my dogs-part four

I got the name of a woman who did work for a rescue group and called her about a dog. She had a thick german accent and invited me to come see some puppies that would be ready to adopt in a few weeks.

They were Lab/Cocker Spaniel pups (imagine that mating in either direction!) Mimi and I went and when we got to her house and rang the bell there were cats and dogs coming up the steps from the basement and down the steps from the living area of the raised ranch house. Dozens of them...dozens. There were cats in the kitchen sink and one sleeping in the open microwave. She must have had 40 or 50 creatures and in a crate with the Cocker mother--that was the mating, by the way) we found Sadie.

She looked like a Lab puppy til her dying day...and acted like one too! A clown and goof-ball, so happy to see anyone that she would pee when guests arrived. She never met a stranger and the only proof that she was her mother's daughter was some Cocker curly hair on her chest and ears that didn't look quite right.

She was my favorite dog of all of them--so loving and needful. (Bern's favorite is our current dog, Bela, another Puli, who tolerates affection and is a bit aloof. Obviously I like 'needful' and bern likes Independence. Go figure.

She was with us for 11 years, I think though linear time always confounds me. Our kids grew up and went to college and then went away while she was here. She was a constant companion, a wondrous healer, a dear and joyous dog. I would walk her several days a week down at Hillside Cemetery, letting her off lead since she never ventured far. We explored that cemetery hundreds of times. It was her favorite walk.

Once we had someone working in the house while we were gone. When Bern got home, Sadie was gone. A neighbor dropped by to say she thought the animal control people had picked her up for her own good--she was wandering around aimlessly (another characteristic I liked since I am prone to aimless wandering...) and the dog warden probably saved her life. Bern went down to the dog jail and found her in a cage in the dark area. Sadie was so happy she peed. Of course, she was often that happy.

We had lots of cats then, and a rat for a while, and Sadie loved them all. Of course, she loved everything and everyone though she once bit my son's nose when he snuck up on her sleeping and startled her. He never quite forgave her but there is that thing about letting sleeping dogs, well you know it....

A month or so before her death, she fell off the deck onto a concrete cover over an old well. She was getting a bit addled and that addled her more. We were watching TV one night and she had a seizure. I wrapped her in her blanket and Bern drove to the Vet hospital. A kind young vet told us--'we can stop this seizure, but we can't stop what's causing it and it will happen closer and closer now."

Will she suffer, I asked.
The Vet nodded her head, I'm afraid so, she said.
So it might be best....
It would be best, but it is your decision.

Had I loved her less I would have chosen to have her longer, for my needs, not hers. I didn't want her to go even though the damage in her head was severe. Had I loved her less, I would have made her live on...That is the awful thing about dogs, we are like gods to them, we make god-like decisions. And had I loved her less I would have put her through what the vet said couldn't be more than a few months of pain and seizures and late night trips to the hospital to stop one more seizure until the one that killed her.

I held her as they gave her a shot to stop the seizure. She was calm and sweet and licked the tears from our faces. Then they gave her the shot to stop her heart. She didn't flinch at all. The young vet closed her eyes and left us with us for a while. I was sobbing like a child. It is that exquisite, razor sharp pain--a deep, clean wound--that people feel when they lose a dog to the inevitability of eternity.

When her ashes came--I still have the simple wooden box they came in--I took the plastic bag to Hillside cemetery, made a small hole in it and walked the walk to our favorite haunts. I take Bela there sometimes, but avoid the paths I walked only with Sadie and walk still in my heart....

my dogs-part three

Little Annie

Our life was complicated for a few years after Finney. The kids asks for a dog but we hadn't the heart for it until one night Bern came home with Little Annie.

Annie was a Brezon Frize (totally misspelled) that Bern and her friend found wandering lost in Edgewood Park in New Haven. Sherry already had two dogs, so Bern brought her home to our house on Everitt Street in New Haven. She had been lost for a long time because when we cut away her terribly matted hair we found a harness under all the mats. We had no idea how old she was but she was so scared we couldn't let her go. We called her Annie--like little orphan Annie--and she loved us so.

