Read Charlotte Canelli's column in the June 22, 2012 edition of the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin or listen to the podcast on SoundCloud. Podcasts are archived on the Voices from the Library page of the library website.
My husband, Gerry, has a bucket list just like the rest of us. It isn’t a formal bucket list, of course, because most of us keep the list in our heads, checking off and adding on as the years pass and add up.
He confessed several years ago that he had long had a desire to try beekeeping, I was, at first, skeptical. I wasn’t a honey lover, after all, and I most certainly didn’t have any affection for bees. The honeys my family had always purchased at the grocery store didn’t excite me much.
Read Charlotte Canelli's column in the June 15, 2012 edition of the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin or listen to the podcast on SoundCloud. Podcasts are archived on the Voices from the Library page of the library website.
My husband, Gerry, is the epitome of stability. One of examples of this is that he has worked 40 years for the same company while the 'company' has changed names and entities several times. He often describes a colleague and begins with something like this: “When we worked together in Medfield in 1976.”
Another testament is that he lived in the same house in Framingham through all the years of his childhood – from birth until he left home on his wedding day. Gerry moved from his parents’ home into an apartment, into his first home and then a second more than 28 years ago. And there he lives today.
When our daughter became engaged last June, she and Dan had already decided that they were getting married in March, based on the weather in Australia where they hoped to honeymoon. They chose the location for the ceremony and reception right away, after looking at three or four venues, and loved the friendliness and casualness of the people they spoke with at the place they chose. It was an easy decision and seemed like a great idea in June.
Read Charlotte Canelli's column in the June 1, 2012 edition of the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin or listen to the podcast on SoundCloud. Podcasts are archived on the Voices from the Library page of the library website.
In this column, I have written about the marriages of our two eldest daughters in 2010 and 2011. They say that the third time is a charm. So, yes, we attended our third, and youngest, daughter’s wedding this past weekend amidst more joy, beauty and love.
We can agree that none of our three lovely girls are very traditional. They are, instead, incredibly independent and sassy. They are also sweet, bright and beautiful and masters of organization.
Read Charlotte Canelli's column in the May 25 edition of the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin or listen to the podcast on SoundCloud. Podcasts are archived on the Voices from the Library page of the library website.
Anyone who has been near Death Valley knows that it sits in the dry and hot California desert. Death Valley lives up to its name. It is barren and it is also immense. It is the driest and hottest place in North America.
Death Valley National Park, the largest national park in this country, covers 200 square miles. A trip from the National Park Service central site at Furnace Creek is a 53 mile drive to Scotty’s Castle at the north entrance.
Badwater Basin, its lowest point, sits at 262 feet below sea level. Death Valley is also home to the site where a 20-mule team transported Borax out of the desert’s Harmony Borax Works.
There’s a sexagenarian in the library director’s office this week.
Ah, let me define. I was born in May, 1952 and I am now a person who is 60 years old. A sexagenarian, then, is between the ages of 60 and 70. Expanding on that definition, I am a person being in the 7th decade her life.
I celebrated with much fanfare last week and I am happy to have made it to 60. But seventh decade? Yikes, that sounds a bit too close to eight, eighty or four score. But then that would be an octogenarian, and that I am not. I’ve got a score to go, thank you.
The Baby Boomer generation has certainly grown up. Some are nearing fifty and some are nearly seventy. That puts me smack in the middle with the rest.
By definition, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, a Baby Boomer is one born between 1946 (the first year after the end of World War II) and 1965. Some Boomers watched their fathers leave for the Korean War. Others watched them leave for Vietnam. Many happily saw them return.
Nancy Ling is an Outreach Librarian at the Morrill Memorial Library. She is also an author and a poet and loves working with children and teens and teaching poetry. Read her column in the Norwood Transcript & Record or listen to the podcast on SoundCloud. Podcasts are archived on the Voices from the Library page of the library website. From the Library on May 11, 2012 - Geckos and the Future of Libraries by written and read by Nancy Ling
A library is not a luxury but one of the necessities of life.
— Henry Ward BEECHER
Recently the Massachusetts Library Association asked the question: What is the future of libraries? This was my response:
You may have forgotten his name—Martin. You may have a hard time deciding which one of his ads is your favorite: the one where he’s dancing in Texas, or his journey out of the parking lot. But there’s hardly a soul out there who wouldn’t recognize that tiny, British-accented gecko who is the mascot for Geico Auto Insurance. Not only is Martin a gecko, he IS Geico. Without a doubt, Geico has increased their sales and notoriety with consumers through Martin.
