Tag Archives: Dogs

Strays

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When the year turns, I tend to watch for events, private or public, that set a tone for the days ahead. I witnessed something on January 6 that I can’t forget, that seems important, like something I need to remember and pass on.

We took our dogs to the local park for a walk in the late afternoon, a beautiful clear winter’s day. Soon after we started, two bedraggled and pitiful looking stray dogs began to follow us. They were small, of no breed I can name, but clearly siblings, and clearly they had been dumped in the park.  No tags, and they were shaggy, dirty, smelly, and seemingly desperate for the company of our dogs.

We kept ours moving – not wanting this pair to come too near – fleas and/or disease came to mind. We circled the park and dropped our own dogs back in the car. One of the strays fell behind, but the other kept up the pace, though it must have been painful, for its nails were overgrown, and walking was difficult. I planned to go to the Arby’s at the edge of the park to get a couple of sandwiches for the dogs, but this little bedraggled one shied away from humans and wouldn’t even come near enough to pick up our doggie treats. It turned back toward it’s companion somewhere behind on the trail.

Words can’t convey how forlorn these two little dogs appeared. How their abandonment evoked the thought of all abandoned, discarded, and unloved beings. How their plight aroused such a strong desire to do something, to relieve their suffering, but what?

Call animal control? They’d be warm and well fed, at least for a while. But who could predict their odds of being adopted or being put down?

In the end, we left them in the park. Once before, I encountered a similar stray, who followed our dogs back to the car and even managed to jump in. Later I learned he’d been adopted by a friend who works in the Parks and Recreation Department. I can only hope someone who wants a dog will find them before cold and hunger or coyotes do them in.

The feeling of compassion never guarantees the wisdom to do the right thing. In the end, all we can do is take our best guess and do our best. As I think of these dogs, as well as the human strays I see from time to time in the park, I think of these U2 lyrics:

Every sailor knows that the sea
Is a friend made enemy
And every shipwrecked soul, knows what it is
To live without intimacy.

The dogs, at least for a while, had each other, but plenty of others do not. Haven’t we all been there at times? And it’s not always people who visibly live at the margins, for margins are not always visible. To watch for a chance to reach out with kind words or a helping hand – is there anything more important to consider at the start of the year?

The season begins…

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While strolling through Petco this morning to pick up some dog food, I decided to get a new rope toy for Kit, the older of two our two rescue dogs.  She never tires of chewing these things and nagging humans to throw it so she can play fetch.  I rounded a corner and stopped.  Dead in my tracks.  Stunned by the horror spread out before me.  On the dog Halloween costume aisle.

Let’s be clear – I don’t mean all canine Halloween outfits.  Some are funny, and some dogs seem to enjoy the attention.

Courtesy http://www.petsadviser.com, CC By 2.0

Courtesy http://www.petsadviser.com, CC By 2.0

What I came upon were princess and ballerina outfits.  I suffered an  instant flashback to the two hour wait I once endured at O’Hare Airport, sitting across from a woman whose poor little dog was dressed in a pink tutu.  I’m serious.  This really happened. I’ve never seen an animal look more miserable outside a vet’s waiting room.

Let’s face it, very few dogs can pull off a tutu with any kind of style and grace:

Courtesy http://www.petsadviser.com, CC By 2.0

Courtesy http://www.petsadviser.com, CC By 2.0

Our dogs are both females.  While they appreciate small accessories,  like an understated pumpkin scarf, they know that canine traditions at this time of year go deep – far deeper than any Disney concoction.

Wolfman-1941-2

They’re both working hard to release their inner wolves on October 31.

Okay, so maybe there’s more work to be done, but credit where it’s deserved.  I think they’re progressing nicely.

