There goes the flat screen TV...and other musings

Just wrote a $1400 check to my credit card company for Elky's vet bills. Needless to say, we won't be getting that sexy new flat screen hi-def digital TV that I was lusting after. Here's what I told Ellen when I wrote her a periodic update on the doggies:

Ellen & Marv, just a quick doggie update. We're all fine now, but we had a scary few days there when Elky was hospitalized with hemmorhagic gastroenteritis. The vet says they don't really know what brings on this condition (prolonged gastric upset, vomiting, diarrhea, dehydration) but I think it was due to gobbling crumbs of suet and birdseed that the large woodpecker spilled onto the ground below the feeder. Whatever the cause, our Elky girl was a sick puppy for about 5 days, and for 2 of those was kept overnight on i.v. fluids.

She had been sick for three days and, even after I put her on a very bland diet (boiled rice and poached chicken breast) she didn't seem to be getting better. Glad I took her in: the emergency vet (these things always seem to happen on a weekend) said she was seriously dehydrated, and that she was in pretty serious danger of sepsis due to the condition of her bowel. You know how vocal Elky normally is. She had gotten very quiet and subdued and very listless, so it was obvious this was no ordinary tummy trouble. I'm very relieved to report that she's back to 100% now: barking at the TV, at the evil UPS truck that delivers her kibble, at the dangerous children walking to the bus stop, at me when I'm mixing up her kibble, etc. etc. And she has regained the contagious bounce in her stride as she and Tass lead me down to the woods for their morning walk.

Do you find her to be a very serious dog? She seems to be intent on everything she's doing, and I swear she looks at each walk as a major career move: she's completely absorbed, totally concentrating. Tass and I are often 30 yards down the trail ahead of her because she's stopped to study some smell or other, and then she comes racing to catch up. Tassel, on the other hand, is happy-go-lucky Miss Relaxed. Aside from her penchant for staying at the head of the pack, she seems much more light-hearted in her enjoyment of the outing. If I stop for some reason, she politely waits for me 10 yards up the trail, her tail wagging as she watches me to see that I'm not going off on another route or something. If I say her name or just talk to her, she trots happily back for a skritch, and then goes back to resume her position. She will stand there and soak up being petted and loved on, while Elky barely tolerates it. It's as if she's got important work to do and is impatient to be off and doing it.

When we're inside it's sometimes a completely different story. Joanna has put a quilt over the hassock/foot stool where I sit to keep the dog hair off, and Elky loves to jump up there and lie between my feet and rest her head on one of my legs. Joanna says I'm turning her into a lap dog, but I think Elky's really too independent ever to go that far. But she likes her cuddles on her own terms. For example: early morning is my meditation time, and this occurs after I take the dogs out for their early potty break. I sit on a low kneeling bench and a padded mat. Both dogs come to greet me and get a skritch when I'm settling into position, and then Tassel normally wanders off to her heated bed we got for her hip problems. Elky stays there in front of me with her head in my lap in perfect position for me to give her skritches with both hands. This goes on for five minutes or so and then she either lies there snoring through my meditation or walks off to join Tass on the cozy bed. She trots along beside or behind me whenever I'm in the middle of a chore, going to get the mail, take out the recycling, etc, and she sits and the entrance to the kitchen and watches me while I'm cooking. She usually snores beside me when I'm reading or working on the computer. It may be that she figures I'd wander off into the street if not for her constant vigilance...maybe that's part of her job.

Tassel will follow us outside, but when she sees we're only going to the mailbox she stands at the top of the driveway and waits, ears erect and her tongue protruding that silly half-inch that it does when she's concentrating on something. As I write this I note that we just returned from the mailbox: she waited at the top of the driveway and, when Ekly trotted back toward the house with me, did her ambush tactic to get some playful wrestling on the way to the front door. Tassel has taken it upon herself to closely monitor the chipmunk that took up residence under the outdoor storage box where I keep (and usually spill) the birdseed. If Elky is intent on my every move, Tassel is doubly so when it comes to this little guy. She stands and stares into the narrow space between the box and the house, then trots to the other end of the box where it is pushed up against the chimney.

