Part II, Day 52: Just Chillin'

I'm probably the only person in the North Country who is sad to hear that it might get up to 80 degrees on Sunday.  When Zoe and I head outside on these cool June mornings, I rejoice when I need a fleece jacket.  She loves the cold, and I love what she loves--as long as it doesn't involve eating a maggoty deer leg or squirrel.

These early days of June have been so achingly sweet.  How did I ever leave the house and go to a job?  We're never apart now for more than an hour or two.  We sit on the balcony and watch the river.  She does her doggy meditation, I attempt my human form, she goes on the gentlemen's walk with my husband, and I write until lunch.  We roam the yard looking for things to smell, and we sit on the rocks and stare at the water moving steadily as breath.  We walk in late afternoon.

Yesterday she startled some grackles away from their favorite backyard willow, but she ignored the baby groundhogs who could have been lunch.  She doesn't chase every bunny she sees now, but she stares them down until they're out of harm's way.  For a while before dinner after our walk I swung myself in the hammock and watched her chew on grass and thought about nothing at all.

It occurred to me the day before yesterday that I could make each day with her feel like two if we share more activities together, so that evening instead of just roaming the yard for one last time before bed I asked her what she wanted to do.  She pointed to the road.  When she was a puppy we used to walk after dinner through our neighborhood so that she could practice being on the lead, and invariably she would tug to go to Rebecca's house on State Street, where she could play hide and seek with her cats.  She did that again last night, but Rebecca wasn't home, so we popped in on Diane and Fred and while I admired their remodeled kitchen Zoe chased around the cats.  Their boxer had to be restrained because it's his job, not hers, to manage the cats, but Zoe learned a little bit about boundaries, and that's never a bad thing for a dog to learn.

Cool nights.  Green grass.  Furry black dog.  Leaves plumping up and filling the trees while light winds carry the aromas of early herb gardens.  The great blue heron, the big blue sky.  A full moon on Monday, then the transit of Venus on Tuesday, and now as the week winds down, just the peace that comes after one of those big stellar shakedowns.

I work on the France novel, then go out to the yard to pet her, then head upstairs again.  This is my work now.  This is my job.

Sweet early June.  I will never forget these days.  How I long to make them pass slowly, as slowly as it takes to write a 500-page novel, as slowly as it takes for some of us (moi!) to learn what peace is and how it's always accessible right here, right now, in a single moment of an otherwise unremarkable day in June.

Part II: Day 51: Porcupine Love

A few weeks ago Zoe found a porcupine hanging from our backyard maple tree and was not all that happy to see him.  She yelled at him for the better part of an hour until he climbed back down in his sleepy, plodding way and hopped into the back and beyond.

I had never seen a porcupine up close before.  Once, I pulled a baby porkie's spines from Zoe when she was still a puppy, so my one intimate contact with this critter wasn't a positive one--although in retrospect, Zoe and I got off easy from that close encounter when you consider that most dogs who square off with porcupines have to be put under in a vet's office so that the quills can be surgically removed.

For today's post I've invited Erin Siracusa, the St. Lawrence University class of 2012 valedictorian, a fine writer and naturalist, to submit a little excerpt from her senior honors project about porcupines.              

The Porcupine

by Erin Siracusa

Tuesday mornings are “porkie wrangling” mornings, at least that’s North Country vernacular for the so-called catch and release tactics of biologists who harass porcupines. A short drive brings you to the edge of the Kip Tract, a parcel of forested wetland in the St. Lawrence River Valley. There are fourteen Havahart® traps along a prescribed path which winds through the undergrowth, all of which have been baited with half an apple the night before. The narrow footpath is easy to lose in the dark, often altogether disappearing for a few meters before reappearing on the other side of a swampy bog. But in the early light of sunrise there is a certain anticipation as you move through the woods, adjusting the weight of your pack across your shoulders and smearing bug dope, the mosquitoes already singing musically in your ear.

