We're Cuckoo for Coco

In the words of the immortal Buddy the Elf, "Good news! I saw a dog today." Seeing a dog can definitely be good news. They are great emotional therapy! And fortunately for all of us in the Barrett household, we have seen a dog today...and every day, for the last few months! We've seen this adorable dog:

 It's the newest member of our family: Coco Barrett!

Our girls have wanted a dog for years. As soon as Lorelai was old enough to speak, she started asking for a dog. In fact, for about 8 months when she was 5, Lorelai was a dog; she walked around the house on all fours, barking instead of talking, all day long. Her younger sisters quickly followed suit, and "When are we going to get a dog?" became a constant, never-ending refrain that has haunted me for years.

Everywhere we went, the kids perked up immediately when a dog was in the vicinity. I can't tell you how many dog owners we accosted over the years, with my girls' constant pleas to pet the "doggie." Thankfully, we learned from those experiences how to approach unfamiliar dogs, and how to treat them with caution and great care. Luckily, my girls were never attacked or bitten (very luckily; their affection could be a bit smothering at times).

Out of the whole family, I was the one least inclined to get a dog. It's not that I hate dogs; quite the contrary, I love them! But I was also the only family member that had ever owned a dog before (Nathan's family had a dog for a few months when he was a child, but they were primarily a cat family). I knew how much attention, care, & training dogs needed, and how much work it would be to own one. The thought of owning one was a bit daunting; I knew it would be like having another small child around! Also, I wanted to wait until a few of our outstanding debts could be cleared before taking on the financial and logistical burden of a dog. These reasonable objections were met with bitter dismay by my girls, who became convinced over time that I was a mean old grump who delighted in crushing their dreams.

For years I pleaded patience, and bit by bit I was worn down. We managed to buy ourselves a year or two by purchasing guinea pigs for the girls as "gateway pets." It was good training for the girls to have an animal that required daily care & feeding. As the years passed--as the girls grew older, as our car payments ended--I knew that soon the time for adoption would come.

We decided early on that we would adopt a dog from a local animal shelter. We didn't want to visit a pet store or risk contacting an unscrupulous breeder; besides, we didn't have the cash for that sort of thing! We thought it would be nice to "rescue" a dog. A couple of years ago, Nathan volunteered for a few months at the Animal League of Green Valley, a local no-kill animal shelter that always has lots of lonely dogs and cats looking for new homes. We promised the girls last summer that the dog would be an early Christmas present, of sorts; we would adopt our dog from the League in December of 2016, after all our big vacations were done, so we would have plenty of time to get to know it.

This sent the girls into a state of excitement that is hard to explain (although I bet they could have been diagnosed with a pathological obsession). They were probably more excited by the prospect of a dog than by any vacation we could have taken (indeed, on more than one occasion during both our San Diego and Utah vacations, the girls would shout, "Once this trip is over, we'll be that much closer to getting our dog!!" I mean, we're at the beach, or Sea World, and still all they could think about was the dog. Lorelai visited the Animal League's web site every day for at least three months, scanning the lists of dogs available and creating lists of dogs she wanted to visit, ranked by preference, breed...all sorts of considerations. It was incredible to me to see their level of focus and interest.

Finally, after our Utah Thanksgiving trip, we agreed that we could visit the Animal League and start "browsing" the dogs, hopefully finding one from our list that was a good fit for our family. After just one visit to the Animal League, though, we realized that the animals appearing on the website weren't always reasonable choices...many of them were not even housed on-site, or had personality issues that meant we couldn't even visit them.

Despite our initial disappointment, we still ended up enjoying our visits to the League, and we met several beautiful, sweet, fun-loving dogs. There were three in particular that caught our affection, for a number of reasons. But in the end, this is the dog we agreed upon:

"Colleen" was listed as a "Lab mix" (most of the dogs at the shelter are mixed-breed; we hope to get a DNA test done later this year to verify what her genetic makeup is). She was estimated to be a little more than a year old. Colleen had been found alone (likely abandoned) in Green Valley, and had been staying at the shelter for just about a month when we saw her. Oddly, she has a short stumpy tail (in all probability, it had been "docked" by a previous owner). We were a little sad not to have a dog with a long, wagging tail, but otherwise we thought she was a sweet, lovely animal.

