griefdog:Woodys Garden

Toy Poodles and Chihuahas, Oh My!

2010-09-27T09:41:00.000-07:00

Woody was a mutt. Hard to believe: at barely 5 pounds at his "fattest", he was a tough little guy who traveled cross country and as far south as Key West with David and me.

Woody peed in more states than you could, er...wag a tail at.

Tweet Me Right

2010-08-30T10:20:00.000-07:00

Tweet me !
twitter@daraboland

Hello, Mutha...

2010-07-07T08:33:00.000-07:00

Woody's Garden

2010-04-09T10:30:00.000-07:00

****
There Must Be Gardens in Pet Heaven
I am at Lowe’s Garden Center, wrestling with a Bird of Paradise. I just want to find the price. This Mutha is huge.
Woody’s headstone arrived and I’ve decided to plant the biggest, most beautiful tropical plants I can find around it. Woody may have been small, but I just know he is huge now. After all, he is in everything I see.
Plus I need something to water and tend to every day or I am going to lose my mind. Rebecca is low maintenance; I love her, especially now as she shares my grief, but she’s an independent kinda gal, as most cats are.
The Bird of Paradise is ninety dollars, plus it won’t fit in my car, so I chose a smaller version called heliconia: same huge green leaves and smaller, but no less beautiful, orange flowers. I set the pot of Confederate Jasmine we brought with us from North Carolina next to his headstone, as sort of a connection to when he was alive. I also buy a yellow flowering shrub called Esperanza, which means “Hope” and a Kalanchoe plant with teeny white flowers on it, because they remind me of Woody. The last thing I buy is some kind of snake plant with brilliant red and orange and yellow-speckled leaves reaching up to the sky, much like the flowers and plants in my niece and nephew’s card.
I have finally changed my clothes. No laundry done yet, though. Change takes time.
I drive home in a stupor - again, change takes time – and I go to work.
To call me “crazy with grief” at this point is an understatement. Even though it is 90 degrees and sunny, I dig the holes for the plants and plant them in fifteen minutes flat, even adding soil conditioner to keep them healthy. Bugs are everywhere: attaching themselves to my arms and calves, flying up my nose, even sticking onto my contact lenses. Undaunted, I weed as I go, all while balancing on one foot so as not to disturb his gravesite. The finishing touch is a little wooden sign I made with a little drawing of Woody on a cloud on it that read, “Woody’s Garden.” No way I’m going to call this spot in my yard “Woody’s G-G-G-Gr-Grave.” Uh-uh, no way.
As I water the plants, I keep hoping I’ll see Woody peek out from behind one of the plants in his garden. Wacko.
Rebecca appears next to me and suddenly leaps over to the heliconia. She rubs past one. She sniffs Woody’s new headstone and plops down on it.
She closes her eyes as I pet her head.
I think of my niece and nephews’ card. “Angels and bugs….” I whisper.
*

BLACK FRIDAY

2009-12-01T10:01:00.000-08:00

From

Woody's Garden
An Illustrated Book for Pet Lovers of All Ages
www.xlibris.com/woodysgarden
(Not to be confused with this blog, Walks With Woody)

“ And, greatest gift of all,
Odin gave them souls that live and never die,
though the body itself has turned to dust.”

- ODIN’S FAMILY: MYTHS OF THE VIKINGS
Retold by Neil Philip

I wake up hearing panting. The excited, Spring fever kind of dog panting :Woody running full force around trees in our backyard in Michigan, years ago when he could do that. No matter how cold it was outside, he’d run circles on the grassy patches in between the snow until, exhausted, he’d sit, and one of us would scoop him up, and bring him inside to rest and lap up some water.
This is just too hard. Thinking about him is just too painful.
So I started thinking TO him instead….
I closed my eyes as quickly as they opened this morning in bed, and tried to clear my mind. Slowly, I pictured him, content, in the lap of Peace….
Me: I miss you.
I imagine he would cock his head to one side, trying to understand.
He is suddenly a beautiful man angel, like a Nordic god.
He: But I never left. And you still haven’t left me. We’re still together.
Me: True. You are in my thoughts, always. I guess what I mean is, I miss your little body.
I picture him shrugging and the thought comes quietly to me, as if he said it directly to my mind.
He: That body caused me a great deal of pain for a very long time. I’m glad to be free of it. I couldn’t run for a very long time.
And suddenly I realize what he is saying is true. His arthritis left him unable to run in years.
He looks at me and without words spoken, and I know: he hung on for a very long time, longer than he might have willingly. Maybe he would have “gone” after his first syncopatic episode – a surprise, too soon, to be sure. In his unconsciousness then, perhaps, he heard the desperation in my voice, felt my wildly trembling hands, and he knew he couldn’t leave me like that, so he pawed his way back to us. Away from the freedom from pain and those grassy fields of Heaven that he finally could run through again. Through another heart attack and several mini-strokes, he stayed with the old ticker as long as he could.
I don’t know if this is true. But…
I also don’t know that it is not.
*

I miss the physical likeness of Woody. I miss his smell (wheat toast) and the feel of his fur (boney angora). I miss the way his head popped up when I’d pass him in his little dog bed; I miss the way he would hold a wedge of rawhide and chew it with gusto; the way he’d smack when he would eat Pupperoni treats.
But if I believed in Spirit, had an ounce (or 3.3 pounds) of faith, I’d know, indeed, that he is in a “better place.” Without the burden of a sick body, he can run again, breathe again, and finally, finally be free.
Thinking of Woody always brings me full-face with those last few frail days, with all the guilt of having him put to sleep, but at the same time knowing that I would never expect David to let me suffer any longer than Woody did. I just don’t know.

*
Me: When are you coming Home?
He: I am Home.
Me: But – I don’t –
He: I’m already with you.
Me: Please. I miss you.
He: Check more. Inside. Around you. I never left.
Me: How can I be sure?
He: You don’t have to be.
Just know.

* *
On my morning walk this morning I heard a rustle of leaves and was rather pleasantly startled to look over and see a Mini Pinscher puppy poised and staring at me, head cocked mischievously to the right.
Oh, God, this is a busy street, I am thinking. “Where did you come from?” I ask him. He darted back, through a hole in the fence.
I walked on.
Rustle of grass. Mini pin, back again.
“C’mon. You can’t play on this busy street, Sweetie. You’ll get squished.”
I consider carrying him to a side street, where I can knock on a few doors, find his real home.
As if reading my mind, he leaps, fakes me out, and darts back into the hole again.
I walked on.
I keep looking back for him, again and again, just in case. But he’s gone.
He must know where his Home is, even though I don’t.
*

His eyes are half closed and he is half-turned, this stunning white-blonde man. The contentment on his face is something I have never known, and I feel guilty disturbing him from it, but –
He turns to me. Tears are streaming down my face but the grapefruit that’s been blocking my throat for the past two weeks has shrunk to the size of an apricot. He looks so lovely; he smiles the kindest smile I have ever seen in my entire life, with sparkling blue eyes the color of the South Florida sky.
Me: I still look for you when I get home and… it’s like being stabbed.
He: Mmm. Yes.
He hugs me with strong, smooth arms enveloped by cool, white sheet sleeves and I cry into them and worry about the mascara stains and I tell him, and he laughs a little and hugs me tighter – big, white, safe arms.
I cry and cry and laugh a little because suddenly I think of him as a puppy, biting my grandmother with tiny teeth and a tiny growl to match, and she giggled.
Me: I spoke to Nannie yesterday and she told me she had a dream about you. She said Jesus was sitting in a chair and He called to you and patted his lap, and you sprung right up, all white and fluffy. But your hair was curlier. Does Heaven curl your hair?
He: (smiling) Only the angels’.
Me: Really?
He shrugs.
Me: Anyway, even though her memory fails her a lot, she remembered that you had been born with a gimp front leg. But in her dream your leg was perfect and you were wagging a lot.
He: Yes. My legs are strong as trees now.
Me: I miss you.
He: I am here. I am here.
He hugs me tighter and…
… I wake up.
*
On my walking path this morning, a man I had never seen before smiled and said, “Hello,” and startled me out of my thoughts of Woody. I looked up to the “Hello” and it was the face of the man-angel in my dream. Except his hair was white, not golden blonde, and he wore a yarmulke.
I ring my sister Jen the minute I get home.
“Woody is a Rabbi living in Delray Beach!”
I tell her about my dream and the man I saw on my walk.
“Uh-huh,” she says, carefully.
“Really! What are the chances of seeing the same man the next day?“
“You haven’t been sleeping, have you?” she asks.
Bitch. Don’t pop my bubble.
“It was the eyes. The eyes were the same. Sky blue. They twinkled.”
“’kaaay,” she said.
*
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PAWPRINTS IN SAWDUST

2009-11-09T08:32:00.000-08:00

Throughout his life, Woody loved to walk through the sawdust aand wood shavings of my now husband, David. When I met David back in San Diego, he was sweeping the floors of construction sites. Since then - pretty much spanning Woody's life - he has won the Sir Waleter Raleigh award for historic renovation; built us a home converted from an old store; had news stories written about him and even been on TV.

Anywho, here's a photo of some of his wood work. if you want to see lots more, check out his blog:

http://customwoodfurniture-david.blogspot.com/

WOODYS GARDEN READERS PET PORTRAITS

2009-10-26T10:20:00.000-07:00

Send me an e-mail with your favorite pet and/or person ATTACHED, please,
and receive
$10.00 off
the price of a custom color drawing
5”x7”
or
8”x10”
Cream or White Matte

daraboland@bellsouth.net

FOR PET LOVERS

2009-10-26T10:06:00.000-07:00

PET LOVERS: Check out my new book for kids and adults:

WOODY'S GARDEN

An Illustrated Book for Pet Lovers of All Ages

WWW.XLIBRIS.COM/WOODYSGARDEN

Let me know what you think!

daraboland@bellsouth.net

and receive a $10.00 coupon toward the purchase of a custom pet portrait!

$10.00 off
the price of a custom color drawing
5”x7”
or
8”x10”
Cream or White Matte

daraboland@bellsouth.net

WOODY'S GARDEN

2009-10-25T10:35:00.000-07:00

A NOTE TO THE WHOLE FAMILY

A Pet Garden is a happy place, unlike a grave, which can be a sad, somber place.
It is a celebration of your pet’s life and your love for him or her. Designing it, planting it, making things for it, and above all, keeping it well-tended, is sure to help kids and parents alike in dealing with the grief of missing a much-loved pet.

A few pointers:

Above all, plant only what you can maintain. If you are pressed for time or have little faith in yourself as a gardener, plant only a few shrubs and plants that grow well in your area.

Plant perennials (plants that come back every year) and shrubs, even a small tree.

Plant annuals (plants that last one year) at the front of the garden or in pots for easy replacement next year.

No need to go overboard with plantings. A simple arbor, garden ornaments, a bird bath and pavers fill lots of space. Plants expand as they grow.

And, of course, fill in the bare spots with pine BARK chips or mulch.

HEY, KIDS:

Caring for a Pet Garden is a lot like caring for a pet:

It needs water, food, an occasional trim and your attention. Keeping your Pet Garden in beautiful shape is your way of showing your pet how much you still love him, and how thankful you are for all the fun he gave you.
It’s also a great way to show Mom and Dad how well you can take care of another pet in the near future!
Pull a few weeds every day . Water the plants and the bird bath. Scatter some birdseed around. And soon, you will see how much life your pet and you can keep…

Together…

Forever.

HOW TO PLANT A PET GARDEN

1. Take a walk together around your neighborhood and look at the trees, shrubs, and plants you see. If many people have them, and they are healthy, chances are good that they will fare well in your Pet Garden.
2. Note if the plants you like best are in sun or shade, and plan your garden accordingly.
3. It’s nice to lay out your garden on paper before you plant. (See last page of this book for a sample). However, it’s not necessary, since you may add plants and garden novelties later .
4. Visit your local nursery and ask questions. Usually there is a garden savvy expert who will give you helpful tips. Your local agricultural extension center can also be a great source of free advice.
5. Choose the spot and dig up any weeds or grass. Add fresh dirt and mix it all together so that your new plants will have a healthy, long life.

I. Trees and Shrubs

Start big, near the back or the center of the space you have chosen.
Plant a small tree.

Plant smaller bushes in front of and around the tree.
Flowering trees and bushes attract birds and butterflies, who love to drink the nectar from their blooms.

Trees with fruits, nuts, and blooms that squirrels and birds love include:

Oak Crabapple Apple
Walnut Hickory Plum

Trees and shrubs birds love to build nests in include any of the above and:

Pine Fir
Holly Juniper

II. Ornamental Grasses

Some birds love to build nests in tall masses of grass. Grasses are usually easy to grow, inexpensive, and create a beautiful, natural border around the garden. Two that grow easily:
Pampas grass
Liriope (Monkey Grass)

III. A Few Easy Additions
Stone and resin sculptures of piglets, frogs, turtles, rabbits and other wildlife add whimsy to your garden.
To add depth, it’s nice to pot a flowering or colorful plant that was in your yard or patio area when your pet was alive. Flowers and plants with similar names to your pet can be a way of letting him or her live on, too. A few suggestions:

Woody- Dogwood; sweet woodruff Glory- Gloriosa Daisy
Bucky- Bottle Brush Buckeye Penny- Pennyroyal
Dusty- Dusty Miller Sargeant- Sargeant Juniper
Elmo- Wild rye (Elymus spp.) Coco- Coconut palm

For any floppy-eared friend, consider:
Lamb’s ears Joseph’s Coat
Sunflowers Snow-on-the-Mountain
Blanket flower Swan River Daisy

Other suggestions:
Labrador violet Phlox (for a sheepdog or curly-haired pup)
Catmint Spotted or Striped plants
Persian epimedium Any large, leafy plant that “wags” when the wind blows

So…
Plant, keep it well-watered and trim away any dead branches or blooms. If any plants die, replace them as soon as possible with something else.

And, of course…

DON’T FORGET THE BARK CHIPS!

Your Pet Garden Planner

My Favorite Plants: Supply List: To Do:
_____________ ____________ _____________
_____________ ____________ _____________
_____________ ____________ _____________
_____________ _____________ _____________
_____________ ____________ _____________
_____________ ____________ _____________
_____________ _____________ _____________

A Small Garden is nice, too!

Suggestions for a Window Sill Pet Garden:
Suncatchers
Paint-Your-Own Planters
Mini Birdhouses
Ceramic Ornaments
Little figurines and statues of dogs, cats, frogs, turtles, etc.
& Potted Plants to stick them in.
How to Make Your Pet Garden Sign
The Cardinal Rule in making the sign for your Pet Garden is to use materials that will stand up to outdoor weather.

