Pagan Pride Recap (probably)

pbp1I mean, not probably anymore; it really is a Pagan Pride Day recap now. I’m just harkening (harking?) back to the Going Full Ravenclaw post I made a few days ago.

So, ok. Short answer: I’ve had better days. I’ve had a lot of better days.

Long answer: the day was a combination of good and bad, but the bad is sort of outweighing the good in my brain.

Had to take a ferry to get there. Missed the 8:15, which meant I had to take the 10:45. This put me at my friends’ house at just after 1 am (the boat ride is 2 hours long, and the drive from the ferry I took to their place is half an hour). We didn’t fall asleep until about 2am, and had to get up around 7 to get down to the park to set up. I slept well, even if only for five hours.

When we started to set up, we realized the canopy/gazebo/tent thing we were using for our booth was missing its canopy. It had got left in Powell River. So I then had to run to Canadian Tire to pick up a new tent. (We got a really good one, actually, for sixty bucks, and it can be used for future events. So that’s a plus.) I also picked up coffee, because ye gods mom and I were tired and snappish and ripping each other’s faces off.

After coffee we felt a little more human. We left the frame for the old gazebo up because it was holding some of the clothes and such we were selling fairly well, but soon it became apparent it was too windy to have it up without the canopy to tie it down. So, with quite a bit of effort, we took it down and put up the new one (with less effort).

Which is good, because then it started raining.

Tyee, the dog, got his wires crossed. He’s Shepherd-Wolf, so his Wolf instincts started saying “This tent is our den!” and his Shepherd instincts started saying “GUARD THE PERIMETER.” So he snapped at some people. I think, too, he just got played out — he was great for the first half of the day, but as the weather got worse and he spent more time in the “den”, and he got too much attention, I think he just got into a bad mood, which didn’t help.

Hey, you know what helps sell books? Having a giant wolf-looking dog snap at you as you get close to the booth. REALLY GREAT FOR BUSINESS.

We ended up getting rained out, which at this point I’m seeing as a blessing in disguise, because then Tyee only had, like, 2 chances to snap at people.

He’s actually a very friendly dog, and I don’t think he’d EVER bite anyone. He’s snapped at me before, and I get that it’s scary, especially if you’re not used to big dogs, but he’s not vicious. You know, sometimes it’s just him asserting his boundaries.

Unfortunately we live in a world where people don’t want wolves or wolf-dogs to assert their boundaries, and wolves and wolf-dogs doing so can get killed by the city. Because nature! We haz to tame it!

So that’s a frustration I have with people in general, though I think it’s fair to say that if we’d had one of our wolf-huskies they never would have snapped at folks. Not the way Tyee did, which was very Shepherd-ish (and scary). Huskies will generally just walk away if you’re bugging them; if you’re really pissing them off they might bare teeth a bit. The only time I ever had a husky snap at me (and bite me) was Toyon, the family meathead, and it should be noted that he had Shep in him.

(Sheps are great. But you should never, ever, ever blend them with wolf. The only dog you should ever blend with wolf is husky. I am dead serious on this. Because wolf instincts don’t mesh well with Shep instincts. You want wild + mild, not wild + GUARD THE PERIMETER.)

But, in the moment, we had to let Tyee know that what he’d done was wrong. You’ve never seen a more contrite wolf. He curled up into a little ball in the car and just slunk right into bed as soon as he got home. Didn’t say a word; usually he’s pretty talkative and active.

It was his first event, like that, so it did show us that no — he can’t do events like this. Not until we have another, more sociable dog that can front most of the attention, and he’s older and mellower and can just chill in the back of the tent or something. (It is our plan to get a puppy, at some point, to help mellow him.)

On the money side, we ended up making less than I did last year at the event — and likely this is because we got rained out. Almost all of our stuff is damp and it’s now strewn across my living room, including the tent covering, trying to dry.

Good things? Afterwards my friends took me out to dinner, which was very nice of them, and I had the most amazing burger. It was the Grilled Cheese Burger at Montana’s; they use two grilled cheese sandwiches as the buns, and it has onions and bacon and cheese on the burger itself. It was amazeballs.

We told them it’d been my birthday almost two weeks ago, too, and they brought out the ice cream and moose hat for me to wear. So I got to be a moose. I did a pretty solid moose impression, I think.

And I sold a book at dinner, which was cool.

Caught the 9:30 ferry back to Vancouver. As soon as I parked my car on the ferry deck I grabbed my bedding from the back seat, put a blanket on me and a pillow behind my head, and next thing I knew we’d docked on the other side and cars were starting to leave the boat. I then spent Sunday vegetating.

I did also get to see my friends, which was nice. But overall the day was…disappointing, and I’m kind of depressed about it all. Going to need a week to recover my happy, I think.

This coming weekend I’m off to Pirates and Fairies, which is the event where I met the Ogre three years ago. (Have we really been together for 3 years? Wow. Time flies.) It’s a real vacation for me, and I have a metric fuckton of work to complete before going, so I may not be posting here again till after. Can’t make any promises; I don’t know how long work will take.

So if that’s the case, I’ll see you in September.

ETA: I did end up writing another post today, because I was pissed off. It’s scheduled to go up tomorrow. Other than that, probably September.