Water

Our village sewage system is being brought up to European standard.  New drainage, which has the added benefit of new pavements (sidewalks). Don't ask where the old drainage went, but note that France is full of rivers.

We've been pleased at the timing because we have to do the plumbing, anyway, with separate pipes for used water and rain water.  (Our neighbour says, "Poof!  I'm not doing that."  He will, though; they can check.) 

Yesterday the workers and the mayor stopped by and pointed out that the current kitchen is in the middle of the house, between the two new sets of plumbing and has its own outlet.  We can re-do it or pay a double water bill.  Whoops!

So Nick is busy digging up the living room floor (packed earth) and drilling through two 2-foot stone walls to connect the kitchen plumbing with the new bit.  I'm locked in the bedroom with the cats.

Today, when I came back into the bedroom after lunch, saying, "O.K. cats, let's go," Nala got up and followed me.  I know that Chows are cats and our friends know that Chows are cats, but I didn't know that Chows knew they are cats.

Here's how Polo and Nick got the rain water tank and the roll of pipe to the back of the house.  They rolled them up boards onto the trailer, drove the trailer up the hill to our neighbour's house in back of us and then rolled them down the hill, through the olive orchard, to the back of our property.  And didn't tell me, so I could get the camera.

In other news, my other big toenail came off yesterday.

Long time, no blog

Someone has been kind enough to send me an e-mail saying how much she enjoys my blog and would I please continue. Well. . . O.K.

Good timing. I have just received a set of video tapes to help me in my training effort. I'm very proud of Van-Ly, but we seem to have got stuck, so I ordered some tapes to see what I'm doing wrong. We may start, again, next week. Then, again, it is skiing season. However, my flattering correspondant also wants to know why I have Chows, no doubt prompted by the fact that no one in their right mind tries to train one.

Actually, I never wanted to train one. Come to that, I never wanted a dog. Neither of us wanted a dog. We're cat people, Nick and I. We'd been perfectly happy with cats for years. But then we came to France. Or, at least, I did. Nick was being an over-age, live-in student in England and I moved into this great big house in the country alone. Alone. Moi, who is scared of the dark.

"Not staying here without a dog," I said.

"We'll go to the pound," I said. That's where all our family dogs came from. "All our family dogs had pedigrees," said Nick, "With a pedigree, you know what you're getting. So, the next question was what kind. We became the FBI of the dog world. "What is your dog like"? Why did you choose him/her"? Why did you choose a him or a her"? We'd accost perfect strangers in the street and give them the third degree about their dogs.

Then we went to Chicago for a couple of weeks for an exchange course Nick was doing -- a survey of the history of art and architecture put on by the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the IIT School of Architecture. (Their students went to England to study furniture-making and design at Parnham House.) One day the director of the School of the Art Institute invited the eleven furniture designers and me, the tagalong, to lunch. We were greeted at his house by loud barks and waitaminutes. When our hostess opened the door, we were confronted by a magnificent lion. Our hostess welcome us and the lion stopped barking and followed us into the interior. He followed us from room to room. He didn't join in the merriment, he didn't want to be petted, he didn't beg. He just lay on the floor in the middle of the students and surveyed. Regally.

So, I went into the kitchen and asked about him. What is he? He's a Chow Chow. "He came housebroken," said his mistress. "He didn't chew shoes, furniture or carpets." He didn't play, he didn't eat much, he didn't much care if he got any exercise, he didn't bark (except at the door), he didn't do much of anything except laze around being beautiful. "He's like a big cat," said our hostess.

Sold!

So, we came back to France and I got in touch with the SCC (the French version of the AKC) and checked on puppies. $1100. "You're the one that wanted a pedigreed dog," I said to Nick. And we found Io Jima. To be honest, I was disappointed in her at first. When we arrived at the breeder's house, she only had black Chows left. Black? Aren't Chows red? Oh, well, if that's all that's available. . . we'll take her. We climbed into the car with her. I spread a towel on my lap and picked her up. "What's the towel for"? Nick asked. And I thought I knew nothing about dogs! She only threw up twice on the way home.

She was everything our hostess had said and more. I now realise that she was probably hypothyroid. At the time, I didn't know that was possible for a dog, but "calm" doesn't begin to describe her. Nor does "cute." And the thing about Chows is that they don't outgrow cute;
they're cute to the end of their lives. And they're no trouble. Feel like a walk? Walk them. Don't feel like it? They don't care.

We took her to the river. She wouldn't touch a toe in the water. "Hey! You're a dog!" So? We carried her across. Year 2: She put her toes in. Year 3: In, up to her chest. She was getting to be quite a weight to carry across. Year 4: Hold her and teach her to swim. She doesn't swim well, but she begins to enjoy it. We explain all to the breeder: how we've taught our dog to be a dog. "But," say Mme and M Breeder in unison, "Chows hate water." Voila! We have the world's only swimming Chow. But now that we know, we'll never be able to teach another.

She went to fairs and exhibitions with us and wore an exhibitor's badge, so that she could come and go, even if the guards didn't know her. Mostly, they knew her.

She slept in the bedroom and made me feel safe and loved, even if she was only twelve weeks old. When Nick came home for the Christmas holidays, she sulked at the stranger who invaded "our room." Nick sulked that she didn't remember him. We had her for eleven wonderful years until she was dying of stomach cancer and we put her down. I knew I'd always miss her, but I knew I couldn't live without a Chow in my bedroom at night.

R.I.P Io Jima