You will need:

~ Paper to practice on
~ Two Small pieces of light-colored wood, such as Pine or Balsa Wood, shaped like a sign (An extra one, just in case!)
~ Paint Markers
~ Wood Glue (such as Elmer’s WOOD G;lue)
~ A stick or yardstick to use as your sign post
~ A Fine Point Permanent Black Marker OR Black Ball Point INK Pen, medium point
~ Colorful INK pens
~ Small jar of light-colored wood stain
~ Small jar of clear topcoat OR Clear Gloss Spray Paint
You might need or want:
~ Letter Stencils
~ Stamps and Ink Pads
~ Sponge shapes
~ Paper Towels to clean up with and Newspaper to work on

How to Make a Pet Garden Sign

1. On the paper, trace the shape of your sign. Sketch or stamp or stencil what you would like the final sign to look like.
2. If you want your sign to be a color, now is the time to paint it and let it dry. Otherwise, natural is nice, too.
3. Now, copy your sign design IN PENCIL onto the wooden sign:
4. Start with the words. For example:

SKIPPY’S GARDEN

And design your sign around the words.

SKIPPY’S GARDEN

5. Trace over the letters with the Permanent Marker OR Black Ball Point Pen. It’s OK if it’s not perfect. Slightly crooked letters are a nice touch.
6. Draw, paint, stencil or stamp on the rest.
Simple designs stand out the most. If you are making a more detailed design, paint markers and colored ink pens work well and last a long time.

REMEMBER: It’s not important to make your sign design look exactly like your paper picture. Any mistakes can become paw prints, ladybugs, daisies, or a leafy border.
Some of the world’s best ideas were “fixed mistakes”!

7. Once you’re done, wait a day for the ink to dry and then rub some stain over the whole thing…gently.
8. With Mom or Dad’s help, apply a clear gloss to protect it from the weather.
9. Glue the stick onto the back of the yardstick. Let it dry lying down with a book on top. Then stick it in the middle of your Pet Garden.

HEY, KIDS:

Caring for a Pet Garden is a lot like caring for a pet:

It needs water, food, an occasional trim and your attention. Keeping your Pet Garden in beautiful shape is your way of showing your pet how much you still love him, and how thankful you are for all the fun he gave you.
It’s also a great way to show Mom and Dad how well you can take care of another pet in the near future!
Pull a few weeds every day . Water the plants and the bird bath. Scatter some birdseed around. And soon, you will see how much life your pet and you can keep…

Together…

Forever.

A HAPPY BLOG FOR PEOPLE LOVERS

2009-10-23T10:52:00.000-07:00

If all this grief stuff is too much, check out this happy blog:
http://noahstrek.blogspot.com

Love it!!!XXXOOO

Dog and Cat Grief Blogs

2009-10-23T10:43:00.000-07:00

TO ALL PET LOVERS: A cursory scan of dog and pet grief blogs is both sad and comforting: I am not the only one who went bonkers when her dog passed away.
I didn't go "raving lunatic crazy." I just forgot stuff - kind of important stuff, like what state I lived in, not to mention what street I lived on; how to boil water; how often to vacuum and other stuff I, well, don't remember.
Anyone else out there with a "crazy with dog/cat/horse/ferret/turtle/parrot/pet grief" story?

Check 'em out:

www.blogs.dogtime.com
www.pet-loss-matters.com/pet-loss-blog.html

PET HEAVEN, GO AWAY...

2009-10-21T09:53:00.000-07:00

Woody's Garden

www.xlibris.com/Woodysgarden

" M'boy"

Brampton Moors

Cary, NC

No Rainbow Bridges, yet, please...

I.

When did my puppy stop scampering and start hobbling?
I see Woody limping to the door and suddenly I realize he is 12. In “people” years, sure, but they are our years together – fully a third of my life – and I want Time to stop for him so that I can catch up. When the awful, awful thought of his death flees across my mind I chase it out like an old hag with a sharp stick. It’s as if someone – Fate? – has put a noose around my neck and given it a quick yank, down to an inch in diameter. All oxygen cut off. All Life.
C’mon.
I find myself getting angry and impatient – intolerant – with him for getting old. Not that I’m a Spring chicken but he is my little cream-colored chick and it never occurred to me, moronic as it sounds, that I would outlive him. The Christmas cards have always been signed, “Love, Dara, David, Woody (and Rebecca in parentheses, since she is the cat who adopted us when Woody was four). To imagine him not here is unthinkable. Therefore, I will not think it. No. He is not old, just stiff from sleeping all day.
There.
Some people look troubled and say, “It’s just a dog,” but that, to me, is like saying to a parent, “It’s just a kid. You’ll have more.” He’s been that much a part of me, and it feels – literally, I can feel the ripping and twisting – as if someone is tearing my heart muscle out from beneath my breast bone. That’s how real the pain is. For twelve years, I’ve fed him, cared for him, walked him, ran with him (and after him); I’ve brought him to the doctor and stayed up nights with him when he was sick. He has been my ever-present buddy; “my secretary”, I called him, since he spent so much time in my office, dozing on my lap, mostly. Woody is my little 12 year old boy.

So, please, don’t let me dwell on this. I am counting on at least another five years together, here on Earth. Every night I tell him about our bond that cannot be broken, that I love him more than the stars love the sky. He’s my little papoose, the vision that warms me, no matter what.
That is Eternal already.

**

It started off the way it always does: 3 pm, I get home. Woody’s in my office or in the bedroom waiting for me or dozing. I clap my hands gently and tell him it’s time to go out. His head pops up and he gives me searching, slightly alarmed puppy eyes. He’s 12 now, hard of hearing, but he still has the puppy eyes. He gets up, stretches, and stands still, slightly hunched, head down as I scoop him up and carry him down the stairs, whispering sweet nothings in the pink of his little ear. Sometimes I tell him what he smells like – something good like wheat toast or butterscotch. Occasionally it’s not so good, but on him it’s always, always cute and rascal-y. “Mmmm, let’s see. You smell like… a lil’ bit of fruit that’s been in the sunshine too long.” I flick on the light in the stairwell so that he can see when he runs back up, as he does every day.
On the way back in after our walk we pass David in his workshop. Woody scampers through a pile of sawdust and David shakes his head and smiles. I open the stairwell door and he bounds up the stairs, me in tow- all those stairs, have to spot m’boy – and I watch him trot back into my office while I go into the kitchen and start breaking Pupperoni dog treats into the little pieces he loves….
That’s when I heard it – a high-pitched moan. Whining. Wailing. I later found the plate of Pupperonis on the floor. I ran in two steps down the hallway to my office and there on the rug was my baby, wailing, lying on his side. I fell beside him and started stroking his little belly. “What, Sweetie? Woody! Woody!”
Thoughts of doggie CPR raced through my head – I was going to try, damn it – but then I moved him and he was heavy and limp but warm, so warm. Heat stroke, yes, bring him downstairs and let him lie on the cool concrete… cold water causes shock… too many stairs…. I cry as I pick up his lifeless body and cradle his head as I fly down the stairs….David, David, help – it’s Woody, please, he’s had an attack, he…. I stroke his little belly and my hands shake so hard, from the elbow they tremble and I don’t want to pet him too hard, with these hands, they jerk, they just don’t work….
He comes around. He whimpers. I whisper and murmur and pet him and cry. I’m crumpled on the concrete floor next to him. David says he’s getting better, gonna be okay….
I call the vet, just in case. He’s okay. Now, I know 12 is old for a dog. He has a heart condition, the valve thing that I have, and I know now that Life is mean.
The thing is, I wouldn’t feel so uncomfortable about Death – about the concept of going to Heaven, since I know Woody will wind up there – if I could just go there and check it out first. Make sure it’s okay – clean and safe, and that there are Pupperoni treats there and at least two water dishes in the house.No. I can’t accept that Woody must go some place without me. No. I know people There. I could hook him up with someone I know will take care of him the best, someone who will make sure he has what he’s used to having. The thought of him leaving, before me, without me by his side, to carry him up the stairs – Heaven has stairs, right? – he’s too little, 3.9 pounds at last weigh-in….What if he gets hit by an angel?

I'D FEEL BETTER ABOUT PET HEAVEN IF I COULD SEE IT.

2009-10-21T09:40:00.000-07:00

*

BARGAINING
Okay. I know he’ll eat if I go to Costco once a week and get him a Rotisserie chicken. Rinse it so he doesn’t get a stomachache. Chop it up in the mini-chopper so he can stop this choking after he eats. Or, better yet, I’ll put down tiny bits of finely chopped food in two minute intervals. That way he has to chew it really well. Then, on alternate days I’ll go to Burger King. He loves the burgers. Oh, look at this: a herbal supplement with CoQ 10. Good for the heart.
*

“Medicine is always bitter to the taste.”

I am reading a fortune cookie from the Chinese food David went out to get to make up for the chicken incident.
I watched the vet lay Woody down on the stainless steel exam table I had held him at countless times for exams. Only this was the last time…. Why didn’t I let him go in his own time? Why did I bring him to the vet to die?

Woody hadn’t eaten for days before he died, and so I was unable to sneak his heart medication into his food. Could not having his medicine have caused his death? I’m terrible. I should have made him swallow the medicine.
He: You helped me. I needed you to help me. That was the love I needed then.
Me: I did it wrong. I should have let you go your own way.
He: We both had to surrender.
Peace is only in the letting go.
*

DOG GRIEF

2009-10-20T10:35:00.000-07:00

No matter what anyone says, "dog grief" is just as bad as "people grief" to the dog lovers among us. Ditto with cats, horses, even cows...birds, ferrets - you name it. For lots of people in their 40's, their pet is actually older than their eldest child. And so when that pet passes on, a parent is faced with helping her child through the pain of loss while dealing with her own.
I wrote WOODY'S GARDEN to help you all through this very difficult time.
Let me know what you think!

www.xlibris.com/WoodysGarden

PET LOSS HOTLINE

2009-10-19T15:37:00.001-07:00

Free Phone-Based Pet Loss Hotline
By support on Jul 24, 2009 In Links Send feedback »
The College of Veterinary Medicine at Washington State University offers a free phone-based pet loss hotline for pet loss support, death of a pet, dying pet. Staffed by veterinary students, trained by a licensed therapist, as well as a pet memorial site where pet owners can post stories and photos in memory of their pets.
http://www.vetmed.wsu.edu/PLHl/

A GOOD PET LOSS BLOG

2009-10-19T15:32:00.000-07:00

Pet Loss Matters - Practical and understanding information and advice on all matters regarding pet loss, pet death and pet grief, along with pet quotes, pet loss diaries and pet loss poetry. You are not alone in your grief. Share Your Story here.

Puppy Palace

2009-10-16T09:20:00.000-07:00

There’s a lady who walks the same route I do in the morning. She wears a floppy hat and knee-hi’s and she carries an umbrella to shield herself from the sun. Each morning we pass each other, nod and say only one word, “Morning.”
On this morning, as I walk, thoughts on the only subject now, Woody - Where, really, do dogs go when they die? Where is he right now? –the Woman With the Floppy Hat called out to me from across the street, where there is no sidewalk but lots more shade.
At first it sounded like, “The Towers!” from across the passing traffic so I turned and looked and she pointed to my side of the street, just up ahead of me and said what she said in the beginning:
“Look at the flowers! The flowers!”
I look up ahead of me and a little to the right and there is the answer to my question, Where’s Woody now? :
A field of tiny white Star of Bethlehem flowers, peppering the grass that used to be green, and alone.
There is only one answer to Death:
Life.
****

CRAZY DOG WALKING

2009-10-16T09:14:00.000-07:00

I walk outside every day, morning and afternoon, when we used to walk the most. In the house, I’ve been walking in circles a lot. I don’t know what else to do.
“I miss you,” I whisper to his burial spot. The only reason I whisper this is so the neighbors don’t think I’ve gone completely bonkers, even though I am pretty certain that I have.
Curiously, I don’t care, either.
Really, now. Where is he? He cannot go anywhere without me. This is silly. Woody, come out now. Please.
If I could only smell his little white head again…
Please.
A yellow butterfly nearly crashes into my forehead. My arms feel like lead; I don’t even try to wave it away. Wait a minute, where was I? That butterfly interrupted me. Oh, yes, Sadness. A yellow butterfly interrupted my sadness.
Huh?
Suddenly I think of Cher, in Moonstruck, slapping Nicholas Cage across the face and barking, “Snap out of it!”.
A thought pops into my head like a two-word brain-slap:
Puppy Palace.
*

I careen into the Puppy Palace parking lot, sweating. This is crazy.
Nothing new there.
I enter a virtual Romper Room of baby dogs: all breeds, shapes and sizes in playpens lined with shredded newspaper: a fuzzy German Shepherd pup happily falls over a Yellow Lab puppy; a baby Chihuahua the size a measuring cup and a tiny dachshund run little circles around a floppy-eared cocker spaniel; a sleepy-eyed King Charles spaniel snoozes next to what looks to be a tiny black teddy bear.
“Toy Pom,” says a voice behind me and a young man with kind eyes and a shop apron on says, “Here, hold ‘im.”
“Oh, no, I …”
A roly-poly Maltese with paws the size of thimbles waddles across the playpen.
“How ‘bout this one?” He scoops him up with his other hand. Before I can object he plops the little poof ball into my hand.
At barely over a pound, the vet had to use kitten shots on him. She gently touched his deformed front paw, the one that looked like the state of Michigan, and as Woody covered her hand with tiny pink kisses she said, “This is going to cause him some arthritis when he gets a little older.”
I stroke the pup’s belly, rounder than Woody’s ever was. Worms? No, maybe health. Woody was so frail in his final days. How could I expect him to hold on to that body that gave him so much pain? How selfish am I?
The little pup gazes up into my eyes and then buries his dot-sized nose in the crook of my arm. He rests his head on my heart and in no time is fast asleep, his little round belly rising and falling smoothly, like a furry balloon – not labored and ragged, like Woody’s breathing was, in those final days.
“Oh, now, that’s a happy puppy,” PP guy says.
I smell the sleeping puppy’s head. It smells what “warm” smells like, but not like Woody’s, and that’s okay.
After awhile, I carefully lower the sleeping little dog back down into his pen, next to what looks to be his big brother. He nuzzles in next to him, belly to belly.
“Bye, for now,” I whisper to him, with a little wave. What a geek. I was afraid he’d start to cry, like puppies do. He raised his head and looked at me, then lowered his chin and peacefully went back to sleep, next to his brother, as if to say, “I’m okay here.”
That was all I needed to hear.
My face feels weird: for the first time in weeks, I am smiling.
*

WOODY'S GARDEN

2009-10-14T15:36:00.000-07:00

Woody's Garden

Illustration

Dear Readers:
It was around this time that the makings of the idea behind my latest book, WOODY'S GARDEN: AN ILLUSTRATED BOOK FOR PET LOVERS OF ALL AGES (www.xlibris.com/WoodysGarden) came to be.
Check it out....

