Category Archives: Dogs

Dogs

Emma’s Last Adventure

3 Comments

Beltane                                                Waning Planting Moon

Emma’s excursion yesterday gave her, as things turned out, her last chance to wander on her own, beyond the woods and backyard that have been her home for over fourteen years.  She died last night, in her crate.  It was probably an arrhythmia that did not convert like the one several weeks ago.

Emma has been old for a couple of years.  I mean bow-legged, wobbly old.  Her hearing had diminished and she didn’t eat well.  Dogs though, and Emma was no exception, take their infirmities in stride, as part of the way things are.  Really, are they ever anything else?

We got Emma and her sister Bridgit, dead now three years or so, from a breeder who had sought the perfect whippet.  Through line breeding, sort of the doggy equivalent of incest.  We didn’t know that at the time and were happy to have two new puppies.  Iris and Buck, our last whippet pair at that time, had both died.  We missed them.

As they matured, though, Emma and Bridgit were both peculiar, shy and reclusive.  Emma, for years, and I mean, like 10 years, wouldn’t allow us to come near enough to pet her.  She flinched and ran away.  We’ve had dogs always and many dogs so we could see aberrant behavior and not blame ourselves.  It was just the way they were.

Bridgit left us to live with Jon because he needed a companion.  In that one-to-one situation Bridgit took the turn toward a normal doggy life, running to you when you came and playing.  Emma, though, in a house with sometimes as many 6 dogs, didn’t get there until much later.

Same of my fondest memories of Emma came when she was 5 or 6.  We had a bad storm that toppled a basswood, a giant maybe 60 feet high.  The trunk lay where it fell and it happened to land with a clear path on its side to the sun.  Emma took to running up that trunk and standing, head erect and surveying the property, maybe 10 feet off the ground.  She looked grand.

The Wolfhound deaths, and I’ve seen 8, are wrenching, difficult because they die between 5 and 8 years old, in what seems like their prime.  Emma’s, and Iris’s too, are different.  These are deaths of old age, a life run its course.  I’m sad, of course, but not heart broken.

Em was a regal and quiet dog, who kept her own counsel and lived life as she wanted.  Would most of us could say the same.

Dogs

Emma Elopes

Leave a comment

Beltane                                  Waning Planting Moon

Emma took off on a tour of the neighborhood.  Our housekeeper Lois opened the front door and Emma slipped out, using her fourteen years of observing human behavior, not speed, as her ally.  By the time I got to the front after Lois alerted me, Emma could not be seen.  I hollered a bit, mostly fruitless since Emma hears about as well as most nearing the end of their natural life.

I felt sure she would return on her own, but hearing Kate asking me if I did everything I could, I got in the car and drove around the neighborhood (which, by the way, uses the term very loosely).  No Em.

Came back home, made myself some noodles, came downstairs to get ready for Latin.  Halfway through the noodles Emma sauntered by garden patio doors.  Knew she would.

Dogs, Health

Off to the Warehouse

Leave a comment

Beltane                              Waning Planting Moon

A trip to the warehouse for the temple of Mammon, Costco.  Dogfood, dog treats and propel for Kate.  Escaped without extra items or involuntary confinement.vegarigel400

Felt great yesterday, today not so much.  That they left the shredded paper insulation behind in my sinuses feeling.  Anticipating thunderstorms this afternoon and a cool down tomorrow, I’m going to work inside today, outside the rest of the week.

Aging, Dogs, Friends

Sheepshead

Leave a comment

Beltane                                      Full Planting Moon

Sheepshead tonight.  We get in lots of jokes and laughing during the game.  The best story came from Dick Rice, who says he got it from a relative of Flannery O’Connor.  He told it in response to Bill mentioning Vega and the rabbit.

This guy’s dog brought home the neighbors pet rabbit, a pet she prized.  The rabbit was dead and the guy felt embarrassed, wasn’t sure quite what to do, so he wiped off the rabbit, washed it off in the sink and dried it carefully with a towel.  His neighbor had not come home from work at this point, so he snuck over to her house.  In her backyard he carefully took the now clean, but obviously still dead, rabbit and placed it in the house she had built for it.

