Yes, it's an invasive. No, you shouldn't plant it (I didn't). I fight its incursions all summer long. But right now, when I step into the yard at night and breathe, it's the most beautiful thing in the world. And it's the right color for the season.
Right now, the redbuds are leafing out, and I won't see their mauve subtlety for another year. Soon enough the dogwoods will be finished. The forsythia have forgotten that they were ever yellow. But the azaleas are out, and the peonies are preparing their own show.
And the bridal-veil spirea is blooming.
What you see in this photo is actually a mess: unmown lawn, bed overtaken largely by vinca major (another thing you should never ever plant, though its blue flowers are pretty right now) and mondo grass, but crowned with the spill of white bloom that the spirea gives every year. There are also some bluebells prevailing over the invasives, but that bed is kind of a washout. Every year I dig up more bluebells and move them to someplace else where they might have more of a fighting chance. But right now, from a distance, the whole thing is kind of pretty.
It's Sunday, and I am making a conscious effort not to labor at anything. I am pretty tired after my exertions of yesterday, though I'm very glad I did exert myself. I have taken the shower-curtain lining out of the washing machine, where I did have to run it again with some bleach. Now, clean at last, it's hung up again where it belongs. The husband will come home to a shining clean detailed bathroom. I really need to detail the downstairs bathroom, but I tend to stay on top of the situation there a little better than upstairs, so it can wait. I'm not doing anything about it today, at any rate. I have also run the dust mop around the floors, which is as good as that's going to get at the moment. Not hauling out the vacuum cleaner today, either.
The sun is in and out, but I have hung some hand washing on the line, hoping it's not going to rain. Looks as though we might have a thunderstorm around 5, so that will give things time to dry. Dora has been outside with me and is now crashed on the daybed next to me.
It's remarkable how much calmer she is as she approaches her fifth birthday (whenever that is exactly --- sometime this spring or early summer) than she has been in the past. Dogs mature quickly in one sense. The obvious puppy stage goes fast. But in another sense they are really slow to grow up, much slower than other companion animal species. They have a long adolescence that passes by very gradual degrees. You expect the puppy energy to dissipate, and it . . . kind of does . . . but not that quickly.
Dora at 18 months, which is roughly how old she was when I got her, was kind of traumatized by several changes of home and family, but once she felt comfortable, she was . . . a lot. I mean, the reactivity aside, she was a lot in terms of her energy level, her drive, her need to be active at something. If I sat down, she was right there, pestering me to pay attention to her or amuse her. If I ignored her, she still persisted. Or she got into something. She was never really destructive, but if I didn't give her something to do, she would go looking for something to do, and often that something was not at all something I wanted her to do. But mostly she just stuck to me and drove me crazy and could not relax. Two was better than one and a half. Three was better than two. Four has been better than three.
But as we approach five, I'm finally seeing a real change. She settles more easily. She will just fall flat asleep beside me. She still has plenty of energy, but we can walk out the door without her dragging me in her eagerness to be outside. Some of this is training. I have certainly worked hard with her, with as much consistency as I can muster --- which is key. With dogs, as with children, you have to be consistent in your dealings with them if you want them to live peaceably with you.
But lately it's gotten much easier to train certain behaviors, because she is simply not as impulsive as she used to be. I have been training her to a "threshold" behavior, which just means that at the door, she sits until I release her. We had already mastered this in her crate --- she "goes to bed" on command, then will sit with the crate door open while I fetch her food. We're working on emerging more quietly from her crate, though I don't make her sit, especially in the morning when she really needs to go out. But I am teaching "wait" at the door, with "break" as a release command, with the goal of having her be reliable about not rushing out the door every time it opens.
