Part II, Day Seven: Bunnies

Chapter One
The first time I knew for sure that Zoe was a real animal, and not just a cute puppy, was when she killed and ate the bunny.

That June there were so many of them running around the yard, it was like they were having a convention.  She liked to chase them, but even though she was fast, I thought she would never catch one.

And then she did.  Before I knew what was happening, she had one about the size of her head in her mouth.  She was mercifully fast.  I heard it scream, but then it was dead.  Down it went, down her gullet.  She ate that thing, whole.

I gaped in horror, crying her name, but unable to move.  It was like I was watching The Exorcist.

Later she found a little warren of them underneath the iris patch.  I tried to stop her, but that would mean not letting her off the lead in our yard.  She pulled them out when they were the size of mice and ate them, one by one.

I used to love rabbits as a child and I wanted to keep one as a pet.  It made me sad to see those bunnies die.

In time, I got over my horror.  Knowing about Zoe's taste for bunny meat helps me remember where she came from.  I call myself her "mommy" because I'm over the top in love and love makes us do crazy things, like anthropomorphize our pets.  But she reminds me when she can that she is the descendant of wolves.

And she reminds me that dogs are predators, not prey, just like we are, but with different dining habits.

Although when she was very small, she would look up at the sky at circling turkey buzzards and pull at the lead hard, asking to go home and into the house where she felt big.

Chapter Two
The first diet I ever went on was at the end of a giant feast on Easter Sunday at my grandparents' house.

We had just moved in, and it was awful.  Our mother had lost her job as a secretary and I was trying to get her diagnosed at the public hospital.  My sister and I liked the back yard of the house, but we missed our freedom.  Our grandfather yelled at us all the time, and we never knew what would set him off.  Our grandmother would cheer us up by taking us downtown to Cleveland's shiny department stores to buy us cute outfits.

The message: some people you just can't do anything about.  The mentally ill mother.  The bullying grandfather.  But a cute outfit will do wonders to lift your spirits, especially if you are slim and pretty and look good in everything, as our grandmother told us we did.

Grandma was Jewish, but we weren't allowed to observe Passover.  She was an atheist, and Grandpa was Greek Orthodox.  He went to St. Theodosious church, near the Cleveland West Side Market, and we celebrated Easter by coloring eggs, getting baskets filled with chocolate eggs and a bunny and jelly beans, and then we would all sit down to a roast lamb dinner that he would cook with garlic and potatoes, with green beans on the side. 

I was 13 and I weighed 108 pounds.  I decided that Easter that I was fat.  I decided that those eight pounds had to go, that 100 had a better ring to it.

I didn't starve myself, but I started counting calories.  If I managed to get through three meals that added up to no more than 1,000 calories, I was "allowed" to have some of the chocolate Easter rabbit that had been in my basket that year.  I made that thing last for weeks.

In the end, I only lost about three or four pounds.  There really wasn't much to lose.

The best part of this period in my life was that I taught myself how to do yoga in one of those 30-days-of-yoga books that made the rounds in the seventies, and I stopped drinking soda for life,(which we Midwesterners called "pop"), and I learned that the thing to do when you are anxiety-ridden from your dysfunctional family and you can't just go in the living room and kick everybody out so you can do yoga is to take your dog on a long walk.

Ginger, the collie/shepherd mix, was my best friend.  I told her all my secrets, every one of them, including the names of the boys I had crushes on, and the kind of TV family I wished I could bring her up in.

We would walk up Grapeland Avenue, and then over to the elementary school.  On the way there, during the era of the diet, I would stop and flirt with a boy named Phil Lowell.

I was with my friends from Cleveland last summer and we found a picture someone took--who had a camera then? and why would they take our picture?--of me talking to Phil Lowell.  I was struck with three realizations.  One, that he was a very handsome boy, who looked more like a man than a boy at fourteen: tall, dark, and handsome, with a strong jaw, he was probably shaving already.  Two, that I was just right, not fat at all, and not too thin, and I looked more Russian than I remember, because back then I was trying to look like Marcia Brady from The Brady Bunch.  I looked a lot like my grandmother, whom I loved, but who couldn't protect my sister and me from all the chaos in our lives.  And three, I was sad, very sad, that whoever took the picture didn't include the dog.

I was a textbook case of a girl who needs something, just one thing, in her life she can control, but I'm glad now that I didn't lose too much weight.

What saved me was that chocolate bunny.

Chapter Three
Yesterday I went to the grocery store and bought a white plush bunny for Zoe to play with and a chocolate bunny for my husband and me.  For Sunday lunch we're having roast lamb.  It's not that I'm capitulating and returning to my grandfather's traditions, which were heavy on the meat and fats, but more that my husband has made me appreciate his, and the smell of a lamb cooking no longer makes my stomach turn.

Dr. Thompson, the vet in Vermont who does acupuncture, told me that in addition to eating more turkey and fish, Zoe should eat rabbit.

I laughed when he told me that.  And I told him the story about Zoe's killing spree.

When we lived in France, my husband and I ate rabbit every week for Sunday lunch.  It was our favorite meal.  We'd cook it with cabbage and white beans and pancetta and mustard sauce.  I've heard it's also good with olives and pinot noir.

If they sold it here in the North Country, I would buy one and my husband and I would split it with Zoe today.

