Category Archives: Poodle

Don’t Blame Me

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This morning, for the first time in a week, the sun rose unimpeded by clouds.             There was a thick rope of fog laid the length of Gastineau Channel but it was gone by 9 A.M. I listened to foghorns while drinking morning coffee and thinking about where to spend part of this sunny day.

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As Aki slept curled in my lap, I decided to head North to where a trail snaked over a small rise and along the edge of Favorite Passage. The little dog always seems to enjoy that one.

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Later, while taking a break on the trail, we waited on a pocket beach for Aki to rinse her new Frisbee. It was only unnatural thing on the beach. Time and tide, not human hands, had placed every pebble and rock. The tiny grass meadow at the edge of the splash zone was sown by the wind.

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After finishing the walk we drove to the Shrine of St. Therese where someone with too much spare time had stacked beach rocks into cone-shaped cairns on the beach in front of the columbarium. Nearby a raven paced. When we neared the bird flew off and landed in the middle of small collection of cairns, knocking down two of them. After defecating on the ruins the raven surveyed the field of rock stacks and then turned to stare at us. I wanted to tell him about the beach not far from here where no one had tried to improve nature.

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Slow Walk Through Downtown

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I chose this route through Downtown Juneau for its convenience, not its beauty. Aki’s other human and I have an appointment at 10 A.M. Aki lead me out the door at 8:30 this morning. We should have finished in be done in an hour. But even though rain sluices down on us, Aki insists on taking her time. Each scent mark must be smelt from different angles. No pee spot may be passed by without a full nasal inspection.

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She slows down ever further when we reach the South Franklin Street tourist stores. I have to discourage her from peeing on a full-length coat on display outside of a fur shop. Otherwise she is well behaved. She trots by friendly cruise ship tourists but stops to accept pets from clerks standing like barkers outside their jewelry shops. Aki pays the most attention to homeless people sheltering from the rain in the doorways of closed shops.  My frustration with the little poodle fades when I see the smiles on those she favors.

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They are Back

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The ravens waited for Aki. Two of the large black birds strutted down the Fish Creek Bridge as if fat-rich bodies of dead dog salmon weren’t stretched out for them on a gravel bar beneath the bridge. They were sated and bored and looking to do some mischief. My little dog was a handy patsy. When they didn’t make way for us on the bridge, Aki growled and dashed forward. The ravens flited a little further down the bridge and waited for her to catch up. Just before she did, the ravens lifted themselves onto the bridge rails.

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Game ended, the little poodle-mix trotted off the bridge and headed toward Fish Creek Pond. Two bald eagles eyed our approach. Incoming pink salmon splashed on the pond’s surface. One let itself be caught by a grade schooler on the opposite shore of the pond.

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We’d see at least a half-a-dozen eagles on our walk to the creek’s mouth. All have been drawn here by the pink and chum salmon now filing up the creek. All around Juneau, chum salmon are spawning in their home streams. Each stream draws of collection of bald eagles, ravens, crows, and gulls waiting for the dying to begin.

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Why Not Stop Once in Awhile?

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The rain stopped early this morning and the wind has shaken the beach grass dry.  As I slow walk down the Outer Point Beach, watching two eagles do an aerial dance with steps known only to them, I realize that I have never just sat and watched the sea from here. Without giving Aki warning, I plop down on a beach log.

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A strong breeze tears through the canopy of the forest that borders the beach. But the trees prevent it from reaching the little dog or me. The wind rips leaves from the beach-side alders, carries them over our heads, then releases them to float down onto the water.  Microbursts of wind slam into the surface of the bay driving tiny by intense waves out in concentric circles. Out in a Lynn Canal a boat idles, waiting for a whale to surface.

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The rain starts up, falling in thick drops that form grey circles on the beach pebbles when they hit home. I am still inclined to doddle but Aki is not. She stands thirty meters away where the trail through the woods begins, showing me her “are you crazy” look. Perhaps I am, little dog, to let you bully me away from all this turbulent beauty.

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Fish and Friend Ballet

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Aki didn’t come with on this fishing trip. It’s for the best. She’d been bored after she investigated the boat for crumbs. The boat’s rhythmic pounding as it rounded Shelter Island would have sent her searching the cutty cabin for a place to hide. She wouldn’t have been calmed until the banging stopped, even after I assured her that the waves would drop at the changing of the tide.  Now I wonder if I shouldn’t have stayed home with the little dog.

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I was thrilled and frightened by a humpback whale that surfaced less than fifty meters in front of us as the boat headed for the fishing grounds. The captain and I both felt relief after he made a course correction letting the whale slide by twenty meters to port. Now I am a little bored and feeling put upon by the rough motion of the boat beating into sharp-edged swells. The captain and I sank our herring-baited hooks an hour ago.  At the edge of our vision, a pod of humpbacks bubble feed. But to move nearer to them would take us away from the fish we seek.

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Right now the Juneau Costco store is opening its doors. If home and not being hammered by waves on Lynn Canal, I could buy two immaculate red salmon fillets nestling under plastic wrap in a foam tray. The tray would cost less than the gas used to reach the fishing grounds. But if I substituted that salmon for the one I hope to catch this morning I could not have watched the peaks of the Chilkat Range climb out of low lying clouds. There’d be no more whale encounters if I only fished at Costco, no more chances to see a bear work the tidelands for found food.

