Dignity

"Dignity" isn't a word often associated with my home. "Chaos" is more suitable most days. The above picture  is a of a portion of our latest chaos. The Thursday before Easter, we were blessed with an unplanned (but not completely unexpected- Mom looked as if she'd swallowed a cantaloupe) surprise.  Eleven squirming bundles of puppy-warmth came into the world that night. Unfortunately, not all of them were strong enough to navigate this world. Four passed within a few days.

The remaining seven are five weeks old today. Rambunctious, playful and increasingly messy, Mr. Moo, Arrow, Smudge, Star, Diamond, Sleepy and Streak come together to form the very definition of chaos. I love each of them. I love Mr. Moo's block-headed stubborn sheer boyish puppy-ness. I love Streak's habit of pouncing into the center of any brawl, even though he's considerably smaller than his brother, Smudge, who's usually in the center between Moo and Diamond. I especially love little Diamond's tenacious personality- she's not afraid to mix it up with the boys. I love Star's sweet face. I love Arrow's calm dignity as he sits beside my feet looking up as if to say 'what's up with them?'. Sleepy's elfin looks and habit of sidling up for a surreptitious nibble on my shoe make me smile. I love them all... And I will be glad when they go to the homes we've carefully chosen for each of them and my house subsides to a lesser chaos once more.

Although this litter was unplanned, and... honestly, unwanted, each of these lives have brought joy, and each of these unwanted puppies will go to a home where they will be cherished for the rest of their lives. Because, after all, isn't that how life is supposed to work? We're supposed to be chosen, in delight. We're supposed to be loved as we mature, as we learn and grow. We're supposed to reach our full potential within a relationship...

But people are not puppies. Life doesn't always work out the way we planned. Sometimes, things go awry. Sometimes, people's hearts change. Sometimes they change their minds.

"People change, and forget to tell each other." -Lilian Hellman. 

And yet, somehow, life goes on.

I am still wrapping my mind around the idea of a forever without Ken by my side. I had dreams... dreams of the days when our kids were grown, finding their own way in the world. Of course, I knew they'd wander home now and then, but I hoped we'd equip them with the skills they need to seek out gainful employment and the desire to begin building lives of their own, separate from Mom and Dad. I looked forward to a future in which we would build the little A-frame cabin in the woods we'd talked about, where I would write and he would hunt and pursue his hobbies. I dreamed of getting old together.


The dream has changed. Ken has made his escape, moving into a new home, building a new space for himself, moving away, separating. To say it has been a painful process would be to say a tsunami is an ocean wave. Our lives have been broken apart, shattered. This separation isn't the natural growth I look forward to in my kids, the breaking off of a seed that drops away from the tree to set its roots into the soil and begin its own journey toward the sun. This was an unnatural break, the loss of a limb... and the scar will take time to heal.

In those first few days, as my kids clung like little burs to my side, a much-younger reaction than I expected, but natural considering the way their security had just been snatched away, I wondered if I'd ever be happy again. I wondered if I'd ever find love again, and if I do, if I'll be able to trust in it, if I'll ever dream of the future the way I once did. I see family and friends who have lived through this building new relationships, wearing them like an artificial limb, but there is something that rings false in many of those relationships. There is friendship. There is affection. There is companionship, all the things a human being needs to thrive, but there is something... something vital and precious that is missing. The sparkle when they look at one another is not there. The longing, the deep affection, the feeling that this one, this person and no other, can fill the space in them that needs filling, is lacking somehow.

That's not to say they're unhappy, or that they shouldn't seek out what they obviously find fulfilling. I have always known I'm a different breed. I expect too much, and too little. I'm too wild and too quiet, too lazy, too determined, too frenetic, too happy, too sad. I know I set myself apart, and now I know that it's a mistake to be anything different than who I am, or to try to settle. I know that by rejecting the idea of a casual romance, I may be creating a future in which I am alone... and I am ok with that. I have learned that I would rather be alone than change who I am. One day, perhaps someone will come along who looks at me and says

"This one. This is the one I want. This is the one who can fill that space in me that needs filling, this one, and no other."