Maybe we can send Zoe out to hunt for us, but I doubt she would share.

Zoe sees the white bunny on the carpet and gets very excited.  She loves plush toys wildly.  I take many pictures of her chewing it, trying to dismantle it, but it doesn't have a squeaker so she loses interest soon and wants to go outside.  Out into the yard, where animals that run and hide and make noises live.

At this stage of my life, I'm very grateful for all my appetites.  I hope they never fade.

And I'm grateful for Zoe's too.

Namaste, gentle readers.  And may you feast on many tasty things today, whatever your traditions tell you are good to eat.

Part II, Day Six: Adventures in Canine Cuisine

When we put down a bowl of food for our pets, we hope they will look like this:

photo by Tara Freeman

When they lose their appetites, or when they look with horror and revulsion at what we have decided is now the best diet for them, we have reason to worry.  Especially if we really need them to eat at a certain time so that we can then give them the essential medicines they need to be well.

In a bout of informed optimism, my husband and I had bought Zoe a 30-pound bag of food.  The kind we had used for a couple years and liked, a natural-foods mix from Canada called Orijen which won a lot of dog food awards in recent years, was no longer available locally, but she had lost her taste for it anyway, so we were up for something new.

Our optimism was not just founded on the hope and belief that she would live along enough to eat all the food in that bag, but also that we had chosen a nutritious option for her that she would relish.

It didn't take long for her to get bored with it, and to wait for us to top it up with scraps from our dinner, and broth.  She has trained us well.

And then, when Zoe and I visited the integrative vets in Vermont, who treated her with acupuncture and Chinese herbs, I heard about another kind of food, called Sojos.  It's a mix of grains, with dehydrated vegetables and fruits.  You add water and raw meat to it, let the concoction sit for an hour or two, or in some cases, overnight, and then it's chow time.

Some of the samples have meat in them already, and others you add to yourself.

The idea behind this food is that dogs should avoid unnecessary wheat and carbohydrates and preservatives and fillers and should have as close to a raw diet as possible.  This is supposed to be good for any dog, not just one fighting cancer.

In Zoe's begging bowl, now, are the following ingredients:

rolled oats, rye flakes, barley flakes, pecans, tricalcium phosphate, dried kelp, parsley leaf, carob powder, basil, dried alfalfa, vitamin D3, sweet potato, carrots, broccoli, celery, apples, whole egg, tricalcium phosphate, flax meal, ginger root, garlic

 Do you think this moist mix of the above will be tasty?  Or do you think she will run away?  Hmmmmm. . .

Mira had the same stomach flu I had early in March.  Is it just us, or do you think this looks like vomit?  This is what the stuff looks like before it sets, settles, and expands.

The first sample packet I try has turkey in it.  Zoe has been told by the integrative vets in Vermont to eat more turkey and fish.  (To learn more about the yin and yang of canine dining, read this post.)

Sadie getting her picture taken by Doug Plavin

I put out the bowl.  Zoe looks and it and leaves the room.  She won't come back until she doesn't smell it any more.

Next thing, I add the Chinese herbs the vet prescribed for her cancer, which makes the concoction smell worse, but then I doctor it with some canned wild salmon.  And then I use a decoy.  I let Sadie, Zoe's saucy dog cousin, smell the bowl.  Sadie wants some.  And as soon as Sadie wants some, Zoe hunkers down, does a body block to prevent Sadie from coming within an inch of her, and she eats it all.

This whole ordeal, however, takes two hours.  By the end of it, I'm exhausted, and my day has only begun.  I'm really glad I don't have to go to a job this semester.  Will feeding my dog become a full-time job?

For the rest of the visit with my sister, Mira, her husband, Doug, and Sadie, I am not ashamed to use Sadie to entice Zoe to the new food.

But it turns out that Zoe likes the other varieties of Sojos--I've been given samples of each kind--and by the end of the visit, I no longer have to exploit her poor cousin to get her to tuck in with gusto.

Mission Accomplished.  I have won the dog over.  She's ready to eat this new food, and I can put all the Chinese herbs on it and not have to cap them up up and stick them down her throat with her other pills, or shoot it in her maw with a turkey baster, like Zoe's new three-legged friend Milo's daddies have to do.  Phew.

All is well.

Or so I think.

I drive us home to Upstate New York and spread all my new purchases across the kitchen counter.  The three jars of Chinese herbs: one for bone stasis, one for fighting the spread of cancer to her lungs, and the other for her immune system.  We also have immunology drops (she gets 65 a day, one for each pound of her weight, which sounds insane, until I realize it's one whole dropper and I don't have to count) and a couple drops of vitamin A and D tincture.

This was me trying to consolidate the loot

 

She already takes two cancer drugs, anti-nausea drugs, and anti-diarrhea drugs.

I have also started her on artemisinin and omega oil twice a day.

And she's on K-9 Immunity tablets (that go into her food).  And Metacam to help with pain on odd days.

Are you getting the picture here of what our kitchen island looks like now?

My husband is scrambling eggs and is about to go out on the gentlemen's dog walk when he sees me make up a batch of Zoe's food.  He can't find room on the counter to prepare his own meal.  He doesn't a say a thing, but I can see from the way he hunches his shoulders that he's not happy.

He wants our old life back.

He wants our old dog back.

