13 Weeks.

I keep saying that if I don't write it down, I'll forget, or be unable, to see if Reno is making any progress. So I'm writing it down.

We took him hiking three weeks ago. He has his own backpack because anybody, no matter their species, has their own backpack when they head out with John:

He loved hiking. He did not love the other dogs, whether they were off leash or on.

We brought him home 13 weeks ago yesterday. And so 13 weeks in, I am documenting that he has gotten more comfortable in our house. He can go up and down the stairs confidently, which was not the case originally. He still cannot go in the kitchen. He loves his kennel (aka his house) and sleeps easily in it every night for 8 to 10 hours.

He stays to his blanketed-spot on the couch nearly always, and has not jumped on the coffee table since that first day. He started wagging his tail, which when it began, was when we noticed that he had NOT been for a month! He now wags us a welcome in the morning, at night after work, and when we cross the room or have been gone for 3 minutes or more.

He jumps at fewer noises in the house, but still jumps at some.

And most importantly, let's chat about the reactivity. I'm not sure if he's less reactive - though I can say we are better at managing it. I can duck a dog heading our way before he even sees the thing. I can position us behind a parked car or in a stranger's driveway so that we can practice watching the dog walk by without his going over threshold. With me, he can currently handle a distance of across the street. Any closer, such as an unexpectedly chained or fenced dog, and he is over threshold in three seconds flat. It seems he can handle a closer dog with John.

One thing that has improved, without a doubt, is his recovery time. If he does go over threshold and starts lunging, growling, snapping and acting like he wants to devour the other dog, he can recover within one city block now.

Another improvement is that he has learned not only his name, but he's learned Sit and Shake! He is working on Down, Sit Pretty, and Come. I include Come in the 'working on' category because he's at about 80%. And 80% is really good but that other 20% is the time you really want him to obey. I don't know if any dog is 100% on the Come command. At the dog park, and on his long line, he has 90%+ recall of Come. We have not ever used it a true off-leash situation (because he's never been in one). So I call it 80%, to be safe.

But this past weekend was a slight digression from his improvement in anxiety reduction, thanks to the fireworks. Friday night the last ones that woke me up were at 2:05 AM. That erases any excuse that it's for the kids. I hate neighborhood fireworks. For Reno, the vet prescribed Xanax:

It worked for a while, and then it stopped. Next year, Xanax for me and a sedative for him. He is just today coming down fully off the heightened cortisol of the 3rd, 4th and 5th's all-day explosions. This dog has PTSD and I'm not even trying to be funny. 

Of course what I'd like to see is for him to be able to pass an oncoming dog (first on the other side of the street, and eventually on the same side) without having a reaction. I'm not sure this will ever be possible; everything I read is not encouraging. But, at the 13-week mark, I can say he definitely is less anxious on walks - he does not cower at EVERY bicycle, loud car, shuffling foot, crunchy leaf. He only cowers at some of them. He used to pass all people with rolled-back ears and a low posture. He now is more perked up, almost looking like he could go over threshold, but he never does. He is less interested in people who are not me, John, and Auntie Beth (John's sister, and his bi-weekly dog walker). 

He does not bark in the backyard ever anymore (thanks, we think, to the two weeks of the citronella collar), and now likes it out there - he goes out willingly and stays out there without us even, from time to time.

He is rarely interested in birds now; he saves that energy for squirrels - and cats, and dogs, of course.

He still sheds a ton; I think we're screwed on this one. When he's anxious, it seems to increase from the normal rate of Daily Shit Ton to a momentary Are You Dying? level. 

In three more months, I'll remember to update on his reactivity, his leash-pulling tendencies (which are still fairly high, depending on the time of day) and his anxiety. Hopefully by documenting, there will be continued improvements seen, and thus we'll move away from feeling so on-the-fence about adding the little red leaner* to our house. 

*Little Red Leaner is one of his nicknames; when he greets us in the morning, he likes to lean into us, or put the top of his head on your shin, or even on the floor, curling over and leaning in for maximum back scratchin. 

