Dog show packing Tetris

Now that the dust has settled on Raider’s and my 2025 obedience trial season, it’s time to review a critical element that can make or break the success of any team.

Packing for the weekend. 

 

If your non-dog-showing human partner has ever looked at the pile of bags sitting by the back door on a Friday afternoon and said, “You’re just leaving for the weekend, right?”, you understand. 

 

If the show site was within a two-hour radius, I used to be that handler who got up at the hour of stupid on Saturday and drove there from home to avoid hotel expenses. I would drive home again at the end of the day, fall into bed and get up the next morning to do it all again. Driving back and forth to shows eliminated the need for packing clothes, toiletries and other survival gear like four pair of shoes, five jackets, my laptop and forty-seven feet of charging cables. I told myself I was saving money, which was ridiculous, because people who do dog sports save money by living on ramen noodles and not buying their husband Christmas gifts. Sorry, honey. Love ya, but entry fees.

 

As the years and the odometer clicked by, I did the math and realized I was not, in fact, saving anything. Fuel costs, plus wear and tear on my vehicle as I racked up the highway miles, ate up the imagined savings earned by avoiding hotels and restaurant meals. 

 

Plus, as I—ahem—matured, I discovered I really disliked driving in the dark. Dark driving is rife with annoying things like deer. And other drivers.

 

With the decision to abandon my long haul, road warrior lifestyle and embrace the “get a good night’s sleep within twenty minutes of the show site” approach, came the need to become an efficient packer. Sure, I’d hotel’d it enough over the years to have a good grip on the basics, but I was not necessarily good at it. 

 

There is a fine art to assembling all of the stuff you need for a weekend on the road and packing it neatly into your car. And by luggage, I mean everything from that screen-printed canvas bag from a national specialty twenty years ago to the wheeled carry-on with its fancy 360 degree spinning wheels and titanium handle that could withstand being flung around by gorillas in a remake of the 1970s Samsonite commercials. (Yes, I’m that old. We’ve discussed that. Move on.)

 

Like everything else that comes with the glamorous dog handler lifestyle, packing is a minefield of overthinking. I admire the people who can throw a toothbrush and a change of underwear in a backpack and be away from home for three days without looking like a refugee. If I tried that, the only thing I’d pull off is the bridge troll look.

 

 

I've created a master packing list to ensure I don't forget anything vital. The essential categories break down as follows.

 

The dogs’ training gear bag: leashes, collars, dumbbell, backup dumbbell, toys, treats, brush, training journal, obedience regs, weekend judging program, etc. Basically, all the essentials you need at the trial. If you forget your toothbrush, you can go to Walmart and get another one. If you forget your custom-sized, hand-crafted, maple and cherry wood dumbbell, you’re screwed. The gear bag is the first thing that goes in the car.

 

The people bag: human clothing and toiletries. Regardless of the season, deciding what to take for a weekend means consulting multiple forecasts, tea leaves and a crystal ball. I end up packing more clothes than I need but hey, I like to be prepared. Husband points out I am prepared to not come home for two weeks. He likes his little jokes.

 

The dogs’ motel bag: dog food, food and water bowls, sheet(s) to cover the bed and/or furniture, entertainment items (toy, bully sticks, bully stick holder), poop bags, extra poop bags and anything that didn't fit in the people bag.

 

The food bag: snacks. Self-explanatory. Long trip? Lots of snacks. Short trip? Same amount of snacks. Possibility of getting caught in a blizzard on I-80? All the snacks. Don’t take chances.

 

The cooler: more snacks. And pop.

 

It should end there, but it doesn’t. 

 

If you’re showing in Utility, you’ll have an article bag(s) and/or extra articles. Extra dumbbell. Extra gloves. A full set of portable jumps, forty feet of ring gate and stanchions, platforms, props and the entire freaking kitchen sink for practice at the motel when the weather is cooperative. 

 

Now let’s talk about coats. Rain coat. Warm coat. Nanook of the North coat. Jacket for a chilly show site. Don’t forget gloves, scarves and hats. In an emergency, you could use your dog's Utility gloves. Make sure the set contains both a left and right hand. This will not work if you show a chihuahua. If the weather is atrocious and your dog is an itty-bitty or extremely short-coated, you will need dog coats as well.

