I haven't been blogging much lately, but that doesn't mean I haven't been writing. I had three articles due by New Year's -- one on real estate sales, one on Rutland Regional Medical Center and one on the things we do for our pets. Each is either finished or almost so. I also had my friend Joan's (Waffles' breeders) annual Christmas letter to get out to all the people who had received puppies from her over the years and I've been working on a short story. Inspired by my work last year with the Hubbard Hall Writers' Project, I decided I needed to get some of my own writing projects out of my head and down on paper. The story isn't done yet and on the face of it isn't the most cheerful of subjects -- about a man who runs a pet crematorium -- but I think it has soul. I hope it will be one of many dog-focused stories and expect the follow-ups to be about happier themes. In the meantime, I have begun exploring the option of turning some of my photo collages into Kindle covers, I hear there's a market for them and many people have commented that my collages already remind them of book covers. My first attempt will be a collage to go along with the dog story, but I needed a Labrador model. I'm hoping to still take some more photos of some other friends dogs in the next couple of weeks to get a variety of shots to use, but one of my friends from my photography classes offered me the opportunity to take a picture of her brother's dog, Abby, who is a partial Lab. Today, I visited my friends house and got a number of shots to use for the collage in addition to this pretty portrait. I think she enjoyed modeling. When the collage and story are done I will let you all know.
Santa Claus Came to Town
I know the blog has been quiet lately, but not for the lack of things going on. I've been busy, real busy and much of it is writing and dog related. And, of course, it's almost Christmas. I have three articles to write before the holiday season is up. One of them is called Pet Love and it is for Upper Valley Life Magazine. It is about all the interesting things we do for our pets such as pet massage, training, pet Reiki and animal communication. Me and the pugs have been busy experiencing them all. I'll write more about that later and of course, you'll have to read the article, but this post is about another pet-related experience. This weekend while my nieces and nephews gathered across town in restaurants and libraries to see Santa, the pugs and I headed off to Country Animal Hospital, our local vet, dressed in elf costumes and Santa hat to see Santa for ourselves. In spite of the beginnings of a snowstorm, turn out was great with dogs and cats all making an appearance to sit on Santa's lap and have their pictures taken. The humans were awarded with cupcakes, cookies and hot cider. My elfin pugs brought smiles to the face of my vet, staff and even Santa. My niece and nephew, who had seen "a creepy Santa" at the library, wholeheartedly agreed that the pugs' Santa was closer to the real deal. I explained that Santa had to hire helpers to dress like him, but he didn't want anyone to mistake them for him, so he only hired mediocre look-a-likes. My pugs, however, seemed content with the doppelganger -- excited just to be out and about on the blustery winter's day, and, to be at the vets without having to get a shot.
My Pet Love article explores the interesting array of things we do for our pets, the reasons why we do them and the ways in which they cement the animal-human bond. Chasing two wiggling dogs down, dressing them in costumes and hats, and loading them in cars with hyper nieces and nephews may beg the question why, but I like to think I took my pugs to see Santa for the same reason so many parents take their children. It's fun, it's magical, it brings smiles to many faces and so often these aren't only the faces of the little ones.
Remembering Vader, Meeting an Aquaintance
It was a dark and stormy night…well, at least a dark and really cold one. So dark that I had a difficult time finding the driveway to the home I was supposed to visit. I was on my way, my pug Waffles, in tow to conduct an interview for an upcoming article in Upper Valley Life Magazine on “pet love” -- the interesting services we will pursue for our pets. This interview was with a woman who does animal reiki and while she had provided me with her address, this time my GPS failed me. When I finally found the building, I was equally perplexed on how to get inside and nervous as I have never brought one of my pets to an interview before. Waffles had accompanied me to one of our writers’ workshops with Jon Katz and was on her best behavior then so when the interviewee suggested I bring her along and allow her to try some reiki on her I agreed.