Of our three finalists, she was the best combination of size (she was a good, medium-sized dog, and thus managed easily by all three of our girls), hair (although she does shed, her hair is fairly short and isn't too difficult to clean up), and especially temperament (she hits a nice middle ground between "calm/cuddly" and "playful/lively"). There was a lot of discussion about whether Colleen would be a good fit for our home, and after careful consideration by all family members, we decided the answer was "yes."

There was just one thing: the name "Colleen" had to go! The Animal League often does a good job naming their stray animals, but "Colleen" sounded way too "old lady" for us. We initially thought we would call her "Coal" (as both a diminutive of Colleen, and a sly Christmas allusion: "We got 'Coal' in our stocking for Christmas!"). However, the name seemed a bit too masculine for her, so we changed it to "Coco," a more playful (and gender-neutral) choice. Everyone liked the name, and so Coco she became!

We were both excited and a little nervous to bring her home. Coco seemed very interested in the house and explored it carefully without damaging anything. She was, however, very interested in poor Cucumber, our lone remaining guinea pig.

It was pretty clear her instincts were at war with our desires; she really wanted to eat that tasty-looking rodent! One day, after leaving the house for a short errand, we returned home to find the metal door to the cage bashed in, and the cage itself hanging half off the table. Apparently, Coco had decided to "play" with Cucumber. After that, the whole family took turns keeping Cucumber in their rooms, to save him from Coco's attention. As it turned out, Cucumber passed away in January of this year, just more than a month after Coco moved in. The poor thing was getting old anyway, but I suspect the added stress of living with a large beastly dog speeded his demise.

So far, having Coco at home has been a very positive experience. She is a sweet, friendly dog who is not afraid of any humans. She will occasionally growl or bark at the doorbell or unexpected visitors, but the majority of the time she trots up to them, stubby tail wagging in greeting, and tries to greet them with a slobbery kiss. She has a fairly submissive demeanor; she listens to our commands and is fairly meek when more aggressive personalities are around (both dog and human). She is actually more shy around other dogs than people; when we are out walking, she sometimes crouches down and holds very still when other dogs approach; she wants to "check them out" before getting comfortable.

So far, we have kept Coco pretty close to home, but we try to take her on daily (or twice-daily) walks, as well as a visit to the dog park every few days. We have taken her on a few outings, though; she has now been to Madera Canyon twice! Once on a snowy day in January with our family...

...and once just last week for Spring Break, with many of our friends. We visited a small waterfall at the base of the canyon, and Coco loved splashing around in the cool spring runoff. It was a fun morning, not just because we got to spend it with our close friends, but because we got to take Coco on a fun outing that was a break from her normal routine.

We hope we can take her on camping trips and other longer vacations in the future!

We strongly suspect Coco has had training before, likely from a previous owner. She is already potty trained; she has only peed in the house three times in three months...and two of those times were the first two days here! She has also quickly learned most of the tricks we've taught her (especially "sit" and "stay"). Just this month, we started obedience training with her at a local PetCo, and the wonderful trainer there has given us a lot of help getting her more disciplined. She learns new commands very quickly, and is very good at sensing our moods. The dogs I grew up with were much more high-strung and panicked easily...in a word, they could often be pretty dense. Coco is a much more intelligent dog; I can tell when she is considering her options, and her emotions are more guarded. She is also pretty calm; small dogs can be yapping loudly in her ear, and she will be silent and quiet, choosing not to descend into a shouting match (at least not right away).

Of course, there have been a few problems along the way. After all, Coco is still a young dog, and she has several puppy-like behaviors. When she gets wiggly and playful, she likes to "nip" our feet, clothing, and hands. The nipping rarely hurts us, but it's still a habit we hope to do away with eventually. She often gets over-excited when she's on a leash and will tug uncomfortably on the lead (especially when we take her to the local dog park, one of her very favorite places; it's all we can do to keep her from running away from us as she joyfully heads up the hill to the park).

