Osanpo in our neighbourhood-Take II

Osanpo in our neighbourhood

The major advantage of having a dog is the need to constantly entertain it. Unfortunately for our dog, we're at work for 10+ hours a day. This makes weekends very precious, and we are often loathe to commit to other daytime activities with friends because the dog does need to get out and play with us.

Our favourite activity is just simply walking. Fast, slow, in urban areas, woods, hills, mountains. We just like getting out and having a stroll. But Kirin is still skitty around other animals. We even have a Defcon-style rating for her level of unease and proximity to all-out nuclear war. This pretty much rules out "hiking" on local trails in the Santa Monica mountains where the entire population of LA descends to at the weekends. There are only so many trails where dogs are allowed, and as such, they tend to be quite packed with four-legged furballs, from which our pooch feels a strong need to protect us. And while we enjoyed Griffith Park last weekend, the drive home in ridiculously slow hot weekend midday traffic could not be justified on a weekly basis.

As such, we are continuing the program of long walks around our neighbourhood, hoping it will provide some gradual socialisation and that it will enable her to feel more comfortable being in public with us. It's like having a teenager who is embarrassed to be seen in public with you, fused with an overly protective mother who will punch out everybody on the off-chance that they could be muggers and kidnappers.

Fortunately, we live in the not-so-affluent part of Santa Monica, surrounded by light industry and quiet residential streets. This gives us a huge area in which to roam on quiet weekends, and time to appreciate some of the nicer things around us:

The hill are ablaze

With the sound of... Crackling flames?

Our simple aim for today was to get some Modest Mouse and Sonic Youth tix for the Greek Theatre, situated in the Hollywood Hills within Griffith Park. Aha, we thought. We could expose the dog (oh dear, this and the other blogs are turning into doggy-bloggies...) to more sights and sounds as part of her socialisation routine. Get her used to being distracted by pseudo-wildlife, but in a controlled manner in the process of a short hike up Mt Hollywood sort of thing. (Yes, it's really called Mt. Hollywood.)

Trying to avoid the heat of being under the midday sun, we thought we'd set out early-ish. At least early for us on a Saturday. Which would have gone fine if we'd been to bed a few hours earlier than 4am. (I blame Pedro Almodovar; his latest film Volver had us glued to our seats from midnight till 2am because the DVD just came out and it's hard to go to sleep after such an emotionally-engaging movie.) But clever little D made some PB+J sandwiches so we could breakfast at the park, irrespective of finding an open cafe.

So, all's well. We're loaded up in the car, hurtling along the 405, 101 (which can turn into the 134 if you use the right spell and the planets are in alignment),: road names that are incomprehensible to non-angelinos (even if you don't drive in LA, everyone complains so bitterly about freeways like the 405, 101, 110 and the 10 so much that you know all about them even if you never see them). We arrive through the north entrance of Griffith Park as part of our allegedly clever ploy to avoid the congested streets south of the park. All's going well. We turn down Mt. Hollywood Drive because our map shows it'll lead us straight to the roads for Griffith Observatory and the Greek Theatre. We stupidly ignore signs that say "no-thru traffic" because I don't like the way they spell "through" here, and we are clueless foreigners who don't watch the local news (no TV) and don't venture out of Westside very much.

So, we climb uphill/mountain, and we see the (in)famous Hollywood sign (which we found out after getting home was nearly the inflam-ous Hollywood sign) and a heck of a lot of people on foot and on bicycles. We see dogs, but our dog is strapped in and sitting calmly, so we're fine. We see a young coyote, but our dog is strapped in, hyperventilating, but strapped in, so we're fine. Then we get to the bottom of the hill/mountain, where a very nice, solid candy cane barrier awaits us. Aha. Revelation. No-thru road signs mean what they say. Which we suspected, but were too belary-eyed to pay much heed to.

Not much lost, except patience all round. Bugger this all for a game of soldiers. Or, at least, a picnic in one of the rest-stops. Where we learn our dog can be a stubborn wee cow about sniffing out every last mole under the grass. Yes dear, we see the molehills and know they excite your "prey-drive" (someone's been reading too many dog behaviour websites), but let's move on cos we're starving and coffee-deprived at that. But it turns out that however disastrous our start to the day in the park was, however annoyed we were about the lack of time for hiking, the right thing to do was just to expose her to all these new sights and smells by just sitting calmly for some time. She was fairly calmly with with off-leash dogs trotting obediently by, but that was more good behaviour by the other dogs than her. And she watched, with great interest, horses also trotting by and was as calm as we can expect from her even when one particularly recalcitrant horse was re-saddled about 50m in front of her. We even watched a gopher/gerbil/small-hamster-like-creature* stick its head out of its burrow multiple times to harvest some grass in its hamster-like cheeks (so, not moles then... more like gophers out of Caddyshack).

All very uninteresting to regular folk, but a major achievement in our growing relationship with our four-year old mutt who behaves like a one-year old puppy sometimes. We took her out. We brough her back. Safely. Step one in getting her to trust us for the eventuality of many hikes, be they in the US of A, or back home where horses, cows and sheep abound.

We even managed to get those tickets for Modest Mouse and Sonic Youth. Hurrah! Two things checked off the list today then. I'm guessing the through-road was barred because of the possible heavy-traffic headed for the newly-reopened Observatory, for which we learned one needs to reserve a parking space online in advance. (No doubt we'd have found that out before if we hadn't been so captivated by Volver). No matter. You want the Box Office? Do a U-turn; you can park in front of the Box Office. Cool beans.

Now, the journey home? That's a whole 'nother saga. But I'm still too traumatised to talk about that...

*I don't think it was a gopher; too small. Maybe someone's escaped hamster?

Kirin

As of January, we no longer live in LA. We're now residents of Santa Monica. Unfortunately, this difference is purely semantic. SM, while considered a city in its own right, is still part of the sprawling conglomerate of cities and towns that make up LA County. It's also been one of those situations where we've moved only to stay still. As you can see in the photo above, hiding just behind P's legs is the one thing that is going to make the next few months in LA bearable.

We've always considered ourselves "dog people". Well, not specifically dogs only, because we love cats just as well (Muran! We miss you!). OK, maybe more like "pet people". And it's really rankled that because of my job, I can't keep certain pets. And because of the time we both spend at work, we couldn't have dogs for years. The lack of job security for postdocs also meant we never knew where we were going to be on a year-by-year basis. Well, no more excuses! We can always MAKE time for a dog. And we have. A few things have fallen by the wayside since acquiring Kirin. We gave away our TV, we spend an average of one hour less at work per day (thank goodness), and we don't hang out with my workmates as much. Instead, we have something worthwhile to come home to. And for now, home is where the dog is.

Addendum: Kirin was adopted from Much Love, a dog rescue organisation based in Santa Monica. They're really nice folk, and are careful about pairing the right dog to the right human. Every Sunday, you can find them in a parking lot on Main Street, just half a block away from Ocean Park Blvd between 1000 and 1500h. And they always have the cutest dogs available.