Waffles and I roamed the perimeter of the fence, but I was unable to figure out how to open it so we eventually climbed a long snow-covered slope to the woman’s front door. No one uses the front door here in New England – never. She opened the front door and said, “I can’t believe you braved the front door!” I looked at her and immediately realized that I knew her. She had mentioned that she had once worked at the Upper Valley Humane Society, the place where I frequently took my former pug Mira for obedience classes. Vader would accompany us and everyone liked him so much they would allow him to walk around inside the class. He was old by then, 9 or 10, chubby, but not so old that he didn’t enjoy taking part in the class. I think he liked to show off to Mira that he already knew sit, and stay and come. But he also had a calming effect on some of the other dogs and he became a favorite with all the teachers and volunteers. I think we took the class four times earning four different certificates just because Mira and Vader enjoyed themselves so much and people enjoyed them. It turns out that the woman I had come to interview was one of the assistants in the class, a woman with as calming an influence as Vader. I could easily understand how she could be successful doing energy work.
No sooner had I declared “I think I know you,” then she said, “Maybe. Our you Vader’s mom?”
“Yes,” I replied and while I started to tell her he had passed, she was already saying, “Oh my gosh, I was just telling someone about him today.”
Vader and Mira had taken the last class at least four years ago. He has been dead for at least a year, but this woman not only remembered him but also had been talking about him that very day. She volunteers at a local library and one of the children there told her he had a black pug. She said she knew a black pug and told him about Vader. “Vader was quite a presence!” she said to me.
He must have made an impression for her to remember him so many years later. We conducted the interview, met one of her Lhasa apsos, had a reiki session and reminisced about Mira and Vader. To learn about the Reiki, you’ll have to read the article when it comes out (I’ll be sure to post it), but suffice it to say Waffles and I left calm and happy even though she managed to have a huge accident on the woman’s floor. She claimed not to mind and I believed her. She was a true dog person, I knew.
“Let’s keep in touch,” I said on the way out. “We dog people are our own tribe.”
“Yes,” she said. “I love being part of a pack.”
So do I especially one that shares my memories, sorrow and joy.
Kid versus Pug
Last week my niece 22-month-old niece Ellie came to our house for Trick or Treating. She loves my dogs and loves their toys almost as much. It’s hard to deny her anything so when she picked up Waffles favorite stuffed dog, a fluffy, cream creature, and asked to bring it home. It was hard, no impossible, to say “no.”
Waffles has lots of toys and although she favors some, she likes new ones even better, so I was convinced that she wouldn’t miss her doggie too much. Ellie went home with it and life continued as normal.
Tonight, Ellie and her parents swung by again on their way to New York on vacation. Excited to see Ellie, my Mom decided to give her an early Christmas present – ad stuffed, pale peach pig. She placed it on the kitchen table waiting for Ellie to arrive. A few minutes later I heard her call me.
“Don’t mention the pig to Ellie,” she said.
“Why,” I asked.
She motioned to Waffles pen and I looked inside. Waffles was happily curled up with the pig and upon seeing me jumped up with it in her mouth to play! It was precious how excited she was by her find and even if she hadn’t suckled it until it was damp and grimy, it would have been impossible to take it away from her. I certainly couldn’t and besides it seemed like turnabout was fair play – Ellie had taken one of her toys after all.
When Ellie arrived she seemed to care little for Waffles’ wet pig, but she did have a good time playing with a handful of her bone-shaped chew toys. At one point holding one that resembled a baby’s teether to her Mom saying, “This isn’t a baby’s!”
Gretchin agreed. “No, it isn’t,” she said, holding the blue bone out to Ellie. “Whose is it?”
“ELLIE’S!” She declared, gleefully grabbing it in her tiny hand.
And, Waffles who was suckling on her pig, not teething on the bone, didn’t seem to care at all.
Pugs in Pink Wigs...And, Me Too
I hope to take a better portrait of us all dressed up later, but I couldn't resist sharing a preview of our costumes. The pugs and I are headed to Chestertown, NY this Sunday for the annual pug parade. We hope to enter a few costume contests, too. This is the same costumes the pugs will be wearing for Halloween. I know it's silly, but it's also fun and I love making people smile. The pugs? They don't much like the wigs, but they love the attention, so the costumes are greeted with tail wags, circles and squeals!
