Three Legged Race

Again bereft of inspiration, I'm recycling another favorite from June, 2007. The photo of sweet Poogan was taken by her owner, Lori V of Do You Realize?

So, dogs and people. A lot alike, according to the old saw.

I adore Ashland's dog park. It’s beautiful to watch the animals run, ears flapping, muscles doing what they were meant to do, coats gleaming in the sunshine. Some are perfect specimens. The rest do all right. Even that miraculous phenomenon that never ceases to amaze me: the three-legged dog.

We’ve all seen one – leg lost in some traumatic way – that runs, wags, even leaps for a Frisbee now and then, perfectly compensating for his loss, never looking back. The disability is obvious, but its effects are invisible. Sure, it must have been hard to relearn some things, and maybe he can’t sit up and beg any more, but he’s done what a dog does. He’s just gotten on with the business of joy.

In some of the early entries in this blog, I mentioned the epidemic of change in the lives of my friends (and, of course, my own as well). While some of these changes are positive, many of them – even the good ones - involve loss. The loss is sometimes sudden, an amputation if you will. A parent dies, a job disappears, a child gets in trouble in a spectacular way. Such loss is brutal, ruthless, but is easily defined. Something Has Happened.

But what of more insidious loss? What if the limb isn’t severed but is slowly withering? What if the leg is there, even normal in its outward appearance, but is without function? When these losses happen in the confines of a family or an individual’s essential self, the analogy to limb loss becomes a little less stable.

When an actual limb begins to fail, a person has options: physical therapy, medication, adaptive technologies or supports. In extreme cases, amputation is the answer to creating a new whole. But people and their systems aren’t that simple, are they? Think of the physical and emotional erosion of chronic illness. The slow train wreck of substance abuse. The withdrawal of intimacy in a strained marriage. These traumas – and that is what they are, even if they are not sudden – happen piecemeal, painfully.

Sometimes the loss is a realization, an “I will never…” statement. Not the whining kind that calls up a response like, “Don’t be silly! You have plenty of time/energy/money to do a, b, or c.” but the peaceful, mature knowledge that the time for a certain action is truly past, that the skills required are beyond a person’s reach, or that some dreams will simply never come true.

None of these scenarios are uncommon, and none are beyond our imagination. They number as many as the grains of sand on the floor of the ocean. The challenge comes, as always, in how we react. Is a full recovery possible? Sometimes the loss is too great, the energy required long gone. People do hit bottom, and they don’t always come back up. I’m not a character-Nazi, the kind of person who believes that a stiff upper lip and a strong work ethic can bring you back from anything. And not everyone is capable of adaptation.

But what of those who don’t want to stop walking, who dream of leaping once again for a well-tossed Frisbee? Even if you do persevere through loss, even if no one around you has any idea that recovery is in process, you still must face the absence. The leg is never going to function again. You leave an untenable situation. You strengthen the remaining limbs. Perhaps you find substitutes.

The challenge lies – at least for me – in the choice of a metaphor to understand your life from the loss forward. Do you choose the four-legged-but-one-is-impaired dog image, or do you radically remake yourself as the three-legged dog?

The answer means the difference between staying in the crate or chasing the tennis ball with your ears flapping and your coat gleaming. You may no longer be the fastest dog, you may no longer have AKC conformation, and you may even elicit pity from those who stare at what is no longer there.

But you will have found your balance.

And you will continue to run on your three strong legs, and the sun will feel good on your back when you take a big slurping drink of cool water and collapse, happy, in the soft, green grass.

Sunday in the park with....Annie?

Sorry I’ve been away from the blog for a while…lots of activity and little introspection.

Large Dog, small child, and I have a new hangout these days: the dog park. With big shade trees and lawn chairs for the humans, two fenced acres and three swimming pools of various depths for the dogs, and mountain views and tennis balls for all, it’s well nigh perfect. Peace reigns (mostly) supreme. The venue offers lots of opportunity to try out that old truism about dogs and their owners resembling each other. I won’t bore you with a treatise on this, but I will mention three pairings of note.

On our first visit, only one dog demonstrated anything remotely resembling bad behavior – Angel, a wire haired fox terrier who yipped at everyone, jumped wetly and uninvited into stranger’s laps, and – horror- chased balls thrown for other dogs. Her owner? Loud, coarse schlumpy woman talking LOUDLY on her cell phone.

My favorite? Another woman, a fully robed Buddhist monk, shaved head and all, with an incredibly peaceful female GSP, a dog she’d rescued from a situation of indescribable abuse. Great conversation and connection between very different yet oddly agreeable dogs and girls here.

Most telling? That would be Annie, a mixed breed with more than a tad bit of pit bull, I fear. Annie and an escape artist Pom (word in the park is the dog makes her way to the park and her owners [sometimes] retrieve her after work), joined at the hip, ran amok. In and out of the water, on and off of people, over and under and around dogs of all sizes and shapes. When other dogs would indicate displeasure, the duo would duck under a table – often in between folks’ feet – and spread their mud and mayhem. The lowlight was when they propelled themselves onto the picnic table where small child was drawing…right onto the artwork, tearing paper, spreading muddy paw prints, the whole nine yards. Flexible, small child found this amusing. Large Dog did not, and in a most unusual move barked and defended...no biting or anything, but he let the truth be known. I looked around for the most likely owner and settled on a nearby mid-life woman, unusual for these parts in that she was fully made up and chain smoking, who was holding forth in the unmistakable, strident tones of Someone Who is Not From Here (I know, I don’t have any room to talk, but at least I try to fit in). I said, nicely like the good southern girl I am, “Is one of these yours?” She relied, “Yeah,” blowing out a big cloud of smoke and proceeding to yammer.

After the first visit, Large Dog assumed a role best described as WalMart greeter. If he smelled or heard a new dog coming, he’d trot to the gate, wag a welcome, and start the pee-on-the-tree party. He’d also go to the gate when dogs left and whine a good bye. On Sunday afternoon, we were hanging out under the trees enjoying our lives when Large Dog’s head jerked up; he shot to the fence and gave three strong warning barks. Care to guess who was on approach? Annie and Ms. Annie. We left.

So why is this telling and (I know you’re asking) why am I telling it? It is absolute proof positive that dogs know things we do not. That they notice subtleties, whether those subtleties are danger or – in this case – merely intense annoyance. That, left to themselves, they work out their differences and can exist in large numbers in relative peace. That they can communicate with each other regardless of background or breed. The big strong ones don’t need to use their muscle. They know when to deal with something directly and when to walk away. The small peaceful ones know that trouble may come, but that it will go as well. Some will even stand patiently by while lesser animals retrieve their tennis balls, to a point.

As for the others? Our siblings need some company on the island, after all.

This post definitely ended up somewhere other than the place I'd planned...I'll try again for my destination of choice in a day or so...stay tuned!