Hobbies

My favorite picture of Silas as a wee tyke:

The pose is just a coincidence, but it captures his feelings toward the spinning wheel so very well. “Pleeeease. Can’t I have a little taste?” The spinning wheel had a (very) short tenure on the stair landing, which quickly became–and still is–one of Silas’s favorite places. Then it was moved upstairs, which we kept gated off thanks to Silas’s gleeful unraveling of the upstairs carpet. By the time he learned how to move the gate, he was trustworthy upstairs EXCEPT for the spinning wheel, which is the only piece of furniture he even tried to chew after his adult teeth were in. Now it lives in the way-back of my walk in closet, complete with the half spun yarn I was making before Silas arrived.

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I’ll confess now that I’ve been rebelling since we came back from our trip. These last two weeks have been about as non-dog as you can possibly be while still taking reasonably good care of a high-maintenance dog. Some of my rebellion has been unintentional. It has taken me forever to get back in the routine of defrosting Silas’s food, and I’ve let all of his training slide. I completely forgot to buy him more food before his store closed for Thanksgiving week. But there have been other things, too. I went out yesterday and bought ridiculous high-heeled shoes, while wearing my emphatically pre-dog black cashmere sweater. I’ve been giving preferential treatment to the half of my blogroll that is about non-dog things and reading books that don’t involve dog training. Instead of buying Christmas presents for Silas or for anyone else, I’ve been putting together my own, entirely frivolous, holiday wish list. My mental energy has been in very non-dog places.

It’s not a bad thing. Just like mothers shouldn’t let their children take over their identity, I don’t think we should let dogs take over ours. I’ve done a lot of that, in part because it helped me paper over some non-dog life stuff that I didn’t want to think about. Now that Silas is an adult, or very nearly one, it’s a good time to remind myself that he isn’t a needy puppy anymore. We’ll all come out better for it.

Forgive me if I’m a little more absent here in the meantime, between my scattered brain and holiday travel.