He wants her, at least, to return to eating from the 30-pound bag of food we bought in early March, and not to mess with all these new concoctions and alternative belief systems, and for our kitchen not to smell like a health food store.

But then, after I make up a batch of the new food and add raw organic turkey from Vermont, Zoe scarfs it all down and licks the bowl.  The herbs are all in there and she didn't know.  And then I stash all the new purchases in a bag that goes under some pots and pans in a cupboard between meals, and my husband, the gourmet cook, has his counter back.

By evening, he's sorry he ever hunched or frowned.  By the next day, my husband is adding the Chinese herbs and drops into Zoe's new food in a nanosecond.  I mix up a couple days' worth of the food and have it ready in the refrigerator. We watch Zoe eat her new meal with gusto, and then we have ours: comfort food.  Meatloaf made with local beef and pork, and potatoes au gratin and collard greens, all local and organic.  We open a bottle of wine and toast one another's health and Zoe's.

Peace prevails in our pack of three, and we mean it when we say, "Bon appetit!"

Part II: Day Five: Wild Things

During Zoe's and my visit with my sister, Mira Bartok, her husband, Doug Plavin, and their dog, Sadie, I'm reading a terrific new memoir: Wild, by Cheryl Strayed.  It's about Strayed's 1,100 mile solo hike across the Pacific Crest Trail when she was reeling from the death of her mother, the end of her marriage, the breakup of her family, and her own dissolution and descent into self-destructive behavior.  Her losses have made her lose her bearings, and the anguish and sorrow she depicts, with such mastery and control, is, in its fierce candor and tenderness, unexpectedly uplifting.  She takes us deep inside the self, a self that has lost everything, and then takes us deep into the natural world, depicting the landscape and the people she meets with lyricism, wisdom, and humor.  She is a funny writer as much as she is a moving and vivid one, and the hike she takes us on--across a gorgeous, rugged Western landscape, and into her own psyche--is wildly exhilarating.

Mira blurbed this gorgeous memoir, evoking Thoreau.  She writes:

"While reading Cheryl Strayed’s stunning book about her arduous solo journey along the Pacific Crest Trail, I kept asking myself—what would I do if I were stripped bare of everything—money, job, community, even family and love? Thoreau once said, “In wildness is the preservation of the world.” For Strayed, it is clear that in wildness was the preservation of her soul. She reminds us, in her lyrical and courageous memoir Wild, of what it means to be fully alive, even in the face of catastrophe, physical and psychic hardship and loss."
Mira Bartok, author of The Memory Palace

"In wildness is the preservation of the world."  My students and I have chewed on that statement for years, through reading Walden together, and Thoreau's other essays and journals; on nature hikes we've taken together; and in our own lives.  In wildness is the preservation of the word, I think, as well, because American nature writing is one of our nation's unique literary offerings to the global literary community.

Were it not for Emerson and Thoreau and Muir (who were influenced by the great British romantic poets, Coleridge and Shelley and Keats, and were also directly influenced by Indian sacred texts, by both Hinduism and Buddhism) we would not have developed this distinctly American sound, this distinctly American voice that starts from place, from landscape, from concrete language, from the poetry of trees (by species, region, biosphere) that opens into a larger call of the wild, on behalf of the wild: the song of the human spirit set loose on the land.  These writers are the literary grandparents of Aldo Leopold, E.B. White, Edward Abbey, Gretel Ehrlich, John Daniel, Annie Dillard, Bill McKibben, Janisse Ray, Terry Tempest Williams, and too many other amazing nature writers for me to name here, but now we can add Cheryl Strayed to the list.

But that's my teacher-self talking to you, and I'm writing today about something else.  I'm writing about how loss, and the anticipation of loss, makes us wild, but how that wildness has a beauty and grace that has much to teach us about what it means to be alive.  In a body.  On this earth.  Right now.

During the visit, I'm also working on my novel.  I realized before I began this revision that I needed to get wilder.  My characters had to face their edges, their limits.  They needed, in their own way, to howl like coyotes.  With control and precise language, I am trying to get deeper into raw emotion.

And so, reading Wild is inspiring me both as a writer and as a human being trying to come to terms with things. 

We go to Boston to see Cheryl Strayed read from the new memoir in a bookstore in Brookline, and then go out for drinks with a small group of people afterwards.  She is a funny and warm and engaging writer and human, and it's lovely to meet her, even if the conversation is fleeting.

It's a two-hour drive, and we have to leave Sadie and Zoe alone from 5 PM until nearly midnight.

Photo of Sadie, in front, and Zoe, by Doug Plavin

Ever since Zoe was diagnosed with cancer, I have avoided being away from her for more than a few hours at a time.  It's so hard to say good-bye.  It was actually a difficult decision for me to go to Boston when a big part of me wanted to stay home and just love up my dog.

When we return to the house, Zoe and Sadie run to greet us like we are the best thing that ever happened. Their joy is contagious.  We sit down with them and look into their wolfy eyes, our hearts beating in synch with their tails thumping against the floor.

Sadie runs outside to bark madly and ward off coyotes.  Her preemptive shouts are the equivalent of the very loud whistle Cheryl Strayed carries on her 1,100-mile solo hike to ward off bears or human predators.

My husband and I wore bells on our wrists, and sang really loudly, and off-key, to scare off bears when we hiked in Glacier National Park.

