It was hot for New Hampshire during most of the month of May. Because Cooper was clearly being affected by the heat we had him sheared down from his normal teddy bear appearance.

(Notice, he’s being bad. He’s sitting on the top of the back of the couch to look out that window in that way).

We had him shaved down to almost nothing on Monday

He always looks so strange to me when he’s shaved down. He’s all lean, skinny, awkward legs.

He doesn’t look like a fluffy teddy bear to me anymore, instead he reminds me of some weird guy streaking across a sports stadium’s field. His gait even seems to change when he’s naked. He almost looks like some kind of fluffy headed Gazelle.

But the vet’s office was very impressed with him when I brought him there. He weighed in at 36 pounds which is tiny for a standard poodle. A vet tech and I started talking about how huge Standard Poodles have gotten and how many poodle owners seem impressed with Cooper’s size. She told me that a lot of their huge standard poodle patients are not as well behaved at Cooper, they seem more hyper. Clearly she hasn’t met my poodle when he’s out running on the trails.

So we shaved him down, brought him to the vet and got him ready for summer. And what happens? It gets cold. Rainy, wet cold. The kind of cold that only happens when you just shaved down your dog, planted cold sensitive plants in your backyard, and need to mow your lawn.

I pulled out one of Cooper’s hiking coats.

It’s a Ruffwear Cloud Chaser softshell jacket, I wish I had one as pretty for myself. (I bought it last winter at a serious discount)

It does pretty much fit him perfectly when he’s shaved down to nothing. And I’m not going to pay to get him a bigger one for when he’s fluffy.

Of course Cooper being Cooper, we need to demonstrate that he can still run in the jacket.

Now the real question is, how do I make it warmer again? Do I give my dog hair extensions?

I really only like my hair in two lengths, chin length and below my shoulder blades. I usually try to keep it quite long because it’s easier to deal with than having it short. The only problem is that my hair gets very damaged when it gets very long.

My hair had gotten long, very long. I loved it, but it was also a damaged mess. I had stopped dying my hair earlier this year after years of pretty much drastically dyeing it regularly. The ends of the hair were no longer matching the roots, although I had a nice fade happening over the hair.

In the past when I’ve chopped my mane I’ve cropped it to my chin. But I wasn’t sure I wanted to lose that much length. So I wandered up to Manchester’s main strip at lunch to get a cut to a healthier length.

I only went to just below the shoulders. I miss the extra length, but I got rid of all the extra unhealthy layers.

Honestly, I know it looks and feels better, but I’m not sure I like it. I know it will grow on me, but its always a shock when it’s shorter.

How do you feel about getting haircuts? Excited? Ambivalent? Ever get buyers remorse?

I spend so much of my time in the outdoors that this is a shameful admission. At the age of 28, I’m still not sure what poison ivy looks like. How have I survived so long? I just avoid any plant with three leaves. It’s not a way to live.

Cooper was quite ill after eating this plant the other day. I think that this must be poison ivy.

Am I right?

Maybe I can stop avoiding most three leaved plants now.

I was also wondering if anyone knows what these plants are. The best way I can describe them is reeds or bamboo-ish.

The town occasionally cuts them down because they get too close to the road.

Some pictures from when I was in Virginia for the Hubby’s Massanutten Mountain Trails 100 miler. My camera hasn’t been overly happy lately.

I have spent considerable amount of time and money training my poodle. We have completed 4 courses now, Basic I, Basic II, Canine Good Citizen, and Rally-O novice level. We continue to train because I would like to do some competitive obedience with him, but also because we want to keep him safe no matter what conditions we encounter in the real world.

Our instructors try to prepare us for the real world but there’s always that nervous moment when you first encounter that strange child climbing on your dog, or the out of control horse barreling down the trail.

So sometimes we try to stage the real life experiences.

When Cooper was a puppy a lady riding her bike on the trail was braking so she could pet him. She was exclaiming “Puppy”. Cooper ran right in front of her bike and was bumped enough that he yelped. I was a little worried that he didn’t learn his lesson and would hurt an actual mountain biker flying down the trail some day.

So my parents came to visit and wanted to go for a bike ride. I thought: excellent, we will see how he does with people who wont sue me.

And I was pleasantly surprised. My parents on bikes, me running on foot. Cooper sprinted to the lead bicyclist and sprinted back to me a few times. When he was next to a bike he ran along side a couple meters away. He kept an eye out for where the bikes were in relation to himself.

Our only thing of concern, while my parents were traveling the opposite direction of the loop from me we encountered a little girl on the trail. She fell off her bike when she hit some gravel. Cooper started barking at the bike. Angry scared barking. We got him to settle down and the little girl and accompanying guardian didn’t seem alarmed. It was suggested that Cooper was just upset at the bike for trying to hurt the little girl.

So overall, pretty pleased with my poodle. I think I’ll keep him.

I like food. But I also get very bored with food. I can’t stand eating similar things day after day. I even have a hard time eating leftovers.

Not my hubby, he could survive on a diet of rice/ramen, frozen fish sticks, and frozen vegetables forever. He does however enjoy eating meat with almost every meal.

