It’s dog-walk-for-charity season again!

This year we are focusing exclusively on the FURRY 5K, the primary fundraiser for medical care of orphaned animals at the Seattle Animal Shelter.

Last year I did not have Sophia long enough to have known about this event. We did a walk for Pierce County Humane Society and also PAWS later in the season. Now that I volunteer at Seattle Animal Shelter as a MatchMaker and also perform Pet Assisted Therapy visits with Sophia at a local convalescent center, it means even more to me than ever to help bring in money for SAS. www.seattleanimalshelter.org

Not only are we walking the 5K together (and hopefully Steve, too, if his sprained ankle heals enough!!) but I am leading a team, called IGGY AMBASSADORS. The team will be comprised of all Italian greyhounds and their walkers, with an occasional whippet thrown in. I am the Group Organizer for a club I called IGGY AMBASSADORS, a Puget Sound-area meetup group (see http://itgreyhound.meetup.com/145/ ) Steve even designed a logo for me and I opened an online store at Cafe Press, http://www.cafepress.com/iggyambassadors Proceeds from logo wear sales from our store go to Italian Greyhound Rescue Foundation. We expect it to be popular across the country since all IG owners are ambassadors and there really is nothing geographic about it at all!

But I digress! What I am looking for today are donations in support of our participation in the FURRY 5K. You can find out more information about the event at www.furry5k.com Donations can be either cash or check and it would be best if I can hand-deliver them with our pledge sheet on June 11th.

So if you can see it in your heart to give a little to Help The Animals Fund and Seattle Animal Shelter, I would be honored to deliver your donation. Please let me know and I can come and pick it up, or you can drop it off at my house – or you can mail it if you have time.

Checks can be made payable to HELP THE ANIMALS FUND and mailed by next Wednesday (June 7th) to my home address.

If you would like to join our team and walk with us on June 11th, let me know! We’d love to have you and your pooch along! All 4-legged friends welcome!

THANK YOU!!

Wendy

Finders Keepers

Sophia by Jenifer Ohlson

Sophia was "discovered" during her holiday photo shoot by local guest photographer Jen Ohlson (http://www.jenohlsonphotography.com/portrait.htm). Jen is working on a book called "Finders Keepers", about adopted dogs with a story. (Sophia's storyline? From needing therapy to giving therapy...)

As a gift to us for allowing Sophia to model for Jen she offered us a free 8x10 photo from one of the pictures taken during the shoot. This was three months ago and I still had not been able to choose a photo. My gut went for the one pictured here but when polling co-workers, and even the photographer, everyone else seemed to be drawn towards shots where Sophia's ears were at attention. I liked this one because she is so lady-like here, coy and flirtatious, even seductive.

Today I got an email from Jen asking if I had selected one yet since she was going to print one to hang at Next To Nature, our West Seattle natural pet store (Cliff, the owner/husband, is one of Sophia's favorite people). So I just went with what I wanted. Then I asked her which one she had picked to hang at the shop. Her answer?

The same one.

Now that's proof of good taste!

PETS Act Passes

No Pet Left Behind in Disasters

The House passed the Pets Evacuation and Transportation Standards (PETS) Act, H.R. 3858, in a landslide 349-24 vote. The PETS Act requires local and state emergency preparedness authorities to include in their evacuation plans how they will accommodate household pets and service animals in case of a disaster. Local and state authorities must submit these plans in order to qualify for grants from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

Furthermore, the Senate version of the PETS Act (S. 2548):
Grants FEMA the authority to assist in developing these plans.
Authorizes financial help to states to create emergency shelters for people with their animals.
Requires the provision of essential assistance for individuals with household pets and service animals, and the animals themselves, following a major disaster.

In addition to the trauma experienced by evacuees who are forced to abandon their animal companions and the subsequent suffering the animals endure, there are serious health and safety risks to disaster areas that are exacerbated by the abandoning of pets. Many of these problems can be mitigated or eliminated simply through the proper planning and response.