The next day he saw her crying and went over to her yard.

“Oh, my.  You’ll never believe what happened!” she said, tears streaming down her face.

“What?  What happened?” he said.

“Well, my rabbit died the other day and I buried her in the backyard, but somehow she came back and ended up in her house again.”

True or not, it’s a great story.

Dogs, Family, Humanities, Politics

In 80 Degree Weather You’d Do It, Too. If you fit.

3 Comments

Beltane                              Waxing Planting Moon

Vega the wonder dog continues a puppy habit.vegainwater Even though she’s quite a bit bigger now she can make herself small enough to fit in the rubber water bowl.  This means that when I fill it up, it soon empties.  I have to go buy a smaller bowl, one she can’t use for cooling off.

In other dog related news I bought two sprinkler heads to replace the ones purloined by either Vega or Rigel.  They have a high degree of energy and intelligence.  That makes them inquisitive and with dogs this size that means destructive.

I spent the morning on Ovid, translating verses of the Metamorphoses, 11-15.  This is a slow process for me because I have to look up each word, discern which of the possible words it probably is, determine its possible declension or conjugation, then go back and try to put all this together in an intelligible English line.  Latin poetic conventions make this difficult since words that below together are sometime split apart by as much as a verse.  Also, Ovid, like Shakespeare loved neologisms so sometimes the word he’s used is the only time it was ever used in Latin.

Don’t get the wrong impression though.  When I finished this morning, I whistled and sang, a sure sign I feel good about what I’ve just done.   It’s a fascinating process for me.

Kate has a big month taking shape.  She leaves on Tuesday for San Francisco and two continuing medical education conferences which will take until June 6th.  On June 30th she has hip surgery.  She needs the surgery, her hip is painful for her and painful for me to watch.

The violence in Bangkok continues and some of it happens right outside my brother’s soi, a sort of side street with no exit that is peculiar to Bangkok’s urban design.

Final Sierra Club legislative meeting for the 2010 session tonight.  There will probably be work upcoming related to next year’s session, but for the near term future, that work will come to a close.  No more weekly meetings.  Happy hour after this meeting.

Dogs, Garden

Potatoes in the Ground

Leave a comment

Beltane                               Waxing Planting Moon

Potatoes take some energy to plant.  First you have to dig foot-deep trenches, then you plant the seed potatoes.  After that, you fill the trench back in about 8 inches or so.  Even in my plot’s highly organic soil this involves lifting a lot of mother earth.  Having said that, I love finding potatoes in the soil, like little treasures.  And they taste really good straight out of the ground.  Really good.  (these are not our potatoes.  what a lot of work there.  Whew)

Vega snuck in the garden when my hands were full.  She put the hammer down and raced in a full suspension gallop all around the garden, then came up to me, rolled over and stuck her legs in the air.  Daddy, daddy, I know it was wrong, but I just couldn’t help myself.

Now a nap, then a workout then out to the Temple.

Aging, Bees, Dogs, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Friends, Garden, Great Work, Humanities, Our Land and Home, permaculture

Home

Leave a comment

Beltane                                     Waning Flower Moon

There is here the action:  taking the hive tool and wrenching loose the propolis, moving the frame, all the while bees buzzing and whirring, digging into the soil, placing the leeks in a shallow trench, the sugar snap peas in their row, inoculant on top of them, around them.  The plants move from pot to earth home, their one and true place where they will root, work their miracle with light and air.  The dogs run, chase each other.  Vega plops herself down in the water, curling herself inside it, displacing the water, getting wet.

There is, too, this other thing, the mating of person and place, the creation of memories, of food, of homes for insects and dogs and grandchildren, for our lives, we two, on this strange, this awesome, this grandeur, life.  This happens, this connection, as a light breeze stirs a flower.  It happens when a bee stings, or a dog jumps up or leans in, when Kate and I hug after a day of making room for  more life here.