Not that she really does this, except when we're going out together. The good thing about Dora is that generally she sticks very close to me. But it's a useful command to know and use, and I'm trying to think of ways of working it into a better routine for greeting people who come over. She's largely fine at this stage --- she does bark at people first, but the shift from red alert to where have you been all my life happens really fast. But then she wants to jump all over the person, who usually does not want to be jumped all over, so I need to work on this area of impulse control. Impulse-control training in other, somewhat related areas builds a kind of foundation for that kind of thing. I also need to train myself to have her always leashed when someone comes over, and to stand on the leash at the right moment so that she can't jump --- jumping is a persistent problem that I haven't managed to crack with great success.
Dora: mostly a very good girl these days.
Anyway, all of this seemed impossible a year or so ago. You have to get to a point where you can realistically build a skill. Sometimes that's a matter of training, but sometimes, I think, it really is a matter of maturity on the part of the dog (obviously there are human applications for this whole principle as well). We tend to focus so much on puppy training --- which obviously REALLY needs to happen, and is a boatload of work, all the time --- as though that were all the training we're ever going to do, like we go to puppy obedience class and then we're done forever. And . . . NO. With practice, some things do become more or less reflexive for the dog, but if you don't practice them all the time (to the point where you don't even consciously think that you're practicing them, because they're just what you do), then the dog will not reliably do them. And that can become a problem.
This is why --- not that anyone is really asking my advice --- I would advise another person NOT TO GET A DOG unless that person really wants to commit to some daily training and behavioral management for the entire duration of the dog's life. What this means is doing everything consistently, as you would with a child, introducing and teaching a desired behavior and then making sure the desired behavior is rehearsed regularly, so that the dog knows the routine for everything and what to expect, and is set up to practice success, not failure. It's not that hard, but it is daily work. In the beginning, especially, it requires some thought, planning, and intentionality. That work can take a long time to pay off in visible results, and some things will take even longer.
I say this not because I think the person who gets a dog without thinking it all through is a bad person. I say it because an untrained dog can make your life harder than it needs to be. A reasonably well-mannered dog is a good companion. An unmannered or destructive dog, on the other hand, can be a source of massive stress, every day. Teaching manners is totally doable (especially when you consider your own thresholds for acceptable and unacceptable dog behaviors in your home and adjust your priorities accordingly). But it can be a lot more work than you might have bargained for, and that too can make your life harder than it needs to be. It's important to know what you're signing up for.
It is true that many dogs are easier than Dora, whom I acquired knowing, to some extent, anyway, that she would be a project. But I actually know a lot of fairly difficult dogs, especially in the 1-5 age range. And I have encountered a number of fairly difficult dogs whose owners say things like, "Well, he was trained, but it didn't stick." This is like saying, "I sent my child to piano lessons. Why can't he play the piano?" Aaaaaand what's the missing piece? Practice. Maybe the dog trainer claimed to be able to fix all the problems and didn't intimate that the dog would need to practice the training every day forever, but in fact . . . yeah, the dog really needs to practice the training every day forever, or at least until the training is so ingrained that the dog can't imagine doing things any other way.
Or maybe nobody really considered that a dog, like a child, can learn only so many things at one time, and that training is really more like education than like programming a robot. The dog learns a range of basic skills (pee outside, walk on leash, sit) and solidifies them. Then you can build on another set of skills (wait at door, go to crate) and solidify them. Some things, like sit, are very easy. Other things, like recall (coming when called, even when excited by something else) are very hard. Many things depend on the dog's natural level of impulse control, or the point at which the dog is over its emotional threshold and operating on pure instinct (the reactive dog who has gotten too close to another dog and just loses its mind).
It's also true that some breeds and types are more pliant that others --- although I have had we sent him to training, but conversations with people walking Labrador retrievers, the people-pleasers of the dog kingdom (also, the most dangerously aggressive dog I've ever personally encountered was a golden retriever). Still, some things are true in a really general sense. Herding breeds are manic to be doing something, all the time. Hounds are hardheaded, will not hear you when you call their name, and have to be on-leash at all times, because if they smell or see something interesting (depending on whether it's a scent- or sighthound), they will be three counties over before they remember ever having met you.