You can help this effort by writing to your Senator/Congressperson about it. The Humane Society of the United States has a great email campaign:
https://community.hsus.org/campaign/FED_2006_PETS3/ugg83i2953jkjj?qp_source=gabao7

Ezra's Hummingbirds

Pat Little, a gardener at the new Climbing WaterP-Patch in Seattle created this web site capturing the nesting life of anAnna's humming bird. Great photography!

http://www.writely.com/View.aspx?docid=bbfhwngm4w9mg

Metro Dog

Pampered like people, our pooches are us

CONSIDER FOR the next few thousand words that this is a city near the apex of civilization. In almost no other place, in no other time, has a group of people had it so good.

We live long and live well, from cradle to grave, from in vitro fertilization to college, career, cancer care and hospice. Name your technological age — jet, space, digital — and we are major players, building planes, plucking comet dust from space, corralling bits and bytes and knowledge itself. The largest philanthropic trust in the world is discretely humming away on Eastlake Avenue.

And coming along for the ride, smearing up the car windows, tail-swiping our coffee cups, hogging the covers, staining the white berber carpet and licking the face of any kid at tongue level, are dogs.

Please see Our Dogs, Our Selves under Cool Links for the rest of this great article.

Sophia's One Year Adoption Anniversary

Today was Sophia's one year adoption anniversary! To celebrate today and the fabulous weather, we took the Elliott Bay Water Taxi from West Seattle to downtown's waterfront, and from there walked and took the elevator up to Pike Place Market. We went to Three Dog Bakery for a celebratory Pupcake, and then across the street to Bottega Italiana for a chocolate drink (Tracy had gelatto). We then visited the park near Pike Place Market before returning to Pier 55 to catch the Water Taxi back.

One of the women I talked to on the boat likened our outing to celebrating mother's day (me being the mom and Sophia being the child/furkid). Thank you, Tracy, for helping make today special and taking this picture with my Pocket PC!

She Likes To Be Spotted

Sophia sports her new kerchief "She Likes To Be Spotted" from High Maintenance Bitch. We bought it at the shop during the Cinco de Mayo Fiesta, but you can also find their stuff online at www.hmb-seattle.com

@home : Perennial Retreat in progress

Planted in the last two days: Fagus sylvatica "Red obelisk" (two trees), two white lacecap hydrangeas, one Spirea japonica (next to bench), and three native sword fern out front.

Dicentra spectabilis (a non-native form of bleeding heart).  

To sleep...perchance to dream. 

The sweet woodruff is about to bloom. 

Native sword fern installed in front of the house. 

@home : Edible Landscape

Circle garden today.

Lettuce. 

Lettuce. 

Lettuce. 

Viola.

Viola. Even Sophia was trying to eat this one.

English daisy - at home. Right before I mowed 'er down. 

outandabout : SSCC Arboretum

Wisteria in bloom. Smells fabulous! Located between the rose gardens and Coenosium Rock Garden.

SSCC Arboretum courtyard 

Evolution of Dance

Enjoy!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMH0bHeiRNg

Evening bandits

We had a little excitement last night! We were visited by a pair of raccoons. This is the first time we have seen them during the day (well, evening, it was about 7 PM), and that we have seen two together.

Every now and then we have come in the evening and caught one up in this tree or in the cherry trees in the back (twice this year so far) but this is a rare sighting. It drove Sophia mad, since they were nearly at eye level and only 10 feet away through the living room window. They are watching Sophia and all of us through the glass.

I suspect they visit more often than I think since she gets quite excited in the backyard late at night. She later treed one of them in a cherry tree. This is the 2nd time she has done that (to my knowledge). I left a message with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife to see if they should be trapped and relocated. I would want them to be together, tho, so maybe we should leave them alone. They were gone this morning so I am not sure where their normal hideout is.

POP goes the poppy

California poppy that is. Front yard, May 10th.

All Twisted

Sophia shares naptime with her balloon animal - a dog twisted for her at the Cinco de Mayo Fiesta at High Maintenance Bitch in Lynnwood last Friday night. Really neat shop! A reporter was there from Dog Fancy Magazine, and there were many bits of entertainment. We met another iggy family there and had a nice visit. Sophia came home with a new neck scarf.

You can visit their site at www.hmb-seattle.com

Death By Chocolate

How it could happen to YOU

I have a little tale to tell that may someday save your life.