It is a mistake to apply human feelings to dogs--they are dogs and we are humans, after all--but Annie was, I think, so 'grateful' to have been rescued from whatever it felt like to be alone and abandoned that she was endlessly showing gratitude. She seldom got out of accidental 'kicking distance' from one of us. She wanted to be up against our bodies all the time. She adored our children and even though she would hide when Josh's teenage friends came over (I'm convinced her 'days on the street' were made worse by adolescent boys) she never stopped saying 'thank you' to us.

I've never much liked little dogs, but Annie broke the mold. She had this ribbon like tongue that was always flashing out to lick a hand, a face, any part of us. She was a clown after she got used to not being on the street. We spoiled her terribly and she responded in kind--loving us beyond measure.

She moved with us to Cheshire and was so good about staying near that we, foolishly, would let her out to go to the bathroom, believing she'd never venture far enough away to be in danger. But one day she wandered into Cornwall Avenue and was hit by a car. Josh was in high school and there when it happened and almost beat up the poor man who hit her. I wasn't home so Bern took her to the Vet and the Dr. there rubbed her as he told Bern she was most certainly dead. She brought Annie home so I could touch her a last time and help bury her in our Pet Cemetery just past our deck. Cats and dogs and Guinea pigs aplenty and a rat to boot--about a dozen loved creatures rest there, near us.

The man who hit Annie was so upset he called Animal Control who came to see us a few days later with all the regulations about how to bury a dog--who knew there were such things? Or should be?--wanting to know if I'd done it right.

I offered to dig Annie up and show them and they left me alone. We buried her with her blanket and her bowl and one of her toys and wept and wept.

Sometimes the best things that happen in life are things you didn't expect--a strange little dog, lost and alone, who gave us the joy and pleasure and priviledge to give her a home where she was safe and loved....What a gift little Annie was. And that ribbon tongue...nothing like it on your nose and face....

At least we gave her four years of comfort and belonging. But she gave us much more, so much more. That's the way it is with dogs--no matter how good you are to them, they are better to you. I assure you of that.

Little Orphan Annie--a gift from God...

(The problem all these memories brings out is that dogs don't live nearly as long as you and I. So we have to know we'll lose them to that magic door of death, most likely. And probably it is better for them than to have their humans die on them....So we run through them over our lifetime and their ghosts hover round us, sniffing and licking and barking and playing...maybe we should have parrots or turtles--both of which live 40 years or so. But, seriously, is there a parrot or turtle who can nose your arm when you are busy and make you melt and you touch their loving face and let them kiss you and realize they are calling you to be a better person than you are????)

Two left: Sadie and Bela. That's coming....What a joy to remember these creatures who shared my life and made me better than I am....Dogs....

My dogs-part two

3. Templomkerti Paloc Suba (aka Finney and Louie)

I didn't get another dog (since I was all over going to school and such) until after Bern and I were married.

One cold day in Cambridge, my wedding band came off and disappeared into the snow. A guy with a big white dog came by and saw me searching. He showed his dog his wedding ring and the dog snuffled in the snow and found mine! I asked what kind of dog it was and he told me it was a Hungarian Sheep Dog. So when we moved back to Morgantown we happened upon a Hungarian Veterinarian who referred us to a woman in Pittsburgh named Magna Vudi. We called her and after several conversations decided we might be worthy to own a Puli. A few months later a litter arrived from Budapest, bred by a Jesuit priest (Templomkerti means 'church yard' in Hungarian) and we were invited to have one.

What neither the guy with the dog in Cambridge or Magna Vudi shared with us is that there are two distinct breeds called "Hungarian Sheep Dogs". One is the Komadore which is large, white and practically mute for all they bark. The other is a Pulik which is smaller, black and capable of barking for hours if need be. The Puli came from Asia with Atila the Hun and is one of the oldest breeds in the world. The Komadore is native to Hungary. The Pulik (the k is silent and seldom even used in writing the breed's name) herds the sheep and alerts the presence of Lions and Tigers and Bears. The Komadore drives the Lions and Tigers and Bears away. Until we climbed the stairs to Magna Vudi's apartment and heard 6 dogs barking like we were Lions and Tigers and Bears, we had been expecting a Komadore. Instead we got a Puli.

