Okay, I’m an official dog-geek now. Look, it’s Odin, Prince Rainier’s faithful, six-and-one-half year old dog following his coffin through the streets of Monaco. The news wire said that Odin followed along "limping slightly." Make me cry already.
How did I live to be this old before realizing what fabulous television this is? I dropped the dogs off this morning to be cleaned up — it’s been a long winter and they were shaggy and dirty — and Barb, the dog groomer, mentioned that tonight was the sporting dog division (as my boys were, uncharacteristically, sitting and being attentive). So this afternoon, I checked out the USA network, and last night’s dog show was on during the afternoon.
Who knew? I LOVE the dog show. The dogs are so fabulous (although the handlers, as a group, need a visit from the Queer Eye guys — really, no need for your white slip to be flapping through the slit in your lovely navy blue dress — and while clearly, one needs to wear flats in order to run the dogs, there *must* be more attractive flats out there). At any rate — I grew up at horse shows, and so spent most of my formative years being taught to look at animals and see how they meet breed standards, and what is gorgeous about them. I LOVE the dog show. The dogs are so marvelous –even breeds I don’t particularly care for — one can see why *that* is a perfect example of a Whippet, while *that* is an astonishing-looking German shepherd.
I’m hooked. I’ve been calling everyone I know tonight who grew up around horse shows to tell them that I’ve gone over to the dog show side … and now, I must sign off, because it’s time for Best in Show. I’m rooting for that fabulous Norfolk terrier I saw this afternoon — my mother had a marvelous Norfolk Terrier when we were growing up — hated all children except for us — in memory of Gillie, I’m rooting for the Norfolk.
The boys were downstairs last night, goofing off in the basement guest room (which they’ve sort of colonized) when I heard Owen yelp, and then he came running upstairs on three legs, holding his left hind leg hitched up behind him. He jumped on the couch, and I felt all along his hip and knee and hock, looked at his pads, and nothing seemed to be overtly wrong so instead of panicking and calling the Vet’s 24-hour emergency number, I waited until morning.
This morning, he was still gimping around on three legs, so we didn’t go to the dog park, and when the vet said they couldn’t get us in until 2:00, I ran down to Bozeman to do a couple of errands. Driving back to town, I had an extended moment of terror — what if something was really wrong? What if I had to put my beloved puppy down? I could kind of deal with Patrick, but I don’t think I could deal with anything happening to Owen or Raymond … they’re dogs. They’ve been my rocks.
So, this afternoon, I took Owie to the vet who checked him out and thought maybe it was his ACL. He wanted to keep him, take some x-rays, sedate him a little to check out his joint mobility. His ACL? I go home imagining rehabbing my dog — and even more frightening, I realize I am the kind of person who would spend anything to fix my beloved dog. Of course, he’s only a year and a half old, and his chances of recovery would be really good, but still. I spent the afternoon trying not to panic. I don’t like surgery — for me, for dogs, for anyone I love.
So the vet finally calls. The x-rays look good — it doesnt’ look like he’s blown a ligament, there’s a small bone chip in his hock joint. Patrick had issues with bone chips in his ankle — he fell in a hole about three years ago, sprained the hell out of his ankle and being a guy who hated doctors, decided that simply tying his Ariat boot tight around the ankle, and buying a cane were appropriate treatment protocols. A year or so later, he was in Texas for a NASCAR race, and the track doc noticed him limping (the weather had gone cold and damp on them) and asked what the deal was — when Patrick told him, he said “here, look we’ve got an x-ray machine, let’s take a look.” Patrick hadn’t broken it, as he’d feared, but he had torn a lot of bone chips off with the ligaments — it was a mess in there. Owen only has one little bone chip floating around in his ankle, so we’re not going to do anything about it right now. The vet thinks that rest and anti-inflammatories will clear it up. If the weather stays nice, maybe some swimming in the river will help. That was the good news.
The bad news is that both dogs have LICE!
LICE! Who even knew that dogs got lice? Ticks, yes. Fleas, yes. Lice? The vet assures me they won’t move from dogs to people, which is good, but LICE? Ick. Owen got his first de-lousing bath at the vet — poor guy, he was all groggy from the drugs, and then they gave him a bath, and he came home just miserable. But the worst was yet to come — Raymond needed a bath in the special lice-killing soap as well. I only have a cast-iron tub, and there’s no hand-held shower thingy. Raymond is a dear, but very high-strung, so I got the vet to give me some doggy-tranquilizers. I gave Ray two of them, like the vet suggested (note to self, two is too many — poor guy was staggering), and when they kicked in, I picked him up and put him in the tub. I’d had to put a wet towel on the bottom of the tub so he wouldn’t slip — poor stoned guy — and then not just soap him up with the lice shampoo, but let it sit on him for TEN minutes.