Craziness at the bark park, when Coco meets her "twin" Leo. They played and wrestled for hours!

Probably the biggest problem we face with Coco is her chewing. This isn't unique to Coco; lots of young dogs love to chew anything laying around. She is calmer than some dogs, but we have still had to be careful about what we leave lying around. In three days, she completely demolished two boxes of Kleenex. She's also ripped the faces off of a few of the girl's stuffed animals, and chewed up a couple of action figures. She likes to snack on our food, too, when she can get it; at Christmastime, with all the extra food laying around, she helped herself more than once to some of our cookies or candy. She somehow managed to devour a whole sleeve of gourmet chocolate-peanut-butter Oreo cookies (thankfully with no ill effect). On another occasion, she ate all of Aurora's leftover chocolate birthday cupcakes (again with no ill effect; she must have a stomach of steel!). We are learning bit by bit to lock up our valuables, to carefully put away all our electronic devices, and to store our food and valuables behind closed doors!

There is one other interesting aspect of Coco's character that has been frustrating at times. Most trainers these days encourage dog owners to have their dogs sleep in crates. But Coco has been wary of the crate we bought for her, from the very first day she arrived at our home. Trainers insist that dogs love the crate and feel comfortable inside it; Coco, however, is very nervous and refuses to go inside at times. Nathan and I tried to force her inside early on, and it was a mistake; she fought us terribly, and even with our combined strength, we couldn't get her inside. She's a strong beast! Anyway, we tried having her sleep in the bathroom downstairs for a few nights. This, too, did not work; she cried and scratched frantically on the door. Eventually one night, she chewed up the doorframe of the bathroom(!), and then leaped onto the sink and ate the nightlight plugged into the wall(!). Finally, exhausted and desperate, we moved her dog "pad" up next to the girls' bedrooms (we do not want her sleeping in any of our bedrooms, but thought the proximity to us would be comforting to her). That seemed to finally calm her down; she slept in the hall for several nights.

Over time, she has moved downstairs and likes to sleep on the couch. I was worried about this at first, but she is on very good behavior at night; she doesn't wander around causing mischief, nor does she wake us up for a midnight bathroom break. She sleeps peacefully through the night! However, it seems that she will not sleep peacefully through the night when she is in an enclosed space.

After Coco got spayed. She looked surprised, but not upset, that Aurora used her as a pillow!

We haven't given up on the crate just yet. We have put comfortable blankets inside it; we have put her food bowl in it at times, and lately we have started putting "special treats" (toys, hot dogs, etc.) inside, to help it feel more welcoming. Progress has been slow, but it has been happening; Coco now takes regular naps inside the crate (she's only spent all night in it twice, and both times avoided the crate afterwards for a while; we have to work her up to nightly visits, methinks). She will now venture inside periodically throughout the day, and occasionally go there when she wants a little quiet time. In fact, as of this writing (late at night on a Monday), she is comfortably snoozing in the crate! We hope we can get her sleeping inside it regularly...it will be very helpful if we are ever going to go on vacation without her! We have often wondered if her previous masters kept her crated for most of her life, and that's why she is so nervous about it. We hope we can restore some of her trust, and we are praying it won't take much longer.

On occasion, I have slept on the couch or out on our futon, and Coco is quick to cuddle up to me. She also loves to hang out with us when we are watching TV, holding family home evening, or even jumping on the trampoline.

Coco likes being around people; she is always very relieved when we return home after being away for several hours.

How can you not love this face??

 She is such a sweet, good-natured dog and we are all falling in love with her. It has been bumpy at times, but we are so grateful to the Animal League for steering us toward a dog that was a really good fit for our family. I hope we can enjoy many happy years together, and that she can be a faithful, loving companion to us and a friend to all our visitors!

A Very Barrett Christmas 2016

We had to track Santa down at the Fry's grocery store. That's how organized our Christmas was.

 Hooray...a post about Christmas, just in time for Spring Break...ha! Maybe one day, I will actually be caught up with this blog! I hope you are all ready for some holiday cheer just as your springtime allergies kick in.

