"Black Market Moose Cheese"

I joke about it all the time...

But.

A simple Google search reveals there is indeed a certain demand for puppy breath scented soap. Soap making message boards seem to teem with folks who would love puppy breath soap.

A number of hokey looking websites boast "Puppy Breath Essential Oils" only to have their gimmick blown in the first review when the customer describes the smell of fresh cut grass and dirt.
I mean, I guess, if puppies ate grass and dirt that's what their breath would probably smell like...but that's not puppy breath.
Puppies eat dog milk.

That's that smell.

Dog milk.

So logic would follow, unscented bars of dog milk soap would probably smell like puppy breath. Yeah?

Google "dog milk soap" and all you come up with is soap and shampoo for dogs made from goat's milk. Or soap shaped like dogs and paw prints.

Google "chien soap" and you get vegan soap for french dogs. (Google "chiengora" and get yarn made from dog hair.)

If moose cheese runs $450.00 a pound then surely I can sell dog milk soap to rich people for a ridiculously high price? They pay good money to eat fish eggs and snails while injecting bacteria from under cooked poultry into their faces. Obviously they are my target market base.

Dude. That's not a teat.

Fish and Game frowns upon moose farming and the FDA would have a genetically altered cow if I sold black market moose cheese.

I don't have any lactating bitches at the moment.

So...

Can I milk your dog? 

"A Time of Hunting and Gathering"

The wood stove.

Fireplace.

Hearth.

It's been around a while--a safe place to contain fire indoors. We've been bringing fire indoors for as long as we've had a thing called "fire" and a place called "indoors" which is a pretty long damn time in my estimation.

There was a time when a man's worth was measured by how well he could build a stone fireplace, and how well he could build a house around said fireplace. Before radio and television the fireplace was the center of the home. For thousands of years we have gathered around the warmth and safety of a hearth of some sort.

It's a wonder then that so many people these days don't know how to start a fire without the aid of some sort of petroleum based accelerant.

Many people have never even seen a real wood stove. Most have seen decorative heat sources that look like wood stoves but burn natural gas piped magically to one's home as long as they pay their utilities.

It has been many years since I have had to burn wood, but the ripple effects of economic meltdown have finally slammed into Alaskan shores. A tsunami of businesses have shut down.

As a result things are tight and getting tighter...

This year we install a wood stove.

The installation of a wood stove heralds a returning to my roots, of sorts. The beginning of a regression back to a simpler yet inherently more difficult time.

A time of hunting and gathering.

We had a wood stove when I was a kid. Pretty much everybody did back then. All our summers were spent gathering firewood for the coming winter. I remember my dad darting out into the forty below ice fog barefoot and in sweatpants to snag a few logs off the wood pile. He slept on the couch so that he could keep it going all night (and so mom wouldn't have to hear him snore).

I remember one fall fire, after the wood stove had been cool all summer long, when the cat decided to jump up on it to have a sit and maybe groom herself. Boy, was she surprised. So shocked, in fact, she stood there for most of a second before one of my parents shoved the cat off the hot stove. She'd burnt off all of her pads, poor cat. I think her name was Tasha.

Back then our house was built out of damaged or slightly twisted lumber and other construction materials pulled out of the dumpster behind Spenard Builder's supply, back when you could do that sort of thing. (Now they cut damaged materials up and you can't access their dumpsters anymore.)

We ate potatoes and rabbits and when my dad wasn't cleaning one of the two bars he worked at, or working for the fire service, he was selling Doberman Pinscher puppies for extra cash.

Potatoes and rabbits for dinner may be on the menu again this winter. Rabbit and Dumplings, Rabbit Stir Fry, Rabbit Pot Pie...Rabbit Burger Helper? I have plans drawn up in my head of the rabbit hutch I need to build this summer.

My great grandmother lived during the depression. That woman made everything and hoarded everything. It was all hoarded in a nice organized OCD sort of way though. Shelves and shelves of storage bins containing everything from empty sunny delight bottles to candle making supplies. For a while she even made Alaskan clay pottery to sell.  She grew a huge garden every year well into her eighties. She had absolutely no problem eating road kill. None at all. She raised rabbits for food just like we did, except she lived in town. Access to a grocery store just didn't seem to factor in for her.

I went over to her house one day with a pair of pet guinea pigs I'd just gotten in a cardboard box.

"Look, grandma! Guinea pigs!"

She looked at me, blinked twice, and said, "Can ye eat 'em?" in her thick southern drawl.

She used to make fireweed jelly. I haven't had fireweed jelly in twenty years so I think it's on the list of things to make and preserve this summer. I've already canned some spruce tip syrup. High in vitamin C, good in tea, smells like squirrel piss (and Christmas trees).