The future of our libraries depends on the same—a clear, concise marketing style. In the past, libraries have made the mistake of thinking they are separate from this business of marketing. We’ve argued, people should value us for what we are. Or, we’ve always existed, therefore we should be forever appreciated. Unfortunately, this is a harmful assumption. As much as any business out there, the library needs to make its value to the community known—consistently and constantly. Marketing is the key to our future.
So how do we do this? More than the number of books we provide on OverDrive, more than the variety of programs we offer children and seniors alike, it is the people behind the library’s name who serve as our best asset. As Rivkah Sass wrote in Library Journal (6/2002), “As highly touted, purely electronic tools like Questia fade into history, we should remember to market the value of what is the largest percentage of most library budgets—the staff.” Librarians bring in depth knowledge, experience, and a relationship to our patrons. We do this daily in the Outreach Department at the Morrill Memorial Library. We reach out to the community. We are in the business of touching people’s lives and making a lasting impression. This is what we do best, and this is something worthy of the patron’s attention.
In my parents’ town of Wrentham, there is a hardware store called Cataldo’s. This family- run store is a beloved fixture on Main Street. However, the day that Loews moved in everyone was worried. How could this small business survive the big competition? Turns out, it wasn’t a problem. Why? The reason for its success relates to librarians as well. Not only does Cataldo’s provide the goods. Not only do they provide the know-how. They provide the personal touch. They are there for you when ice dams crash through you ceiling. They know your children and your children’s children as they grow up.
Just as the famous jingle from Cheers goes, we all want to go where “everybody knows your name.” The library is that kind of place. We are essential to our communities—the great equalizers of society. We need to send out this message loud and clear. Librarians are valuable. You can bet your future on it.
In 1965, my parents packed our family of six into our Oldsmobile sedan and spent one month touring the country from California to Boston and back again. We first navigated south, stopping at over a dozen national parks along the way. Our trip home was to the north and included Niagara Falls and Reno, Nevada.
On that family vacation, I had my first lessons in navigation using multiple road maps and AAA tour books. I often won the front seat between my parents and spent hours studying the highways, motel amenities, restaurant offerings and sightseeing highlights in those guidebooks.
April Cushing is the Adult Services Librarian at the Morrill Memorial Library. Read her column in the Norwood Transcript & Bulletin or listen to the podcast on SoundCloud. Podcasts are archived on the Voices from the Library page of the library website.
I know someone who claims to have never lost anything. Is that even humanly possible? If the name weren’t so fraught with pejorative
connotations beyond the inability to keep track of stuff, I’d join Losers
Anonymous in a heartbeat. I’m thinking
of two particular incidents.
I picked up my daughter at the 128 train station recently to
take her to the dentist while I waited in the parking lot. After dropping her
back at the train en route to the Morrill Memorial Library, where, ironically,
I help people find things, I reached for the shoes I’d tossed on the floor of the
front seat.
Read Charlotte Canelli's column in the April 20 edition of the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin or listen to the podcast on SoundCloud. Podcasts are archived on the Voices from the Library page of the library website. From the Library on April 20, 2012 - Charmed by the Hike: The Appalachian Trail by written and ready by Charlotte Canelli
In the 1998 bestseller, “A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail”, Bill Bryson recounts his experiences, with and without his friend, Stephen, along the 2,184 mile challenge of the Appalachian Trail. Bryson hiked the trail from Georgia to parts of Maine. It doesn’t matter much that Bryson, never completed the hike. Only one-quarter of those who attempt the hike as a “thru-hike” in one season actually complete all of it. His obsession with the trail, his humorous exploits and his discoveries, among them how hard it is to team up with a friend under extenuating circumstances, made for a bestselling memoir.
Read Charlotte Canelli's column in the April 13 edition of the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin or listen to the podcast on SoundCloud. Podcasts are archived on the Voices from the Library page of the library website.
While both halves the 20th Century saw incredible growth and achievement, Americans endured terrific losses in the first half. It seemed like ancient history to me as I was growing up, but World War II ended less than ten years before my birth. The beginnings of the Holocaust and the meteoric rise of Adolph Hitler occurred only fifteen years before I was born in 1952. The black days of the stock market crash only twenty-three.
Put in that perspective, it isn’t hard to wonder why my parents and grandparents lived such a frugal and conservative lifestyle, always afraid of another world disaster that might strike.
In 1912 my grandparents’ first child was born, my mother’s eldest sister. It was also the year the Titanic sank.
