Cairnzilla Strikes! (07/05/06)
She takes guff from no one, not even her mother, Echo, who when last interviewed insists that she "wish(es) to encourage assertiveness in my (her) daughter." In the above picture, Echo experiences firsthand that she has more than exceeded her goal.
Cairnzilla technically has two names. One's her AKC registered name which is Robinsend Still Echoing, SE. The other is what Brad LaBroad and Peggy Appel call their little monster at home, which is Stella. Sometimes they call her Stella Frances, but they are only being nice to me because I think she looks more like a Frances than she does a Stella. She has always reminded me of the little badger named Frances, who went on the most famous food jag in all of children's literature in Bread and Jam for Frances a perennial favorite (of mine) by Russell Hoban with illustrations by his wife, Lillian.
The name Stella, conjures up a young Marlon Brando's Stanley Kowalski playing opposite Kim Hunter (as Stellaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!) and
Vivien Leigh as Blanche DuBois.
A more recent memory is of the Cascade Cairn Terrier Club's Racing Day and Picnic 2001, when Stella's maternal grandfather and paternal great uncle, Haggis (Ch. Joywood's Thrill of the Chase, CD, ME) took on the Brando role in a slightly altered revival of Elia Kazan's 1951 film version of the Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire called A StreetCairn Named Desire. The only discernable difference-- to my expert and discriminating eye-- between the two productions was two extra letters in the title of the subsequent one. Oh, right. One was filmed and is about fifty-five years old.
(By scrolling farther down the page that depicts highlights of Racing Day and Picnic 2001, you will encounter Stella's other grandpa (paternal) and great uncle Geordie (Ch. Joywood's Geordie of MagaDog, CD, ME, CGC) as a monk
and his double great great Aunt Maggie (Joywood's Maggie Simpson, CDX, CGC) as a nun, their costumes crafted by the canine haute couturier of incomparable skill and panache, Barb Schuster, sometimes compared to Donna Cairn.)
Ah, but back to our Stella-- and how she got her groove, of course. . . She's always had it. She inherited it with a vengeance-- the self-same vengeance that transforms Stella into Cairnzilla when the conditions are just right and when the moon is in the right phase, which is pretty much every day. She can seem like a real bitch, though appearances can deceive, and Stella is a helluva lot sweeter than she looks in this picture.
Stella descends from a long line of Master Earthdogs (ME). Both her parents are Master Earthdogs, as well as both grandpas, and she, having just turned two in April, is but one leg away from the fourth needed to complete her own ME title, the pinnacle of AKC Earthdog test achievements.
So in her honor-- and because Brad LaBroad just happened to take the best gol-darned picture ever, I have named a line of fashion that will henceforth be known as Cairnzilla-Wear and it will take the world and slap it around a lot, a little reminiscent of Stanley Kowalski.
Cairnzilla-Wear
Cairnzilla-Wear is a new line of Cairn couture for the entire family. Don't be surprised to see "Branjolina" in the infant creeper. Assert yourself. It's hip because we say it is. For feminists of all genders!
Just Jill.
Because Maggie and Geordie have already gone to bed.
Meet "Cairnzilla."
She takes guff from no one, not even her mother, Echo, who when last interviewed insists that she "wish(es) to encourage assertiveness in my (her) daughter." In the above picture, Echo experiences firsthand that she has more than exceeded her goal.
Cairnzilla technically has two names. One's her AKC registered name which is Robinsend Still Echoing, SE. The other is what Brad LaBroad and Peggy Appel call their little monster at home, which is Stella. Sometimes they call her Stella Frances, but they are only being nice to me because I think she looks more like a Frances than she does a Stella. She has always reminded me of the little badger named Frances, who went on the most famous food jag in all of children's literature in Bread and Jam for Frances a perennial favorite (of mine) by Russell Hoban with illustrations by his wife, Lillian.
