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Wednesday, December 27, 2006

Some Dogs I've Known

My wife and Wally and I went for a walk in the woods this morning. On a couple of long stretches of incline, my wife told us to go on ahead, she'd catch up. When we would get fairly far ahead, I was struck by how Wally would stop and turn back to wait for "Mama." I marveled, as I had many times before, at Wally's conscious presence.

Wally, happy on New Year's Day 2005

Wally, happy on New Year's Day 2005I was reminded of that profound observation by someone long ago: dog spelled backwards is god. And if I thought of God as, say, the sum total of consciousness, I could believe in that, something manifestly existing not only in humans, but also in dogs...in all such living creatures and maybe even in those rooted to the ground, for who was I to say that God as a tree was not experiencing the wind, the rain, the sun, squirrels, frogs, owls? I reminded myself to consult Rilke when we got home. From the ninth of his Duino Elegies:
Sind wir vielleicht h i e r, um zu sagen: Haus,
Brücke, Brunnen, Tor, Krug, Obstbaum, Fenster,—
höchstens: Säule, Turm . . . aber zu s a g e n, verstehs,
oh zu sagen s o, wie selber die Dinge niemals
innig meinten zu sein....

[Are we, perhaps, here just for saying: House,
Bridge, Fountain, Gate, Jug, Olive tree, Window,—
possibly: Pillar, Tower? . . . but for saying, remember,
oh, for such saying as never the things themselves
hoped so intensely to be....
          J.B. Leishman and Stephen Spender translation]
And waiting for Mama there with Wally, I remembered other dogs, other presences of God.

The first dog I can remember was Poncho, a collie mixture my parents had when we lived on a Petaluma chicken ranch around 1950. I remember once, when I was desperately sad—why specifically I can't recall, but it could have been after a fight between my parents, or after I'd run away home from school because my feelings had been hurt—sitting on the porch steps weeping and holding Poncho for comfort. Sometime later, my dad had to kill Poncho (a .22 shot to the head) because he bit my niece Stormy on the face and neck after she reached for his food bowl. And thus for the billion billionth time was God experiencing violent killing and being killed, as though God hadn't experienced it enough times already in the constant uproar of the food chain.

Twenty-five years later, my wife and I bought a springer spaniel for our children. I can't remember whether they named him Dale, or he was already named that, but "Dale" he was, a nervous dog who shed copious amounts of long, silky hair. He was permitted in the house, but he mainly lived outside. We had a plastic "sky kennel" for him, situated in the narrow space between our house and the redwood fence separating our seventh-of-an-acre tract lot from our neighbor's, there in San Jose.

When we migrated from California to North Carolina in 1983, Dale rode in the sky kennel in our airplane's luggage hold. Spiritually, Dale was mostly our son's dog. Our daughter didn't seem that attached to him. But of course my wife and I did most of the chores of caring for him, and we did all of them after August 1984, when our son, who had been playing the cello since fourth grade, went away to complete high school and take his bachelor's degree in music at the North Carolina School of the Arts. Dale seemed very unhappy living outside. We didn't have a fence, so he was continually hooked to a long lead attached to a line stretched between two oak trees. He wasn't welcome inside for long because he shed so much.

One of the very worst things I have ever done in my life was taking Dale to "be put down," with the concurrence of my wife and daughter, but without having consulted our son. When he came home and found out, he immediately took off for a long walk and wouldn't say anything about it afterwards. Nor has he ever been willing to talk about it, even on the several occasions when I have brought it up, hoping each time to be forgiven. But even more than that, I remember the vet asking me just before he injected Dale, "Did he bite someone?" And I said, as I held Dale in my arms, probably to comfort myself more than him, "No, Dale never bit anybody." During that moment I wanted to call the whole thing off, doubting that I could decide for Dale that it was better for him to die than to go on living unhappily. God experiencing both innocent death and remorse at once.

Ten years later, my wife wanted a dog and chose another long-haired shedder, a ten-year-old golden retriever named Ruffy.

Ruffy, August 1995

Ruff, August 1985But by this time she'd ceased to care whether a dog shed or not, so Ruffy lived inside and was welcome to spend part of each night on our bed. Ruffy was the dog I was taking out for a walk on that blizzardy evening of January 10, 1996 when my feet flew out from under me on a frozen step and I landed so hard on my butt that the brain tumor I didn't know I had started to bleed. When I was in rehab after surgery, my wife brought Ruffy to see me. I came to regard Ruffy as "my angel in disguise" for occasioning the tumor's discovery. He and I were photographed for a newspaper article about it.

My wife wanted another dog, a young one who she hoped would learn from Ruffy's calm, gentle ways. She'd learned about poodles' not shedding and we bought a pup from a neighbor who bred poodles. We chose "Little Blue Spot," the one marked to distinguish him from his cream colored twin. That of course was our Sir Walter Raleigh, or "Wally."

Wally almost still Little Blue Spot

Wally almost still Little Blue Spot

Wally at about 3-4 months old

Wally at about 3-4 months oldHe was of no mind to learn from Ruffy, however, bossing his appointed "mentor" around from the very first day.

Ruffy, always patient with his "mentee"

Ruffy suffering Wally's rough-housing

Ruffy suffering Wally's rough-housingI wonder how much Wally missed Ruffy after he died. Not so much, I think, as my wife and I did.

