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Quote of the Day: Giving My Heart (Yet Again) for a Dog to Tear
Well, OK. Einstein was wrong. (I say this because I refuse to believe, just because I indulge this particular sort of repetitive behavior–always believing that, next time, when the end comes I’m going to weather the storm without incident–that I’m insane. Obtuse, stubborn, and human, perhaps. But not insane.)
Shortly before Christmas, it fell to my lot that I had to have my wonderful Levi (The Greatest Pyrenees) put to sleep because his back legs stopped working. It was an outcome I’d feared for a couple of years, and a situation which, especially when you’re talking about a 150-plus-pound four-leggedy creature, just wasn’t sustainable.
Other than the back leg issue, even at the age of 11, he was in what the Victorians used to call “rude health.” Loved life. Loved me. Loved the farm, the sheep, the chickens, the companion of his old age–Xena–and everything else in between. Here’s the last photo I took of him, when the two of us were at the veterinarian, about ten minutes before the deed was done:
He trusted me. And I had him killed. It was the absolute best, and rightest, thing to do. But, Lord, it tore my heart.
It still hurts. And I still miss him like stink. He was, in every sense that a dog could be, a real mensch. He loved me to bits. I know (in spite of his lifelong fear of gunshots, thunder, and any unsourced and scary noise), that he’d have defended me to the death. He was a pillow to lie on when I needed one, and a shoulder to cry on when I needed one. I loved him to bits, too. Still do.
And yet. I’m not one to think — once an earthly relationship has ended for one reason or another — that there’s something terribly sinful in wanting to move on, to love, to live, and to continue to find pleasure in my life, and to do what I can to share my own joy with another. So a couple of weeks after Levi died, I asked my veterinarian friend if she knew anyone who bred Great Pyrenees, who might have a litter and puppies available.** She suggested someone. And my journey to find a new companion for Xena, who has appeared rather lost since her special guy moved on, began.
It ended on Saturday, February 12, when I picked up “Odo” from a farm in southeastern Ohio. (TBPC, he’s named after the 12th-century Pyrenean saint, not the Star Trek shape-shifter.)
Crimenutely. What a lovebug. He’s nine weeks old and huge already. This morning, I took him to meet the local veterinarian. He’s nine weeks old, and weighs almost 25 lbs. His ‘mom’ in Ohio just kept repeating, “he’s going to be really big,” as if that were some sort of charm to ward off evil spirits. But, hey. This is me. I do “big.” Especially when “big” picks me, as Levi did so many years ago, and as Odo did when I walked into the paddock with his mother, his brothers and sisters, and the goats. He’s the one who came over for a hug. And, as is usually the case in such instances, that was that. So I took him home.
He’s not a show dog. He was raised on a farm to be a guard dog. I like that, not least because he already understands things like ‘fence,’ ‘stall,’ and ‘paddock.’ He’s met my sheep — one of whom sent him flying through the air — and the chickens (who have already initiated their own sort of affectionate chickenly relationship with a creature they obviously see as their ultimate protector). He’s dancing gingerly around the cats. Psymon bloodied his nose. and Odo steered clear for a day. He seems to have regrouped, and I think his attitude now is something like, “Well, OK then. You’re never going to get any bigger, but in about six months I’ll be 100 lbs. or so, and then we’ll re-negotiate the hierarchy.”
And he’s met his Auntie Xena.
She hates him. Still, we’ve moved on from circumstances in the first 36 hours when she wanted nothing more than to close her eyes, open them again, and find that he’d disappeared in a cloud of smoke forever, to a point where she at least acknowledges his existence and has decided to do what she can to forestall his stumbling attempts at subservient, slobbering, puppy-dog tail-wagging, friendship. Witness this photo indicating her determination to 1) contain him, 2) stop him from bothering her, and 3) secure the food supply from his depredations:
Little by little, we’ll get past this, and peace will prevail. Here’s where things stand today:
We’ve reached a point where, if we can get the pecking order of the food sorted, and if I can get Xena past her attitude of “all the dog food am belong to me,” we’ll be fine.
Odo is proving extraordinarily mellow, for such a young guy. Well-behaved, and very chill. (Although he really dislikes rides in the car.) Part of that is the breed standard–GPs are not typically nervous or super high-energy dogs. As with most loving relationships, much of the foreplay has to do with discovering each others’ boundaries. They like to know what’s expected of them, who they’re responsible for guarding, which creatures are permitted within the perimeter and into the house, and once they’ve figured all that out, they simply get on with it, usually pretty genially and sweetly. Except when the predators show up. And then they are fierce.