Book Report

It is March 1 - and I even had an extra day in February! - but I failed in my goal of finishing the 1,004 page book loaned to me by a dear friend, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke. Alas, it was a self-set goal (not required by the loaner), which makes failure even worse!

But it's hard to compete with the two books I did start - and finish - while the giant red behemoth of a paperback languished bedside. I like it, I truly do - but it meanders, it lingers, it takes time with an old-fashioned style of narration. And it is HEAVY! Sometimes it annoys me, resting too heavily on my stomach in bed at night. It really should be on a Kindle!

So first up, I cannot recommend enough Room by Emma Donaghue. It's a "run-don't-walk" to your library/friends/bookshop/Kindle store kind of book. I literally intended to read for 20 minutes one night, to dip my toes in, to only slightly cheat on Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell... and 3 hours and 20 minutes later, at 2 AM, I was within 45 pages of the end. It is that good. It made my heart race, there were sections where I could not read fast enough and was holding my breath. If you have an ounce of trust in me, you won't even go read about Room - you'll just go read Room.

And second, I joined the bandwagon and read Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games. It's pure YA fun and the writing is not nearly as skilled as Donaghue's, and the plot is not QUITE as compelling as hers either, but I read it in an afternoon/evening, and book two in the series was loaned to me today. Yay for friends, and yay for borrowing!

So that's this month's Book Report. You?

Why do we have Netflix?

(This will not be a post bitching about Netflix pricing. I maintain that if the leap from $12 a month to $18 a month hurts your finances that much... then you, my friend, have bigger financial problems than your DVD/DVD+streaming/streaming subscription(s).)

No, instead, we have it so that I can start watching the old TV show thirtysomething! I remember my parents always watched it, and I thought, heck, I'm 30 now. Let's see what it was about in the 80s instead of in the 20teens. Two episodes in, I notice:

• the clothes are amazing;
• Timothy Busfield is shockingly less handsome as a young man than as an older man;
• sound mixing has evolved leaps and bounds;
• the conversations are more realistic, and about more universal subjects, than on any sitcom I've taken in in a long while. Hmm.
  

Re-View

Did I write recently about re-watching "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves" and what a grand disappointment it was? Lesson: don't take a movie you loved when you were nine and watch it when you are twenty-nine. In all likelihood, it won't stand up.

However, what about taking a movie you loved at fourteen? It's a risk, I tell ya, but sometimes, it pays off.

In this case, Baz Luhrmann's William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet. Run out and re-watch it! Or, use Netflix streaming on whim, as I did.

It absolutely stands up - the Nurse, Mercutio and Father Lawrence (yup, renamed in this version) are especially wonderful with both Elizabethan language and modern filmmaking. It breathes life into the bawdy jokes and it still pretty hip, 15 years on.

But upon re-viewing it, you get the true added bonus -- now you know who Leonardo DiCaprio is going to become. And so you get to see the very last traces of boyhood, the last bits of baby fat in his cheeks, and the end of adolescent angst right in front of you. If they shot this movie even two months later, he'd have been too old. But he was dead-on-perfect. And Claire Danes is all soft innocence, except for how perfectly she captures the singular obsession with sex - and sex with love, let's be fair - that Juliet and, ahem, some, teenage girls have.

The music is still good, the sets still interesting, and the angel wings/fireworks/watery kisses/morning bedsheets are as sexy as they were when I watched it in 10th grade on a date with Brandon at the Campus Square 8 in my hometown - twice!

I'll be on the hunt for more of these film gems that shine - and movie duds that stink, because frankly, they are probably more fun to write about.

Theft.

I would like to be smart enough to have said this, but I am not, so I must give credit to N where credit is due.

We saw Meek's Cutoff the other day, which I recommend highly - she liked it, I liked it AND John liked it! It's by a NW filmmaker, who made Old Joy and Wendy and Lucy and it has a similar feel to it, while being a grand Western like you've never seen before.