The Wet Rat Brigade

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Back when I was in grade school _______________ (insert a phrase like, “When dinosaurs roamed the earth”), school resumed after Labor Day.  To add salt to the wounds, there really were essays and/or discussions along the lines of, “How I spent my summer.”  Fortunately, a blog makes that whole exercise obsolete, but just because the morning began in unusual fashion, I offer a mini-retro style essay called:

How My Labor Day Began

I woke up to see the streets damp (not really wet) with the first rain since May if I am remembering right.  A pleasant and cool morning, so after a cup of coffee, I leashed up the dogs for a walk in the park.  As I opened the door, the skies opened up as well.  After a flash and the crash of nearby thunder, all three of us did a 180, back into the house for breakfast.

Fortified by cheerios and kibble, we set off again, and this time the downpour did not resume until we were out in middle of the park.  I don’t know how to describe what a magical moment it was.  I haven’t had that much fun in the rain since those bygone grade school days, when I took my mother’s warning that I would catch pneumonia as a challenge.

True, I called a halt after one lap around the baseball fields because the drops got fat and hard I thought we might be in for hail.  But nobody melted and good times were had by all.

wet missy

Little wet Missy (now dry) and I wish you all a wonderful Labor Day and a Happy Start to Fall!

Notes on Trickster stories

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Many of you will have heard the old Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times.”  We do, beyond any question.  With a longstanding interest in folklore, I often find myself wondering which, if any, of the old tales can speak to us now and illumine our situation?  I always come back to the trickster stories.

Br’er Rabbit, an Americanized African trickster, from an 1881 book cover by Frederick S. Church. Public domain

Trickster tales are told around the world and may be among our earliest stories; in some traditions, tricksters create the world and bring fire to humans.  Sometimes benefactors and sometimes criminals, tricksters are contrarians, rule breakers, restless beings who disrupt and disturb, who keep creation moving, dealing out life and death in turn.

Groucho Marx, Loki, all of Shakespeare’s fools, and many animals, from Coyote, to Spider, to Br’er Rabbit are tricksters.  We named our first rescue dog Kit, short for Kitsune, which is Japanese for “Fox,” another famous trickster.  The reason should be obvious in this picture:

Kit

Kit

We have to lock the windows when driving with Kit because she knows how to hit the window button with her paw to roll it down so she can hang her head out, bark at other dogs, and catch the breeze. If Kit had thumbs, we’d be in serious trouble!

Establishments have little use for tricksters, and it’s easy to see why.  We may like them in the movies, but no one wants the Three Stooges to work on their plumbing. Schools are ruthless in their suppression of tricksters.  And yet, in times when the norms break down and the culture looses its rudder, trickster energy may be what we need.  Free of cultural norms and concern for what is polite or even legal, tricksters focus on what will work in the here and now.

After interviews with twin tower survivors, researchers discovered that people waited an average of ten minutes before deciding to exit the buildings.  “Do you think we should leave?”  “Will we have to use vacation time if we go?”  “What about the report I have to finish?”  Once they decided to exit, survivors spent several more precious minutes logging out of their systems and locking their desks and file cabinets.

Researchers concluded from this and other studies, that the human brain is often dangerously slow in reacting to radically different events or disasters.  These are the times when we need trickster energy.  Unbound by convention, the trickster jumps on a desk and yells, “The sky is falling – get the f**k out!”

Allan Chinen, M.D., a psychiatrist and professor of psychiatry, wrote about tricksters from the Jungian perspective.  In 2012, I discussed his Once Upon a Midlife, an analysis of folklore aimed at that stage of life.  In 1993, Chinen published Beyond the Hero:  Classic Stories of Men in Search of Soul.

beyond the hero

Chinen argues that despite popular concepts and movies like Man of Steel, The Hero is not the core masculine archetype – the Shaman/Trickster is an older, wiser, and more primal energy.

Like most Jungian’s I have read, Chinen regards tricksters as primarily masculine archetypes.  I’m not sure how opinion stands in currently folklore studies; much work has been done with women’s tales in the last 20 years.  It is Gretel, after all, who uses trickery to kill the witch and save her brother.  Only by wiles can Bluebeard be defeated or brothers saved from various enchantments.

I suspect the difference is that full-time tricksters like Coyote are usually male.  You see it in children at play too, and sadly, it is overwhelmingly boys who get dosed with ritalin when they’re not docile enough for the modern classroom.  As Jung and Hillman both observed, what a culture defines as pathology may say more about the culture than the people it labels as defective.

