Poetry Friday: I didn't know I was a dog person

Recently, my sister lost a beloved dog and I sent her Mary Oliver's Dog Songs. I hoped that it would comfort her, offer her a bit of solace and a smattering of beauty in the midst of grief. I was happy when she said it did all that. 

What I didn't know, in early September, was that as October ended I would be in sore need of Dog Songs, too. 

Mary Oliver was more than a dog lover, she was a dog chronicler, a dog bard, a recorder of all things dog-like and lovely. 

Oliver hung out with her dogs, talked to them, and extrapolated poetry from their existence. This is from one of her imagined talks with her dog Ricky, during which they were watching a dog show on TV: 

“If I ever meet one of these dogs I’m going

to invite him to come here, where he can

be a proper dog.”

Okay, I said. But remember, you can’t fix

everything in the world for everybody.

“However,” said Ricky, “you can’t do

anything at all unless you begin. Haven’t

I heard you say that once or twice, or

maybe a hundred times?”

You can't do anything at all unless you begin.

Eleven and a half years ago, we began something. We became dog owners (Dog adopters? Caretakers? Dog companions?) for the first time. I was fifty years old and I'd never had a dog, but my girls had always wanted one. Ramona was eight, Betsy was fourteen, Anne-with-an-e sixteen. Atticus had never wanted a dog. I was kiiiiiind of open to it, but unsure, so we played good cop/bad cop. I'd say, "Well, I'm open to a dog, but your dad will never say yes." That was my safety net. Then one day, the girls were looking at the shelter website, cooing over a pretty border collie/cattle dog mix, and Atticus walked past them, looked at the screen, and said, "Do you guys want that dog?" They responded with a resounding "Yes!" and he said, "Okay, I guess we could get that dog." 

Wait. I thought we were playing good cop/bad cop? Now the bad cop was on their side? 

We were getting a dog. 

She was living at a no-kill shelter. Her name was Sydney; she was about two years old, but no one knew for sure. She had been adopted once and then returned to the shelter. Sydney was a little neurotic, kind of OCD, and, well, maybe not quite as smart as the average border collie/shepherd mix, but what she lacked in smarts and go-getter attitude she made up for in sweetness. "She just loves to be with her people," the shelter owner told us. 

I've always been a cat person. When I was growing up, cats were omnipresent. Tabbies and calicos, kittens, and big toms. I've always loved cats. When Sydney came to live with us, we had a cat. (We still have Mr. Putter. He's 18 and going strong, aside from a little thyroid medication. He can be so sweet, and also jerky, but we love him anyway.)  

I knew cats. They were quiet and low-maintenance. We could leave them alone for a day or two when we went out of town. They didn't demand to go outside in a blizzard. On the other hand, I didn't know how to live with a dog. Dogs, as sweet and cute as they can be, can also be gross and horrible and loud and sloppy. And there was just all that stuff that I'd never thought of. Every time we planned a trip, I'd forget to schedule boarding. We started buying food in 40-pound bags. Do you know how heavy those are? (I know. Forty pounds.) Everything about dog life was new, but Sydney began teaching me. We started walking together. She went with us when we did our version of camping. (A fully equipped cabin, thank you.) 

There isn't really much more to tell. I became Sydney's alpha, she became my dog. She was, of course, also Ramona's, Betsy's, and Anne-with-an-e's beloved dog. Atticus scared her at first — not because of anything he did, of course, but because she was frightened of men in general. It took her years to stop barking at him every time he headed to the basement. (What did someone do to this poor dog in a basement? I can't think about it.) It took her several years to stop protecting me every time Atticus approached me. (What did someone do to a woman in front of this poor dog? I can't think about that either.) She never got over her fear of fly swatters, so suffice to say that we simply didn't swat flies in front of her. We were patient with her and she was patient with us. I just didn't know I was a dog person until I was a Sydney person. 

Before any of us knew it, she was old. Her jet-black cheeks, her eyebrows, her lashes were gray. She moved a little more gingerly. Our three-mile walks hadn't been happening for several years. Now I walked her for a little while in the morning, dropped her off at home, headed back out on my own. 