So, now my house is redolent with the smell of sleepy wet dogs — wet dogs who luckily don’t need surgery, but who do need de-lousing once a week for the next few weeks. I am so grateful there’s nothing seriously wrong, but I’m trying very hard not to succumb to the psychosomatic itching …
The dogs love skiing but we have one little problem — they get snow stuck to the fur between their toes and it ices up in hard little balls that really bother them — and because the ice balls hurt, the dogs stop and lick them, which only makes them worse. Owen, my puppy, also has problems with snowballs adhering to his feathers, especially in the back. He’ll be running along with tennis-ball sized snowballs hanging off his ass, which looks really funny, but doesn’t make him happy.
So, what’s the solution? Pam cooking spray! Who knew? They didn’t like getting sprayed so much, but it really works … we skiied all the way up Suce Creek (a mile and a half) and back down and they only had little tiny snowballs between their toes — and no hanging snowballs off their feathers. They were happy, and because their feet weren’t bothering them so much, everyone was much safer (dogs stopping to lick their toes when you’re flying downhill on ice can be dangerous for everyone).
I should have paid closer attention when I came home last night, but I’d been to a party and I figured the dogs had just been hanging out downstairs on the guest bed, because, well, it’s the guest bed. This morning, however, it was clear something was up. Raymond had been scratching at the door intermittently during the night, which was odd because he’s three, and long past not being able to make it through the night, and when I got up at seven-thirty, he bolted out the door in a way that isn’t typical for him.
I was lettting Owen in through the back door (they’re very spoiled and some mornings go in and out and in and out — I should crack down but it’s not like I’m so busy inventing a cure for cancer that I can’t get up and let them in and out and in and out) when I smelled it. Something bad had happened in the basement. There were sad little puddles of doggy-diarrhea down there. Careful puddles on the linoleum, where they could be mopped up. Poor Raymond. No wonder he’d wanted to go out all night long.
So, I got the mop, the paper towels, the bucket, the Pine Sol and cleaned it up. Not fun, but what can you do? Animals (and people) we love sometimes leak noxious fluids. Because we love them we try not to throw up and just clean up the mess.
It wasn’t until later that I saw what the problem had been. I’d left the dogs in the yard when I went to Maryanne’s to celebrate her birthday — it was a mild night and they’d been cooped up much of the day. I thought they’d like being outside.
It looked like a tag-team operation. There was a deep hole in the front flower bed, a hole that bore the distinctive marks of a manic-Owen digging operation. And an errant daffodil bulb. We’ve had a little trouble with this, and it looked like Owen had done the digging and then offered up a daffodil bulb to Raymond — Ray, who will eat almost anything. Ray who isn’t the brightest dog we’ve ever known. And since daffodils are toxic to dogs, we had a night of furtive dog puddles downstairs, followed by a morning of the saddest, ashamed-of-himself dog one’s ever seen.
He seems recovered tonight — and tomorrow I’m going to spread some mulch in hopes of smothering the siren smell of daffodil bulbs.
Sitting. Dogs don’t get meditation. Cats, they get meditation, dogs, not so much.
This morning I was on my cushion, trying to pay attention when I felt a small dog nose poke me in the back, right between my shoulderblades. So Owen poked at me a little, then went to examine the incense smoke for a moment, then tried to curl up on my crossed legs, but there wasn’t really enough room on the cushion, and he kept sliding off. Eventually, he got bored and went away. Ah, I thought. He’s learning. And tried to bring my attention back to mindfulness.
Then Raymond came in to see what was going on. Same drill, a little whining, a little licking, a little trying to curl up in front of me on the cushion. Not comfortable. A little shifting, a little more whining, some incense watching and then he gave up and went out to curl up in the dog bed under the kitchen table. I tried to bring my attention back to mindfulness.
Now, like so much lately, the dogs in my meditation space can be seen as a problem, or can be seen as just what they are, dogs in my meditation space. Maybe I’ve been reading too much Zen lately, trying to see my way through this ordeal, but it seems to me I could have gotten all bent out of shape because the dogs were “ruining” my meditation, or I could have just let the dogs be dogs and keep trying to bring my attention back to mindfulness. I went with the latter, partially because I love my dogs so it was easier not to be mad at them than to be mad at them, and partially because all affection, even if it is in the middle of my so-called meditation practice, is welcome, especially these days.
But it’d be nice if they’d sort of get with the program eventually. Maybe another dog bed in the room where I sit, so they can have their own cushion.
Because we can’t get delivery here in Montana, I get the Sunday New York Times a week late. It usually comes on Thursday or Friday and I save it so I have a Times to read on Sunday morning. This is what two years of one’s youth spent in Manhattan will get you — a lifetime addiction to a big fat Sunday paper.