 

Plus shoes. Everyday shoes. Trial shoes. Slippers for the motel room. Rain boots in the summer. Snow boots in the winter. My personal best for a winter show weekend was four pair of footwear to cover all conditions. Don’t judge. I can be cranky enough without adding cold, wet feet to the mix.

 

Back in the day, I traveled with a dear, dear friend who could not pack lightly to save her life. Actually, she did pack lightly. None of her bags weighed much at all. But there were A. Lot. Of. Them. I was never sure exactly how many of them there were because aside from her gear bag and people bag, the extras were Walmart bags and they all looked alike. Pretty sure she did that on purpose so I couldn’t get a firm count and give her a hard time.

 

We jokingly called them her subsidiary bags. In the tradition of Walmart bags (at least back in the days before self-checkout) they each seemed to contain only two or three items. Nowadays, the best thing about self-checkout is that I can cram a single bag with as much as possible because I am not making four trips to carry sixteen bags into the house when I get home.

 

But I digress.

 

Once, my subsidiary-bag friend, another friend and I and our dogs loaded up a Chevy Blazer (Blazers were a lot bigger back then) for a show weekend. In the interests of not having to rent a U-Haul for all our crap, we agreed to limit our luggage to one gear bag, one people bag and one small cooler per person, plus the necessary crates and chairs. True to form, Subsidiary Bag Friend showed up with a multitude of extras. There was a great deal of eye rolling, but down the road we went. I think we made her hold them all on her lap.

 

Another friend joined us on a weekend excursion and brought her clothes on hangers in a garment bag. She’s a breed handler, too, so we forgave her the reluctance to take chances with wrinkles. That didn’t stop us from teasing her mercilessly about her “ball gowns.” To this day, every time I put clothes in a garment bag, I think of the ball gown weekend.

 

 When I was showing Phoenix, the Farmer made a last-minute decision to go to the ABMC national with me. At the time, I was driving a Chevy Equinox, which was a cute little SUV that fit one woman, one Malinois, one Aussie, and all our stuff quite nicely. Squeezing in another human, his luggage, and a second folding chair was do-able but . . . snug. Then Phoenix won a lovely embroidered chair for High Combined. I seriously thought I might have to find someone to bring the thing home for me. 

Then I remembered a good friend and master vehicle packer’s advice: “You can always go up to the roof.” I wedged that ten-inch-wide folded chair into a nine-inch-wide space atop the crates and we were good to go. Never mind I needed a crowbar to get it out of the car when we got home.

 

These days, when I leave for a trial, my car is packed using a “last in/first out” approach. I’m OCD enough to put everything that goes into the hotel in one area and all the trial gear in another. Nothing rattles. Nothing tips over. I could slam on the brakes and there would be no massive load-shift, mostly because everything is wedged in so tightly it can’t move.

 

By the time I leave the show site on Sunday afternoon, my car looks like I drove past a garage sale with the windows down and people threw stuff into it at random. I’m just happy I can get the doors closed. 

 

Is it wrong that one of my goals for the new year is to master truly efficient packing? I’ll let you know how that goes.

 

IN OTHER NEWS

The final countdown for “How to Live with a Ghost” is officially on! Release date on Amazon is Monday, Dec. 15. Don’t know what to give that reader in your life? Feel like buying yourself a holiday gift after shopping for everyone else? Currently, you can only pre-order the Kindle version, but the hard copy option should show on the release date. Bless all you Kindle folks who have pre-ordered. Here’s the link.

 

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0G2KRCN38

 

 

As always, I invite you to follow me at my author’s page at https://www.facebook.com/melinda.wichmann.author. 

Dogs behaving, well, like dogs

I’ve spent my entire adult life watching my dogs act like idiots at the vet’s office. Relatively well-trained idiots who wouldn’t make the tech’s lives a living hell, but idiots nonetheless. Five generations of dogs (we'll talk about the sixth generation later) couldn’t make it through the front door of the clinic before the shaking started. Followed by the panting. Eye rolling. Fur shedding. Acting like the world was ending accompanied by vast sighs of canine angst.  

Through the years, my vets and the techs who help them have been, without fail, some of the kindest, gentlest people my dogs ever encountered. 

