Daily Archives: October 28, 2009

Dogs, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Great Work

Litter Mates

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Fall                                       Waxing Dark Moon

A word about litter mates.  Kate and I buy litter mates when we get puppies.  Once in a while we’ve gotten adult dogs given to us by a breeder and we did buy one solitary wolfhound, but otherwise litter mates.  Of our current pack all of the dogs were litter mates.  Hilo and Kona were born 8 years ago from a champion whippet bitch.  Emma and Bridgit (now deceased) we bought 14 years ago from a woman who was line breeding for really fast whippets.  They were both crazy, but they loved each other.

Rigel and Vega don’t look like litter mates.  Rigel looks like a miniature Irish Wolfhound (miniature at 100 pounds, of vegarigel400course) and Vega looks like, well, Vega.  She’s a giant coon hound with a huge head and a lot of muscle.  Appearances in this case deceive.  These girls have been together since last December when they were born.

Litter mates have mutual space.  They lie on each other, eat each other’s food, play together.  They retain the bond you might expect from animals who shared a womb, then a mother’s breasts.  The intimacy and trust they display toward each other is so sweet, so innocent and enduring.  We buy them just for this reason, so they will have a partner through life, one they can count on, one their own size in the case of Rigel and Vega.

These relationships have been part of the magic for Kate and me over the years, an addition to the joy of knowing animals as friends and companions, we also know them as sisters.

Aging, Dogs, GeekWorld, Great Work, Politics

Fencing

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Fall                                          Waxing Dark Moon

Dan the fence guy came and measured the fenceline for our garden.  He hopes to finish by tomorrow and I hope he does.  Rigel will then be relegated to digging holes in the woods and the backyard rather than the garden and the orchard.  This home’s most expensive dog greeted Dan with a lot of energy.

Kate’s doing a bit more each day, though she still tires easily.  She walks without her walker for short distances and stood up for a good bit last night to cook the Danish pancakes.  Her recovery is a testimony to Viking pillaging genes, I think.  No Viking would let a bad back stop them from raiding a monastery or sacking a castle.

Dan has had back troubles, too.  In fact, he goes in to see the top spine surgeon at the U on Monday.  He had surgery on L-5/S-1 twelve years ago and now has trouble there again and in his neck.  He keeps telling Jake, his cousin, that he can have the fence business, but that he needs to protect his back.

After burning through the majority of the new toys I bought yesterday, Rigel and Vega seem enchanted with the frozen peanut butter Kongs.  A good sign.

Here’s a link to a fascinating Scientific American article on economics titled Does Economic Violate the Laws of Physics? It raises issues I would put in the conceptual arena of the commons.  It makes a ton of sense to me.