Suede becomes Seamus

Friday came.  No one came to claim Suede.  I took the day off work, showed up at the shelter at noon when they opened, walked up to the counter with the new collar and leash I’d just bought at Petsmart, and told the young male employee that I was there to adopt Suede.  Twenty minutes later, my dog was sitting calmly on the floor next to me while I adjusted the new collar and signed the last of the paperwork.  A man waiting to get a dog license asked, “How old is your dog?”  I looked around, realized he was talking to me and replied, “Eight.”

“How did he happen to get in here?” the man wondered.

“Oh—I’m adopting him today.”

“Really?  I can’t believe how well he listens to you.”

My son would echo those same words later in the evening when he watched us play fetch and my good dog dropped his new toy turtle every time I asked him to.

Years ago my daughter introduced me to the poetry of Seamus Heaney, and I became a fan.  When I was searching my brain for some name that might replace “Suede,” I wanted a long A sound, an Irish name and hopefully one with character.  And suddenly there it was on my Facebook page, a post by Billy Collins (another favorite poet who enjoys celebrity status) which included a photo of him visiting Seamus Heaney in Ireland.  Perfect.

So from our first hours together yesterday, Suede became Seamus.  (For those of you unfamiliar with crazy Celtic pronunciations, it’s Shay-mus.)

I called my vet upon arriving home, and he just happened to have a free spot in the afternoon.  (Yes, my vet does house calls.)  He came by with his able assistant Emily, pronounced Seamus healthy and gave him all the vaccines known to preventive dog medicine.  (The shelter had done no inoculations as the family surrendering him had produced paperwork showing that he’d had his shots.  Just, no one recorded when.  So we gave him all the vacs again, just to establish a base line.)

And what did my new dog do while he was being jabbed by a stranger repeatedly?  He wagged his tail and licked Dr. Lebovic’s face.  Who’s a good boy?  Huh?  Who’s a good boy?

In the evening, when the warm spring day cooled a bit, we went for a two-mile walk.  We did the same loop this morning after I’d done my yoga.  Seamus is calm and obedient on the leash, even when other dogs bark at him or sprinklers go on or cars whiz past.  And yeah, he listens.

Dogs.  They’re just so amazing, aren’t they?

Suede

"Mama always said life is like a box of chocolates; you never know what you're gonna get."

This photo was borrowed from the website www.the-happy-dog-spot.com.

Last Wednesday I did my weekly walk-through of the local animal shelter.  I’ve been looking for a dog to adopt, but it’s tough to see dogs under those conditions, so I generally don’t stay long.  That day, I was suddenly greeted by two dogs in a single kennel barking loudly through the chain link.  One appeared to be a huskie/shepherd mix.  The other was a purebred chocolate lab.

I ignored them, waiting to see if they would stop barking.  When they didn’t, I decided to address the issue.

“Hey!” I said, “sit.”  The lab stopped barking immediately, hung his head in shame, and sat.  The other dog stopped barking, but stood watching me.  “Sit,” I said again, and he sat.

The card on their kennel told their story. They’d been brought to the shelter the day before when their owners had been evicted from their home.  They had gone from having their own home and no doubt a yard to being thrust into a small cement kennel, separated from all that was familiar.  Their collars attested to their status as family members, with tags stating their names and the address of the home they would probably never see again.

Saddened, I left.

But I couldn’t get them out of my mind, so I returned the next day.  The lab, “Suede,” remembered me and, true to his lab instincts to please, immediately sat, watching my face expectantly.  The huskie mix, “Fenway,” spent his time pacing back and forth in the kennel.  When Suede wandered over toward the food bowl, Fenway growled, putting his body between his cellmate and the food.

“You just lost the gentleman vote,” I told him.  Suede returned to where I stood and sat down again, wagging his tail slowly, quietly.

At the front desk, an employee told me a ten-day hold had been placed on the dogs.  The family has that long to make arrangements to house them.  In the meantime, a list would be made of people interested in adopting them.  I gave the woman my name, thus becoming #1 on the list.  If the family does not return to claim Suede by Friday, May 10, I can adopt him.

I returned the next day to visit, and noticed that Fenway had developed a runny nose. He was still showing food aggression toward Suede, and Suede still sat as soon as he saw me.

On Saturday, the kennel appeared empty when I approached, and my heart started pounding.  I bent down and looked to the back of the enclosure.  Fenway was there, curled up asleep.  No Suede.  My eyes misted over.  Had the family reclaimed one dog but left the other behind?  Or had the dogs simply been separated by the shelter staff?

The answer to the latter question was yes.  Two kennels down, I found a very lonely, very glad to see me Suede.  He sat, but stood again and wagged his tail, then sat again.  I spent a few minutes quietly talking to him.  On Sunday I returned again, this time just sitting outside the kennel on the floor for a while, talking to him.