Most families have their own holiday traditions during the month of December. We have a few that we try to keep going every year, but mostly our "family Christmas tradition" is starting to be, "survive December and remember it as a big blur." Blogging about it so long after the fact is just emphasizing the blurriness; in a month where everyone is running from place to place to place, how can I focus on the most important stuff? I will have to look back at the pictures I took and do my best to sift through my memories and commit them to screen.

Some of our holiday happenings have already been blogged about. After two large family vacations in the fall, the Christmas season actually felt less crowded than usual...perhaps because we'd already done so much prep work for our traveling that all the other errand-running felt a little less overwhelming. At any rate, our December remained busy but not breakneck...despite the fact that we gained a new, furry family member that month!

But that story is getting its own blog entry very soon. This post is a list of our notable Christmas activities...

...like buying and decorating our Christmas tree! Yes, we are still using a live tree. Maybe some year Nathan will talk me out of live trees and we will purchase a nice big plastic one, but that day has not yet come. For now, we were happy to bask in the light from our real pine tree, and gratefully inhale its delicious scent.

Now that the girls are getting older, it is getting easier and easier to decorate the tree...I just delegate most of it to them! They still need me to hang the high-up ornaments, but they are slowly learning how to do it all themselves. What a relief for me!

We also spent much of the holidays doing various combinations of playing/listening to music, and looking at lots of beautiful Christmas lights.

First, the music! We were blessed to have a wonderful music-related service opportunity this last December. Occasionally, I play piano on Fridays at an assisted-living center in nearby Green Valley. I am the substitute for the regular pianist, who comes weekly; I have filled in at various times throughout the year. This year, the regular pianist was unavailable for the whole month of December, so I was asked to fill in. I was so excited to go; I love playing for these sweet people; for some of them, it is the highlight of their week! Also, it gave me the excuse to play lots of Christmas carols, which I am more than happy to do.

This year, as luck would have it, the girls had several early-release Fridays in December...so I invited them to come with me, and sing the Christmas carols along with the residents while I accompanied them all! Thankfully, all my girls were eager to do this! Sometimes, I know younger children can be a little nervous around the elderly. My girls have lived near Green Valley (a large retirement community) almost their whole lives, so they are used to being around lots of senior citizens (having a Grandma who lives in Green Valley and has lots of friends there doesn't hurt either!). It warmed my heart to see my girls sitting next to the residents, talking with them, and singing together with them.

Lorelai and Celeste even played some piano songs for them as well! It was the songs they were to play at our Christmas piano recital (more on that in a little bit). They got a great response from the residents. All told, I played Christmas carols for the center on four consecutive Fridays in December, three of which included my awesome daughters! It was a great opportunity and we all felt the warm joy that comes when you brighten someone's day. It may not be the biggest form of service you can give, but we all loved it. Hopefully we will have the chance again this next Christmas.

Usually, our charter school's jazz band holds a Christmas concert. Unfortunately, due to lots of ongoing construction projects, there was no holiday concert this year. Honestly, none of us minded all that much, since it was "one less thing" to worry about in December. But the performing arts class of our school did stage a "holiday musical," featuring quick, fun musical numbers from each elementary school class.

I wasn't able to get a video of any of the musical numbers, but it was a cute show...especially considering that the middle-school students wrote and directed the show themselves! Impressive. Plus there was a lot of fake snow to play in at the end!

It was a lot more fun than Lorelai is making it look here.

Another December musical tradition that did happen was the Christmas recital of my piano students (this is including my two beautiful daughters, plus a couple of former students). Despite being a little stressful, I am always so excited for this concert; I love to hear the kids play their Christmas music, and it was great to hear how hard all the kids had worked and how well they sounded.

I love being a piano teacher, and hope I can do it for at least a few more years!

For those interested, here are the musical numbers that Lorelai and Celeste performed at the recital (I recorded their performances from home, to make them a little less tense during the actual recital):

I was especially proud of Lorelai's performance of "Music of the Night." It was the most lengthy and challenging song she's yet attempted, and she worked really hard on it for a long time. She even played it from memory! She has really come a long way in piano in the last year or so.