Animal Love
Is there anything cuter than a picture of children and animals? Probably not, and that’s just the problem – such pictures tend to be taken as throwaways, too lighthearted, too cliché – I think they hide hidden depths. Both children and animals inhabit worlds we can only guess at, imagine. One we can never visit, another we may have known, but have outgrown and quickly forgotten. We are foreigners to their minds, but we can observe. The cuteness is only the surface layer.
Today, we took my niece Ellie on a fun-filled outing. She encountered several dogs along the way. Each time she greeted them exactly the same – “Ohh, doggie,” she’d exclaim. “I hug!” And, she would proceed to go over pet, nuzzle or kiss the animal. “Goodbye doggie,” she’d then say.
Where does the love of animals come from? What causes it in some and not in others? Why do we find such images so precious, so cute? I see in my niece the ability to step outside of herself and embrace another, the start of lifelong connection, the beginnings of wonder, empathy and love. Animals are so well suited in allowing this connection, in rewarding with soulful expression or wag of the tail, our fledgling efforts.
When Ellie arrived at my house today, my pugs greeted her with lavish kisses. “Tongue,” she said, as Alfie and Waffles licked her, slobbering all over her mouth. “Oh my gosh!” she said! When I witness the angelic calm, the sweet bliss that comes over her face with each embrace, I feel the same way. “Oh my gosh!” And, I hope I never lose my fascination with such exchanges, that I never dismiss what passes between these creatures as mere cuteness. I hope it remains as fresh for me, as curious as it did when I saw it today.
May I always see in such moments the birth of empathy, the promise of acceptance.
Pug Social Here We Come!
I went to Petsmart yesterday to return the Bert and Ernie costumes I had purchased for Alfie and Waffles to wear to the upcoming Pug Social. Waffle's Bert costume was too small and Alfie's Ernie costume too big, but I was fortunate enough to find replacements. You will have to tune in tomorrow to discover what characters I chose. While we were shopping I spied a couple with their black pug Mia, very busy trying to fit her in a costume of their own. Pugs are not easy to shop for. They are broad of chest, but often slim at the waist -- toy dogs but never tiny. These two were in the store for quite some time. I had a chance to chat with them and snap Mia's picture. I learned her name and that she was a Green Mountain Pug Rescuee. She and her family will be at the Social tomorrow as will me and my two girls. Come back to see all the photos and hear about the fun! We are planning to enter the costume contest, pug races and much more!
Joan and the chicken
Animal Love
Joan leaned against the gray chicken’s cage, cooing quiet comfort to the interested bird. As the bird grew closer to her, I reminder her of the time the llama had spit in her face because she had overstepped the boundaries and suggested if she wasn’t careful we might be rescheduling her upcoming eye appointment from November to an emergency room visit. She backed away, but not before clucking one last “sweet nothing” to her new-found friend.
That’s what going to the fair with Joan is like. You can’t really talk about animal love without bringing up her name. For me the two have become synonymous. Not everyone would live the way my friend does. A former concert pianist, Joan has let her house go to the dogs literally, having one in every corner of the house and many more on her bed at night, where the climb upon her hip, curve into the crook of her neck and the small of her back and on top her head, making it impossible to turn.
Also a former nurse – she’s had many careers – she helps her animals through to the end of their days, nursing them when others would choose to give up. Before I met her and in the beginning, I was sure I knew what it meant to love an animal – limited numbers, vet care, a peaceful goodbye when the pain gets too bad – and, there’s wisdom in that, but now that I’ve known Joan I’m no longer as sure my way is the only way. I have been with her when dogs passed on car rides to pug socials and while I would have rushed them to a medical end, she has wrapped them in towels and blankets, placed her palm on their brow and sat with them until their labored breathing ceased. As I look at her with blind, failing Ghanny and see the deep affection pass between them, I wonder once again, is it the worse thing to die where you have lived – in Joan’s bed or in the car where you rode as a pup, head hanging from the window? If you could talk would you choose the comfort of that palm and the familiar smells around you to a doctor’s needle?
