Christmas Boat Parade

Christmas Boat Parade to kick off yule season

When does the holiday season begin here in the Clear Lake area? For the past 60 years it has begun with the annual Christmas Boat Lane Parade on Clear Lake. This will be the 61st annual parade of dozens of gaily decorated boats of all sizes and descriptions.

Produced by the Clear Lake Chamber, it begins Saturday, Dec. 10 at 6 p.m. with fireworks in Nassau Bay, from where the boats travel down Davis Road Canal in League City, move into the south channel, passing South Shore Harbour, then through the channel between Seabrook and Clear Lake Shores to the Kemah Boardwalk and then into Galveston Bay and then return.

Some of the boaters have participated for 25 years or more, and their decorations become more creative and elaborate each year. Entries of all sizes include rowboats, sailboats and power boats, which have music, passengers in costumes and all types of moving parts. Fun!

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photo @WaterfordHarbourMarinia photo @KemahBoardwalk

Seabrook, Texas

Afew years ago I wrote in this column that dogs were God’s masterpiece—a reflection of God on earth, hence their name: GOD: DOG. I’d done a lot of thinking about what they teach us: things like loyalty, character, and above all, love. But lately I’ve begun to notice they also teach us lots of little things that, if we pay attention, will make us better people. So let me tell you about a few of the dogs in my life and some of the things I probably would never have learned without them.

It started decades ago with Misty, a beagle. As a member of the family, she was with me most everywhere I went. This was back in less civilized times, before dogs were welcome in hotels, restaurants and bars, so she often had to wait patiently in the car while I did my business. She preferred that to staying home without me. Our best times were when we went out to the woods. She would run off and do her thing while I’d find a spot to sit by a creek. I would hear her baying off in the distance, hot on a rabbit trail while I relaxed, fully confident she’d be back when she was ready.

One day we had been out there for a couple of hours and it was time to head home. I called her but she kept running and baying. If you have never seen a beagle on the trail of something, it is pretty funny to watch. They run, flat out, nose about a centimeter above the ground, baying the entire time and totally oblivious to the world around them.

At one point, she ran within six feet of me as I called her. She acted like she never heard and just kept running—until she met the buck. A beautiful six-pointer was annoyed at being “trailed” and decided to put the little menace in her place. I saw the confrontation coming and called out to her, but Misty was following her nose. I kept calling; she kept running. When she got within reach, the buck lowered his head and gave her a good shove. She barrel-rolled two full times, got up and looked around, wondering what had just happened. But for the moment, the baying stopped. I took advantage of that opportunity to call her again. She turned, saw me, then came running. Lesson one: When the mouth works, the ears don’t. Shut up and pay attention to others around you.

And then there was Koty, a 104 pound Labrador 28

retriever. I have never seen a person with the energy this guy had. “Koty” was a shortened version of his snooty AKC name “Hurricane Lakota,” so named because as a baby he was an absolute disaster and the hopes we had that someday he would settle into a fine calm sage. Koty was, well, a Lab! As a pup, he was sweet, but always in full attack mode, wanting to play, twenty four-seven. I had little puncture marks from those needle-like puppy teeth all up and down my lower arms for the first few months he was with us. But it was when I had to leave him at home that it became scary.

Afraid of what he could do to the house alone with his energy level, I used a baby gate to restrict him to the utility room. It worked. Of course, there were the two times he ate the sheetrock off the walls, but other than that, it worked.

Then, at about the age of two, overnight (literally, in less than 12 hours) he got his brain. And from that moment on, he was the best dog you could possibly imagine. It was then that my lessons began. I decided we should try using hand signals instead of verbal commands. I figured that, when in public, it was less disrupting to those around us. He quickly learned sit (raise hand, palm up), stay (hold hand, palm out toward him) and down (hand moving downward, palm facing downward). It was kind of a neat trick and lots of people were amazed when they would see us interact—except for one thing. He absolutely refused to accept the sign for “come” (a hand to my chest). Instead of coming, he responded by standing on his hind legs, putting his hands on my shoulders and showering me with kisses. No matter how many times we went through it, he responded in the same way. He let me have my way on the first three signs, but on this one, he wanted input. A couple of weeks later, I finally got his point. “Come” would be one finger pointed to the ground in front of me and the hand on my chest would always be “let’s hug and kiss.” Lesson two: Good relationships are negotiated, not dictated from power.

When Koty was first learning to read (yes, I said that), he seemed to have trouble discerning the difference between Ps and Ks. I guess I had a dyslexic dog. One day my wife came home with a little cement frog yard ornament. The frog wore a small crown and on the base was written “Kiss Me.” Always interested in anything new in his

By Michael Gos Lessons From Dogs

yard, he looked it over thoroughly, seeming a bit confused. After checking it out for about ten minutes, he decided it would be appropriate to follow directions as he understood them. He lifted his leg and initiated that frog. Lesson three: Never underestimate the intelligence and abilities of others.

And now there is Maggie, a white lab. She is the opposite of Koty in the sense that she arrived on this earth with a fully-developed brain. Those of you familiar with Labs know how rare that is. It started when she first came to me at eight weeks old. She was dropped in my lap in the middle of the second half of the Purdue Minnesota football game. We NEVER interrupt Purdue games at La Maison Gos, so she laid there peacefully for over an hour. That patience persists today, 13 years later, as she will lie next to me at meal time, never begging, but confident that when I am finished, she will get the last bite. Lesson four: Show patience. People who care for you won’t forget you.

From the beginning, Maggie had issues with a leash. I tried training her to walk with me on my left side. She was happy to do that—until I put the leash on her. She grabbed it, pulled it, chewed it and generally made it abundantly clear this was not going to happen. Today, even when we are out walking the trails and she is exploring, she never lets me out of her sight. And when I flash Koty’s come sign, she comes running, full-speed, and sits right at my side. She has not seen a leash in over a decade. Lesson five: People (dogs are people too, of course) will come to you and stay with you only out of love. You can’t restrain or control them.

The only down side to a relationship with a dog that I can see is that we tend to live longer than they do, and that’s a tragedy. It has been my experience that losing a dog is much more painful than losing a human. That could be because I’ve never lost a human I was really close to. Or, it could be because I’m just weird.

But I like to think it is because dogs are just so much better people than humans.