I'll be canning a little bit of everything. Salmon, raspberry jelly, cranberry jelly, strawberry rhubarb jam, carrots, tomatoes, pickles, salsa. I have a fair amount of root crops planted this season as well.

Soon I'll be harvesting blueberries. Blueberries are gold. Blueberries are good barter for moose meat, salmon, or  honey.

Chokecherry wine is on the to-do list. Raspberry leaf tea. Labrador tea.
Handmade hats.

Dog milk soap...

Just kidding...

Maybe...

"Good God, You Smell Like Dog."

I often sit and try to recall, to reach back in time to my earliest memories. Most are vague yet vivid just the same; Strawberry Shortcake curtains, She-Ra, a fear of Santa and clowns.

I remember once pushing around one of those stupid things with the multiple colored balls that jumped around within a plastic dome as the wheels turned. I don't remember what it was called, but I do remember this.

We lived in a house off of Nordale road; a long narrow strip of pavement that seemed so middle of nowhere back in the 80's. My dad had built the house, and as was typical of the Alaskan patchwork home, we had a trap door in the floor which concealed the well house.

I vaguely remember looking up through that trap door; a square of light in a sea of darkness. I remember the smell of the dirt floor, and I remember the surprise on my dad's face when his head popped into my view. Apparently I had fallen into the open well house--that, I don't remember.

My mom didn't know about it until I told her almost twenty years later. "I'm surprised you survived your childhood." she said. "—what else don't I know about?"

I remember other things too.

There was this floppy under-stuffed plush dog, I loved that grungy thing and wish to this day that I still had it, or could find one like it--it was my favorite stuffed toy and the only one I really ever yearned for since it disappeared. I don't know what happened to it.

Dogs.

When I was born we had a Doberman Pinscher. She was my nanny. Every kid has a dog-nanny, right? The dog protected me as if I were her puppy. My grandmother couldn't do much with me if the dog was around.

The dog’s name was Balloo.

I remember once waking up from a nightmare. My parents weren't too hip on my coming to sleep with them every time I had a bad dream, so in a stroke of genius I crept out into the living room and curled up with the dog on her dog bed.

My mother seemed baffled the following morning. "Good God, you smell like dog."

I think I was about five at the time.

The Doberman was approaching thirteen. The following year she started to deteriorate. My dad had to help her up and outside to pee or she would just lay there and pee on herself.

One day I came home from school and my dad was sobbing uncontrollably, my mother's eyes red rimmed.

My dad just couldn't watch Balloo suffer any more. He took her outside to relieve herself one last time. He shot her in the head with a .22 while she pooped, her back to him. He didn't want her to know what he was going to do to her.

My dad loved his dogs. I have never seen him cry that hard over anyone but my mother.

Within the week my mom brought home the most beautiful Rottweiler puppy. She was black and mahogany, the sharpest mahogany markings. She was a beautiful dog; we named her Josephine. I seem to recall that we'd recently watched the life story of Josephine Baker on HBO. We called her Josie for short.

She was smart. Her big brown eyes seemed to beg for education.

My dad was working two jobs at the time, both janitorial, one at the Elk's Club and one at Club Alaska. I remember going in with him, early in the morning on weekends. I sat at the bar drinking Shirley Temples and watching cartoon network on the big screen they used to watch football during open hours. When I got bored Josie and I played, running and chasing each other through the bar. One Saturday morning at Club Alaska an infomercial came on, it was for a dog training video.

My dad ordered it immediately.

My dad informed me, however, that I--a young girl of about six--was going to be the one watching the video and training the dog.

I thought--but I'm just a kid, how am I supposed to train a dog?

In a week or so the video arrived. I must have watched it three times before gathering the confidence enough to tell myself that I could do it.

I remember taking the dog to a park or somewhere with an open field--I don't remember where exactly. I remember having a puppy on a long line, walking in large squares, turning ninety degree angles in the opposite direction the dog wished to go, letting the line wrap my hip and bring the dog to my side as I turned. I remember how quickly she picked up her training. I remember how easy it was, how eager Josie was. Before long I had her trained to heel, sit, stay, and lie down. Eventually it was as if she understood plain English.

My dad got me another dog; a lab mix. She looked like any other black lab.

She was high strung and intelligent, I named her Tara; Tara the Terror. Intelligent dogs are troublesome dogs...but they're the best dogs. I began to train her in the same way I had done with Josie.

Dogs.

I can count chapters of my life that opened and closed with dogs like Balloo, Josie, and Tara.

Dogs teach us things. They teach us about compassion, loss, friendship, love, selflessness, teamwork. If you listen close enough the lessons a dog can teach are boundless. Without dogs, humans would have never become a successful species.

We owe our entire existence to dogs.

Cat people can argue if they want.

But they're wrong.