But she was fine! Or so we thought, until she swiftly, suddenly wasn't. We had to tell our sweet girl goodbye last week. On Poetry Friday, October 29th, we held her for the last time. 

This next part is going to sound so utterly sentimental. If you can't stand dog stories, avert your eyes now and don't say I didn't warn you. Friday night, after buckets of tears that I never thought I'd be capable of shedding over a dog — gross, loud, sloppy creatures! — I had a dream. In my dream, it was snowing. The kind of exquisitely soft, fluffy snow Syd loved. I went to the front door and there she was. "Sydney!" I cried out, "What are you doing here? You're supposed to be at the vet! How did you get here?" I reached out but she was gone, happily bounding out of sight, out of reach, but calling over her shoulder, "I'll be back!" 

(I warned you.) 

You can't do anything at all unless you begin. 

~ Ricky, 

and Mary Oliver

I'm so grateful I began with Sydney. 

~~~~~~~~~~

The Poetry Friday round-up is being hosted this week by the incomparable Mary Lee Hahn at A(nother) Year of Reading. 

Sydney, last year on Valentine's Day,
looking toward the future.

Oh, no! I forgot I had a blog!

No, not really.

We've just been busy here, getting Advent off the ground. Here's the Jesse Tree this year:

And the Jesus stocking on the mantle:

(And above the mantle is a lovely garland and print from the lovely Lesley Austin.)

The daily prayers for Advent are up: 

And the hutch holds Advent calendars:

And here is Sydney, saying, "See? You can too have nice things."

Happy Eve of the Feast of St. Nicholas!

Sydney and Advent and Unconditional Love

Look at this face:

This is a face that says, "I love you. More than walks! More than rides in the car. More than rawhide bones! More than sniffing every disgusting, stinky spot of grass in the park, and you know how much I love that. More than belly rubs. I love you so much that if you, in that A.D.D. way you have, jump up from your desk five times in ten minutes to go tend to suddenly-remembered things, I, too, will jump up, and I will follow you! No matter how much I looked like I was enjoying a snooze. I will wait for your command; I will take any job you give me; I will threaten to kill the UPS man for you! Because I love you. No matter what you do."

I wish I could love like that.

Sometimes when the dog who owns that beautiful face irritates me, I find myself thinking, "Well, I like the dog most of the time, but I don't really love her when she throws up," or, "I don't really love her when she insists on going outside three times in half an hour. And I don't love her when she smells like that ...."

I wish I could look at everyone, and every important thing in my life, and God, with the same devotion that Sydney displays in that picture up there. Instead, I often find myself reacting to the world much more in the manner of a cat. Oh, yes, to be sure, there's kitty-happy-hour in my life -- you know, that frantic racing around the house just for the sheer and utter joy of it? But then there's also that gazing with contempt at things that get in my way. That attitude of indecision that is so cat-like: "Shall I accept you into my personal bubble? Or should I bite you on the face?" Then there's the whole love of sleep thing.

And though my cat has been known to curl up next to me, purring, in the middle of the night when I'm having trouble sleeping, it's always really more for his sake than for mine. When he's done with me, he's done. He's outta there. It's always on his terms.

In this season of waiting, this Advent, this time of reflection and resolutions, I'm thinking about being more like a dog -- accepting everything that comes my way with a goofily happy resignation. Frantic, anticipatory joy. Stupid gratitude.

I know I won't get there this Advent. I probably won't make it in this lifetime. But it's worth shooting for the attitude of utter love I see in that picture, don't you think?

I will not, however, threaten any bodily harm to a UPS man. Ever. Love the UPS man. So back off the man in brown, Sydney.

Atticus Helps Me Keep Poetry Friday Afloat

Atticus sends me all kinds of links, but who doesn't love a man who sends poetry?

I've been so busy with stuff-stuff-stuff -- writing projects, fun with Ramona while her big sisters were out of town, cooking for those big sisters when they got home (after six days of road food they were ready for something fresh out of an oven), cleaning (which is, as Erma Bombeck once said, "like stringing beads without a knot"), and homeschool stuff/reading stuff/planning stuff -- that I have neglected my poor little blog and nearly let Poetry Friday slip by unnoticed.

Atticus to the rescue. (He saved me last week and a couple weeks before that, too.)

This week he sent me this gem: "Winter Twilight" by Anne Porter. (You remember Anne Porter -- I've written about her before.)

Go ahead and click over to the poem now. You have time. It's all of five lines.

These five little lines bring to mind the winter nights here. When I run the dog outside for her last backyard break before bed, I breathe in the cold, Nebraska air, take in the starry night and think, "If I didn't have a dog, I wouldn't be out here at 11:00 at night. I'd be all Woody Allenish, quoting him from the comfort of my couch, saying, 'I am two with nature.' So, this dog business is a very good thing."

"Winter Twilight" is, then, a tidy package of love for my husband, gratitude for my dog, appreciation of nature and awe in the face of Anne Porter.

And let's not forget The Writer's Almanac.

On the same day they ran this poem, they also noted the birthdays of W. Somerset Maugham (who wrote The Razor's Edge, a book that affected me greatly when I was spiritually searching, and who said, "To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life."), Scottish poet Robert Burns (I have only to hear the name to have the Scottish blood in me stir), and Virginia Woolf (whose A Room of One's Own also greatly affected me when I was young).

So, huzzah for The Writer's Almanac and Atticus. Poetry Friday lives!