I’ve spent much of the last couple of days walking the farm boundary with both dogs. It’s something I learned I needed to do with Xena, who grew up in a small Philadelphia apartment, and really didn’t have a clue how to behave when set free within a fenced area, even one comprising a couple dozen acres. And so she reverted to the “chase” behavior encouraged by her previous owners when they took her for a weekend walk in the park.
You really can’t have “chasers” on a farm. It took me almost six months to break her of that habit and to discover, when I had, what a really instinctual guard dog she is.
It’s taken Odo about three days to get the hang of things outside the house. Inside the house, he’s a work in progress, and I expect that to be the case for a while. (I’m not looking for full-time working guard dogs, ones that live in the barn with the livestock all the time. I expect my creatures to strike a balance, and to know how to behave in both worlds, inside and out.)
Here he is, in the snow. I defy you–if you’re human–to tell me that this brings you anything but joy:
I see that the recent movie, “The Power of the Dog,” has been nominated for a dozen or so Academy Awards. The title is taken from Psalm 22:20:
Deliver my soul from the sword; my darling from the power of the dog.
As interpreted in the film, “the power of the dog” is a tale “about toxic masculinity, sexuality [and] about how they can lead to a person’s destruction.”
Of course, it is!
Apparently, there are overtones of latent homosexuality as well.
Of course, there are!
The film’s director, Jane Campion, ties those themes, described as related to the male ego, to Donald Trump.
Of course, she does!
“Like, when things didn’t go well for him [Trump], he melted,” Campion said to Indiewire. “He couldn’t ever even say the words ‘I lost.’ He created this massive fiction. Even to say the word ‘failure’ is just not an option for someone like him, for these kind of men.”
“Failure is not an option.” A concept, and now bywords, not for overcoming insuperable obstacles and finding success, but for toxic masculinity.
I’m not about to deconstruct Psalm 22 and tell you exactly what it means for me. There are others far better suited to the task, and I’d love to hear from them.
I am going to refer to a favorite poem, also called “The Power of the Dog,” by one Rudyard Kipling (emphasis mine):
When the body that lived at your single will,
With its whimper of welcome, is stilled (how still!).
When the spirit that answered your every mood
Is gone—wherever it goes—for good,
You will discover how much you care,
And will give your heart to a dog to tear.We’ve sorrow enough in the natural way,
When it comes to burying Christian clay.
Our loves are not given, but only lent,
At compound interest of cent per cent.
Though it is not always the case, I believe,
That the longer we’ve kept ’em, the more do we grieve:
For, when debts are payable, right or wrong,
A short-time loan is as bad as a long—
So why in—Heaven (before we are there)
Should we give our hearts to a dog to tear?
I’ll tell you why. Or, rather, I’ll let C.S. Lewis tell you why:
“There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.” – C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves
Someone in my family who was going through a very difficult time once said to me something like:
Why does it hurt so much? Why do I keep on doing this?”
And then she answered her own question:
It’s because I’m human, and because I have a heart. And because the fact that my heart keeps hurting so much means that it is working properly.
Our hearts hurt because we’re human. And because we keep on making ourselves vulnerable, “even to an animal.” Because humans don’t thrive when they have “unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable” hearts.
Loving, and being vulnerable, is the best–and the worst–part of being human; we should embrace it, and we shouldn’t ever stop. No matter what.
Happy belated Valentine’s Day to you all and to all those you love!
**I had my last puppy, Wulfie–an Old English Sheepdog–in 1986, the year Mr. She and I moved into a field and started to build our house. (TBPC, he was named after the 11th-century St. Wulfstan, Bishop of Worcester, and not after the young Mozart.) He grew up with, and on, the farm. I’ve had dozens of dogs in the intervening thirty-six years; they’ve all been adult runaways, strays, victims of abuse, or retrieved from people who no longer wanted them. Lord, I’d forgotten how much fun, and what a challenge, a puppy can be. Were Odo a character in Greek or Roman mythology, or a hero of one of the Norse sagas, he’d be known as “Odo, Thiever of Shoes.” Sometimes he undoes the strap with his teeth and takes them right off my feet before he starts to chew on them. Sometimes, he doesn’t even bother to remove them first.
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What a cutie!!!
This was a great post and Odo looks like a great dog.
I hope you don’t mind that I copied out sections of your post and sent them to a few people I love. Thanks, and Happy Valentine’s Day to you too! Good luck with the pup.
I’m honored, and I don’t mind at all. Bless. (You (and they) can find the post publicly, here, on my vanity blog whose alternate purpose serves as a backup for my Ricochet posts, most of which (in addition to a few others) find my way over there.)
Happy Valentine’s Day, @thescarecrow!