The name Stella, conjures up a young Marlon Brando's Stanley Kowalski playing opposite Kim Hunter (as Stellaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!) and
Vivien Leigh as Blanche DuBois.
A more recent memory is of the Cascade Cairn Terrier Club's Racing Day and Picnic 2001, when Stella's maternal grandfather and paternal great uncle, Haggis (Ch. Joywood's Thrill of the Chase, CD, ME) took on the Brando role in a slightly altered revival of Elia Kazan's 1951 film version of the Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire called A StreetCairn Named Desire. The only discernable difference-- to my expert and discriminating eye-- between the two productions was two extra letters in the title of the subsequent one. Oh, right. One was filmed and is about fifty-five years old.
(By scrolling farther down the page that depicts highlights of Racing Day and Picnic 2001, you will encounter Stella's other grandpa (paternal) and great uncle Geordie (Ch. Joywood's Geordie of MagaDog, CD, ME, CGC) as a monk
and his double great great Aunt Maggie (Joywood's Maggie Simpson, CDX, CGC) as a nun, their costumes crafted by the canine haute couturier of incomparable skill and panache, Barb Schuster, sometimes compared to Donna Cairn.)
Ah, but back to our Stella-- and how she got her groove, of course. . . She's always had it. She inherited it with a vengeance-- the self-same vengeance that transforms Stella into Cairnzilla when the conditions are just right and when the moon is in the right phase, which is pretty much every day. She can seem like a real bitch, though appearances can deceive, and Stella is a helluva lot sweeter than she looks in this picture.
Stella descends from a long line of Master Earthdogs (ME). Both her parents are Master Earthdogs, as well as both grandpas, and she, having just turned two in April, is but one leg away from the fourth needed to complete her own ME title, the pinnacle of AKC Earthdog test achievements.
Cairnzilla Meets Style of Monstrous Proportions!
So in her honor-- and because Brad LaBroad just happened to take the best gol-darned picture ever, I have named a line of fashion that will henceforth be known as Cairnzilla-Wear and it will take the world and slap it around a lot, a little reminiscent of Stanley Kowalski.
 |
Cairnzilla-Wear is a new line of Cairn couture for the entire family. Don't be surprised to see "Branjolina" in the infant creeper. Assert yourself. It's hip because we say it is. For feminists of all genders!
Moreover, at The Attack of "Cairnzilla", Stella's custom boutique at Holy Terrier Dog Designs
(Check out the Cairn, Westie, Norfolk, Border, Sealyham designs, too. )
(Check out the Cairn, Westie, Norfolk, Border, Sealyham designs, too. )
Just Jill.
Because Maggie and Geordie have already gone to bed.
Meanderings. Then Back on Track (07/06/06)
This area has changed so much. More than a hundred houses have supplanted the acres of hazelnut trees that once occupied the half mile between the southern end of our neighborhood and John McLoughlin Elementary School where both my sons, Alan and then Noah, attended from kindergarten through sixth grade. I spent many hours as a parent volunteer until my kids practically pleaded with me to stop! I relive fond memories of the great teachers there and the time Noah brought Maggie and me for Show-and-Tell and when Lynda Loos, one of my sons' favorite teachers, invited me and Geordie, by then a show dog, into her classroom and turned the visit into a geography
lesson (Scotland) with a touch of science and a bit of film history.
Soon the bulldozers came, and bit by bit the scenery changed. Fruit orchards and nut groves vanished. Then the people who prefer a little land and vegetation to buffer themselves from their neighbors sold their homes and moved farther outside the city limits. A domino effect-- gradual at first-- began while my children were still in elementary school.
New streets bear names that suggest wistful memories of what once was. It seems eons have past since, when desperate for money, I picked pounds of hazelnuts there. A few years later, I would buy them pre-picked from the same farm to send to my mother. Now I buy Oregon filberts/hazelnuts at the store-- just like everyone else in the U.S.
