Dog Days

I awaken bereft, doubting the worthwhileness of lifting my torso to vertical, lost in bedroom space, perceiving little except my own heaviness.  The summer day is gray, cool and probably much like the one my cousin Caroline is currently experiencing in Gloucestershire.  Global warming has sucked the heat out of California, deposited some in the American midwest, the rest in western Russia.  Leaving me with the bedroom ceiling, the morning and summertime, when the livin' is supposed to be easy.

Caffeination may not be the ultimate solution, but it will suffice for now.  Lorna, my usual morning helper, has decamped with her husband to their mountain cabin.  I slip on shorts, drop my feet into oversized shoes...comical looking yet capacious without my leg brace...and hit the battery-powered road.  There are only two viable options for coffee in Menlo Park, plus a couple of marginal possibilities.  Say, four cafés where the food or the cappuccino pass muster.  They beckon like points on a compass.  Two lie to the west, two to the east.  They seem so routine, so hammered into my consciousness, that I can't help noting the stodginess of my life.  Contracting in scope, it seems.

Mildly unnerving to get behind the wheel of my van, these days.  I can't tell if my reactions have slowed, my paranoia accelerated.  Or if I simply do not drive enough to stay in practice, keep my confidence up.  In any case, a drive around Palo Alto yesterday proved mildly exhausting.  Thus distracted, it occurs to me that my wheelchair control has turned westward, reacting like a Ouija board, toward the Illy coffee at the neighborhood's upscale grocer.  It hardly matters.  For half the experience of going for coffee lies in the going.  It's maybe a two-minute bounce down Fair Oaks Avenue, but that's long enough to see some portion of life pass before my eyes.

I've gone to the dogs.  Jane has two of them.  And hanging out with her has resembled a merging of families, not to mention species.  When I explain that Jane is raising rescue dogs people invariably jump to the wrong conclusion.  Perhaps it's my choice of words.  They are not the St. Bernards with caskets of brandy, which is what people tend to assume.  More precisely, they associate the guy in the wheelchair with helper dogs.  And that's not it.  Rescued dogs, that would be the better description.  Her dogs have been rescued from bad owners.  They were abused in various ways, and Jane is undoing the damage.

More fascinating is the underlying, and shared, human psychology.  I am either an enabler, co-conspirator or partner in all this rescuing.  Take Bixby.  Is he some mixture of spaniel and sheep dog?  I am very weak on breeds, but stronger on backgrounds.  Occasionally one reads about some demented person who had given over an entire house to cats or dogs, the animals breeding uncontrollably, unattended, fed but otherwise forgotten.  Thus, Bixby's origins.

And seemingly, my own.  Why wander down the Bixby road without explaining how much I identify with this dog?  Let me count the ways.  When I first met this dog, he was skittish and fearful.  Bixby would look up at me, back away.  Then approach.  Then back away.  In emotional terms, I am utterly familiar with this.  Liking people, cautious about approaching them, making some overture, retreating.  Trying it again.

Yet isn't this a childhood wound that has largely healed?  In scope, isn't this par for the human course?  What is it that emotionally sucks me into Bixby and his losses and struggles?  Surely I have moved on.  Hell, Bixby has moved on, even in the brief year I have known him.  Now he approaches and much of the time submits to petting.  As do I.  Ask Jane.

It's a bittersweet connection, Bixby's and mine.  I sense his tentativeness and fear.  I sense his need for connection.  And perhaps most invigorating for me, I sense his joy.

Bixby grew into doggiehood with strange patterns and blanks.  Just yesterday, the four of us headed out for a bit of shopping, the two dogs on leads, me in the wheelchair.  Bixby stopped to sniff a bush.  Seemingly the most routine of dog activities, but not for him.  Jane advised that I keep some distance while Bixby went about his olfactory explorations.  The four of us proceeded another block or so, then another sniffing, followed by a peeing.  Jane was relieved.

This is where Isabella comes into the picture.  This dog is part boxer, I think.  In any case, her origins with a homeless person have left her generally anxious, starved for affection, and almost Bixby's opposite.  Given the option, Isabella would accept petting on a 24-hour basis.  As Bixby's housemate, her role has been canine instructress.  Isabella has shown him how to wander about the world sniffing, not to mention peeing and marking.  Thus Jane's advice to back off and give Bixby a moment to sniff, get it together, assemble the otherwise automatic associations that lead dogs to urinate.

Bixby never learned to play.  Who knows what went on inside his 25-dog house?  Certainly eating was problematic.  To this day, with each bite of doggy kibble, Bixby wanders from bowl to front room to chew.  He returns to get another bite of food, retreats to eat, returns.  Even dining must not have been safe.  

In any case, play was a luxury that didn't happen.  Jane describes how Isabella began playfully batting Bixby around to show him how to have normal doggy skirmishes.  For the longest while there was no reaction.  Then, gradually, he got it.  Now the two of them rough house, play-wrestling and mildly snarling.  Still, there are gaps.  Isabella occasionally drops a ball in front of Bixby, gives it a push and watches to see if he will chase it.  No dice.  Bixby isn't having any of this ball chasing.  And, who knows?  Having emerged from his hell house partially blind, he may not be able to see well enough to chase anything.

That I find all of this so poignant, well, how curious.  The truth is that I grew up without enough play.  Life became preternaturally grim around third grade.  Something in me became falsely adult.  My job was to save my parents' marriage.  It was hard work, round-the-clock, and without a neighborhood and other children, there were few distractions from the mission.

There wasn't much play.  And there wasn't much joy.  Marlou noticed my trouble with expressing the latter.  I seem afraid to let go.  Afraid that the high moments, life's Dionysian peaks, will...what?  Lift to me too far and drop me too hard?  Reveal the extent of my longing?

Which is why Bixby is my current therapist.  He has an open look about him, something hopeful, when he runs up to me.  And he does run, even dances about, whenever we meet.  We have a bond.  And in his dog's life, where everything is shorter and condensed, his development teaches me much about my own.  Bixby can get downright exuberant these days.  Yes, he's still a bit afraid of petting.  But he has this way of throwing back his head, lifting his paws and prancing.  It's joyous, infectious and maybe not all that canine.

The only curious thing is why it's all so poignant.  Sometimes this quality threatens to overwhelm me.  Perhaps through lack of perspective.  Maybe it's just life.  Maybe things feel this way to lots of people.  Maybe we are all in the doghouse.