Ghanny and Joan
But, this story is not about death. It’s about life, with Joan it always is and that’s why my beliefs expand. I see the life all around her and the love pouring out of her. She can’t pass a dog, donkey, chicken, goat or frog without stopping to caress and chat with it. For a while, she volunteered, helping during rainstorms to move frogs safely off the roads. She had a pet toad that hung outside her door and she would occasionally have to save from the pugs. She once brought it inside and placed it on the bed beside a litter of puppies, so I could take pictures of them both. The toad was bigger than they were. She has even been known to leave spider webs up in her home so as not to disturb the creatures.
But what I love most is seeing the immense and simple joy these animals bring Joan each time she meets a new one. Her face lights up, her blue eyes literally twinkle, she puckers her lips and begins chattering away. The story goes that she received her first pug from Prime Minister Clement Attlee after she burst in on a meeting he was having with her husband. She had just been outside Harrods in London and saw her first pug on the street. She ran into the meeting breathless, exclaiming, “you wouldn’t believe what I saw and describing in detail the little fawn pug on the street.” Shortly after she returned home to the United States to be greeted by Attlee’s gift of her own fawn male, Harrods Bugle Boy, who came with a mile-long pedigree that unrolled like a scroll.
When I see Joan interact with an animal, she experiences pure, unadulterated glee and being witness to it, I feel a little bit rub off on me. Joan’s unconventionality, her child-like joy reminds me to open myself up to wonder, to crow with the chickens and howl with the dogs. She may not be right about everything, but she is right about this and so, I learn to open my mind, but mostly my heart to possibility, to move beyond judgment to awe.
Joan and a sheep
The Reason I Love Dogs
I saw two dogs today. The first was dazzling – a small terrier with ombre fur that bled from chocolate on the muzzle to Farrah Fawcett blonde on her chest. I had never seen a terrier that particular shade before, so I stopped my car to ask the woman walking her the breed. “Cairn terrier,” she answered and we chatted amiably about the little dog and her beauty before bidding goodbye.
The second was a retriever – gold and longhaired. She accompanied a woman in a pale blue sweater who held her by a lead and color with tinkling jingle bells. As the woman asked for help at the copy counter, the dog grabbed its leash and shook it, making the bells ring in a cascading chorus. I smiled and I stopped to snap a picture.
Yesterday, my uncle and grandmother came by the house and paused by the kitchen window to observe my two pugs dance across the pool cover in their daily game of tag. Soon my relatives were laughing, as the pugs almost seemed to be. Last night I fell on the floor with the same two pugs, collapsing into giggles as they kissed my face and barraged me with toys and bones and a tangle of doglegs, tails and tongues.
I think about the smiles of the men earlier this week, who took the time to check out Ghanny and his other elderly companions and cast a warm glow on our day and the faces of the passersby who seemed a little happier after reading my pug bumper stickers. Books have been written about the role of dogs in modern life – the prominence we now give them. I read an article about an author who recently wrote about the death of two family members and his dog. The death of his dog he felt acutely. When asked why this was so, he answered something to the effect that they are the only ones who truly see us as we are, all our facets.
I’m not sure about that. It may be true. It is certainly interesting to ponder. It got me considering why I love dogs and these smiles and conversations came readily to mind. My pugs, like my license plate that bears their name, elicit smiles. They start conversations. They help me connect. They bring me out of myself to seeing others.
Some people worry because those others aren’t always human, but I think its good to start small. It’s a sign of evolution of our souls when we can feel for something other than ourselves. I think of Spock in one of the original Star Trek episodes discovering that a rock-like object was actually a sentient being. By learning to acknowledge another living creature as important we learn to recognize ourselves. We begin to connect the dots and see each other.
And, my dogs get me talking – stopping cars, rolling down windows and darting from vehicles to talk to people. Without my pugs I never would have met my friend Joan. To me, my dogs are all about connection – to life, to joy, to something beyond myself. It is this connection, I believe, that is the gateway to love.