I mean, REALLY Crazy with Grief...

2009-10-14T15:34:00.000-07:00

*
On my morning walk this morning I heard a rustle of leaves and was rather pleasantly startled to look over and see a Mini Pinscher puppy poised and staring at me, head cocked mischievously to the right.
Oh, God, this is a busy street, I am thinking. “Where did you come from?” I ask him. He darted back, through a hole in the fence.
I walked on.
Rustle of grass. Mini pin, back again.
“C’mon. You can’t play on this busy street, Sweetie. You’ll get squished.”
I consider carrying him to a side street, where I can knock on a few doors, find his real home.
As if reading my mind, he leaps, fakes me out, and darts back into the hole again.
I walked on.
I keep looking back for him, again and again, just in case. But he’s gone.
He must know where his Home is, even though I don’t.
*

His eyes are half closed and he is half-turned, this stunning white-blonde man. The contentment on his face is something I have never known, and I feel guilty disturbing him from it, but –
He turns to me. Tears are streaming down my face but the grapefruit that’s been blocking my throat for the past two weeks has shrunk to the size of an apricot. He looks so lovely; he smiles the kindest smile I have ever seen in my entire life, with sparkling blue eyes the color of the South Florida sky.
Me: I still look for you when I get home and… it’s like being stabbed.
He: Mmm. Yes.
He hugs me with strong, smooth arms enveloped by cool, white sheet sleeves and I cry into them and worry about the mascara stains and I tell him, and he laughs a little and hugs me tighter – big, white, safe arms.
I cry and cry and laugh a little because suddenly I think of him as a puppy, biting my grandmother with tiny teeth and a tiny growl to match, and she giggled.
Me: I spoke to Nannie yesterday and she told me she had a dream about you. She said Jesus was sitting in a chair and He called to you and patted his lap, and you sprung right up, all white and fluffy. But your hair was curlier. Does Heaven curl your hair?
He: (smiling) Only the angels’.
Me: Really?
He shrugs.
Me: Anyway, even though her memory fails her a lot, she remembered that you had been born with a gimp front leg. But in her dream your leg was perfect and you were wagging a lot.
He: Yes. My legs are strong as trees now.
Me: I miss you.
He: I am here. I am here.
He hugs me tighter and…
… I wake up.
*
On my walking path this morning, a man I had never seen before smiled and said, “Hello,” and startled me out of my thoughts of Woody. I looked up to the “Hello” and it was the face of the man-angel in my dream. Except his hair was white, not golden blonde, and he wore a yarmulke.
I ring my sister Jen the minute I get home.
“Woody is a Rabbi living in Delray Beach!”
I tell her about my dream and the man I saw on my walk.
“Uh-huh,” she says, carefully.
“Really! What are the chances of seeing the same man the next day?“
“You haven’t been sleeping, have you?” she asks.
Bitch. Don’t pop my bubble.
“It was the eyes. The eyes were the same. Sky blue. They twinkled.”
“’kaaay,” she said.
*

Crazy With Grief

2009-10-14T15:33:00.000-07:00

“ And, greatest gift of all,
Odin gave them souls that live and never die,
though the body itself has turned to dust.”

- ODIN’S FAMILY: MYTHS OF THE VIKINGS
Retold by Neil Philip

I wake up hearing panting. The excited, Spring fever kind of dog panting :Woody running full force around trees in our backyard in Michigan, years ago when he could do that. No matter how cold it was outside, he’d run circles on the grassy patches in between the snow until, exhausted, he’d sit, and one of us would scoop him up, and bring him inside to rest and lap up some water.
This is just too hard. Thinking about him is just too painful.
So I started thinking TO him instead….
I closed my eyes as quickly as they opened this morning in bed, and tried to clear my mind. Slowly, I pictured him, content, in the lap of Peace….
Me: I miss you.
I imagine he would cock his head to one side, trying to understand.
He is suddenly a beautiful man angel, like a Nordic god.
He: But I never left. And you still haven’t left me. We’re still together.
Me: True. You are in my thoughts, always. I guess what I mean is, I miss your little body.
I picture him shrugging and the thought comes quietly to me, as if he said it directly to my mind.
He: That body caused me a great deal of pain for a very long time. I’m glad to be free of it. I couldn’t run for a very long time.
And suddenly I realize what he is saying is true. His arthritis left him unable to run in years.
He looks at me and without words spoken, and I know: he hung on for a very long time, longer than he might have willingly. Maybe he would have “gone” after his first syncopatic episode – a surprise, too soon, to be sure. In his unconsciousness then, perhaps, he heard the desperation in my voice, felt my wildly trembling hands, and he knew he couldn’t leave me like that, so he pawed his way back to us. Away from the freedom from pain and those grassy fields of Heaven that he finally could run through again. Through another heart attack and several mini-strokes, he stayed with the old ticker as long as he could.
I don’t know if this is true. But…
I also don’t know that it is not.
*

I miss the physical likeness of Woody. I miss his smell (wheat toast) and the feel of his fur (boney angora). I miss the way his head popped up when I’d pass him in his little dog bed; I miss the way he would hold a wedge of rawhide and chew it with gusto; the way he’d smack when he would eat Pupperoni treats.
But if I believed in Spirit, had an ounce (or 3.3 pounds) of faith, I’d know, indeed, that he is in a “better place.” Without the burden of a sick body, he can run again, breathe again, and finally, finally be free.
Thinking of Woody always brings me full-face with those last few frail days, with all the guilt of having him put to sleep, but at the same time knowing that I would never expect David to let me suffer any longer than Woody did. I just don’t know.

*
Me: When are you coming Home?
He: I am Home.
Me: But – I don’t –
He: I’m already with you.
Me: Please. I miss you.
He: Check more. Inside. Around you. I never left.
Me: How can I be sure?
He: You don’t have to be.
Just know.

*

Woody's Garden? Hell Hath Dirty Laundry

2009-10-14T15:28:00.000-07:00

“Are you ever going to do laundry again?” David asks me. I am collecting Woody’s toys to give to all the poor dogs in the animal shelter. Give his old toys new life, so to speak. Plus the sight of them sends me into hysterics every day.
“Why? I bought you a new package of underwear.”
He looks at me. I avoid his eyes. He knows. No laundry load was ever complete until Woody jumped into the hot, clean clothes, right out of the dryer. I know when that buzzer goes off and Woody doesn’t appear I’ll have a nervous breakdown and die.
“Look, why don’t you get a job? Apply to Grad School? “
“Just what I need : DEADlines.” What a whiner.
“’When you hurt, do something anyway.’” He says, quoting someone because it is particularly eloquent coming from Mr. PottyMouth. “Go for a walk. Exercise is good for you.”
Nonetheless, whoever’s words those were stuck in my head all day and by day’s end I found myself walking around the block.
*

WOODY WITH BEAR FOR KEVIN

2009-10-13T10:31:00.000-07:00

Thanks, Kevin, aka FujiMan, for being a follower! Your self description is beautiful. Here's a ...er...Woody for ya.

XXXOOODara

Healthcare for REAL Minority Pets

2009-10-12T10:21:00.000-07:00

Gates by David Bonomo: Southern Florida
*
It is nighttime. Woody has been sleeping in the living room lately on an ultra soft green blanket that looks like baby fine grass and not with me. His arthritis has gotten much worse and he walks with a slight shimmy and has a hunch in his back.
SO I was delighted when I heard a “tap-tap-tap” next to my pillow that night. “Oh, goody! You’ve come to bed.” I whispered and flicked on the light.
Hm. No Woody. I could see him, sound asleep in the next room.
I turn to punch my pillow and splayed out in the center of it – where my head just was – is a prehistoric beetle the size of a small bird.
“Nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaghghghaghghghghghghghaaaahghghghg!!!”
I am already out of bed in the split second it takes David to wake up.
“What the -?”
I am already pointing and doing a jig with my Scream face on but all that is coming out is some otherworldly screech.
“Jesus!” David yells, and lunges out of bed.
The jarring motion has awakened the Sleeping Giant and it scurries – toe tapping loud, this thing was so big!!! – off the bed and into the closet.
“Naaaaaaaaaaaaghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhsasysyaghgajh!”
In a heartbeat – mine had just resumed – David dove into the closet and shoes started flying and the laundry hamper and belts and –
“I need a paper- I need a shoe- I need a shovel! Get me a shovel!’
Yeah, right. Like I’m running into the garage in bare feet now.
I run into the kitchen – Woody gives me a shocked look as I dash past him – and grab a – ladle? – and come rushing back into the bedroom, only to hear David growling, “Die! Die! Die, you fucker!” and the slamming of a shoe – my Nikes! Oh, to hell with it, the arches suck anyway…. And then, then… it was all over.
“I need some paper towels in here!” David says as emerges from the closet, holding the sporty murder weapon, wiping sweat from his brow. “I don’t think you’ll want to wear these shoes anymore.”
“Fifteen years together and finally we can agree on something,” I say, winded, handing him an entire roll of paper towels.
“You got any rug cleaner? It’s a mess in here.”
Ew.
I peak into the murder scene, and Coroner Dave yells, “Don’t look!”
So I don’t.
*
It took me a full week to get a full night’s sleep again. Just long enough for the Palmetto Bugs on Steroids to let me get comfortable. And then, the morning came when I woke up to a sunny room shaded only by the…
…PALMETTO BUG SCURRYING ACROSS MY FACE!
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHUIUIUFHGHJFGHUHNNJGHUNMNVJHUHMNNFJURINKDMFKLKAHHH!”
David comes running, pants at his knees, holding the newspaper he reads every morning on the crapper. “What?”
I am jigging again, shrieking in tongues. “Blahjhdjhdjfkjfkjjdkjkdjgkkkahhhhhhhhhghghghghghhhh!” I run my hands around my face. “---akjdkjdkjk ACROSS MY FACE AND AKDLSJFKHGJHGJHH ON MY PILLOW AGAIN AND MY FACEMY FACE!!!!“
“Shit.” He pulls up his pants and goes into the bedroom, traps the lobster in the shower drain and then you know what he said?
“Guess I should start shutting the bedroom window at night.”
“What.” My first English word of the day.
“The window. The screen is a little ripped and I guess the palmetto bugs are getting in that way.”

WOMAN KILLS HUSBAND OVER BUG DISPUTE
“He Tortured Me With Palmetto Bugs,” She Claims

(Couldn’t you picture it, though?)

Iguana!

2009-10-12T10:15:00.000-07:00

There are Pet sitters in Hell
“IT’S OKAY, he won’t bite you,” Maryann, our neighbor says. David and I are standing in her small living room, watching her stroke the back of what looks to be a small stegosaurus, clinging to side of an enormous birdcage.
“Whoa,” David says. “Let me see.”
I take a step back. “I’ll watch.”
“Gila monster or iguana?’ Ranger Dave asks, as Maryann hands the reptile to David. His arm lurches under its weight. I take another step back.
“Iguana,” Maryann says smartly. Since she is a student at the North Carolina State Veterinary School, she knows the difference. Yay.
“So, I just need you to feed him twice a day all next week. I’ll be home Sunday, very early in the morning. You can leave him out of his cage. He likes to hang around up on the curtain rod.” She points to an iron ramp above the bay window. “Oh, and here’s his food,” she says, and holds up a bag of baby greens, the kind I pay 6.99 a pound for at Whole Foods.
“David? David. Maryann’s showing you his food.”
“Whoa! What’s this growth on his face?” David marvels and pivots around with Cyclops on his arm and all I see is a scaly golf ball protruding from the iguana’s face. It looks like a second, albeit smaller, head. I notice his ribs as he breathes, hard.
“Dude. That thing is huge!” David says, grimacing, and slowly pivots the double-headed creature back to Maryann’s arm.
“Oh, that’s nothing. Just a growth. I’m hoping it will eventually fall off,” she says brightly. I have edged back into the kitchen now.
“And do what with it? Play eighteen holes?’ David asks, wide-eyed.
“No, silly. Study it, probably,” Maryann says.
Oh, gross.
“Oh, yes, and one more thing. Dara, make sure you – “ she holds her hand to her mouth and whispers – “sorta stay away from him if it’s, like, you know, that time of the month. He gets a little… aggressive.”
“’kay!” I shriek, and smile, and hightail it to the door. “Ready David I’m gonna go?!”
David is in a genuflect/crouch, studying him. “Damn. Are you sure he’s okay?”
“He’s fine,” Maryann says. “See you in a week.”
*

HELL FREEZETH OVER
“The iguana doesn’t look so good,” David tells me, shaking his head. It is Day 2 of his Iguana Pet Sitting Service for Maryann.
“How can you tell?” I ask, making a face.
“Well, when I opened the door, he was sitting on the curtain rod, but then the wind blew the door shut and – Thmph! – he just fell to the floor.”
“Did he run away?’ I ask. The hair is standing up on the back of my neck just thinking about that thing running.
“I wish. He just stayed there.”
“Maybe you startled him. He probably can’t see around his second head.”
He shakes his head. “I don’t know,” he says. “He won’t eat or drink anything. Watch him keel over.”
*
Lo and behold: the next day, he did.
“Shit!” David says. “The iguana’s dead.”
“Shit!” I agreed. “Are you sure?”
“I’m pretty sure. He’s stiff as a board.” And then: “I think I’ll run over him with my truck, just to be sure.”
“What?! You can’t run over someone’s pet with your truck!” I yell.
Woody trots out of the room.
“Sure I can. What if he’s suffering?”
“David. Maryann may want to see him, or bury him when she comes home. Plus, you’ll flatten that [I gag a little here] growth she wants to study.” Uck.
“Trash pickup is Friday. I was just gonna throw it out. Although, recycling is tomorrow….”
“You can’t recycle it! Or throw it out! Plus, that dinosaur will never fit in the recycling bin.”
“Well, I’ll figure something out,” he mutters pensively.

