I like your hair

Over the last couple weeks my older son, Wally, has been learning many things in this his second year of school. He's in Pre-Kindergarten, for 4 year olds, called Pre-K 4 to those of us in a parental status. Wil, my second son, is in Pre-K 3, at another school. Well, Wally's got some great teachers at the school he's going to, and I'm really impressed with the education he's receiving.

Wally is a rather late talker, with some big hurdles to overcome with his speech, so he goes to a school that caters to children of all types, with perfectly average kids to those with serious autistic tendencies, and while Wally really has only the speech to work on anymore, he's learning how to deal with conflicts with other children that have some real communication issues beyond just their speech.

Wil is going to a local private school. He hasn't exhibited the severe speech delay that his older brother has, and I really wanted him to blossom into his own person, not just live in the shadow of his big brother, so I wanted him to go to a school that still has music and arts as part of the regular curriculum, which sadly just isn't addressed in the public school system for most of this country anymore. But I digress...

Wally's education in conflict resolution, or how to get along with everybody, comes down to a lesson that I don't remember ever getting when I grew up. I do have to admit that while it sounds a bit strange, it does in fact lighten the mood of all those involved. See, the way it goes is this: Two kids have an argument about whatever kids fight about, like the one Thomas train in the whole toybox while there's 50 Gordons. Anyway, ultimately these kids get to yelling and grabbing and so on. This is where the new school of thought comes in, and the preferred way to deal with it comes down to 2 things, an apology and a compliment.

A scenario for this might play out about like this...

Boy 1: [seeing another boy has the toy he wanted] "I wanted that toy!"

Boy 2: [defending his posession] "No, it's mine!"

Boy 1: [grabbing the toy] "I said I wanted it!"

Boy 2: [taking a swing at boy 1] "Unh!" (that's supposed to be that mean grunt)

The teacher steps in at this point and breaks things up, hopefully figuring out who actually had the toy first and then has the child that took the toy apologize for what he did, and then he has to give the other child a compliment. Sounds like this:

Boy 1: [to boy 2] "I'm sorry I took that toy, and I like your shirt."

I am not a child psychologist, so I don't know the reasoning for this kind of communication, but in my own home it's made for some interesting entertainment. We never know what one son is going to say to the other one when we use this tactic to resolve a conflict between siblings.

So, Melanie's picking up Wil from school the other day, like she does every afternoon, and as is the normal practice for the preschoolers, they walk each child out to the waiting vehicles from the safety of the building. The parents queue up their minivans and station wagons, pull up to the specific stopping place and wait for their child to walk to the vehicle hand in hand with a teacher or assistant. As Wil is getting into our car he slips and stumbles into the back seat, and without a moment's hesitation he says to his teacher, "Oh, sorry!" and then adds," I like your underwear."

Apparently Melanie, who seldom has nothing to say, found herself at a complete loss for words.

Man's best friend indeed...

I woke up this morning with somewhat of a start. My oldest son, Wally, who had earlier in the morning displaced me from my own bed and made me walk cautiously through the house with only a sliver of lighting seen with my mostly closed eyes to seek slumber in his bed, decided that my bed was no longer so inviting since his mother's alarm started blaring. After the cacophony of the alarm clock, my wife began attempting to wake Wally and his younger brother Wil, who had decided that since Wally had figured out the parent's bed was a better place to seek refuge from whatever bad dreams kids have it must be a better solution for himself as well. This was good for both boys, until their mother set to waking them. Wil mistakenly did what he often does and popped up with a smile and eyes wide open. Wally, the more mature, and wiser to the world of the two, knew what had to be done. Mimicking his father's action from only a couple hours earlier, Wally crept down the hall to his own bed once more, only to find his dad there occupying the space. As if taken partly from an Arlo Guthrie tune, Wally decided that it was easier to make the best of the situation, and rather than return to the noise and light of Mom and Dad's bed he'd simply climb in his own twin sized bed that his dad was now keeping warm and toasty. Ol' Dad's a bit big for the twin size bed as it is, so while Wally fell back asleep almost instantly, I was now uncomfortably wedged up against the wall in an attempt to make sure Wally had plenty of room. Needless to say, I wasn't going to be getting much quality sleep for the rest of the morning. It was almost a relief to hear my wife yelling down the hall a little while later for Wally to get up and get ready for school.