Margot Sullivan is a reference librarian at the Morrill Memorial Library. Read her column in the Norwood Transcript & Bulletin this week or listen to the podcast on SoundCloud. Podcasts are archived on the Voices from the Library page of the library website.
“What dreadful hot weather we have! It keeps me in a continual state of inelegance” Jane Austen in a letter.
“If you don’t like the weather in New England, just wait a few minutes” Mark Twain
Everyone, and I mean everyone, is talking about the weather. Truthfully there is just nothing we can do about it! For those of you who missed the snow and cold and ice I have some suggestions for you here at the library. Come in and borrow the movie “The Shining” by Stephen King where a caretaker gets marooned in a snowy resort and slowly loses it! “The Day After Tomorrow” is a huge disaster movie with lots of ice bergs breaking up and global warming! How about “Doctor Zhivago” a great movie with winter in Russia! “March of the Penguins” is an entertaining DVD for all ages. Every March in the Antarctic penguins file one by one for hundreds of miles to look for a mate and start a family. For books I just finished a really taut mystery story “The Snowman” by Jo Nesbo. James Michener’s “Alaska” would be a good read if you want cold.
Attributed to Mark Twain was also the quote”the weather is always doing something”. Yes, it is always doing something and we have no control over what it is doing! The First Thursday Book Discussion Group just finished “Isaac’s Storm: a man, a time, and the deadliest hurricane in history” by Erik Larson. Even with some weather forecasting the September 1900 storm in Galveston, Texas was incorrectly analyzed for a variety of reasons – some ignorance, some political, and some ego –driven! We all can remember storms that have been predicted and not arrived or vice versa! The weather has a mind of its own. In keeping with the theme of missing snow and snow shoveling, how about checking out “Blizzard! the great storm of 88” by Judd Caplovich (974.7 Cap). This book has great photos of mostly New York and one can imagine what it might have been like without some of the specialized machinery we have to cope with this kind of a storm. How about the “Blizzard of 78 by Michael Tougias (551.5 Tougias) – those of us around here remember this famous storm in which the snowfall amount was not predicted!
The library has a nice array of weather books I particularly liked “Weather a Visual Guide” by Bruce Buckley et all (551.5 Buckley). This book covers the atmosphere and jet streams (they are always talking about the jet stream in the weather report), ocean currents, humidity (not my favorite), clouds, rain, lightning, dust storms, and history of weather forecasting, …. and so on. Lots of photographs make this a valuable weather resource. Chris Mooney’s book “Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics, and the Battle over Global Warming” (363.738 Mooney) looks intriguing. Finally for you “weather at its worst” fans “Extreme Weather A Guide and Record Book” by Christopher C. Burt (551.5 Burt) presents all kinds of records on blizzards, and floods, and hurricanes and ice storms, droughts, tornadoes, and any other kind of like catastrophe. The book has great photos and is very readable.
Spring has already sprung – in March! It’s April – can summer be far behind? Wonder what July will be like?
Reading reviews and choosing both fiction and non-fiction books for our library, I often place a book on hold months before it is published. And sometimes I am puzzled when the book arrives on my desk not quite remembering just why it had piqued my interest.
This past winter I placed a hold on the book “Immortal Bird” written by Doron Weber, a program director at the non-profit Alfred P. Sloan Foundation in New York City. Skimming the back cover, I realized why I had reserved Weber’s book which chronicles his “struggle to save his remarkable son”, Damon, who was born with a congenital heart defect.
This is a story that I knew personally and similar to one that I, too, had experienced. I knew I must read it, if only for cathartic reasons. “Immortal Bird” sat on my bedside table for nearly a week before I dared open its cover. I was avoiding it because I knew that I would revisit tender and painful memories.
My daughter, Coleen, was born in 1980 with a congenital heart defect. Her father and I were told several weeks before she was born that she might not survive her birth. She was four months old when on my twenty-eighth birthday we were told that this child, our firstborn, would not survive her first year.
Through what some might ascribe to effective intervention and medical care, or what still others might attribute to powerful prayer, precious Coleen miraculously blossomed. She passed her first birthday and her vivid blue eyes twinkled and her impish smile captured the hearts of everyone she met. I traveled to introduce her to relatives who we never thought she’d meet. We convened with doctors in Los Angeles, south of San Francisco where we lived, who were pioneers in pediatric cardiology. All were simply stunned by her progress with no answers as to why.