N said of the film, and the filmmaker, "If her movies were in French, she would be hailed as a master of existentialism and as an auteur of grand scope... a cinematic genius! But since her movies are in English, people think eww, they're boring." Nail. On. The. Head.

Go see Meek's Cutoff! Give Kelly Reichardt some of your intellectual love!

And now, on a nice note.

I hope you have a wonderful three-day weekend (whether you get three days off your tasks or not), and instead of leaving this page with a rant for the long weekend, I leave it with a shout out for the book Little Bee by Chris Cleave. This description is all you need, and the recommendation of someone you trust. No doubt, this will get made into a really bad movie, but if you have time this weekend, pick it up! I read it in two days and you can, too. It has a number of things going for it:

• A protagonist who isn't always perfect;
• An antagonist who isn't always bad/mean;
• Plot points that you probably won't predict and will surprise you;
  
• A male author writing in the voice of two women, and doing so quite well;
• A small child who is not inherently likable, but is a real seeming 4 year old boy.

Plus, it's a great title. Little Bee! It's British, it's about a refugee and a fancy magazine lady, and if the devastation, political upheaval, 1967 borders, flooding, pain and suffering in the news feel really giant right now, try out Little Bee to remind yourself that behind every single day are 6 billion 700 million or so people who have their own little story that's worth hearing.

2011 Book List: Entry One

Over at The Short Years, books read and books hoped-to-be-read are tracked, and I think posting it to my friends (and possibly to any readers who aren't personal friends?) will help me both accountable for the quality of my reading and help boost the quantity of it.

So for 2011, I give you the books I have read and what I think of them in two sentences or less! Expect the next installment in another two months (or so).

New York: The Novel by Edward Rutherfurd. A guilty pleasure badly hidden in a historical novel; long, worth the read, but perhaps only if you have been to or love New York City.

Endurance by Alfred Lansing. I mentioned this earlier in the year and if you have not read it, you should go get it today. One of the best books I've read in the last ten years, hands down.

Four Fish by Paul Greenberg. This book tries to answer the unanswerable question: what seafood is OK to eat if I don't want to harm the ocean, or myself? Salmon, sea bass, cod and tuna are covered. If you want to stop eating tuna but can't seem to, read this book; it is wonderful and educational to boot.

I'm a Stranger Here Myself by Bill Bryson. It's a crime to not love Bill Bryson, and this book is as funny as Notes from a Small Island - maybe more so.

Moonstruck

I borrowed the DVD for Moonstruck from good friends about two years ago... and finally watched it tonight! My review, in a word: excellent!

And then John came wandering in at the end, since he'd already seen it, and I said happily, "You know, the whole world wants to visit a little bit of France. But the whole world thinks of themselves as being a little bit Italian!"

He thought for a moment and replied, "Well at one point, the whole Western world was inhabited by Romans. But not by the French."

Match made in heaven.

Lyricism

An oldie but a goodie on the radio tonight... U2's "One" which includes the lyrics, "One life, one love ... sisters, brothers, one life, but we're not the same, we get to carry each other, carry each other ... One..."

U2, of course, fronted by Bono, he of the AIDS and poverty and global health outreach.

Another song I heard today, a brand new one, on the country station by Josh Thompson... it includes the lyrics, "Our necks are burnt, our roads are dirt and our trucks ain't clean,
The dogs run lose, we smoke, we chew and fry everything ... We won't take a dime if we ain't earned it, When it comes to weight brother we pull our own, If it's our backwoods way of livin' you're concerned with, You can leave us alone ... Our houses are protected by the good Lord and a gun, And you might meet 'em both if you show up here not welcome son..."

Look, I don't think people who listen to country are Red State Tea Party assholes -- hell, I listen to country clearly -- but it doesn't take a genius to look at one side that wants PROGRESS and LOVE and to WORK TOGETHER, and at another side who wants to SHOOT PEOPLE WITH GUNS IN THE NAME OF GOD IF THEY SHOW UP UNANNOUNCED.

