Walks with Dogs

Roger 1994 - 2008

The Lord Is My Shepherd

January 30 is Roger’s Jahrzeit. He left this plane of existence sometime between 2 and 5 AM January 30, 2008. Although he had slowed down and lost weight throughout the year, he had only two weeks of real suffering during which, as dogs do, he would not eat enough to sustain himself, turned into a walking skeleton, and kept dragging himself to the furthest corners of the yard to lie in the snow and ice, awaiting his fate. I couldn’t leave him there. I kept dragging him back inside where he lay on the blankets I left about for him. He was a proud animal; to the end he forced himself outside to do his business, sapping what remained of his strength. I never once had to clean up after him.

The final night he licked weakly at a tablespoon of the Ben & Jerry’s Peach Cobbler ice cream I had bought for him. It had been odd, standing at the market freezer and wondering which flavor my dog would like. The feeding didn’t last long, then we went to bed: he, as usual, atop the covers, alongside me on the futon.

I woke up at two and he was still there, still quietly breathing.

I went back to sleep and in a dream a tawny young man of incredible sweetness was there in my presence, radiating soft, tawny love. I felt bathed in love, deeply relaxed and at peace,  amazed and delighted to finally meet one who loved me so completely, also some anticipation that I might in real life meet this beautiful being.

This has happened before. Departing souls will send a message of consolation and peace.

I awoke again at 5AM. He had gotten himself onto the blanket folded at the foot of the futon and there had died, lying on his side upon it, perfectly centered,  as beautiful in death as he had been in life.

We both knew he was going to die, and die he did, after sending me all the comfort he could. Now a year later, very rarely, the full measure of the loss will hit me. When it does, it is like being kicked in the gut, a moment of blinding pain, mercifully short and rare.

But I no longer live in a world of dramatic emotions, thank God. So what I want to say is more about him than about me. Animals’ lives are sadly uncelebrated. This animal deserves a wider audience.

Roger’s personality covered the dog spectrum. Those of you who met him when he was in full bloom remember a 65-pound Shepherd/Retriever with a perpetual self-effacing grin, a creature both radiantly beautiful and stunningly powerful, while at the same time apologetic, clownish and humble whether jumping on you, crawling onto your lap, dancing, spinning himself into a 180 degree turn while leaping on and off the couch, grabbing towels in the bathroom and prancing through the house shaking them in his jaws, chewing through wooden gates, wandering off, getting found by neighbors, or attempting to hump every other dog on a Sierra Club hike.

The same stunts pulled by a different dog would have infuriated me. But I could never get angry with Roger, and there was no power struggle between us. He was the clown and I was the perpetually receptive audience.

Because his face was so expressive, you could catch every nuance. Roger usually played it for laughs. He  stood on his hind legs with his paws on the examining table, making eyes at the vet,  ate the most ghastly remains: crunchy dried 2-dimensional dead rodents; once a rabbit with an arrow through it, and so much more that he came upon outdoors. He fought me one time for a ram’s horn and again for a boar’s skull, complete with tusks. He had found them first, so they were legitimately his, but I stole them for my collections.

Just as my dearly departed aunt sent me dimes at the oddest times, so Roger sent gifts to my other dog, Sadie, his hunting partner. He sent her a dead rabbit about three days after his demise. She ate it, something she never did before or since. After that he sent her a few mice now and then and once a garter snake.

Then, as with all the other spirits I have known, he ascended higher and further and the energy that had been Roger dissipated and could be found only in my lasting love and memories.

Dogs like Roger only come around once in a lifetime. I always said, as people ran away screaming, or cursed me as he body slammed them, “He’s a lot of dog.” May all of you find a Roger.

Wounded child in Gaza

Some truths are self-evident. That torture and war are wrong is self-evident. Self-evident means no further explanation is necessary. If the right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness are self-evident, the obvious corollary is that destruction of life, liberty or happiness are wrong.

The first question I remember asking in Sunday School:”if God is love, why is there war?” Unsatisfactory answer from Christian Science teacher goes like this: “There is no war. It is an error in perception. We live in Adam’s dream. When we awake, we will see the perfection of God. If you turn on the light, there is no more darkness.”

Likewise the ancient Heart Sutra:

“No Eye, Ear, Nose, Tongue, Body or Mind;
No Form, Sound, Smell, Taste, Touch or Mind Object;
No Realm of the Eye,
Until We Come to No realm of Consciousness.”

The message: that the reality we experience every day is not the ultimate reality. The ultimate reality is Emptiness and to directly experience emptiness is our goal. Therefore…if I interpret this correctly, and there’s a good chance that I don’t…we should strive to experience Emptiness and not be either attracted nor repelled by the phenomena of everyday reality.

