Farewell to a Friend

Just this side of heaven is a place called Rainbow Bridge.

When an animal dies that has been especially close to someone here, that pet goes to Rainbow Bridge. There are meadows and hills for all of our special friends so they can run and play together. There is plenty of food, water and sunshine, and our friends are warm and comfortable.

It’s been a month since the Saturday that began with such great promise.  I’d managed to get myself up early and got in a good run; 40 minutes, pouring sweat and feeling exhausted.  Not the “I think I’m going to die,” exhausted. It was the kind of exhaustion that makes you feel great knowing it was damned good effort. Longest run in as far back as I could recall. It was going to be a good day.  Changed into a dry shirt and headed for Starbuck’s for morning coffee.  The Starbuck’s drill on a Saturday morning is to cruise by and peek inside.  Yeah, lined up to the door.  Never mind the coffee I needed to get home to see how our dog Rainey did overnight. When I walked in she was lying in the downstairs bedroom.  She sensed that I was home and struggled to get up on her three legs to greet me; a good sign.

Then came the screams.  

It's Just A Dog

“It’s just a dog.”  That’s what she said.  That was her first offense.  Her second offense was saying it to someone who had had to put down her two Rottweilers within about a year of each other.  Actually what she really said was, “It’s just a fucking dog.” Which only served to redouble the offense.  This was part of a friend to friend conversation. 

After ACL surgery

Tripod

That’s odd - I’m dreaming about a braying donkey.  A few moments of confusion when I came out of that deep sleep and the donkey hadn’t gone away.  Geeze, it’s my dog and that’s not a dream.  Rainey had rolled over onto the site where her leg had once been and was screaming in pain.  I got up and helped her to sit up.  She whimpered and quivered while I rubbed her head and held her.  Once calm I made sure that she laid down so that she wouldn’t roll onto the wound again.  Back in bed I wondered, ‘Did we do the right thing?’  I glanced down and she was already back to sleep and once I calmed myself down I reasoned that this is going to be one of multiple challenges for the next 10 days or so.  ‘Don’t get hasty with doubts.’

It's Not My Time Dad

I’m not an overly spiritual kinda guy.  I pray, though not religiously – so to speak.  That is to say I don’t pray nearly as much as the wife but more than my daughter – who doesn’t pray at all (so I guess that would be damning myself with faint praise).  When it comes to praying I can’t hold a votive candle to the wife. In my own spiritual defense though I do pray for things more substantive than the elusive winning lottery ticket or the local nine going to the World Series.  And while my devotion is often fleeting there are those times when I’m given pause to consider that there may be some sort of providence at work.  But providence does have to hit me in the face – hard.

My Buddy, My Friend

You're my buddy, my pal, my friend

It will be that way until the end

“How do you know when it’s time?” I’d asked the vet a couple weeks ago.  “Well, she’ll have good days and she’ll have bad days .  You’ll learn to recognize those and then when she has more bad than good then you need to start considering putting her to sleep.”

Good days and bad.  Last Saturday (a week ago) was a very bad day.  Late in the evening I literally thought that she was dying.  The next morning when I got home from a morning run she looked at me with bright eyes; alert and inquisitive.  “Welcome home, where have you been?  Running without me?” she seemed to ask.  Sunday was pretty good.  Sunday was also the day that I decided to pull out two little left over bunk bed mattresses.  I laid them one on top of the other next to her dog bed and spent the night in my sleeping bag.  When she seemed a little restless I reached over and stroked her head.  That was in the little downstairs “computer room.”

Boundless Love

Dogs have given us their absolute all. We are the center of their universe. We are the focus of their love and faith and trust. ~ Roger Caras

She’s trying gamely to walk around the house, 

albeit awkwardly with the pink bandage on her lower front leg.  She’s eating again.  She comes around and hits me with her nose, her way of saying, “Hey old man get me some head scratching.”  There’s no moping in a crate, raising a painful paw in supplication It’s starting to feel like I have my dog back.  She’s alert again - pissed off when someone has the effrontery to ring the bell on HER door. She goes back near the open kitchen window to stick her nose up and see what kind of smells are out there. I feel like I have my dog, my best friend, back again.   She’s not totally whole yet.  She struggles to get to her feet because that one paw is still weak and doesn’t give her the leverage to lift her up.  It’s certainly still sore but she isn’t afraid to put some pressure on it.  The stairs are supposed to be off limits but Rainey saw an opportunity when the gate was left down and she bolted up and went to one of her favorite sleeping haunts. The other night she asked to go out on the back patio. So the two of us sat quietly in the warmth of a summer evening.  She stuck her nose up and looked into the night. It twitches as she picks up a scent.  Something irritated her and she barked into the darkness. I’m getting my dog back.

Old Dogs

Dogs are not our whole life, but they make our lives whole.

I slowed up during the run and Rainey turned back and looked at me.  It seemed almost accusatory.  “What the hell,” she seemed to say, “Are we going or not?”  Hey miss birddog you are the one who practically pulls my shoulder out of joint when you feel the need to stop to point at some bird in a bush, I would think.  She has a beautiful feathered tail that would flip back and forth like a metronome.  Her trot was graceful and effortless. After the run we sat outside Starbucks.  I drank coffee and she lounged like a princess as she took in the compliments, “Such a beautiful dog.”