Yet, during her second year, it was apparent that she could not defy the odds against her. Her deficient heart could not keep up with a body that needed to thrive. Children grow at amazing rates. A normal one-year old triples his or her birth weight and by a second birthday that birth weight has quadrupled. A healthy heart is key to this remarkable growth.
We lost Coleen a few short months before her second birthday. She was, to us, a perfect child with a personality as big as the moon and a smile unforgettable as the stars. In those twenty and more months however, as parents of a terminally ill child, we were frustrated with interminable delays, the arrogance of specialists, a disorganized medical records system and the cover-ups of mistakes. Days after she was initially released from a renowned teaching hospital at the University of California at San Francisco, it was discovered that the head physician in charge of neonatology was a fraud who had never even graduated from medical school.
We were simply stunned and yet we continued to endure a flawed medical system fraught with inaccuracies and conceit. Doron Weber, the author of “Immortal Bird: A Family Memoir” and the father of Damon Weber has chronicled his similar experience in this unforgettable book.
Doron and Sheleagh’s firstborn son, Damon, was born in 1988 with a congenital heart defect that was mended with surgery when he was very young. However, in late 2001, when Damon was thirteen years old, he became increasingly weaker and ill from complications related to his initial heart condition.
While some of the story records the medical intervention and Damon’s disheartening decline, most of the book focuses on Damon’s incredible strength, his amazing spirit and his unwavering will to beat the odds. He rarely complained but managed to enter a very competitive high school in Brooklyn where he acted in and directed stage plays. He even managed a very small part in one episode of the HBO series, Deadwood. In the fall of 2004, just months before he died, he was the recipient of a transplanted heart. The unthinkable happened soon after when he contracted an infection from that new heart – the one that had promised him a longer life.
In the last year of Damon’s life, Doron Weber fought a maddening battle, advocating for his son in medical institutions that lacked a central record and with doctors who rarely listened to the people who knew Damon best, his parents. As things spiraled out of control, I couldn’t help but react to the unbelievable mistakes and ineptitude of the medical professionals assigned to Damon’s case. In the end, a grave misdiagnosis hastened Damon’s death and a family lost their eldest son.
In the epilogue of “Immortal Bird”, Doron Weber writes that “Damon died three days before my birthday. That’s a misleading statement since no one you love dies once. They die for you repeatedly, over and over.”
All parents who have lost a child know that while you can never change what happened, you do have the choice to move on from it, keeping lost ones in your heart and reconciling the painful memories when you feel the strongest. “Immortal Bird” is frustrating, poignant, and powerful. I anguished, and sometimes I relived, many of the moments that were told in this tender and vivid story by a father who loved his child more than he could have ever imagined. Yet, it is books like Weber’s that many of us turn to in times we when need to heal from memories while we rediscover the strength within us.
If you would like to reserve any books in the Minuteman Library System please call the Reference or Information desks of the library, 781-799-0200 or reserve them in the Minuteman Library catalog.
I didn’t watch much television as a child. At least not in comparison to most of my friends, then and now. I can sing parts of the Gilligan’s Island theme song but I usually only belt out with confidence only these four words: “a three-hour tour.”
Don’t get me started on the episodes of Bewitched, Get Smart, Lost in Space and the Andy Griffith Show that I missed. Oh and Gomer Pyle, Hogan’s Heroes and The Fugitive I caught up with mainly at my best friend’s house which was conveniently next door. Her modern family had the television tuned in most of the time and they also watched old movies and rerun after rerun of Lassie and Bonanza. I loved hanging out there and found a way to sleep over as often as I could.
What my family never actually missed on television in the mid-60s was The Ed Sullivan Show, the Lawrence Welk Show, the Carol Burnett Show and Walt Disney’s World of Color. Ed had been on the tube since 1949 and Lawrence Welk nationally debuted in 1955. Both of those shows passed my parents’ test of suitable family entertainment. Singing, dancing and that little mouse, Topo Gigio, were all deemed fine family fare.
Until, of course, the fall of 1966 of my freshman year of high school when my parents divorced. At the same time I suppose I was growing up and naturally left to my devices and censorship. Whatever the reason for the huge shift, it coincided with the debut of the Monkees. I remember racing home from school clubs and babysitting gigs to catch the very start of the show each week. We were all a bit nuts about the Monkees. They were quirky, silly but cute. We all had our favorites (mine was Peter Tork.) Davy was just too cute, Mickey Dolenz a bit odd and Michael Nesmith way too moody.
When Davy Jones died on March 1 this month, there were many of us who wondered how he got to be so old so quickly. And of course, he wasn’t. He was barely 20 years old when he joined on to the phenomenon which was the Monkees. He was only 66 when he died.
