting to lose the opportunity, we took the little Chester down to the park to play. The last few times we took him were quietly stressful. He was afraid of new things, afraid of other dogs, completely without confidence. And I was at a loss to be honest. My dog park experiences are with Maddie, who is the prime protector and cannot be let off her leash or with Ghengis who viewed every human as a potential giver of treats and love and every dog as a playmate. I was not quite sure how to deal with a dog that was not only scared, but entirely without curiosity about the situation.
Dog obedience class! After 8 weeks of dog obedience class he is comfortable around other dogs, he’s curious and even willing to play a little.
We let him loose and he tried out some tentative butt sniffing and stuck close by. David ran about 50 feet away and Chester followed. We had him run back and forth between us and this aroused the attentions of other dogs. They came to investigate and there was another round of butt sniffing, less tentatively this time. He soon learned that unlike the dogs in the barn from where he was rescued, most dogs don’t want to kick your little puppy ass and steal your food, they just want to play.
The dog park is huge, a giant expanse of trees, hills, marsh and clear grass. Dogs in their various groups here and there. We walked from group to group (including the Pug Army! There were only 4 last night, but they have up to 8 or 10 pugs on some nights. a gasping mass of fat pugginess!). At one point David took off like a shot, running down the hill and into the trees with Chester hot on his trail.
And I gasped, and my heart hurt a little, and my eyes welled up.
One of the things I adored about David when we first started dating was how much he like Ghengis. How he would play Ghengis into exhaustion, run and chase with him. At the dog park they would do this, take off and run like the wind through the park. I loved watching this, I couldn’t help but smile to see the man and the dog that I loved so much together having so much fun. Briefly, it was painful to not see my little fella out there. David reminded, quite correctly, not to forget Chester. He was right, I needed to focus on what I had, not what I lost. We ran and played and practiced his dog obedience skillz and it was all good.
If you click here you can see Ghengis playing at the dog park in all his happy glory. Sorry about the quality, I’m not so great with the movie making. It’s just a very short movie to make loading easier.
Later there will be movies of Chester and Maddie and I will remember to celebrate what I have because what I have is pretty damned good.

I always do this. Someone asks about the dogs, or makes mention of them or whatever and I pull up the dog photo album (link on the right…see…over there). Then I go clicking through, smiling and laughing at the photos, remembering all my happy dog times.
And then of course it hits me that I don’t have Ghengis anymore. He is gone. I look at photo after photo of him and it becomes so very painful. It’s raw and heavy and bittersweet. Still after all these months I weep for the loss of my dog.
This is the photo that will be placed on Ghengis’ box when it is completed

If I believed in a heaven and an afterlife, this is what I imagine it is like for him.

On Saturday I bundled up my little tiny box of Ghengis and his collar and his stinky dinosaurs and David and Chester and I headed over to Dena and Levi’s for the afternoon.
Levi is making the box that will hold Ghengis’ ashes. To be honest, he is the only person I trust to do the job. I’ve seen his work and not only does he have mad carpentry skills, but our sense of taste and aesthetic is very similar. I also know that he is one of the few people who can truly comperehend what this means to me. Dena and Levi lost their beloved Bela in December. It’s been a hard year for pet owners. Many tears were shed that afternoon.
Right foot. Left foot. The earth keeps turning and you find you are still walking. The main point of the visit was to get Chester over to play with Milo. Chester, being not very well socialized before I got him, needs to work on his intercanine skills a bit. He’s great with people, he loves people, he just doesn’t care for other dogs.
That afternoon I got to see the actual extent of my dog’s OCD problems. There was treasure EVERYWHERE!! Everywhere! The entire living room was covered in toys that no one was bothering to hid. He was beside himself, what the hell was going on in this place that toys were just laying out here and there, squeaky pork chops, rawhides, fuzzy hedgehogs!
His first order of business was to collect everything and hide it…but where. He ran here and there with Milo perplexedly following him. He tried to hide the rawhides but every time he turned around, there was Milo watching him, seeing exactly where he put it.
Time for a different plan. This plan had him collecting every toy and treat he could find and depositing them under my chair. This is good. Everything is collected and in one place and certainly the fatty that feeds him and protects him is going to extend her umbrella of protection to the treasures he just found.
Except the fatty don’t care so much and would probably prefer that Chester not be so impolite when he is a doggy guest at another doggy’s house.
He also got to play a bit with teeny tiny Doti, the new puppy. Doti is a lovely, roundy, 6 week old American Bulldog. She’s completely deaf and that means that she can sleep through any chester related catastrophe. Good for her.
Chester then got to spend the evening at Petsmart where he got treats and stuffed toys and rope toys and whatnot. Wembley the Stuffed Whale lasted all of 20 hours! I need to find a cheaper source of stuffed toys for him.

Come to my house and sit still. Let the quiet of the morning wash over you. Completely relax.
Once you are relaxed start to look around. Don’t look with any intensity, just glance from once spot to another. Eventually, like those magic eye posters, they will come into focus. Little bits of orangish brown poking out here and there. You’ll realize their everywhere.
They are treasure. Little doggie treasure. Chester maniacally hides about 50% of his dog biscuits and all of the dog biscuits that Maddie doesn’t eat. Sometimes you’ll look over and see him snuffling in a corner, his demeanor frantic. His head will pop up and he’ll have a dog biscuit dangling out. He’s ‘dug’ one up and is trying to find a new place for it. Sometimes, late in the evening, he’ll dig one up and settle in to eat it.
He’s an industrious little guy. My job now is to find a way to focus this industriousness so he feels like he is working and does not become completely neurotic about it. Anyone know how to make a rat terrier feel like he is working (besides seeding the house with live rats for him to catch)?
PS this week the dogs are officially known as Duke Chester III of Nokomia and The Right and Good Princess Maddie of the Boombalatties.