I’d like to commemorate the late Boss Mongo, a beloved Ricochet member whose dog posts–IMHO–were beyond compare. Lord, I miss him around here.
Man, do I love your posts about your animals! They sparkle with wit and humanity, and I never fail to learn a word or two or a phrase used in a new way. BTW, what do you do with all of that long white hair?
Amen
I do love dogs, though my wife finds them challenging, so we always had cats, multiple cats. Cats are OK and long lived, but they are disloyal and aloof, a selfish species to be sure. My girls loved them and when the last one passed away at 19, my wife said she was done with all pets. I understand that. Cats do not die easily. They develop various chronic ailments requiring special diets, medications and care. It always develops into a test of worth and will, eventually leading to that final trip to the vet. I’ve held a few cats for that final spasm when life goes out. No mist or evidence of a soul emerged in any case. I think that with dogs, it might be different. Still, my girls all mourned and missed their cats. Me? Not so much.
When I was a boy, I had a Golden-Irish Setter mix and I loved her with all my heart. I wonder why this is not a more common cross? It makes for a wonderful companion. Titian (named after the artist, not the mythical creature) was the daughter of a loving female Golden and a champion Irish father. She had all the patience and loveliness of her mother and all the heart, stamina and instinct of her father. She had none of the health issues common in Goldens and none of the awkward skittishness of Setters. She was amazingly athletic. Her only flaw was swimming. She had none of the retriever’s ease in the water; she fought with it and was determined to save anyone swimming nearby. She liked to swim, but if she got near, she was all motion and claws. Not good.
I had other dogs, but she was the best. Perhaps one day…
In the meantime, I find I put dogs in my poems. My wife and oldest daughter are watching four new feral kittens who live in a storm drain a few houses south. The last three cats we had were of the same provenance and the same storm drain, a kind of universal abandoned cat nursery. They were fed, lured away, neutered and eventually, tamed. I sense a similar thing happening again.
Are you sure he isn’t named for Odo the Great, 8th century Duke of Acquitaine and Vasconia and frenemy of Charles Martel? A sure way to tell would be to see how well he gets along with Umayyads.
Well, on a few occasions, I’ve added it to the sheeps’ wool and spun it. Mostly, though, I swear at it, and vacuum it up.
Oh, I’ve mourned them all. And I’ve been grateful for my vet, for sending them off so easily, no matter the cost to myself.
Glad you clarified that. She sounds amazing.
Yes.
Around here, the “cat nursery” is the road. That’s where people throw creatures (cats, dogs, bunnies…) out to fend for themselves.
A couple of days ago, I saw a well-fed, healthy-looking cat finding his way into the field.
Trust me. It’s just a matter of time….
My favorite sentence. And Odo: I think I’m in love. A truly beautiful post, She.
LOL. Give me a moment or two. I will report back.
Thanks, Susan. You look fabulous, BTW.
Thank you for that. I’m glad I read it all the way through. I’m a cat dad, as I’m sure you know, and my dear little Sushi has been refusing to eat for two weeks. The vet says her lymph nodes are enlarged and gave her some shots on Monday, and will check with me tomorrow to see about blood work if she doesn’t improve. She hasn’t; she stays curled up in the same spot all day except for bathroom breaks, and looks so miserable it breaks my heart. Sushi is only four years old, and has become very dear to me in that short time; I’m praying that there isn’t something serious going on. If I have to deal with the worst case scenario it’s going to be very hard.
We’ve had Golden Retrievers for 50 some years. Our first pair did not like to ride in cars either until I came up with what proved to be a cure for that problem. It occurred to me one particularly difficult day that the only time I put them in the car was to take them to the vet. Of course they didn’t like the car. What self-respecting dog enjoys a ride to the vet’s office where they are subjected to all sorts of bodily indignities? So, the next day I went through the usual struggle of making them get in the car, but this time, instead of the vet, we went to the drive-up at McDonalds where I ordered two cheeseburgers. They sat in the back seat licking their chops as I carefully removed the pickles, tore the burgers into bite-size pieces and then handed each dog the goodies. I duplicated the McDonalds trip for three days in a row. By the fourth day I had only to open the car door and happily watch as two tail-wagging car enthusiasts jumped in the back seat with big smiles on their faces! I seldom took them to McDonalds after that week, but they still loved going places in the car the rest of their lives.
I hope you take them to McD’s every now and then. Mr AZ says that old bait and switch trick is really mean.
Those two doggies went to heaven long ago, and I did take them back to McDonalds, but only periodically. A couple times we took them on 1200 mile trips down to our winter house in So. Cal. We did stop at McDonalds along the way where they were introduced to the delights of Chicken McNuggets. When we bought a car to keep down there and started flying I never learned how to make them like getting in their crates and going to the airport.
