Puppy life

Watson, quiet

Little Watson today chased a leaf that scuttled around the driveway in the freezing wind, amusing himself, catlike; catching and letting go, to pounce when it moved again.  Later he barked at his reflection in the window, backing away, all the while.  He chased the cat, biting at its legs until Hobbes, who is twice as big and incredibly patient, turned around and gave Watty one of those feline predator looks that says hey, i eat things your size.  Game over.

Like most babies, Watson's either busy or asleep, chewing or pooping.  He tried to gnaw the button off my sweater as I held him to keep him from getting in the way while I negotiated a one-armed stack and tidy.  And here's what I said as I turned on him, catlike...HEY!  I said, this is my favorite sweater!  I've had it half my life! 

Hmmm.  Did I say that? Looking down I had to admit that what I was calling my favorite sweater could reasonably be mistaken for a giant chew toy.   It's drab with age, the elbows sag, the cuffs are stained and it's snagged here and there from when I wore it to trim the roses many houses, many lives ago.  A relic, long past going out in public, it was no accident I was wearing it to clean the garage.   I had to consider why it matters, in the first place.  I could get a new sweater that's comfy and warm, with the same useful pockets on either side, but the arms of this old one, I realize, have encircled almost every love I've had...parents and grand parents, my children and their families, friends, lovers and a long ago husband.  Watson joins the line of precious dogs, cats and a few particular chickens that have rested in its embrace.  This tired old piece of cloth, like me, reeks of memory.  That one of it's buttons now dangles, scarred by puppy teeth, is actually just fine because it will recall, for me, more than just a moment with this soft little pup.  It will remind me that love is sweet.  That life is brief.  That I have been well blessed.

she's back...

and it's only taken three months and a bit of a wander....

at the end of a long day

Over the course of the day, our Peach gave birth to 5 more babies.  Not one resembles her and we have no idea who the daddy was, so there was no telling what they might look like, later.  they went up for adoption at 8 weeks.  I took them to the shelter that saturday and at the end of the day, they were all spoken for.  but as these things go, one of the adoptions fell through and i am here now with the only remaining pup, Watson.  and what i'm learning is that one puppy in your house is a lot more challenging than six in the bin.  whatever that means.

they look like little piggies

Little Watson

Watty is a great little guy, button eyed and gentle.  He has an enormously endearing habit of hugging my neck when i pick him up, pressing his head against my cheek.  Holding him when i sit, he does a version of the same thing, climbing onto my shoulder, drifting off to sleep with his chin on the back of the chair.

Watty playing with his Aunt Cora

Now is when it gets tough.  Where the rubber meets the road, so to speak.  as i started this whole fostering thing, my intention was to help the most needy dogs find homes...plumping them up, getting them healthy, nurturing and socializing them so that they become more adoptable and that's worked out great except for the fact that it absolutely has ripped out a chunk of my heart each time i've had to let them go.  since May, i've cared for 21 dogs including three mama's and their pups, eventually saying snot faced, tearful goodbyes to all but the few who have stayed.  I couldn't let Maggie go.  She was the first dog i walked at the shelter and we'd bonded before i ever brought her home with her 8 babies.  I ended up adopting Corabelle, as well.  Scrawny and old looking, she has some ongoing issues that reduced her desirability in the wider world, though she has blossomed into a beauty, soft as a bunny and easy to manage until strangers show up.  And I'll keep Peach.  If you met her you'd understand.  She's one of those funny, happy little critters that you want to have around.