In a deep way it is unintended, that is, it happens not because it is willed, but because becoming native to a place is like falling in love, a surprise, a wonder, yet also a relationship that requires nurture, give and take.  In a deep way, too, it is intended, that is, we want to grow vegetables, flowers, fruit, have room for our dogs and for our family, for our friends.  The intention creates the space, the opening where the unintended occurs.

Sixteen years Kate and I have lived here.  A long time for us.  Now though, we belong here.

Aging, Bees, Dogs, Faith and Spirituality, Friends, Garden, Health

Life is a Conspiracy Against Nature

Leave a comment

Spring                                         Full Flower Moon

Dicentra in deep pink, iris in deep purple, tulips in yellow, red, orange and purple, daffodils in many combinations of yellow and white, plus, amazing for this time of year, lilacs, fill out the full flower moon here.   The moon’s light, silvered and slight, gives no presence for the flowers so they close up, invite no visitors.  When I walk in the garden at night, under the flower moon, its namesakes here on earth sleep, perhaps dreaming of bright days, bees and warm breezes.

Emma has recovered almost to her old self, and I do mean her old self, not even her mature self.  Her old self is wobbly, a bit eccentric in motion and attention, but she enjoys the sun, a small dinner and a warm spot on the couch.  So do I.  Life is a conspiracy against nature, wonderful and delightful while it dances and spins, mocking the tendency of all things toward chaos.  That it exists at all is a miracle.

A good day, productive and educational.  All except for that sting on the posterior.  A bit of humility administered by an aging worker bee.

Aging, Dogs

Emma’s Conversion

Leave a comment

Spring                                     Full Flower Moon

A quick update on Emma.  Once inside she grew more alert, though she remained on the couch where I put her last night until I carried her outside this morning.  Once out she stood on her own, ate some turkey, walked around, then drank some water.   Returning inside she ate some cottage cheese.  She had a coordinated gate and jumped up on the couch by herself.  Where she is now, on the blue blanket, under a lap rug from the Amana Colonies.

Kate thinks she had a non-perfusing arrhythmia.    In which case her heart came close to stopping due to an irregularity in the wiring, then it failed and continued to fail to have enough pumping power to distribute (perfuse) blood to the outer extremities.  Kate says she may recover or continue to dwindle.  We’ll have to wait and see.

Right now with the bees and Emma and the Latin and the art museum and the Sierra Club not to mention the vegetable garden, I’m feeling a bit stressed.  Only solution–dig my way out of the pressure and enjoy these things, each of them, as I normally do.

Dogs, Faith and Spirituality, Friends, Health, Politics

Living and Dying

Leave a comment

Spring                                                    Full Flower Moon

Death comes calling whenever it wants,  not worrying about the season or the weather or the inclinations of the living.  Kate’s colleague, Dick, suffering from multiple myeloma has gone on hospice care after two years of often brutal treatment regimens.  Bill Schmidt’s brother, who has prostate cancer, also chose hospice care recently to ease the pain of complications.

Tonight I was on my first Political Committee call of the year, a Sierra Club committee that deals in endorsements and retail politics.  The dogs were making noise so I quick ran upstairs to shoo them inside.  Emma didn’t come inside.  She lay under the cedar tree.  I’ve watched a lot of dogs die over the last 20 years and when I went to her side, she looked up at me, but had the stare that looks beyond, out a thousand yards, or is it infinity?  Her body was cold and she did not rise.

Vega, the big puppy, came outside and poked at Emma with her paw, sat down and nuzzled her.  Vega loves Emma, has since she was a little puppy.  I called Kate to let her know I thought Emma was dying.  Emma’s fourteen, our oldest dog right now, and our oldest dog ever with the possible exception of Iris.  At fourteen her time is near, perhaps it will come yet tonight.  Right now she’s on the couch, wrapped in a blue blanket, her head on her favorite pillow.

She seems a bit more alert now and Kate says her heartbeat is regular.  She may have had an arrhythmia and converted it, that is, brought herself back into normal rhythm.  Hard to say.  As Kate said, she appears to have the dwindles.

When I compared the call, about politics, and Emma lying outside, I realized Emma was more important to me than the call, so I stayed with her awhile, brought her inside and made her comfortable on the couch.  Then I returned to the call.