Sadie is licking her chops; Photo by Doug Plavin

Our dogs are as domesticated as any dogs can be, but what we love about their company is the wildness in their eyes when they play.  When we roll around with them on the ground, when they nip each other and grunt or howl, when we get to be part of their world, we feel like wolves in the den.

Living with the knowledge that Zoe's days are numbered is another way to engage with the wild.  It is tremendously sad and isn't something I would wish on anyone, but I am here to say that we have much joy in our lives these days, and we never take it for granted.  We can't sleepwalk through a single minute.  There's no time to waste.  No time to obsess about petty things.  As Zoe's human pack members, we have to stay alert, awake to her with our animal senses.  We love more fiercely, more completely.  We are attentive to each subtle shift in mood or energy.  We are here.

I was here, but not fully here, not fully present, for years of my life.  Meeting and falling in love with my dog woke me up.  And now, more than ever, it feels like a great gift to encounter people and books and animals that remind me to love with everything I've got because all we have is now.

Tender.  Fierce.  Open.  Certain books are portals to these ways of being in the world and in the wild. Gentle reader, I urge you to buy Wild today.  Click here to read the rave review by the New York Times.

Tender.  Fierce.  Open.  The animals we love teach us how to be all these things, and more.

Zoe and I live in a house with beds and couches and a refrigerator and steel bowls.  Although we walk in the woods every single day, my dog and I have never spent a night outside together, just the two of us, under the stars.  But we are kindred, and we are wild.

Namaste.

photo by Doug Plavin

photo by Doug Plavin

I took this picture of Zoe provoking Sadie to chase her; Zoe has the chirping toy fox.

Zoe instinctively goes to the porch or deck of any house so she can watch over everyone.  She tells the dogs roaming around that they need permission to enter the property.  She yells at the UPS guy too.  But I think if she saw an actual pack of wolves or coyotes or foxes, she'd run and hide.

Part II, Day Four: Sadie and Zoe, the Love Story

Is there anything more euphoria-inducing than coming home and seeing your dog run toward you with joy? 

For me, the closest thing to that rush is to watch Zoe greet others in that ecstatic way: to witness her reaction when family comes to the door, or when we arrive at her home away from home.

Sadie waits patiently to get her toy fox back

She's been whining for the last hour. When I rolled down her window, she smelled the air and said, Hey, I know that smell.  I know those burnished leaves, that river, that lake, those road signs, that tint of sky.

Are we there yet?

We pull up to the house, and out comes Sadie, the saucy herding dog cousin with her big, pointy ears, and Sadie's people: my sister, Mira Bartok, and her husband, Dougie Pee.

Zoe charges into the house and finds the Amish basket I gave Mira for her birthday one year, where Sadie's plush toys live.  Out comes the octopus, the piglet, the chirping little fox, the black and white polar bear, but not plush burger, who is carefully hidden from Zoe when she comes, or perhaps it's not there because Zoe demolished it on another visit and I've conveniently forgotten.

Zoe runs around the house showing her cousin that she can help herself to what she wants, and Sadie promptly bites her in the butt, or tries to trip her.  Now that Zoe has three legs, Sadie finds new advantages where she can.

Zoe in front of the barn

Sadie has a great smil

Then they submit to their people's immature games.  We like to get them to wrestle.  Not, like, for money.  They don't have stage names.  They don't wear tights or capes.  And they don't hurt each other.  But for our version of pup pile-up, we get them to kiss (touch snouts), roll on their backs, mouth, and growl and grunt like wild beasts.  We could watch this all day and never be bored.

And then it's time for the afternoon walk.  First Zoe takes one of Sadie's indoor toys, the plush volleyball, and tries to get Sadie to chase her into the barn, the infamous barn where the music played on Mira and Doug's wedding day, and in front of which Zoe had to be bathed by her person, in a story that has become legend in these parts.  (See "Squeamish No More: Dog Bath at my Sister's Wedding.)  They swoop around the yard, circling each other, peeing competitively.

Then down the driveway, up the road a little, and into the woods.  For a short while Zoe has to be watched, because there's no guarantee she won't run down to the nearby farm to kill the chickens.  (Zoe has never killed a chicken, but dogs can turn into chicken-killers just like that, and we don't want to give her the taste for blood.  And now that I know, as of yesterday's visit to the integrative vet in Vermont, that chicken makes her too yang, well, there's an extra incentive, beyond being neighborly.)

They look most alike when they are begging for treats.

I love the companionable stroll

Who will shake more water on us, faster?

Sadie could herd horses, if she needed employment

We pass that patch of woods without trouble, and then head further along, to the stream.  Both dogs go down for a swim and a drink, then bound up again.  It's a beautiful spring day, but not very warm.  I'm just glad that it's too early for tick season.

Zoe waits several yards away for the horse visit to end

And eventually we visit the horse farm.  Sadie is excited to meet more four-legged creatures, and she runs over to tell the horses that she is queen of the hill.  Zoe, for all her alpha behavior with her cousin, hits the road.  She sees a lot of Amish horses where we live, and was once charged by a group of irate horses and donkeys who didn't appreciate the way Zoe had herded their friends, the migrating ducks, so she keeps her distance.

