About Elky

I have already told you a bit about happy Tassel, who moves in grace in beauty. Let me now sing a loopy and spontaneous song to Elky, the vociferocious girl.

The thing is, this little dog has some issues. The same true to some degree for all of us, I suppose, and while Elky's issues are nothing to be alarmed about, they sure make living with her an interesting proposition. Take mealtime: she follows me around the house most of the time, but when mealtime approaches she stays particularly close. When I walk toward the laundry room where I keep the dogs' bowls and food, she begins to whine in a squeaky voice in anticipation, and when I take down from the shelf and open the plastic bucket containing the kibble, unless I have given her the "quiet" command (the hand signal accompanying the verbal command is to draw the right hand knife-like across my throat), she will bark at me and growl at Tassel. I feed her in the laundry room with the door closed, lest she run between her bowl and Tassel's, growling and fretting.

Elky considers anything to do with grooming as torture. Yesterday the dogs managed to find some stagnant and fetid drainage from the compost bin and, as dogs are wont to do, rolled in it. As the worst offender, Tassel went into the tub first and was her usual compliant self, even standing still while I trimmed her nails afterwards. When I called Elky for her turn she sat across the room staring at me as though she couldn't understand what I wanted her to do. All I have to do is say "brush" (a common expression in a house with two Corgis) and she starts looking for a place to hide.

In the evenings Tassel generally goes to bed in her crate around 8:30, but Elky prefers to stay up with us regardless of the hour, even if it's simply to doze at our feet.

On our trips in my pickup truck to the park she gets very excited whenever we slow down or when she hears the turn signal...which she interprets as "Are we there yet? Oh boy!" She has an adorable intensity in everything she does: be it watching me with her bright eyes to find out what is next on the agenda, dancing around me on the way to the back door to receive her afternoon treat, or jumping into and out of the truck before and after our morning run. Her intense gaze conveys the impression of a sharp curiosity about the world...in particular whatever it is that I am doing in her world...and perhaps because of this impression I find that I engage in a fairly continuous one-way conversation with her: "OK, Elky, here we go. You're a great dog, but wait, WAIT!, till I get the leash on you and Tassel. Want to start at the pond or the soccer field? When we finish our walk I'm going to have to run by the grocery store and pick up some things for lunch, but don't worry, I'll park in the shade and won't be but just a minute." And so on. She divides her attention between eye contact with me and and intent survey of our route and progress. To observe dog and man would be to conclude that the old guy is certifiably losing it, the creature at his side is perhaps really a small person in a Corgi suit, or mabye that he is wired up with one of those disconcerting "no-hands" cel phones that have people walking down the grocery aisles speaking as though to the canned tomatoes or an imaginary friend.


Joanna, my bride of 42 years says that my one-way conversation with the dogs is like when I was a boy and sang to my dog.

She refers to a childhood memory I shared with her when we were in the process of adopting Elky and Tassel: it is a dreamy summer day and I am sitting on the shady back porch steps with my first dog, Sandy, a female Spitz-Chow mix. The dog lay on her stomach on the cool concrete and I knelt there with my arms around her neck. I was about nine years old and so full of love and adoration for my dog that I felt my heart would burst with it. There was every comfort in her nearness and I remember singing to her loopy, spontaneous songs that seemed to pour out of me.

Dog with the happy heart

It is hard for me to describe one dog without reference to the other. Elky and Tassel are quite different in temperment, and I have come to think of them as two differently charged particles that in many ways seem to define each other. But I will try to keep the focus on Tassel alone in this post, the girl in the picture cooling her heels at a recent herding event.

Joanna calls her the dog with the happy heart, and that's how I think of her now. My early morning routine begins around 6:30 or 7:00. I put the tea kettle on to boil, feed the marvelous cats Mavis and Jake, and then go to my study where the dogs sleep each night in their crates...as they have each night for practically their entire lives. They are wide awake and eager for their morning to begin, barely pausing for a skritch before loping to the front door. After a routine "sit stay" to give me room to open the door, they watch me carefully for the "OK" that marks the start of the morning scramble. For a dog who just spent 8 or 10 hours in her crate, one would assume the first order of the day would be to find a place to pee, but for Tass it is to gallop down the driveway, tail held high and wagging, then turn around and run back to me for a quick and enthusiastic embrace before making the circuit again. She is the embodiment of that phrase from Psalms, "This is the day the Lord has made; let us be rejoice and be glad in it."