            It usually takes two people to handle a porcupine. One will squish it in the corner of the trap with a large metal object that looks like a multi-pronged fork and the other will, with utmost care, inject the porcupine with a mixture of ketamine and medetomadine. After a few minutes the porcupine will cease to exhibit the physiological responses associated with an animal under threat. Its quills will no longer erect and its tail will cease the sharp slapping motion. Effectually, the porcupine will be immobilized. In that space of time we will have created a moment in which we can pull smelting gloves up to our elbows and pick up this porcupine, this wild animals that we have stunned with our chemicals. We can run our bare fingers through its short dense underfur, we can measure it and weigh it, we can take a clipping of its ear and insert a PIT tag under its skin with a 12-gauge veterinary needle. We can poke and prod its genitals and put ointment in its still-open eyes so they don’t dry out. We can clip electrodes to its lips and stick needles under its skin and run an electric current through its body in order to determine its mass body index.
            We do all this because we care about these animals, because we want to know how much fat they’ve stored and if they will make it through the long North Country winter, because we have a human preoccupation with obtaining knowledge and understanding the way the world works. We do it because these animals are poorly studied and even more poorly understood, because myths create misunderstandings and misunderstandings alter the shape of our interactions with the world. Because porcupines are killed as a nuisance species and a pest and most of the time hunters have no idea what they are killing. They kill porcupines because they are in the way, because they are slow and easy targets, because porcupines eat their maple trees and damage their sugar shacks or because they protect themselves from an overcurious dog.  In doing this we break a barrier, we cross a line. Quills say get this close and no closer and we disregard that warning. I cross a line of objectivity when I hold a baby porcupine to my chest and watch it wake with the lethargic movements of a drug-induced sleep. We create a space in which the laws of nature are altered. We chase these porcupines around the woods with their drunken, stumbling movements, their motor function still impaired from the remnants of drugs in their system, plucking them off trees like misbehaving toddlers, afraid that they will get hurt if they try to climb too soon.

Erin and her porcupine muse

            The thing is, when you come down to it, porcupines are cute, with their softly furred faces and dexterous hands. I find my self rather enraptured at the way they lumber ungracefully about the woods after being drugged, occasionally tipping unceremoniously onto their side, as if the weight of the left-half of their body were just too much. And the soft way their pink tongue might poke out at the side, licking the outer edges of their lips in a roundabout, lizard-like way. Sometimes I talk to them, coo to them like a mother might to a child taking their first steps. They become surprisingly human-like in the way they sit on their haunches with their forepaws in the air, gracefully handling flowers and catkins between tapered claws. We name them: Jack, Eva, Carlos, Lyra, Stekel, Sage, Godzilla, Beba, Mira, Aspen, Zena, Roze, Tater Tot. I even smell them sometimes, when I’m far from the woods, their dark, musky smell. It comes to me in the way that odd snips of memory do, a flash, an essence of something that isn’t there, but you desperately wish was. And I am reminded of the way that porcupine quills burrow under the skin, their tiny barbs gripping with every muscle contraction, lucidly clutching onto tiny fibers, unparalleled in their ability to sink in, to disappear slowly until one day you hardly realize how deeply they’ve found their way into your life.
           

Part II, Day 50: An Hour in June

Zoe and I have said good-bye to two beloved dogs from our circle in a span of four days.  That's a lot to take in.
 
One we knew for seven years.  He and Zoe ran together, swam together, vacationed together, and would have chased sheep together if his people and I had been ranchers in a parallel life.  The other was Zoe's patient and courageous guide into the world of the three-leggeds.  All I can do now is sit and hold these two loving pups in my heart, sifting through memories of tails thumping, eyes gleaming, wet noses, butt sniffing and snorts.  I can still feel the comforting weight of one of those sweet dogs on my feet.  This fellow taught me the meaning of play.  Fun-loving and prankish in his youth, always affectionate and stout-hearted, his voice-over in the animation would be read by Albert Finney.  I can still feel the gravitas of the other one as he lifted his big head to meet Zoe and me and invited us into his world for this spring season of new life and change, endings and beginnings, telling us not to take ourselves and this situation we are surprised to find ourselves in too seriously, telling us not to be afraid.  When I think of him, I will remember how he chased sunbeams on his walks and looked for cool patches of moss to roll in.  A soulful Tom Hanks would do his voice-over.  Both these dogs taught those who loved them a little something about happiness, about feeling the earth beneath our paws and feet.  

I sit outside for an hour with Zoe, inviting the essence of these two dogs we have both loved to join us here in the green grass of June.  All we can do to honor their lives and their passing is to share some minutes here loving the life that beats in us still.

What looked like rain cleared early this morning and now the sky is a tranquil, flawless blue.  The dog and I watch a light wind stir up the willow leaves above us.  Some of them scatter to the grass and one falls on my lap.  Zoe leans against me.  We rest in one place like this for a long time, and then we find another. 