One day, perhaps, I will be chosen and I will choose. One day. But for now, I will simply try to live my life with dignity, and look forward to whatever dreams this new future brings.

~*~*~

“Think of it! We could have gone on longing for one another and pretending not to notice forever. This obsession with dignity can ruin your life if you let it.”
~Mary Ann Shaffer

“Be strong. Live honorably and with dignity. When you don't think you can, hold on.”
~James Frey

Remembering Amanda

Amanda
1998-2009

Kame, while he is the pet I most often feature in this blog, is not my only four-legged friend, or even my first.

Several dogs have graced my life over the years... beginning with Prince, the family mixed breed I grew up with, followed by "Scruffy", a beagle who wandered onto our property when I was perhaps three or four years old, and her offspring, Daisy and later Daisy's only surviving pup, Toby.

Toby was my first real dog, in the sense that I was mostly responsible for what little care he needed. Being a "farm dog", he lived happily outdoors, retreating to the garage when he needed shelter. He was, for most of my teen years, my best friend.

Toby lost his sight early on, and lived blind for the last few years of his life. It never slowed him down for a moment. He'd race along after our bikes as we tore around the small dirt track that constituted a driveway, only realizing his handicap when he'd run into the back of a parked car.

It didn't take him long to recognize my parent's usual parking spots, so the collisions didn't happen often, but when they did, he'd shake it off and keep right on running, as if the sun and wind on his fur and the sounds of our laughter were enough to keep him cheerful forever.

Toby passed away when I was 18 and away at college. I didn't have another dog until Ken and I were married. We had one dismal failure in a mixed-lab pup, Jack. At two he turned aggressive despite our best efforts, and at our vet's advice, we were forced to have him put down. I decided then that I didn't want another dog, that my husband's Lab, Brandy, was enough dog for both of us.

For the next two years, I had my hands full with a toddler and housework and life. I worked for a year at the Press. Life was chaotic and crazy and full... and yet something... some indefinable essence was missing.

What happened next was my friend Amy's fault. She brought me the newspaper, pointed out the ad. "For sale: Australian Shepherd pups. Home raised."
I hemmed and hawed. I didn't want another dog. I had a two-year-old and I was pregnant with our second child.

"Let's go look," she said. "It'll be a nice drive." she said.

Finally, reluctantly, I went.

We went on a spring afternoon. We admired the dogs, and finally the breeder led us out to the barn, where the little female, the last of her litter, was cloistered. Aussies have a way of getting attached to one person, she explained. Once they bond, it's very difficult for them to move to a new family. She didn't want the pup to bond with her own family, and so she was living in the barn.

She brought out a squirming black and white bundle of fur. I eased to the ground, finding it easier to sit down than try to bend with my bulky baby belly. Jessi stood next to me, pointing.

"Doggy, Mommy! Doggy!"

Amanda flew at us, leaping into my lap and licking every bit of face she could reach, before giving a giggling, delighted Jessi the same treatment.

What took my breath away wasn't just her manic energy and the speed at which her stump of a tail wiggled... but her uncanny resemblance to my first best friend. She looked exactly like a long-haired version of Toby. I would visit twice more, bringing Ken to meet the newest member of our family, before bringing her home, but it was inevitable. She was my girl. Whether or not the timing seemed good to me, she was destined to join our family, and she came to us not a moment too soon.

It wasn't two months after Amanda's entrance into our household, that she cemented herself irretrievably into my heart. Jessica was a very active toddler. It'd been a warm fall, and in desperation I took Jessi outside to run off some of her energy. Run she did... straight to the pasture that housed our six month old steer, Mac. (Short for Big Mac. My husband's idea of a joke). Mac was more pet than potential beefsteak. At six months he weighed around 400 pounds, and believed himself to be an over-sized puppy. With Ken he was docile, but he seemed to take great pleasure in butting me playfully with his rock-hard head, sending me staggering. To him, Jessica was nothing more than a new playmate... and she was through the fence before I could catch her.

