D is for Dogs—Love, Loss, and All the Pawprints Between

 

Dogs, Dad, Don or dyslexia. Eeny, meeny, miny, moe. What should I write about for the letter D in the April A to Z Blog Challenge? Since my theme this month is “The humans, habits, hidden joys and heartaches that shaped my world,” I could cheat and pick all four—Dad for the humans (the best person I’ve ever known), Don for habits (he chain‑smoked three packs a day and I’ve got stories), dogs for the joys, and dyslexia for the heartaches that followed me far beyond school. But if I start cheating this early, by the time I get to K the Challenge Police might kick me off the spreadsheet that tracks how often we comment on other bloggers. As I understand it, that’s half the point of this yearly event—discovering new blogging voices. So welcome if you’re new here, and if you’re a long‑time reader, thank you for sticking around.

I’m choosing Dogs for my D topic because most of you don’t know that back when blogging was at its height, I kept a blog in a large dog‑blog community—large as in roughly 700 dog lovers. Most of us wrote in our dog’s voice. I loved it. My dogs could say things I couldn’t, or add a humorous twist to the antics all dog parents recognize.

Here’s something Levi “wrote” in The Levi and Cooper Chronicles when he was a puppy: “Wednesday me found Moomie’s boobie hammock hanging in the bathroom. Levi is smart. Me figured out how to get it off the hook and mes turned it into pull‑toy for my stuffie, Mr. Goose. He was having so much fun riding through the living room and Daady was having fun watching us until Moomie came along. End of fun. End of Daddy, Mr. Goose and Levi being happy.”

Six years later, Levi had learned proper pronouns but not how to soften a blow: “Something happened I want to share with the world because it hurts so much. My daady died! My human daady died and I’m so worried because he went to the Rainbow Bridge without his wheelchair. He needs that chair and Moomie just took it to a place called Goodwill. If they really have good will they’d bring it back and bawl my moomie out for leaving it there.”

In this blog alone I’ve written seven posts dedicated to the dogs in my life, and there are countless others where they wander in and out of the narrative. They’ve been shaping me since the beginning—from Blackie, the puppy who shared my playpen and grew into my babysitter and protector, to Levi, my last dog, who died just before I moved into Independent Living nearly five years ago. They’ve been confidants, companions and stand‑ins for the babies I never had. They’ve made me laugh, cry, brag and shamelessly use them for blog fodder. I worried over them, cleaned up after them, and I was, admittedly, a helicopter pet parent.

Don, my husband, spoiled them in the classic good‑cop way, while I was the bad cop in charge of training them to be good citizens and housemates. I loved him all the more for the way he treated my poodles. Before we were married, I gave him a document proclaiming him to be 49¾% owner of Cooper, and you’d have thought I’d handed him the keys to a mansion. On his birthdays and Father’s Days, “Cooper” would tape a quarter inside a greeting card and deliver the cards mouth to hand. When I was cleaning out my husband’s stuff during a move I discovered that he’d kept all those cards and quarters. They were the same quarters Don had dropped into Cooper’s piggy bank every time I let him take the dog along while he plowed snow. They were crazy about each other.

John Steinbeck once wrote, “I’ve seen a look in dogs’ eyes, a quickly vanishing look of amazed contempt, and I am convinced that basically dogs think humans are nuts.” Most dog parents know that look. They judge us, and sometimes we come up short. But we also know their look of pure devotion, and the one they use when they’re trying to sweet‑talk us into shelling out a treat.

I miss having that co‑dependent relationship in my life. Truth be told, I probably needed my dogs more than they ever needed me.

And that’s my wrap for the letter D. ©

Photo at the top: Levi, the only Schnauzer I ever had. The rest of the dogs in my adult life were poodles (3). In childhood we had collie and two Belgium Shepherds and one dog of questionable breeding. 

Screen Doors and New Neighbors

Maintenance here at the CCC can be a two edged sword with one side sharper than the other. On the sharper side, the system for writing up service requests works well for those of us who are computer literate. With the exception of that time a maintenance man was on vacation and an office girl closed out the work order about my water without sending one of the guys around to check it out, I have no complains. And yet here I am finding something to get picky about---the dull side of the sword: They’re not good at giving us prior notice of when they’ll be stopping to do things.

