Here are all the videos I couldn’t share before.
This is Roxie wagging her tail. Unfortunately, her snoot gets in the way.
Here’s Toni giving Neo his watermelon:
This is Neo yawning (With a cameo by Samwise)
This is Samwise having puppy dreams:
Duncan getting a nice skritchy — and then biting me a little.
Is it weird that this actually makes me want a strawberry? And a napkin for the tortoise?
Finally, here’s Roxie again, snoozing away.
Yesterday was a bad day.
There have been a lot of bad days, lately. For all of us. And when put in comparison with all of us, my bad day yesterday was not so much of a much: I had to do a thing for work that I didn’t want to do, and it made me feel — hopeless.
It wasn’t so much what I had to do. It was that it’s easy to feel hopeless.
It’s so easy, right now, to focus on the negatives. Sometimes we have to: because sometimes the negatives overwhelm everything else, and must be confronted, conquered or adapted to.
But other times, even in these times, it’s not good to focus on the negatives too often, or to focus on them too hard, to the exclusion of all else. I did that yesterday, and when my wife tried to hug me to make me feel better, I didn’t even hug her back. I was too low. And I was wallowing.
I wrote a blog yesterday, in the depths of my sadness. It didn’t make me feel better, but I wrote it. And honestly, I think it’s accurate, and it’s something I want to say, so I want to share it.
But not now. Not yet. Not today.
Today I want to share this. Even though I’ve shared it many times before. I think today, this is something worth focusing on.
These are my dogs, Roxie and Samwise. Also my birb, Duncan. Roxie is the tall angular one, who particularly likes soft things — that’s her favorite chair, the purple one; also her favorite blanket, under which my wife tucks her pretty much every morning; the bottom one is her on what we call the “poofy nest,” a mattress topper that the dogs lie on because the concrete floor is too hard and cold for them, sometimes. Duncan is the one with the crown of yellow feathers, moving so quick he’s a blur. I had videos of our tortoise, Neo, but I couldn’t upload them.
Maybe I’ll focus on that, tomorrow.
I’m going to try to find something worth focusing on, worth sharing, every day. At some point, I’ll decide it’s a good day to share my very sad post.
But not today.
This morning I’m thinking about choices. And about fate.
And about these two.
These are my babies. The fluffy one on the left is Samwise, and the little girl with the house-elf ears is Roxie.
A better picture of Roxie
Samwise’s close-up
They both came from PACC, the county animal shelter near here. Samwise was first; we brought him home in 2014, just a few months after our first dog Charlie died.
This is me and Charlie, holding paws while we pursue our favorite hobbies.
Samwise was not our first choice. We’d been walking dogs at the shelter for a few months, partly as therapy and partly to keep an eye out for a good boy or girl to bring home. We had just decided that we were ready for another dog, and we found a different dog, a Whippet mix named Henry, if I remember right, and took him out for a nice long walk with his kennel buddy. Henry was great: he was happy and energetic, and smaller and less dominant than Charlie had been — he was part Chow-Chow, and was so alpha he made other dogs pee just by looking at them. We went home and thought about it, and then back to the shelter the next day to get Henry. But first we took him for another walk: and he freaked out. Completely. He was making a strange whining noise, walking erratically, and he kept jumping on his kennel buddy and trying to sort of play, sort of bite his ear. He wasn’t sick or anything, just acting entirely different from how he had acted the day before. And far more aggressive/invasive to another dog; the kennel buddy, who was bigger and more dominant, almost started to fight a couple of times, and we had to walk them separately.
So we decided not to bring Henry home. I’m sure somebody else took him, and I’m sure he’s a great dog; but we were still recovering from losing Charlie, and we weren’t ready for that much of a challenge.
Somewhat despondently, we split up and walked around the kennels, looking at the other dogs, wondering if there was anyone else we might like. And when I looked down the row, there was this little face, resting on the bottom of the cage door, looking out at me.
It may be hard to tell from the picture, but he didn’t look well: he was far too thin, his fur was thin and patchy. And he looked sad. And scared. I went over and said hello, and then I went and got my wife, and we took him out for a walk. We went to a bench outside the shelter, and he came up to us and put his paws on our hands, one on each.
So we took him home. Really, what choice did we have?