Less than an hour later he returns, looking relieved.
“What did you do?” I ask.
He beamed. “Froze ‘im!”
“You- what?”
“Froze. Him.”
“You stuck Maryann’s pet in the freezer.” Oh God. I whirl around to our freezer door.
“Not our freezer. Her freezer,” he says. “It’s in a bag.”
“Did you, uh, label it?”
“Hell, no! Believe me, it’s expired!”
“David.”
“What.”
“You must go over there the minute she gets home and tell her what happened.”
“No fucking way. She gets back at like, four in the morning. I’m not getting up that early.”
“Well, leave her a note then. What if she finds it?” I have visions of an early morning snack gone terribly, irreversibly wrong.
“That’s her problem,” he says. “She never should have left me in charge of Golf Ball Boy. He obviously was sick.”
“But… the freezer?”
“So he won’t stink,” he says.
“Oh.”
Maryann arrived home bright and early – and famished.
She never spoke to us again.
*

I make an appointment with a realtor to go browsing at houses back in peaceful, safe, pleasantly boring Cary. I find one on a quiet block, not far from our old house. I tell David about it and he says, “Oh, yeah, about that. “
Uh-oh.
“Remember that huge remodel and cabinet job I bid on in Key Biscayne?”
“Florida?”
“Duh! Yes, Florida!”
“What about it?”
“They accepted my offer.”
“And?”
He takes a breath. All at once he announces, “Bin it, Baby! We’re movin’ to the Golden State!”
“We already lived there,” I say, meaning the Golden State of California. “Don’t you want to try somewhere new?” He can’t be serious.
“Okay, wait a minute,” he says, and leaves the room. I pick up Woody, who is suddenly shivering.
He reappears. “Bin it, Baby! We’re movin’ to the Sunshine State!”
He is holding up something: a check with a lot of zero’s on it. “Deposit it and weep. This is only their down payment.”
I look up close. “Wow.”
“An entire kitchen for the very rich and an entire remodel and bath for the even richer. And lots more to follow.“
Woody shivers again. My baby. My old baby. He’s cold.
“Why not?”

Health Scare

2009-10-12T10:11:00.000-07:00

He ran up the full flight of stairs, like he does every day after our afternoon walk. That’s all. Just like every day.
Woody ran into my office to rug surf while I went into the kitchen to break a single Pupperoni treat into little pieces, just like he loves, like I do every day.
The sound I heard as I stood at the counter made my knees buckle: a high-pitched wailing. The agonized plea of a rabbit dying.
My Baby.
I ran down the hall and flew to my office floor where Woody lay, still, so still.
“No,no,no,no,no,noooooo….” I hunched over him, my hands shaking up and down so violently I was afraid if I touched him it would be a slap. I scooped him up supporting a rag doll dog head and pummeled down the stairs to David’s workshop.
“DAVID! DAVID!!!”
David stood at his saw table and half smiled and then his face fell. I lowered Woody onto the cool concrete floor of the shop and resumed my shaking hand tai chi movement over his lifeless little white body. “No, no, no, nooooooo!’ was all I could say and then David crouched down, too, and said, “Wake up, Little Buddy. C’mon, Dude, wake up.” And then to me: “Give him some air, you’re crowding him,” and I think I moved back a little bit and made my crazy hands fan him with air. I tried to stroke his head and his belly with my cold hands and my voice was some nervous breakdown Lady’s, shivering and rocket-pitched and all I could say was, “NOOooooooooo….”
“He’s coming to!” David yelled. And Woody woke up.
“Oh!Oh!Oh!” was all I could say, hands still flailing, afraid to pick him up, afraid to leave him there on the hard floor and certainly never, ever, able to let him go….

“His heart stopped,” the vet tells me.
I cannot stop petting him. “It’s called a syncopatic episode -” she said, searching for my eyes, which I can’t take off Woody, a silly half smile on my face. M’boy. He’s here. We still have time –
“- and there will be more of them. I’m putting him on heart medication, a third of a pill. He has to take this every day for the rest of his life.”
I am beaming, can’t stop petting him. He’s here. He’s alive. I – can’t.
“Dara, you must prepare yourself. This will happen again.” She looked at me and searched for my eyes some more, since I’ll admit, I am avoiding hers.
Finally I look at her, my eyes burning. “Thank you, “ I choked. “Thank you.”
*

But Cats and Dogs Learn to Get Along in North Carolina

2009-10-06T09:57:00.000-07:00

There are no kittens in Hell.

3:45 P.M. on a Wednesday

Ding-dong.
I scoop up Woody and when I open the front door, two little boys, I’d guess around 8 or 9 years old, are looking up at me.
“Hey, I’m Carter. This is Matt. We’re your neighbors.”
“Well, hello there. Nice to meet you, “ I say. Woody squirms in my arms.
“Can we pet your dog?”
“Sure.” I put Woody down and they pet him gently.
“He’s cool,” says Matt.
“I think so, thanks,” I say.
“We have a dog. A Boston terrier,” Carter says.
“She’s black and white,” says Matt, rubbing Woody’s back. “She looks like a cow.”
“She doesn’t look like a cow,” scoffs Carter.
“Well, I’m sure you love her very much,” I say.
“Yeah, she’s cool,” says Carter.
“My Mom won’t let me have a dog,” says Matt, stroking Woody’s back with little feather fingers. “Maybe she’d let me have half a dog, like Woody.”
“He’s small, but I guarantee you, he’s a whole dog,” I say. “But, hey, you never know, your Mom may change her mind someday.”
“Doubt it,” says Matt.
“Well, you can come play with Woody whenever you want to,” I say.
“‘Kay!” they say.

*
Ding-Dong.
The next day: 3: 40 p.m. sharp.
I scoop up Woody and swing open the door.
“We found a cat,” says Carter.
“Yeah, and she has kittens,” says Matt.
“They look like little tigers and all they do is squeak,” adds Carter.
“Aw. Does she belong to one of your friends?” I ask, lowering Woody to the floor for his petting. He leans back with his butt up in the air. Attack mode.
“Oh, you want to play?” asks Matt, and starts shaking his sleeve. Woody growls softly and does a wheelie. He loves this.
“No, Silly. She lives up in the cemetery.”
“Really,” I say.
“Yeah, and she’s really nice,” adds Matt, “but we think she’s sick.”
“Yeah, she’s like, hungry all the time,” says Carter. “She likes potato chips,” he says proudly.
“And chocolate milk,” adds Matt, prouder.
“Oo. I don’t know if you should give her chocolate milk. “Hold on.” I ran into the kitchen and filled one of Woody’s little plastic bowls with milk.
“Why don’t you see if she likes this?”
“Okay!” says Matt, psyched.
“I can carry it!” Carter says.
“No, let me!” cries Matt.
“You both can carry it,” I say gently.
They each held onto opposite sides of the bowl and carried it awkwardly down the front walk.
“But be careful crossing the street,” I call after them.
Woody and I watched them carry the bowl together, all the way up to the old cemetery, hidden on top of the hill where our street ends.
The next day it poured, and the day after that. Woody and I looked out the window for them at 3:45, then again at 4:00. “Maybe tomorrow,” I said, and he cocked his head to one side the way dogs do, as if to say, “Why?”
*

3:20 p.m.
The following day.
Ding-dong-Bang-Bang-Bang.
I scoop up Woody, who is kicking with glee, and open the door. Nobody.
“Over here!” I hear a loud whisper. Carter.
The boys stood on the driveway and pointed to a petite, malnourished cat that was obviously nursing, who paced around them. “Mew,” she said, and looked at me with the most beautiful aqua green eyes I have ever seen, even on a cat.
“Where are her kittens?” I ask and deposit Woody safely back inside – for now, at least.
“They’re gone,” says Carter. I slowly walked over to the cat. She timidly approached me but quickly ran back to the boys.
“We think they washed away in the rain,” says Matt. As if agreeing, the little cat mewed again and approached my outstretched hand. “She’s so skinny,” I say and then, “Hold on.”
I ran inside and came back out with a paper plate topped with tuna.
She inhaled it.
“Mom says I can’t have the cat,” Carter says, stroking her back. She kept eating, and glancing up at me, petrified, in between mouthfuls. “My Mom’s allergicked,” says Matt.
*
Ding-dong.
3:30 pm, next day.
I open the door. It’s the cat.
“Just in time,” I say, even though I hear the boys laughing in the bushes. “I was just about to open a can of tuna. Won’t you join us?”
*
“Hell smells like mouse dung.”
Opened the silverware drawer this morning to make some breakfast and was very unpleasantly surprised by the sight of M-O-U-S-E droppings.
At first I didn’t know what they were – had no idea, in fact, or maybe it was just some deep-seated denial kicking in. I even – oh God!- picked one up and examined it, rationalizing: ‘Must be charred remnants of last night’s barbeque’ – and thought of ways to blame David for the mess. (I am a mouse turd).
But then I saw more. And more and more and more of them as I rummaged through the utensils we eat off of, for crying out loud, laying in some rodent’s toilet.
I’m not sure what hit me the hardest: the actual realization that these were, indeed, mouse turds (oh God it better not be something bigger and furrier I am going to a hotel right now with the dog oh God) or the fact that I picked one of them up with my bare hands and almost – gulp – tasted it, in fact.
Like lightning, I slapped on the ol’ Rubbermaid’s – so quickly, in fact, that my sweaty palms made it nearly impossible to pull them all the way on. Hastily I dumped some baking soda down my wrists and yanked them on. Which did wonders for the little nicks on my knuckles from gardening this past weekend, since baking soda is basically salt. Yay.
The will to survive was my morphine, though, and I went to work: I threw handfuls of silverware in the dishwasher along with the turd-tainted silverware holder. Gingerly I opened the cabinet door to retrieve the dishwasher soap, and flooded with relief when I saw not a kernel o’ crap in sight. Figures. Even the mice are smarter than humans and pets and won’t go near all those toxic cleaners we keep under there.
With Trojan hands, I carried the veggie peel bag out to the compost house Martha showed me how to make. I eyed that with suspicion – even Martha told us, if not properly filled, “It could attract vermin.” I threw the peels on top and shivered.
“Mew.”
“Why, hello, Kitty,” I cooed, and then, “C’mon, Kitty, do your thing. There’s a mouse – oh God I hope it’s not a rat – and you can have it for lunch!”
Ew.
“C’mon, I know you can do it. Go for it!”
“Mew,” she said sweetly, and rubbed against my leg. Not the snarl for blood I was hoping for.
The Jones’ cat is too fat to catch anything besides fleas, so that’s out.
I sprinkled baking soda on the carpets and vacuumed everything in sight, as Woody looked on with a curious cock to his little white head. “No mouse droppings for you!” I admonished gently, though I know even the dog wouldn’t try to eat mouse turds like his mama almost did.
Satisfied that at least it wouldn’t smell like a mouse was here, I punched in David’s cell phone number, still with rubber hands and not very easy to do.
“Yeah!” That’s contractor speak for, “Hello?” in case you were wondering.
“It’s me. We have a [shiver] mouse.”
To someone else David says, “I don’t know, put it down over there, Ben. I’ll be right there. What? Well, what do you want me to do? I’m in Raleigh, working.”
“There are turds on the silverware. I’m washing everything in sight as we speak. The dog is frightened. I cannot cope with a mouse in this house. What should I doooooo?”
“Wait. A mouse, huh?”
“Yes? Hello? M-o-u-s-e,” I sang hysterically.
“Hmph. Must be getting in through the dishwasher.”
Respiration: ceasefire.
“What.” I have visions of rodent flotsam caught in the riptide of the dishwasher, where every dish, pot, and piece of silverware we own is at the moment. “I’m calling an exterminator,” I choke.
Wait a minute. It’s all coming back to me now: Night before last, sitting and drawing in front of the TV. It was a blur, out of the corner of my eye. Disappeared under the bookcase. Woody barked. David bitched, because he was trying to sleep. That was it. The gray blur. Oh God, it’s been here for two days – or more – in my house at night while I sleep, probably frolicking with venomous filthy paws with Woody while I am fast asleep. Noooooooooo.
“I’m not paying their fees for putting a trap down. I can do that myself.”
I am reaching into the dishwasher for a sparkling clean dish and pull it and it is caked with mouse fur….
“Yeah. ‘kay,” I say, and hang up. With shaky rubber fingers, I thumb through the phone book and….
*
“You don’t understand. I have a phobia of bugs and rodents. It goes way back…”
Bill the Bug Guy chuckles a little and nods, “Yeah. Everybody does.” I heard the part he didn’t say:” ‘specially the lil’women of the household,” but I didn’t care. He was right.
“No,” I said, searching for his eyes, “you don’t understand. The fur – agh, I mean hair – on the back of my neck stands up so high it looks like I’m wearing a ponytail. I cannot function when I know – even suspect – that there are bugs and/or mice around the house. If there are bugs outside I stay in. If there are bugs inside, I leave. Vanish. Kaput.”
“Well, I’m sure your husband will be happy with our service, then,” he says. I didn’t want to tell him we aren’t married yet – haven’t had the time what with all this moving going on, and plus, that little fact doesn’t go over well here in the Bible belt. And I needed Bill. Today. Now.
“By the way, you sure it was mouse?”
“It was either that or the fastest moving lint ball I’ve ever seen!” I shrieked.
He thought this was hilarious. I did not.
“It was small, gray?” he asked, clipboard poised, feet apart, probably to balance the enormous vermin-tool belt he wore.
I nodded quickly. “Whiskers, beady little eyes. Tail,” I added with a yelp.
“Sounds like you got yourself a field mouse. Some people call it a ‘house mouse.’”
“Not this ‘house mouse’,” I said.
He thought this just as funny. I was starting to dislike Bill the Bug Man.
I led him into the kitchen and pointed accusingly at the lower drawer of the stove. “I found…droppings.”
“Small, hard-?”
“- looks like barbeque? Yessss.” Don’t laugh, just kill.
He laughed anyway and went to work.
He pulled out my heartshaped muffin tin and rattled it: perfect cup holders for Shitting Mickey dung.
I threw it out.
He held up my little corncob pan and shook that. I dragged the garbage can over to him and said, “Please.”
“You’re not going to throw these out, are you?”
“There is no way on God’s green earth I will ever eat anything that comes out of those pans again.”
“Suit yourself,” he said.
“So what’s the plan? What are you going to do?”
He pulled a triangular shaped black box out of his wonder belt and said, “Bait ‘er.”
I didn’t like that he called Shitting Mickey a “her.” Like sinking ships and hurricanes and aircraft that drop bombs.
“Her?” I gulp.
“Sure. It’s probably a female. She’s been searching for food for her babies.”
Gag-choke-gulp. “There’s more than one?”
“Noah had two of everything on the ark!” he said, cheerfully.
After an entire diatribe on the toxicity of mouse crap, Bill the Bug Guy left, a couple of strategically placed black boxes in his wake. He even braved The Black Hole – the back half of the house, and told me, “You gotta do something with that. That’s a rodent magnet in itself.”
Gee, thanks, Bill.

