Flying Poodles

What I’ve been doing lately

What I’ve been doing lately:

12 days in Italy (Venice, Padova, Rovigo, a little Milan) with my sister (see previous post)–notice that this does not involve dog training

moving–this doesn’t involve dog training either

unpacking–no dog training here

(The dogs were at their friend Cat’s for 17 days. Fortunately they adore her and she adores them. She is the finest poodle sitter in the world.)

However… the travel was good, the food was amazing, it was great to spend time with my sister, and when I got home, we moved because our house in Sammamish has sold. We only own one house now, the one in Portland.  Jay has a ten minute commute (by car) or a forty-five minute commute (bicycle) instead of a three-hour one (by car) or a fifteen hour bike ride.

So what I’ve been doing, mostly, is unpacking. We have an astonishing amount of stuff. We got rid of truckloads and boxes of stuff before we moved (seriously, it took six months to get the house ready to go on the market) and I’m still opening boxes and looking at them and saying to myself “why did I keep this?”

The dogs keep me company during this effort. I have their two favorite beat-up leather chairs (they’re 25 years old) in my office and they curl into them and doze while I unpack. Yesterday I took them to Chimney Park and you could see their relief that they got to run around like maniacs instead of relaxing in a chair.

I’m working on a fence plan for the yard so that they’ll be able to run around here too. There will ultimately even be a snmall grassed training area.