This week I got an e-mail saying they’d be installing screen doors on our units starting next week, but two days later two guys showed up at my apartment with a box containing my screen door. I had just stepped out of the shower, had my hair wrapped in a towel and my heavy winter bathrobe was buttoned up to my neck so I said, “Okay.” I wasn’t going to fall into the trap of saying come back later because you get downgraded to the bottom of the list. They have their way of picking through jobs so they keep their tool carts in certain areas for as long as possible. Two hours late I had my brand new screen door in just in time to greet spring if it ever gets to my part of the world. 

Mine was the second one installed in the complex and the neighbor who got one that same morning wasn’t home when hers was put in. She was unset because “they didn’t put the screens in! What are we supposed to do? Call them to change the glass and screens twice a year? Are they going to store them for us?” I tried to tell her that the screen was self-storing and rolled up (like a window shade) at the top of the door but I wasn’t getting through to her. I might have through the same thing if I hadn’t looked at the door online before I ordered one and I understood what I was getting. Word to the wise for anyone who isn't already computer literate, get there while you can because even in places like this upper middle class Continuum Care Complex life is easier if you can keep up online. We have our own app the covers sixteen areas of our lives including phone directories for staff and residents, dining menus, pastoral services, Life Enrichment schedules and so on.

There is a woman who moved in two weeks ago that I swear is going to worry herself to death. She walks around with a schedule of what’s going on for the week in her hand that one of her kids printed out for her. She seems to think if she doesn’t find the right room for, say, an exercise class or she misses the dining hours that she’ll get punished or kicked out. She doesn’t grasp the concept that no one in charge of anything cares if we show up or not. The word 'independent' in the term 'independent living' seems to be a hard concept for many people to understand. All of us have friends and family who've asked questions making it clear they think we moved into something like the Witness Protection Program only for old people hiding out from scouts looking for residents to ship us off to nursing homes.

Anyway, if our new resident gets moved out it will be because maybe she should have gone directly to memory care and by-passed independent living. And maybe deep down that is what she fears? I sat next to her at our baked potato buffet one night and she asked me four times when I moved in. To be fair, most of us moved in together in October and it was hard to keep our back stories all straight when you’re trying to learn them all at once. She needs to relax and give herself time because there is no Litmus Test coming. Well, there is actually but there is only one question: Are we residents a danger to ourselves or others? But even if we are they can’t move us out of our independent apartments without the consent and full cooperation of the person/family member we named as our power of attorney. And people with money could in theory even hire  live-in or part-time caregivers if they didn't want to move on down the food chain of a continuum care complex. There is a business associated with our CCC that covers all kinds of stop-gap services if we need them but we don't have to use that one in particular company.

The new resident has a three year old Chocolate Lab that nearly tipped me over jumping on me and I’m not a small, frail woman. She has no control over that dog and if anyone gets kicked out her dog might be asked to leave if it hurts someone. Its owner just lets go of the leash when the Lab sees someone it wants to greet. It did a full gallop and a two legged bounce against me. 

Now that spring is here I’m seeing a lot of dog walkers, mostly from the surrounding community who like taking our road and walkways through our wooded property. I don’t blame them. It’s one of the major reasons I bought here---the fact that it's so dog friendly. Now that I’m settled in, though, and my raw grief over losing Levi is in the rear view mirror I’m 95% he was my last dog. Just the right dog would have to fall in my lap for that decision to change. 

