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Eyes behind Glass
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Tag Archives: Dog images
This Way and That Way
For the two hours that we were in the plaza of the French Bakery, this little dog went from table to table for a friendly visit. When someone made the mistake of giving him a piece of bacon from their breakfast croissant, he became demanding, thrusting his head up into the lap of anyone still unfortunate enough to be eating. He would run to the table of a rather crabby couple with a dog of their own, barking at the other dog, bringing frowns on the faces of its owners. When I tried to call him away from them, they started frowning at me instead, thinking he belonged to me.
I couldn’t resist taking photos as he zigged here and there, trying to decide which way to go. When a new omelette or bacon croissant arrived at a table, it solved his dilemma and he came to semi-rest. Insistent and often vocal, he tracked the arrival of any food at any table. One by one, as people got up from their tables, they came over to my table to ask if this was my dog. No, it belonged to someone in the neighborhood, I told them. This is what the owner of the bakery had told me and I believed him, but I don’t think anyone really believed me.
or high steppin’
Click on any photo and then on arrows to enlarge and view all.
For Cee’s Which Way Challenge.
Share Your World, Nov. 13, 2017
One of the highlights of my week and always one of the highlights of my trips to Missouri was a visit to Evelyn’s wonderful antiques store. She was redecorating and painting, so the stock was about half of what it usually was, but I still found some finds, including a delicious apple from her bowl put there for the taking. I would have bought this spinning wheel if I’d had a way to get it to Mexico. The little dog greets every visitor for a friendly rub before jumping back up to his perch. I love this place.
(Please click on any photo to enlarge them all.)
Okay, now on to Cee’s questions for the week:
Do you ever sit on a park bench for more than ten minutes? Rarely.
When you lose electricity in a storm, do you light the candles, turn on the flashlight or use your cell phone for light? I live in Mexico, where the electricity goes off frequently and sometimes for hours and even days. I have a handy supply of candles all over the house as well as kerosene lanterns and propane cylinder lamps that always seem to lack either fuel or mantles. In the past year I’ve purchased a few little battery-powered crookneck lamps that come in handy as well. I have a half dozen flashlights that are never in the right place at the right time so I hardly ever use them.
Would you rather be given $10,000 for your own use or $100,000 to give anonymously to strangers? At this point, I can think of some excellent uses for the $100,000–especially for education expenses for children in the village. I would have no problem finding proper recipients for it so I’d definitely make that choice.
What inspired you or what did you appreciate this past week? I loved not necessarily having to do anything (except blogging, of course) for the past week. For the last two days, however, most of our time had been taken up trying to figure out the intricacies of two computers with a lot of problems. Really frustrating. Thanks to three hours spent online via Team Viewer and Skype with a tech expert in Vancouver, we finally got some of the problems solved. An additional two hours spent trying to get social security problems solved via phone and internet led to no solutions at all. All in all, a frustrating day but luckily I feel most of the computer problems are solved. Thanks, Chad! (If anyone needs the name of an excellent and personable tech expert for Macs, I’d be glad to share his number.)
Sentinels: Cee’s B&W Challenge, “S”
On this day, wherever we went, there seemed to be animals on guard, seemingly as sentinels. In all probabiity they all just needed a comfortable place to perch. The first photo is of the entrance to a bank in Chapala.
Click on first photo to enlarge all, please.
Cee’s B&W Challenge: The letter “S.”
Security is . . .
Security is a big comfy bed and permission to use it! (Click on any photo to increase the size of images.)
Today’s weekly photo prompt is a photo that represents security.
The Couch Potato’s Creed
The Couch Potato’s Creed
Though he who hesitates is lost,
impetuosity has its cost.
You should look before you leap,
because still waters might run deep.
Though early birds might get the worm,
rash actions trip up the infirm.
So all-in-all I think it’s better
if you aren’t a go-getter.
I guess the moral to this tale
is lest you lose or lest you flail,
you’re up against the proverbial wall.
It’s best you do nothing at all!
