Tag: Ashley

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Ashley with her snout in the greenery on our patio

Steven commented while he was visiting on how much fun vole-watching on my patio was.

Ashley thinks so too.

Ashley has caught three voles that I know of (because she was on-leash when she caught them). She may have caught some others on the patio when she was out there off-leash.

One thing that surprised me, because it is so different from our boxers when I was young, was how gentle her mouth is.

Our boxers would promptly dispatch whatever they caught—groundhogs, even raccoons. One shake of the boxer’s head and whatever it had captured in its powerful jaws was dead.

That is not Ashley’s modus operandi. Two of the voles that Ashley captured were released unharmed, after I told Ashley “drop it.” (The third got eaten before I got organized to tell Ashley not to.)

In addition to the three voles, Ashley has caught both one (rather stupid) squirrel, and one (rather immature) robin fledgling. Both of those were released unharmed as well.

I’m not quite sure why. I know some retrievers have very soft mouths, so they can bring back a dead fowl without ruining it. Maybe there’s a gene for that, and Ashley has it? Or maybe it’s just that she was rewarded repeatedly for being very gentle when she took treats from people’s hands?

Whatever it is, I like both aspects of my li’l pupper: truly a mighty hunter, but also a gentle one.

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I was busy most of the day. In the morning I took Jackie to her (last!) physical therapy appointment, and in the afternoon I had my usual Thursday visit with some former co-workers. But in the early evening (after fourth dog walk) I sat down and wrote a few hundred words. I’ve also updated the progress tracker in the sidebar. (And, if you’re reading it, wrote this brief post on my day’s progress.)

Three things I should do soon (they’re on my schedule for “before November 1st”): Write a logline, short synopsis, and long synopsis for the story. I don’t know that I need to do all three, but I should definitely do some thinking about what the story is about before I spend much more time writing.

Probably just the sort of thinking to do tomorrow while walking the dog.

A black dog looking just a bit supercilious sitting on a bed
Ashley, the dog in question.

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I’ve started generating prose for my NaNo 2.0 story, despite the fact that starting early is supposed to be against the rules.

I figure it’s okay because I’m not really trying to write the story yet. I’m just capturing some text to use to validate things like the NaNo 2.0 progress bar, which should now be visible in my sidebar, below my short profile, and above the form for subscribing to my newsletter.

I’m not sure the progress bar is working yet. It looks kind of minimal, but maybe that’s just because I haven’t written much yet. By the time NaNo 2.0 goes live on November 1st, it should be clear that it’s working.

Besides writing, I’m making notes about how the story is supposed to go. I don’t really have an outline yet, but I’m capturing internal details about the story world as I figure them out.

And I’m figuring it out while I’m walking. Mostly while I’m walking the dog.

I’ve always done some of my best thinking about stories while walking. The past three years or so, I’ve done less such thinking, for two reasons: The dog, and podcasts.

Ashley, especially as a younger dog, was kind of hard to walk. She was a little too likely to lunge growling and snarling at people. (Too often she acts like she’s a very good dog until she jumps on someone, so people want to meet her, and then get booped in the nose with Ashley’s snout.) So I’ve really had to be very alert to people coming within reach, to make sure nothing bad happened.

That made it harder to think about other stuff while I was walking Ashley.

I’ve also been listening to podcasts, which I rather enjoy, but which also lead to less thinking about stories while I’m walking.

So, between Ashley behaving much better these days, and cutting back on podcast listening, my walks are turning back into an excellent opportunity for plotting.

I’m very pleased with the results so far.

A black dog with a white chest sitting in the grass in a park
This dog will boop you in the nose with her snout