The local dog beach is one of my favorite places on earth. The unbridled joy of running free on the sand and in the water is intoxicating for both canines and their owners. The beach is a finite space, there are cliffs behind and on each end, giving urban dogs a rare chance to be off-leash outdoors without man-made barriers. My little girl loves loves LOVES the beach, she is very fast and gives me ample opportunities to practice my high-speed photography skills, which will come in handy for capturing cheetahs soon. She's also not shy and has absolutely no idea that she is a small dog. She's confident but not aggressive, playful, smart and generally the life of the party. I want to be just like her when I grow up.

The light was amazing that day, as the sun lowered in the sky the ocean turned into molten metal, a sea of mercury, and the dogs all became pitch black.

The last picture is of our new family member, Taiko. He's a two year-old Gordon Setter mix, a long-legged gentle soul just coming out of his awkward puppy stage, also a rescue from a local shelter. He lives with my husband at the house in the mountains and Aubrey's with me at the cottage during the week, and we're all together on weekends.  She bosses him around and chases him around and around the big oak tree in their yard, but he's very tolerant and gentle with her. He's very cuddly and affectionate, another very special creature, he's helping to heal the grief of losing Tucker so suddenly.

I haven't done much riding lately but what I have done has been fun and fulfilling. I'm looking forward to better weather and the end of my tenure at Soon To Be Ex-Company at the end of January.

This year has been extremely difficult and extremely wonderful in big dollops. I have to say I wouldn't have it any other way.

Our neighbors own an electrical company and use their home as a showcase for new and interesting lighting effects, often bringing clients there and hosting parties. This is their latest addition: a herd of custom-made sheetmetal horses.



They are life-size and magnificent, with individual spotlights embedded in the ground next to each horse for maximum effect when viewed in the dark.


During the day they are no less awe-inspiring. I'll have to invite myself to their next party and try to capture their stunning beauty under the lights.

Photo credit: Jean-Francois Leblanc

This week I was lucky enough to see Cavalia for the first time. I think my expectations were a little bit too high, as it wasn't the experience of a lifetime that I wanted, the continuity in the second half was a problem and a couple of times there were no horses on stage at all during long trapeze numbers. Having said that, I would still recommend it to horse people and non-horse people alike, just to see the "at liberty" work. We all know how difficult it is to gain the trust of a horse and to successfully pass on our wishes using all the aids at our disposal. This is Sylvia Zerbini and part of her group of 9 Arabians. She was able to control them with just her voice and a very small whip, used for directionality only. At one point she had 4 of them cantering in a circle clockwise and the other 4 cantering in a circle counter-clockwise inside the other circle. At the beginning and end of the show I saw, two six-month old colts wandered into the performance space by themselves and playfully and gently frolic with each other and the horse toys strewn about the stage, seemingly without noticing the lights, the music or the hundreds of people watching them. Another piece showcases a single dancer and a white Andalusian playing in and around a shallow pool of water -- they might as well have been a wood nymph and a unicorn -- truly magical. This amazing work is worth the (hefty) price of admission.

The recent bad weather has made riding Missy on the weekends a hit-and-miss proposition, but at least she is being worked during the week. Every time I get the chance to ride her I am cantering, so that's a step in the right direction. She is so uneven and crooked and falls out of it easily, but at least we're doing it. My lessons during the week have made this possible, I am so grateful for my trainer and for the wonderful group of women I share her with. We all went to see Cavalia together then the next night had some fun doing poses while we cantered around in a circle together.

How did it get to be less than 60 days until I leave for South Africa?  So much to do.  I'm just trying to get through each work day one at a time and avoid completely freaking out about my decisions.

Safari. Africa. Two words that evoke a myriad of images and emotions. This is where I will be spending four glorious weeks, the entire month of February 2011, in the north east corner of South Africa, on a private game reserve. My only job will be to show up each morning with my camera gear and my sense of adventure.

I have no idea where I will end up after I return from Africa. Seldom does one have the time and the money to take a month off and I wasn't about to squander it sending out resumes and waiting for the phone to ring.

No matter. Since I made the decision to leave the environment has been much better, since my manager got the mandate from her manager to avoid pissing me off, lest I walk out and demand the severance package without fulfulling my extended notice period.

The project is run by a conservation organization that uses the photographs of the volunteers in their efforts to educate the world and the local population. These images are from the September project volunteer portfolio.

I continue to make lemonade from the lemons.

Still reeling from the loss of Bailey in March, we lost Tucker Friday afternoon. We knew he was 11, we knew he was old dog, but he didn't know it, and he was a puppy to the end. He never got gray, or crippled, or stopped jumping for joy or playing ball with the intensity of an Olympic athlete. In fact he played ball with abandon on Thursday evening, as it should be. He was gone within 8 hours of showing any signs of distress, so he didn't suffer. For that we are grateful, but it was so fast, so shocking, so unbelievable...I still can't wrap my head around it. He passed at the vet's office and we went there to say goodbye on Saturday morning. I didn't get the chance to do that with Bailey and I felt it was important to see him and stroke his beautiful red coat one more time. Some might think that strange or morbid, but, as difficult as it was, it was helpful. And it was all we had.

