Dogged

No one should have to go through the process of raising kids without a good coach or mentor, and we are so lucky to have a great one. Teacher Lynn has been our parenting teacher for more than three years, and she is absolutely the kind of person you want to have around. Name any kind of parenting concern and she can come up with some creative and positive approach for solving it, or she knows which book to refer to in her impressive library.  Her kids are in their mid-20s and have moved out of the house, so she stays busy doing an amazing array of things: airline supervisor, parenting teacher, community activist, surfer, dog trainer... the list goes on. As we just learned last week, she has for years volunteered as a "catcher" at the L.A. Marathon - as in, she's one of the people who stands at the finish line and catches exhausted runners as they collapse. The volunteer coordinators know that they need to have at least one other person volunteering alongside Lynn because she tends to get so wrapped up in talking with her runners she doesn't have time to catch all of the ones who cross her path (I picture Lynn chit-chatting with her runner while a stack of other runners piles up around her.)

All of this is a long way of saying that we have been playing with her dog - well, one of her dogs. Scout is a 1-year-old golden lab who is exuberant about life, and loves nothing more than to catch balls. This is a great coincidence because we have at least two people in the house who love nothing more than to throw balls to a dog. Scout was supposed to have left for doggie police academy last month but Lynn and the trainers decided that Scout wasn't quite mature enough, or possibly didn't have the temperament. So until they decide what might be a good career path for him, he's staying with Lynn and is available for play dates.

Lynn brought him over on Saturday and we spent the better part of an hour tossing a dirty, grass-and-saliva-covered ball to him. Then Luke went to get him a bowl of water. Then Zach went and got him a cup of crushed ice. And for even just a short time, the boys were in dog heaven.

Are we going to get a dog? Uh... It would be great but it's a project that I'm not quite ready to take on. So if we can borrow a dog on the weekends, we've got a pretty good deal going.

Speaking of boys and dogs, Luke's friend Blake has a dog that looks just like the "Otis" dog in Zach's favorite movie, Milo and Otis. So when we were getting ready to pick up Luke from Blake's house last week, Zach packed up his toy cat and his train book, which he told me he wanted to "show him." Since Zach doesn't quite get the difference between "she" and "he," I assumed that he was planning to show his toy cat and book to Blake's little sister. But when we got there, Blake's sister took a grab for the cat and Zach howled in protest. He took the book and his cat and went off to find the "Otis" dog. Then I found him sitting in the corner with the dog, very quietly reading him the train book, just as he had planned.

Yesterday Dave had a meeting in downtown L.A. so Zach and I drove with him and Dave dropped us off at Union Station. There Zach and I checked out the trains and hopped on the Gold Line for a little joyride. He sat on the train absolutely transfixed for the entire 45-minute round trip. When I told him we were going to Olvera Street for lunch and maybe a treat, he decided that he was going to buy a train. So we walked up and down the narrow alley lined with all manner of Mexican toys and treats, but we didn't see a train. Then Zach spotted something that he wanted even more: a basket filled with tiny kittens. And for the rest of the time there was no other treat that had any ability to distract him. He named them Fluffy, Snowball, Otis, and Joyceandjoyf. Joyceandjoyf is Zach's mangled reference to the cat named "Joyce" in Milo and Otis. I can't explain it other than it's just one of those kid things that you say, "Oh - OK," and move on. Kind of like how you should react after you read this.