Dog Bed 22

In November 2011, right before Thanksgiving, our wonderful, loyal, loving rescue dog Jesse died of natural causes at our house.  He was the best dog ever and our first dog, so he was ever so special. He came to live with us when he was two years old and lived with us for 14 years, dying of heart failure at the ripe old age of 16.  By then he was deaf, quite grey around the muzzle, very arthritic, and just plain old.  But he had been one of the most enthusiastic dogs you could ever want to meet.  He LOVED to chase balls, LOVED to go for walks, LOVED to eat, and LOVED us.  And we LOVED him.

Thankfully, when he died, I had already been a volunteer with the Mutts With Manners program for a couple of years, so the trainer at that program, immediately said, that now without Jesse, I would have room to foster one of the Mutts who needed to leave the prison.  I, of course, agreed, both because I wanted to help and because my house started feeling awfully empty and quiet the minute Jesse was gone.  I have to admit that I wasn't at all sorry when I found out what dog Cheri wanted me to take home.  I'd taken a liking to the long legged black and tan puppy long ago, and was secretly hoping it was him.

Luke had been at the prison much longer than most of our dogs.  He had entered the program younger than most of our dogs, but had also been unusually timid, so the trainers had required and taken extra time to bring him along slowly, gain his trust and allow him to grow up.  But by now he was fully trained and he and his trainer had a very close and deep bond.

But as sometimes happens, even though he was ready to leave the prison, nobody had as of yet put in an application to adopt Luke.  That was the reason Cheri asked me to foster him.  If he could come stay at my house until a permanent home was found for him, a new dog could enter the prison program and be removed from the shelter making room there.  And of course I agreed to that arrangement.

When Jesse died, my husband, Steve, told me in no uncertain terms, that he was not ready for a new dog yet.  As I, he was very close to Jesse and emotionally, he felt it would be difficult or wrong to bring a new dog into our family immediately.  I did not feel that way, but was willing to wait for a while.

Steve travels quite a bit and I am often at home by myself for days or weeks at a time.  During those periods it had been particularly comforting to have Jesse around.  But as he died right before Thanksgiving, Steve was going to be around for most of the time during the holidays and would not be traveling a lot again until his teaching schedule started again at the end of January.  So though we had not yet discussed it, I had pretty much decided that I would get another dog by the time I would start having to be alone again.

I brought Luke home from the prison on December 1, 2011.  And he wasn't too excited at all to leave with me.  He was still a fairly timid fellow, nervous about anything new, loud noises, new people, places, and things.  I borrowed a crate from John, one of the other volunteers, because Jesse had not been crate trained I never previously had a crate.  It turned out that Luke was also terrified of riding in my car and shakily hugged the floor the entire way home, rather than trying to hang out the window as most other dogs I have ever known wanted to do.  But at least he didn't get car sick!  Because I was the only thing he knew, once we got to my house, he immediately attached himself to me - that at least was helpful!

Luke may have been a timid little guy, but he was not stupid.  From the very first evening he was at our house, every night when we sat down to watch TV, Luke would climb up in Steve's lap and snuggle in with him.  It was as if he knew exactly who he had to convince!

And, of course, it worked or I would not be writing this!  After Luke had been with us for about a week, somebody did fill out an application to adopt him, but when I told Steve about it, he immediately started worrying, said he thought it might be better for Luke to stay with us, that Luke had already gotten used to us, that it would be hard for him to move, etc. etc.  All his concerns about not being ready for a dog yet, had evidently disappeared?  And, since I was already fostering Luke and was a volunteer with the program, I was able to adopt him when I filled out an application that night.  Fortunately, Luke's litter-mate was also in the Mutts With Manners program, so the people who had originally been interested in Luke were able to adopt another dog who was almost identical to him.

As soon as we adopted the dog we renamed him and he is now Luka.  Our great nephew is named Lucas and often called Luke, and I didn't want my great nephew to have to share his name with my dog.

This is a terrible picture of Luka on his first dog bed in his crate.  The dog beds are all big and puffy at first, but they settle and flatten out, so it looks really weird.  It has settled down and fits the crate perfectly.  Also, the crate he is in, which was borrowed, turned out to be too low for him. When I bought a crate for him, I got a taller one.  He is not a big dog, but his legs are really long, so he is tall - he is a great runner and loves to run.  I think he might have a fair amount of sight hound in his genetic background.

And in spite of the awkward picture, Luka actually loves his crate.  For a timid fellow like he is, a crate can be a great place to "hide" and feel safe.  I know Luka feels that way.  It's not the only place he retreats to.  He has several safe places.  It kind of depends on where we are.  He likes to be close to us also, if possible.

Lotsa Monkeys

Two of my former colleagues at the Southern Center for Human Rights were both expecting baby boys in the fall of 2011, so I went to work on two baby quilts at the same time. I discovered that I had just enough sock monkey fabric left that if I mixed in some other well-matched fabrics, I could make two quilts! Perfect. I used the same pattern for both, four patches alternating with plain squares. Nothing fancy to be sure, but I had to make two quilts in relatively short order in addition to whatever else was going on!