~~~~~~~~~~

Hey! The round up today is at Hey, Jim Hill! 

Homeschooling Notes: Ancient Egypt With Ramona

Ramona and I have been reading about ancient Egypt. This week, thanks to the Book of Artrageous Art Projects, we mummified Barbie. Here she is getting ready for her ceremonial wrapping, with some of her most treasured possessions (lovingly selected by Ramona) surrounding her: 

And here she is, properly wrapped (we skipped the cleaning, oiling, salting and 70 days of drying), surrounded by lip gloss, two cakes (one chocolate, one vanilla), butter, an egg, coins (bus fare, Ramona says), her driver's license, a hairbrush, a ponytail holder and a can of Coke: 

Princess Shopsalot (name thanks to the Klutz book) 

now rests in materialistic peace in her Ramona-decorated sarcophagus: 

~~~~~~~~~~

The next photo has nothing to do with ancient Egypt, but is simply to show you that when Ramona decides to stage a Pet Beauty Pageant, Sydney not only wins, but is also named both Miss Congeniality and Miss Most-Patient-Dog-Evah. 

You Really Can Find Google Results For Anything, Including Rubbing Dryer Sheets On Your Dog

Sydney is the sweetest dog, though she can be slightly odd in the best of times (Atticus explains her a little less affectionately: "I think that dog has a screw loose.")

She's frightened of the chihuahua next door, she gives the cat (who is one-fourth her size) a wide berth, and she is sometimes reluctant to go potty ("Go potty"? Was I the mommy of little ones for a long time, or what?) even when I know she has to go.  The biggest rogue screw that rattles around in her little doggy brain is that she's convinced that Atticus is an axe murderer. The joke around here is that in a past adoption she witnessed something horrible in a basement, because every time Atticus runs downstairs, Sydney whimpers as if her world is about to end.

Anyway.

She doesn't like thunderstorms, either. She doesn't go all  Winn-Dixie, not quite the pathological stage, but she clearly gets upset when it's stormy, as some dogs do. So, it turns out that rubbing a dryer sheet on your dog before the storm can help.

See evidence (which must be true, because it's on the internet) here.

A dryer sheet was helpful yesterday, and Google is helpful just about every day. How did anyone survive dog ownership before Google? Huh, Sydney?

Things of Late That Have Made Us Happy

(Photo courtesy of Stock.xchng.)

• Walking the dog on a half-thawed wetlands spillway -- Ramona delighting in feathery, frosty  patterns, in kicking up crunched, jeweled bits of crystal with every sloshy step, in seeing bubbles under the surface.  

• Temperatures in the 50s. Climbing into our van, on a bright February Sunday and actually feeling interior heat from the sun. 

• Watching Downton Abbey (which we recorded) in two sittings with Atticus.

• Reading The Winged Watchman to Ramona, with my older girls happy to listen in on an old favorite. All of us laughing over our reminiscence of "Bum-poofle-dee-dee."

• The works of Brian Jacques -- may he rest in peace.

• Feeling so grateful for our pastor -- for the depth of his spirituality and faith, for his kind, loving leadership. And, yesterday -- for the smile at hearing him talk about our imaginings of heaven, of the ways in which we transfer what we know -- earthly pleasures -- to what we cannot yet know, and hearing him describe the embodiment of God's goodness as a cup of freshly brewed coffee, eternally hot, eternally ready for that next splendid sip. 

• Watching Inception with Anne and Betsy. Having dreams within dreams and then trying to explain them to each other the next day.

• An afternoon of lunch, laughter and no interruptions (from the total of our fourteen children) with two other homeschooling moms. The fact that two of the three of us have children old enough to babysit all the others. 

• Our extremely sweet: 

and patient: 

dog.