So Sunday I was reading the Style section and there, in the Weddings, was my cousin George on his father’s vintage motorcycle with Jen, who is now his wife. It’s a really cute picture and I tossed it aside thinking “Patrick will love this.” It was a good ten minutes before I realized what I’d done. That Patrick wasn’t going to be coming by later that day, and so I had a little crying fit because I’m really quite sad right now about the whole thing.
So I’m on the couch crying and Owen, my puppy, my perfect, 35-pound French Brittany spaniel jumped up next to me and started licking my head. Licking my hands over my eyes, licking my ears, licking my head like he knows somehow that this is his job in the universe, as though his whole reason for being on the planet this time around is to save me from my sorrow. Which he did, because it’s really hard to keep crying when you have a frantic year-old dog licking your head, your hands, whatever parts of you he can get his tongue on. He licked at me until I started to giggle through my tears, and remembered that although I am sad, I am also still here, still kicking, and still loved by among others, my fabulous little dog. (So now I guess I’m going to have to learn to hunt birds for the little guy.)
Things you can do instead of planning Part Two of your new novel. I finished Part One the other day … well I didn’t exactly “finish” it but I do have a draft that seems sort of alive and is stable enough that I have to stop tinkering with it and go on to the next part of the book. I’m trying not to dwell on the fact that it’s taken me almost four years to get to this point, nor to dwell on the fact that I’m back at the edge of terra incongnita, that place where I have to make up a bunch of new stuff. Rewriting is way more fun than writing.
So, here are some of the things a person could do on a Sunday instead of diligently getting out the enormous sheets of paper with the post-it removeable stickum and outlining scenes.
Go to Mass. Hard to feel bad about that one. After all, it is Lent. Our priest was a little shook up, aparently he was felled after morning Mass on Ash Wednesday by an enormous kidney stone, and he choked up a couple of times during the homily talking about how even though we know we are safe in God’s love, things can get kind of scary sometimes. It was endearing. He seems like a pretty good priest, and we prayed a lot for peace in the Middle East, and even here in conservative Montana, people seemed really to be praying that we won’t go to war.
Walk the dogs. It is very very cold … one bank says it’s 6 degrees and the other bank, a block up the street says it’s 4 degrees. The dog park is out on a low bluff along the Yellowstone River, and it’s windy. None of the usual characters were out there this morning and the dogs were a little miffed that they got a short walk, but too bad, my fingers were frozen and there wasn’t anyone to talk to while freezing.
Read the New York Times. I get the Sunday NY Times by mail, so I actually read last Sunday’s Times this morning. I read the Bozeman Chronicle too, but that only takes about fifteen minutes, including Parade and the comics. It’s a pretty good paper, but Sunday is distinctly unsatisfying. My friend Hope who lives on a ranch in Colorado and I were talking about how much we like reading the Sunday Times a week late… it takes all the urgency out of the news parts of the paper, and since the Magazine and the arts sections aren’t particularly timely, it makes for a very relaxing reading experience. I was especially struck by Judith Shulevitz’s essay Bring Back the Sabbath (sorry, it’s now in the annoying NYT archive where you’re supposed to pay for content). For several years now, I’ve avoided committing to activities on Sunday. I haven’t been consiously thinking of this as keeping the Sabbath, but whether or not I make it to Mass (which was pretty much never in California, thanks to the recent scandals and the enormity of that parish. I guess I just don’t like big congregations), I like taking Sunday to be quiet, do some reading, cook something, clean my house, putter. Shulevitz traces how she gradually found herself joining a Synagogue and practicing the Sabbath again, as well as traces the history of the Sabbath in American history. It’s good to have some space in the week where you’re not all caught up in trying to accomplish anything.
Make a big pot of Lamb and White Bean Stew. Chop up an onion, a couple of carrots, and a couple of celery stalks into dice. Chop up the last of the prosciutto butt that was tucked away in the freezer. Saute the prosciutto bits in oil, then add the onions and saute until translucent. Add the carrots and celery with some red pepper flakes, a couple of cloves, a couple of bay leaves, some of last summer’s sage that happens to be hanging in the back of the pantry, and a generous sprinkling of herbes de provence. Smash and peel a bunch of garlic cloves (five or six if, like me, you like garlic). Throw them in with the vegetables. Add 1 cup of small white beans soaked overnight (or a can of white beans, or even unsoaked beans if you didn’t think about it in advance). Add the leftover 1/4 bottle of white wine, a good slug of vermouth (for that herbal flavor) and a pint of chicken broth. Add two lamb shanks. Bring to a bare simmer and let cook all day so it fills your house with a lovely smell and plan to eat it while watching Clinton and Dole on 60 minutes.
Blog
Stop blogging and suck it up and go try to figure out what these characters want to do next. Even if it is Sunday, nonetheless, it would be good to get this done before another work week begins and sucks me in.
Happy Sunday everyone.