 

Keep in mind, these dogs were trained for the show ring and had been exposed to all the madness of the human world from day one. Semi tractor-trailer air brakes. Screaming toddlers. PA systems. Live fire. Slick floors, bicycles, errant wildlife, other dogs being jerks and once, a hot air balloon lifting off about fifty yards from where we were training (okay, that was kind of a surprise to everyone). Meh. They’d been handled from nose to tail by me, my family, my friends and complete strangers. Almost without exception, this interaction was met by patient tolerance or enthusiastic reciprocation. (The latter being Raider. He is a firm believer in reciprocation.)

 

But take them to the vet? Dramatics ensued.

 

Sheltie Jess buried his head under my arm and pretended the vet didn’t exist if he couldn't see her. I’m not sure he actually saw any of his veterinary caregivers in his fifteen years on this planet. 

 

Sheltie Connor was a little more chill. He pulled some kind of Jedi mind trick where he slowed all his vital signs at the vet's because he was pretty sure death was coming for him and he was going to meet it halfway. His blood pressure was so low at the vet’s office, techs couldn’t draw from a vein in his leg and had to draw from his neck.

Connor, Phoenix and Jamie

Tervuren Jamie was the undisputed high royalty of drama at the vet. Poor guy. He kinda liked going to the vet until he got neutered. What should have been a straightforward procedure turned into abdominal surgery to find a retained testicle, and that was the end of any positive association with the vet's office. When I went to pick him up after his neuter, his opinion of the situation echoed through the whole building. The tech who went to get him soon returned, pale and counting her fingers, and suggested it would be in everyone’s best interest if I were to go and fetch my own dog.

 

Malinois Phoenix was stoic about the whole vet scene. He played the “Yeah, whatever” attitude card during routine exams and blood draws. Keep in mind, this is the dog who once chased a cat through a rotary hoe. Sort of. Cats can run through rotary hoes. Malinois can not. He abandoned the cat and trotted back to me with an eight-inch laceration across his ribs. He was wagging his tail. Off we went to the vet to get stitched back together. He didn't hold it against her. 

This is what a rotary hoe looks like, in case you were wondering.
It was not in use when the cat-chasing occurred.

 

I think Phoenix liked going to the vet more than he let on. He liked to lick faces, and veterinary care meant there were lots of faces in lickable proximity. The problem was, he usually bared his teeth before he licked. I suspect he took a few years off the life of several techs when he looked at them, pulled his lips back to show a little fang, then gave them a fast tongue swipe.

 

Aussie Banner, who generally likes everyone, gave it the ol’ college try when it came to the vet’s office, but he just couldn't manage it. The dog who will happily let a complete stranger pet him takes a dim view of being poked and prodded in the name of health. He carries on, shaking and panting, but is willing to negotiate for treats. He does not, however, think the number of treats he receives at the vet’s is fair compensation for the indignities he has to endure there. He would like more. As in, all of them. He can see the full container on the counter. He is nobody’s fool.

You will give me the cookies. All of them. Now.

 

Then Raider arrived. The dog who likes everything. All the time. All at once. 24/7/365. When we go to the vet, the wiggling starts the second his paws hit the ground outside the office. Granted, this dog also wiggles at the mannequins in stores. His delight accelerates as we go through the doors. Unlike my shelties, who started trying to leave the minute they arrived, Raider starts looking for people to wiggle at.

 

He is delighted to see the front office gals. Ditto for the techs, his vet, other vets, drug salesmen, clients trying to pay their bills and on more than one occasion, a very annoyed cat in a cat carrier.

Raider at about 5 weeks old.
This is still how he does everything, including vet visits.
Go now, go fast.

When Raid was a puppy, the ecstasy of meeting all these wonderful people often triggered the waterworks. He leaked. If Jamie was the Drama King, Raider was the Peeing King. He didn’t mean to. He was just so happy he couldn’t stand it. P*ss on being reserved and aloof. There were people to meet!

 

It got to the point where we’d enter the office and I’d ask the staff not to talk to him, look at him or pet him, unless they wanted to clean up after him. Life was hard for a few years.