What I love most about these visits is how easily these dogs fall into their routines together, and how their routines become the structure for our days.  Meals.  Walks.  Dogs outside.  Dogs back in.  Dogs chasing each other for plush toys.  Dogs submitting to pup pile-up rituals, which means every creature on the floor to a sound track of wolfy grunting and sometimes keening.  We know the dogs love each other, and long to be close: they mouth and nip, and are wolf pups together.  And we know they compete for love, although there is no limit to the love we have on tap.  The dogs structure our days, and when we focus on them completely, time stops.

The story continues tomorrow.

Namaste.

Part II, Day Three: Yin and Yang

Part I:  Yin

At Vermont Integrative Veterinary Associates Zoe relaxes and waits for Dr. Emily Bond to enter the room while I stare up at the chart of tongues wondering which one looks most like Zoe's.

Once, many years ago, long before Zoe came into my life, my chiropractor/herbalist looked at my cracked, coated tongue and told me I was a mess.  "No sugar, no alcohol, no fermented or processed anything for three months," she prescribed.  She also commanded that I walk outside every morning to move my stagnant qi [pronounced "chi"].  She said if I followed her instructions to the letter, and never cheated once, I'd feel much better.

I did exactly what she said, lost ten pounds, started sleeping better, and had more energy.  The slime on my tongue receded and the witchy crack closed up a lot.  My hair was shinier too, and less dry.  I came back for an appointment and my chiropractor was amazed.  "You didn't cheat at all?" she said.

"No, never."  I really hadn't.

I think she thought I was a weirdo for adhering to her rules so rigidly, but we agreed that I had never looked better.

I think it's fair to say that I'm open to alternative forms of healing.

The first time I went to an acupuncturist was in Cambridge, Massachusetts, when I was 26, and I had to take a cab there because I couldn't walk--not even up and down the stairs of the tube.  I was in great pain because of chondromalacia patella: my right kneecap's cartilage was like a scratched-off Teflon pan.  All because I was too cheap to buy good running shoes, and then I ran my heart out on the roads of Boston to mend a broken heart.  As for the guy, I got over him pretty fast, but my knee was never the same afterwards.  My acupuncturist heated the needles, smoked me with moxa sticks that smelled deliciously like a cross between sage and pot, and after only one session I was able to walk the two miles home.  She made a convert of me, and later went on to help me with my gallbladder when a doctor thought I had stones.  She even tackled my PMS and mood swings almost enough for me to find a new boyfriend--but not quite.

But I don't hold out hope that acupuncture will cure Zoe of her cancer.  I'm always open for a miracle, and I pray to Dog every day that we will find one, but mostly I'm interested in quality of life.  I want to make sure that her immune system is as strong as it can be, and her gastrointestinal track gets every booster it can to handle all the hard-core drugs she's taking.

I want her to feel good.  That's the reason why Zoe and I are here.

You can't see the needles; they're as black as her fur

Dr. Emily Bond is a gentle soul.  Zoe and I take to her at once.  She comes into the room and sits down with Zoe on the floor, and just listens.  This woman listens with her whole self, not just her stethoscope.  It's apparent that she loves animals and loves what she does.  Zoe, who is a reserved dog, is instantly in love.  She leans her head against Dr. Bond.  She even gives her a kiss, which I don't get from Zoe unless there's food on my face.  And when the needles are in, Zoe relaxes into it so deeply she appears to be napping.

"Considering all the things going on, I would expect to hear weaker pulses," Dr. Bond, who asks me to call her Emily, says.  "She has quite a lot of qi.  She's strong.  Really strong."

I had to fill out a form, and one of the questions asked was whether my dog likes to sleep in a warm bed or if she's always on the lookout for somewhere cool.  Zoe is a hottie.  She pants easily and loves the cold.  Always has, even as a puppy in the pound.  She has never wanted to sleep with us in our bed because it's too hot to be around snugglers.  Winter is her favorite season.  She loves to roll in the snow.

"Zoe has too much yang," she says.  "Anyone who gets hot easily, and seeks the cool, has too much yang.  That means a yin deficiency.  We need to give her more yin."

(This sounds a lot like my husband, by the way, who sweats when he eats, turns red even when not embarrassed, and likes to turn our thermostat down to 55.  Now I know another reason why he and Zoe are kindred spirits.  I, myself, am neither too hot, nor too cold.  I'm lukewarm.)

Emily asks me about what Zoe has been eating, the main meats in her dog food.  Chicken and lamb, her two favorite meats, are only going to make her more yang, I'm warned.  Zoe needs turkey and fish.  Those foods are cooling.  Beef is neutral, so I can keep giving her that, in a pinch.  But the chicken broth my husband has been putting on her food to make it more interesting: that's a no.

Dr. Emily Bond is yin herself.  She doesn't talk a lot.  She listens.  She creates a space that others fill.  She seems wise beyond her years, and lets Zoe tell her the story, and waits for me to fill in the details.  We have a lot in common because she was an English major.  She loves literature; she even has been reading my blog just so she'll know Zoe well in advance and how to treat her best.  She has a soothing presence I can't describe, but Zoe picks up on it immediately.  Zoe trusts her completely, and I do too.  I know I will do everything she suggests even though we recently bought a giant bag of dog food.