 
Earlier this hour I brought my lunch out to the big flat rock in the river.  The dog sat beside me in the tall grass and begged for bites of it.  She looked happy and puppyish, working it with her big brown eyes, and in my eyes she was every age she’s ever been: the scared eight-pound pup I brought home from the pound, who put the “dog” in the word “dogged” as in “dogged my footsteps” when we went on our first walks across the river.  The punk-ass year-older and terrible two-year-old who once ran from my side into the road to chase a kid with skates up the hill, causing the woman beside me to say, “Thank goodness; I thought she was perfect, and what a lot of pressure that would be for you!"  The three-year-old maturing dog who was part of a pack of four dogs that circled the table in our friends’ wedding banquet in a mad frenzy, causing us to suspend all toasts so that we could pay homage to that moment that not one of us who was present will ever forget.  And she is still the dog who for several years has run on a certain beach in North Carolina dodging jellyfish, the dog who has seen much of the Northeast and Midwest, Georgian Bay in Ontario, and perhaps more of Ottawa—a certain animal hospital—than she would have liked.  She is still the six-year-old voyager who traveled all through France and a bit of Sardinia and Spain and was shown to tables in fine restaurants where she was given a water bowl before her people got their drinks.  But above all she is a North Country dog, a dog of river trails and pine forests, snow and rain.

One of the dogs I mourn this week was present for many of these Zoe incarnations.  It is inevitable that this would be so because his person, a beautiful and wise woman, and I are very close friends. The other dog came along late in the game, along with his amazing people--generous, patient, and kind, my role models and guides through Zoe's cancer--reminding me that one of the blessings dogs bring us is that they make us meet human beings we would have no reason to know otherwise.  This has been true for Zoe all along, even now.  I have met some of you, gentle readers, because of this dog, in person, or through the blog, and I am so grateful to have made your acquaintance.

Now, on this June afternoon, we are just two living creatures feeling a gentle wind on our skin.  She turns her head from side to side in her “I’m cute and I know it pose” and then offers me her paw to hold, presenting it like a papal ring.  The leaves and grass are so green now and the sky, bluer than a dream of blue sky, brings out the amber glow of her eyes.  

What we have these days is very tender and sweet, even if it is the most sober kind of happiness.  Even when my heart is filled with sadness for the dogs who have left us in recent days and weeks and I feel a foreshadowing of loss and sorrow to come our good days like this one are miracles to me.   

The days lengthen every day now.  Just as on the solstice we know we are at the pinnacle, that all days thereafter will shorten in the lazy yawn of summer, I let the daylight do its work today.  Sorrow’s soft underbelly is the joy of every sweet memory.  When I pat that part of my dog, the soft white of her, the fur still shaved down where we once took pictures of her heart, I know that our lives will always be entwined. 

Thoreau wrote in his journal in January of 1855, “Perhaps what most moves us in winter is some reminiscence of far-off summer.”  Today in June I am remembering a day in winter when Zoe stared at the iced river for hours and I thought how lucky I was to share that afternoon with her.

Now I know because of writing and living “Winter with Zoe” that in the winter of our lives, a summer sun burns still.  And if we honor winter in summer we won’t let the warmth of June rush away from us without taking that sunlight into our bodies, feeling it on our skin in this cool green grass.

Part II: Day 49: This Morning, This Cool, Rainy June Morning

6 a.m.  It's cool and damp out here, sweater weather for the dog's person, comfort weather for the dog with the thick black fur coat.  We contemplate purple pansies, pink snapdragons, gymnastic squirrels, groundhog mamas and their young, and invite the great blue heron to bring his girlfriend over for our appraisal.  The wind stirs the poplar outside the studio and a branch bows down to us in an unsteady way just as I bowed last night in yoga class in sun salutations with knees slightly bent--cool nights bringing me unusually tight hamstrings--and I say, this is the life I was meant to lead.  We listen, we watch, and I wrap myself in a blanket and drink coffee.  Our dog hates heat and if cool is what she wants, so be it.  I say, I'm in: let's go for summer-lite.  Let there be lettuce and asparagus, let there eventually even be corn and tomatoes, I certainly don't want our farmers to suffer, but if this lovely dog likes a mild cool morning with nary a bug, what's the harm?

We watch the mist swirling above the river and I think I can see fish or creatures imitating them riding the current.  The hammock swings empty in the yard; no one wants to lounge there and read in this weather.  I picture the August me out there with sunglasses and a book and I hope there's an August Zoe too, underneath that hammock swatting flies away.  But hope, Thich Nhat Hanh says, is dangerous.  It makes me forget that the perfect moment is this moment right now.  It makes us chase things we can't see.  It makes us put our happiness in hock. 

And right now the dog is eating, walking, running, playing, cuddling, smiling in her doggy way, and she knows this is her world so of course as the day wakes up and people get to work she will supervise the construction going on across the river--across her river.  Right now the dog is beside me sharing a new day, this Tuesday morning.  This is our moment, and although I want a million more of these I will horde the ones I have by writing about them here and now.