In the mid-1990s, brand new homes sprouted seemingly overnight like mushrooms on moist spring lawns. These neighborhoods boasted streets named Filbert, Hazelgrove, Hazeldell, and Orchard Park Drives-- all within half a mile's radius of each other. Other streets took the surnames of families who used to live there, names of Alan and Noah's classmates at John McLoughlin. The population has shifted such that, were they still of that age, they would have been gerrymandered into the King Elementary School area.
The few trees that stand in these new neighborhoods are not the original nut trees. The bright well-mowed lawns, green as Astroturf, look toxic in their stark perfection. I never walk my dogs on them. Heaven knows what herbicides lurk.
More than a decade has passed since I first walked Maggie and Geordie (who was a mere puppy)
Geordie still hassles Maggie as he did in the beginning
along South End Road to meet Noah, my younger son after school. Overgrown blackberry brambles, greenery-gone-wild, and a dilapidated house or two made that bit of South End Road interesting-- not like the boring strip of macadam it is today. Back then, it seemed less dangerous to walk this stretch. It is, after all, an arterial that runs south before emptying onto 99E toward Canby and toward Aurora and the fertile Willamette Valley. (Central Point Road, which runs roughly parallel, is even more scary. I've lost all perspective of its length; there are so many turns to new streets that I'm never sure which to take to Partlow Road, once the only through street and hard to miss.)
When I drive this route we once walked or biked, I wonder if I am in a different town, in a different state, in a different country, in a different hemisphere, or on a different planet.
These days, when it's our destination, I always drive to John McLoughlin's half-mile track. It remains almost as it was in the late 1980s and 1990s, except that the neighboring farms-- including the one where the longtime principal lived with her horses and goats-- have disappeared. New houses butt up against chain link on two sides, and there's even a path that leads through to the new subdivision. At the time of my sons' first days of school, new houses already stood on Salmonberry Drive, which borders the south side of the schoolyard.
All the classes, K through Grade 6-- a veritable Wonderbread commercial of children-- gathered at the same track for early morning fall jog-a-thons raise money for programs that dwindling school allocations could no longer support. First the librarians went. Then the classes swelled to thirty students. Now the classroom entrances bear plaques honoring corporate donors.
Today, Maggie and Geordie jump into the car, and I drive to the track for an afternoon walk, for a change of p(l)ace. My perfect weather-- mid- seventies and just a wee bit overcast, rare these days. Lately it's blazing hot.
I let Maggie loose, since she heeds my commands well enough for her safety. I detach her leash and add its length to Geordie's. I don't take my chances with him, but the extra six feet of lead give him a little more slack. About ten yards down the asphalt track, Geordie starts to flirt with the Australian Shepherd bitch in a Salmonberry backyard. Both my dogs investigate culverts and Geordie anoints a few exercise stations along the way.
Maggie pauses to sniff, graze, run around in the grassy middle, and then sprints back toward Geordie and me. Geordie has has less leeway, but that is the price he pays for being less obedient. He does that "scratch and sniff" thing with his right paw to release a scent intrigues him. He growls where he's just peed over another dog's mark as if his "I'm the alpha" message can be transmitted-- by astral projection or at least in advance-- to the next dog. A warning.
The nice thing about tracks is that you know exactly when you've gone a mile. Maggie and Geordie do more than I because, for them, the track is a mere reference point from which to deviate. Today, they would have done a hundred miles, but I had things to do at home. Those are concessions you must make when you're dogs.
I reflect gratefully on the company of Maggie and Geordie. They're my Empty Nest children for not-enough-more years-- sometimes I wish they could outlive me. They make my life so much richer.
To Auld Lang Sine--
Jill --with Geordie underfoot and Maggie resting on her quilt waiting for dinner.
lesson (Scotland) with a touch of science and a bit of film history.
Soon the bulldozers came, and bit by bit the scenery changed. Fruit orchards and nut groves vanished. Then the people who prefer a little land and vegetation to buffer themselves from their neighbors sold their homes and moved farther outside the city limits. A domino effect-- gradual at first-- began while my children were still in elementary school.
