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Re: chimp grins and my reluctance about being photographed. A little info from the San Diego Zoo:

- Chimpanzees don’t like to be in water and usually can’t swim.
- Some observers have noted chimps feeding on medicinal plants when they are ill or injured.
- Research has shown that chimps and humans share 98 percent of their genes.
- Chimps can recognize themselves in a mirror.
- Chimpanzees make a grunting sound when they are happy.
- A toothy “grin” actually indicates fear or anxiety.

I’m not down with submissive gestures. For all of my cultivated equanimity, I’m off the charts on the D of DISC tests.

Anyhow, see the resemblance to my work photo? Really, it’s uncanny.

***

Reptile fest!

This morning, right before I stepped on the mat, I heard Daisy barking and barking. Nothing new. She likes to go out in the middle of the yard and bark, in hopes that the neighborhood dogs will bark back. She loves to pick fights. If she’s human in her next life, she’ll be a cage fighter for sure.

Something sounded a little different about the bark, so I looked out and noticed she was barking at something on the ground. When I went to check, I found a little (18 inch) snake coiled up & looking upset. Whoa! I grabbed Daisy, called Waylon, and retreated to the house. Where I got a camera so I could take pictures.

Here’s the picture I took to investigate its markings. You can get an idea of how little this guy is — or else those are some big grass blades.

Then I Googled to try to see if it was a rattlesnake. I figured that if I could make a positive identification, I’d need to go back and kill it. I don’t like killing stuff, but I do make exceptions for black widows and I think I’d feel the same about rattlesnakes. They’re a threat to the dogs, and I don’t think you can relocate them very easily.

Anyhow, from what I can gather, baby rattlers usually have a bud (though very small) on their tails right from the get-go. This snake had a pointy, non-rattler tail. And its marking didn’t look like what I found online. So I left it alone.

Went into the yoga room to practice and as I was pulling the curtains against the sun, I noticed that the huge lizard who hangs out on the top of the block wall was sitting on the ground next to the lawn mower! This is very weird — he ALWAYS stays on the top of the wall.

The reptiles are going berserk around here.

I tried to get a picture of the big lizard, but he took off when I opened the door to try to sneak up on him.

At this point, I am monitoring dog visits to the back yard. In fact, I am at home for lunch right now and wearing my dress along with The Cop’s muddy outdoor sneakers so I can supervise the dogs on their pee runs.

Animal kingdom. Over and out.

Everything converges. Starting here.

Then there’s this:

Now The Cop’s post-mountain-bike-accident, pre-osteopath’s-intervention pinkie:

And finally, picture #7.

“I have puppy exhaustion,” I announced to The Cop this morning. Indeed, Daisy is an utter joy — she is the happiest, bounciest, most irrepressible creature I’ve ever met. But man, is she a handful. For one thing, she rolls around in her crate all night. Every hour on the hour, she snorts and flips herself over in her crate — it sounds like someone repeatedly throwing a huge pot roast onto a counter top. At 4:15, she snuffles and scratches and flips some more, then whines to get out. Bleery, I open the crate, and she falls out, rolling over herself to get to me and Waylon, wiggling and snorting and biting at us as best she can.

Adorable.

Holy crap, though, I’m tired.

***

New book. Essentials of Hinduism. Another great read. I am always thrilled when I find a new interest — every book about it is a joy, a whole new world opens up. (Go ahead, ask me a question about old school alpine climbing or about whaling in the American Northeast. Or shipwrecks! God, I love reading about shipwrecks.)

It’s always curious to me how we have/develop affinities. If you’d given me this book 10 years ago, I would have glanced through, said, “Yeah, that seems interesting,” and put it down. Now I can’t wait to get home and have at it. Curious.

***

This morning was the first morning Daisy got into her crate in the yoga room by herself. I love the routine of dogs; I love that they like sleeping or watching as humans do yoga. During supta vajrasana, my head was right up against the crate. There I was, upside down, and I looked up and straight into Daisy’s green eyes as she calmly watched me do the posture.

Maybe it’s crazy, but I feel like dogs who watch yoga are preparing for a next lifetime, or remembering past ones. Creating (or sustaining) an important affinity.

So in Buddhism, there is reincarnation, but not of an individual soul. Basically, you “return to the one.” Hinduism posits an individual soul. I guess my intuitions about dogs and yoga are more aligned with the Hindu belief system, which is as it should be.

Okay, enough from this exhausted mind. I chatted with Owl this morning, and now I have a little tune playing in my head (always appropriate, as the Beatles tend to be): And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.

Don’t forget, you guys. We’re here to make energy to share with the others. (Yogi Manifesto)

I was so inspired by Jaime’s float adventure that I looked online to see if there were any float places in Arizona. Believe it or not, there is a new “float spa” about 3 miles from me! I went on Saturday for my first float and have one booked for next week. I loved it. I had always wanted to try a sensory deprivation tank. Of course, now they’re called flotation therapy pods, but whatevs.

Here’s a picture from their website.

