Hemp Collar, $20-$25
My trio loves their EarthDog harnesses. I wish I sprung for a collar for Tino instead – he’s so wiggly trying to get him into a harness for a walk!  I like this one with stars on, but there are tons of solid and printed styles to choose from.

from earthdog.com

My blog was down for a bit, so I’m late posting about my awesome interview with Erica from Fucked in Park Slope, which you can hear here.

I was aware of her blog for ages, but I didn’t meet her until we were both guests at a Shabbat dinner. After that, Rob and I both became good friends with her (and interviewing friends is such a delicious treat for me!) so we had a time in the studio.

I spaced on taking a photo of her (life is hard, yo, and I can’t keep on top of everything!) plus we interviewed at night and I like to take my photos outside, so she sent me a cute photo of her at her wedding. I love the sleeved gown!

Here, because I still don’t have a photo of her, I used a photo of Oliver, her dog. He’s cute.

Every morning in Prospect Park there are off-leash hours until 9 am. The chances of me actually seeing the world before 9 am are generally slim to none, but yesterday morning at five am I was staring at the ceiling wide awake and completely miserable. So I got up. I made myself coffee and quietly snuck Matty and Leeloo, their leashes and some poop bags out of the apartment.

Tino was sleeping, and I really didn’t want to deal with him, either. He’s horribly leash aggressive, and we aren’t sure what to do at this point about it. When he sees another dog he starts growling and barking and choking himself at the end of his leash, and it sounds horrible and scary. I know all he wants to do is play, but it’s hard to explain that to someone who has a tiny puppy on the end of their leash that’s cowering and piddling itself in fear. It’s something we’ve been working on, but we haven’t seen a lot of improvement in. If you have ideas for me, let me know.

Anyway, Matty and Leeloo, the dream team, headed out on their walk, and they were pretty jazzed just getting out there, seeing the sights and smelling the smells. I got to the meadow area of the park and unsnapped their leashes, and it was a few seconds before they both realized they were unteathered. Leeloo kind of jumped up and down a few times, and then looked at me like, “Really?!” and then she was off, gone, sprinting down the field, running for the pure joy of running. I never see her so happy as when she’s barreling at full speed. We’ll definitely have to go again.

So, we’ve landed in Park Slope after a very self-sufficient move. In addition to going DIY with the painting, we packed everything ourselves* and then ran some of the boxes of stuff over to the new place and unpacked them in the weeks before the Big Moving Day with the Movers. These small chunks of moving were not only sanity-preservers, they made everything way cheaper: our by-the-hour rate movers had finished everything in just under three hours, including the drive over to the new place. Even they were stunned. Rob and I celebrated with a high-five.

One of the things we did early was put our bookshelves in the empty apartment and fill them.  By “we” I mean Eric.  The wall they are on is drywall over brick, and I said to Rob, “There is no way we are tackling this ourselves.

If you ask nicely he’ll wear his tool belt while working (you know, for the ladies who are into that sort of thing) and he gives a discount if he can bring his dog.

Thanks, Eric!

It doesn’t feel like home yet, and I wonder if it ever will. It’s very small here, and it’s clear that we will have to move eventually. Not just because of the space issue, either; the landlord actually told our real estate agent, “Three dogs is no problem, but NO KIDS!” It’s quite nice for now, though.

Stu! came over Saturday with champagne and cupcakes to celebrate the new place, and we spent the afternoon with me shirking unpacking responsibilities to show off the new neighborhood and slowly but surely convince her to become my cup-of-sugar neighbor.

Thank you to Effed In Park Slope for the Twitter welcome! This 4-part-series of videos they did of the local Target explains, to a level I don’t have the ability to blog about, why I feel like I’m descending into the seventh ring of Hell when I go.

*Apparently the really rich people leave their homes and go away for a few weeks and people come and pack them up and move them. Then they come back from vacation to a newly set up home somewhere else!

Oh, one more thing before my mini moving hiatus!

In April I blogged about a small company run by a dog-mom who, like me, has three dogs.  She came up with a new and improved approach to dog beds, and Molly Mutt was born. Remember? It turned out to be a popular post, so I asked Molly if she would offer a coupon code to The Amber Show readers. She said yes! Use the code “theambershow” at checkout to get 15% off any purchase now until August 12, 2009!

Thanks, Molly!

For Google: Molly Mutt Discount Code

This is Annabelle.

She has a home with John; they live in Manhattan.

Annabelle is going to be the face of a fund dedicated to helping Stray from the Heart with vet bills, so she needed a photoshoot.

I have no idea what she’s doing in this picture, but I think it’s pretty funny.

Isn’t she cute?

If you would like to advertise on my page, now is the the time to set it up for May 1st!  See here for more information, and email me (theambershow at gmail dot com) for details.  We’ll have your ad up first thing Friday morning.

I hope you get to do all of your very favorite things this weekend.