I still missing living with a dog. You can’t have a dog in your life 78 years out of 80 without feeling like a part of you is lost. Heck, neighbors called me the Poodle Lady for years, the one who threw birthday parties for her dogs and taught them circus tricks. But I keep reminding myself that all my life I’ve had my own back yard and I didn’t need to walk my dogs. That changes everything in the grand scheme of growing older. ©

Routines Past and Present and Scary Dogs

I’m a creature of habit and predictable patterns. I was going to say like no other, but that wouldn’t be true. Birds fly south every fall and come back in the spring. Bees and ants rest in eight hour cycles. Bears hibernate. Every species on earth has its breeding seasons and its sleep times. The sun rises every morning and sets every night and aren’t we happy about that. At least it does for those of us who live in certain regions on the earth. People who live at the top of the earth, however, where they get very little sunshine, how do they know when it’s time to sleep? Here in Michigan we just have a short twilight before darkness falls. In the Arctic Circle it’s completely dark from mid-November to the end of January. The rest of the time they have, according to sciencing.com, one of three kinds of twilight that last 24/7---Civil Twilight, Nautical Twilight and Astronomical Twilight if you want to look them up. And,  boy, did I ever get off track to what I wanted to write about which is the routine I’m settling into here in my new community. 

 

I’m almost as routine-ridge as my mom was when I was growing up when we did the laundry on Monday, ironed on Tuesday, cleaned on Wednesdays, ate left-overs on Fridays and grocery shopped on Saturdays. We only had one car so if my mom had errands to run mid-week on Thursdays she had to take my dad to work early in the after afternoon and pick him back up after midnight. During her menopause years her doctor told her to get a job to help with the symptoms she was experiencing. Ya, like we all know, now, that that was voodoo medicine he was practicing. But she did it and and that meant she had to take my dad back and forth to work every day that she worked. His factory was in a bad part of town so she went down to the humane society and got a big black dog that hated men. 

 

Jody was a purebred, Belgian Shepherd that had been badly abused and it took my dad months before he could be in the same room with that dog. Jody was loyal and protective of my mom and me but she never did learn to fully trust men. She was the perfect dog for woman to have in a car at midnight or to protect your teenager daughter when her older brother had his friends over when our parents weren't home. It only took one boy to try to kiss me and get bit for his efforts for the rest of his friends to see the error in getting in the personal space of “Little Rat.” My brother wore his nickname of “Rat” proudly and at the time I didn’t question how he got it and now that I'd like to know that back story its probably lost forever. But I'll bet my brother still remembers how our driveway was often filled with boys working on cars. The TV series Happy Days could have easily based a few episodes on their banner. Those were fun days, but I digress. Again.

 

Sundays here has evolved in being my housework and laundry days and often I don't-get-dressed because I avoid the campus restaurant and the after church crowd that gathers in the public area with their families and/or off-campus friends. This place has settled into a pattern of having the exercise classes mostly in the morning slots which keeps me from dropping into them. Four-five afternoons a week they have lecturers, entertainment or podcasts on the schedule. We've even had two bus trips to the art museum with another planned to a lavender farm. Every afternoon and evening of the week including Sundays they have something going on in the game room but all my good intentions to take part hasn’t happened yet. The crafting-for-charity get-togethers are usually in the mornings too but I do make an effort to go...it's only on the schedule maybe once a month? And I haven't missed a monthly book club meeting yet.

 

Once a day I eat at the cafe`and once a week I eat in fine dining restaurant, both to get my fix of socializing which usually takes two hours if the mix of people there is to my liking, which is most of the time. If not, I could be in and out with a take-out box as an option. I’ve taken to writing in the mornings like I used to do before the move but the afternoons that I visualized myself painting or quilting hasn't happened yet and somethings got to give for me to correct that...write less, go to less afternoon events and I don't really want to cut either one. Like yesterday afternoon we' had a live demonstration of playing steel drums. (I'll write about that later.)  Throw in a few outside appointments and shopping and the week disappears quickly. My evenings are my treadmill, reading, jigsaw puzzle and my Netflix times. I've never liked crafting after dark.

 

Oh, and it should be noted that I’m trying to ease back into watching the Sunday news shows again and at least a hlaf hour of news every day. But doing so feels like I'm living in a loop, like in the movie Groundhog Day. Everything’s changed, but nothing has changed if that makes any sense. The Pandemic, Trump, supply chain shortages and scary people trying to destroy Democracy here and around the world. Banning a book from high school libraries about the Holocaust because it has a photo of naked lady standing in a gas chamber? Where was the outrage over Mrs. Trump’s girl-on-girl naked photos? As you can see I’m not yet sufficiently decompressed from the long break I've been on from my previous addiction to watching (way too much) news. It still has the power to raise my blood pressure. But its still our civic duty to stay informed, so I'm trying again... Besides being informed before elections get here, what happens in the world could become a question on the dementia test and who wants to fail that life changing quiz.