How could you go wrong with 1,000 pounds of Epsom salts, right? Throw in darkness and silence, and you’ve got a perfect environment. The only other thing I wish they had (“Oxygen bar,” you’re thinking, right? “They should have an oxygen bar!” Well, they do. In a darkened room with a huge round fish tank.) — so the other thing they should have is an EEG machine so you can check out your brain waves afterwards. I felt like I shifted into theta in about 30 seconds.

***

Up early for practice this morning, then off to DC for the week. Heading to an executive compensation conference, then an advisory board meeting at our DC office. Gonna be long hours and very early mornings, so it’ll be hotel practices only. At least I’ll be treated to some nice humidity.

The Cop is taking a couple of days off to dog-sit. Daisy is too young to spend a whole work shift in her crate, so he’ll be hanging out with Waylon and “Little Pig” (her nickname since she snorts as she bustles about the house and yard).

Obviously this has to be a great podcast for me to bother typing a blog entry one-handed as Daisy chews on my other hand or jumps up trying to bite my hair.

Right at the very beginning Swami Jyotirmayananda talks about the relationship of Buddhism to Hinduism. After years of practicing zazen, and now years of practicing Ashtanga, I just knew the relationship was strong, but this is the first time I’ve heard someone say that Buddhism is a “blossom” of Hinduism. Maybe that’s a really obvious thing to say?

He is pretty dramatic, in terms of blurring the lines: says Buddha was an incarnation of Vishnu, and that instead of “Hare Rama, Hare Krishna,” one might say, “Hare Rama, Hare Krishna, Hare Buddha.”

Anyhow, check it out.

***

Wake-up time is moving back rather steadily. Daisy was up and ready to roll at 3:30 this morning. I don’t mind too much because next week I’ll be in DC for work. We’ll be offering an educational session at a conference, and the days will start early (on site at 7 AM). So I might as well roll back the body clock — in order to be at the venue at 7, I’ll be getting up at 4. I try not to think too miuch about the fact that that’s 1 AM, Arizona time…

***

List of Yesterday: Practice was leisurely since The Cop didn’t leave for work ’til 10. Waylon, running wildly through the yard with Daisy, crashed into one of the porch’s support beams and gave himself a black eye. My Gift and her girlfriend came over to meet Daisy — and loved her, of course! I made a huge pot of aloo gobi and some yummy naan. Karma yoga = service to dogs.

Pretty girl.

Keep away:

Bitey game:

Break time:

Resume play:

Waylon is patiently trying to teach Daisy the pulling game. He brings toys and dangles them in front of her, waiting for her to latch on and engage in a tug of war. She is still easily distracted, though — she’ll play for a few moments, then run off to something else. His patience will pay off eventually. I stepped in and played for a bit, but already he prefers playing the game with another dog.

***

Waylon makes crazed runs through the backyard — he revs up just outside the sliding glass door in a patch of grass, then speeds across the back yard into the gravel area. There’s a corner with a block wall (where I always worry he’s going to crash) and then an obstacle course of palm tree, creosote bush, sage bush, mesquite tree. Daisy checked out the course last night, climbing up onto the high pile of gravel in the corner, where Waylon’s mad dashes have created a banked turn. This morning she ran after him, floppy and waddling as he tore around the loop. Her running made him even more crazy, so at 5 AM, I was chasing wild dogs through the backyard, trying to at least stay close to her so he wouldn’t bowl her over.

***

Daisy woke from her yoga crate nap at setu bandhasana. Uh oh, I was afraid I’d have to bail to take her outside. But she just sat there contentedly. The Cop woke up and took both of the dogs outside as I started backbends. Nice.

Closing poses, I’m in halasana. Daisy waddles over from the kitchen, where she’s just had some water, sits herself next to my head and shoves her soaking muzzle between my thighs and my face. My laughter caught Waylon’s attention, and he came over and shoved his head in, too. Halasana with two wet dog faces. Very funny.

Really, we should call her Tank.

But we’re down to Daisy and Petunia. What would we really end up calling her, though, if we go with Petunia? Probably “Tootie” or something…

Anyhow, she slept (snored!) through the night. Got up at 4 AM, which is only 30 minutes early for me, so that was great. I woke up every hour to listen in case she needed to go out. Housebreaking really is about the humans being super vigilant about not allowing accidents to happen. Anyhow, the broken sleep, as we all know, makes for great flexibility.

I fed and played with Way and his sis for an hour, then put her in the crate that’s been returned to the yoga room. She protested for a minute, then settled down to gnaw on a toy, then keeled over for more than an hour. Waylon lay down where he usually does when I practice — out of the room, but in a spot where he can look in and see what I’m up to.

Selfish as it is, I did worry that the new pup might really upset my practice. It’s hard to practice with a crying puppy freaking out and trying to escape a crate. Ideal is a pup who’ll play a bit then fall asleep. And the longer the sleep, the better. As soon as they wake, you have to grab ‘em and make a potty run. So she did wonderfully — a nice long sleep that lasted until I was well into closing poses.