Alan, born with several siblings to a feral mother in a forest near Bowie about fifteen months ago, had few manners when we got him. His adoption was a bit of a bait-and-switch affair, because we had been told that he was an "adult" dog who got on well with cats. When we met him, we found out that he was about five months old, had just been neutered, and was friskier than we had anticipated. I had already declared myself "too old not to have a dog," but we quickly discovered that we were probably both too old to raise another puppy.
Still, I had fallen in love with his photo (he was called Fred at the time), and with the name "Alan" after Joyce's adopted mutt in The Thursday Murder Club books. Our Alan and Joyce's had little in common except for coloring and, possibly, intelligence. On our annual Boxing Day trip to Tyler, where Alan met his many canine cousins, he was affable enough, and got on well with them (they were all bigger than he was at the time).
And yes, he was good with cats--in the sense that he had fun chasing them. Molly started it, and has adjusted to him rather well, but isn't averse to popping him across the snout when he gets too fresh.
But Alan grew less in size than in weight and muscle mass over the next few months and can run faster than any dog we've ever known and is strong, willful, assertive, and--as they say in the dog-training community--reactive. He's extremely smart, affectionate, and persistent. But he's also pretty clearly part pointer (the rescue group thought lab and border collie as well) and as such, has a well-developed prey instinct. Unfortunately for us, his prey of particular focus is rabbits. And our back quarter acre is prime wildlife habitat, especially attractive to the local lagomorphs. Early last spring Alan alerted us to the existence of a form (nest) of bunnies in the garden we had built to honor our dog Woody. We quickly got in touch with wild bunny experts who told us what to do, and we secured the nest as best we could, making sure that Alan couldn't get at the three babies, and then fenced it off from dogs.
That crop has long since left, and there was later another somewhere (probably under TBS's shed). We know that because Alan caught another youngling and proudly (and gently) carried it around the yard until we got him to drop it and I was able to help it escape. But that experience was so much fun that every time he sees a rabbit he goes stark staring bonkers. And because I'm a bit (but only a bit) on the fragile side, we have to train him away from this particular trigger so that I don't come between him and his object of desire. So we found a great online course (Trail and Bone), a sort of Montessori for dogs, and we're about halfway through and showing good results. We're still not ready to face an unexpected rabbit encounter, but we're now good with squirrels, people in general, and many local dogs.
At any rate, the park is a short drive away and mostly free of triggers and distractions. There's a new disc golf course which means more frequent people encounters and fewer dogs, and we get there early enough to have a good half hour of sit/stay/release work, and then can go out on the forest trails if we're in the mood for it.
The trees in the main part of the park are quite old. Some of them are actually dead, with great ladders of shelf-fungus and other interesting bits. But all of them have lovely big root flares and nooks and crannies that (we discovered only two days ago) anonymous folks are tucking gnomes and fairy doors and other objects into.
Now, I'm apparently new to this, because there are conversation galore on Reddit and other platforms (I searched "gnomes in tree trunks"). But to an old lapsed archaeologist/mudlarker/desert rat, this was all grist for this blog. Here's the story so far:
In addition to the gnome TBS discovered first and that opens this post, yesterday we found a much more elaborate construction consisting of a fairy door, a couple of cards with quotations on them, an amulet of some sort (I thought it was made of agate, but it's actually a photo of a very Alan-like dog), and a trail of tiny shells leading up to it.
The Coelho bit is quite well known, and comes from The Alchemist, his enormously successful 1988 novel. The quotation from Mary Oliver is the final line of her poem, "The Summer Day."
I should probably mention that I'm not usually attracted to the preciousness of gnomes and fairy houses and such. Nor have I read any of Coelho's books (although I might just go see what I can scare up at Half Price Books). But I have always liked Mary Oliver, and am thus rather sympathetic to the Gnome/Fairy door people/person responsible for providing these particular "pellets" for my little bloggish Wunderkammer.
And so, I pass it on.
Finally, here's the last of the offerings we found at the park:
This is often attributed to Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss), although he didn't write it. But it did make me think that the curator(s) of these little exhibitions might spend serendipitous moments at charity shops where things like this often show up, along with gnomes and fairy doors. If they do nothing more than put a smile on some faces and make the world seem a little less problematic, then they're certainly worth paying attention to. And I'm also going to try to find a copy of Oliver's Dog Songs, which I remember enjoying rather well. Reactive or not, dogs really do help make the world better.
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