Norma and Ghanny
Grace
Love doesn’t always look like we expect. Today, it looked like three old dogs. None are pretty. One is blind, bitten, unable to sit up on his own. Another looks like the Creature from the Black Lagoon – all folds and skin and gaping mouth. She breathes like a labored guppy and hops on three feet like a rabbit, holding her right, rear leg in the air. She has a luxating patella; her knee pops out. The third’s tongue hangs from her mouth where a horse once kicked her in the jaw. If her youthful luck was poor, age itself has caught up with her and her legs are now crippled and buckled. Still, she moves with the speed of a slithering sci-fi alien, clearing an expanse with surprising grace. They are not the dogs one would choose to bring home. No cuddly puppies, here. The ears of two are bitten from rambunctious play and pack rumbles gone awry. Some would say these dogs have seen there day.
Narnia
My friend Joan doesn’t think so nor her friend Norma. Looking at Norma with fractured hip hobble ever so slowly to and from the car, one might suspect she has seen her day as well. She has suffered strokes and broken bones. Yet, Norma shuffles and picks up blind Ghanny to take him in the thrift store, to show him off to her friends. I worry as she lifts him with shaking hands that she will drop him. I worry she will slip on the wet ramp and fall. I worry she will hurt him. I worry she will hurt herself. She lifts him anyway and I hold my breath and scurry out from the car to spot them both. “Who do I catch first?” I ask Joan.
But with a luck reserved for fools and children, both make it inside. Norma falls into a fading upholstered chartreuse chair amidst other furniture that has seen better days. Ghanny buries his head into her shoulder. He cannot walk any longer. Joan thinks he may have had a stroke. If he were my dog I would scoop him up and take him to the vets. Spend the hundreds and thousands on tests and medicine. She does not. She nurses him as she has done many before him, cleaning his sores and soiled bedding, letting nature take its course.
Ghanny
He is limp and ungainly like a pile of wet laundry spilling out from a hamper; he spills over the lips of Norma’s folded arms. She announces him her “grandbaby” and I monitor the reaction of the chunky, bearded twenty-something store clerk. He approaches to see “the puppy.”
“He’s not a puppy exactly,” I warn. I want to apologize, embarrassed for Ghanny, for Joan, for the young man. “He’s an old one. He doesn’t exactly look good.” And, then I wait, watching for any look of distaste – daring him to make one, expecting it at the same time. And, I am disappointed and simultaneously made happy when all he says is, “Aww, sweet puppy and smiles at Ghanny and at Norma.” He is a good young man.
He even stands and chats for a few minutes as Joan peruses this palace of discarded items for a few finds. She debates over two seven dollar molded chairs, considering them for the kitchen of her new house. I survey them for stains. Was the tan molding once white or always tan? Joan and Norma both deem them “wonderful, a good price.” They lack disdain for the worn; they don’t seem to need everything to be in good shape.
Still, we slip from the store without the chairs amidst a friendly goodbye from the young man and a declaration from Norma that “that place has everything.” We make our way to the feed store where Joan debates over dog food, comparing prices while I offer to buy Ghanny a can of grilled salmon and chicken and Norma throws in a stick of beef jerky. We split it among the other geriatric dogs. They gum it down, drool dripping from the side of their mouths. Each squeals for more.
Tar Baby and Narnia
Dogs fed, it’s our turn and though Joan parks as close to the Chinese restaurant as possible, we still have to walk a block or two. If Norma were my mother, I wouldn’t have her go, but she stifles our protests and makes her way out of the car. We totter down the streets and I remind myself to exhale. We will get there.
We do. We feast on curried chicken, wonton soup, fried rice as Norma struggles to hold her quivering cup. Joan makes a not-too-subtle jibe in my direction about eating out too much. Norma offers to start crocheting a blanket for Ghanny – an undeclared death shroud because we know his days are numbered. We chat about pleasant things, too. It is not how everyone would describe love, but as we return to Norma’s apartment and let the two old-lady pugs out to do their business, another young man awards us with smiles.
“What’s wrong with them? Poor puppies,” he says, watching them hobble, but still reaching down to pat their heads and chuckle.
“They’re old,” I offer, resigning myself to the fact that not everything needs to be fixed. Sometimes love looks like three old dogs. Sometimes it is about letting go and experiencing grace.