Namaste, gentle reader.  Namaste.

Part II: Day 48: Zoe and Rebecca and Katniss, Another Interspecies Mixer

Those of you well-acquainted with this corner know that my dog, Zoe, has aspired to befriend a cat for quite some time, to no avail.  When she tugs me over to State Street to Rebecca's house, where Webster the cat lives, said cat in residence disappears.  (I wrote about Zoe's back history with cats and with Webster some time ago, and that post can be found here.)  Zoe will sniff out Webster's hiding place and park there looking pleased with herself, but the two never interact beyond the phenomenon of Zoe risking a mauling and possible blindness by sticking her head under the divan where Webster is crouched in the fetal position.  Now and then she barks to him a message that sounds like "Show your face!  You're weak!  Tom-cat up!"  I don't think he cares one bit what she has to say.

Well, now that there's a new cat in town and Zoe's had a chance to come courting, we know just how bold and sassy this canine ambassador is.  The answer: not so much.

This weekend we stopped over to meet the new addition to Rebecca's cat palace.  Her name is Katniss, she was rescued by our friend Diane, and she is the size of Zoe's head.

This kitten is not afraid of dogs.  She sits there and watches with detached amusement as dogs roll on their backs, bark at her, stick their snouts near her face, eat snacks, lap up her water, expel gas, and play with her mouse toys.  Nothing fazes her.

Rebecca had to hold Zoe by the collar to get her to appear in the same photographic frame of little Katniss.  Zoe was panting in fear.

Was it Katniss's mojo?  Maybe she's just got that alpha vibe that turns other creatures into pools of terror and supplication.

Or maybe Katniss just fits into Zoe's category of Unidentified Animate Object.  She is certainly the smallest animal Zoe has ever seen of the pet variety.

Katniss got bored with the scared dog routine eventually and decided to climb up her pedestal where she could reign over her kingdom from on high.

Faced with the chance to interact further with this self-possessed kitten, Zoe took off.  She ran laps through the house, heading up and down and finally settling near the divan where she could intimidate the hidden Webster who is approximately four times the size of his adopted sister.

Later, when she knew we were leaving, and I already was buttoning my raincoat, Zoe realized that she had a reputation to maintain.  She stood beneath Katniss's high perch and barked at her.   What was she saying?  Want a piece of me?  How'd you get up there?  Be a dog!  We didn't know.

I'm a veteran of junior high mixers and I know that there isn't a lot of mixing that takes place.  We, the students of Newton D. Baker Junior High, in Cleveland, Ohio, circa pre-Watergate, called them Friday night canteens, and in retrospect it was an act of incredible generosity and courage for the teachers and parental chaperones to decide they would give up a weekend night to supervise hormonally-challenged seventh and eighth graders in a big school gym.  Mostly the boys held up their part of the wall and watched with feigned disinterest while the girls jumped around in a big pack in low-riding tight bell bottoms and screamed.  It could have been the music we were listening to that made us scream.  When I think of that time, however, and search for a soundtrack, my mind goes blank.  I just hear girls bending over to screech random things in my ear, and the distant baritone of boys whose voices only stopped being mezzo-soprano about five minutes ago mumbling a language I had yet to learn.

Meet Katniss.  She's an imperturbable kitten, and she weighs as much as my morning toast

Zoe's licking her chops for . . . the greenies next to the kitty.  Rebecca is holding this brave dog in place.

This is a dog-free perch

Zoe likes it in the next room where she can feel superior to the hidden Webster-cat and can still watch our every move

You think you're so smart, little cat, just because you can climb.  But, can you fly?

Do you think they are friends now?  We'll have to see what happens next time . . .

It is the way of all mixers that much is lost in translation.

Part II: Day 47: Days of Wonder

On Monday my sister and brother-in-law called me from the house to go outside and see something special.
 
They had me climb a ladder near the sweet little tea house where we had pictures taken of our family on the day they were married.

Up in a tree was a robins' nest.  The little hatchlings opened their mouths and squeaked, asking their mother for lunch.

I took these pictures, but really, you had to be there.  I felt so lucky to see these little guys on one of their first days in our world.
 
Back on the lawn, Zoe rolled over on her back and said, Do you mind?  You're blocking my view of the road.  She had a domain to reign over, which was how she regained her strength.

Later she posed for us in the iris bed and for a little while, the rules did not apply to her at all.

Then, our first morning back home, the great blue heron touched down briefly, balanced himself, then flew away.

