Wine for Being Afraid

One of the reasons Steve and I wanted a dog was for the relaxing, healthy benefits of pet ownership.

Especially for me, who has been known to wrestle with anxiety, the idea of stroking a pet in a quiet, soothing manner, was in itself comforting. To have a gentle, peaceful relaxing creature by your side every day, to calm me by its mere presence, held a great deal of appeal.

And so it is with great irony that I now share that we somehow chose a puppy who seems to suffer from....you guessed it....anxiety.

How we did this, I'm not sure, he didn't seem anxious when we chose him, but there you have it.

Now I am the first person to fully understand anxiety, but I have to admit that some of the things that frighten Tuco are really beyond me.

For starters, the first few weeks we had him, he was afraid of other dogs. I found this odd considering he came from a litter of six pups, and was, himself, after all, a dog. But apparently this is common, and now he plays with the best of them, but i will never get out of my mind the vision of him running away from a tiny three-month-old pug who came to say hello to him in our puppy class.

Some other things he is afraid of:

Garbage barrels. This again is not uncommon, considering they make a lot of noise when rolled out onto the sidewalk.

His new treat dispenser: it is a red, honeycomb-shaped device which wobbles if you hit it with a hand, snout or paw, and dispenses a treat out of a small hole in one side. It scares him. I don't know why.

His harness: Tuco is the only dog I have ever met who is not excited to go out. Really, not even a tail wag. When he sees us take out his harness, he runs away, tail between his legs, and we have to coax him out with treats.

This one really baffles me because we only ever take him fun places in that harness: the dog park, daycare, walks.

But wait, you may be thinking, you probably take him to the vet in that harness! Well, yes, we do, but here's the kicker: he LOVES the vet. Loves it there. We live around the corner from the vet, and often on our walks we go right by it, and we can't walk by it without Tuco going inside. He pulls me, strains against the leash, running to get in.

He has to go in, and once inside he is beside himself with delight. He gets low to the ground, he wags his tail so hard you think it will fall off, and he flops over and presents his belly to everyone who works there.

Even when he sees the vet himself, he is delighted. Remember, this vet is the man who just a few short weeks ago was jabbing Tuco with a vaccination needle and grabbing his man-parts.

He also has, inexplicably, become afraid of his own poop. Now on the one hand I can understand, sometimes I'm afraid of it, too. But you'd think since it's his, he wouldn't fear it. But he seems to. Midway through the poop's exit from the ole chute, Tuco will suddenly turn around and look at his rear end as if to say "what the hell is THAT?!" and start running away from it. Needless to say, this leads to some rather interesting poop-dispersal patterns in the yard.

I know I'm one to talk about being afraid of random things. Once when my parents left me alone at home for the evening, I spent the last hour before their return huddled in a corner, because I had seen someone walking in the backyard and was convinced he was going to break in. Only when my parents finally came home did I realize that the ax-murderer I had seen was in fact my own reflection in the glass porch door.

Like mother, like puppy.

My wine for Being Afraid is a 2007 Vezer Family Vineyard "Franci" Black Muscat. The Vezer winery is located in the Suisun Valley of California near Napa. Franci is the name of the Vezer's 10-year-old daughter.

This Black Muscat is a sweet dessert wine, with lovely floral notes of lilac and carnation as well as plump blackberry and blueberry. It has a bright, lively acidity which keeps is from being overly sweet, and it will pair beautifully with black and red fruit desserts, as well as sorbets and anything chocolate. It is also yummy enough to be a dessert in and of itself.

You can order it online from the Vezer Family Vineyard website for $24.95 (375ml).

Just don't bring it to my house unexpectedly: it might scare the dog.

Wine for the Puppy Menace

Let me start off by saying that I love our puppy. Really I do. After all, who could resist a puppy with such ridiculously big ears? But he is, a lot of the time now, an absolute frickin' nightmare.

He seems to be going through a phase where he has decided he is going to test us. A lot. And then eat. And then just go completely crazy for no apparent reason. And then poop (outside, thank God). And then sleep. And then go crazy again. And then eat my socks.

I think I can sum up how Steve and I are feeling during this phase by saying that at the moment we love him most when he is sleeping. And when he has just woken up. Then he is an absolute darling. He rolls over on his back for belly rubs, he licks our hands and gazes into our eyes lovingly...all the while planning his next path of destruction.

He has decided that when he is in the backyard, rather than playing with the ball or little plastic puppy pool, what he really finds most enjoyable is eating mulch, clumps of dirt, and rocks. Oh and grass of course, lots and lots of grass.

He then comes back into the house and makes various hacking and acking sounds, but clearly is oblivious to the fact that he could avoid these delightful moments by just skipping the dirt-rock-mulch-grass combo. When we try to explain this to him, however, he just looks at us like "what?" and then chews on his foot for a while.

He has also decided that I'm not allowed to talk on the phone, or, for that matter, to anyone but him, and when I do, he starts growling and pulling on his leash and jumping on me to get my attention.

Today, as I tried to talk to my sister on the phone, he grabbed a paper towel off the coffee table and then went tearing around the house with it while I tried to catch him and take it away. Let me tell you, that sucker is fast, and can wedge himself into spaces where he knows I can't grab him, and he was changing direction and scooting past me like lightning, leaving paper towel shreds in his wake.

When I finally put him in his crate and closed the door, he gazed at me with those innocent, soft brown eyes, sweet as can be, one last white paper-towel shred hanging from his tooth, wondering, I'm sure, why Mama was so red-faced and sweaty.

It's not all bad, of course. We had a delightful moment this morning when he was sitting on his mat in our living room. I was trying to get him to lie down, but he wouldn't. He just kept sitting there with a slightly odd look on his face.

All of a sudden, a fairly expressive toot emanated from his rear. He seemed quite surprised by the whole event, and turned around to stare straight at his bum-hole, as if to ask "Was that you?"

Indeed it was. And let me just say that before that toot my hair was curly. Now, not so much.

My wine for the puppy menace is a cocktail that I made up at the restaurant one night when two diners really wanted an apple martini, and then asked for me to make then something fruity and kind of sweet when told that we can't make apple martinis.

The descriptive name is a mandarin grapefruit cosmo, but in honor of this post I will now call it the Mandarin Menace.

Here is how you make it:

In a cocktail shaker combine:

3/4 ounce mandarin vodka

1/4 ounce grapefruit vodka

1/2 ounce cointreau

1/4 ounce Luxardo Maraschino cherry liqueur

1/2 ounce fresh lime juice

1/2 ounce cranberry or pomegranate juice

simple syrup to taste

add ice and stir. Strain into chilled martini glass.

Garnish with Maraschino cherry and a few drops of the red Maraschino juice.

It is fruity and refreshing, but watch out: it's got bite!