 

I’d like to think he’s finally outgrown this expression of delight in being able to interact with his medical providers. It only took four years—four years during which I think he peed in reception, up and down the hall, on the scale and in every exam room in our clinic. I don’t know how much vet techs get paid. It’s not enough.

 

After the sprinkles, Raider was a cooperative patient. He didn’t care what part required examination, he would happily comply. You want to see a paw? Wonderful! Check teeth? Absolutely! Palpate nether regions? A little weird but knock yourself out. He wiggled his way through routine exams and vaccinations with inexhaustible joie de vivre.

 

The only time he did NOT appreciate going to the vet was an emergency trip when he was young. He came out of his crate in the morning on three legs and went tri-podding around the yard like he’d never had four legs in his life. Off to the emergency clinic we went, where I summarily handed him over and went to sit in the waiting room where I listened to someone’s noisy dog screaming at the top of his lungs for at least thirty minutes.

 

Thirty-one minutes later, a vet appeared and said, “He’s a little excitable, isn’t he?” I decided the “If you’d let me stay with him he would have been quiet” argument wasn’t a hill I wanted to die on. Clinics have their protocols and many pets are, indeed, easier to handle when anxious owners aren’t hovering and raising everyone’s anxiety. Within twenty-four hours, Raider re-discovered his fourth leg and everything was fine. Except my wallet.

 

This fall, my local veterinary practice added a chiropractor, and I began taking Raider for routine appointments. This would be right up his alley, I thought. He was going to love going to the vet’s office for the express purpose of having someone put their hands on him. No needles or probes, just fingers.

 

It took about five seconds for Raid to fall in love with his new provider. She’d just come back from a farm call, and he thought her coverall smelled divine. He was all about the touching until he realized this was touching with a purpose beyond his own selfish gratification. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that. Getting him to simply hold still was asking quite a lot since he is a graduate of the school of “Pet me and I will pet you back.”

Raid does have "indoor enthusiasm" and
"outdoor enthusiasm." He just has "enthusiasm."

 When the restraint and manipulation got to be too much, Raid would break free, ricochet around the room like a demented rabbit, then settle back down to focus on bits of cheese while the appointment commenced. These breaks came to be known as “Raider minutes.” It is now commonplace for his chiro to address a troublesome area, then release him, saying, “He needs a Raider minute.” I think this is a concept we could all get behind. 

THE BOOK

I am soooooo close to being able to share the cover design. But I can't. Not yet. The final tweaks are taking an agonizing amount of time, as these things do.

Still no release date. Thank you for hanging in there and believing me while I keep chanting, "It's getting closer!" I promise!

Shut the bedroom door. Please.

Since Halloween is drawing near, I chose a scary topic this week.

Let’s talk about sex in books.

 

Coming from the viewpoint of someone born in the previous century, I’m fine with it. A little spice is fine. But like garlic and tequila, a little goes a long way. 

 

We’ve never been further from the social constraints of our Victorian predecessors who were scandalized by the accidental reveal of a booted ankle. Sex is pretty much everywhere, and we’re pretty much blasé about it. Things that would have given my grandparents heart attacks barely earn a raised eyebrow in today’s society.

 

But I am a graduate of the School of Less Is More. 

 

As I sat at my keyboard, telling the story of two old-enough-to-know-better, young-enough-to-do-it-anyway, slightly messed-up people who fall into friendship before realizing they want to be more than friends, I drank a lot of coffee while trying to decide how much more-than-friendly they were going to get on the page. I concluded that I enjoyed developing their relationship more than spying on them while they consummated it. Click. That's the bedroom door closing.

 

Avid readers encounter couples coupling in genres from romance to mystery. Good for them (the characters). They can do whatever they want to one another, as many times as they want, in as many places as they want. But after they make their intention clear, please, someone shut the door. I’m perfectly happy knowing they are enjoying one another to their mutual satisfaction without explicit descriptions of things that are bulging, throbbing, thrusting, or doing anything else that ends with -ing. I wonder if those authors’ grandmothers read their books. I am this many years old, but the thought of writing explicit, intimate scenes that my family members would read gives me the heebie-jeebies. Christmas dinner would never be the same.

 

 Color me old-fashioned. Romances, by their very nature, are about two people falling in love and a natural extension of that means they end up in the bedroom (or shower or on the kitchen counter or beach or whatever surface is handy). I don’t care where they go. But I’m over having it described in detail. Page after page. Multiple times. We’re all adults here. We understand the mechanics. 