And, besides Wally and God, another dog I'm still getting to know:

A dog named SpikeI did liken myself to a dog, after all, in a comment to Tom Sheepandgoats the other day:

Most of my posts since I started blogging back in the spring seem to have been motivated by a dog's desire to pee on a post, the post being George W. Bush. Me saying, "I've not been taken in by the man. And I'm here again to say so."
I had already written (in my "Youie" journals of 1989, I think) that when a dog marks a spot he's saying "I AM" (as the burning bush characterized Yahweh to Moses).

11 comments:

  1. Nice post. I noticed you said photo in various places, but there was no photo. Do you intend to add them?

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  2. Just what I needed - a good cry. I can't read about beloved friends passing on without getting all choked up. Sorry for your losses.

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  3. Steve, I have digital photos of Wally and myself, but I wanted to take a new one of myself (with my gelled spikes), and I need to scan printed photos of Dale and Ruffy (and perhaps of Wally soon after he was Little Blue Spot), but I won't have a scanner available until Tuesday.

    You are a lovely person, Southern, to get all choked up over my post.

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  4. Thanks, I like the change of pace with the green.

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  5. A good friend of mine was having a devil of a time with the white on black. When my background was briefly green I was trying to get a textured background pattern to repeat, but I couldn't achieve it on blogger (haven't yet, anyway). I didn't think the green worked well, so I'm now trying dark slate gray (color #2F4F4F). It's very easy to alter background color—that is, without trying a different template. Background color is specified near the top of my template (and I'm assuming in all blogger templates). You can see a large sample of colors, with hex color codes at http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_colornames.asp.

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  6. That was a very touching article, which triggered memories. I confess I have a soft spot for pets, though like you, I have had to put one down, which was not easy. And my Dad, while I was away at school, put down Jenny, our Beagle & Weimaraner cross. I didn't hold it against him, though. The dog was old and incontinent.

    When my daughter was born and we were searching for a name, I suggested Jenny. Why, asked my wife. Because when I was a boy, we had a dog named Jenny. WE ARE NOT NAMING OUR DAUGHTER AFTER YOUR DOG, YOU TOMATO! said she. But I loved my dog. Now my daughter has a different name, which probably coincides with someone else's dog.

    Whereas you appear to have stuck to the true course, I have gone apostate and have two cats. But they shed as much as dogs, and we have tumbleweeds rolling around the house.

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  7. We had a cat once. Actually Oscar was our daughter's cat, but he sort of got left here when she moved on with her independent life. Poor Oscar got diabetes and, while I was willing to do the insulin injections, my wife wasn't. But we think this story had a happy ending...at least to the point where we still knew anything about Oscar's story: a young man who was interning at the local vet's volunteered to care for Oscar. But that was some years ago, and Oscar was a kitten in 1991, so I must assume that he no longer lives. (We have a photo of Oscar displayed on our mantle, along with a photo of Little Blue Spot).

    I think my soft spot isn't just for "pets," but for most creatures. I felt heartsick to discover that TWO black snakes (a couple?) had gotten snagged in our deer netting and perished. Felt the same when our rambunctious Wally raided a rabbit hole in our back yard and carried off a baby rabbit. And each time a feathered creature runs into one of our many windows and dies instantly of a broken neck.

    The "food chain" as the more general phenomenon of the wheel of life and death is grandly beautiful, has its comic moments, and is fundamentally tragic.

    I harbor a deep suspicion that the main source of religious belief is its use as a crutch to remove the unbearable sadness of a person's anticipated demise. Suspecting that, I would feel compromised to assent to the "promise" of The Gospel According to John III:xvi.

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  8. Moristotle, I thought you attended the Episcopalian church. What an atheist you are. But there is such a thing as a deathbed conversion I'm told.

    I don't remember Stormy being bitten myself. I wish I did. I had a dog named Pancho when we lived in the country outside Exeter. He was left at home when I left. Do you remember him?

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  9. "Grandma"! Great that you left a comment. I think I know which of my surviving sisters you are too! <smile>

    I'm confident that the "Pancho" of your memory and the one of mine are the same dog. I myself can't remember his coming with us from anywhere to Petaluma. But I would have thought you'd remember Stormy's being bitten. I mean, I think she was visiting us with you. Could you have repressed that? It was pretty traumatic for everyone. After all, Daddy thought it necessary to put Pancho down (as we euphemistically say).

    You're right about my attending the Episcopal Church (if we take that strictly in the past tense).

    But if you get the idea "what an atheist I am" from this post about dogs I've known, I wonder what you'd think if you read much further (especially starting with September 9 and coming up to date)?

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  10. I love seeing how people respond to animals. They do add so much to our lives. Curious to know if since this writing you and your son have made peace over Dale. My sister I think never forgave my parents for giving away her first dog Mickey, although his life was probably better on the farm he went to instead of a small yard.

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    1. I hope that my son & I have, but I have wanted to talk about the incident way more than he has. By the way, I see from the comments 15 years ago that Tom Sheepandgoats and the Memphis Astrologer were among my earliest blog acquaintances. And I think that Astrologer was the person who introduced Ed Rogers & me. (I refer to Ed’s reply to Neil Hoffmann’s question.)

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