On Monday, the kennel smelled bad, and Suede’s milk chocolate nose was bloody and raw.

“What happened?” I asked.  He wagged his tail, then leaned against the chain link.  I squeezed my hand through, scratching his neck.  A runny pile of poop oozed at the far end of the kennel.  Dogs that are housebroken have the hardest time in shelters because they’ve been trained not to go ‘inside.’  The loose stool was an indication that his digestive system wasn’t adjusting to whatever they were feeding him, and his nose was an indication that he had tried to scrape up some dirt to cover his mess.

When I returned on Tuesday, his kennel had been cleaned.  And as I sat with him, I watched a family with young children stroll through, looking at the dogs.  The little girl with them saw Fenway’s gorgeous blue eyes and ran to the kennel while her parents hung back.  For a week, I have watched that dog bark at every single adult who comes within five feet of his kennel.  But when he saw the little girl, he trotted to the gate to greet her, quietly wagging his tail.  Atta boy, Fenway.

Friday is the day after tomorrow.  I should be excited, but I’m not.  What I’m feeling is much less than that, and a little more.  I’m anxious about bringing Suede home, worried about how Sug will adjust to having a dog in the house; she’s never lived with one.  And I feel guilty, as if I’m profiting from the misfortunes of others.  I can only assuage that guilt a little by telling myself that if I were ever in the situation of having to give up a dog (and heaven help me if such a calamity would ever occur), I would want that dog to be adopted as soon as possible to someone who would care for him and love him deeply and responsibly.  And I am hopeful.  There is still time for the family to rally, to return for the dogs who miss them terribly.

 And so the waiting game continues.  Stay tuned.

Word Search

I lost my words last week.

I was gathering them all together like Scrabble tiles,

arranging, rearranging….

Then Boston exploded,

sending my words in a thousand directions.

It has taken a good deal of effort to gather them all back in.

When I was finally able to go about retrieving them,

I found that they had been changed by the shock wave.

Some words, like “celebratory” and “success”

became “sadness” and “confusion.”

Some words, like “serenity” and “tranquility”

are still missing, though I haven’t given up hope of finding them again.

In the meantime, I will busy myself

gazing at the waning moon, watering my roses, exchanging exclamatory text messages with my teenaged granddaughter about the CD she loaned me

and continuing my search for the next good dog who will serendipitously bless my life.

Oh look—it appears I have found a few more words….

Retrieving the Gauntlet Thrown

I am removing the sod from a 15' x 15' patch of my back yard, digging up the sod myself, shovelful by shovelful. 

I am doing this so that I can plant a garden.

What I mean is, I am doing this because a foolish man said to me, “You won’t be able to do that.”

As soon as he said that, I knew that I would do it.  Knew that I would be in the back yard with a shovel on as many days as I could spare the time, plunging the sharp new spade into the earth, dancing on top of the blade to make the bite as deep as possible, bringing up the tightly woven clump of grass torn from its tapestry and tossing it as far as I could so the impact would knock off some of the clinging soil.  I knew I would keep at it, back-straining as the work may be, without calling The Grandson over to help (though this would be a project he would love).

Don’t misunderstand me; I like the foolish man who looked me in the eye and said, “You won’t be able to do this.”  He simply needs… a paradigm shift.

And I am writing this blog post today for another foolish man… one I don't like so much... one who criticized my writing earlier this week… the stranger who said, ‘You can’t have a paragraph that’s only one sentence long.  It’s not really a paragraph, is it?’

Is it?

Lavender Daze

I tend to wear purple or lavender often in March.  Not so much for the coming-of-spring awareness, but because it was Mom’s favorite color in the last years of her life, and she left us in March.  Hard to believe it’s been three years.  I talk to her every day, and nowadays I remember less the traumatic confrontations we once had, and I recall more the amusing stories…

When we were teens and I was learning to play guitar, my sister and I would sit around and play and sing for hours, working on harmonies or chord patterns.  She was a patient teacher—thank heavens, because we would often go over the same song again and again until my fingers moved automatically to form the chords.

One bright summer morning when we were trying to think of something to play, Mom interjected, “Play the one about the heroes.”

“What?” we answered.

“You know, the one about the heroes.”

We were perplexed.  We’d never done a song about heroes together.

“We don’t know….”

Mom looked at us like we were idiots—not an uncommon occurrence—and started to sing the beginning of the song.  We burst out laughing.  And then we started singing, “He rose from the dead….”

It was never about the lyrics for Mom.  She was happy when her children were getting along, and she loved to hear Peg and I sing.  At her memorial service, we sang “The Rose” together.  Maybe we should have done that “heroes” song as well.