Terriers are prey-driven and assertive, lovers of conflict. Sporting breeds (which include poodles, incidentally) are high-energy and, like herders, really need something to do all the time. Doodles are generally the combination of a sporting breed (poodle) with either some other sporting breed (retriever) OR a herding or working breed (Old English Sheepdog, Bernese Mountain Dog), which makes them not the easygoing, low-maintenance dog people often expect them to be. Even their famous no-shed coats are not really that low-maintenance, especially if the coat is more poodle than whatever the other breed is.
None of these general types of dog is a bad type of dog. That's not what I'm saying at all. They're all great. I have a real partiality for terriers --- the TXgirl's little dog is a terrier mix, and I love his whole mix-it-up attitude and his smarts. I also love hounds. Our old dog was a hound mix; the TXgirl also has a redbone coonhound, who is a neurotic beauty, but a beauty nonetheless, without a mean bone in her body. I love greyhounds, who are fairly quiet and surprisingly low-energy, though as sighthounds, bred to chase rabbits, they're generally not good with smaller animals.
I admire Australian shepherds and cattle dogs, and also border collies. I love being around other people's dogs of this type, but hoo boy, I do not want one. I know myself well enough to know I couldn't keep up with the sheer drive of a dog like that. I also like poodles, having grown up with one, but they too are high-energy, and I really don't think I'd want the coat maintenance. It's easier just to sweep up dog hair. Giant breeds, such as the Great Dane, tend to be big old darlings, but they have terrible joint trouble as they age, just because they're so big.
Anyway, I'm not dissing any kind of dog, just saying that it's good to know what that type of dog was bred to do and how that breeding will manifest itself in a particular dog's personality. Yes, they're fairly individual --- I know someone who had an actually calm Australian Cattle Dog, possibly the only one in existence --- but breed traits matter a lot. The person with the calm Australian Cattle Dog loved him so much she got another, and that dog ate the couch and then looked around for something else to do.
Dora is a cocktail of many of these breed profiles: herd dog, terrier, sporting dog, working dog. It's been interesting to note how those profiles play out in her personality. She is basically a supersized terrier --- tons of energy, high prey drive (although we can now glance at squirrels and not lose our mind, cats remain a powerful temptation), a love of rough play and mixing it up. But then she's also got the red alert/danger approaches impulse of the herd dog. And so on. All that to say, it's really nice to be able to sit here on this daybed with a sleeping, relaxed dog who is not pawing me, dropping a bone or a ball onto my keyboard, gnawing my wrist, or barking at me to tell me how boring I am. Training, but most of all a ton of patience, strung out over multiple years, does eventually start to reap some rewards.
Anyway, it's been a while since I climbed onto a dog-related soapbox. You're welcome.
In other news, what did I wear today?
*Secondhand April Cornell vintage silk dress, bought summer 2024, last worn March 10. Wears in 2025: 3. Not actually terrible innings for a silk dress. This is not an everyday knocking-around dress. I'm glad to have had a place and a reason to wear it.
*Old thrifted Eddie Bauer cardigan, second decade of wear
*Secondhand Birkenstock Papillio sandals, first year of wear
I liked this nice purple-on-purple groove for Passion Sunday. It's weird what purples suit me --- it's either very cool blue periwinkles and lavenders or very pink, plummy tones like these. Darker eggplant tones don't do much for me, nor do loud purples. I really do love this silk dress, firmly in the plummy category. And it's nice that the cardigan is just a more powdery shade of the same.
A good Mass at the Abbey, with an excellent homily from Fr. David on the Gospel reading, about the woman caught in adultery. I was glad I'd driven in for it after all.
It's starting to cloud over, so I had better bring my laundry in to finish drying. Then I think I'll binge-watch some more Vera --- my emotional-support detective of the moment --- and make a ground-beef skillet for dinner, with leftovers to send with the husband tomorrow to work.
A lovely Sunday to all!