The Heart Sutra came centuries before Mary Baker Eddy’s vision. It most likely originated in the first century C.E. Mary Baker Eddy wrote Science and Health in 1875. [There is speculation that in fact she plagiarized the work of  Dr. Phineas Parkhurst Quimby who had cured her of chronic ill health, but that is another story.] But in view of the chronology of these ideas, it would appear that the concepts of the Heart Sutra: emptiness and the unreality of what we call every day reality — precede and encapsulate the concepts of Christian Science. Another topic for another day is the question of Mary Baker Eddy’s inspiration and vision. Was she dipping from an eternal, omnipresent well? Was she lifted to Buddha consciousness by her head injury and subsequent healing? Had she at some point studied the sutras? I do not know and all these are questions that  intrigue but digress. My point is that there is a long-standing religious and spiritual case for evil being unreal, an error in perception. This is utterly unsatisfactory to me in view of the photograph above.

Another argument, frequently offered by New Agers, is that those who appear helpless victims to me are in fact just suffering the results of their karma. So I shouldn’t have survivor guilt over my fat happy American life while others writhe in hospitals where the aggressor has shut off supply of medicines; while others spend years on end in robot metal cells guarded by robot Bush loyalists with no charges, no trial, no evidence, nothing but daily torture with no hope of release. The idea that in any way these souls deserve such a fate is unacceptable to me.

The only answer for me is service, but not service to some ancient sutra or some self-serving politician, not to any cause other than the effort to heal and help. In this light, I am obligated to seek closer association with a helping organization. If in this pursuit I forget my ego enough to experience emptiness, great. If not, at least I’m serving my deepest sense of right.

I hope the Obama government provides outlets for service to right our national wrongs. Right now I wouldn’t have the courage to go to Iraq or Gaza or Afghanistan. Yet those are the places the most outrageous wrongs at American hands are committed. I have been talking No More Victims up for a while, and maybe with the new administration, and one of the new State Department buzzwords being Development…maybe such programs will proliferate and flourish. It’s time for me to shut up and get involved. No More Victims provides an ideal path for involvement. Take a look, and be sure to have plenty of hankies nearby. If these stories don’t touch your heart nothing will.

In their own words: “No More Victims works to obtain medical sponsorships for war-injured Iraqi children and to forge ties between the children, their families and communities in the United States. We believe one of the most effective means of combating militarism is to focus on direct relief to its victims.”

Inspired by a locally produced TV documentary called “Living in the Big Empty” which appeared on local PBS channel KNPB, I write about my great good fortune, to have the desert as my teacher. May I never take it for granted.  Most people wouldn’t want it anyway. They think it’s harsh. They think it’s empty.

 Desert Miracles:

Desert: the Ultimate Teacher

• That the desert immediately embraced and soothed me.
• That I can walk all day and seldom see anyone.
• That some people have walked in Nevada mountains for a year without seeing anyone.
• That we learn to delight in what is here.
• Silence.

The documentary introduced some desert eccentrics. Of course Burning Man is a chance for thousands to be desert eccentrics, if only for a weekend.  I’m a full-time undercover desert eccentric. The sagebrush and jackrabbits have so thoroughly permeated my soul that I carry them always, everywhere.

Arch to Nowhere: Or Everywhere if You Love the Desert

Here is Goldfield, Nevada in March 2005. We have a confluence of ghost town, Burning Man obsessive compulsive disorder, and your standard desert decay, along with everyday living. I was lucky enough to be alone coming home from Death Valley, to have two cameras, to have all the time in the world, to have good light. What more would constitute a miracle? Oddly these pictures have sat around for four years; I just realized how priceless they are. Oddly, I did not see a living soul during my approximately three hours in Goldfield. Picture essay at link below.

 http://websighttrish.com/goldfield/Goldfield.htm for entire picture essay.

I think this is a swanprint

Basically I’m too lucky. I do some whining and moaning on these pages, but none of it is about my personal life or my place in this world. I  agonize and protest injustice and cruelty. That’s a big step up for me because I used to be consumed with self-concern and emotion. Since 1997, I’ve been focused on matters outside myself.

But I can also say that’s because I’m phenomenally lucky.

It’s late, so I’ll just give one example right now. There was abundant sun and a lazy day to spend as I chose, so I went to the lake with Sadie and the tundra swans were back, many with older cygnets: juveniles smaller than the parents, already long-necked and graceful, just the necks, and on some the necks and backs, still bearing the stubby gray juvenile plumage, the remainder now white and sleek, the exquisite black mask coming into focus on some; not yet for others. What animal name comes close to “cygnet.”  What expresses more of distance, power, endurance and freedom than “tundra swan.” This is natural royalty.