I have never known a dog so compliant when it comes to recall. I walk Tassle and Elky for an hour or so each morning, and for half the time or more the dogs are off leash: romping up and down our wooded trails or hiking across the open fields at the 95 acre Battlepoint Park. Tassle likes to "take point" to use the old infantry phrase: she'll lead our party, staying anywhere from a few feet ahead to 30 yards or more. She is always sure to know where the rest of us are, even though she might be out of sight. She hesitates at any trail junctions or obvious branches in our walk long enough to get her cue for which way we'll go, but much of the time she is well down the road ahead of us. But regardless of what fascinations of scent or sight she may be enjoying, when I call her she turns at once and comes to me...and she's as glad to see me then as she is on that first morning romp.

There are many feral rabbits at the park, progeny of years of liberated Easter bunnies (and thus of many sizes, shapes, and colors) and it is Tassle's considerable pleasure to chase them to the entrance of their warrens that honeycomb the thickets of wild rose and blackberry brambles. The other morning we came over a little berm and surprised a half dozen or more grazing in an open field near the park's rock quarry. The dogs lit out immediately in pursuit, the rabbits scattered and, while there was little danger of their actually catching one, I called the dogs back lest they bolt through the gate and into the road. Much to my surprise and pleasure, Tass abandoned the chase immediately and came trotting back, tongue lolling, and with a most satisfied look on her face. Elky is so used to following her on our walks that she, too, turned around.

Midway through our walk we come to a paved path encircling the duck pond. A water faucet stands near the path, and some kind soul has placed a large water bowl beneath it where we stop for a drink. I usually wash out the dish and refresh the water, then step back to watch Tass's delightful routine. All the dogs I have known drink by placing their noses near the water and lapping it up with their tongues. Tassel, on the other hand, pushes her muzzle all the way under the water, blowing bubbles out her nose and sipping the water rather like a horse or cow might do. On our walks she follows this by placing both her front paws in the bowl and making little digging motions. Whether she's literally cooling her heels or just doing a little doggie rejoicing in the day is anybody's guess.

One of the things I most like is to watch Tass in motion: she has the most beautifully even gait I have seen on a dog. I would never have thought a stumpy-legged Corgi on the move would be anything but comical waddle, but Tassle has perfect balance and poise. Her ears are at perked, her head is high, and she moves across the landscape as though she were queen of the world.

Change and hitchhikers

These days we seem to be spending almost as much time cleaning up afterwards as we did romping in the woods. Wet spring weather inexorably moved on to clear skies and warmer days, giving us respite from the post-walk rubdown with the tattered bath towels set aside for the dogs. But as dry weather persists and the season progresses, I find myself doing a lot of nit-picking when we finish our walks. Plants of the Pacific Northwest Coast by Pojar and Mackinnon, Lone Pine Publishing, 1994, tells me that the culprit is Osmorhiza chilensis, commonly known as mountain sweet-cicely. We find it along the wider sections of our wooded paths, an unassuming perennial member of the carrot family, about a foot tall, and notable for its spread of coarsely toothed, slightly hairy leaves. It seemed to me that the plant has something of a quiet dignity about it, but in my earlier spring walks I was more interested in the forest superstars: trillium, starflower, and the emerging sword and bracken ferns.

O. chilensis gets harder to ignore as the season progresses. Intent on watching the trillium blossoms morph into seedpod (with the view of picking a few to cultivate in the shadier parts of my yard) I failed to notice the carrot cousin taking on a rangier aspect. The little non-descript white flowers weren't all that appealing, and besides, I was having to keep one eye peeled for the stinging nettles also lurk along our route.

The solstice came and went. The damp carpet of compost and loam dried out and the newly hatched winter wrens grew up and moved on. And all this time mountain sweet-cicely was developing its fruit, about which Pojar and Mackinnon have this to say: "black, needle-like, 12-22 mm long, narrowing below tip, broadening into a beak, bristly-hairy, often catching on clothing or fur." My emphasis. What the guidebook fails to mention is that the mature seeds spring from the weed at the slightest disturbance, show an unfortunate affinity for athletic socks and the knit fabric that lines our sneakers and that, once imbedded, are the devil to remove. And "needle-like" hardly does them justice.