I’ve discovered an interesting fact about Morrie. He frequently sleeps with his eyes wide open! In the above photo, he’s on the sofa, but I snapped the below photos one morning when he had usurped my bed as well:
The boy knows how to make himself comfortable.
The prompt today was “hesitate.”
Always Behind Windows: Monday Windows Challenge
Always Behind Windows
Not only on a Monday, but every day this week,
we’ve been locked behind windows, through which we have to peek
to see what’s going on inside, where all the good things are.
Other times, we’ve been inside, but now we’re kept afar.
Our noses sticking through the bars, our breath fogging the glass,
as intriguing as we find it, we hope these times soon pass.
When all this tiling madness is done and gone away,
we’ll have more freedom to run free each and every day.
No more behind windows, no more behind bars.
We’ll wander boundless in our world, where we will be the stars.
But for a few more days now, we’re sticking here like glue,
so we can tell these workmen exactly what to do!
https://mondaywindow.wordpress.com/2016/11/27/monday-november-28-2016/
Angel: Daily Prompt, Anticipation
Angel
In the bedroom, our alarm goes off faithfully at 6, and I see through the sliding glass door to the back porch, the lump of wood our neighbors’ dog, Angel, has left like a calling card. It tells me I’ve missed her invitation to throw the chunk and watch her hurtle down the mountainside in its pursuit. She has been known to run so fast that she wins the race with the stick, which hits her on the back of the head or lodges itself in her throat as she turns and lifts her head to catch it.
She first approached us in our driveway, where Bob was carving a stone boulder too large to move any further onto our property. With the stick placed on the ground in front of her, she would crouch with her haunches in the air, her front legs stretched straight out in front of her in anticipation. Her eyes would fix on the stick, then on us, then on the stick, her mouth stretched in a huge grin of expectation. How could we not throw?
Later, she ventured farther up the driveway and onto the porch if no cats were around. Now she knows every entry to our house and stops at each on her rounds, watching me make paper and Bob drill stone, occasionally lifting the stick and dropping it to the deck until we give in and throw again.
At the time I first met Angel, I didn’t favor dogs, preferring my crabby cats. But I made an exception for this Australian dingo of a dog who was so happy to see me–so happy to see anyone who would throw a stick. This dog who now comes into my paper making studio to drink from my water bucket. Who once got pulp on her nose dipping into the wrong bucket. This dog who might show up covered in cement, and when the cement finally wears off, shows up covered in white paint, conjuring up images of workmen not patient enough to deal with a dog with sticks to chase.
This dog who seemed not to know about dog biscuits and who, the first time we threw one to her, retrieved it without eating it. This dog who for months would come no closer than five feet––friendly from a distance––fleeing away from any attempt to touch. Who had to be taught that an outstretched hand contained a pat or hug. This dog who sees the cats as bosses and who detours all the way around the house to retrieve a stick if one of the cats puts itself in her pathway. This dog who is an old dog but acts like a puppy.
She fills a place in my husband’s heart– a heart that needs the amount of child a dog can bring: companionship that doesn’t need to borrow the car, a stick chase that doesn’t involve any exercise more rigorous than pulling the arm back and letting the hand open as it swings forward. She is the way children should be when you’re in your sixties: being pleasant, being around without a lot of talking, fetching things for you.
Slowly, as we meet our neighbors at gatherings to try to stop the harvesting of the redwoods on the land adjoining ours or to discuss the cellular phone tower at the end of our mountain street, we find that they all know Angel in varying degrees. And we begin to understand that she needs to continue her rounds to find enough love, bit by bit, from all of us–like some children too ready with devotion toward strangers, too needing of attention from teachers or their friends’ parents. And that hard part of us that doesn’t want to love the person who needs it most can release a bit. Enough to throw a stick. Enough to teach a dog how to be petted. Enough to add a case of dog biscuit bones to our grocery cart at Costco, enough to try to get the matted cement from the tail, and to go to the woodshop to cut sticks. That part of us can thaw a bit, knowing that the dog will not take itself from us voluntarily. That she will stay with us as long as we will throw an occasional stick, talk to her every half hour or so, give a few pats, put down a pan of water. That she will stay with us for a minimum of our effort.
