Animals
« Previous Entries Wednesday, September 12th, 2007Journey With Animals
Recently Kailana posted a new reading challenge (Four Legged Friends Reading Challenge) in memory of her dog, Sandy. The idea appeals to me - but I realize that I just can’t take on another challenge right now. Despite this, I did decide to post some memories about pets as requested by Kailana.
This article was first published at The Piker Press during the week of August 15, 2005.
by Wendy Robards
Copyright 2005
In 1964, when people laughed at leash laws and dogs roamed their neighborhoods at will, my parents brought home my first dog.
Cindy (named for the coal black cinder color of her coat) attached herself to our family and became my constant companion for the next twelve years. Her mixed breed genes graced her with a sense of humor and an undying faithfulness. She followed my sisters and me everywhere we went and waited at our school bus stop each afternoon. I believe the arrival of the milkman proved to be the highlight of her days due to his habit of carrying donut holes for the dogs along his route. Cindy taught me how stubbornly sticking to a course of action and failing to learn from one’s mistakes can be painful. She suffered a broken leg when my oldest sister ran over her on a bicycle. She survived three collisions with cars. Despite her bad luck on the roadway, she only stopped chasing vehicles when the arthritis in her joints prevented her from doing so.
Other animals shared our household in the years of my childhood, including Becky (a three colored “money” cat whose doubled toed paws made her an expert mouser);
Gilbert and Prunella the guinea pigs who mated incessantly and produced several litters of little pigs; Jock, a blond hamster with a propensity to escape his cage;
and two other cats named Samantha and Simon who came along right about the time I left for college.
I entered the University of Rhode Island in the fall of 1978, eager to be on my own and away from the protective shield of my parents. I pounced on my new found freedom with great enthusiasm. I loved the cool New England mornings as I hiked through the campus to my classes. All around me swirled conversations of other young adults and the reeling, dizzying sense that I had finally grown up. I think of college as the rat years. My dorm did not allow pets, but rats were easily concealed. They make excellent companions: bright, affectionate and trainable. Grete was a lab rat: white with red eyes. I met her on the first day of Behavioral Psychology, a tiny baby trembling in my palm. The sole point of the class was to teach the rats in our care to press a lever to get a drink. The professor instructed us to deprive the animals of fluids and food so as to increase their motivation for this task. Grete’s learning curve demonstrated nicely what happens when an animal is *not* deprived of sustenance and therefore lacks the desire to learn anything. My instructor frowned at the tiny label with Grete’s name which I had pinned to the cage door; he seemed confused by the nesting materials I had supplied for her. Grete ascended from lab rat to pet in the dead of night. Horrified by the college’s policy of gassing all the animals at the end of the semester, I broke into the lab and whisked her away to the safety of my dorm.
After graduating college, I moved to Boston and adopted a cat whom I named Clint Catwood.
I believe Clint’s temperament derived directly from his father, an unknown Boston alley cat who must have been savagely territorial and independent. Silvery gray with olive green eyes, Clint lived his life for no one but himself. He acquired the unusual taste for Brillo pads which he ripped from their boxes and tore to pieces on my kitchen floor. He hated children and dogs equally. He let me know right away that walking on a leash through the city streets was not going to happen. I can still picture him falling like a stone onto his side after I fastened a little harness to his torso. Clint traveled from Boston to New Hampshire to Maine to California, back to Maine, and again to California as I moved about the countryside. He spent most of these road trips sprawled across the dashboard where he soaked up the sun and watched the world pass by. During those years when it seemed I had no roots to hold me in one place for long, I owned three dogs (all of whom Clint despised). Natasha, a smallish German Shepherd, had a knack for destroying carpets, door frames and shoes. She taught me the fine points of dog training and the value of a good crate.
When she died at the age of three after being hit by a car, I acquired my second German Shepherd. Kodiak, a huge dog with over sized ears and paws, won me over with his kind and gentle heart.
He liked nothing better than to lay his head in my lap or sprawl across my feet on cold mornings. His single fault was an irrational fear of the wind whistling around the eaves. He is the only dog I know who has successfully launched himself out a second story window and survived with nary a scrape. When I moved to California (for the last time), I adopted a seven year old Elkhound/German Shepherd mix named Sussi who became Kodiak’s security blanket and best friend, and whom I fondly referred to as the “Pack Cohesion Coordinator” because of her skill at keeping track of the entire family.
Although I loved my dogs without bias, it is always Clint I think about when I remember those wandering years…a huge cat with a personality to match; a tough guy who rolled with the changes in my life. His death, at age fifteen from bone cancer, signified a bigger transition for me: the dissolution of a seventeen year marriage.