One of my routines is to stop writing when I hit my 1,000 word quota and I’m 85 words over now so I’m putting a period on this post right here. ©

 

Photo: The dog above was our second Belgian Shepherd, Cindy, but she and Jody looked identical. Both of these dogs and my mom were inseparable. Cindy, however had a sweet personality that could be trusted completely not to bite. My mom could tell that dog to go get the grandkids who were playing down the road and that dog would herd them just like they were a flock of sheep, usually the youngest, my nephew would be crying because that dog wouldn't let him go anywhere but back towards our cottage. The girls were older and understood and didn't seem to mind having a dog come get them when grandma called.

 

The Dilemma

Dogs are like little people who don’t wear clothes or own big collections of CDs or radiator caps that you have to dispose of when they pass. You don’t have to close their bank accounts, stop their cell service or notify Social Security or the post office but I do need to get Levi taken out of my will. Although come to think about it he’s not mentioned specifically by name. It just says that a $1,000 for every year left on my dog’s estimated life span is to follow the canine to help with care. And that amount is to be taken out of my assets before the four humans in my will gets a cut of whatever I might leave behind when I die. Now that Levi is gone one of my heirs could try to pass a puppy off as one I recently adopted and scam my estate out of an extra twelve-fifteen grand which is as good as any other reason to justify me actually getting a puppy. Screwball logic. I could teach a class in that.

Ya, I know, Levi’s only been gone ten days. It’s too soon to be thinking of getting another dog and I ask myself if it’s fair to get one when my own life expectancy wouldn’t out last a puppy’s. But here’s the thing. I’ve never in my entire life not had a dog. When I told the son-I-wish-I-had and my youngest niece about my should-I-or-shouldn’t-I dilemma the son said, “You’re the best dog mom I’ve ever known. You need to get one.” And my niece said I should because “you won’t be you without a dog” and we laughed about how my mom used to yell at me, “Put that dog down! She has legs!” In my defense I held Sarah to keep her from getting stepped on when there were a lot of people in the room. If I happened to be swaying from side to side at the same time that didn't mean my dog was spoiled. She was well behaved, as sweet as pecan pie and as cuddly as a teddy bear.

I won't lie. A few days ago I looked at rescue dogs at the Pet Finder’s website and I know myself well enough to know that I don’t want to take on one of their senior dogs. The under 12-15 pounds dogs like I'd want all seem to come with housebreaking and dental issues and I wondered if at my age they would let me adopt a rescue under five. My oldest niece says they only care if you've got the income and a safe space to have a dog and she just helped my older brother find a rescue dog so I pretty much know where she stands on my too-old-or-not-to-have-another-dog dilemma. 

Then I did a brief search of puppies for sale in the area and got sticker shock. I expected $1,000 but $2,500 to $5,000? Wow! Either way, I feel the pressure to decide sooner rather than later because it would be so much easier to train a dog or puppy while I’m still living in a single family home. At Pet Finders many of the listings say, "Fenced yard required, No exceptions!"---especially the with the little dogs---which means I'd never get an adoption placement after I move. And did I mention I'd need a hypoallergenic dog? In other words my search criteria would be limited to a breed that doesn't shed, doesn't get bigger than 12-15 pounds and isn't so old that it need thousands of dollars' worth of dental care and a dog that doesn't have housebreaking issues well into adulthood. The negatives are stacking up quickly against getting a rescue.