*
Later that night:
“C’mere, Kitty Kitty Kitty…. I have some TUNA for you! Here, Kittykittykittykittyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!”
David is in the kitchen vacuuming the drawers of any poop I might have missed before the dry heaves made me stop. I am on the front porch with a soggy paper plate of premium tuna fish, searching for the cat, who is quickly becoming ours, while intermittently shouting hyperventilating instructions at David.
“Don’t forget the skinny cabinet next to the-!”

Rrrring.
“Get the phone!” he yells from under the sink.
“Hello!” I shout into the receiver.
My sister.
“Oh, hi, Jen. Look-we-have-a-mouse-gotta-go.”
“Oh –Jesus-I’ll-let-you-go-call-me-later-or-whenever-it’s-gone!”
Click.
This fact affects her as if by some telepathic fear of Mouse that bonds our psyches. I know she will be checking her own cupboards with increasing alarm all evening.
I ran back into the kitchen just as David is pulling the now empty stove drawer off its track and out completely, revealing an absolute smattering of feces beneath it.
“Jesus!” he exclaimed. I made the sign of the cross or flailed my arms or something and, I guess, started speaking in tongues because he turned to me and scowled, “Why don’t you go watch TV or something?”
Rrring.
“Hello?” A choked whisper from YoursTruly.
“Hi, Honey. What’s wrong?” Mommy.
“Mom…we…-”
“What, honey? What is it?”
“-hhhave a mmmou-“
“Oh, Mother of God! Okay, okay, stay calm you’ll be fine is David there I’ll call you this weekend don’t worry call an exterminator and go to a hotel-“
Oddly, her hysteria calms me.
“Mom. David is here. The exterminator set traps. It’s under control,” I say, that last part shaking a bit.
I hear my mother cup the receiver and say to my grandmother, “No, Ma, she’s fine. Really. Everything’s fine. It’s a M-O-U-” I hear my grandmother shouting some very fast Italian words. “No, David’s with her. She’ll be fine.” And then back to me, “Okay, so David’s there?”
“Yes, Ma, he’s –“
David yells from what sounds like the inside of the stove, “Where the hell are the paper towels?”
“Oh, Ma, I gotta go, he’s cleaning it up –“
“Cleaning what up?” my mother shrieks, and then my grandmother starts yelling a torrent of Italian prayers and …
“Do you want me to clean this up or what?” David is yelling from the kitchen. Woody barks at him.
“’kay, Mom, gotta go, really,”
Sound of skull on stove.
David: “SHIT!”
“Mom, I’ll call you this weekend.”
“Okay, okay, oh. Your grandmother’s all upset. Ma, calm down. We’ll say a prayer to St. Jude, don’t worry, you’ll be fine-“
David: “C’monnnnnn!’
Me: “Okay, love you, gotta go, bye.” Click.
St. Jude, by the way, is the patron saint of hopeless cases.
*
I call it RAD: Rodent Affective Disorder.
“Rat”, “mouse” and “snake” were dirty words in my house and those of my relatives. If any word of “that kind” was essential to the telling of any story, it was never, ever to be spoken, but spelled out in soundless, exaggerated letters.
It’s hereditary. It can blossom into the more severe form: ARAD (Amphibian and Rodent Affective Disorder) or the more severe AARAD (Aviary, Amphibian and Rodent Disorder). I an aunt with that one. All I can remember of a family trip to the Reptile House in Sea World was my aunt with large black sunglasses on being led around by the elbow by my uncle, like a blind person and, all that moaning … it was u-g-l-y. And my mother: the mere sound of my parakeet’s flapping wings could send her into a maniacal departure right out the front door.
Reminds me of the original trauma, years and years ago….

Queens, NY
1969
“Mommy, I thought Mickey Mouse was black,” my little sister says.
“He is, honey,” Mom says, as she tucks the pink satin edge of my favorite blanket under my chin in the bed next to my sister’s.
“No, he’s not,” says my sister, from under her favorite blanket.
“Yes he is, Honey.” Mom reassures her tenderly.
“Well, then, why is that mouse gray?” Jen sits up in bed and points a dimpled little finger to a spot about a yard away from where Mom is standing.
There could have – should have – been a springboard under Mom’s feet. But of course there wasn’t. Like tiny mothers who lift automobiles off their children; like the resurrection itself, Mom was suddenly possessed of some otherworldly power that catapulted her up to my bed … WITHOUT BENDING HER KNEES.
Years later when we were teenagers, Jen and I watched The Bionic Woman do the same thing. Jen pointed at the screen and said, “Look. Mom with the mouse.”

“Ooooo! Look! He’s soooo cute!” Jen squealed.
Mom was doing the Riverdance around the foot of my bed.
“Hey, don’t step on me, Ma!” I whined.
“Neil! Neeeeeeeeilllllllllll!” Mom moans. I never heard her sound like that.
“I’m getting car sick,” I say, holding my mouth.
I hear Dad’s Marine Corps footsteps coming down the hallway. “What.” He ordered.
My mother, still weakly marching at the foot of my bed, points to the old iron radiator near my bed with one hand, touching her cheek with the other.
My father, after saying a very fatherly, “Shit,” grabs a go-go boot from the floor and launches into an arm flying staccato seizure of sorts, as did my mother, all to no avail.
“Don’t hurt him, Daddy!” Jen cries. “Let him live in the boot with Mother Huvvard!”
“You - mean – ‘Mother - Hubbard’, “ I say, holding on.
“Mother Huvvard needs a pet mouse to eat the scraps!”
“And she doesn’t live in a boot,” I say, my voice bouncing.
“Why can’t she?’ Jen cries.
“Because … everybody knows mice aren’t allowed to live in boots.”
Jen grabs her sand pail and hands it to my dad. “Here, Daddy. Maybe Mickey would like to live in here.”
My older brother George appears at the doorway, holding a View master. “What’s the problem?” he asks. Even at seven he was cool.
“Your mother – shit! – saw a f—mouse!” Dad growls.
“I want a ride, too!” Jen cries and hops onto my bouncing bed with my mother and me.
George shakes his head and saunters over to the radiator. “See? This wouldn’t be a problem if you had just let me get the snake I wanted.”
My mother moans a word I never heard her say before.
“Or the kitten I wanted!” I say.
“Like Tom and Jerry!” says Jen.
George puts his View master down, takes the pail and traps the mouse.
“Don’t hurt him!” screams Jen. My mother is in a slow, exhausted march. “I don’t feel good,” I say. My father throws his hands up and leaves. “I’ll bring him outside,” George sighs.
“Where are you going with Mickey?” Jen says, running after him.
“Back to Hollywood where he belongs.” George says and sets Mickey free.
***

We named our new cat Rebecca, who, like Woody, was a character on the old sitcom, Cheers. If you’ve ever been a fan of the show, you know Rebecca was more easygoing than Diane - dark-haired, a bit obnoxious, certainly misunderstood – and wickedly funny.
That’s our girl.

Dogs Love Michigan. Cats? Not So Much....

2009-10-06T09:52:00.000-07:00

“I met the neighbors,” David said, as I helped him step out of frozen jeans. He has been working for a builder of log homes, near Lake Interlochen.
“Jeez, I wonder if these jeans will stand up by themselves,” he said, and tried. They actually “stood” for a split second before collapsing, nearly crushing Woody, who scampered over to watch. He took a lick of the crumbled jeans, and backed warily away.
“And?” I asked, running my fingers under hot water. “I think I got freezer burn from your fly.”
“He’s Dick –”
“That’s not very nice.”
“That’s his name.”
“Oh.”
“When he goes deer hunting, he uses a bow and arrow.”
“Lovely,” I said. “You should wipe the icicles out of your nose before they defrost.”
I handed him a tissue.
“Hey, at least it’s a fair fight,” he said, wiping snow flaked eyebrows and blowing his nose.
“Sure, if the deer has a bow and arrow.”
“He’s from Massachusetts.”
“Really? Hallelujah. A Nor-easter. How bad could he be? He’s seen Boston!”
David walked away.
I followed him into the bathroom.
“Where is she from?”
“I don’t know. Texas, I think.”
Woody is lapping up the puddle that is forming on the rug beneath David’s pants. He backed away, cocked his head to the side, and wagged his tail.
“What’s the matter, Boy? Got a mouthful of rug?” David asked. “That’s m’boy! “
“You’re gross,” I said.
“”Hey, he’s fixed. At least he can get some oral gratification.”
“I believe the rug is happier than the dog right now,” I said.
“Anyway, his wife told me to tell you to stop by and have a cup of coffee with her some afternoon.”
“What’s her name?” I asked, scooping Woody up. He coughed.
“Her name is Annie.”
*

A week later, I knocked on Annie’s door, holding Woody.
“Hi I’m Dara your neighbor this is Woody my dog. I thought I’d introduce you.” I speed-said. Hey, it took me a week to get up the nerve to knock on a stranger’s door, for crying out loud – I was a bit nerrrvous.
Annie was middle aged, with dark, wavy hair and glasses. She wore a big, burgundy sweater that looked hand-knit, a fleece jacket, and very fuzzy slippers.
Woody squirmed in my arms. She laughed. Not just any laugh: a throaty “Ho-ho-ho-heh-heh-heh.”
“Hi, I’m Annie,” she said, and gave Woody a tender caress of the head, which he miraculously let her do without biting her. He hates his head touched. Napoleon thing.
“I see you and David chasing him around our yards – ho-ho-heh-heh – every morning and I get a chuckle with my coffee. David is the best, with those long arms a-flyin’ and just when he gets close, that little doggy dodges away, heh-heh-ho-ho-ho, and the curses are all over the place. Do you like coffee? Come in, come in.”
She waved us in. “Bring the little guy, too, of course!”
I stepped inside as she led me to her kitchen. “It’s so cold in this house you’ll need some coffee. These high ceilings – our first gas bill was over three hundred dollars and so we try to heat with wood.”
Doesn’t anyone use modern heat around here??? I am thinking, but of course I say, “We do, too.”
She poured strong black coffee into two big heavy mugs. An obese cat eyed Woody warily and dove under the couch. Woody’s ears shot up and he wriggled like a fish to get out of my arms.
“Oo, hoo-hoo, let him down and see what he’ll do. That’s Casey. Maybe he can get that fat cat to go outside.”
“Is the black and white cat yours, too? I see him prowling around your pond,” I said.
“Pouncing on frogs. Yes. That’s Felix.”
“Felix the Cat,” I said.
“Ah, yes. That would be he.”

***
***
I went back the next day, sans Woody.
“Where’s the little guy?” Annie asked, ushering me in the front door.
“Oh, well, I thought Casey – and you – might like a break,” I said. Woody cried when I left him. I felt awful, promising him I’d be back to play in half an hour.
“Well, my goodness, go get him! A little bit of stress will do that fat cat some good. Maybe she’ll burn a calorie or two before dinner.”
And so I did.

We talked about everything, always over strong black coffee, which we both loved. We talked about her past and mine. She told me about her sister in Florida and how much Annie loved it there, but “Dick would rather die than live in that heat.”
And we talked about my family in New York and how I wanted to move back there but “David would rather die than live in that kind of heat: high taxes, traffic, the prospect of me getting a job in Manhattan and the possibility of me, making more money than him, blah-blah-blah.”
After the Cinco de Mayo blizzard melted, when the weather started to warm up and the muck became a dirt road again, Annie would walk/chase Woody around our yards with me, through pine trees, under big blue spruces:
“ He’s here! He’s on my end!” she’d yell from the other side of the skirt of a mammoth evergreen. I’d dive for him, with sunglasses on so as not to blind myself from the prickly evergreen branches, and she’d catch him from the other end – most of the time.
His favorite spot to poop was just inside the tall grasses of the mushy, marshy riverbank. Then one day, the inevitable happened.
“Oo-hoo-hooo!” howled Annie, just as my head whipped around, Alien-like, from the base of the tree Woody was just under, just in time to see a mini geyser- like spurt of water and hear the perfect “ker-plunk’ that his little body made when he slipped into the moving current. And when I ran and scooped him out, sinking and soaking and stunned in the sludgy riverbank, his little pencil legs rowing in overdrive, all I heard was, “Oh-ho-ho. Hoooo-hooo-hOOOoooo!”
Something like this happened every day. As soon as m’boy would relieve himself of the mighty double ounce Torpedo, he’d rear up on his hind legs and take off like a Tasmanian devil dog. Dick and Annie had a little arched bridge in their yard that Woody loved to race over. In Michigan, as you now know, it is icy even in spring. So it was a great source of amusement to Annie when I’d be chasing Woody down and he’d invariably b-line it to the iced-over bridge and scramble over it to a wayward patch of grass peeking out of the snow on the other side, slip-sliding and gathering his feet under himself and, with the chorus of Annie hee-heeing and hoo-hooing in the background I, inevitably, would make a spastic slide/scramble of my own over the shiny little bridge over to m’boy who, by then, was winded and wagging and waiting for me.

***

Healthcare Bill for Woody

2009-09-23T09:42:00.000-07:00

WOODY’S
A V E R A G E D A Y

BETWEEN 6 A.M & 8 A.M. : First Pee of the Day
Please put Fresh Water in his Water Dish
8 A.M. ‘til 4 P.M.: * NAP TIME *
{ Woody usually sleeps in the closet or near the heater in the bedroom…. Feel free to check on him throughout the day and flip him like a pancake in case he’s too close to the heater}.

BETWEEN 4 P.M. & 5 P.M.: FIRST (& usually the only) POO OF THE DAY

For this MAJOR part of Woody’s Day he’s usually ready as soon as you call him and show him his leash. He’s pretty stiff and rickety these days (he IS nearly 70 in Dog Years!) so you may have to click his collar on him while he is still in the closet (not as hard as you may think). I usually carry him down the street and let him poo near the store, but he will love to go anywhere you take him. He may be nervous, so if he skips a day, don’t sweat it. (He’ll save it all up for me – YAY).
When he comes in, he’s ready for FOOD!

BETWEEN 5 P.M. & 6 P.M. : D I N N E R T I M E !!!
One baggie of broken up Pupperoni treats + One plate of the Food I have stacked in the ‘fridge. You can warm it in the microwave for 20 seconds. Thanks!