Thanks for making me cry! Seriously though, I see people nearly every day at the vet clinic where I work who have to make that decision and it is always heartbreaking. We said goodbye to our own golden in September and I’m still grieving. A few weeks before that we got a puppy and thought we had gotten a friend for Jasper; one he could show the ropes to, but he didn’t care too much for Maddox. The nose to toes picture was about as friendly as it got! We sure love them but they take a piece of your heart when they leave. ❤️
Ah yes. Our Goldens loved Mcnuggets! I had forgotten.
You can have both. :-) My daughter has two cats and now two dogs.
When I was growing up we had them all, plus gerbils, fish, snakes, turtles, salamanders, dogs, cats… Some of the cats were vicious, but my mother loved them all. Both my mom and dad were country people transplanted in the city, so they were used to barn cats. Many times I had to warn a friend, “That cat you’re petting? I’d put it down slowly if I were you.” My wife’s mother had a little toy poodle that was as a mean as badger, but selective. She claimed it only attacked people of low character. Luckily, it never attached me. My mother had a Persian cat that would launch sneak attacks, leaving the target’s clothing shredded and bloody, but she refused to have it put down.
We never had pets because of allergies; the kids had some, and I am basically allergic to oxygen. I had a couple of outdoor cats and rabbits when I was little, and was sorry my son and daughter never had the chance. They made up for it. Brian’s fiancee is a veterinary technician of pretty impressive caliber, specializing in surgical support of small animals. In their time together they have had three little dogs that needed so much care, the owners didn’t want them any more. My personal favorite was a little shid tzu that was almost blind; she was a dear little thing. Brian has loved them all. They are down to one at the moment, but with Eliza’s job being what it is, there will be another that needs them before long.
Valerie rescued a cat while at college; apparently some girls she knew had caught a stray and were abusing it. We took Pumpkin in and I gradually acclimated to her allergy-wise. It has taken years for her to trust us, and she is still very shy, but she loves Valerie and she lets Keenan (Val’s fiancee…it’s going to be quite a year for weddings) and me pet her if she’s in a good mood.
Four years ago Val and some friends went to a church bazaar, and I got a call: “Dad, I’m bringing home a couple of kittens.” Note there was no asking for permission; Valerie is a force of nature. That’s how we acquired Sushi and Cheesecake. Cheesecake is your basic airhead, who is pretty enough to get what she wants from anyone handy. Sushi is more particular. She decided early on that I was hers, and I have learned her personality (catality?) and preferences over the years. She prefers that I wear one particular sweatshirt for petting purposes. If she’s happy she’ll knead my left arm; I bought a welder’s Kevlar sleeve to keep from looking like an accident victim.
I can’t imagine life without cats.
It always is…
Neither can I; that’s why I have 7 house cats (3 full-time and 4 part-time) and 6 litter boxes. Some others get to stay on on our enclosed back porch if its really cold. One is really old, Little Bit—she stays on the porch day & night when its cold. I think she’s about 12, maybe. We are making plans to convert an old 6×10 chain link dog pen into temporary quarters when we want to spend the night somewhere. I have 2 doghouse kits ordered. We need to wire some gaps shut and put a hail screen top on it. What we are willing to do for our furry friends!
Naming a cat a fish name—that’s pretty rich! Mine are Smudge, Tim, Sassy, Button, Shorty, Scooter, Spot, Tommy, Pippy, Misty, Lady, Inky, Tippy, Growler, Ears, Wild Thing, Shelly, Tuffy, Flossy, and several unnamed tomcats. I MIGHT have missed a couple ;)….I did miss some—Birdie!
Catwise, inside and outside, I have: Darlene, Wookie, Psymon, Little Levi, Ammy, and Fat Alice. All of them came along either due to the kindness of strangers, or because they decided to stop living in the woods and acting as coyote bait.
Our daughter-in-law keeps trying to introduce “barn cats” (they don’t have a barn, so the garage is the barn-equivalent) to try to keep the property’s rodent population down. Our son is less convinced that this will be a successful strategy. But our son and daughter-in-law have been unsuccessful in training the hunting instinct out of their Husky dog, so the barn cats keep becoming Husky snacks. As an academic matter, it is fascinating to watch the Husky once he gets his sights set on a hunting target. And in all other aspects, the Husky is as docile as can be. In the household dog pack he is subordinate to the much younger (but much smarter) female Bernedoodle (Burmese Mountain Dog – Poodle mix).
Aaaaaahhh! What a cutey pie! Nothing loves life like a puppy. May you have a wonderful relationship with him. God bless.