Divorce is like a kick in the stomach after a huge meal. The end of my marriage coincided with the loss of all three of my pets: first Clint, then Sussi, and finally my gentle giant, Kodiak. Like a drowning person, there were times I thought I would never surface to get that much needed gulp of oxygen. Once again, however, an animal came to my rescue.
As my first marriage ground to a halt, I immersed myself in a life long dream of training a search and rescue dog. I began to look for a puppy with high drive. Drive in a dog is equivalent to a Type A personality in a human. Nothing deters a motivated dog from its goal. Specifically, they are ball crazy, and possess intensity and initiative to “get the job done.” They strive to complete the game and get the reward. I looked at a lot of puppies over the course of several months before finding Caribou, the runt in a litter of three and the only female. The moment I saw her I knew I had found my canine partner.
Her bright eyes never left my face. She charged after the squeak toy I threw, pounced on it, killed it with a quick shake of her head, and returned it to me without hesitation. She was a big dog in a puppy’s body with no lack of confidence. Little did I know, Caribou would not only become my first certified search and rescue dog, but she would introduce me to a wonderful, gentle and amazing man…by falling in love with his dog, Argus. On that bright, autumn day in the mountains near Lake Tahoe, in the year I celebrated my fortieth birthday, two dogs play bowed, danced, tugged a stick, and romped through the woods.
“Who owns this dog?” I asked.
“Me,” Kip said.
We married two years later.
My life has a comforting rhythm to it these days. The dogs wake me at dawn for breakfast, then settle in for their mid morning naps as I write. Outside the red tail hawk soars above the pines and the air smells like cedar and sunshine as it drifts through the open windows. My hand floats down to scratch Argus on the ear; I glance at Caribou, her paws twitching in a dream; and I feel blessed by the animals who have shared their lives with me, who have taught me about joy, patience, independence, and loyalty; who I am certain have given me far more than I have ever given them.
**Addendum: Since this article was written, Kip and I have added two cats to our family: Maia and Gizmo.
Not Just Another Ordinary Day
Sometimes life seems so ordinary - getting up, checking emails, making coffee, going to work, shopping for groceries, paying bills, going to the post office, watching a few of your favorite TV shows…and then doing it all again the next day. Lately my life has seemed to have a mind of its own; I feel like I am rushing around doing the necessary things and then falling into bed at night exhausted. Every now and then I need a miracle or some magic to remind me that life is more than menial tasks and obligations.
Yesterday I drove out to Triple Creek Ranch to volunteer for a special event - a group of adults with developmental disability were coming out for two hours of riding and learning about horses. The event went smoothly and there were lots of smiles all around - exactly what we always hope for! After it was over, I helped pick up tack and put things away and as I was getting ready to leave, my friend Carla said: “Oh, the mother cat moved her kittens into the office. I meant to tell you!”
The mother cat is a stray. She is aptly named Spooky as she avoids people like the plague and will bolt whenever anyone gets near her. She delivered kittens high up in the barn about three weeks ago and since then had been routinely moving her kittens to keep them hidden. Now she had moved them to a spot where we could actually put our hands on them!
Carla, Dwayne, Cherry, Alycia and myself tromped into the office, pulled aside some boxes and there they were, three teeny-tiny balls of fur sans mama!
There is nothing like a baby animal. I scooped one of the little guys into my hands - his bitty bones felt frail beneath my fingers, his fur was pure silk against my cheek. He opened his blue eyes and released a little “mew” into the warm air of the office. I cuddled him, stroked his miniature ears, gazed at his perfect features. I held a miracle of creation in my hands. My heart filled with love - an ordinary day became something special.
Last night as I settled into bed a warmth still glowed inside me - and I was reminded that life is not just a series of menial tasks. It is much bigger than that.
Monday, March 12th, 2007Creative Non Fiction Piece Published at Piker Press
The Piker Press has published one of my creative nonfiction stories on the front page today! It was written several years ago and is about the first search that Caribou and I went on together. I hope you’ll come on over and check it out sometime this week. Next week it moves to my author page on the site.
Cone Head
Have you ever had an itch you had to scratch? Or a thumbnail you couldn’t resist pulling on? Or a sore spot in your mouth that you just kept poking at with your tongue?
Argus can relate to all of these. We’re just a bit past one week into his recovery from dental surgery, and his mouth is doing fine. But, the little shaved area on his leg (where the vet inserted the IV needle) has been giving him fits. He ignored it at first. Then the hair started growing back and Argus took notice. He just had to lick it…and lick it…and lick it. We tried scolding him. We tried spraying it with bitter apple. The result was he hid in the bedroom to lick and came out foaming at the mouth. Within a couple of days, the shaved spot on his leg became red, hot and raw.