BETWEEN 7 P.M. & 8 P.M. & LAST THING AT NIGHT: A quick pee out front.

PLEASE BE CAREFUL OF THE PIT BULL ACROSS THE STREET AND THE BOXER BEHIND US. BOTH LOOK VERY HUNGRY WHEN WOODY IS AROUND! THANK YOU SO MUCH! xxoo

Change you Can't Believe In

2009-09-22T08:45:00.000-07:00

Traverse City, Michigan
“Country Music, 24/7”
Cinco de Mayo Swan Dive*
It is the Fifth of May in northern Michigan – sunny, Margaritas on the beach Cinco de Mayo in San Diego terms – and I am driving to work in a blizzard. Even with the heat blasting in the Escort, I am freezing, despite the fact that I am wearing my snow-bunny-pink and black ski jacket I bought back in California for frolicking on the sunny slopes of Steamboat Springs, Colorado.
That was two moves ago.
Now I am here, white knuckling it as the car slides and slopes and thrashes about on the muddy muck that was once the dirt road we live on. The holes in the road are like potholes the car skids into and I am doing everything they warned you NEVER to do in Catholic school: dreaming of adultery with a man far, far away from here (any man); murdering my spouse; and curse-praying I don’t get stuck in one of these friggin’ mud holes as each of my neighbors have before me.
In this land of camouflage coats and rusty pick-up trucks I look like a freak with this pink coat on, driving a gold Escort. But all I want to do is make it to work alive. I have seen the neighbors in knee-deep muck trudging home for a towline and another family member who, of course, also has a pickup truck to pull their mud-splattered vehicle out of the quicksand our home has become.
How in Hell did I get here???

***

“Have I got the house for you!”
He said, and arced the car down a bumpy dirt road alongside a river.
David’s big brother Kevin – and I mean BIG and TALL - is a realtor in Traverse City, so when we finally got there I spent three nauseating hours in the backseat of his bouncy old Buick, feeding Woody luncheon meat out of the wrapper, while Kevin took us to all the properties he wanted to unload.
The first thing I saw was the homemade “STOP” sign in front of a rusty mobile home. “That’s not it, is it?” I asked nervously.
“Nah!” said Kevin. He yanked the car between two rows of Christmas trees and said, “This is it.”
The dog burped.
The driveway was long and covered with dirt. Oh, it was dirt.
I am from Long Island. I had never seen a dirt driveway before.
“Oh,” I said, when I saw the water-stained wooden shoebox at the end of the driveway.
“Oo, look. Lil’ Hell house on the Prairie,” I say.
“It has a workshop!” Kevin beamed. He pointed to the Little Tiny Hell house on the Prairie, at the end of the dirt, I mean driveway.
“That’s a shed,” I said. I know this because the neighbors next door had one when I was growing up. Rabid raccoons raised their devil babies in there.
David gave me a dirty look and said to Kevin, “How much?”
“For you, fifty grand,” Kevin said.
“We’ll take it,” David said.
Woody began to whimper.
“But – aren’t we going to see the inside?” I asked.
“C’mon,” Kevin said, jangling keys.

**
A box.
An unheated box with a woodstove: that’s what we walked into.
I had never seen a real woodstove before, unless you count Old Bethpage Village, a recreated colonial village on Long Island. We went there for field trips in grammar school, and I thought it was “cool” then. At seven I also thought my Dad was the tallest man in the world, and making brownies from a mix was “hard.”
“It’s…pretty,” I said.
“It’s our heat.” David said.
“But… isn’t there a thermostat?” I asked.
“Why, when there’s no heater?” he asked back.
WHAT.
“But-“
“Deal!” David said, and slapped Big Bro on the broad shoulder.
“ I’ll draw up the papers tonight,” Kevin said, and slapped him back. “You won’t regret it,” he said.
Really.
Can I hold you to it? Like, at gunpoint?

Health Care for Rainbows

2009-09-21T09:27:00.000-07:00

*
Woody is hiding from me, and I can’t find him anywhere. I’ve looked in closets, even in shoeboxes and pocketbooks on shelves he couldn’t possibly reach, let alone curl up into.
Someone – Jen? David? A stranger? – leads me outside into the far corner of the backyard and points to a small mound of dirt.
“He died,” this person says.
I turn around and go back inside, calling him, telling him to stop playing now because really, really, this game has gone on long enough.
And then I wake up.
*
What am I doing? I don’t belong here. I don’t deserve to be here.
I am standing in the little chapel at Emmanuel Catholic Church here in Delray Beach, staring, dumb with sadness, at the patient eyes of a statue of Jesus with outstretched arms.
I am a twice a year Catholic, and that’s in a good year. I was raised Catholic, my parents paid a pretty penny to send me to Catholic school, and here I am, standing in a Church I don’t know my way around, doubting that there’s a Heaven. Thanks, Mom. Thanks, Dad. You should’ve saved your money.
I lower myself feebly to the kneeler in front of the Jesus statue. I feel like I’m ninety.
I should say a prayer – I’m in Church, after all. But I’m too tired. And mad.
I glare at Jesus and think, “I won’t lie to you. I… guess I can’t, anyway. You’re Jesus. You’ll know: I’m mad at you.
All the no-goodniks in the Bible were humans, not dogs. I don’t know one lying, doubting, cheating, stealing, adulterous dog. Do you, Jesus?”

*
At the end he was so bony that, in the moonlight, a deep indentation near his shoulder blade looked like a bloody ravine in his back. By then the rumble-churn of his congested heart was nearly silent. Was he peaceful or just so weak that he seemed not to care if there was any air at the end of the occasional labored breath?
I glance over at the crucifix over the altar. Streams of blood are painted from the nail holes in Jesus’ hands. All this suffering. Why?

Helpless. That’s all I am.
I tried to blow air gently up his nose but he flinched so I stopped. I stroked his belly gently and whispered, “This place you are going to? Oh, you’ll be able to breathe better than you have in years. And you can run, and eat Pupperonis whole, if you want, no choking. Don’t be afraid….”
Most of the men in my life have not been good communicators. Maybe a woman will answer my question.
I turn to the Blessed Mother, the face of the Pieta, the famous sculpture of Mary holding a dead Jesus, just off the cross. It’s just a dog. But her face is how I feel.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry…” It was all I could say to him, over and over again, my sunglasses fogged over from tears and snot. Woody hated the vet. And now I’ve brought him here to die.

I read the inscription, and it went something like this:
‘Her face shows all the anguish, anxiety, and resignation she felt when she was handed the limp body of her only son.’
The vet wrapped up Woody’s little body in his favorite green blanket – wait! Don’t cover his face he can’t breathe! – and handed him to me. “I’m sorry,” he said.
‘But her faith in God sustained her.’
I whispered to him all night long. This was no time to get into my doubts about Heaven and so I told him, “ I’ll find you there, too, someday. There are a bunch of angels there waiting for you: Great Grandma from San Diego, remember her? And Josie, your buddy from Michigan? She’s wagging as she did at the sliding glass door for you every morning, waiting for you. Go ahead, Sweetie. Go to Josie….”
‘She knew God had bigger and better plans for him, that His life was not over because his eternal life had only just begun.’
I feel like Mary Magdalene gone wrong. Gee, God, I’d have a little more Faith – capital F - if only I could get this ICE PICK out of my chest ….
“Show me proof. Show me Heaven and M’boy happy there and then, then I’ll have Faith that indeed, he is in ‘a better place.’ ”
Even now I am hit with the irony of what I am saying. Because the more time you spend wondering about Heaven’s existence, the less likely you are to find it.

Perhaps it takes a week or two for a soul to get settled. Surely by then I’ll be more settled with the idea, that Woody held onto his sick body at the expense of his own comfort, loyal to the end. ‘Can’t leave’em like this,’ he may have thought but finally we just had to let him go. We had to help him go.
M’boy.
****

Rebecca was a little malnourished cat that adopted us back when we lived in North Carolina. She knows all about grief: when the two little boys – Mitch and Clint - in our neighborhood found her, she had a litter of kittens. They didn’t make it. We adopted her because neither of the boys’ parents wanted a cat and, in the beginning, neither did Woody. He ran her out of the house so she lived quite happily and healthily on our shady porch and in our gardens, tackling and pawing unwelcome pests that unwittingly came too close to our home.
For nearly three weeks Rebecca doesn’t make a sound. Every day she prowls the house, looking for Woody. I can’t help myself – sometimes I find myself doing the same thing.
She stops and searches my eyes in complete silence. I have no answers, and she seems to know that. She settles down next to my feet to lick a paw, pat my toes, or maybe, just to be with me. And you know what? It helps.

*
The next day I am sitting at the teak dining table on the lanai, half-writing and half-wondering where the hell you really go after you die. Death would be so much easier for the Living if the Living One had an ounce of faith. After all those years in Catholic school I, apparently, am quite the Doubting Thomas.
I look up at the sky and mutter, “Where did you go?” to Woody.
When I look back down at the table I find a tiny piece of Woody’s fine white hair, stuck and waving, in the wood.
*

Who Is Lying Now?

2009-09-17T08:11:00.000-07:00

The Long Search
1985
Marist College
Poughkeepsie, NY

“Describe Hell.”
My five college roommates and I are lounging around one evening in our tiny apartment living room, in various stages of undress – Flash dance socks inside big, mangy bunny slippers, sweatpants with camisoles, and other weird collegiate loungewear. Our good friend, John, is asking us this question for a Philosophy assignment.
One by one my roomies answered:
“Burning hot.” Kelly.
“Everyone hates you in Hell!” Lea.
“You hate them!” Tammy.
“It is u-g-l-y.” Lynn.
“Country music blasting 24/7!” Courtney.
“Dara, how ‘bout you?” John asked.
“Hell…is a beautiful place,” I decided.
“Yeah?” he asked, pen poised. I saw Tammy roll her eyes and heard Kelly sigh, and Lea disappeared into the bathroom. I went on:
“Hell fools you. It has gorgeous scenery and people and there are buffets everywhere. But…Hell is a cruel place. You are truly damned if you do, or don’t. People are smiling and pleasant but they hate you; the flowers stink; the food gives you the runs.”
“Yeah!” yelled Lynn from the bathroom.
“And?” John asked, scribbling.
“Cramps are even worse in Hell,” said Lea thoughtfully.
“And men are even moodier,” added Kelly.
“And nothing you do in Hell pays or means a thing. It is, like, totally postal,” said Courtney.
“Even worse,” I added, “no matter how many degrees you have you will always be referred to as a ‘housewife.’
“No!”
“And… everyone calls you Ma’am in Hell!” Lynn, really on a roll now.
“Not only is Hell hot, but it is humid and sticky and filled with bugs you can’t see. But they bite – hard.” I went on:
“No matter how hard you try to fit in, in Hell, you don’t. Your fellow Hellions hate you. It is no use. Even worse, in Hell you get everything you ever wished for but realize it sucks.”
“Oo, this is good. Go on,” John ordered.
“In fact you realize in Hell that everything you ever believed to be true is wrong. Lying is King in Hell and Love is taken away.”
“She went to one of those Catholic schools,” Lea whispered to Tammy, who nodded knowingly.
“Hell is NOISY. You are driven to distraction, no matter what you try to do. And, while it may look Rockwellian in Hell, everything is loaded with mouse dung.”
“Ew!” Collective disgust from the gallery.
“Anything else?” John asked.
“Hellions hate puppies.”
“Oh!” Group gasp.
There was a bit of a pregnant pause here. Finally, with wobbly pencil and saucer-like eyes, John asked,” What’s your vision of Heaven, then?”
“Heaven?” I asked.
Everyone nodded.
“Ask me if I get there.”

To All Dog Lovers on Facebook...

2009-09-17T07:49:00.000-07:00

Hey, all!
Check out my blog if you've ever loved a pet or a person a LOT.
Let me know what you think!
In a couple of months I have another book coming out for the whole family entitled, "WOODY'S GARDEN". I wrote and illustrated it to help pet lovers of all ages deal with the confusion and grief of losing a pet by planting a special garden. Kids and adults may like the pictures, too!
Will be available on www.xlibris.com and it is considered a Children's Book. Will keep you posted....

Even Kathy Griffin Can't Get Me to Laugh Now

2009-09-17T07:44:00.000-07:00

*

This is sick, I am thinking.
I am holding my dead dog in his favorite blanket while my husband dickers with the vet receptionist over the $125 charge. This, after spending more than $500 yesterday on medicines that did not “make him more comfortable so he can die at home,” as the vet promised; diuretics that left him wired, awake, and aware of the fact that he was dying.
****

“Please. Please…”
David is stabbing the ground brutally with the business end of a shovel.
We wrapped him up in his green blanket with Vinnie the Pooh, his favorite teddy bear toy he tore one ear off of, years ago when we lived in Michigan. Together we gently laid him in a little box with palm trees and sail boats on it, inside another box, black leather like all the suitcases he was so used to seeing over the years. Now we are burying him in the back corner of the yard, near the plum tree he loved to sniff.
My eyes are nearly swollen shut. I don’t want to part with this box. No way.
David is crying. Hard.
A big wind kicked up and he held out his hand.
I handed him the box.
*

Not Ready for the Rainbow Bridge

2009-09-16T10:36:00.000-07:00

San Diego, 14 years ago

FIRST NIGHT
“He’s a dog. Therefore he will sleep in his dog bed.”
I point to a folded towel on the floor.
David laughs as he dives onto the futon. “You call that a ‘bed’?”
“Well, yeah,” I say. It did look a little sad. I picked up the little pooch and just as I began to lower him onto his terry cloth mattress he nuzzled his nose into my chest.
David chuckled into his pillow. “Yeah, this is gonna last.”
“Now, now, little puppy,” I say. “Here’s your bed. Sweet dreams.” I set him down and crawled into bed.
“Eeeemeee-mew-eemeeee-“
I peer down and, in the moonlight, is the little guy, peering up at me.
“Meeemeeee, eeee, neeeee.”
To hell with it.
I scoop him up and he scampers all over us, mountains o’ blanket fun.
“Gee, that lasted long,” David says. “C’mere, buddy.”
“No, let him sleep near me!”
*

“Love is patient and kind….”
Woody was all those things to me. But, I see it now: I could be those things with Woody, too. Amazing.
Most people think they are kind enough, but there’s fake kindness (giving when and what you want to give) and then there’s real kindness. That’s the really patient stuff: the gentle stream of encouragement you give when every part of you wants to plop down and throw a screaming tantrum. When all of you is screaming, “NNNOOOO!”
Someone once said, ‘When you look into the eyes of a child, you see the world.’ Well, when you look into the eyes of your dog, you see Love. And patience. And Kindness: the real stuff.
Woody taught me all that. He made me all that.
Doesn’t that make him an angel?