And now Watty....my daughter's voice got stern the other day after listening to me talk about him.  you could practically hear the hairs raising up on her arms.  Do NOT keep the puppy, she commanded.  You CANNOT keep the puppy.  then, at the vet last week, when someone asked if i was going to keep him, Dr. Mitch jumped in to answer for me, NO, she's not.  He said he didn't want to turn on the tele one day and see me on some show about animal hoarders.  That one made me cringe.  Even though he was laughing as he said it, i knew he was shining a light on an uncomfortable truth.

i'll admit here, in front of you and God and everybody, that i might be close to some tipping point where i could slide right over from helpful community servant to crazy old geezer.  it can eat up your life, caring for pets.  already, i can barely negotiate my way to the bed, for all the dog crates and squeaky toys.  already i spend the greater portion of my days feeding, walking, cleaning up after and shopping for the four leggeds.  it can eat up your life, yes.  but it can also fill an emptiness.   when the other markers of productivity and connection, like jobs and parenting and intimate relationships have fallen away, it can give purpose.  

but at what point does it become a pathology? at what point is it time to say whoa?  is moderation the answer?  oy.  that'll be a task.  i am so not moderate.

TA DA!

The very preggers Peach, showing off her belly.

well folks, this is Peach.  she's a little stray i brought home from the shelter 3 months ago...obviously very pregnant.  at 3 am on Nov 18, she announced her intention to do something about that.   it was a long day of sitting in the shed, staring at her, searching for signs.  i'd think, oh boy...we're getting close...and then she'd get up and go outside and bark at the other dogs and scratch around in the leaves and look at me like, "whut?".

refusing to move

a kind friend brought me breakfast and stayed to help me stare for a few hours but eventually she needed a nap and had to go home to look for it, leaving me alone on duty.  so here's where i get called for my embarrassing lack of forethought.  while she was there, i might have left her sentry and gone inside to have my shower and finally get dressed in some grown up clothes but no.  while she was there we sat on either side of the birthing arena and doubled our staring impact, which was nada.  then when she left, i decided i may as well freshen up cause it looked like it was going to be a long day.  when i returned to the shed 40 minutes later, Peach was the proud mama of one black pup, with more to come.

with the first wee one

and a few more

here's what we all know from experience:

people who never stop complaining can make you crazy.  here's what maybe we don't know:  people who never stop complaining can make you dumb.

wellthinkaboudit!  it makes sense...explains a lot.

i wouldn't have chosen to be in the test group for this particular study, but it's interesting, what they found.  apparently brain chemistry actually changes when a person is exposed to too much negative talk.  the decrease of certain natural enzymes leads to negativity, depression, anger and ultimately to stupidity.  OMG!  Stop watching Fox right now!!  Stop watching network TV all together cause the news is always bad and the reality shows are worse.  Stay away from AOL, too, unless you just have to hear it one more time how some actress fell down drunk and slipped a mammary or how one crack addicted man ate an entire pizza by himself without sharing.  A healthy alternative is to watch cartoons.  I recommend the series "Peep" which is insanely wonderful, as well as "Roly Poly Oly" and "Kipper the Dog".  For movies, try Disney classics like "Jungle Book".  Sing along whenever possible.

but i digress.  i think what they missed in that study is that negativity is also addictive.  for some folks, once they've had that first hit of adrenalin that comes with reliving an offense, they just can't stop without reliving all the bad they've got.  depending on age and how well they've kept score, all they've got can be a lot.  my mom, for example,...lotta years, meticulous score card.  as she talks, i fantasize just slowly standing up and then running as hard and fast as i can, straight into the wall.

i am aware that i feel all kinds of negative by the end of a 2 day visit with her.  that's why i drive 10 hours each way, instead of flying.  i don't want to get home before i've recovered and it never fails that there's something along the way to distract me, something in nature that serves as a defrag for all the static i've absorbed.  at various times, it's been a starving stray by the side of the road that i've tried to catch or at least to feed and then to pray for, the rest of the way home.  and more than once i've had a hawk swoop low and close across my line of sight, raising my spirit as it lifts toward heaven.

often, the dogs at the shelter do that for me, as well.  i went in today with a accumulation of small irritations and though i wasn't doing it out loud, inside my head i was starting to whine. my phone's lost and my basement's wet, how bad will it get?  how bad will it get?  even as i walked the dogs, i was stuck in the frustration/self-pity conversation.  what brought me back to the moment was a medium sized shepherd mix named Arizona, who cowered at the back of the kennel, flinching as i reached for her and then crouching through the lobby but who, when we'd been outside for a while, walking in the rain, through the tall grass, suddenly started hopping with joy.  she'd prance a few steps, pause to look back at me to see if it was ok and then spring forward like a bunny - all 4 feet in the air.  At one point, she did 3 bunny hops in a row and i can't tell you how good it made me feel...how i laughed out loud and how much i wanted to hop right along with her, for the sheer silliness of it.