Zoe's tongue, by the way, is too red, and has a little stagnant purple center.  "That's a sign of being too yang," she says.  "But it also shows she has a lot of emotion.  She feels a lot.  A lot.  She's very sensitive."

When she says that, I stare at Zoe's purple heart, that was given to her by her oncology team for bravery.  (That story is in the link above and right here.)

Zoe and I are reluctant to leave.  We feel a kinship with this young woman who has only been a vet since 2010.  She's the vet who always treats Milo for osteosarcoma, whom I wrote about yesterday.  I hope we will meet again.  Zoe has never taken to a vet quite so quickly.  This is almost a miracle in itself.

Part II: Yang

Four days later, we return.  This time Zoe runs up the ramp and gets to the door first, eager to enter.  How many dogs race their people to enter a vet's office?  Today we're working with Dr. Don Thompson, who started the practice, and is about my age, and will be seeing Zoe regularly now because--get this--he's from the North Country, where I live, and once a month he comes to my area to see his family and make house calls.

Are we lucky or what?  It feels like fate.

I used to say, about where we live, one of two things, depending on my mood:
1) Canton, New York is far from the known world.
2) All roads lead to Canton, New York.

Both are true, equally, even today.  It's a four-hour drive to this vet clinic, so coming here is not something I can do without a lot of planning.  And yet the senior vet here makes house calls.

Dr. Thompson is exuberant and warm.  He hugs instead of shaking hands.  The best part is what he's wearing: a bowling shirt in bright Hawaiian colors of dogs on motorcycles.  "Call me Don," he says.  It's a first name-only practice.  My students call me Natalia, so we're all alike in that way.

Dr. Thompson agrees that Zoe's tongue is very red.  And when he listens to her pulses, he's knocked out by them.  "She's got a really strong lung pulse," he says, which reassures me, since the bone cancer's "mets" are in her lungs.  "This dog has a strong will to live."  Just for good measure, he includes the "will to live" site in the places he puts in the needles.

Again, Zoe seems to feel every needle go in, tilts her head with wonder at the strange pulses and energy sensations, but she likes it.  She started the session up on his examining table but we carry her down to the floor where she can rest.

And while Zoe rests, Dr. Thompson--Don--holds forth.  I learn so much in our hour together.  About the five elements, how the "grandfather" of the area afflicted--where Zoe's tumor started on her leg--can be triggered to "discipline" the cancer, how tumors are started because of too much dampness in the body, among other things, and how Zoe can also eat rabbit, if she wants.  The very yang animals are the ones that move fast, and although rabbits run away quickly, they are also very shy, which is yin.

Coincidences abound.  Dr. Thompson went to St. Lawrence University, where I teach.  He goes through the list of his mentors and I tell him which ones are still around and haven't retired yet.  I explain that his teacher, Dr. David Hornung, who helped him get into medical/vet school, is one of the gentlemen of the morning gentlemen's walk that Zoe goes on daily, and so the circles are complete.  We agree that I'll invite his old mentor to the house for when he comes to give Zoe a treatment on April 14.

Zoe is facilitating a reunion between teacher and student.  I love this!

Don has lectured in China, and was recently asked to write a chapter for a textbook being authored by one of the foremost experts on traditional Chinese medicine for animals, a Chinese vet who now lives and practices and teaches in Florida.  We look at the map of China together and I try to remember all the places I went to on a trip led by David and my friend Anne, whom I mentioned on another post because she is starting a wonderful gardening blog.  (If you love gardening, go to the hyperlink on the left, or go to my home page and click on the blogroll blog with "cassidy hill garden" in it.)  I feel like we could talk away the rest of the afternoon and never run out of things to say.

As quiet as Emily is, Don is loquacious.  I like them both.  I feel, after the two visits, that Zoe has been treated to the full spectrum of yin and yang.

And I have too.  The two balance each other.

Afterwards, Zoe and I do run into Emily, who is helping a woman with her crated cat.  Zoe leans against her like they're old friends.

A couple Saturdays from now, Zoe will see Don at the door with his needles and herbs.  She'll bark, but probably not for long.  By now she's used to all the attention.  And besides, all roads do lead, by hook or by crook, to ours in Canton.

Part II, Day Two: Thanksgiving in Spring

Among the kindest of many kind things people have done for us in recent weeks, James and Glenn invited us to come to dinner and spend the night at their place near Stowe on the eve of Zoe's first adventure in Chinese traditional herbal medicine and acupuncture.

I "met" James through Annie, a lovely former student, who is currently in the Peace Corps in Zambia with her husband, Andrew.  Annie worked with James at Green Mountain Coffee and sent me an e-mail this fall to tell me that her coworker and his partner, Glenn, had a golden retriever with osteosarcoma, just like Zoe.  She said the dog was on the same path as Zoe is--amputation, then chemotherapy--but was also being treated by an integrative vet.  It's East meets West in Vermont, and also, Boston, where James drives Milo for monthly visits to his oncologist.  The vet that gives Milo the Chinese herbs and pokes him with needles is less than 20 minutes from their house.

We arrive at 4 on a cool, raw day with scuttling clouds and tawny light that feels more like late November than late March.  The house, on four wooded acres, with a deck overlooking the Green Mountain valley, is private and spa-like, and I already feel relaxed before I knock on the door.