All the way back from pittsburgh he pushed himself up under the driver's seat--what he did most every time he was in a car and then enjoyed the ride--and bern and I agreed to never let him on our bed. When we got home bern ran up the steps before me, ran in our bed room and dropped him on the bed. He'd won from the beginning.... He liked riding in the car so much that when we lived in Charleston we'd let him sit in the car while we were in the back yard. One day he knocked the car out of gear and drifted backward through the driveway gate. I swear he was trying to steer and get away....

I was reading a dog book at Barnes and Noble the other day and of the Puli it said "most Puli's own people rather than the other way around." They are smarter than whips, stubborn as a winter storm and as loyal to their people as Kamikaze pilots were to the Emperor. And, they are a pain in the ass.

How smart was Finney? I used to show off by saying to him, "go get your ball and put it in your bowl". He'd look at me like I was an idiot but off he'd run and find his ball and come drop it in his food bowl and then look at me like I was an idiot.

How stubborn was he? When we brought Josh home from the hospital he tried to climb up into my arms to see him and wouldn't leave him alone. I thought we'd have to get rid of him because he would hurt our baby. I took him in the basement and wept. But Bern put Josh on the floor so Finney could smell him up and down and from that moment on he would have killed Lions and Tigers and Bears for Josh.

How loyal was he? We'd take Finney and the kids to Wooster Park and let the kids go wild and Finney would circle them like his little lambs the whole time we were there and park himself between any human or dog that came near them with his fierce teeth showing until we called him off. A Puli is a bit aloof and not good with strangers--but the people the dog knows need not fear lions or tigers or bears when he's around.

He lived with us in Morgantown, Alexandria, Charleston and New Haven. He was a pain in the ass but we loved him and he never failed to be unerringly loyal. He was smarter than we were by half, but we were young and up to challenging his dominance.

He was 12 or 14 when we left him with a house sitter to go to the beach. He hated the beach. His hair and disposition didn't take well to sand and heat and crowds of strangers on the beach. He was the talk of Wooster Square because he'd go up to the park by himself each day. But while we were gone, his unerring sense of knowing how to cross Chapel street let him down and he was killed by a car. Coming home to an empty house was one of the most painful days of my life.

I could tell you a thousand stories about him, even now, some 25 years later. You never forget a dog that smart, independent and loyal. Never. I still miss him.

Oh, his name....He was Finney after Albert Finney the actor and became Louie because we called him 'goofball Louie' so many times it stuck.

my dogs-part one

Since Luke died (I wrote about it a few days ago) I've been thinking of dogs--my dogs.

1. Blackie: Blackie was really never named until he died. My pet duck had died--that's a whole other story!--and my father brought home this black cocker spaniel for me. It was a total surprize. I must have been 6 or 7 and my father thought a dog to take care of would keep me from being such a strange, dreamy kid. I took him out on the porch and gave him a bowl of food and ran in to get my parents to watch him eat and when we got back, he was dead.
Why would I make this up?
My father buried him down near the creek and asked me what to scratch on the rock he was going to put on the grave. "Blackie", I said.
That was my first dog. 15 minutes worth.