I was chewing up a bite of Hershey's Special Dark last night, yum. I am not sure if I took a breath to say something to Steve or if it was an involuntary thing, but a small bit lodged in the wrong pipe.

I began to cough to expel it. Now, if this had been a peanut or something else solid like that, it would have popped right out. But as you know, chocolate melts in your mouth (not in your hands).

What was a small piece of chocolate disolved, nearly closing off my wind pipe. Steve asked me if I was ok, and at first I was (until it melted). Then I struggled for air because the liquid chocolate was suffocating me.

Steve says clap your hands together if you need help. Imagining a bone-crushing Heimlich maneuver that would do absolutely no good since we weren't dealing with a solid object, I abstained from signaling for help.

I got up and ran to the kitchen and began coughing so hard I felt like I was going to cough up a lung. I would struggle for a breath, and then cough and cough. I managed to finally clear my pipe enough to get more air. I reached for a water glass (couldn't decide between water or milk...) when Steve suggested hot tap water might be best to clear the rest.

I've had a few scares in my life - mostly when I was a child and just scared my parents to death with my accidents and misadventures. At that age you still believe you will live forever and are made of rubber. But this is the first time I had a moment of real fear - even worse than the few car accidents I have been in (really just crashes, never had to be hospitalized or anything).

So I ended up with a massive headache and a sore throat from coughing up the lining of my esophagus. I guess the moral of my tale is to stop with one piece and not be greedy since it's the second piece that might actually kill you. As my friend Colette always says, ALL THINGS IN MODERATION. I was reminded of a very important piece of advice. And I lived to tell the tale.

@home : INbloom for May Day

The perennial garden is coming along slowly. I've been having trouble fulfilling the plant list given to me by the designer I hired last year. I finally called her in desperation to get some alternatives. I picked up two white hydrangeas and a Spirea japonica with red leaves this last weekend. They will be planted on the west (far) end of the garden. The helleborous and some of the other plants have been struggling under a load of aphids and other weird little bugs. We loosed about a thousand ladybugs here Friday morning as a natural predator against these small bugs. Our property is a pestcide free zone so you have to get creative with what battles you have to fight. This also explains why I tore out the roses last year - too difficult to grow without the aid of chemicals. She also found a source for the trees that will be planted across from each window. What we can afford is only about two feet tall ($25 each). The alternative is buying a much larger tree, which is often harder to transplant and survive. (They also cost $200 apiece and I just can't do that!) 

A native shrub, Elderberry blooms fragrant white bunches of flowers this time of year. This shrub is from a salvage site and tripled in height last year. It smothered the Western red hemlock it was planted with so had to be relocated to give both plants more room. 

The native swordferns are unfurling their fronds madly. This fern is in my first native garden planted during the first year we were in our house. There are a number of swordfern dotting our home landscape these days, all from salvage sites. This one is planted under a mock orange, another native plant. 

Switch likes to keep me company outdoors. He races around up and down tree trunks. Here he is in one of the English hawthorne trees in front of the house. This tree blooms great bunches of little dark pink flowers. Unfortunately it also gets blight every year around mid-summer and loses all of its leaves, leaving ugly skeletons. I call them our Halloween trees. This tree will be removed this year to make room for a young Magnolia tree I have been nursing along in a pot for the last two years. Magnolias do much better in our wet climate. 

This was taken on our walk along the Harbor Avenue waterfront of Elliott Bay (West Seattle). Not sure what this is, and it is not highly scented, but it looks stunning! April 26th. 

The azalea next to the front steps is recovering gradually from 2004s ice storm. It had a terrible showing last year, but I have faith that it will recover. I have not trimmed it at all, afraid to cut off something that is still alive! 

The rhondodendron out front exploded on April 25th. 

I always forget these hidden red tulips. The first year we were in our house was fun because I never knew what was going to pop up where. Then it was frustrating because a lot of stuff I don't know what it is since I didn't plant it! 

Sophia still needs wind protection when walking along the waterfront. It's not quite warm enough for her! Or me - I was wearing a windbreaker, too. SHe's stylin' in her Isaac Mizrahi "Bling Bling" t-shirt. She probably should have been wearing a polar fleece. April 26th. 

Lilacs on the west-facing hillside in front of the house are off to a good start!