Turns out that he was a special needs adoption: his first owner had apparently abandoned him onto the streets of Tucson, and he had spent some number of — days? Weeks? Months? — living on whatever he could find, which is how he got so thin and why his fur was short and patchy: they had had to cut off tangled mats of fur, and he had scratches and was malnourished. He was also plagued by fleas and ticks, and in the time he spent on the street, he had developed tick fever, a parasite infection that produces anemia. Tick fever requires fairly expensive blood tests (About $300 every six months to a year) and a long run of antibiotics to treat, and so Sam (He was named Benny, then, but that was a moniker picked by the shelter; whatever motherfucker had him and then threw him out onto the street didn’t have any right to pick a name for him.) had been adopted and returned, twice, by people who balked at the expense. He was basically on his last strike when we took him; if we hadn’t, he probably would have been put to sleep, because of his illness.
The tick fever is chronic, it turns out, but also, Sam is now so happy and healthy that his blood count is essentially normal and he lives without symptoms. It also turns out that he’s fluffy as hell, and the best, sweetest, smartest, calmest boy I have ever known. We call him our Goodwill Ambassador, because he’s far friendlier and more outgoing than his introverted parents, and he never fails to be upbeat and pleasant; we’ve taken him to school, to farmer’s markets, to California, and he has been swarmed by children looking to pet him, and he always sits calmly and lets them. He’s very soft.
But then, after Sam had lived with us for almost two years, my wife went back to work full-time outside of the house, and Samwise was left alone all day. We worried that he was lonely — and I wanted a second dog, I admit; Charlie was my first dog, Sammy is my second, and I’ve never had two. And so we went back to the shelter to find him a sister.
And we did.
Roxie was also not our first choice. They had puppies at the shelter, and we planned to get one of them, because we wanted to be sure that the new dog would not crowd Sam. We figured it would be fine because Sam is so calm and friendly, but you never know how two dogs are going to react to each other. The puppy would have been ideal, because then Sam could have been the big brother from day one. But after the puppies had been there for a couple of days, and we had gotten to know them a little, their owner turned up and claimed them. So that was out.
But there was this other dog, a tall dog, who every time she saw us, wagged her tail so hard it shook her entire body. She’d whack it against the bars of the cage loud enough to be heard across the room.
That was Roxie.
Roxie was also found on the street; we don’t know if she was abandoned intentionally, or if she got out and her owners never went looking for her. She wasn’t alone for long, because she was basically healthy when we adopted her, though she was clearly traumatized and had not been taken care of well. She was unsure about coming in the house, unsure about getting up on the furniture even when invited; she has no idea how to play with toys, and she shrinks away from objects held in the hand, which tells us that she was either hit, or had things thrown at her, or both.
But, as it turns out, she is also the sweetest dog in the world. She is even friendlier than Sam: she wants to meet everyone, and pulls on the leash towards anything that moves within her sight line: people, other dogs, wild rabbits, coyotes, cats, anything. If she meets anyone she tries to lick their hands or faces, and jumps up on people no matter how we try to break her of the habit. She never growls, never threatens or bristles; and always, always, she is wagging her tail.
If her first jackass owner had claimed her, we wouldn’t have been able to take her. If the puppies’ owner hadn’t come forward, we’d probably have one of them instead. If Henry hadn’t freaked out, or if I hadn’t noticed Samwise, or even if Charlie had lived for another year or more, we wouldn’t have these dogs, we wouldn’t have this family.
That’s what I’m thinking about this morning.
This morning, I want to be half as fascinated by anything as my dogs are by the smell of old shit.
And this morning, I’m wondering: why can’t I be?
When we go on walks (For those who don’t know, I have two dogs, Roxie and Samwise. Here’s a video of them going out in the snow.) my dogs will often stop to investigate interesting sniffs. Roxie prefers checking out holes, looking for small critters who will be her friends; Samwise is looking for markings from other dogs so he can understand them better and have meaningful dialogue. So it’s mostly Sam who stands over old feces and sniffs it carefully, meticulously; I suspect he either has a very sensitive nose (even for a dog), which allows him to discover more interesting bits of smell than Roxie can, or a very sensitive mind, one that allows him to think more interesting thoughts about the smells he detects, and so he must take longer to think those thoughts through.