The Internet went a bit crazy when Davy died. Sales of the songs increased and word of his death spread like wildfire. After all, MTV had begun to air old episodes of the Monkees to an entirely new generation in 1986 and that generation is now having children. Nostalgia multiples across the ages and the Monkees will be forever young. Think Daydream Believer. Check it out in your local elevator or on iTunes. Or Sugar, Sugar. You’ll see.
Nostalgia about the Monkees is here to stay and that’s why we are making sure that we have plenty of Monkees recordings in our library collection. Most of us growing up in high school in the 60s ended our love affair with the group after the first season on television. (They did record and broadcast a second season in 1967-1968.)
1966 brought us the album (now the CD) The Monkees with the singable songs Last Train to Clarksville, Take a Giant Step and I Wanna Be Free. Their second album, More of the Monkees, including Stepping Stone, Pleasant Valley Sunday, A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You and the album was actually the band’s top seller, racking up 70 weeks on Billboard’s album chart. It didn’t hurt that Neil Diamond and Carol King, among others, wrote some of their bestselling songs.
Other CDs of Monkees include the Best of Album and Essentials. Headquarters was their first album recorded after they left the studio and decided to strike it out on their own. Some people say that album is the best that the Monkees did with Forget that Girl and Shades of Gray.
The DVDs of the two seasons of the Monkees television show (1966-1967 and 1967-1968) feature 32 and 26 episodes, respectively. Those were the days. A season ran through at least half, and sometimes more than half a year.
The Monkees starred in the movie Head which hit the screens in 1968, just three years after the Beatles’ Help. Annette Funicello joined the cut-up guys and the movie was a quirky effort at social commentary (think 1968, after all) and their attempt to reach the adult audience that had outgrown the television show. They tried to leave their silly good-boy image behind in the movie and tackled some serious stuff like anti-war sentiment. Cameos included Frank Zappa, Jack Nicholson, Dennis Hopper and Terry Garr.
The story of the Monkees and their manufactured music and band can be watched online on the Smithsonian Channel. The 46-minute documentary is fascinating and includes footage of all the Monkees, including reclusive and moody Michael Nesmith.
I have such fond memories of the Monkees that just playing snippets of the songs through any search on Amazon or the web brings a smile to my face. Who hasn’t felt the sentiment of their songs at least once in their lives?
“Though you've played at love and lost and sorrow's turned your heart to frost, I will melt your heart again. Remember the feeling as a child when you woke up and morning smiled? It's time you felt like you did then.” Lyrics from Take a Giant Step.
If you would like to reserve any of these titles in DVD or CD version please call the Reference or Information desks of the library, 781-799-0200 or reserve them in the Minuteman Library catalog.
Read Bonnie Wyler's column in the March 17, 2012 edition of the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin or listen to the podcast on SoundCloud. Podcasts are archived on the Voices from the Library page of the library website.Bonnie Wyler is the Outreach/Literacy Librarian at the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood. From the Library - My Life With Teddy by Bonnie Wyler
Teddy came into my life as a 5 ½ pound bundle of fur in August 2008. My previous dog Wink had been gone for almost two years and I was ready for a new canine companion. Because I was approaching senior citizen status and had a full-time job, I told the Keeshond breeder that I wanted the most laid-back puppy in the litter. She assured me that with her 35 years of experience matching puppies with new owners, she would choose the right puppy for me. I knew I loved this breed. Keeshonds are sweet, playful, affectionate and intelligent. The “smiling Dutchman” as he is called, originated in Holland as a barge dog, bred as companion and watchdog for the captains of boats traveling the waterways in the countryside. I knew from previous experience with my Keeshond Wink that another puppy of this breed was what I wanted. Hoping to be well-prepared for the new arrival, I began reading about human-canine communication in a wonderful book by Patricia McConnell called The Other End of the Leash.
Driving home that day in August, I held Teddy on my lap while my friend Susan drove. He sat quietly for the two hour trip, looking up at me with his big brown eyes. We were off to a good start. For the first few days in his new home, he explored his surroundings, running in the yard, sniffing all the new smells, struggling to climb the two steps to my deck and tumbling down again. He was lively and curious, just what I expected from a new puppy. My sister Carol had told me how much I would love rocking him to sleep in the evenings when he was tired out. I looked forward to those peaceful moments.