maybe i'll do that next time...cause hopping will be good for me as cardiovascular training, cause it might entertain passing motorists and also cause i'm pretty sure that if they did a study, they'd find that a little bit of silly is the perfect antidote to a lot of whine.

I was havin a little dry spell there...

unable to share my thoughts with you because i was pretty much unable to have any, past some complicated personal stuff.  and i can't promise i'll be back tomorrow but tonight, i thought i'd catch you up on doggie developments right after i say thanks for putting up with my ramblings about my mother and world peace.

the pups, raleigh and ember, have each been adopted by adoring families. corabelle, meantime, has been spayed and she came through the surgery just fine but she's having trouble adjusting to her babies being gone.  it's wrenching to see her continue to search for them.  the sound of coyote pups in the nearby woods set her off the other night and i'm still sweeping up pieces of the back door she shredded, trying to get outside.

i'll be honest, my first reaction to seeing the destruction, which also included several window screens and a variety of rugs, was to say "that's it.  i can't have this dog in my house."  i notified the shelter that i would have to either return her or take her to another foster home.  but after i burned out with whining and cussing, i had a think.  and what i thought was this:  i've taken away her babies.  she has no way of understanding why that happened.  she just knows they're gone and she's crazy with grief.

when you consider the stuff we do to the animals in our care, even when it's for their welfare, it's remarkable that they're able to forgive us.  i was focused on weaning the pups and making them available for adoption while they still had the advantage of being irresistibly adorable.  the fact is that the older they get, the harder it is to find them homes and here i was with all my personal issues cranking up and it felt increasingly important to find placements for raleigh and ember.  i was doing what i needed to do and trying not to think too much about the parts i couldn't change...like how it might feel to cora.

a while back i wrote about her being a good mom.  turns out, she was a much more dedicated mother than i gave her credit for being.  turns out, she loved her babies intensely and with her entire being and it hurts my heart to see how she's suffering.  so i'll get the doors fixed and the rugs cleaned and i'll keep cora with me for as long as it takes to find her the right home.  she really is a good, sweet dog and what's making her act so desperate is not who she is but what i've done to her.

Florida

is not one of my favorite places.  i'm more a temperate weather, non man-eating-alligator-in-your-kiddie-pool kind of person.

i recently returned from my second trip to the sunshine state in 3 weeks.  I have an ailing brother and an 89 year old mother living there and as you might imagine, things are getting complicated.  my mom lives alone, by her own choice, in a too big house with too many maintenance issues and too much yard to care for.  what was reaffirmed for me on this last visit was that i am powerless to affect that.  it's well past time for her to make some changes but it isn't going to happen so i am left with the prospect of more and frequent trips with the inevitable collapse of her shakey independence.

driving home, i searched the radio for distraction and stumbled on the Ted Talks hour on public radio.  they were featuring innovative thinkers on the topic of education.  one of the speakers was a man named John Hunter, who teaches 3rd grade in Charlottesville Va. and who has created "The World Peace Game".

what he does is remarkable.  in the game, which he's been teaching for 30 years, his kids assume positions of political power, representing various countries, and they're presented with some complex and interconnected, real time, real world problems.   as he says proudly, various classes have solved the global warming crisis in 5 days or less.  they have all the choices that are available, theoretically anyway, to the rest of us....declare war...send aid...unite for a common cause.  what they don't have are the limitations of hard-wired "impossibles".  and they're not hog-tied by looming prospects of re-election time.  they're free to imagine possibilities. the game is won when all the problems have been solved and, at the same time, every country is better off financially than they were at the beginning of the game.