Tass is our protector: no pedestrian or hiker makes it down our road without a sober and prolonged warning from her. No car door closes within a block without her disapproval. She is as intent on our protection as Elky is on supervising my every move.

Well, the trillium are in bloom in the woods across our road and the starflowers aren't far behind. And when we've had a day without rain, it makes for a very pleasant place for walking, despite all the fallen trees we have to scramble across. You're welcome any time to come for tea and time with the girls. Hope the spring is going the way you like it.

Jim

Time does its thing...

Today we celebrate Elky's and Tassel's arrival into our lives. They have become my devoted "posse", as Joanna calls them, and are better for morale than my 400 daily miligrams of Welbutrin. Who would guess that scratching a smelly dog behind the ears would have such a beneficial effect on the one doing the scratching? But there it is...another miracle in the Big Mystery. Still, it ain't all roses:

The Buddhists call it annica, or change: the observation that nothing remains the same, not really, not even for a minute. Everything is in a state of flux, always. For us the big implication of this, of course, is that we are here on the earth only temporarily. The evidence of this truth is everywhere, and yet in our drowsy wishfulness we ignore it as best we can, preferring to dwell on other things. But reality has a way of persisting on its own course, and however pleasant and comforting they may be, the fact remains: our dreams are awry of the world.

On the left of this x-ray you can see a dog's laterally luxated patella. I snagged the photo off the web, but if it were from the several-hundred-dollar examination Tassel got back in January it would also show mineralization of one of the discs in her lower back (interestingly, the same one in my back that is herniated: L5-L6) and considerable arthritis in both legs and ankles.

This, our kindly vet explains, is why she now limps around the house after our walks. Several hundred dollars worth of x-rays revealed that her knees and back are as bad or worse than mine. So our forays are shorter and more to the point, potty-wise, unless I leave her behind and take Elky (and sometimes Jojo) to the park or woods for a good romp. Tass is on a combination of rimadyl (for pain), adequan (a wonder drug for arthritis), and a heated bed beside my reading chair. At the age of nine dog years (Tassel last January, Elky next month, Jim way back in 2004) I have discovered that our mortal coil has ceased to be so tightly wound, and I often remind myself that whatever it is that I want to leave behind post-shuffle is best moved to the front burner.

Dog people are silly

It was about a year ago that we pulled up behind an old gas-guzzler sedan at the stop light. I'm guessing the rather large and seedy guy behind the wheel was somewhere in his sixties. As we waited for the light to change a Chihuahua jumped from the front seat onto the head rest and then into the guy's lap. The driver shifted the dog to his left arm and cradled it there and began to rub noses with the dog. The dog was in ecstasy, licking the guy all over his face, and you could see his lips moving as he talked to the little dog. When the light changed he did a reasonable job of dividing his attention between the dog and the road, but you could tell by the look on the dog's face (in rapt attention on the driver) that the conversation was still going on. Joanna and I chuckled at how some people get sort of loopy about their dogs and to what ridiculous extremes they sometimes go with them. At the time we were coming back from Costco where I had encountered another sixties-something guy, this one with a little schnauzer sitting in his shopping cart. I rolled my eyes when I heard him talking to the dog, explaining things as though the pooch wanted to know the difference between saltines and club crackers, etc. I rolled them again when I saw that he had brought a towel to put in the child-seat portion of the shopping cart so the dog would be more comfortable. Some people.