2. Fatzo was really never fat. He was a beagle and mostly black and white with a little brown. He lived a long time--all through my childhood and into my teens. He lived in a pen and house my father built on the little hill beyond our yard, but he came inside a lot during the day and followed me around town all the time like a kid and a dog in a '50's movie. Anawalt was tiny and a car or two an hour came by so he wandered a lot by himself as well. Everyone knew him and would send him home if he walked into one of the stores or someone else's house--most doors were open from spring through fall in the WV mountains. I believe in the winter he came in and slept by my bed.
Fatzo never asked for much and seemed perfectly satisfied with his life. He didn't like Gene Kelly though.
Gene Kelly was a black man who worked in my uncle's store and since I worked there after school and during the summer from 11 until I went to college, Gene and I worked together. We brought up boxes and stocked the shelves of the H&S Grocery--five aisles and a good butcher shop. We checked the produce and chucked bad stuff. Gene always found one bag in a box of candy--like malted milk balls or something--that was damaged. He'd dutifully show it to my uncle and then Gene and I would eat it. I knew he was the one who damaged it and my uncle did too. And Gene knew where the key was to the Coke Machine so we'd have a Coke every once in a while as well. Gene was a good worker. He was a drinker and a womanizer (breaking the heart of his wife, Geraldine, who was my uncle's housekeeper) but I always loved him.
We all thought Geraldine would kill him someday and my uncle said it would be 'justifiable homicide' but she never did.
Fatzo hated Gene, mostly because Gene was afraid of dogs and would stop and yell and wave his arms when Fatzo was around...which Fatzo was a lot, wandering the streets, poking his head into the open door of the H&S from time to time.
Fatzo and I would go into the woods and climb the mountains. Some of my best days as a kid were spent with just Fatzo as company.
He'd go to the bus stop with me when I was in high school and be there waiting for me when I came home. I know he couldn't tell time, but folks around town would see him a half-hour or so before my bus came laying on the sidewalk on the corner, waiting.
He died my senior year of High School. I'm sure he knew I was about to go away. And one day he wasn't there when I got to the bus stop so I ran up the street and found my dad and my uncle and several other people waiting for me in front of the H&S. They'd put him in a Campbell's Soup Box with a blanket.
Gene Kelly was there, tears running down his face and smelling of cheap whisky.

Winged hope

A pair of robins have built a nest on this little box on the side of the front porch. The box is maybe a foot long and 6 inches wide. It was once an outside alarm for the alarm system the house used to have. We have a keypad so there was an alarm and the box, made out of metal, could only be a siren of somekind.

The two of them are always around. The male is huge--one of the biggest robins I've ever seen--and the female isn't petite. So the nest, as carefully crafted as it is--and it is that--seems precarious to me, especially since the prototype fell off and they had to totally rebuild.

She sits on the nest and he is in a tree where he can watch her. She used to fly away whenever we came out the front door--but now she mostly peers over the nest at us and he starts yelling until we walk away or go inside.

I admire their hopefulness greatly, though I think chances are the nest will be blown off again. And what did they think, building so close to people and a dog? They fly right above the deck on the way to the front porch and their song fills the hours.

It is touching to be so close to them. I anthropomorphize and begin to think we'll be friends!

I fear for them and their brood--there must be eggs or she wouldn't always be there. But there is something both noble and sweet about their presence so near to ours....

not going to church

My first Sunday of retirement and I didn't go to church. I didn't feel guilty in the least. (That, by the way, is one of the problems Episcopalians have--we've lost the capacity to feel guilty about not going to church!!!)

I did wonder what was going on at St. John's, but not as much as I thought I would.

Someone asked me the other day, "Where will you be going to church?"

I responded, "That implies I will be..."

I've told people who asked me why I pursued ordination that "I want to make sure I go to church...."

I actually like 'doing church' a lot, lot better than 'going'. I love preaching and liturgy and I know I'll be doing more of that in the future--supply priest, part-time in some large parish or priest in charge in a small one. Filling in. Stuff like that. Someone at the Diocese suggested I let it be known I'd be glad to fill in for people on Sabbatical. That would mean I'd go to the same parish for a month or two. I thought that was a great idea.

Then she said, "You do take some getting used to...." A compliment of sorts, I guess.

Or not.

I'm still on the email list for various meetings at St. John's. They should probably take me off so I won't just abscent-mindedly show up and because I really am going to try to 'vacate' myself from the inner workings of the place. It's none of my business any more.