I however have recently been heading back towards a more flexitarian diet. What’s a flexitarian? I’ve heard it described as either someone who tries to reduce their meat consumption or a vegetarian who occasionally eats meat.

I tend to be a more unconscious flexitarian. I don’t actively eliminate meat, I don’t actively try to eat only vegetarian. I simply often find myself looking at my meals that day to realize that I didn’t consume any meat products. It simply is not what I chose that day.

When I choose to eat meat I try to avoid the processed stuff (frozen fish stick…yuck). And I mostly do it because I either really suddenly crave the meat, or because I’m making food for the both of us.

I think the idea that one does not need meat with every meal, is starting to catch on. I was at a race at NHTI in Concord and a table in their cafeteria had a flier on it “Be flexitarian, eliminate meat one day a week”. Having no true definition, this is a true statement. Several environmental blogs encourage eating a meatless meal one day a week to improve the environment. Whatever the reasons I continue to enjoy meals without meat.

I’m considering doing a conscientious vegetarian week or two soon. I mostly want to do it to try new recipes to use in my daily flexitarian routine. But I need ideas.

I do eat a lot of eggs and dairy. I enjoy Indian foods. I’m not very good at preparing dishes with tofu in it.

What is your favorite vegetarian or vegan dish? Links to recipes would be much appreciated.

Photography fascinates me. Not just the artsy, the perfect, the wonderful. I love snapshots, family photographs, accidental button clicks.

I think vacation photography is very special When you start to think of all the people who have posed in the same spot as you. Taking the same tacky tourist photos as you are taking that very moment. Capturing a memory of something you witnessed. Saying, ‘hey, I was there’.

Well recently my father scanned a whole slew of pictures my grandmother had collected over the years. There is no information about what the pictures contains but we can guess.

The following picture was taken at Hopewell Cape in New Brunswick. I’m not sure when. I think it was pre-Miriam for sure. I’m not even sure who is in the picture.

How do I know it was taken at Hopewell Cape? I took this picture when I visited the place in 2008.

And guess who’s family posed under the same flowerpot formation?

I wonder if my dad  was in that family snapshot and if he was, I wonder if he remembers that he had posed under that same arch probably 30 years earlier.

I should really take pictures of Cooper when he gets home from the groomers. He always looks so clean and proper. But he’s a goofy high energy mess and he loves to get dirty.

This is what he looks like a week after the haircut. We like to keep him fluffy. He’s been through a few get dirty, get hosed off cycles at this point.

But I’ve been training for my 1st Ultra-marathon, so Cooper and I have been hitting the trail a lot. On a hot and muggy day like yesterday, that means that mud, any mud is a welcome sight to him.

Sure, I guess I could be the kind of dog owner that tells him to get out of the mosquito larvae infested puddle in the middle of the trail, but to be honest, I was a little jealous.

The puddle may have been gross but it sure beat the 89 degree Fahrenheit and humid heat in early May.

And when we get home, and he looks like this, it’s hard to deny the fact that I have a poodle, he loves to get muddy and he loves his life with my family.

Mis-communication

My husband was at work last week when he got a phone call from a number he didn’t recognize. A quick Google search lead to discovery that this phone number had been calling to a level that was harassing and never left a voicemail. So he chose to ignore it.

A few minutes later a text message comes in “I’ll be by your car”. Adam’s a little creeped out by this but chooses to ignore it.

Next text “I have your Capp”. Adam ignored this as well.

My little brother was in town. We had given him a prepaid cell phone. He had purchased a Cappuccino and was patiently sitting by my hubby’s car to give it to him. That will teach my little brother to try to do nice things for others!

When will he learn

Poodles are supposed to be smart. So why is it that he doesn’t learn the connection between being horribly sick and eating the rotten sandwich on the side of road. Instead when he sees the next rotten sandwich he just eats it faster because he remembers that his running partner tried to stop him last time.

Parental weather check

We had a little relapse into typical Spring weather last week. It was 38 degrees Fahrenheit and threatening to snow (it snowed the next morning). I was at the airport with two sweaters on, freezing as I waited for Adam to come back from Arizona.

While I was there a flight from Charlottesville, Virginia came in. Everyone was wearing shorts, flip flops and tank tops, even the kids.

This irked me, because it’s one thing if you as an adult are walking around in the cold dressed like an idiot. Its another thing when your 3 year old is standing there shivering because their sweater is in the checked luggage. Before you travel with children, please check the weather.

The thing I love the most about Spring is the beauty of the blooming fruit trees. I recently took my camera on a lunch run with me simply so I could take pictures of some of the beautiful blooms presenting in Manchester, New Hampshire. I wanted to share some of them with you. But here’s the catch, I want you to name/guess what kind of tree/fruit/flower produces the blossoms I’ve seen on my run. No prizes but comment away

Mystery Blossom #1

Mystery Blossom #2 (hint it hasn’t bloomed yet and it it’s really more of a flower than a blossom)

Mystery Blossom #3

Mystery Blossom #4

Mystery Blossom #5

Mystery Blossom #6 (A little tricky because taken from below)