Three or four months later we adopted Elky & Tassel. Fast forward six more months. I was sitting at the very same traffic light, and realized that I was explaining to Elky where we were going next on our errands (Home Depot). She was looking at me with this rapt expression on her face and when I leaned down to her, she licked me all over my face. When the light turned green, I pulled her up next to me so she could stand on my right leg and see out the windshield (well, if it were possible to see around all the 'nose art' she had deposited there), then I proceeded to Home Depot, having done a reasonable job of dividing my attention between dog and road, where I studied the various kinds of shopping carts to decide which one would be most suitable for wheeling my two dogs around while I looked for plumbing parts and paint. The two dogs looked back and forth from me to the merchandise and other shoppers. I am fairly sure I detected some eye rolling on a couple of them. I suppose it is a common reaction to seeing a seedy-looking, sixties-something guy, crooning away to his dogs and wheeling them around the store in a shopping cart. Some people.

On the way home I found myself wondering if anyone would mind if I brought the girls into the library. I was only planning to be in there for 10 or 15 minutes....

Happy Birthday, Tass!

Please join me in wishing Tassel a very happy 9th birthday! If you shared your mornings with us you'd recognize Tassel as the goofy red and white girl who starts all the rowdy games with her side-ways dance and "helicopter" tail action. Yep, and she's the one who quickly finishes her morning relief break and then runs back to me for a skritch while Elky studiously sniffs the weeds at roadside for evidence of overnight visitors. Now, for the brag:

A couple of days ago I opened the front door and stepped out on the porch to let the girls have their morning potty break. I'd been getting sloppy about the leash (we live at the end of a dirt road in rural area where there is very little traffic) and just as I looked up to notice a man taking his large boxer for a walk in the road, the girls spotted same and took off at a dead run, barking their heads off. Man and dog stopped suddenly (his dog was on leash), anxious at what these two crazy muscle bullets had in mind. I shouted "no" and called Tassel and Elky to come. By this time the dogs were more than 2/3 of the way to their target and visions of lawsuits were dancing in my head when, lo and behold, both dogs slowed, turned, stopped, and looked back at me! I called them to me again and Tassel immediately trotted back, happy as a clam. Elky followed, looking back over her shoulder and muttering at the boxer, no doubt saying, "You are one lucky dog, mate." Red faced, I apologized to man and boxer alike, sent a silent thank-you heavenward, and stood there astonished, praising the dogs as they stood at my feet waiting for me to clip on the leashes. (Note to self: from here on out, attach leashes before opening the door.)

I've had dogs over the years, but I have NEVER had dogs who would, on command, break off from flat-out, hard running pursuit of the temptation of the moment, and come to me. Am I not blessed to share in the lives of these two miracles?

Dog noises: When Tass is tired of waiting for me to finish my coffee and serve up the kibble, she flops on the floor nearby giving a loud and laughable sigh/grunt that is equal parts world-weariness and exasperation. What a character!

About Elky

I have already told you a bit about happy Tassel, who moves in grace in beauty. Let me now sing a loopy and spontaneous song to Elky, the vociferocious girl.

The thing is, this little dog has some issues. The same true to some degree for all of us, I suppose, and while Elky's issues are nothing to be alarmed about, they sure make living with her an interesting proposition. Take mealtime: she follows me around the house most of the time, but when mealtime approaches she stays particularly close. When I walk toward the laundry room where I keep the dogs' bowls and food, she begins to whine in a squeaky voice in anticipation, and when I take down from the shelf and open the plastic bucket containing the kibble, unless I have given her the "quiet" command (the hand signal accompanying the verbal command is to draw the right hand knife-like across my throat), she will bark at me and growl at Tassel. I feed her in the laundry room with the door closed, lest she run between her bowl and Tassel's, growling and fretting.

Elky considers anything to do with grooming as torture. Yesterday the dogs managed to find some stagnant and fetid drainage from the compost bin and, as dogs are wont to do, rolled in it. As the worst offender, Tassel went into the tub first and was her usual compliant self, even standing still while I trimmed her nails afterwards. When I called Elky for her turn she sat across the room staring at me as though she couldn't understand what I wanted her to do. All I have to do is say "brush" (a common expression in a house with two Corgis) and she starts looking for a place to hide.

