A Good Dog

Frisbee, January 9, 2020

Here’s the thing: this puppy chose me.

Skowhegan, Maine. November, 2004. I’m sitting within a small pen surrounding by squirming, teetering-toppling balls of fluff. All puppies are delightful but Australian Shepherd pups are inordinately adorable. I’m here to pick one. Choose the future canine member of our family who will make her surprise appearance for the kids under the tree on Christmas Day … and I’m examining their coloring, their eyes, their energy. I think I know what I’m looking for ….

Then the biggest, quietest, slowest, with the least “perfect” Aussie markings (I’ve done my homework!) shoulders all the others out of the way, maybe even stepping on a few in the process, climbs into my lap, curls up contently, and before settling in (and sending her sibs a very clear Back Off! message) turns to face me. To look straight into my eyes.

Hey. Where’ve you been? those eyes seemed to say. A familiar stranger. And like that, we were matched.

This dog has been my constant companion for 15 years and five novels. Her walks have been part of my writing routine. On days when it felt lonely to be trapped in an office, at the computer, while the sun shines, I would look up and see her watching me, waiting for me to take a break and go throw a ball or play hide and seek with her (she could always sniff me out!) And somehow her quiet patience helped me feel like what I was doing was important, worth waiting for.

She has been with us through extremely difficult and extremely joyful times. We have marked the years of our family through her presence.

She had an uncanny sense of our distress, and when you were sad she would press up against you.

She had teeth like razors, and if you stopped to chat with a neighbor during one of her walks she’d bite clear through the leash in order to keep moving. But if you had the tiniest treat to feed her, her little lips could sense your fingers and expertly pluck the bit without even the slightest nip.

She inhaled her meals. She was always hungry; she never said no to food. But these past days I’ve been hand feeding her kibble one pellet at a time, because she can’t bend low enough to reach the bowl. 

My husband hung jingle bells on our doorknob and trained her to ring them whenever she needed to go outside to pee. But in past weeks she has become incontinent, and distressed by her inability not only to control her bladder but to even tell us she needs to go.

On summer evenings we’d take her to the athletic fields at Bowdoin College and hurl frisbees into the air for her. She'd race, feet pounding, Seabiscuit-like, practically half a football-field’s length, leap high and snatch the dang thing from the air. But these past days her back legs have failed her, and she collapses when she tries to stand. I need to hold her up to urinate, to drink. 

This is a bluebird day, and when I brought her outside she seemed to know. She managed to prop herself into a sitting position and point her face toward the sun, and remain like that, still, for a while. Like she was soaking in the last of this dear world which she exulted in. She loved charging through the snow, racing through the woods, chasing pretty much anything we’d throw. She loved going places, anywhere, and when we’d say, “Wanna go for an automobile ride?” she’d run to the car.

These last few days I’ve watched her become imprisoned by her failing body, and it’s time to set her free. This dog chose me and trusted me to always care for her, and hard as it is to let her go it’s the last loving thing I can do. 

The poet Mary Oliver loved dogs, too. Her words help:

A dog comes to you and lives with you in your own house,

     but you

do not therefore own her, as you do not own the rain, or the

trees, or the laws which pertain to them.

Bye, Friz. Thanks for being our dog.

Poem for a Monday

Frisbee, ball in mouth.

The past five months I’ve spent even more time than usual attached to a chair. General household order and muscle tone number among the casualties, but The Revisions to the Next (as yet unnamed can you believe it?) Novel are almost done.

No one will be happier to see this phase of the writing process end than my Australian Shepherd, Frisbee.

“Ah,” say those of you who know Aussies. You say this as you envision flying plastic discs, bouncing tennis balls, and random sticks hurled boomerang-style. You say this as you imagine an exhausted middle-aged woman trudging outside in all sorts of weather (Maine’s coastal weather can be summed up as “all sorts,” often within a 15-minute span) because an Aussie will walk. Every. Single. Day. You say this knowingly, even though I would delete the word, because it ends in –ly, making it an adverb, which, in this season of revision means it must go, go, GO!

As Stephen King warns in his memoir, On Writing, “The road to hell is paved with adverbs.” And let’s face it: Stephen King would know how the road to hell is paved.

For those of you who don’t know Aussies, think: somewhat dumber Border Collie. In other words, busy in the extreme, focused to the point of obsession, relentless … with a side order of lovable goofiness. If the Border Collie is the Harvard student with perfect SAT scores, the Aussie makes the honor roll and gets into the respectable safety school. Then plays Ultimate. Or rugby.

At any given moment as I write, rewrite, and unwrite (which feels like an appropriate word for the detangling this manuscript has needed) I can look across the room to the futon where Frisbee pretends to nap (yes, this entitled dog jumps up on the furniture) and at the slightest movement from me her eyes will open, wide, and she will channel “Are we ready to go YET??” She plays these Jedi Dog Tricks all day, and always succeeds.

I could not pull off this work without her, and in this I am not alone. I was reminded of that this weekend, not only when I read Maira Kalman’s lovely essay “True Love” in the Sunday Times, but also when I met, for the first time, in the most unexpected setting (I was wiping tables; he was sweeping floors) the author Ron Currie, Jr. who commented he’d just spent the past 12 years inside with his dog and realized he needed to get out.

The poet Mary Oliver devotes an entire volume, Dog Songs, to this bond. Here’s one that reminds me of my girl.

Percy Speaks While I am Doing Taxes

First of all, I do not want to be doing this.

Second of all, Percy does not want me

   to be doing this,

bent over the desk like a besieged person

   with a dull pencil and innumerable lists

      of numbers.

Outside the water is blue, the sky is clear,

   the tide rising.

Percy, I say, this has to be done. This is

   Essential. I’ll be finished eventually.

“Keep me in your thoughts,” he replies. “Just because

   I can’t count to ten doesn’t mean

I won’t remember yesterday, or anticipate today.

I’ll give you ten more minutes,” and he does.

   Then shouts – who could resist – his

      Favorite words: Let’s go!

Poem for a Monday

In Sunday's NY Times Book Review the author Sue Monk Kidd said she tries "to read a poem every morning" with her coffee.  I think this is a marvelous practice ... provided you can find the quiet space in the morning maelstrom to actually savor the poem.

I'm still crushing on Mary Oliver (see last Monday's post) so here we go with another one of hers.  This one fell open this morning, which was a little scary because only yesterday I was talking to someone about despair.

Wild Geese
by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
      love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.


In other news from the Times:  author Jo Knowles wrote a very good review of Laurie Halse Anderson's latest novel, The Impossible Knife of Memory.  These two are among the best writers in young adult and middle grade fiction right now, and I want to rush out and get Knife as well as Living With Jackie Chan, which is Knowles' latest.