• Twenty-seven years of marriage to my best friend. I'm not sure I can top last year's tribute to Atticus, so you can find it here. 

It's Not a Panic Thing, But ...

... we may need to tweak our Jesse Tree ornaments ... just a wee bit.

It turns out that the dog loves salt dough.

Who knew?

Ramona, on God as an Artist

Ramona went with me to walk the dog this morning. It was a perfect and crisp sixty degrees. The mild, morning sun shone on us and I remarked that I thought Heaven might be this temperature. "Sometimes," Ramona added. "Sometimes it should be warmer."

"Well, yes," I conceded. "But I think that for me, Heaven will feel like this, and for Daddy, it will feel like a 90-degree day, with plenty of humidity. And I think, in Heaven, we'll be able to stand in the same place and we'll each feel perfection."

She agreed and we ambled on contentedly. We watched some butterflies for awhile and then got to talking about God's mind and Creation.

"How did He think of it all?" I asked her.

"He's really, really smart," she said. "And it's kind of like an artist. Like the world's His painting or something."

"Yes!" I said. "I agree with you! Just like a painter who imagines something beautiful and then gives it to us as a gift. That's kind of like God's creation. It's His mind at work, huh?"

"Yeah," she said. "I think He got out his oil paints for butterflies. And watercolors for the rivers and stuff like that."

I knew she was on a roll, so I prodded for a little more. "What do you think He did to make dogs?"

"I think," she said thoughtfully, "that he took one feather from every angel's wing and made dogs. Because I think dogs are angels."

"Oh! I like that idea. What about cats?"

"For cats?" she asked. "He used a couple of spices."

Poetry Friday: About Two Things I Love: Billy Collins and My Dog

Now that I have a dog I love so much, and now that it's Poetry Friday, and now that I've found this poem by Billy Collins (whom I also love so much -- do I toss that word "love" around too casually?) and since I think of my own dog, too, as a "paragon of detachment" (except when she isn't), I find this to be the perfect poem for today.

Dharma

by Billy Collins

The way the dog trots out the front door
every morning
without a hat or an umbrella,
without any money
or the keys to her dog house
never fails to fill the saucer of my heart
with milky admiration.

Who provides a finer example
of a life without encumbrance—
Thoreau in his curtainless hut
with a single plate, a single spoon?

(Read the rest here, at The Writer's Almanac.) 

The round up is at Book Aunt.

What Playing Sounds Like When Your Kids Pay Attention to Everything

Ramona had two friends over yesterday, and they played Vet.

"I can see your dog now," I overheard Ramona say.

She disappeared into the exam room with a stuffed animal and all was quiet for a moment. Then she emerged and I heard:

"I'm sorry -- your dog has crystals and bacteria in her urine and she'll need to take these two medicines."

Art imitating life. Get well soon, Sydney!

Lessons I Am Learning From My Dog

About two months ago, we found Sydney at a shelter.  Having a dog is a completely new thing for me. I grew up with cats and for a long time thought I'd never be a dog person.

But Sydney has been teaching me a few new lessons, or, in some cases, helping to remind me of lessons I learned when my children were very young.


Life is Messy

When my girls were babies, I lived in the land of messiness. Spit-up stains on the back of my t-shirt, caustic diapers that at one time in my life would have left me gagging, wiping up vomit and then kissing that poor, sick, chubby little face -- this was the stuff of the baby days. During toddlerdom, peanut butter replaced spit-up as a wardrobe accent, and I commiserated with other mothers who also rued the stains on carpet from potty training moments and red juice.

Now that my youngest child is almost eight years old, life has gotten much less messy. Only it hasn't, really. I was just fooling myself into thinking so.