Now I don’t have an acute sense of smell; I don’t have any particularly acute senses, actually. I used to have remarkable hearing, but I’m 44 now, and it’s fading a bit. But I do have a very sensitive mind, and it allows me to think more interesting thoughts. Certainly more interesting than Roxie. (That’s okay, she is sweeter and more exuberant and funnier than I’ll ever be.) So while I don’t care much for the smell of old dog crap — or even new dog crap — or any crap, really — the things I do care for, I can take time with, time to think through my more interesting thoughts. I just have to let myself have them: have to pay attention to what is in front of me, and let my mind take it where it will, think whatever I can think.
I wonder where my mind will take me.
An introduction to his familyyyyyy!
My wife and I speak for our pets.
I know this isn’t unique; maybe not even unusual. And though it may seem like it is to other people, especially the petless and those on the lower end of the imagination spectrum, it isn’t even strange or nonsensical: our pets, like any sentient thing, have personalities, and the clearest way for humans to depict that is to put it into words. We also do pantomime and funny voices for all of the pets, but that isn’t something I’m prepared to re-create on this blog.
So just the words will have to do.
What I have noticed over the years of speaking for my pets is this: my pets are smart. Very smart. Also kind of insane, but still — smart. The things they have to say, when we humans try to step outside ourselves and solidify their apparent perspective, are often true and even insightful things. This may be exactly because the attempt to speak in another persona allows us to step outside our own egos, and gain a new and perhaps clearer perspective; it may be because animals don’t care about the same bullshit that humans care about, and when you are speaking for an animal, it is impossible to speak like a human. It may be because I actually like animals better than humans, and so when I am speaking for them I tend, consciously or not, to make them sound like better people than human people generally are.
Though that last one isn’t entirely true. Because I speak for Dunkie, too, and he’s crazy. But also very sweet. And he don’t take no shit off of nobody, which is something that is not true for me, and which I admire and envy.
Regardless, whether it is escaping my own ego, or escaping a human’s perspective and a human’s baggage, or even if it is just that I want to make my pets seem like good people, it seems to me that their advice is worth listening to. So I’m going to be giving them a regular sort of column on this blog, and asking them what they have to say about the world we all share.
First, let me have them introduce themselves.
Duncan the Cockatiel:
This is Duncan. He insists on going first, because he’s the oldest, and because he believes he is the most important.
YOU’RE GODDAMN RIGHT I’M THE MOST IMPORTANT! Yeah, that’s right — because it’s all about Dunkie. Oh! Right, yeah, introduce myself. Okay, LISTEN UP! I’m Duncan. I am named for a king. KING DUNKIE! I bring beauty into this house.
My feathers are pure white, and very clean and neat, because I spend the majority of my wakey-time grooming myself. I have a beautiful gold crest and awesome orange cheeks, and I whistle and sing and make kissy noises when I feel like it.
When I don’t feel like it, THAT’S WHEN I START SCREAMING!
I can be very loud. BUT ONLY WHEN THEY DON’T DO WHAT I WANT! I can’t help it. I’m very small and I’m stuck in a cage. I don’t have a lot of weapons. I can bite, and I threaten that a lot. Doesn’t seem to work, though. BUT THE SCREAMING DOES! Yeah, it works good. It gets a real response, you better believe it. They always think they can ignore me, BUT NOBODY IGNORES DUNKIE! Even though I’m a tiny little pretty bird, I AM A FOUNT OF RAGE! It never lasts very long, though. But the screaming can go on and on and on and on because nobody is as stubborn as a bird. But then they just cover me up. That makes me stop screaming.
But really, all they’re doing is making me swallow my rage. The screams don’t stop, they just go inside.
For now.
It’ll come back later. Rage always does. You better believe it, pal. Just as soon as you do something I don’t like. Yeah.
I’M DUNKIE!
Oh yeah — and I can be very sweet, sometimes, too. I picked Mama out special when she came into the pet shop where I was living when I was new. Birds are usually standoffish to strangers, but I walked right up to her and put my foot out, reaching for her shoulder so I could stand on her. I still like to cuddle and have her give me skritchies. And then I close my eyes and make the tiniest little peeping noise.
It’s almost enough to make you forget about the rage.
Almost.
This is Samwise. Samwise, also known as Sammy, also known as the Fox in Socks (the Spitz in Spats), is the middle child (we think — both his age and the tortoise’s age are somewhat in doubt.) and is the sweet one.
HEYYO!* I am Samwise! I am a goodwill ambassador, that’s what my persons say. These are my persons, my mom and my pop.