Milo is in Zoe's bed, but Zoe is intrigued by the kitchen

Milo and Emily

Inside, the open living room/dining area/kitchen with the panoramic view is more dogcentric than any home I've ever been in.  Milo, who is almost 11, thumps his tail from his C-shaped day bed, and Emily, a golden Chesapeake retriever curly girl, is 12, and before I can bring my bags in Zoe and I are told by these two that we need to keep our priorities straight.  We plop ourselves down for the meet and greet, and then I bring Zoe's plaid bed near theirs before I bring in anything else.  Milo promptly scoots onto it, claiming it as his.  Zoe doesn't mind.  She likes what's happening in the kitchen.  "She can seem a little aloof at first," I say to James, who goes over to her and sits down with her to begin getting acquainted.  "It's just that she has a job to do.  She has to herd everyone and watch the house and keep us safe.  And she needs a little space to watch everyone and everything equally."

so patient, so brave, so good

Glenn and Milo

While James roasts a turkey, Glenn and Milo and Zoe and I head out to walk around some groomed public fields.  I'm in awe of how Glenn and Milo have this routine down.  Glenn lifts all 75 pounds of Milo into the trunk, then finds room for the go-cart.  When we arrive, he carries Milo out and straps him in.  Milo is a tripod like Zoe, but his back left leg can't do its part now.  He was fine at first, but then he had to have radiation on the back leg because of another mass, and then he blew out his knee.  Plus he has arthritis.  But oh, that sweet, young-looking, brave face.  He is all love and all head.  He pushes that head into you and says, "Look into my eyes soulfully, now," and time stops.

true love

Zoe has her big chance.  She is with a comrade.  They are both tripods, both fighting the same aggressive disease.  He is patient and sweet and friendly, a natural-born teacher, and he would be happy to show her the ropes since he has two more months of experience than she does with oncology, pills, and doctor visits.  But Zoe, side by side with her special needs doggy counterpart, takes off.  Milo is feeling a little under the weather today.  He can't go very fast or very far.  Zoe has been in the car all day.  She runs ahead, comes back, runs ahead, and comes back, but then ditches us for the company of some small, swift dogs.  One, a beagle/retriever mix, has been known to run off into the wild, but his person thinks the retriever part of him is starting to keep him close to the pack.  Zoe would love to show off her herding skills and bring the errant dog back, but he's on his best behavior.

Zoe shoots ahead to meet the swifites

Milo meets the dogs in the 'hood

Zoe turns to check on us and make sure we're still there

Back at the house, we sit down to drink the French red wine I brought and to nibble on goat cheese brie and hummus and crackers.  I didn't have lunch, and the smell of the turkey is making me a little giddy.  We talk about our dogs and our pasts.  James and Glenn met over 17 years ago in San Francisco when they were both working for AIDS hospice.  James grew up in Upper Michigan, served in the military, studied parks recreation on the GI bill in Arkansas, and is currently applying his considerable charm to his work at Green Mountain coffee where he gives tours.  Glenn is from Pennsylvania, has a background in marketing, and now works in IT at Green Mountain.  They give me three free bags and I think ahead to the caffeine highs that will fuel future posts.

I notice later, especially when I bring out the camera, that the colors around us--soft sienna, mustard, saffron, and nutmeg--match the coats of their dogs.  This is a golden retriever pooch palace.

At doggy dining time, James feeds all three dogs at once, topping up Zoe's boring food with some cat food to help the medicine go down.  I watch him give Milo his meds.  Several pills go on his tongue.  James wears gloves, like we're supposed to but don't, and when I marvel at this he says he only put them on to impress me, and that he hardly ever does it either.  Then Milo gets a reward: dried liver treats.  After dinner, Milo gets a baster-full of what they call a "slurry" of Chinese herbs, slippery elm, mushrooms, and a variety of herbs and antioxidants that Glenn, who has a nutrition degree, has been reading about and adding to since the diagnosis.  Milo swallows it all and puts his heavy head in James' hand with gratitude.  James asks if I've noticed that Zoe might have lost her taste for beef marrow bones since she started chemo.  He has created new bones filled with a frozen health drink he makes himself with almond butter and fruit.  All three dogs chomp these down, then suck out the delicious center with a sound like happy people slurping oysters.

Dinner is the succulent turkey, roasted brussel sprouts that have been sauteed with bacon and shallots, mashed sweet potatoes, and a green salad.  Dessert is fresh berries with lemon curd and yogurt.  The dogs get little nibbles of everything.  This is my idea of comfort food--gourmet comfort food.  I'm in heaven.

Where is that flying kitty off to now?

These guys are fun and funny, generous and sweet.  We talk about politics (same allergies to certain bullies and bigots), our respective travels, the move from a very fast-paced urban life in San Francisco to rural Vermont, their remodeling work on the house, and then it's dogs, dogs, dogs.  I would be writing everything down, I should be writing everything down, but Glenn beats me to it.  They also give me a book on dogs and cancer, and a novel I've been wanting to read (with a dog protagonist: The Art of Racing in the Rain.)  I give them Dog Years by Mark Doty, my favorite dog book, but I wish I had more to offer them than that.