I would be OK with this if we could take all federal dollars, public education, food safety standards, children's health insurance and more away from these people who say they don't want it... and leave 'em way out in those backwoods... but it doesn't work that way. It's one life, even if we're not the same. We pitch in to help even those we don't understand, Mr. Thompson, because we are civilized people who don't shoot strangers.

I disagree:

with anyone who thought "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" was good. (I know this does not come as surprise, but, well, yeah.)

Hangover.

Not the usual kind, but the kind from too much (mental) cotton candy... also known as "Sex and the City" on DVD.

In the way that traveling and eating only junk food eventually inspires cravings for spinach salad and sauteed beet greens; in the way that too many Netflix'ed documentaries means a viewing of "Blue Crush" becomes required... this is the way that watching too much "Sex and the City" makes a person uninterested in any number of normally fun things: high heels, having sex, telling people "I'm a writer", drinking at morning brunch, talking about men.

But never cigarettes or curly hair. If there are two things the inimitable SJP can do, it's smoke a cigarette sexily (making even this never-again-smoker want a Parliament) and rock the curly hair (making this new-to-embracing-her-curls woman want to wear 'em au naturel).

Sentence Fragment review: Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.

Watched the HBO movie "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee."

Didn't know Anna Paquin was in it, but she didn't ruin it. Yay! Adam Beach was great, always love to see Aidan Quinn.

Oddly melodramatic yet simultaneously too mellow for such a story. Seemed too low budget, what a disgrace. Ought to have been treated better.

Think I was mainly disappointed about the dance just before the climatic, infamous massacre...

Remember learning it in high school, again in college. And every time I heard the story? Haunting. Spine shivers. As good as history can be, grave and intense. Were the ghosts about to arise and arrive to help? I always think so... and the HBO film didn't nearly do justice to that. No epic emotion. No terrifying possibility. Not enough drama. But perhaps the dance can't be shown on film?

I liked it; a C+. But I'd like to see it done again with a bigger budget, experienced director, tighter script.

Movie Review Time: Bright Star

The last two films I have seen were both absolutely fantastic, and could not be more different. The first, The Hurt Locker, I can't even write about. It's so good, so perfect, that you should just see it as soon as humanly possible.

The second, Bright Star, I saw two nights ago. If you have ever yearned for flower-filled fields of romance, if you've ever read a poem by one of the Romantics and sighed, if you've ever been 15 or 18 or 21 and in love (and probably a woman, though not must be one)... SEE THIS MOVIE.

I will not reveal any spoilers. Unless you didn't know that the poet John Keats died at age 25, and then I will be sharing that spoiler. So there.

The film is subtly erotic... while being rated PG and totally chaste, and totally appropriate for tweens, with nary a French kiss to be seen... it is incredibly swoon-worthy and romantic and captures the overwhelming experience of new love. The director, Jane Campion, is so clearly having fun behind the camera - she is excellent at her job, and the sense of playfulness, her mastery as a director, and plain ol' exuberant joy shines through. Even for those who might have a tendency to say, "But I can't tell one director from another,"... I would be surprised to hear them, no matter how cinematically unsure, say that about Bright Star.

Campion continually cuts the scenes just before they feel over, and it's like being a teenager again - where you want to savor the event but the party's over, time's up, before you feel done. It reminded me a bit of blinking and missing something, or closing your eyes because it's too perfect and painful to full absorb.

An excellent historical portrait of why love couldn't matter as much as money... an Oscar-worthy performance from Abbie Cornish (one of whose scenes was almost traumatizing in it's emotion)... a loving visual postcard to springtime in England... actor Paul Schneider who is sorely underused in widely distributed films... insight into the life of John Keats while he was living... a calmly paced and quietly memorable film all around... Bright Star isn't for everyone, but I confidently believe it will stand the test of time and I felt absolutely, 100%, thoroughly satisfied at its end... and THAT is what a good romance film is about. Take your sexist, simplistic rom-coms and give me heartbreaking Romantic, poetic love every time.

PS. There is a shot in this film involving a spring breeze and an in-love young woman. I defy you to not be aroused, in one way or another, by its execution and perfect beauty.