 

I chose this topic because I’ve encountered a run of audiobooks lately that had well-developed characters and interesting storylines but waaaaaaaaay too much shagging. There was so much sex in one book, I was like, “We’re doing this again? I thought we just did this. Can't you keep it in your pants?”

 

No judgement, honestly (she said, while judging). A little consensual something-something can create a whole lot of conflict between characters who something-something’d with the wrong person and now their lives are total chaos OR took a tumble with the right person and now their lives are a different kind of chaos.

 

There’s a market for stories that embrace, well, embracing and a whole lot more. I just felt a little blindsided by all the panting, moaning, grinding, etc. that have popped up, unsuspected, in a couple of books marketed generically as romances. These are not the sort of thing you want to be listening to when your husband is in the car with you. After a few of those, I’ve wised up and started avoiding books described as steamy, spicy or sizzling. That translates to “clothes are coming off and body parts are going to do things that I suspect are not physically possible in real life but the author is determined to prove me wrong.” It's just not my gig. If it's yours, you're welcome to it.

 

Sometimes those R rated scenes are important to the story’s progress but hey, I heard you the first time. I also nearly drove into a ditch so please, you’ve made your point. Can we move on? How many times are you going to describe decadent cupcakes in a book that isn’t about cupcakes? 

 

 As I wrote “Ghost,” I struggled constantly to juggle character development, plot advancement, conflict building and all those other writerly priorities. There were lots of scenes (not involving sex) that I wrote just because they were fun—until I realized they did nothing to move the story forward, and they got cut in the name of word count. 

 

With that in mind, when I read/listen to a book with a seemingly gratuitous amount of time spent getting nekkid, I wonder if the author felt it was really necessary or just word candy? Done well, intimate scenes are, um, well done. Diana Gabaldon’s “Outlander” series is a five-star example of putting sex on the page and making it an integral part of the storyline. Done badly, the cringe potential is staggering and makes me avoid that author in the future. 

 

IN OTHER NEWS

 

My designer sent me the initial cover mock-up for “Ghost” this week! It’s still a work in progress, but I’m excited to have a foundation to build from as he and I fine-tune art concepts. 

Cover design is not for the faint of heart. Think about a favorite book—now think about what you’d want on the cover if you’d written that book—then think about how you’d convey those ideas to an artist who hasn’t read the book. That’s kinda where we are right now.

 

As always, I invite you to follow me at my author’s page: https://www.facebook.com/melinda.wichmann.author. 

Casseroles and farm wife GPS

I’ve spent the last two weeks as chief cook and bottle washer, farm Uber driver, agrarian Door Dasher, vehicle ferry pilot, meteorological consultant and occasional finder-of-lost things (the Gator wasn’t actually lost, it just wasn’t where it was supposed to be. Or maybe I wasn’t where I was supposed to be. It’s hard to tell sometimes.) In other words, harvest in the Midwest is in full swing.

Finding the Gator is a popular activity. 
It is usually followed by the four-legged passenger screaming 
all the way home because Gator rides are the Most. Fun. Thing. Ever.
(Photo by Melinda Wichmann)

 

My job is simple: keep everyone fed and drive things from Point A to Point B, with or without passengers. This is no small undertaking since farmers and their partners often operate in different dimensions of time and space.

 

Me: Do you need any help this morning?

 

Farmer: Yeah, but first I have to unload the semi at the other farm, then I’ve got to move the grain cart to that other field and fix a tire on the combine, and I’ll need a ride back to get the other pickup, but I have to check the dryer first.

 

Me: 

 

Farmer:

 

Me: Just call me.

Moving from one field to another.
Iowa Township, Iowa County, Iowa.
(Photo by Melinda Wichmann)

 Food is a big deal this time of year. The bucolic scene of a harvest meal in the field is one of the iconic images of the American farm family. Everyone is clean and smiling while they enjoy a spread that looks like it was catered by a five-star chef. The combine in the background is polished to a high gloss and the pickups parked strategically to accommodate the photo shoot could have just rolled off the showroom floor.