As Dog is my witness, you will talk to me

sacked out pups; Zoe's got the bone

Zoe is a shy dog, but she takes to these two humans right away, and cozies up to them, trying to steal attention from the other two dogs.  But the star of the show, as far as she is concerned, is that acrobatic cat, who flies up the stairs, runs to the bedroom headboard, then leaps to the kitchen counter and to the top of the fridge.  Zoe is enthralled.  This is as close to a cat as she has ever been, and still, the cat is elusive, but that's okay: Zoe loves the thrill of the chase.  The cat is not going to snuggle with her, or share her toys, although Zoe did sneak downstairs and nibble from her bowl.

The next morning, we wake up to Winter, the Sequel, and I have to spend some time scraping off my car.  James and I take all three dogs on a snowy trail.  I'm touched when I watch the way James, as Glenn did yesterday, helps Milo in his cart.  He has to lift the cart a little to help Milo pee, and later, before we get into the car, he cleans up Milo's bottom.  He does all this with such sweetness and patience and grace.  Milo just beams and waits, leaning that big soft head against his person.

A few days later, after Milo visits the chiropractor, he will get his mojo back.  Check out his stunts on you-tube.  He's so inspiring.  When I asked if it would be okay for me to share this link with blog viewers, Glenn wrote, "I like getting the word out about dogs with disabilities and their ability to have a great life!"  So please share:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvBeWh3-r4U

What I'm learning is that while Zoe's diagnosis has made us think about the future in a less expansive way, she has also opened our hearts and brought a wider world to us, leading us to people and other dogs and other experiences and houses and lives we would have never known about, were it not for her. 

Usually, after visiting someone's house, I have to put Zoe in the car first, before I pack the trunk, so that she knows she won't be left behind.  If not, she cries.  This morning, for the first time in all our years of traveling together, Zoe won't get in the car.  In fact, she won't leave the yard.  She just parks herself in front of the door to the Vermont Comfort Pooch Palace and looks at me calmly, with her superior knowledge, waiting for me to realize that she knows best.  It's a version of her "hell no, I won't go" look, but less defiant, more calm and beatific, until I call her again, and again, and again, and finally she comes running to see what other surprises are waiting for her down this valley road.

Part II, Day One: Another 108 Days

It's the beginning of April, the trees, confused by late March's summer weather, are budding a month early, and Zoe and I just returned from a road trip to Vermont and Massachusetts in which she:

• walked and ran five miles a day (except for driving days);
• met, hiked alongside, dined with, and had a pajama party with Milo, the golden retriever who has the same bone cancer as she does, his pack sister, Emily, their human family, James and Glenn, and meanwhile made the acquaintance of a certain wily, nimble, provocative, refrigerator-vaulting cat; 
• visited her saucy, smiley cousin Sadie, whose herding instincts take the form of tagging the humans in the flock with a rag or stick or squeaky toy on each walk, and who has been known to do a leap-frog over Zoe, horizontally; 
• had acupuncture twice, liked it, and booked in again for mid-April; 
• embarked on a new chapter of more adventurous canine dining (raw meats!  oats!  kelp!  holy health food store!); 
• chased one UPS truck to the street and then sat in smug, self-satisfaction in a pool of sunlight on my sister and brother-in-law's deck, telling us all by her haughty look: My work is done here now; 
• shoved her saucy, smiley cousin aside on the couch to find the best position for watching Michele Williams become Marilyn Monroe on family movie night; 
• and returned home to the North Country to assume her favorite position on the deck guarding the house and ruling the people inside it.

Zoe and I agree: it feels good to be home again.

And it feels good to be back on the beat, writing about daily life, even if this new season will definitely challenge my dog and my husband and me to be stronger than we thought we were, because spring has sprung with much uncertainty.

For today's meditation, I opened up to this teaching from Your True Home, the Everyday Wisdom of Thich Nhat Hanh:

We all feel insecure.  We don't know what the future holds: accidents happen, a loved one may suddenly be struck by an incurable disease and die, and we are not sure if we'll be alive tomorrow.  This is all part of impermanence, and this feeling of insecurity can make us suffer.

How can we face this feeling?  What is our practice?  I think living deeply in the moment is what we have to learn and practice so we can face this feeling of insecurity.  We have to handle the present moment well.  We live deeply in the present moment so that in the future we will have no regrets.  We are aware that both we and the person in front of us are alive.  We cherish the moment and do whatever we can to make life meaningful and to make him happy in this moment.

Gentle reader, this is my mission for the next 108 posts (which might not happen on 108 consecutive days; I'm giving myself a little leeway this time . . . )  To cherish the moment and do what I can to make life meaningful for my dog, myself, and our little pack, even as Zoe's future is uncertain.

We know that the nodules in her lung were shrinking during most of the winter, when I began writing "Winter with Zoe," and then they got a little bigger as we began a new season and a new kind of chemotherapy treatment.

But today, as I write, she is very much alive.  Her coat is shining, her eyes are bright, and she is on an hour-long walk with her favorite beagle and her favorite golden retriever, and three of her favorite men, including my husband: what we refer to around here as the gentlemen's walk.  Before she left a few minutes ago, she ate her new food with gusto, then tossed around the squeaky beaver, looking murderous and delighted at once.  She's baaaaack, and she's ready for a good Sunday, and she might even con us into doing something foolish, something April foolish, on her behalf.

I have a backlog of stories to share with you.  I look forward to taking this ride with you again, gentle reader, and I wish you a most relaxing Sunday and start to the new month.