As I watched, three swans took to the sky, huge wings beating ceaselessly, no coasting for these great birds, banking aided by updrafts until they were headed east, three bodies forming a single slice of white against the looming red mountains. I heard their call, higher and thinner than the Canada goose, the scream of absolute freedom. This is how lucky I am, I have witnessed this in my lifetime.

Here’s a link to the sound:

http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/birds/tundra-swan.html

Nikki and Ambler (Cont.)

Nikki went first. Summer came and she was just plain miserable. So I sent her off to live in Tahoe. Today I would have held out for older owners. I last saw her, always amiable with people, lying in the back of a pickup trick surrounded by a group of young people who assured me she’d have happy runs in the forest.

That left us with Ambler. He just got more intense, more wired, more unmanageable. I was gone so much of the time and so tired the rest. I don’t remember Elise taking charge. I do remember her being pulled on her belly across the floor of the livestock center where we had come for his first obedience lessons. Just like Marley in “Marley and Me”, this dog wasn’t going to get any diplomas. My mortification was doubled because Elise let out a stream of curses as Ambler ran wild, heedless of the choke collar.

Then followed a string of little notes left on the door by Animal Control. He kept getting out of the yard and heading for the local riverside park where he would chase the ducks and geese. Twice I bailed him out, paying  big fines I could ill afford in those poverty days. Why did this keep happening?  I later found out my next-door neighbor was dropping the dimes on him.

Whenever I’d get him home from those episodes, he would hang close for a few days, slinking along the walls, literally looking both ways before crossing doorways. He had an increasingly haunted expression and  slouched walk. For all I know he got tattoos under his fur.

But after a week or so, he’d figure he was in the clear. He’d straighten up, shake off the jailhouse blues,  and disappear again. I spied on him from the kitchen one day and found out how he did it. The six-foot high fence came to a narrow corner at the side yard. Ambler would get a running start, fling himself, feet first, at the wall to his right which he would hit about four feet up. He then used his back legs to richochet himself upwards at the high gate in front of him. A quick push over the top with his front legs while he was airborne and he was up and over, then out to menace the neighborhood.

After the fourth bust,  I told Elise that was it. Ambler would have to stay at animal control. Her pleas did not move me. Then a few days later, I was walking down our street and saw the all too familiar dogcatcher’s truck two blocks away. The truck stopped, a door was opened, and Ambler came out trotting to me in his slouch mode. Animal Control couldn’t place him, they couldn’t help him, they couldn’t tell me the truth, so they just dropped him off.

But that reprieve only lasted a week or two and the pattern resumed. The next time he got out, he just didn’t come back. Animal Control evidently gave up on him too; there were no more mysterious reappearances. From that episode on, I’ve always held respect and affection for Animal Control, and realized their abiding compassion. They did what they could. Some dogs just aren’t suburban dogs. They need a big world, a forest, a forest that may no longer exist anywhere. I wonder if Ambler had been dropped in Yellowstone if he would have run with the wolves.

++++++++++

Unleashed Melody

I’ve had  11 dogs in my life. I hate to say it because it’s elitist, and I hate competitions and odious comparisons, but Melody was the smartest. She just was.

It was 1984 and I’d been through three harrowing dog episodes. The first of these was Ambler. Elise was 11, old enough to pick a pet. We went to the local pound, where the attendant begged her to take any other dog there, any dog but the skinny, wired black animal of indeterminate ancestry who stood glaring at us from behind his wire mesh. This, of course, riveted her to the belief that he was the only dog she would have and she by all means would have him.

Ambler always acted like the FBI was after him. He would skulk around corners. He was nervous and suspicious, though friendly enough to humans.  We took him hiking frequently and never had the problems I’ve had since with other dogs on hikes. He stayed more or less with us and he got into the truck after the hike — both behaviors I’ve learned one cannot necessarily expect.

He was plenty strong enough to pull her around the neighborhood.

Because he had so much energy, we got Nikki from a newspaper ad to keep him company. Nikki was depressed. She was depressed, the owner told me, from a spaying gone bad, although there were no physical symptoms of this; she was depressed because she was blind in one eye which we were told was the breeder’s fault; and I found out she was further depressed because she was hot all the time. The upshot was Nikki lying around most of the time, heaving great sighs and passing a lot of gas. When she would drag herself erect, a thick mat of silky fur coated the carpet and furniture. This we collected in paper bags, planning one day to learn to spin, and from the resulting dog thread knit dog garments, earning big bucks.

Oddly, like a switch being thrown, she would rouse herself from her depressive moods to chase Ambler around the house with a vicious frenzy that terrified us. We would stand on the couch as the two would race around the circular floor plan barking, growling and spitting with murderous intensity. I still don’t know if they liked or hated each other.

In retrospect they were friends.

Doubtless it was just the scattered way I was living in those days: working several part-time jobs and worrying about money, I never kept either animal.