 

The reality of field meals is trying to park the pickup upwind of the moving dustball that is the combine chewing through dry stalks and releasing a choking cloud of field dust, grain dust, bugs and chaff so thick you can’t see through it. 

Sometimes, the first reality of meal delivery is finding the right place, but once I get in the general vicinity, it’s easy to locate the field crew by the dust cloud. And just forget about anything being clean or shiny. It’s not. Get over it. I call it a success if the paper plates don’t blow away and I remember to bring a serving spoon for the sloppy joes.

 

When the Farmer and I were first married, I lived in terror of delivering food to the wrong farm. It took several seasons to cement in my mind exactly where he meant when tossed out the farm and section names that he’d grown up with but had no meaning to me. There were a few initial hiccups, but we reached an agreement that directions like “east of the pond at the Maas farm” or “west past Immanuel Church and south at the first stop sign” was more likely to yield good results than “down by the creek” or “north of Dad’s 80.” Figuring those locations out was a skill that came with time. By the way, there are multiple fields “down by the creek.” They are in no way, shape, or form close to one another. Ask me how I know. We’re still married.

 

Ditto when it comes to needing a ride. The problem isn’t so much poor directions by either the giver or the receiver, it’s that trying to locate farmers can be like herding cats. Plans change, paths get diverted, and “be there in ten minutes” is a rather liquid interpretation of time. The sense of relief I feel when a rig pops over the hill is palpable, especially when I’ve started second-guessing whether I was supposed to go to the north gate on the east road or the east gate on the north road. Farm wives develop their own GPS after years on the job.

(Photo by Melinda Wichmann)

 

In terms of food, I’m not of the generation that delivered fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, homemade dinner rolls and pie to the field. (I know ya’ll are out there and I’m seriously awed by the magnitude of your skill, but that’s not me.) Field dining is about convenience and speed for both cook and diner. The food has to taste good and be transportable in a way that ensures it’s still hot when it gets where it's going, or if it has to wait a while when it gets there. My Crockpots are still my go-to favorite kitchen gadget.

 

Best case scenario: hot casserole. The skinny end of things: cold meat sandwiches. Dessert: always. I love this time of year because I get to bake some favorite recipes I’ve put on the back shelf because they’re too much for just the Farmer and I, but work great for field meals. It’s amazing how fast a big pan of brownies or an entire sheet cake disappears.

 

IN OTHER NEWS

 

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, things ARE moving forward with “Ghost.” The text is in the hands of the second-to-last proofreader, and my cover designer said he’d have an initial design concept for me this week. I feel like a kid on Christmas Eve!

 

And I’ve had some great authors who were generous enough to write blurbs for me—those little marketing devices on the cover of books that say delicious things like, “This stunning debut novel is a haunting, sensual blend of friendship, love and danger.” Well, okay, none of mine actually say that, but you get the idea.

Thanks for reading!

Time, OCD and waiting for Christmas

Salvador Dali's "The Persistence of Memory"
I think we've all felt like this once or twice.

 

It my six decades on this spinning galactic dust ball, I’ve experienced time in multiple dimensions. Before you suggest I step away from the coffee and whatever I’m splashing into it, let me explain. 

Time is an established measure, right? Sixty seconds in a minute, sixty minutes in an hour, twenty-four fours in a day, etc. You can’t change it or control it. Some folks are really good at managing chronometry. Others take a different approach. For thirty-five years, I worked with both in a job that lived and died on coffee and deadlines. There was real time and there was reporter time, which is kinda like farmer time. Example—Reporter, “I’ll have that story done by noon.” Um . . . you do mean noon today, right? Farmer, “I’ll be in for supper by 7.” Um . . . is that Central or Pacific Time?

 

When you retire, time takes on a whole new meaning. At first, it feels like there’s more of it than you know what to do with as you explore the concept of having at least forty more hours a week to call your own.

 

As you relax and pursue the interests that you previously had to carve out of barely existent spare time while you worked, you start to wonder, “How did I do all of that—hobbies, volunteering, housework, family stuff—when I was working full time?” It’s a mystery. Perhaps the space/time continuum shifts to accommodate those years so we don’t go completely insane.