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The tip of my trolling pole dips down and then pops us as a fish pulls my line from the downrigger clip. I grab the pole and reel in slack until I can feel hooked salmon struggling to escape. When it breaks the water and I know it is a silver.  My fishing partner reels in his line and cranks up the downrigger cables so they can’t interfere with the boating of the fish. With the net, he moves in front of me as I gently reel in my line. Three times the silver will undo my efforts when it swims away after being brought close to the boat. It will be too tired to resist the net the fourth time. Then I will remember that it is this ballet of salmon and friend that I would miss most of all if I only fished at stores.

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Simple Things

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Simple things—a cooling breeze, sunlight on flowers, interesting shapes of everyday objects—can lift a person’s mood. Aki keeps it simple in her life. She examines every faint smell. The little dog follows the straightforward social rules of her kind, showing submission at the first meeting with a larger dog and then joy when submission is not required. Often my tendency toward complexity leads me to ignore the plain things.

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This morning I am standing at a trail junction waiting for Aki to catch up. Mosquitoes are storming around. I want to move before the one buzzing my right ear sinks its drill-bit like proboscis into the tender flesh at my temple. When the little dog breaks into a run in my direction I make my escape. We continue on to Gastineau Meadows in a cloud of bugs. A ten-knot breeze reaches the meadow the same time as us, carrying away the mosquitoes. In the unexpected quiet that follows, I slowly focus on how the wind ripples through the meadow grass. I notice, too, the early morning sunlight elevating the beauty of simple objects like dead trees limbs and live pinecones.

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Tiny but Fierce

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Aki showed indifference while I pulled on my bike gear and left the house this morning. I didn’t hear her howl when I rode out of the yard and down the steep hill into downtown Juneau. She seemed calm when I took a post-ride shower. But her patience and understanding ran out when I filled a mug with coffee.  Okay little dog, we’re going.

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I crack open a window to distract Aki and drive over to muskeg meadow. It should be empty of people. No one I know would spend a sunny afternoon hunting and pecking on the muskeg for ripe cloudberries. Only expats from tundra towns or Scandinavia seek them out.

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At first Aki refuses to follow me off the gravel trail.  She has learned to avoid the normally wet muskeg. But thanks to our recent drought the meadow is dry. She can spring over it in search of interesting smells. After plopping a cloudberry into the container, I look up and spot my little poodle-mix legs up on the muskeg.  With the look on her face of an aficionado with a mouthful of perfect ice cream, she rubs her back on something that must smell like doggy heaven.

This is why I choose to ride my bike to Sheep Creek this morning rather than take you there in the car.

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That morning, I had heard the scream of gulls before reaching the creek. They fought for position on gravel bars and places in the stream full of holding salmon. A dozen bald eagles held a meeting on the Gastineau Channel beach. Already dead salmon—the kind that dogs love to squirm in—were pilling up on the beach.

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In mid-stream, a lone Bonaparte gull landed on a partially submerged rock. While she screeched from her rock, a dog salmon slapped her pulpit with its tail.  The little gull flew off and dive-bombed an eagle as it ripped flesh off a dead salmon. Tiny but fierce bird.  Kind of like Aki.

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Auk Lake

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When she was a puppy, Aki would carry a book around in her mouth. I’d find her tooth marks on volumes left by the bed. She gave up books when she figured out she couldn’t eat words. But she still likes to visit our local college.

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I also like to walk across the tiny campus with its Tlingit totem poles and sheet metal raven sculpture. The campus abuts against Auk Lake, which we circumnavigated after our college visit. It’s a trail better suited for someone hearing impaired who wouldn’t have to listen to the constant noise from nearby Glacier Highway.

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After I tune out the road roar, I notice a face formed by the reflection of sedge by small wind-driven swells. It looks grumpy, even menacing in a James Thurber sort of way. Nearby a small floatplane appears to be sinking in shoreline vegetation.   But I know it is tied safely to a hidden dock, ready to fly its owner over the glacier and onto a quiet mountain lake.

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She Can Never Know Solitude

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Since this is the first overcast morning we have had in a week, I shouldn’t be surprised by the lack of hikers on Perseverance Trail.  But it seems weird to have the trail to ourselves.  Thanks to her powerful nose, Aki can never experience true solitude. Her world is always full of scent messages. She can never know and would probably hate the sense of being alone in the rain forest.

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Today’s flat light robs much of the beauty from the mountains but there is plenty of interest at my feet: heart-shaped cotton woods leaves stressed into displays of fall colors, canary yellow monkey flowers (aka touch-me-nots) framed by their own green leaves, and a judgmental little poodle-mix urging me to get a move on.

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Frisbee Six

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This is a sad day for Aki, not because we failed to find many berries to pick but because her beloved Frisbee floated away.  She has lost five other Frisbees in the same manner. Today, while we walked from the berry patch toward the trailhead, the little dog shot off the trail and down a steep path to Montana Creek. Not realizing the danger, she dropped her Frisbee into the water for cleaning. In seconds it floated away down stream. Her other human slid down the trail in hopes of retrieving the toy. But it was already out of reach.

Aki refused to accept her loss. She urged her other human to go get the saucer-shaped toy. She had to be carried halfway up the stream bank before she agreed to join me on the trail. Even after we started back to the car, she would look with expectation at the little shoulder pouch that once housed her special, plastic friend.