Life is still messy. There are countless ways that life can be sticky. I don't ever want to forget that, or to begin thinking that a neatly constructed life is both possible and a goal. Sydney is sloppy and imperfect and infinitely lovable. Like this life.


It's Good to Walk Every Day

Exercise has to happen. Dogs don't care about email or blogs first thing in the morning. They care about getting outside. There's always a great scent to inhale at the park, and somehow that tired old park seems new and exciting each day as we nose into corners heretofore unexplored. 

It's Good to Stop and Listen

No walk is so important that we don't have time to stop. And listen. Watch what's passing in front of us. It's good to pay attention to birds and rabbits and potential new friends behind fences. It's essential to stop meandering and just be for a few minutes. Okay. Now we can get moving again.

It's Good to Have a Balanced Life 

Exercise. Have regular meals. Sleep. Get scratched behind the ears. Express unbounded joy at the sight of loved ones, always remembering they're the most important thing in your world -- Be ready to give your life for them, and then have another nap. Appreciate treats with every quivering inch of your body.

The only area in which Sydney doesn't get it has to do with books. She just doesn't see the point, so, yeah, there's that. She's not perfect.

But she's exceedingly pleasant to have around, and she's such a good teacher.

Just How Patient Is Our New Dog?

Ramona just told us: "Sydney eats too much. Do you know that our hula skirts don't even fit her?"

Bits and Pieces of Our Dog Days

The new dog.

Where has she been all my life? 

And how exactly did this happen?

Anne, Betsy and Ramona were doing their usual routine one night over dinner -- giving their father puppy-dog eyes. Begging for a dog. Hearing him say flatly, "No."

Cue the next line: "Mo-o-o-o-m?! Will you please talk to him?"

I did my usual routine and said, "Yes, I'll talk to him. Just give him time." 

Then they got online, to "just look" at a few pets on Petfinder.com and soon we were all (all except Atticus, who was now in another room) oohing and aahhing over puppies and kittens. We read about a cute beagle at our local shelter, and then found the description of Sydney. She sounded charming. I went to find Atticus and told him he should probably just come take a look at the website. Just a quick look. "She really does sound like a sweet dog," I said, the tiniest hint of pleading in my voice.

He came into the room to look at her.

"No," he said and turned around to walk away.


The girls deflated. He left the room but the next thing we heard was his voice calling back to us, "Okay. If you want that dog, we can get her."


What?

Had he been replaced by a Pod Atticus? Did the Dog Fairy zap him with a spell? Maybe the girls had slipped him some kind of canine love potion over dinner. Or, did he just really want his kids to be happy? Whatever it was, it brought The Dog That Was Meant For Us into our lives.


But we still didn't know that for certain. Over the following week, we talked about what kind of dog we should look for, what the best match would be for our family, why we wanted a dog instead of a puppy. We prayed for the right dog to come our way, read Cesar Millan's website, and checked our local shelter. The beagle was gone, and I kept thinking, "Sydney? I think maybe Sydney is the one for us." She was living at a shelter an hour from here, and we decided to go visit her.  It was love at first sight.

She's affectionate, and housebroken. She's so sweet. She isn't bothered by Mr. Putter the cat. And she's housebroken. She's (relatively) obedient, though we need to break her of that habit of wanting to climb us. She pretty much knows we're the pack leaders (Cesar would be proud), and she's housebroken.

She's housebroken. Did I mention that?

I love this dog.

We Love Our Dog!

 More details soon.