Levi: 14 weeks old

I decided that I’ll make myself wait until my birthday in April before I look at anymore puppy and rescue sites. Who knows, by then maybe I’d quit missing having another living presence in the house, quit expecting to see Levi here and there. The longest I’ve ever been between dogs is four months and
we got Levi the day after our other dog died, but Cooper was older and had been sick for six months. I was never sorry that we got Levi so soon after. He brought a joyful sense of purpose to our days after months of watching Cooper fade away. And finding Levi was either fate or serendipity---I could never figure out what to call it. Several weeks before we got him I’d been early for an appointment, had some time to kill and there was a sign by the road that said, “Puppies for Sale.” I stopped to kill some time and they had a boy and a girl schnauzer left in the litter. I fell in love with the little girl.

Two weeks later, the day after Cooper died, I told my husband I was going to go back and see if the girl was still there and if she was, she was meant to be ours. She was gone but Levi came home with us instead. He was 14 weeks old by then and his price had been reduced from $800 to $400. He turned out to be the easiest puppy I've ever trained and Cooper had been just the opposite. Cooper had been taken away from his mom and weaned at five weeks---way too young and that caused some issues that

Cooper 4 months old

required the services of a "doggie shrink", a guy the vet recommended who trained guard dogs for the military. In two sessions he evaluated what my nine month old poodle had already learned at obedience school and how he interacted with a litter of German shepherds twice Cooper's size and taught me how to get tiny Cooper to understand that under no circumstances was he allowed to bite. To this day I swear it was the threat of a shock collar more than me developing a super-dick Alpha persona that did the trick. I keep thinking, do I really want to go through all that again, a year of intense dog training? Could I even find my Alpha voice after years of not needing it with Levi? Most of the time I answer yes/maybe. Decisions, decisions. I just may let fate or serendipity make the choice like it did with Levi.

Levi’s things were everywhere and I’m still running into stuff…like in the freezer where I kept a bag of string beans for his snacks. Coupons in my coupon envelope. And it took my breathe away when I opened the front door and saw the sticker on the storm door that reads, "In case of an emergency please rescue me" and then it showed a picture of a schnauzer. Doing my income taxes I ran across Levi's folder in my file cabinet and I still haven't put those papers through the shredder. It took me several years to shred my husband's papers and even then the project was laced with tears. It seems so final to cancel a life out like that. Blankets and beds and stainless steel dishes. Collars, harnesses, leashes. You name it, Levi didn’t lack for material possessions just like his human parents but at least that stuff can all be donated if I choose not to love on another dog. Shredded paper by default have to end up in the garbage because recycling doesn't want them clogging up their machines.

The photo at the top was taken of Blackie---my first dog---and me sitting outside of a playpen. I have others showing us together inside the playpen, Blackie in various sizes, me not so much. We were raised together only she learned how to escape the ‘cage’ long before I did. But I’ve been told she’d jump back in if I was crying and if my mom didn't come in a timely fashion Blackie would bark to help get her attention. 

Got time for one more dog story? This one is about Jason, a poodle who came after Sarah and before Cooper. He was a wise, old soul right from puppyhood and one time we took him to a nursing home to visit my husband's mom and there was another resident there who had a bunch of stuffed dogs lined up on her bed. She obviously liked dogs so we thought maybe she's like to pet Jason. When we asked from the doorway of her room she screamed at us to get our mangy dog away from hers! We learned later that the woman spent her days 'training' her dogs. We also learned that when we took Jason to visit the nursing home that if we sat in the lobby, hordes of residents would come to us wanting to love on our perfectly groomed 'mangy dog.' Jason could do circus tricks and parlor games so he had a fan club at the nursing home. Wise old soul that he was Jason seemed to know what each person in his audience needed be it a cuddle-hug, a handshake, a slide-of-hand trick, or to make deep eye contract as if he was conducting a seance and helping them communicate to their own, long lost pets. Oh my gosh, I have so many great memories that involve the dogs in my life but this post is already way too long. ©

Cooper picked some interesting places to pee and my husband loved photo-documented them---it's a guy thing, I suppose. Cooper more than earned his nickname, The Trouble Bubble but he was also a lot of fun and he kept his own blog both before and after he died. Angel Cooper helped little Levi learn the ropes during his puppyhood and he introduced Levi to his other siblings up at the Rainbow Bridge.