LAST NIGHT
Delray Beach, FL
Present Day
*
The moon is just about full tonight.
That last night with Woody, I laid on the cool tile floor of the living room next to him, and together we stared at the moon through the sliding glass doors, painfully clean. The view of the moon was crystal clear and huge like all the possibility of Death.
This is the same moon we looked at clear across the country in San Diego where we all started. I cannot believe that, after all these years, all these days and nights together, that it is this moon that will be the last one we look at together. I can’t stop thinking of that word all the celebs use when they win an award: surreal. Stupid word. With only a few minutes or hours left together – who knows? – every second counts. This is about as real as it gets.
I know this is selfish on my part. I want my little one; I want his doggy smell and baby fine fur; I want to walk past this room every day and see his little white head pop up in surprise. Today he cries if I try to leave the room to go to the bathroom, or take a shower. I will sleep here on the ceramic tile floor next to him, only a jute rug and his green blanket separating our bones from the hard, hard floor underneath. Every half hour or so I will feed him medicine and water through an eyedropper from the vet. At least as long as he can still swallow.
I whisper to Woody all night long through tears, about how great Heaven is going to be, about all the Pupperoni treats he’ll have there, about the people there we know that are waiting for him and will care for him ‘til the day we can live there together, again.
David is in the garage. He can’t speak without exploding into tears, the way men who never cry, do.

***

14 Years Ago – San Diego CA
SECOND NIGHT
We are in the living room watching an old re-run of Cheers when David yells out, “Woody!”
The puppy is racing around the couch at lightning speed. He has a subscription card from a magazine in his teeth, but he’s so small that he keeps stepping on the card. He is doing this all so fast that it sounds like a playing card stuck in a fan.
“Woody. Yes! What a perfect name! Like the original surfboards! Like Woody Harrelson! Like-“
“Wood!” David says.
“Yeah.”
“ ‘Woody!’ Hello, Woody. Do you like your new name?”

*
I finally dozed off as the sun came up and was shocked to find him still alive and breathing. When he tried to lift his head he choked and anyone could see how weak he was from the effort. The water from the eyedropper just dribbles from his thin black lips, and I began to cry.
****

What if Dean Koontz' Angel was a Cat?

2009-08-28T14:14:00.000-07:00

For more than a week after Woody died, it rained. A few hours after we buried him the clouds swooped in like a big, heavy curtain and then the wind picked up and whipped around with a whoosh! and buckets of wet sky came crashing down.
I am big now.
*

4 p.m.
Woody’s Usual Walk Time

I walk along his favorite path around the yard, actually hoping to step in an old piece of his poo. There’s a little tree over his gravesite, and the bougainvillea hugs it. His grave marker arrives next week. I miss Woody so much the pain is real – like a dull ice pick pressing on the center of my chest, an orange blocking my windpipe. I speak softly to him, like a crazy person, then trudge back to the empty house.
Three and a half pounds – he was huge to me.
*

Back in the house, I shuffle through “To Do” lists, and find one from just last week: “Get SENIOR treats for Woody.” Our calico cat, Rebecca, rubs against my leg and walks over to the spot where Woody and I laid just hours before. It’s empty now, but she sniffs it delicately. Then she darts over to the magazine rack and starts smacking around a little piece of Styrofoam. She licks her shoulder and gazes at Woody ’s empty spot; looks out at the yard, the sky. She plops down and looks back at his new spot in the yard, her tail switching to the song of a bird outside. She makes a funny little sound in the back of her throat, gets up and looks in the corner of the closet where Woody used to go when the thunder was too loud. All the while, she has not meowed once.
*
Woody is hiding from me, and I can’t find him anywhere. I’ve looked in closets, even in shoeboxes and pocketbooks on shelves he couldn’t possibly reach, let alone curl up into.
Someone – Jen? David? A stranger? – leads me outside into the far corner of the backyard and points to a small mound of dirt.
“He died,” this person says.
I turn around and go back inside, calling him, telling him to stop playing now because really, really, this game has gone on long enough.And then I wake up.

Uh-oh....

2009-08-24T12:54:00.000-07:00

“Are we there yet?!”

We are on our way through Illinois farmland, en route to Michigan, David’s home state, from California, where we met. Convinced that the man I love couldn’t be from a bad place, I am moving there, sight unseen. In Mover’s Terms* this is what is known as a perfect Swan Dive.
“About another day and a half,” David says.
“Waaa.”
After awhile I say, “If I see one more farm, I’m going to scream.”
David eyes me sideways and says, “Uh, Dara?”
“What.”
“There are a lot of farms in northern Michigan.”
Uh-oh.

Baby Pictures: Woody the Incredible 1 Pound Pup

2009-08-21T09:25:00.000-07:00

ANOTHER BOOK ON THE WAY

2009-08-21T09:10:00.000-07:00

Dear Readers and Fellow Pet Lovers,
Just wanted to give you the heads up - yay - that I have another book coming out in a couple of months for pet lovers of all ages - young, and not so young anymore....
The book is entitled WOODY'S GARDEN and it will be available through all the major channels (Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc., along with the website of my publisher, Xlibris.com.
Best of all, it has pictures!!!
And I'll have special offers for you bloggers!
Will keep you posted.
As always, your comments are welcome.

Time Out

2009-07-24T08:45:00.000-07:00

Okay, readers and bloggers, before we continue jacknifing * around the country with little Woody in tow (or, more precisely, under the driver seat on David's sweatshirt, alternately in my happily cramping arms) ...
What do think?
I'd love to hear from you- dog lovers, cat lovers, bird lovers, horse lovers; married, straight, single, gay - whoever you are! Share it here, before we really bin it*, rentaheffa*, and Walk With Woody everywhere we go....

*See: A Mover's Glossary

TRAVELS WITH WOODY: A Mover's Glossary

2009-07-13T09:13:00.000-07:00

A Mover’s Dictionary of Terms

Arizona Groovin’ -1. the ongoing intestinal coup that results from curiously inexpensive produce of unknown origin that one stupidly gives a quick rinse and consumes with the gusto of a “smart” shopper. [In the U.S., the FDA would require a “Fecal Matter Included” sticker]; 2. the limp/trot/twist one must perform on the way to the john in order to avoid the unthinkable (See Public Staining)

Beach Brains - impression that surfers and other frequent beachgoers on the West Coast give to the East of the Mississippi native, that they are either ever-so-slightly brain damaged, severely drunk, or impossibly high.

“Bin it” – to store all of one’s belongings in large Tupperware so as to make sudden moves cross-country easier and more spontaneous. Also referred to as a Tupperware party.

Bungee – Sell a house. Fast.

Cary [NC] – Concentrated Area of Relocated Yankees

Cesspool – 1. Home with a mortgage so high it induces persistent diarrhea; 2. Home with a mortgage so high it drowns you in debt.
In order to avoid sudden death or divorce, one must roto-root it (see Below).

Cramp – 1.Unintentionally staying in a Stopover State longer than desired due to purchase of a fixer upper from Hell that must be completely gutted when both time and money are available simultaneously, i.e., when Hell freezes over and after the capital gains tax won’t devour any and all profits 2. At least two years.

“Dar” – NOT my name, as one of my small town co-workers thought for, like, ever.

“EAT ‘M” – East of the Mississippi

Fudgie – Tourist in any given city who thinks things that bore the locals to tears are “Grrreat!”…Exciting!”…”Yummy…!” , e.g., Visitors to Traverse City, Michigan (Cherry Capital and Home of the Annual Cherry Festival) actually buy - and eat and enjoy – something called “cherry sausage”, which looks and tastes like something a North Carolinian would classify as “jest ain’t right.”

Housewife – NOT me, or any other woman who decides to stay home and help her self-employed husband run his business while simultaneously pursuing her dream of writing a book. SO GET THAT STRAIGHT.

“Jackknifing” – To relocate in a geographically rotating scissor fashion across the continental U.S. of A., at times living again in cities lived in before. Also known as, ‘Wet’M and Eat ‘M’

Mapholder – god-like sage; one who knows how far to the next home state, destination, or rest stop. syn. the dog.

Mover’s High – Ignoramus state of mind induced by overdose of Places Rated Almanac and Money magazine’s Annual Livable City Issue, in which one actually believes a new place to live can cause Happiness.
syn. 1.See“Beach Brains” 2. ant. See “Three Month Slump”

Nirvana – as in the spiritual sense, the state never arrived at; the unattainable State.
In the movaholic mind, it is suspected to be somehow “just missed” while jackknifing across the country.

Ol’ Randy – atlas; road map. A name affectionately coined by spending waaaay too many hours looking through a Rand Mc Nally.

Public Staining- soiling oneself in public due to lack of Arizona Groovin’.

Q-Tips- White-haired Florida drivers, normally spotted swerving in and out of lanes at a minimum of ten miles per hour under the speed limit, oblivious of the pile-up behind them. The term “Q-Tip” refers to the only visible sign of a driver: the tuft of white hair visible over the steering wheel.

Rattle and Roll – Fix up and sell.

“renta heffa” – rent a U-Haul. A BIG one.

“Rise and Shine” – Move. Again.

RoadSpeak – the abbreviated code language one adopts as a result of stress caused by jackknifing across the country, i.e., this glossary.

“Roto-root it” – see “the Three R’s”

“shat on” – hurricane damage. For e.g., “The roof ripped off. We were shat on.”

“Sleepover State” – state or city lived in for three months or less. In this case, that would be Arizona, Colorado, New York (for David only since I am from there), and California – the second time.

SomberTown – 1. a new hometown that, while visited, is sunny. While LIVED in, the sun actually hides itself, even while shining brightly one half hour away. 2. any locale where Wal-Mart is King and neither Barnes &Noble nor Starbuck’s will touch.

“Stopover State” - state or city lived in for two excruciating years or less

Swan Dive – Moving to a new city, state, or hemisphere sight unseen and/or stupidly; the feeling one is left with when grieving the loss of a loved one.

THE LONG SEARCH

2009-07-13T09:07:00.000-07:00

1985
Marist College
Poughkeepsie, NY

“Describe Hell.”
My five college roommates and I are lounging around one evening in our tiny apartment living room, in various stages of undress – Flash dance socks inside big, mangy bunny slippers, sweatpants with camisoles, and other weird collegiate loungewear. Our good friend, John, is asking us this question for a Philosophy assignment.
One by one my roomies answered:
“Burning hot.” Kelly.
“Everyone hates you in Hell!” Lea.
“You hate them!” Tammy.
“It is u-g-l-y.” Lynn.
“Country music blasting 24/7!” Courtney.
“Dara, how ‘bout you?” John asked.
“Hell…is a beautiful place,” I decided.
“Yeah?” he asked, pen poised. I saw Tammy roll her eyes and heard Kelly sigh, and Lea disappeared into the bathroom. I went on:
“Hell fools you. It has gorgeous scenery and people and there are buffets everywhere. But…Hell is a cruel place. You are truly damned if you do, or don’t. People are smiling and pleasant but they hate you; the flowers stink; the food gives you the runs.”
“Yeah!” yelled Lea from the bathroom.
“And?” John asked, scribbling.
“Cramps are even worse in Hell,” said Lynn thoughtfully.
“And men are even moodier,” added Kelly.
“And nothing you do in Hell pays or means a thing. It is, like, totally postal,” said Courtney.
“Even worse,” I added, “no matter how many degrees you have you will always be referred to as a ‘housewife.’
“No!”
“And… everyone calls you Ma’am in Hell!” Lynn, really on a roll now.
“Not only is Hell hot, but it is humid and sticky and filled with bugs you can’t see. But they bite – hard.” I went on:
“No matter how hard you try to fit in, in Hell, you don’t. Your fellow Hellions hate you. It is no use. Even worse, in Hell you get everything you ever wished for but realize it sucks.”
“Oo, this is good. Go on,” John ordered.
“In fact you realize in Hell that everything you ever believed to be true is wrong. Lying is King in Hell and Love is taken away.”
“She went to one of those Catholic schools,” Lynn whispered to Tammy, who nodded knowingly.
“Hell is NOISY. You are driven to distraction, no matter what you try to do. And, while it may look Rockwellian in Hell, everything is loaded with mouse dung.”
“Ew!” Collective disgust from the gallery.
“Anything else?” John asked.
“Hellions hate puppies.”
“Oh!” Group gasp.
There was a bit of a pregnant pause here. Finally, with wobbly pencil and saucer-like eyes, John asked,” What’s your vision of Heaven, then?”
“Heaven?” I asked.
Everyone nodded.
“Ask me if I get there.”
*
The following semester I took the b.s. – I mean, elective - course John had been doing this assignment for. It was aptly called The Long Search.
Basically, the Long Search is the frustrated attempt of all humanity to find nirvana: the ultimate self-peace. The professor who taught it must have found it because he kicked the almighty podium shortly after I finished the course.
In many ways the search for our Most Livable City was just that - a search for nirvana – with low property taxes and a nice front lawn. David and I were convinced on some level that Nirvana was actually a place, somewhere between San Diego and Weeki Wachee.
We just kept missing it, is all.
And Woody was always, always along for the ride.**
“The journey home is never a direct route; it is, in fact, always circuitous, and somewhere along the way, we discover that the journey is more significant than the destination, and that the people we meet along the way will be traveling companions of our memories forever.”

-NELSON DE MILLE
Up Country

OKLAHOMA!

2009-07-08T08:37:00.000-07:00

“Damn! He saw me!”