So what began in the spring as an attractive and unassuming border at the edge of the path has become a fanged gauntlet the dogs and I have to run if we're to impose ourselves on the forest across the road. As I go at my socks and sneaker insides with tweezers this morning I take pale solace in the knowledge that the dogs and I are helping to broadcast the message of Osmorhiza chilensis across the face of the green earth. May I get as many trilliums in my yard next spring as their carrot cousins from hell.

Open Adoption

While Joanna and I may be the dogs’ owners in the eyes of the law, the idea of “ownership” doesn’t convey the true nature of the relationship as we see and experience it. We are responsible for the dogs (and to them); we provide for their needs as best we can. But the idea of an intelligent sentient being reduced to the level of property just doesn’t feel right to me. The pickup in the driveway is mine. The dogs sleeping beside my chair are good friends who live here.

When Elky & Tassel came to us we welcomed Marv and Ellen, their previous owners, to come for a visit with the girls any time they wish. We could see that they were pleased at placing the dogs in our home, and we wanted them to be able to maintain their long friendship with the girls in whatever way they were comfortable. We knew the dogs would be delighted to see them, and we figured it would be best for all of us if they did. Our daughter Kelly laughed when she heard this, saying it sounds like we’re part of one of those “open adoptions” you hear of these days, where the birth mother stays in contact with the child and the adoptive parents and is involved to some degree in the child’s life.

I’ve been sending regular reports and photos to Marv and Ellen, letting them know how well the dogs have adjusted to their new routine, and how much we enjoy having these beautiful and intelligent animals in our lives. Thus it was with delight that we received Ellen’s request to come over for a visit. They are about to embark on an extended vacation, and they thought it would be nice to see the girls before they left town.

This afternoon Marv and Ellen rang our doorbell and were welcomed by two very happy Corgis. After brief pleasantries they took Elky and Tassel to the wooded trails of the Grand Forest park just down the road. They returned in an hour or so and the dogs sprawled on the floor while we went over the details of an adoption agreement Marv had worked up. It contains the usual things: that we’ll maintain the dogs’ health and see that they have regular checkups at the vet; notify them if the dogs become critically ill, die, or we are no longer to continue ownership (that word again) of the dogs. We also agree to allow them future visits and to continue to send pictures and updates occasionally.

Marv & Ellen posed with the dogs for pictures on the front porch and then walked to the car. Elky and Tassel, who were off-leash, stood on the porch and watched them go...both pairs of ears in the full-up and forward position. I briefly worried that one or both would break away and perhaps chase the car but they simply sat at attention and watched their friends drive away. We came inside for cookies, and once again I marveled at Corgi resilience.

The swallows

We were heading into a stiff south wind in early afternoon a few days back over at Battle Point Park. Elky and Tassel were off-leash, alternately poking into the margins of the islands of blackberry and wild roses that break up the meadows at the north end of the park. (Yes, we knew this is a technical violation, since all dogs are supposed to be leashed at all times, but we had the fields to ourselves and the joggers were a quarter-mile away at least. And besides, both dogs are so conscientious about coming when called that we don’t worry about bothering the innocent civilians.)

When we came out of the brush into the open meadow we found ourselves surrounded by a dozen or so of the barn swallows. They were feeding on insects we flushed from the tall grass, and as they came upwind the birds would glide slowly by, giving us a good look at them before flashing across and racing downwind to start the circle again. The picture shown here is one I grabbed off the web, and it doesn’t show the buff underbelly or the flash of white you see when the bird flares its tail when suddenly changing direction. They encircled us all the way across the 90-acre park, and I stopped every few yards or so just to marvel at how close they came.

The little moments that make us dance...

The dogs and I have been exploring the 40-acre wood across the road almost every morning for the past couple of months. The narrow paths cut through the thick understory below second-growth Douglas fir and Western red cedar trees, interspersed with big leaf maples and alders. Head-high huckleberry, salal, and salmonberry crowd the trail, the ferns are thick underfoot, and we have to scramble up and over several deadfalls along the way. Where the brush thins out in heavy shade the forest floor is covered with moss, ferns, woodland wildflowers, and jumbles of fallen trees and branches, some rotting away as “nurse logs” where seedlings take root along their moldering forms.