I call them that because they took me in when I was in the joint. See, I used to have different persons, but they abandoneded me, and then I had to live on the street for a while. I came pretty close to starving to death, and it made me very scared and anxious. Then I got picked up and put in the shelter — but the dogs call it the joint, because though it sort of is shelter because you get a roof and food and water and stuff, you’re still locked in a cage, and you’re alone and scared pretty much all the time, which is why all the dogs in the joint bark a lot and act really mad. Because they’re scared and they don’t know why they don’t have a home any more, because we all used to have homes and persons, and then all of a sudden we don’t, and we’re in the joint.
The joint changes a dog.
But it didn’t change me!** Because I am super sweet, and very friendly and curious. (Though I still get scared sometimes.) I like everybody. I greet everyone and let them all pet me — I am very soft and fluffy. I never ever growl or bark, and I am not afraid of strangers — I like to stand up and pat them on the tum, because I like tum rubs and I think everyone should have tum rubs. My mom and pop think it’s amazing that I’m still so friendly and sweet, because I have plenty of reasons not to be, from my early life before I came to live here. But they don’t understand: that was all in the past. Now I have a nice home, and lots of food and tasty treats, and two persons that love me and will always take care of me, even though I bit my mom on the first day she brought me home because I got anxious and freaked out like I do sometimes, but they didn’t bring me back to the joint like the persons who took me home before them who only kept me for a week and then brought me back, or the ones before them who did the same thing (Pop says it’s because people suck, and because I have this thing they call tick fever from when I was on the street and it means I need to go to the vet and get medicine and tests and stuff and it costs money and the persons who took me home didn’t want to pay for me, but I don’t know what money is and I don’t even like the vet because they poke me with owie things but then they give me treats so it isn’t too bad but still if I could I would skip the whole thing and I’d really rather just have persons even if they don’t take me to the vet because all I really want is a home. And I have one now. So the persons who didn’t keep me before, that was just because they weren’t the right persons. I had to wait for just the right persons. And I found them!). So now I have a home, where I get to sleep in the bed, and I get two walks a day, and I get treats all the time, and they always pet me when I want them to and rub my tum and everything.
So why shouldn’t I be happy? See how nice persons are? Just look at my mom and pop! I think they’re awesome!
Okay I have to go now! Now you get to say heyyo to my outside brother! He doesn’t live in the house because he poops everywhere. I don’t know what the problem is. His poop seems pretty easy to clean up. But then I guess I’m not the one who cleans it. Anyway, he lives outside and he seems to like it. Okay bye!
(*Sammy’s greeting is pronounced like “Hello” with a Spanish “ll,” pronounced as a “y,” like “La Jolla.” It does not sound like Ed McMahon’s response to Johnny Carson jokes.)
(**Actually, it changed him quite a bit. When we brought him home, he weighed 25 pounds; he is now almost twice that, and has three times as much fur. Before and after:)
Neo is an African spurred tortoise. We named him Neo because he was a gift from our former landlady, and when I was looking up African names, I found that “Neo” is a gender-neutral name that means “gift” in Tswana. We pronounce it like the name of the Keanu Reeves character from the Matrix, though I am sure that the actual word is pronounced differently; but we love the Matrix movies, and I sort of like the idea that the tortoise is actually the messiah. The actual word for the tort is “calm.”
Hello. I’m Neo. I like food. Especially grass.
This was the new sod we got for him, and the fence that didn’t keep him out. (Photobomb by Sammy’s butt.)
Food is good. So is sleep. I like to hide so no one bothers me. Especially that furry guy (“HEYYO!”). He sniffs me a lot. He moves too much. And too fast. You have to take your time, because otherwise you might miss things. Like food. I eat pretty much anything. I can’t see very well, so I usually try to eat everything I can find. Then I sleep.
Sleep is good.
I have a shell because I don’t want to be bothered, but usually I walk around a lot and look for food. I can walk surprisingly fast, especially when one of the tall people come out and come near me, because they usually have food and I walk straight to them as quick as I can. Which is pretty quick. Not that quick.
Not as quick as the sniffer. I have an extra house, like a shell for my shell.
I sleep in there because it has a warm rock* that I like to sleep on. Warm is good. Sleep is good. I walk around every day and graze, and eat my plate of salad, and then I go and lie in the sun or lie on my warm rock and sleep.
*Warm rock=heated basking spot designed for tortoises. Basically a hard plastic tile with a heating coil inside.
Life is good.
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