New streets bear names that suggest wistful memories of what once was. It seems eons have past since, when desperate for money, I picked pounds of hazelnuts there. A few years later, I would buy them pre-picked from the same farm to send to my mother. Now I buy Oregon filberts/hazelnuts at the store-- just like everyone else in the U.S.
In the mid-1990s, brand new homes sprouted seemingly overnight like mushrooms on moist spring lawns. These neighborhoods boasted streets named Filbert, Hazelgrove, Hazeldell, and Orchard Park Drives-- all within half a mile's radius of each other. Other streets took the surnames of families who used to live there, names of Alan and Noah's classmates at John McLoughlin. The population has shifted such that, were they still of that age, they would have been gerrymandered into the King Elementary School area.
The few trees that stand in these new neighborhoods are not the original nut trees. The bright well-mowed lawns, green as Astroturf, look toxic in their stark perfection. I never walk my dogs on them. Heaven knows what herbicides lurk.
More than a decade has passed since I first walked Maggie and Geordie (who was a mere puppy)
Geordie still hassles Maggie as he did in the beginning
When I drive this route we once walked or biked, I wonder if I am in a different town, in a different state, in a different country, in a different hemisphere, or on a different planet.
These days, when it's our destination, I always drive to John McLoughlin's half-mile track. It remains almost as it was in the late 1980s and 1990s, except that the neighboring farms-- including the one where the longtime principal lived with her horses and goats-- have disappeared. New houses butt up against chain link on two sides, and there's even a path that leads through to the new subdivision. At the time of my sons' first days of school, new houses already stood on Salmonberry Drive, which borders the south side of the schoolyard.
All the classes, K through Grade 6-- a veritable Wonderbread commercial of children-- gathered at the same track for early morning fall jog-a-thons raise money for programs that dwindling school allocations could no longer support. First the librarians went. Then the classes swelled to thirty students. Now the classroom entrances bear plaques honoring corporate donors.
Today, Maggie and Geordie jump into the car, and I drive to the track for an afternoon walk, for a change of p(l)ace. My perfect weather-- mid- seventies and just a wee bit overcast, rare these days. Lately it's blazing hot.
I let Maggie loose, since she heeds my commands well enough for her safety. I detach her leash and add its length to Geordie's. I don't take my chances with him, but the extra six feet of lead give him a little more slack. About ten yards down the asphalt track, Geordie starts to flirt with the Australian Shepherd bitch in a Salmonberry backyard. Both my dogs investigate culverts and Geordie anoints a few exercise stations along the way.
Maggie pauses to sniff, graze, run around in the grassy middle, and then sprints back toward Geordie and me. Geordie has has less leeway, but that is the price he pays for being less obedient. He does that "scratch and sniff" thing with his right paw to release a scent intrigues him. He growls where he's just peed over another dog's mark as if his "I'm the alpha" message can be transmitted-- by astral projection or at least in advance-- to the next dog. A warning.
The nice thing about tracks is that you know exactly when you've gone a mile. Maggie and Geordie do more than I because, for them, the track is a mere reference point from which to deviate. Today, they would have done a hundred miles, but I had things to do at home. Those are concessions you must make when you're dogs.
I reflect gratefully on the company of Maggie and Geordie. They're my Empty Nest children for not-enough-more years-- sometimes I wish they could outlive me. They make my life so much richer.
To Auld Lang Sine--
Jill --with Geordie underfoot and Maggie resting on her quilt waiting for dinner.
Loch West(ie) Monster vs. Cairnzilla. Do We Have a Challenger?
I am waiting for Laura to fill me in on this toothy girl. Is she smiling, or has she just eaten some creature from the Loch? Or both?