In the evenings Tassel generally goes to bed in her crate around 8:30, but Elky prefers to stay up with us regardless of the hour, even if it's simply to doze at our feet.

On our trips in my pickup truck to the park she gets very excited whenever we slow down or when she hears the turn signal...which she interprets as "Are we there yet? Oh boy!" She has an adorable intensity in everything she does: be it watching me with her bright eyes to find out what is next on the agenda, dancing around me on the way to the back door to receive her afternoon treat, or jumping into and out of the truck before and after our morning run. Her intense gaze conveys the impression of a sharp curiosity about the world...in particular whatever it is that I am doing in her world...and perhaps because of this impression I find that I engage in a fairly continuous one-way conversation with her: "OK, Elky, here we go. You're a great dog, but wait, WAIT!, till I get the leash on you and Tassel. Want to start at the pond or the soccer field? When we finish our walk I'm going to have to run by the grocery store and pick up some things for lunch, but don't worry, I'll park in the shade and won't be but just a minute." And so on. She divides her attention between eye contact with me and and intent survey of our route and progress. To observe dog and man would be to conclude that the old guy is certifiably losing it, the creature at his side is perhaps really a small person in a Corgi suit, or mabye that he is wired up with one of those disconcerting "no-hands" cel phones that have people walking down the grocery aisles speaking as though to the canned tomatoes or an imaginary friend.


Joanna, my bride of 42 years says that my one-way conversation with the dogs is like when I was a boy and sang to my dog.

She refers to a childhood memory I shared with her when we were in the process of adopting Elky and Tassel: it is a dreamy summer day and I am sitting on the shady back porch steps with my first dog, Sandy, a female Spitz-Chow mix. The dog lay on her stomach on the cool concrete and I knelt there with my arms around her neck. I was about nine years old and so full of love and adoration for my dog that I felt my heart would burst with it. There was every comfort in her nearness and I remember singing to her loopy, spontaneous songs that seemed to pour out of me.

Dog with the happy heart

It is hard for me to describe one dog without reference to the other. Elky and Tassel are quite different in temperment, and I have come to think of them as two differently charged particles that in many ways seem to define each other. But I will try to keep the focus on Tassel alone in this post, the girl in the picture cooling her heels at a recent herding event.

Joanna calls her the dog with the happy heart, and that's how I think of her now. My early morning routine begins around 6:30 or 7:00. I put the tea kettle on to boil, feed the marvelous cats Mavis and Jake, and then go to my study where the dogs sleep each night in their crates...as they have each night for practically their entire lives. They are wide awake and eager for their morning to begin, barely pausing for a skritch before loping to the front door. After a routine "sit stay" to give me room to open the door, they watch me carefully for the "OK" that marks the start of the morning scramble. For a dog who just spent 8 or 10 hours in her crate, one would assume the first order of the day would be to find a place to pee, but for Tass it is to gallop down the driveway, tail held high and wagging, then turn around and run back to me for a quick and enthusiastic embrace before making the circuit again. She is the embodiment of that phrase from Psalms, "This is the day the Lord has made; let us be rejoice and be glad in it."

I have never known a dog so compliant when it comes to recall. I walk Tassle and Elky for an hour or so each morning, and for half the time or more the dogs are off leash: romping up and down our wooded trails or hiking across the open fields at the 95 acre Battlepoint Park. Tassle likes to "take point" to use the old infantry phrase: she'll lead our party, staying anywhere from a few feet ahead to 30 yards or more. She is always sure to know where the rest of us are, even though she might be out of sight. She hesitates at any trail junctions or obvious branches in our walk long enough to get her cue for which way we'll go, but much of the time she is well down the road ahead of us. But regardless of what fascinations of scent or sight she may be enjoying, when I call her she turns at once and comes to me...and she's as glad to see me then as she is on that first morning romp.