Guardians of the status quo are wary of tricksters and with good reason.  They are almost always subversive – the Stooges only throw pies in the homes of the 1%, and Charlie Chaplin was no friend of the captains of industry.

Charlie Chaplin in "Modern Times." CC-by-SA-2.0

Charlie Chaplin in “Modern Times.” CC-by-SA-2.0

To personify self-preservation; to point out the shadow of a dominant culture; to keep the flame of hope and spirit alive; to demonstrate the power to wit to those who are disenfranchised.  Scholars now believe the Br’er Rabbit tales performed such functions for slaves as the Coyote stories did for Native Americans on the reservations.  In all likelihood, these are the gifts tricksters have given for untold millennia.

Next time I’ll look at a classic trickster story that Allan Chinen told, with an eye to it’s relevance for the 21st century.

Pondering, mulling, musing, and ruminating on the year so far

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I was looking for just the right word for “think over” and pulled out Webster’s Dictionary to check  precise meanings.  Here are some of the definitions I found:

  • ponder, from the Latin pondare – to weigh, mentally; think deeply about; consider carefully; deliberate; meditate.
  • The definition of mull points back to ponder:  “to cogitate, to ponder.”
  • ruminate, from Latin ruminatus, means  1 to chew (the cud) as a cow does and 2 to turn something over in the mind; meditate.
  • The word I wanted was  muse.  It’s usage as a verb comes from the old French, muser, and carries these definitions:   “to ponder, to loiter, (originally) to stand with muzzle in the air, to think deeply and at length; meditate.

So here I stand, with muzzle in the air, loitering and pondering 2012 as it turns into the home stretch.

Even without a calendar, the signs are everywhere. It’s almost dark at 8:00pm, and the mornings are chilly. Halloween decorations are on display at the supermarket, and the volume of Christmas catalogs has notched up from a drip to a steady trickle.  Before you know it, they’ll be playing “Little Saint Nick” in the stores (kill me now!).

Things have been good in 2012 on the personal front – much to be grateful for.  Good health, food, shelter, and the resources to do our thing(s).  No catastrophic events like fires or floods in this area.  Even our little dog, Holly, who seemed to be at the end of her life in June http://wp.me/pYql4-1TW is stable, hanging on for while, thanks to a good vet and our daily medical interventions on our behalf of her failing kidney.

Holly, about eight years ago

It’s a blessing to have this extra time with her, to give her special attention even as we learn to let go.

I also posted about my good fortune this summer to be able to attend teachings by a senior Tibetan lama http://wp.me/pYql4-2jk, about his knee surgery and its successful outcome in August.

Long life puja for His Eminence Choden Rinpoche, July 28, 2012

We also have an exciting trip planned for the fall, which will be the subject of more than one post later on.

***

If things are positive in the personal sphere, I know I’m not the only one who finds the public arena disturbing this election year.  There’s something schizophrenic about the media messages we receive on one hand, and our day to day experience on the other.

As the election nears, we constantly hear how polarized we are as a nation, yet in my experience, in parks and public places, restaurants, and stores, people mostly treat each other with courtesy and respect.  I haven’t seen kamikaze parking lot behavior since last year’s Christmas season.

Last week, as I glanced around our local waffle place, it struck me that at places like this across the country, you see “ordinary” people who, if given a chance, could do a better job of getting things done for the good of the nation than our elected representatives.  Did anyone in that breakfast place, or ones like it across the nation, decide to vote for the candidates most likely to freeze up government like an engine without any oil?

And yet it happened, which means (a) it benefits some group of influential people or (b) our politicians are morons or (c) somehow our dysfunction has become systemic.