We did not encounter such a creature-- Geordie, Maggie, and I-- on our walk, long and casual, at our usual haunt (pun intended), along the shaded path, so lush with vegetation, to the Canemah Cemetery. No monster leapt out from the brush to ambush us. Not this time, anyway.
When I posed the question in a post to the Westie-l calling for Westies "a little off center," Vicki in Rochester quipped in an email to that list, "LOL! Aren't they all?" So to Vicki and the rest of you Westie folks, I throw down the gauntlet and challenge you to show, don't tell! As for Anwen, she's shown here, but now I need Laura to tell
.
In another email Nancy Ann Wolicki sent me a picture of her rather normal-looking Westie, Andy, playing with his Cairn-bro, Dougie.
Jill, Georzilla (Cairnzilla's grandpa) and The Creature from the Brindle Mag-goon.
This is Anwen.
She is a West Highland White Terrier owned by Laura from Westie-l.
She is a West Highland White Terrier owned by Laura from Westie-l.
I am waiting for Laura to fill me in on this toothy girl. Is she smiling, or has she just eaten some creature from the Loch? Or both?
We did not encounter such a creature-- Geordie, Maggie, and I-- on our walk, long and casual, at our usual haunt (pun intended), along the shaded path, so lush with vegetation, to the Canemah Cemetery. No monster leapt out from the brush to ambush us. Not this time, anyway.
When I posed the question in a post to the Westie-l calling for Westies "a little off center," Vicki in Rochester quipped in an email to that list, "LOL! Aren't they all?" So to Vicki and the rest of you Westie folks, I throw down the gauntlet and challenge you to show, don't tell! As for Anwen, she's shown here, but now I need Laura to tell
.In another email Nancy Ann Wolicki sent me a picture of her rather normal-looking Westie, Andy, playing with his Cairn-bro, Dougie.
That's normal-- unless, of course, Andy is literally devouring Dougie's ear off and is an incarnation of Mike Tyson. . .
So what's it gonna be, Westie folks?
Jill, Georzilla (Cairnzilla's grandpa) and The Creature from the Brindle Mag-goon.
Getting Hot and Lazy? (o7/13/06)
Geordie sits behind me panting. We just returned from a walk in the neighborhood as I am vehicle-less. I don't even have a bicycle! Larry's car is in the shop waiting its turn to receive a new transmission. Since he works in Portland, he needs a car more than I do, so for me, there will be no trips to graveyards, parks, or anywhere else until this resolves.
I am afraid to start my yoga routine because Geordie and Maggie double-team me no matter what time it is. As of late, they have taken to interpret any time I decide to exercise as DINNERTIME. Maggie gets positively playful
I love air-conditioning-- so much that I will do penance by not driving. It is easy and even easier this week.
Nothing else to say, so why write?
Oh, except check out Holy Terrier Dog Designs
New terrier designs all the time. . .
Jill, Manya, Jokerman
Geordie sits behind me panting. We just returned from a walk in the neighborhood as I am vehicle-less. I don't even have a bicycle! Larry's car is in the shop waiting its turn to receive a new transmission. Since he works in Portland, he needs a car more than I do, so for me, there will be no trips to graveyards, parks, or anywhere else until this resolves.
I am afraid to start my yoga routine because Geordie and Maggie double-team me no matter what time it is. As of late, they have taken to interpret any time I decide to exercise as DINNERTIME. Maggie gets positively playful
while Geordie poises himself on my yoga mat wherever my next posture takes place. I believe he's memorized my routine better than I have, since I depend on a DVD guided by a woman named Yolanda with an Australian accent who's at least five years older than she was when she recorded it.
Done with yoga. Geordie anticipated almost every move. It's time to buy a new DVD. Should be good for at least another couple of weeks until he memorizes it, too.
I love air-conditioning-- so much that I will do penance by not driving. It is easy and even easier this week.
Nothing else to say, so why write?
Oh, except check out Holy Terrier Dog Designs
New terrier designs all the time. . .
Jill, Manya, Jokerman
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