The first of the two quilts went to Baby Shai, first-born child and son of Brooke Sealey Rupert and her husband Matt. Brooke now lives and works in the DC area, but we worked together for several years at the Center, where I originally met her when she came to work with us one summer as a law-student intern.

In Full Bloom

The second quilt I carried to Denmark when I visited in 2011, was this one for my sister Vibeke. Some years ago, I had made her a throw, but for some reason it was way too small and thus not very useful, so I had promised to make her another bigger one. This quilt is actually 71" x 81" so it is more like a twin than a throw, but certainly big enough which was the point. I didn't work from a pattern and didn't design it in advance, but just put it together as I went along and stopped when I liked the way it looked, I didn't really realize how big it was until it was finished.

I started with the two big flowers and just built around them. All of the fabrics in the top - except for the two border fabrics - are from Anna Maria Horner's Garden Party line of fabrics.  As I hadn't planned ahead, I didn't have anything for the borders when I came to that step, so I went to my favorite shop, Intown Quilter, in Decatur, GA, and was fortunate to run into my favorite border person, Taffy McLaughlin who helped me pick the border fabrics.  Without her brilliance this quilt would have been much less complete.  I just love the final border fabric and think it is absolutely perfect.  But there is no way I would EVER have dreamed of pulling it off the shelf or ever imagined it would work with this quilt until Taffy put it down and I immediately saw that it was created just for this quilt.  Thank you Taffy for this and so many other borders!  And for so many other pieces of advice and everything else I have learned and continue to learn about quilting from you.



Up there is a picture of my sister holding the quilt which was expertly machine quilted to a perfect finish by my wonderful friend and Georgia's one and only professional machine quilter, Regina Carter, without whom, I would be no quilter at all.  Regina used a really fun quilting pattern called Bubbleplay, which, unfortunately, is hard to see in these pictures - sorry Regina!

Sporty

When my oldest nephew, Jens, turned 5, I started the tradition of making Big Boy - or Girl, as the case may be - quilts for my nieces and nephews on their 5th birthday. With this quilt, that tradition should be completed, as it belongs to William, my cousin's youngest son and the youngest of the bunch. I believe it will be a surprise to everybody if any additional children turn up in that generation. However, if they do, I will certainly continue the tradition.

P.S. I also have a whole bunch of wonderful nieces and nephews (by marriage) but they are all older than the Danish bunch, and had actually all been born before I even started quilting. So I am on a different "schedule" of making and giving quilts to them.
I am not sure that William is really very much into sports. Unfortunately, as he and all the rest of my nieces and nephews live in Denmark, I don't see him that often and don't know him nearly as well as I wish I did. When I got ready to start working on the quilt, I remembered that when he was quite young his parents commented on how much he liked balls, while his older brother, Yonas, had no interest whatsoever in kicking a soccer ball around.

So I think it was based on that rather thin evidence I settled on a sports theme and started looking for just the right fabrics! Because William's brother, Yonas, is adopted from Ethiopia - and thus, obviously Black - I tried to make sure that the fabrics I used didn't depict just all white people and kids. I should be conscious of that every time I buy and use fabric, but it seemed especially important in this case that William got a quilt which looked like something both he and his brother could be a part of.
The back of the quilt has some children from around the world fabric mixed in! And, as always, the quilt was expertly machine quilted by the one and only Regina Carter.

Even though William turned 5 in December, he didn't get his quilt until the following August, when he was well on his way to 6 and I made my annual visit to Denmark. I am pretty paranoid about putting quilts in the mail, especially internationally, and don't do it unless I absolutely have to do so.

Dog Bed 14

I made this dog bed for a dog named Petey. I've never met Petey, but I've heard lots about him, because he lives with Beth Neff, who is a fellow volunteer with the Mutts With Manners program sponsored by our local Humane Society, Danville-Boyle County Humane Society.

This is a program where shelter dogs on the verge of euthanasia are put in our program, taken to our local medium security prison and trained by prison dog trainers, making them much more attractive and adoptable dogs and then placed in good homes.

A select group of twelve prisoners live in the same dorm with the dogs and work with them 24/7. Our dog trainer and a few volunteers go into the prison once a week to work with the prisoners and the dogs, and facilitate the selection and subsequent placement of the dogs in forever homes through adoptions. But the prisoners do all the work of socializing and training the dogs. And they do a great job.

It's such a joy to volunteer with this program and see the transformation of the dogs during the 6-7 weeks they each spend at the prison. They often go from being shy, scared, and generally unsocialized dogs to happy, confident, very well behaved dogs who do very well in their subsequent homes.
Please visit www.muttswithmannersdanville.com to learn more about the program. You can also see a few pictures a my dog, Luka, who I adopted through this program. He's the handsome one named Luke on the web site.