 

Time stretches and contracts like a rubber band. Remember when you were seven years old and waiting for Christmas? For many of us "old folks," it wasn’t even mentioned until the Thanksgiving leftovers were cleared away, then December lasted at least three months. Now, Mariah Carey starts singing “All I Want for Christmas” three weeks before Halloween. You can buy trick-or-treat candy and candy canes at the same time. 

 

Everyone knows time goes super fast when you’re working through a training problem with your performance dog and you've entered a bunch of upcoming trials. Three weeks off from the show ring seems like a reasonable amount of time to get back on track, except it sails past in a snap, and suddenly you’re back in the ring with that troublesome exercise that may or may not be new and improved. Where did the time go?

 

Privately, I think people who train and show dogs possess the ability to manipulate some aspects of time in a way normal people don’t. Don’t be offended if you consider yourself normal. If you’re one of my “dog friends,” you’re not, so don’t worry about it.

 

Dog people can look at a judging schedule and immediately start doing math in their head that would escape them if presented in any other way: if I’m the fifth dog in the ring at 9 a.m. and I need to get there by 8 a.m. at the absolute latest, it’s an hour and a half drive to the show site, plus a ten minute stop to grab drive-through breakfast, then factor in construction zones, add a cushion of fifteen minutes so I can get out of the garage and off the farm ahead of the morning implement-moving, grain-hauling, cattle chores mayhem going up and down the lane, how many aliens does it take to make pancakes? This is why sometimes I consider just arriving at a show reason enough to raise the win flag.

 

A number of years ago, I traveled to an out-of-state dog show with a friend. We each planned to drive separately but would go together. I arrived at her house on the day we were to leave, very pleased to be early. I was excited because we were already ahead of the game and winning at the eternal human vs. time battle. I anticipated my friend ready to go, her vehicle idling at the curb in front of her house, and we would sweep out of town like warriors riding into battle.

 

My friend did not share my world view. For some folks, leaving at a specific time means actually leaving at that time. For others, it means it’s time to start getting ready to go. These two types of people should never, under any circumstances, ever travel together.

 

At the appointed time to leave, my travel partner began packing her cooler in the kitchen. This was followed by loading her van with crates, chair, gear bags, article bags, food bags, extra bags, bags containing mystery items, and finally, dogs. Then we had to drive through town to the bank so she could stop at the ATM, followed by a side trip to buy gas. We were an hour late before we ever started.

 

Being the slightly (ahem—cough, cough) OCD person I am, I had done all those things the night before. Well, except for packing the dogs and the cooler. Any obedience exhibitor will tell you the latter takes a stupid amount of time because it’s vital to get the proper balance of water, soda, dog treats and human lunch with ice or freezer packs because nobody wants food poisoning from warm tuna salad. Coolers are always too small or too big to accommodate our needs, but that is a topic for another day.

 

So yeah. OCD me. 

 

A number of years ago, I was hospitalized with a wildly racing heartbeat. Apparently a heart rate of nearly two hundred beats per minute is only acceptable if you are a lumberjack or a fetus. I was neither.

 

The attending ER physician lacked any kind of empathy, along with medical training. He informed me there was nothing wrong with me and I was a Type A personality having a panic attack. (He was partly right – after being hauled to the ER in ambulance complete with lights and sirens and my heart going whacko, I admitted to feeling just a tiny bit panicky.) It turned out I have a form of atrial fibrillation that is hard to detect on a traditional EKG but can accelerate my heart rate and knock it out of rhythm like nobody’s business. In any event, the doctor didn’t believe me when I told him I wasn’t a Type A personality and I’d never had a panic attack in my life.

 

But . . . I am often frighteningly well organized because being organized is my ticket to getting things done on time. We OCD folks are like that. When I plan to leave for a dog show at six a.m., that means the dogs and I are in the car, going down the lane at 5:59 p.m. Not everyone else works that way. I have friends whose approach to most things in life is “I’ll get there when I get there.” And you know what, that’s absolutely fine. I kinda envy them. There’s a lot to be said for refusing to play by the universe’s demands.

 

I’m telling you all this because I’m anxiously waiting the final proof copy of “How to Live with a Ghost,” which is the next-to-the-last step in production before it becomes a real live book. I’m also waiting on cover art, and let me tell you, it is like being a seven-year-old waiting for Christmas.