We have seen scattered starflowers succeed the trilliums at the foot of the alders near the corner where we turn back toward home. We’ve met a family of winter wrens, the parents scolding us as their young took what seemed to me their first forays from the nest. One, a little fellow not three inches long and possessed of more down than feathers, landed in the scrub nearby. The bird and I looked at each other for a minute and then he took wing—and how he managed to fly at all with so few feathers still astounds me.

Corgi resilience

Since we adopted Elky and Tassel they have taught me a wonderful lesson about dealing with change. On the day of adoption the owners brought them to our home and stayed for an hour or so telling us of each dog’s quirks and preferences and letting the dogs get comfortable with us.

The first indication of Corgi resilience came when the visit was over and the owners climbed into their truck and drove away. As I’m sure you can imagine, leaving the dogs was very hard for them. I was fairly choked up with sympathy for their having to part from old friends, and I know there wasn’t a dry eye in the cab of the truck as they drove away. I had put the dogs on leash because I was concerned that they might be distressed at being left behind and try to chase the truck but, aside from some puzzlement at not having been loaded into the truck with the owners, neither dog seemed all that concerned.

Over the next couple of weeks I remarked to friends how quickly the dogs had adjusted to their new surroundings. They seemed entirely comfortable even the second day with us, which was no small feat, given that it was Easter Sunday and our house was invaded by a chaotic family gathering that included six new people and their four dogs. After the company left Elky and Tassel stretched out on the rug and napped as though it had been business as usual.

“But don’t they miss their previous owners?” a friend asked. “How sad! You’d think they would grieve at least for a week or two.” Not that I could tell, I would reply. Each morning Elky and Tassel emerged from their crates with tails wagging, exuberant barks, and every sign of eagerness to welcome the new day. They happily explored the winding trails in the woods nearby, challenged the UPS truck each time it drove by, romped across the vacant fields next to the college, and trotted around the house behind me as if asking, “O.K., Jim, what’s next? Wanna go out and play?” Their appetites remained robust. I could detect no signs of grief.

Now it may well be that this behavior is typical of Corgis, or it may reflect a sense of security and confidence borne of the previous owners’ good training and loving care (I’ve never met better behaved dogs.) Or maybe it’s simply the way dogs look at things. I have no doubt that if/when the previous owners come for a visit or borrow the girls for an overnight or weekend at their old home, as we’ve invited them to do, Elky and Tassel will be jubilant at seeing their old friends: there will be dog kisses all around. But as for hanging on to the way things used to be, or bemoaning their losses, it doesn’t seem to be the Corgi way. Whatever memories they have of pervious times, they don’t let the past get in the way of the delicious present. I hope some of this rubs off on me as I share my life with these two wonderful dogs. I hope I can achieve some degree of their uncomplicated, uncontrived joy at whatever the day offers, that I can come out of my crate each morning, you might say, with tail wagging and exuberant barks.

About Jojo...

Why Corgis? My daughter Kelly and her family got this guy for Christmas four years ago. (He's about three months old in this picture.) Since everybody in their house went to school or work every day, I started taking Jojo with me after I'd helped my grandkids off to school. He'd spend the day with me hanging out, running errands, going for walks where he was admired by one and all, and so on. I'm convinced he's the smartest dog in the entire world (though Elky is giving him a run for his money) and he'll always be my first love when it comes to Corgis. Jojo is a Pembroke Welsh Corgi, cousin to the Cardigan, and thus was born without a tail. I took Jojo to basic and intermediate obedience lessons and we now work very well together...but he was a handful in the beginning.

How it all began...

We adopted Tassel (red & white) and Elky (brindle & white), these beautiful eight year old Cardigan Welsh Corgis, on Easter weekend 2007. It was hard for their owners to let the dogs go, but they found themselves increasingly away on travel and the dogs were being shuffled from one temporary situation to another. So with great reluctance they asked Denise Waiting, Regional Coordinator of the Cardigan Welsh Corgi National Rescue Trust for help in finding a permanent home for the girls. Two years later, as I was looking for a breeder who might have a Corgi pup for sale, I came across Denise's flyer seeking homes for the dogs. We met Elky and Tassel and their owners and quickly realized that they were the dogs for us. Since the dogs have been together for almost their entire lives, I couldn't imagine taking only one of them...and besides, I figured that two Corgis would be at least twice the fun (subsequently proven to be the case). Voila!