I lean toward the third choice. In it’s Labor Day editorial, The Sacramento Bee underscored a point I made several days ago http://wp.me/pYql4-2lV – that the fortunes of the middle class mirror the fortunes of labor unions:

“Draw one line on a graph charting the decline in union membership, then superimpose a second line charting the decline in middle-class income share and you will find that the two lines are nearly identical.” The middle class has shrunk significantly, from 61 percent of the adult population in 1971 to 51 percent in 2011, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the Federal Reserve. http://www.sacbee.com/2012/09/03/4781267/editorial-to-rebound-labor-needs.html

A forty year decline indicates that the trend is truly systemic.  It’s not the exclusive fault of Bush and/or Obama – rather it’s something built into our current political/economic system.

I know I’m thinking that way now because of Bill Moyer’s guest on Sunday, Mike Lofgren, author of The Party is Over: How Republicans Went Crazy, Democrats Became Useless, and the Middle Class Got Shafted.

In his interview with Moyers, Lofgren is not sanguine about our chances to reform the status quo.  He advocates something like folding our hand and asking for a new deck:

BILL MOYERS: But what do we do about it? Nothing seems to tame the power of money in politics.

MIKE LOFGREN: The only thing that will achieve it is fundamental political reform. And the only way you’re going to get that is mass defection from the parties. Because the parties simply do not serve our interests anymore…there is a point where if there is mass public outrage at this, just as there was in the prairies in the 1880’s and 1890’s, eventually they’ll get the message.

http://billmoyers.com/segment/mike-lofgren-on-dysfunction-in-our-political-parties/

When Moyers asks him to state greatest fear and hope, Lofgren says:

“My greatest fear is that this whole impasse simply carries on. And this country becomes more and more polarized and ungovernable. And we could be faced with a very bad situation, internationally and domestically….My greatest hope is that we can govern ourselves again in a spirit of bipartisanship.”

When Moyers asks if he thinks that’s realistic, Lofgren replies, “We must let our hopes be greater than our fears.”

If his answer doesn’t ring with confidence, it’s still good to remember that more than anything else, it is fear that drives us to act in mean spirited ways.  Generosity follows finding the threads of faith and confidence within, and generosity of spirit is what we desperately need.  Sometimes I imagine this through one of William Stafford’s last poems.  It’s a simple but powerful answer to give to our fears.

The Way It Is

There’s a thread you follow.  It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.

Everything Changes

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Lewis Richmond, an ordained Zen priest and author of Aging as a Spiritual Practice, began his studies 40 years ago with the renowned teacher, Shunryu Suzuki Roshi.  Richmond relates that one day, after a talk, a student said, “Suzuki Roshi – you’ve talked for an hour, and I haven’t understood a word you’ve said.  Could you please tell me one thing about Buddhism I can understand?”

The master waited for the laughter to die down and said, “Everything changes.”

“Everything changes” is a truth we often would rather forget, but sometimes events make that impossible.  Our oldest dog, Holly, has serious medical issues.  She has come to the end of her life.  This month has been a daily exercise in letting go, in watching her, in trying to gauge the quality of her life and which interventions make sense.

The vet confirms that she’s not in any pain.  She is still feisty and cuddlesome in turn.  She turns up her nose at dog food much of the time, but still likes buttered toast and hot dogs, so antibiotics make sense.  So does medication to increase the blood flow to her kidneys, which are failing.  We take turns administering “subcutaneous fluid replacement therapy” each morning, which was scary at first, but has become a very serene, if bitter-sweet, time to bond with her and reflect.  With quiet music and morning sun slanting into the room, we calm ourselves so Holly calms down and stroke her head while 150 ml of solution flow through the drip.

We brought her home as a puppy when she was eight weeks old.  She’ll be 16 at the end of the month if she lasts that long – we don’t know – it could be days or weeks or months.  It’s hard to believe how quickly sixteen years goes by.

Is there anything that doesn’t change?  All of the major religions say yes, there are the ways to unravel the knot.  A reminder of why there is nothing more important may be Holly’s final gift.

Kit

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She answers to Kit, but her real name is Kitsune, the Japanese word for fox.  That’s because when we adopted her four years ago today, she looked so much like a fox.

We’d been looking for a second dog for over a year and had even spent six weeks with a foster animal with the option to keep, but it didn’t work out.  We’d put the word out, and one afternoon it paid off.  The owners of a mom and pop kennel called concerning a year old animal that needed a home.