In this era of Angels pulling people from cliff tops and burning cars, in this time when Angels are the fad, we who usually shun trends, we who seek to be the exception, we who need no angels have an angel sitting in our driveway. Have evidence of her outside every door.
The Dangers of Blogging
I’ve been working sunup to late afternoon for the last four days setting up and running a booth that sells the wares of all of the participants of our wonderful Maestros del Arte show in Chapala. The last two days were rainy and cold which necessitated two revampings of the booth and moving of all the goods. The rain kept coming and the mud puddles got deeper. I was running from booth to booth and then back to ours and came home exhausted every night. Tonight, therefore, I got home at 5, fed the dogs, warmed up a few leftovers, washed off my muddy feet and fell into bed. It was freezing cold in my house with no central heating, so I set a little space heater on my night table and took turns warming my four sides of my body, fetched a heating pad to warm my hands, and socks to warm my feet. I fell asleep at 7 p.m. and woke up at 11 p.m.
Still, still night. Went out to see the Super Moon, but it was too overcast to reveal even a glow to suggest where it might be. Then the gloom opened up for a few seconds and I ran in to get my camera, but by the time I located it, the sky had closed its window again. Read a few blogs, including Murdo Girl’s which had a video I turned on. In it her three dogs were barking and barking. Immediately, Morrie and Diego, who had been sleeping peacefully in the doggie domain, went rushing out into the night to bark back at them outside the sliding glass door to my bedroom. Then all the neighborhood dogs began to bark back. I brought my dogs in with the promise of a dog biscuit, locked them in their cages, and they are calm once again, but sixteen minutes later, the neighbor’s dog is still going crazy. The dangers of blogging.
Look Up! (Eulogy for a Good, Good Girl)
Look Up!
She used to chase the shadows of birds across the ground
and dig where they disappeared
and never once thought to look up,
no matter how many times I tried to tell her to.
Chasing light across the pool, she’d pace
back and forth, along its further edge.
Her first playmates the cats,
she could not follow them up into the trees,
but stood instead, barking at the bark they clung to.
Thinking herself a cat, perhaps,
or all of them some new species in between,
she followed wherever it was possible to go.
Up the broad steps to the second floor,
across the terraza and just a small leap
to the ledge of the high sloping dome of the roof.
Up to its top to lie or stand and bark at all who trudged up our mountain
to intrude into her world.
She could see for blocks,
turning like a sundial with the sun
to change her focus, but usually starting at the point,
southward, that most invaders came from.
Neighbors led by unwelcome dogs on leashes
passed below her on their morning walks,
or farmers carrying hoes or machetes
up to the fields above.
Lines of burros plodding beneath her, facing uphill,
small herds of cattle
flooding down to the lake for water—
none escaped the attention of this reina,
who would bark directions to be on their way, fast,
and not to loiter.
No creature had greater staying power than she.
The cats, bored with the high view,
moved to the bushes and trees to hunt possums, squirrels and salamanders.
Only she stayed true to her original position
as she looked ever down from that high dome,
only deserting it a year ago,
when I locked the gate that blocked her progress up—
not because I judged it unsafe for a dog grown arthritic and less sure of her step,
but because of the new puppy,
untrained by cats and with feet less experienced than hers.
Feeling punished, perhaps, she traded her high domain
for a place beneath the terrace table
from which she watched the two upstarts
speed by to cavort in the lower garden
where she once chased bird shadows in the grass.
She exercised her staying power one last time
as, looking down on a world reduced to only me,
never once blinking, she stared into my eyes
as I crouched beside the vet’s high table,
and looked straight back up into them,
the closest I’d ever been to her.
That table’s surface, straight and gleaming stainless steel,
was where she lay with her front legs spread-eagled
for the long hour it took to finally climb up that high dome again.
I wonder if she heard me as,
“Good girl,” I told her a hundred times that final hour, and meant it.
“Good, good girl. Look up now. And go on.
You were always such a good, good girl, watching out for us.
But now, look up. Go on.”
The prompt word today is “Original.”
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 