i'm not doing it justice and i urge you to google the actual talk.  what struck me and the reason i'm bringing it up, is that the Mr. Hunter's ultimate goal with this game is to teach compassion.  his hope is that by the end, the kids have realized that they're responsible for more than their own territories...that they're responsible for the fate of humankind.  and the beauty is that, given a free hand in working out the issues, they seem to naturally come to that.

i'm reaching here, to connect this to my recent experience in Florida.  it hasn't come clear, yet, but i know it has everything to do with the compassion piece.
it's easy to look at my mom and call her the problem.  she's a difficult person and her behaviors have a huge impact on any well intentioned folks who try to help.  but in a world of more highly functioning, fast moving, clear headed powerful younger people, each with their own agenda, about all she has to hold up in her own defense is a refusal to cooperate and she does that with no pretense of being a nice old lady.  she's in your face and fighting mad, all the time.  friends fall away.  pretty soon its only the morally obliged who show up to try again.

so if my mom was a country, she'd be a dangerous one and a threat to world peace.  Mr. Hunter told the story of a little girl who was the defense minister of a small, impoverished nation.  She shocked the room by unexpectedly and unprovoked declaring war on a larger nation next to hers.  Against all protests, she fought and won by surrounding and immobilizing their army in a surprise attack.  It was only revealed later that the larger forces in question had been planning a global war, whereby they would take control, not just her country but of everyone else's as well.  The little girl had been watching and reading the signs of coming aggression and she'd preempted it, essentially saving the world.

wow.  talk about your lessons.  it involves personal and collective sacrifice and an incredible level of confidence.  it scares me cause it challenges my own absolute beliefs about the morality of war.  and on a smaller scale, it challenges my obligations with regard to that dangerous territory i call my mom.  she's still driving.  that alone makes her a threat to the rest of the world and to herself.
at what point do i step in, surround and immobilize her to prevent something bad from happening?  what's the compassionate choice?  i dunno.

i dunno.

Back to dogs.

Ember

when last we met, that i wasn't on some tear about my cell phone or my frustration with the fact that i've suddenly gotten old and still haven't done anything with my life, the pups were just learning to stand and walk, dragging their little tails on the floor for balance.  i meant to take piles of photos but of course i was pretty much too exhausted, what with all the energy that aging consumes. this is all i have:

Ember and Raleigh

Raleligh

Momdog Corabelle

perspective

socializing the puppies is on my agenda this week, so i've been taking them out on the lawn to meet the pack.  i've kept the interactions brief till now, partly because Corabelle gets very agitated when i take them and partly just to insure that each meeting is a positive one - getting them the heck outa there before max and ellie start to get jealous.  this was the first day i actually let one of them run around with us while the other stayed back with mom to keep her distracted.

Raleigh toddled along behind me, wagging his little tail, pausing as each of the pack came over to check him out.  pretty soon the rottencockers got bored and ran off but uber mom maggie was rapt.  she sniffed.  she licked the pup's head. nudged his belly with her nose.  then she lay down and used a curled paw to pull him toward her.  he obliged briefly before waddling away.  finally she dropped, belly up, legs spread, head back in an apparently irresistible invitation.  Raleigh climbed onto her neck, falling from side to side and struggling back.  he licked her mouth, bit her cheek.   eyes softly closed, she remained still.

i don't know if all mom dogs respond that way to random puppies.  i have my doubts, but maybe.  maggie's pups were adopted away back in June so perhaps her memories are fresh enough to influence her behavior toward these little ones.  but i think there's more to it than that.  i think that like people, dogs are individual and distinct.  some are born to run and play, to hunt or herd or protect. some are more people oriented and some just want to be with other dogs.  there are those born more needy and others, like our maggie, more nurturing. she was in a state of unmistakable bliss with a puppy flopping around, slobbering on her face.

when he got tired and refused to walk, i carried Raleigh back to the pen with Maggie close alongside, jumping up from time to time, touching noses with him. i understood she wanted him back.  from the depths of my heart, i understood.