Kit had been rescued by a roommate from a couple who mistreated her and were planning to dump her by the side of a highway.  She was frightened of men, and at first ran away when I tried to pick her up, yet by the end of the day, she was at home in our home, and after a walk in the park the next morning, she was my new best buddy.

First walk in the park

She was just over eight pounds when we got her, and her ribs showed. Now she has the opposite problem – she’s on low fat kibble. Officially, she’s a Chipom, a Chihuahua / Pomeranian mix, although we suspect there’s something else in there, because she’s bigger than either of those breeds. We’ve wondered how much the dog DNA tests cost, sometimes wondering if she really might have a fox in the family tree.

Kit is foxlike in more ways than appearance, not all of them good.   Rescue dogs often carry baggage and hers manifests as aggression, which can be very sudden.  Work with a trainer has helped moderate it, but we’re still not done.  Kit is smart like a fox too, not always in healthy way.  Everyone thinks their dog is brilliant; let’s just say that this one, among other tricks, has learned how to paw the button to lower the backseat windows while driving.  We have to put on the lock as if she was a kid.  And an instant after such indiscretions, she’ll turn on the charm that makes strangers ask, “What kind of dog is that?”

Like any complex creature, she’s full of contradictions. She’s as brave as a dog twice her size, and the unquestioned alpha to the others, and yet she’s a wimp when it comes to rain. With tail between legs she’ll duck for cover if the drops start to fall on her arctic quality fur.

In the end, it’s like William Stafford said in his poem, “Choosing a Dog:”

“It’s love,” they say. You touch
the right one and a whole half of the universe
wakes up, a new half.

Going to the Canines

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Today is the 20 year anniversary of several important events.  For starters, I had managed to last seven years in the corporate world, so on Friday, August 30, 1991, I was starting my first sabbatical:  ten weeks paid time off.  The tech industry was booming then, and they did things like that.

I was also finishing up a masters’s thesis for a degree in psych I’d been working on in my spare time – I did things like that.  But the most important thing we did on this day 20 years ago was bring home a dog.

Charis negotiates a step - Aug. 30, 1991

We had her picked out and all the arrangements made ahead of time, but that day – leaving work for ten weeks and bringing home a puppy to celebrate was one of the most memorable of my life.  It was just a bit less memorable for Mary.  Charis was riding in a crate in the back seat, howling because she wasn’t used to cars, so Mary thought she might be happier riding on her lap, where the puppy promptly peed.  We laughed about it then and now – nothing a little soap and water couldn’t fix.

Mary and Charis, fall, 1991

We have shared every day for the last twenty years with one, or two, and recently three dogs (which is really too many but at the time we couldn’t say no).  We started this anniversary day with a walk in the park for our two rescue dogs, and then another class.  We’ve discovered that rescue dogs are analogous to foster kids – they have issues.  These two are doing pretty well with extra training (which I sometimes call, reform school, depending on their behavior).  A side benefit of the class is, it tires them out.  As I write this, they are sleeping like little angels.

Which is what they really are.  As William Stafford put it in his poem, “Choosing a Dog:”

“It’s love,” they say. You touch
the right one and a whole half of the universe
wakes up, a new half.

A few years after we got Charis, I spent some time as a volunteer for the Folsom City Zoo Sanctuary.  Vixen the fox had come there when she was four weeks old, so she got very used to humans.  So used to humans that she could milk it really well, and as a result, she was getting rather pudgy.  For her own health, some of the keepers and volunteers would leash her up and take her for walks.

Vixen the Fox, ca. 1995

Once or twice a week for several years, I would get there at 7:00 am and take this little wild animal for a walk through the rising dawn.  That was an unforgettable way to start the morning!  One day, someone at an 8:00 am meeting who hadn’t had his coffee said, “What the hell are you smiling about?”

“Long story,” I said.  And kept on smiling.  Through all of it, all of the ups and downs, the joys and the losses, that’s what it’s like when you share your life with dogs and their wild kin.