Later I saw two of them flapping past.  I guess he's found his mate.

off to meet his girlfriend for a morning rendezvous

gold star if you can see him squatting down here looking more like a white duck than a majestic great blue heron

Simone and Priscilla at around two months of age

Thursday I took Zoe out to visit the shaman/poet and her dogs Kole and Zoe, the young blond version.  My friend wanted Zoe to meet the new additions to their family: a pair of lambs.

Zoe was born to herd, and my great regret was that I was never able to give her a sheep farm.  Once, when she was already about three or four years old, I took her out to the Cornell Extension Farm for a herding lesson.  She was too scared, at first, of these alien creatures.  I led her around the pen and she herded me instead, instructing me to stay close.

Meet the parents, and then some

But later, she watched through the fence and something deep and instinctive in her woke up.  For the past hour or so she had averted her gaze from the pen, from the other dogs practicing their herding moves, looking instead longingly at my car, but then she stared at those sheep anew.  I saw the wolf in her turn on like a light.  Her mouth opened.  Her teeth gleamed.  She was saying, Hmmm. . . . That's some nice-looking, plump sheep bootie over there.  I need to bite me some of that!  She begged to be asked for a second time in the ring, and when she went in there, she performed remarkably better.  I trilled with pride for her when I heard her telling them what was what and who was who in the grand scheme of things.

Baby Simone, the Black Sheep of the Family

Zoe watches the sheep from a distance

This is a good spot for contemplating the natural order of things.

The black dog and the black lamb in the lap have an intense visual encounter, while the other black dog supervises

Way beyond this side of the fence, Zoe bids adieu to young Priscilla

This week, however, she hung back for a while looking for a spot in the shaman/poet's lovely gardens where she could lounge in the shade and watch us love up the lambs from a safe distance.

But later, just when we were getting ready to go home, she ran up by herself to stare them down.  She just needs to come around to things on her own time.

Part II: Day 46: The Dog's Codependent Pepes

Morning meditation with our girl starts this codependent human on the right track

Yesterday after lunch, my husband and I were romping with Zoe along the riverbed in our back yard, and he said, “We’re both totally codependent on the dog.  We’re happy as clams today because she’s happy as a clam.  Look at her!”

We looked down as Zoe chewed on some tall grass, then tried to balance a stick on her head.  The dog looked up at us and panted happily.  She had that gleam in her eye.

If every day with her is a gift, this one, Thursday, May 31, was like a houseful of presents on one of those birthdays that end with an 0.  Dog's appetite: excellent.  Dog's desire to walk and romp: off the charts.  Dog's vibe: Buddha meets Lassie.

“I don’t know what’s worse,” I said.  “The fact that what you just said is true, or the fact that I’ve influenced you and now you are starting to talk like this.”

We both laughed.  My husband loathes jargon, especially the kind we associate with pop psychology.  But he knows this about himself:  he is always as happy as the least tranquil member of his family.

Why is our Zoe back to her happy place?  What has done the trick?  Has she gotten used to her new drugs?  Is she just happy that she won the victory and we’re giving her mainstream dog food and, for the moment—this is really not forever—no herbals? 

Last week there were a lot of strikes against her.   

For starters, she's dealing with new drugs that no one seems to know much about, not even the pharmaceutical company that makes them.   I know this because I called them when we were trapped in the car on our way through the maybe-tornado.  And I know this because when I talked to Willow and asked whether she has known dogs lose their personalities on the drug, she said that Zoe is only the second dog she’s prescribed it to.  “The other dog . . . It was just a short time,” she said.  Meaning, I presume, that the drug was the last port of call, and the dog died.  So we’re in unknown territory here and no one has any advice.   

Then there were the parasites.  And intense heat.  The rise of barometric pressure before a major storm blew through.  Construction project altering her domain and adding to the noise, which she can’t stand.  Plus we also gave her a dose of Frontline—we were driving into Lyme Disease headquarters—which always makes her squirmy, plus her monthly Heartguard tablet.  Just one of these factors—the heat, in particular—would normally take her off her game.  Then add to that the problem that her people roiled about with anxiety and frayed nerves.

A friend who is going through something very similar with his dog wrote me this message on e-mail:

"Although these days are all rollercoaster days - some we're at the top and some we're at the bottom--my challenge is not letting those days at the bottom consume me.  They tend to be lost days in my life and I wish I could find a better way to handle it. "

Tell me about it, friend!

So now our task is to do whatever we can to replenish ourselves, rebuild our strength and resilience and senses of humor so that we can be ready when something else happens, so that we can ride the next wave without letting it carry us away.