My first clue that I was dealing with more than the usual puppy exuberance came
that first week when my neighbor Sandy stopped by to see Teddy and show me the listing for a house she was looking at. As we sat on the grass studying the printout sheet, Teddy exploded out of nowhere like a bolt of lightning, grabbed the paper and made a mad dash around the yard. By the time we corralled him, the paper was in shreds. We laughed as Teddy jumped in and out of Sandy’s arms, impossible to contain. There was no question he was adorable, but laid-back? His activity level seemed to escalate by the day as he became more familiar and comfortable in his new home. And holding him in the evenings as he fell asleep in my arms? This was not to be. I began to realize I didn’t have the puppy I had bargained for.
That fall, as I struggled to provide the exercise and socialization all puppies need (and Teddy needed even more), my friend came to the rescue. She picked up Teddy one morning a week and brought him to her fenced-in backyard to play with her Jack Russell terrier, Jilly. For hours, the two dogs would run at breakneck speed from one end of the yard to the other. At some point, Jilly would grab Teddy’s collar in her teeth and pin him to the ground, his feet waving in the air. Teddy loved those playtimes. To this day, whenever I say “Jilly,” his ears go up and he races to the backdoor to look for his friend.
By then, I was reading in earnest, looking for any answers I could find to help me cope with my super active puppy. It was a two-pronged approach: knowledge for me and training for Teddy. I enrolled him in a puppy kindergarten class one evening a week. Of the five puppies in attendance, Teddy stood out as having the shortest attention span and greatest difficulty focusing. It was no wonder. He was on serious overload with four other dogs to smell, chase and jump on. After a beginning play period, the trainer worked on basic commands each week, with the canines and their humans practicing under her supervision. By the final session, while everyone watched, each pair attempted to walk in a figure eight, puppy healing on the left side. When it was our turn, the trainer came up to me and said quietly, “Why don’t you and Teddy just try a straight line?” Clearly we were at the bottom of the class.
As fall turned into winter and snow covered the ground, Teddy was ecstatic to be outside with me. As a northern breed, he was well-equipped for the cold weather and loved playing in the snow. He would race around the yard, tethered by a 30-foot lead attached to the deck. Each time he changed direction and hurled past me, I would jump to avoid being tripped by the lead. Unfortunately, my reaction time was no match for his speed. I found myself on the ground, stunned but unhurt, grateful for the soft landing in powdery snow.
I spent many of those winter evenings in the kitchen with Teddy. He was too crazy to keep me company in the living room, and too unhappy if I left him alone in the kitchen. We practiced his ball skills, bouncing and catching, over and over. And I read. A friend had told me about the books of Nicholas Dodman, an animal behaviorist and director of the Animal Behavior Clinic at Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine. I read Dogs Behaving Badly: an A to Z Guide to Understanding and Curing Behavioral Problems in Dogs, looking for sections that might help with leash biting, jumping, and extreme excitability. Of course, I realized that I was still dealing with the exuberance of puppyhood, but I wanted to be well-informed at the least. I found helpful suggestions in another book as well: The Well-Adjusted Dog: Dr. Dodman’s seven steps to lifelong health and happiness for your best friend. Who knew that dogs on average need at least 30 minutes of aerobic exercise a day, and walking doesn’t count? I was intrigued by the drawing of a dog treadmill, suggested as especially helpful in the winter months.
Fast forward two and a half years to last summer. Teddy was still a challenge for me, but there’s no question we had bonded. There were moments when I was completely exasperated by his excessive energy and excitability, but I loved him and couldn’t imagine my life without him. One beautiful day in August we traveled to Chatham to visit friends, and by chance, went on a boat ride in the bay. As we motored out and then sped through the waves, Teddy sat motionless, staring out at the horizon. I had never seen him so peaceful and content. And then the lightbulb went on. He was a boat dog by nature, his breed serving those many centuries ago as barge dogs in Holland. He was in his element. Back on land, I couldn’t stop thinking about the power of instinct and genetics on behavior, and how I had just seen a totally different side of my dog.
I have found reading about dog behavior and the human-canine relationship fascinating. There are many excellent books on dogs and dog training at the Morrill Memorial Library and in the Minuteman Library Network, including several others by Patricia McConnell and Nicholas Dodman. If you wonder how dogs experience the world, pick up Inside of a Dog by Alexandra Horowitz. You’ll find ideas for children in 101 Fun Things to do with Your Dog by Alison Smith. For those who knit for their dogs, try looking at Men Who Knit and the Dogs Who Love Them by Annie Modesitt. If you would like to see a photograph of Teddy, you will find him in a READ poster in the Cushing Reading Room.