 

Random ramblings

 Good morning! It’s a short post this week due to the Gypsy experiencing issues with chronology (translation: I forgot what day it was.)

Last weekend I attended the All-Iowa Writers’ Conference sponsored by Our Front Porch Books Publishing Company. The event was held in Montezuma, Iowa, and a panel of speakers shared highlights of their writing and publishing journeys. It’s always fun to emerge from my hobbit hole and enjoy the company of other people who create with words. Except it meant I had to step out of my comfort zone and talk to strangers. I did. No one got hurt.

 

As I listened to the speakers, I realized there is no right or wrong way to write, no matter what your genre. It’s easy to commit writing. All you need is a laptop. Or a pen and paper, if you’re kicking it old school. I’m not sure which is more dangerous in terms of losing your work. You can delete entire chapters with the errant push of a button, then frantically pound Command Z while making desperate promises to the deity of your choice, or you can dump coffee all over your hard copy, which doesn’t come with a backup no matter who you pray to.

 

A fast Wi-Fi connection is handy, too, but unless you’re into a heavy research mode, sometimes it’s more productive not to have internet access. If your Wi-Fi has gone dark, you can’t tumble down a rabbit hole, only to emerge two hours later from a quick check of Facebook (fun fact: there is no such thing), to discover that while now you’re up-to-date on everyone’s latest dramas, your protagonist and her love interest are still stuck in a blazing barn with no escape except to launch themselves out the open loft door in a leap that mirrors Luke Skywalker’s iconic swing across the chasm on the Death Star. Except you haven’t written a word of it.

 

I read a bit of advice that went as far as suggesting writers disable their internet connection before sitting down to work so they won’t be tempted to wander off into the fairyland of cyberspace and return 20 years later, only to find that same damn cursor blinking on a blank Word document. Not a chance. My W-Fi connection is sketchy enough out here in my cornfield without deliberately taking it offline. It’s already looking for an excuse not to work. I'm not about to give it permission.

 

The top five things I find useful as I write are, in no specific order:

 

1. A quiet place. I spent more than three decades writing news stories in a busy newspaper office with phones ringing, customers at the front counter, co-workers causing all manner of chaos and a vast off-set press rumbling on the other side of the wall. My career was nearly over before work-from-home became a thing, and the final years when I carved out a home office from a spare bedroom were a welcome change. Left to my own devices, I am a solitary creature. I love my office at the back of our house, even though it’s about as organized as your average broom closet most of the time. 

 

2. A solid idea/scene/dialogue to pursue. I love to step into the momentum of a story in progress and pick up where I left off. Natural progression builds momentum and makes writing easy. Easier. Okay, not as hard. With that in mind, when I quit writing on the previous day, I try to stop at a point that will be easy to pick up and immediately move forward. Starting from a standstill is do-able but harder. Which means that's what happens 97 percent of the time.

 

3. Sticky notes. So. Many. Sticky notes. You have no idea. They’re everywhere. On my desk. In my purse. In my car. On my end table. On the dog. I’m constantly scribbling ideas on sticky notes. Yeah, I confess to looking at some of them later and having zero idea what I was thinking when I wrote them, but when a story-related idea pops into my head, I know better than to think “Oh, I’ll remember that.” I know from experience that I will not, in fact, remember that.

 

4. Coffee. I’m a morning person. I’m a coffee person. I’m a writing in the morning with my coffee leave me alone person.

 

 

5. Possession of time. Not simply time, but time I possess by wrangling it away from all the other daily demands. It’s easy to say, “I’ll sit down and write when I have time.” Guess what? You’re never going to have time. Work, family obligations, household chores, appointments, prying dead squirrels out of your dog’s jaws (don’t laugh, it was in the dark, before coffee, I was in my pajamas and I assure you it was not funny, not one little bit) will cheerfully occupy every waking moment if you let it. I’ve gotten better at carving out time to write. The rest of the world can just get along without me for a bit. Possessing time is a constant wrestling match that pits a fantasy world against the real one, but the more you work at it, the better you get. It's a helpful skill for whatever hobby you choose.

 

 

Thanks for reading, and again, I invite you to follow me at my author’s page: https://www.facebook.com/melinda.wichmann.author.