Kind of hard to tell in this picture, but there was a harpist sitting under this lovely light cascade, playing soft spiritual music all night for Winterhaven visitors. Beautiful!

Speaking of music, there was a lot of it when we visited the Winterhaven Festival of Lights this last Christmas; we must have gotten lucky and gone on a special night! The renowned Tucson Boys Chorus was there, entertaining everyone with carols.

The girls and I were all quite impressed!

"Muppet Christmas Carol" house...yaaaaay!

"Snowfall" from Elsa's castle

No music here...just a whole lotta lights.

This house has a coordinated light/water fountain show every year. Impressive!

Christmas...pirates??!?!? Okay, then.

 

Inflatable "Star Wars" figurine house

Camping under a polar bear

 There were, of course, many other homes that had Christmas movies or carols playing on loudspeakers, to match their pretty lights.

Listening to music and enjoying the fire

Shooting hockey pucks at the Grinch

The girls got to write letters to Santa.

Going to Winterhaven is probably my favorite Christmas tradition; I am a sentimental sucker, but I never get tired of the lights and the cool displays!

A little closer to home was the famed "Christmas House," which never ceases to amaze us. The house really isn't that big; it's pretty amazing what this family manages to put on display. I shudder to think of what their electric bill must look like.

Not only that, but they have a Christmas tree filled with candy canes that are free to all visitors! The family also accepts donations to local food banks, which I think is a nice touch.

We have slowly started to make the "Christmas house" a tradition in other families as well; we like to bring the girls' friends along for a look!

There is also this impressive "Christmas carnival" house in a smaller neighborhood in north Green Valley:

 

Sadly, we didn't make it to the Mesa Temple lights this year, because of our newest "family member," but we hope to make it there next Christmas!

Once school was out and all our concerts were done (I'm including our ward's Christmas musical program in with that), we were able to relax a bit, while still taking care of some of our other traditions, like:

--making the kids' annual Christmas-tree ornaments;

--assembling gingerbread houses;

 

--and baking treats to give away.

For the last couple of years, we have been delivering plates of cookies to our local firemen and policemen. The kids are coming to expect it, and I think it's a great way to give a little service during the holidays.

Another tradition we have come to love is having friends over for Christmas Eve or Christmas day dinner. It's not as grand of a feast as Thanksgiving, but we try to have a nice ham and a few sides. It is a great opportunity to draw closer to people we don't see as much anymore. We have had our friends the Valles over for three straight Christmas dinners now; they were in our old ward before we were moved to a different one, and this is one way in which we try to keep in touch.

However, there was more family than usual visiting from out of town this Christmas; Nathan's brother Evan, his wife Kaela, and Evan's son Braiden all decided to come down for Christmas! We decided to invite the whole crew. And since Grandma wanted everyone at her house for Christmas night, we decided to move our dinner to Christmas Eve. In a lovely coincidence, Christmas Eve and Hanukkah fell on the same night in 2016, so it was a great excuse to make my traditional Hanukkah dinner: pot roast with cranberry sauce, and lots and lots of potato latkes!!

It was a delicious, greasy dinner and everyone ended the evening with full bellies and big smiles. We were so grateful for all the company. After that, it was time to put the kids to bed, and get ready for "Santa's" arrival the next morning...

We were pretty happy with all our gifts!

 

The maiden voyage of Lorelai's drone didn't go perfectly. At first, it got stuck in our tree. Then, it accidentally landed in our neighbor's yard. It's a work in progress!

Sorry for the bad camera work in the second half of the video...I was laughing too hard at the drone's predicament.

I splurged a little and bought an Instant Pot, a programmable electric pressure cooker that I've been hearing raves about.

It was love at first sight.

I was able to test it out just a day or so later, when I made ham and bean soup out of our leftover Christmas ham. It was delicious; and it was the beginning of a lovely relationship between me and this very handy kitchen device!

So, our Christmas was great as always, and probably a bit more low-key than usual. But that was definitely not a bad thing! Plus, it was our first Christmas with this beautiful girl...

We hope she will be with us for many Christmases to come! The next blog post will be all about her.