I'd brought Amanda out on a retractable leash. Seeing Jessica running up to a cow that stood twice her height at the shoulder, I had only one thought- retrieve my child before she was badly injured by the lumbering, careless steer. I dropped the leash, and ran... waddled.

Amanda, on the other hand, had nothing to slow her down. She flew into the pasture and ran at a shocked Mac, lunging and barking and placing herself directly between the steer and my giggling red-haired toddler. I had time to get into the pasture and pick Jessi up while Amanda held her ground, snarling as if she would eat Mac on a bun if he so much as stepped closer to us.

Mac stood, staring at this dog as if she'd lost her mind. He snorted and gave a little lurch toward her. She dodged and nipped at his nose, a clumsy puppy determined to do a working dog's job. Mac decided he'd had enough. He spun around and kicked up his heels, catching Amanda in the side of the head as he ran off.
I was nearly hysterical by that point. This brave little pup had just saved my daughter... and earned herself nothing but a cracked skull, I was sure. I was so afraid I'd lost her... but she got up, shook herself, and came over to be picked up and comforted. I took my two babies back into the house, weeping... an emotional wreck, but so grateful everyone was safe.

The trouble with pets, and dogs in particular, is they never live long enough. In February of 2009, I took Amanda to the vet. She hadn't been acting her usual chipper self for a while. I'd been trying to tell myself age was catching up with her, that all dogs slow down eventually. After 11 years with us, she'd certainly earned a relaxing retirement, but when she stopped eating, I knew there was something far more serious wrong than the onset of old age.

Lymphoma, the vet said, reciting numbers like a death knoll. A canine oncologist could preform further tests, offer treatment options, give us perhaps a few more months, a year at most. Or...
I nodded. It would be best, I knew. Amanda was already nearing the end of her life expectancy. She was nervous with strangers and I couldn't bear the thought of putting her through more tests, more needles and poking and prodding when she seemed so... tired.
I'll take her home, I said. One last night with her family. To say goodbye.

The vet gave me some medication to help her feel better. Anti-nausea medication so she could eat. Something to ward off pain. I put my old girl on the seat of the car, and drove home to break the news to my family.

The next day, she lay around, looking tired and weak. It was clear she was going, and I knew the time had come, though I'd hoped to have more time with her, I couldn't allow her to go on this way. I called the vet to make an appointment for the very next day. I made her as comfortable as I could, and stayed up with her quite late that night, knowing it was our last.

As it turned out, one more night was all we would have. The next morning, she was laying, as peaceful as if she were asleep, in her old spot in front of the stove. Amanda, my brave, amazing girl, was gone.

In the two years since she left us, it is a rare day that's gone by without Amanda entering my thoughts. The first tearing grief has long since passed, but there are still moments when I feel the phantom of remembered warm weight against my leg, and reach down without thinking to scratch ears that aren't there. For eleven years she was my walking partner, my writing foot-warmer, my steady companion in an often unsteady world. Her fur absorbed my tears, comforted my hurts, slid soft and silky through my fingers. She was crazy and hyper and spastic, and I loved her.

George Bird Evans wrote in his The Trouble with Bird Dogs:

"I think we are drawn to dogs because they are the uninhibited creatures we might be if we weren't certain we knew better. They fight for honor at the first challenge, make love with no moral restraint, and they do not for all their marvelous instincts appear to know about death."

Amanda, in her brief time with me, taught me about courage, about loyalty and love and life. She woke up every morning as cheerful as if the previous day had never been, and as if she had a thousand more mornings, all as beautiful as the last.
She died the way she'd lived, with quiet dignity, and I am blessed to have known her.

Rejoicing in the day the Lord has made,
-Mary

*~*~*
Near this spot are deposited the remains of one who possessed Beauty without Vanity, Strength without Insolence, Courage without Ferocity, and all the Virtues of Man, without his Vices. This Praise, which would be unmeaning Flattery if inscribed over human ashes, is but a just tribute to the Memory of Boatswain, a Dog.

~George Gordon, Lord Byron, "Inscription on the Monument of a Newfoundland Dog"