Sunday ruminations

As I write this, Sugar Plum is creeping through the ever-lengthening backyard grass, crawling on her belly like a combat soldier, inching toward the small dove that has come down to peck up the seeds the finches are spilling from the feeder.  The dove looks her way, then continues to eat, the gift of a free meal overcoming her good judgment.  If you are a bird lover, no worries—Sug will not actually try to catch this bird as it is too large for her comfort zone (and even if she did ultimately sprint for it, she has grown too old to catch anything but the slowest of birds.

I am always glad for the company of Sugar Plum, my little dog-like cat.  She follows me around the house when I am home, purrs me to sleep at night and then remains curled against my side.  She loves the new house and the yard, and she seems happier here. She has been more playful and less skitterish of late.

But I long to expand our tiny family with a dog... or two.

Three weeks ago I filled out an online adoption application for one particular dog available through a rescue in Anaheim.  She’s a corgi/sheltie mix—just like Harper (if you’ve read the dog book).  I happened to see her profile on Petfinder, so I sent an email to the rescue group, asking about her temperament around cats, and I also filled out the application.  Nothing.  No response. Three weeks.

This is not the first time I’ve had this happen with a rescue group, and I find it distressing.  Such groups are always pleading for money, it seems—and rightfully so, for those who are doing the hard work of rescuing dogs and finding them permanent homes.  But too often I encounter groups that are run more like secret clubs whose members choose to snub those who are not deemed worthy.  It’s frustrating.

I’ve also made the rounds of some of the local city shelters.  I can never stay long.  I walk through quickly, looking for that special spark in a dog’s eye… and I remember that Alex and Nicki, both pound puppies, had no spark at all; I found them (a year apart) curled in the back of their kennels, ears drooping, tails tucked.

If I wanted a Pit Bull or a Chihuahua, I’d pretty much have my pick of whatever size, gender, age, color or temperament I might want.  The shelters are filled with them.  But I’m not a tiny dog fan, and I am reluctant to bring Sugie home a Pit Bull to boss around, because Sug will be the boss, whatever dog is here.

Maybe the answer is to start with a puppy.  But puppies are easily adopted, and I would rather rescue a big goofy looking dog, one that might not have a chance otherwise.

Alas, it’s a tedious process.  In the meantime, I’m watching every episode of The Dog Whisperer and Leader of the Pack I can find.  And I’m taking good care of Sugar Plum.

My new neighborhood... on a storm day... at dusk.

After living on the mountain for six years, it is taking some getting used to, living down here in civilization… in a housing tract… with street lights… and traffic noise… no absolute quiet or absolute darkness at night… no big owl hooting far off in the trees as I fall asleep.  I miss the drive down to work reviewing my day ahead, consulting my spirit guides.  I miss the longer drive home, listening to NPR, watching for golden eagles.

But there have been a few consolations….

Two years before I moved I found a set of wind chimes—big, serious wind chimes—at a curio shop far out in the desert while on my way to Randsburg.  I paid $60 for them—even though I knew I would not hang them until I left the mountain, as my lease with the Forest Service prohibited doing so.  Made by Grace Notes Chimes, Inc., they produce a gorgeous pentatonic scale when the wind wafts across them.  If you click here and then click on “Listen to the Chimes,” you can listen to them as you read the rest of this post.  A week after I moved in, I pulled them from the box where I’d kept them, waiting, and hung them on the back patio.  Their music has been the score for this period of transition.

On the same day I hung the chimes, I set up my composter, which sat empty far too long up on the mountain.  I realize this isn’t something most folks would get excited about.  But I love to play in the dirt.  And knowing that I am just weeks away from planting some fine elements of dinner (which have grown in soil nourished by my tea leaves and strawberry tops and banana peels) gives me a whole lot of goodness to look forward to.

And today I rode my bike to work for the second time this week.  The thirty-minute uphill ride in crisp morning air is just what the doctor ordered for my lungs.  And it’s all downhill on the way home.  Now, instead of filling up twice a week, I’m filling up once every two weeks.

Bestest of all, I can see my kids and grandkids more often.  A couple of weeks after I moved in, Ezra stopped by on his way home from work.  I made him dinner.  That went a long way to taking the sting out of moving away from my raccoons and bluejays.

And oh—my new home is very near the reservoir in Ontario.  A few mornings ago, as I walked outside to take the trash cans to the curb (another novelty, not having to pack out my own trash), I heard a Canada goose fly by overhead.  (You can see and hear one here; scroll down and click on "Sound," then scroll down again and click the first tab for "Honks... and Flight Calls.")  I haven’t heard one in the sky for over a decade.  I took that moment as a blessing, and later that afternoon as I was on my daily walk around the neighborhood and saw a goose floating languidly in the reservoir, I took that as a blessing as well.  A goose is a far cry from a golden eagle, perhaps.  But both are just as wild.