We would walk along the sidewalk above the beach with them, Bailey on D's left and Tucker between us on my left, a formidable phalanx of four. Countless people stopped to comment on their good manners and their beauty and to ask if they could pet them. Countless more said nothing but smiled at the sight of them, and we always joked we should charge $1 per smile. Tucker's favorite place on earth was the dog park across the street from the beach. We never brought a ball, we would just let him loose and he would always find one, that's how I think of him, like in this picture, resting on a bench at the dog park with a found ball, just waiting for someone to throw it for him. He's worn paths through the trees on either side of the driveway, the ball-throwing routes across the property. He was the definition of Golden Retriever -- sweet, smart, playful, polite, loyal, athletic. He was loved beyond measure and radiated happy. Right up to the end.

In keeping with the rebel spirit that has been 2010, I now have three essential negotiations going on at the same time.

Since July I've been in negotiations with my husband on where to live and when we live together again. He doesn't want to move, I couldn't live where we were any more so now I have my little cottage but we live apart during the week. Recently I asked him what his plan was and he wants to wait until the spring to see how the real estate market is before putting the house on the market. Our realtor told us if we didn't get it on the market by September to wait until March, but the choice to wait was made by inaction, which is highly disappointing.

My trainer has finally started a dialogue with the property owner to see what kind of deal we can work out in order for me to keep Missy, I'm hoping they will agree to a half lease. In my mind this is a perfect solution, she will get ridden more consistently during the week, I will keep my current schedule of riding on the weekends and my expenses will be cut in half. The trick is finding someone acceptable to all of us, which may take some time, but at least there is some movement happening.

Two weeks ago I had a huge argument with my manager, something that's happened about every six to eight weeks since I started working for her in June 2009. This one ended in an ultimatum: she said I had one week to tell her whether I thought this was "going to work or not", because she wasn't going to change. After three days I scheduled a meeting with her and called her bluff. For the first time in my life, I quit a job without having another one lined up. I had just had it, I dreaded coming to work every day, I had the title and responsibilities of a manager but no authority, and I had to report literally everything I did to her in real time. That was on a Friday, on Monday she came back with the promise of a severance package if I would agree to stay for three more months. I told her I would have to know what the offer was before I could agree to anything, and I hadn't planned on staying that long so it better be worth my while. Obviously after she got over being pissed off from our argument she realized how much she needs me in order to complete the project we've been working on for the last six months on time. It took a week for her to come back with the numbers, which she told me on Friday. It's a decent offer, more than what I was expecting. I would love to just walk away and leave them in the lurch but that isn't very reasonable or responsible. At this point I really have no choice, I will take their offer knowing that I can still leave at any time if I find another job before the end of January. I'm also going to make it clear to her, her boss and HR that if she continues to maintain the hostile work environment that has been the norm, I WILL leave and I WILL get the severance package as well. This New Donna can be quite formidable.

Aubrey is doing fine, she seems none the worse for her adventure last weekend, if she remembers it at all. I had to bathe her three times, the last with Gojo grease hand cleaner, to get her head clean.

Last night I came back to the cottage as usual and let Aubrey outside. I was busy doing whatever and after a little while I thought to go outside and check on her, I hadn't heard her or seen her for maybe 15 minutes and she wasn't coming when I called her. I was shocked to see her body sticking out from under the fence in her dog run, seems my silly little dog was chasing some critter and tried to fit through a drainage hole embedded in cement. Of course I didn't know that at the time and I thought I could just pull her free. I tried, the neighbor tried and finally I decided it was time to call 911. The nice policeman tried and then he called the fire department. I was so afraid they were going to break her neck or she was going to suffocate! She was very brave. Me, not so much. More than an hour and 4 professionals later, they finally freed her, but I was shocked again to see a filthy, rusty tin can lodged tightly around her neck. Thankfully it had not cut her, although I'm sure her neck will be sore for a while. It was exactly like one of those stories you see on the news, happy ending and all. Today I stayed home from work, bathed her (again) and fixed the fence, putting up sheet metal over that hole and another one I found. At the time I felt a little strange calling 911 but both the police and fire departments were very concerned and took it seriously.

This is the hole her head was stuck in, after a fence board was removed and some of the concrete was chipped away, it's about 4 inches across.








This is the rusty old coffee can that someone was using as a drainage pipe, the reason she couldn't get her head back out of the hole.









Here you can see where the can was wedged around her neck, a fireman cut it off with tin snips.










She was filthy from all the goop they put on her to try to help her get free, after two baths the back of her head is still greasy.