Argus now wears the dreaded Shakespeare collar … better known as The Cone. He wonks its edges against walls, and clears the coffee table of debris each time he walks past. And he is still licking, only now he licks the inner walls of The Cone. He has kept his sense of humor and figured out that he can drag a toy into the conical sphere and toss it about.
Argus goes back to the vet for his follow up visit in five days. I hope by then his leg will be healed and we can stop calling him Cone Head.
A Pain in the Mouth
When Argus was a puppy he liked to chew on rocks (he now enjoys demolishing our wood pile). This habit led to him breaking his lower canine. At the time, my husband was told he could take a wait and see approach; and hopefully Argus would have no problems with the broken tooth. Alas…it’s been seven years and that tooth has finally decided to give Argus grief. About two weeks ago, we noticed our boy was just not himself, and then we saw that his face looked weirdly lopsided. Argus had developed an abcess.
Monday he went in for a dental procedure to extract the dead canine and clean up the abcess. Because he is a Golden Retriever, he was happy to go to the vet (afterall, there are many hands there to pet him and sometimes he even gets a cookie). Later in the day, when Kip went to pick him up, he was most eager to leave. He was a bit woozy and confused last night (although confusion for Argus is generally the norm). Today, he is a bit put out by the way his tongue slides out the side of his mouth, unhibited by his missing canine. He keeps slurping and pulling his tongue back inside, then looks at me as though it is my fault (which is partially correct given it was my American Express card which paid for the surgery).
The upside to all of this? The vet says Argus must eat only soft food for a week. So Kip went out and purchased top of the line, 100% organic, canned dog food that smells better than what we eat each night. Oh, and handmade soft treats made with real meat that smells like meatloaf (I’m tempted to try one). Argus is very happy about all of this. I don’t want to tell him that in six days he’ll be back eating kibble again.
Near Cat-astrophe
We started the New Year quietly…slept until 9:00am, rose, made coffee, enjoyed the quiet stillness of a near perfect morning. And then - yowling from the office! Kip and I rushed in to find Gizmo writhing about in front of the closet. Her tiny paw was trapped beneath the door! I squated next to her to try to ease her paw free and discovered that it was not the door which trapped her - but, a skirt hanger which had clamped down on her toes and then become lodged against the closet door. I’m sure that Gizmo though it was a monster biting her and she lashed out like a wild cougar. It took us several minutes to figure out how to free her from this self-imposed trap, but eventually we did. Incredibly, she was only bruised. But the damage to her ego was by far the greater injury and she lay with a pitiful expression on the rocking chair, allowing Maia to wash her. Kip offered her a bit of her Christmas milk treat, and that seemed to sooth her trauma. All is well with the world now. Gizmo is back stalking the dogs and tossing her teeny mouse toys in the air. But I have noticed she is staying far, far away from the closet where the hanger-monster lives.
Thursday, December 28th, 2006Cats and Chrismas Trees
“Do we need to worry about them climbing it?” Kip asked me as we strolled among the Christmas trees, hugging ourselves against the chill and looking for the perfect fir.
“My previous cats never did that,” I muttered. I held an especially full tree away from my body at arms length. “This one is good.”
“I’m thinking of attaching two cords to the limbs and then stretching them to the wall,” Kip continued.
I gave him a glance over my shoulder. “Do you like this one?”
“Sure, sure.” He frowned, not listening to me at all.
Once the tree was selected and tied to the hood of our car, we drove home and the discussion continued.
“Cats have been known to destroy Christmas trees,” Kip said.
“I don’t think we need to worry.” I gazed out at the pretty lights that twinkled on houses and lighted shrubs. The sky was jet black and clear with a thousand little sparks of star light.
“How can you be sure?”
“I’m thinking optimistically.”
“Time will tell,” Kip said.
The cats did not climb the tree and I managed to prevent Kip from stringing cords from limb to wall like so many spider webs.
They did redecorate it, however. In the days before Christmas, the perfectly symmetrical tree began to look a bit unbalanced as Gizmo and Maia removed the ornaments one by one and scattered them throughout the house. When I found one, I carefully picked it up and placed it a bit higher on the tree. By Christmas Eve the limbs of our perfect tree were bare from the floor upwards for about 2 feet. All the pretty ornaments winked from mid tree on up.
“I told you they’d mess with it,” Kip reminded me.
I shook my head. “No…you said they’d climb it.”
“Same thing.”
I laughed. Looks like the start of a new tradition.
Caribou & Argus - Christmas 2006
Very good dogs…waiting to eat their cookies until mommy says so! Notice all the new toys around them. And they LOVE the new rug!
Saturday, December 3rd, 2005Maia
Beautiful Maia…she has brilliant blue eyes, although this photo doesn’t show that!
Saturday, December 3rd, 2005The Giz
Gizmo at seven weeks old…and full of energy!
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