I caught a glimpse of the Oklahoma State Trooper turning off the highway median, in our direction.
“Damn!” David repeated, slapping the steering wheel and eyeing the rearview mirror.
A flash of lights.
“Uh-ohhh.” That would be me.
We pulled over.
“Well, at least we don’t have any drugs in the car.” I said brightly.
When David glared at me I nearly shat my pants.
“What do you mean?!” I yelped through jaw lock.
He jerked his head toward the back of our pickup just as a man in khaki F-Troop wear approached the driver’s side window.
I crossed my legs.
***
“What’s the matter, Son? Road getting’ away from ya?”
F-Troop asked. A challenge, not a question.
My bowels were pond scum. I smiled weakly.
“Licenseandregistration,” he barked.
David shrugged and, hanging his head, handed him his license and said, “Well, Officer, there never really is an excuse to speed, is there?”
“I’ll need your registration, too,” F-Troop said, eyeing him curiously.
With poorly disguised, shaky hands, I turned the knob to the glove box and immediately shoved both hands in. Dear God I promise to do volunteer work every weekend for the rest of my life and do pro bono work for MADD and Partnership for a Drug-Free America if only You please-oh-please don’t let there be weed in this glove box, I prayed.
My prayers were answered.
I found the registration and threw it at David as I slammed the glove box shut.
F-Troop went back to his vee-hickle and, as if he had X-ray hearing, I savagely whispered, “How fast were you going?”
“Eighty five,” said David with a shrug.
“In a what, a sixty five?”
“Yep.”
“Oooo. We’re going’ DOWNTOWN,” I said.
“Maybe,” he said, and shrugged again.
****

When he returned, F-Troop looked David in the eye, gave him a quick nod, and handed him his “documents.”
And let us go.
“Slow it down, Son. And drive careful, now.”
David checked his rearview mirror, waved to F-Troop who, I kid you not, saluted him back.
“You lucky shit,” I sneered, waving and smiling stupidly. David let him pass us and then pulled our vee-hickle out, trailer in tow. He grinned at me and said, “I know.”
I smacked him on the arm, which made him grin even wider. So I smacked him again. He started to chuckle. I ignored him and so he said, “You know what’s really great, though?”
“What?”
“That the Trooper dude didn’t ask to see your license.”
I have a clean record, so I asked, “Why is that?”
“Because it’s in your purse and -”
Just then Woody began to scratch on it. The dawn.
“ –I put that bag of weed that Woody found in there.”
“What if he looked in there?!”
“He didn’t, though. So what are you worried about?”

LAST NIGHT: PRESENT DAY

2009-07-08T08:31:00.000-07:00

*****
Death smells like mushrooms.
I lean over and kiss Woody’s furry little face for the umpteenth time. This thought is like a cloud in front of sharp, shooting, all-at-once pain that I have never known before. My Baby is dying and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it, so … I will never eat shitake mushrooms again.
I look him right in the eyes and ask, “Are you ready to go now? Because I’ll – gulp – help you.” He gives me a panicky look that, to me, screams, “Hell, no!”
I vowed years ago never to keep Woody alive because I am the one with separation issues. My job, it seems suddenly so clear to me, is to help him make the journey to Dog Heaven, or wherever it is that’s next. But I also know this is the hardest walk I will ever take with m’boy.
He looks up at me with the same searching brown eyes I fell in love with nearly fourteen years ago. We lived in San Diego then – clear across the country and a lifetime ago, literally. As I sit here in our South Florida living room I suddenly hate it and all it represents: the last house we lived in together, my best buddy and me.

SECOND NIGHT: SAN DIEGO

2009-07-08T08:29:00.000-07:00

14 Years Ago – San Diego CA
SECOND NIGHT
We are in the living room watching an old re-run of Cheers when David yells out, “Woody!”
The puppy is racing around the couch at lightning speed. He has a subscription card from a magazine in his teeth, but he’s so small that he keeps stepping on the card. He is doing this all so fast that it sounds like a playing card stuck in a fan.
“Woody. Yes! What a perfect name! Like the original surfboards! Like Woody Harrelson! Like-“
“Wood!” David says.
“Yeah.”
“ ‘Woody!’ Hello, Woody. Do you like your new name?”

*

SAN DIEGO: FIRST NIGHT

2009-07-08T08:26:00.000-07:00

PRESENT DAY

2009-07-08T08:25:00.000-07:00

*
The thing about Love is, it starts out easy, and then the hard part begins.
Today’s the hard part.
I was chopping up the chicken from the Wendy’s sandwich I just brought home for Woody. He has not eaten in two days, and I am frantic. He hobbles into the kitchen, on a mission for the door. “Okay, Buddy, you’re ready to go out already? Okay.”
I open up the door for him and he steps out and pees all over himself and then like a wilted daisy his head dips down to the ground, and I choke, “Nooooooooo,” as I scoop him up and hold him to my heart.
“Can you come home?” I am on the phone with David, holding Woody who is floppy as a rag doll but still alert, in my arms. “I- think- Woody’s… dying.”
“I’ll be right there,” David croaks.
***

MEDICINAL PURPOSES

2009-06-27T10:08:00.000-07:00

We very quickly found out why Woody toppled over so much: his front left leg was considerably shorter than the rest, the toes of his paw fused together. "Looks like Michigan," David noted when I showed him Woody's "mitten."
Not that his "handicap" stopped him from making virtually anything - toes, subscription cards from magazines, fallen wrappers, pantyhose - a toy.
A toy to be shaken like shark chum and transported at lightning speeds around the apartment.

So, packing was fun.

Except for, uh... certain things one might want to remain, er...unshaken.

"Man, I know I had a little baggie of weed around here somewhere," David said, searching the living room on that last day.
"Well, " I called from the bedroom,"you'd better find it before Lady Aubrey's piggie little porker does. Then again, maybe it will find it and get the munchies so bad it'll eat itself to-"
Just then I heard it, a sound much like a salt shaker being shaken, its "shimmy-shimmy" sound echoing through the empty apartment.

"Uh-ohhhh," I muttered and ran into the living room.
A tiny white blur raced past me, the "Shimmy" sound louder and louder.

"Nnnnooooooooo!" David dashed past in a bent-at-the-waist position, his hands in a permanent scoop.
"Yyyowwww! Don't let him eat that! He could die! He could die!" I screamed, running after them.
"C'mere, buddy boy, let Daddy have it, c'mon...." David coaxed.
So the three of us were there racing around the apartment, Woody and the weed in the lead.
In a flash of insight I grabbed the feather duster and continued the mad dash as I called, "Oh, Woooody! Whatever you do, don't get this feather duster!"
I zoomed in the opposite direction and he leaped for the hot pink feathers just as the baggie left his tiny jaws.
David dove for it.
I shook the duster crazily.
"Pick it up! Pick it up!" I whispered savagely as I shook the feathers wildly at Woody who, thank God, was now going after the duster.
"Damn," David said, holding the baggie. "It's still in tact. Good Boy!" Woody left me and the duster and trotted over to David. "Good boy! Good boy! Man, I could use this on this road trip...."

San Diego: EVICTED

2009-06-26T09:07:00.000-07:00

We left San Diego for 3 reasons:

(1) David wanted to buy a house so he could put his carpentry skills to profitable use and buy, fix up and sell it - an impossible dream in Southern California on a carpenter's and sometime temp/baker/artist's salaries....

(2) I had just seen Doc Hollywood, in which Michael J. Fox plays a Hollywood doctor who moves to and finds true love and a darling home in a quaint Midwestern town that looked sooooo cute! (Hey, I was, like, 23 and like many 23 year olds, not exactly dealing with a full 6-pack when it came to smart Life decisions, if you know what I mean)....

Oh, yes, and...

(3) We were evicted.

Somehow our landlady, a wealthy Manhattan widow with a Madonna-style British accent I'll call Lady Aubrey, found out that we had a dog. So, for a one and one-half pound puppy we named Woody (after the long surfboards and Woody Harrelson's character on "Cheers" - not what you're thinking, oh nasty one) we were homeless.

We decided to head to Michigan, David's home state, since his brother was a realtor there with some dirt cheap properties we could buy. Yay.

Two days before we were ready to leave, Lady Aubrey showed up on our deck step with her morbidly obese Shitzu, Mish Mash.

"I've come to rent the flat out myself," she said cheerily. It was hard not to slap her, standing there all happy and phony with her dog. "The agency simply cannot be trusted," she chirped, referring to the rental agent we signed our lease with.

I stood in the doorway, holding Woody, barely a palm full of pooch, and stared at the blubber-fur she apparently didn't call "a dog." It sneezed at me.

"But...you have... a dog," was all I could say.

"Oh, no, this is Mish Mash! And who's that little thing?"

Thing?

"Woody."

"WOODY!!" she shrieked. "My ex-husband's name was Woody!"

"Good thing we're leaving," I muttered.

"Mish Mash and I will move into your flat straight away," she said. Cut the phony accent, even Woody knows you're probably from New Jersey, I am thinking.

"After we leave, you mean," I said.

"Naturally! Mish Mash doesn't care for other dogs."

I looked down at Mish-Mashed-In-Face just as he lifted his leg and peed, right there on the porch. Urine drizzled down with split-splotch sounds onto the first floor residents' patio.

"Good boy, Mish Mash!" She applauded.

I still can't believe this.

"But you're evicting us for having a dog," I said.

"Well, I don't allow them," she said simply.

I look down at Mish Mash, noisily cleaning his privates with a freakishly long tongue.

"Well, then," was all I could say.

"Tally ho!" she waved and hefted up Blubber Boy.

We were gone by nightfall.

********

Back to the Beach : First Day

2009-06-25T09:30:00.000-07:00

San Diego, CA
14 years ago

"What is THAT?!"
I greet David at the door, holding my poof-o-joy.
I gently set the puppy down on the plush carpet. He wags a cottontail and looks waaaaaay up at David ... and rolls over.
"Hey, hey, buddy," David says, crouching down. The little pup covers his big, calloused hand on kisses and pats his arm with thumb-sized paws.
"I thought we weren't going to get a dog yet?" David asks, smiling. The puppy scampers away and looks back at David. Wags. Rolls over and back up. Play.

"Isn't he the cutest dog, ever?" I gush.

"God, he's small," he says, still smiling.

"Bob's friend says he's the runt of the litter - part Maltese, part Toy Poodle, and part something else. Maybe. I don't know. And I don't care!"

And now we are both sprawled out on the rug giggling like little kids as the puppy pats David on the nose with the tiniest dog paws I have ever seen.

***

Welcome to the Sunshine State

2009-06-25T09:01:00.000-07:00

Delray Beach, Florida
Present Day

"We're moving to Florida!"

My sister, Jen, is on the phone, telling me this. I am sitting in the living room, next to Woody, who has just upchucked his breakfast for the third time. Congestive heart failure does weird things to the swallowing mechanism... at least that is what the vet here tells me.

"Oh, good." I stroke Woody's side. He is spent, but he always comes around again. We play together every night as we've always done and then we watch TV together or he sits next to me while I draw pictures. Lately the TV time and the drawing time have increased while the playtime gets shorter and shorter. He gets too tired and starts to cough.

"-just an hour north of Tampa. Are you listening?" She's still talking.
"Oh, yeah, an hour south of Tampa."
Tampa's on the west coast of Florida; we live in Delray Beach, on the Atlantic ocean side of the state -a move we jokingly made 'so that Woody can retire to a sunny climate.'Oh, yeah, and a little thing called Work.

"An hour NORTH of Tampa."

"Oh. Yeah," I say.

"And the house is great. Like my dream house with a pool and the kitchen is OK but eventually we'll redo it, so when are you coming to visit?"

"Um. I don't know. Why don't you move into the house first?" I ask, watching Woody's little chest rise and fall.

"About a month, give or take, we have a moving company and we should be there sometime next week and -"

"Hey, Jen? Can I-?" My eyes are suddenly filling with tears and I feel like I'm choking. Woody raises his head slightly and looks at me, concerned.

"What's the matter?!"

"It's...Woody...he's not...doing so well."

"Oh." There is a pause, and then she says, "And here I am going on and on about my stupid dream house."

My sister knows all about this. When our family dog, a tiny Yorkie named Tammi, was dying, Jen held her, rocking and crying, for three days.

"It's...not...stupid. I'm...happy for you!" I say, and start bawling.

"Hey. Have a good cry. Spend time with your boy. Call me later if you want."

"'kay. Bye," I croak.

Click.

***

FIRST DAY

2009-06-24T08:19:00.000-07:00

San Diego, CA

14 Years Ago

"Oh, he's cute."

I am standing next to my friend, Bob, in the parking lot at work. As is usual in San Diego, it is an extraordinarily beautiful day, so the sun is reflecting off the windshield of Bob's friend's car, the one that holds the puppy he needs to find a home for. White, long-legged, about a foot tall, the dog I see peeking out the window looks more like a lamb than a dog.

"No, that's his aunt. That's the puppy," he says.

He points.

I squint.

And then I see: the white kitten I begged for as a child; the baby white seal I always wanted to protect; every stuffed animal I ever loved. Only this one was real, all rolled up into a white puppy the size of a pomegranate.

"Oh! Oh!" I cry, rushing over to the car like an idiot. "I'll take him! I'll take him!"

"He don't have no papers or nuthin'," Bob's friend says, sauntering over.

"Oh! I don't care!"

I shove my endorsed paycheck at Bob and scoop the little wagging ball out of Bob's friend's hand.

"Uh....Sold?" Bob says to his friend with a shrug.

I rush the puppy back to our apartment a few blocks away. David's gonna kill me but I don't care, I think happily. (David is my live-in boyfriend of several years who does NOT think we need a dog, and certainly not a "wimp dog").

I dial my mother at work and set the puppy down on the rose-colored livingroom rug.

"Department of-"

"MOM?!"

The puppy wags and rolls over like a happy Weeble.

"WHAT'S WRONG?!" My mother shrieks. Because I am shrieking.

"I GOT A PUPPY AND OOOOOOO HE IS SOOOOO CUTE!"

I can't stop giggling. I sound like a lunatic. Or a little girl.

"Oh, Mother of God I thought someone died," my mother gasps.

"No! No! Wait 'til you see him! He's soooooo cuuuute! Oh, I just LOVE him!"

****

Walks With Woody

2009-06-23T08:33:00.000-07:00

I am in the backyard, weeding. The lady from the Post Office - the one who bought those "ugly LOVE stamps-" is saying, "C'mere. You'd better look at this."

I follow her to a small rectangular hole in the dirt near the plum tree that Woody loves to stand under to do his most aerobic activity lately: sniff the air. She points down and there in the hole I see Woody, lying on his side.

"Oh, Woody, silly boy," I say, bending down. "What are you doing in there? You're going to get all dirty."

The Post Office lady is suddenly my sister, Jen, and she is looking at me, troubled. I look at her and say, "He's just sleeping," and I scoop him up and carry him inside, back to his green blanket in the living room.

You could say there are two types of people in the world:

(1) Those that say, "It's just a dog," and

(2) Those that look at you with sad, screaming eyes that say, "I understand."

But, really, there is only one kind of human: the kind that feels pain. The kind that realizes Grief is a form of insanity; that Loss actually feels like a stabbing through the breastbone; that abandonment is nothing short of an emotional mauling.

That, to love a life is never "just" anything:

It is everything.

This Blog is for you all.