There are many feral rabbits at the park, progeny of years of liberated Easter bunnies (and thus of many sizes, shapes, and colors) and it is Tassle's considerable pleasure to chase them to the entrance of their warrens that honeycomb the thickets of wild rose and blackberry brambles. The other morning we came over a little berm and surprised a half dozen or more grazing in an open field near the park's rock quarry. The dogs lit out immediately in pursuit, the rabbits scattered and, while there was little danger of their actually catching one, I called the dogs back lest they bolt through the gate and into the road. Much to my surprise and pleasure, Tass abandoned the chase immediately and came trotting back, tongue lolling, and with a most satisfied look on her face. Elky is so used to following her on our walks that she, too, turned around.

Midway through our walk we come to a paved path encircling the duck pond. A water faucet stands near the path, and some kind soul has placed a large water bowl beneath it where we stop for a drink. I usually wash out the dish and refresh the water, then step back to watch Tass's delightful routine. All the dogs I have known drink by placing their noses near the water and lapping it up with their tongues. Tassel, on the other hand, pushes her muzzle all the way under the water, blowing bubbles out her nose and sipping the water rather like a horse or cow might do. On our walks she follows this by placing both her front paws in the bowl and making little digging motions. Whether she's literally cooling her heels or just doing a little doggie rejoicing in the day is anybody's guess.

One of the things I most like is to watch Tass in motion: she has the most beautifully even gait I have seen on a dog. I would never have thought a stumpy-legged Corgi on the move would be anything but comical waddle, but Tassle has perfect balance and poise. Her ears are at perked, her head is high, and she moves across the landscape as though she were queen of the world.

Change and hitchhikers

These days we seem to be spending almost as much time cleaning up afterwards as we did romping in the woods. Wet spring weather inexorably moved on to clear skies and warmer days, giving us respite from the post-walk rubdown with the tattered bath towels set aside for the dogs. But as dry weather persists and the season progresses, I find myself doing a lot of nit-picking when we finish our walks. Plants of the Pacific Northwest Coast by Pojar and Mackinnon, Lone Pine Publishing, 1994, tells me that the culprit is Osmorhiza chilensis, commonly known as mountain sweet-cicely. We find it along the wider sections of our wooded paths, an unassuming perennial member of the carrot family, about a foot tall, and notable for its spread of coarsely toothed, slightly hairy leaves. It seemed to me that the plant has something of a quiet dignity about it, but in my earlier spring walks I was more interested in the forest superstars: trillium, starflower, and the emerging sword and bracken ferns.

O. chilensis gets harder to ignore as the season progresses. Intent on watching the trillium blossoms morph into seedpod (with the view of picking a few to cultivate in the shadier parts of my yard) I failed to notice the carrot cousin taking on a rangier aspect. The little non-descript white flowers weren't all that appealing, and besides, I was having to keep one eye peeled for the stinging nettles also lurk along our route.

The solstice came and went. The damp carpet of compost and loam dried out and the newly hatched winter wrens grew up and moved on. And all this time mountain sweet-cicely was developing its fruit, about which Pojar and Mackinnon have this to say: "black, needle-like, 12-22 mm long, narrowing below tip, broadening into a beak, bristly-hairy, often catching on clothing or fur." My emphasis. What the guidebook fails to mention is that the mature seeds spring from the weed at the slightest disturbance, show an unfortunate affinity for athletic socks and the knit fabric that lines our sneakers and that, once imbedded, are the devil to remove. And "needle-like" hardly does them justice.

So what began in the spring as an attractive and unassuming border at the edge of the path has become a fanged gauntlet the dogs and I have to run if we're to impose ourselves on the forest across the road. As I go at my socks and sneaker insides with tweezers this morning I take pale solace in the knowledge that the dogs and I are helping to broadcast the message of Osmorhiza chilensis across the face of the green earth. May I get as many trilliums in my yard next spring as their carrot cousins from hell.