Not long afterward, once the kids and wife had left the house, it was time for me to start getting ready for work. It was a morning with the same start as usual, but something was seriously amiss on this particular morning. My Standard Schnauzer, Britta, wasn't there to greet me when I woke up. She wasn't following me through the house. She wasn't whining at the door to go out, or doing the same from the reverse side to come back in. She wasn't sitting next to the corner of the counter where she begged for her dog cookies after she had been outside to do her business. She just wasn't, and it just felt a bit less like home this morning.

Britta was a member of the family, born over 13 years ago, and commonly referred to by both my wife and I's parents as the grand-doggy. My wife, Melanie, and I were not married at the time when we first brought Britta home. I had picked the breed, and done plenty of research on breeders before finding what I consider to be the best place to get a schnauzer from, Skansen Kennel in Cotati, CA. One would think that after all that research, exchanging emails, making telephone calls and even visiting the breeder before making the commitment to buy my dog from there, that I would be very particular about which dog I was going to take home. I wasn't. I let the right dog pick me out. I climbed in to the pen with all the pups and sat down. At first most of the pups ran right over and checked me out, and then one by one they lost interest, until only one had decided that it found me likable enough, and decided that I would be its provider for the next 13 years. Britta always was a great judge of character!

This puppy raising was no small undertaking for me at the time, and I actually took puppy leave from work for a week to get acquainted with the new dog. I had her housebroken in less than 3 full days, although this was done with a pretty large amount of cookies and until her final day she still insisted on a treat every time she relieved herself. What I hadn't counted on was the voracious appetite for wood and cloth that a Schnauzer pup has, and before we had discovered how well a peanut butter stuffed Kong toy was for a teething dog, Britta had eaten one full size futon, one comfortable recliner, countless shoes belonging to both Melanie and I, and finally the carpet off a couple steps on the stairs. Thankfully our landlord was a dog owner too, and a carpet installer to boot, so we got the stairs fixed at a minimal cost. The futon frame was unceremoniously burned in the fireplace that winter, and the recliner was likewise beyond repair, and had to be taken to the city dump. While Britta didn't completely destroy it, she also chewed a good portion of the way through one of the thick legs on my computer desk too. Britta had a great set of chompers.

Britta also found one of her many lifelong callings while living in that little condo in Lompoc, CA, varmint hunter extraordinaire. Britta let me in on this great talent by bringing me a reward of a very large opossum, sans entrails, one evening while I was sitting on the sofa that now sat where the comfortable recliner had once resided. She couldn't have been more proud, and was practically dancing with excitement while presenting me with her trophy. I almost screamed like a girl. It's not that I had never seen a opossum before, as I'd seen quite a few both live and dead, but to have one dropped literally at one's feet unexpectedly, without its organs, and that crazy set of teeth that opossums have, was alarming! That was only the first of many similar hunting expeditions for Britta, with the prey varying from seagulls to neighbor's cats that had made the most unwise decision to take a shortcut through Britta's yard. This dog would actually take bits of her uneaten treats out onto the patio to lure birds in and then pounce on them like a lion. Britta was a great hunter and even in the last couple months managed to catch a neighborhood cat in out much larger backyard now.

There was a time when I had the crazy idea that I would train this superdog to do incredible things, and maybe even try for a confirmation, or harder yet Schutzen training, but it turns out she was too smart to do that willingly, and I stopped with the new tricks once we had "Roll Over" down pat. This doesn't mean that she ever stopped training Mel and I, and we were still learning Britta's ways until yesterday.

Britta went with her tail still wagging, and a pig ear in her mouth. I only hope I did right by her while she was in my care.

Does make one wonder how this one's any better than the last...

I love Day By Day.