We got up before sunrise.  When she got to middle age she went day blind.  Couldn’t see past her long nose in the daylight but in the twilight she could see perfectly and so we, as my dad would say, got up with the chickens.  We ran for up to an hour. Years passed and we ran for 40 minutes. A couple of years ago I pared the runs down to half an hour.  Last year I would take her out for about 15 minutes and then I dropped her off at the house and then finished my run. The runs ended some months ago and when I would get up she would get up as well, “Sorry girl, you can’t. Go back to bed.”

It's The Ideology

It wasn’t a gun.  It wasn’t a bomb. It wasn’t a machete.   It was a truck.  2 -3 minutes.  84 now dead, including 10 children. Do you understand now? It’s not the weapon.  It’s the ideology. ~  A viral Facebook post.

I’ve had an epiphany. Yes, I totally understand now.  If someone with a twisted ideology or some random radical Islamist wants to take out a crowd of people then he’ll find a way.  It might be fertilizer rife with ammonium nitrate, it might be a box cutter, it might be a baseball bat (as happened in Deltona Florida in 2004) or it might be a simple kitchen knife as happened in Osaka in 2001.  Most recently of course, it was a truck.  "Where there's a will, there's a way," goes the old saw.

140 Characters and a Meme

We’re two weeks removed from our nation’s 240^th Independence Day and the founders' great experiment is experiencing an upheaval unlike any that I can recall since the protests of the Vietnam War over 40 years ago. 

Over two centuries ago, America was the revolutionary undertaking that a doubting old world viewed with a bemused expectation of imminent collapse. For more than two centuries America has weathered the storms of war, strife, corruption and a temporary sundering. It's managed to put some issues behind it. But one issue, one wound will not heal. Whenever we think that the scab might fall off we manage to pick it and open the lesion afresh. It's our trauma that's scarred the nation since before it was a nation. 

It's the can that the founders and their successors managed to kick down the national road for over 200 years.  And once again, for that umpteenth time, we stand with that can before us with the decision to pick it up and finally dispense with it or kick it for another generation to deal with.  That can is of course race relations and the can kickers have been our nations leaders; by and large old white guys. The original can kickers couldn't come to agreement despite their reputation for being enlightened and ahead of their time. 

Trumping America

"It's amazing to me. A guy with the worst spray tan in America is attacking me for putting on makeup.”  "Donald is not going to 'Make America Great.' He's going to make America orange!"

~ Marco Rubio on Donald Trump

Historically presidential election years are characterized by truths and half-truths, partisanship, accusations, a fair bit of slander and enough melodrama to fill up several seasons of daytime TV.  They’re a Machiavellian daytime soap.  It’s popular to look back longingly at elections past and glorify them for having the dignity that never was.  And so we always try to lean on that nostalgia and the pretense that each upcoming election will rediscover statesmanship.  Yeah this election has squashed any hope of decorum. This election year a process that has at least historically pretended to having dignity has all of the decorum of a rolling barrel of random trash.  And that barrel was set in motion by the antics of one Donald J. Trump.  He came onto the political scene with all of the grace and tact of an exploding gasoline truck. 

Brief Notes from a Political Dreamer

I’m a dreamer apparently.  I’ve always thought of myself as being pretty matter of fact; pragmatic to the point of being stodgy.  I guess not.  Since I’ve hitched my political wagon to one Bernard Sanders I’ve been relegated to the ranks of the starry eyed idealists; Utopians with big ideas and small chance for success.  I’ve been told by the Hillary crowd that a vote for Sanders is tantamount to a vote for the GOP.  “We like Sanders," they say in that patronizing, I'm talking to an 8 year old tone.  "He’s got good ideas but they aren’t realistic.  Hillary has a better chance of beating Trump.”

The Quadrennial Games

It’s time once again for the quadrennial party.  You know the one.  That over the top orgy of backbiting, name calling, sore losers, graceless winners, allegations of cheating, actual cheating, xenophobia, jingoism, backroom deals, payoffs, under the table money and other assorted bad behavior.  Thought I was going to write about the Summer Olympics didn’t you?  Maybe another time.  This is about the presidential elections. 

Fixing the Internet (or call Al Gore)

Sunday evening and the daughter was indignant, “The internet isn’t working,” she called down from the corner upstairs bedroom.  The whole internet or just ours?  I wondered if Al Gore would be available on short notice.  I mean who better to call to fix the internet than the guy who (apocryphally) invented the damn thing.  It had been a long, hard day of moving.  The house was a mess.  There wasn’t one room in the place save the bathrooms that wasn’t piled with boxes and bags.  I’d just been on the internet earlier in the day so I tried to ignore her and hoped the whole issue would go away.  I don’t like fixing electronic things.  Then again I don’t like fixing plumbing things, metal things, wooden things, mechanical things or automotive things.  Yeah, I’m not the DIY guy.  If I ever win the lottery I’m going to put a DIY person on retainer.