I was going to go to church at the local parish--St. Peter's--but I only wanted to go to the 8 a.m. service and I couldn't remember when it was. (That's not a joke--I know it isn't at 8...it's 7:45 or 8:15. There was an Episcopal Church in West Virginia that had on it's display board:

SERVICES
8 a.m.-------8:15
Holy Eucharist---10 a.m.
I couldn't make that up. Episcopalians simply believe the early service is the 8 a.m. Service.

And I won't go next week, most likely, since we'll be in Vermont.

My theory has always been that church attendance is 'habitual'. You don't do it out of the goodness of your heart or because you want to but because it is a habit...much akin to brushing your teeth before bed. Your mouth just doesn't feel right if you don't....

I've told people the 'habit of church' takes at least 3 months to form...if not more given modern attention spans...and about 3 weeks to break. We'll see about me....

Luke

Luke Plunski--Luke the dog--died today.

He was Michael's dog first...saved Mike's life once and made Mike's life so much finer, brighter, happier. Then, after Michael died Luke became JoAnn's dog, saved her life in a different way, making it possible to move on after her son's death.

I'll never forget how someone with great good sense allowed Luke to be in Michael's hospital room during his last illness--even in Intensive Care. Mike had lost both his legs to his disease and Luke was his legs for him. Mike didn't take up the whole bed, so Luke would lay where Mike's legs should have been had the world been kinder. Sometimes a medical person would come in and be horrified to see a dog in a hospital bed. Luke would just look at them with those endlessly deep brown eyes and most of the time, the person would just melt.

Luke made you melt. He was a Golden Retriever and a beauty of one. How could you resist that look that said--"I'm laying here where I belong, next to my human...."

Luke became a therapy dog after Michael died and brought joy to hundreds and hundreds of people in hospitals and nursing homes. He was never assertive, always patient, always waiting for the human to make the first advance. And as gentle as a spring breeze, as sweet as the smell of honeysuckle, as healing as magic chicken soup.

He always came up to communion with Jo, mostly because he knew his job was to be near her always and he did his job to perfection. And one day, his great head leaning against the altar rail, I simply gave him communion--just a wafer like everyone else. After that, he was my great, good friend. If I'd forget and someone else gave out the bread on that side of the altar rail, I'd glace over and he'd be looking at me with those eyes that made me melt and I'd feel like I'd been rude to the Christ Child...which isn't far from true. Luke was about as Christ-like as any creature I've known.

I suppose some people might have objected to my giving him communion--but I never asked and, most likely, wouldn't have cared. It was only right and proper and in good order.

When Jo and Luke got into the library on Sunday mornings for the adult forum--they were there almost every week for years--he'd want to come greet me. Jo would give him his short little leash which he would carry in his mouth and he'd come to say hello. (He'd also take the chance to roll on the Library rug, but who can blame him for that?) It was one of the highlights of every Sunday, that little lick and rubbing against me.

My grandmother divided the world into two distinct groups "church people" and people who, well, were not 'church people'. I tend to divide the world into 'dog people' and everyone else. Loving a dog is like holding your heart in your hand and feeling it beat for a while. You all know the "DOG"/"GOD" stuff...well, I'm not sure it isn't true.

Lord I will miss him....

Jo held him as he died. I've held dogs as they've died and there is very little more profound and humbling than that. The pain of a dog's death is sharper and cleaner than even the deaths of people you love. I don't know anyone who, when someone they love dies, doesn't have some unfinished business or some guilt or some unanswered questions...mixed up stuff. With a dog, it's just pain. You know they never blamed you for anything, were never disappointed in you, never thought you should change your ways....they simply, purely loved you. Just like you are. Just like that. That's a Dog/God thing--there is no other creature besides a dog who can find that Agape Love, that redemptive Love, that Love that knows no bounds, that love that mimics God's love for each of us.

I weep for Luke tonight...but more for Jo. I know the pain she feels. I've been blessed and privileged and made a better person by the love of dogs....