Tag Archives: laika
Red Thread: The Hanged Man
Sun Dogs
Someone said today that it was our first sunny day after fifteen days of rain. I don’t know if that’s accurate, but it sure feels like it. Over the past week, I’ve gotten grumpier when I get dressed in the morning to go feed goats. It’s often been quiet until I start getting dressed, then the rain starts pattering on the roof. I try to keep a positive attitude, but it’s been a challenge. The rain. The mud. The wet. The cold.
I whine.
Continue reading Sun Dogs
December Morning
Laika has been trying to get me back in the routine of going for a walk. She nudges me while I’m sitting at the computer, drinking coffee, and gives a little groan while tilting her head towards the door. She is irresistible, especially when she knows I’ve gotten the message and begins dancing in delight at successful communication. Besides, the walk is a good thing for me, too.
She’s been on my mind a lot lately. While filing away some papers the other day, I found her adoption ad from the shelter, and noticed that it included the date she was found as a stray. It was only a day or two after an utterly miserable February night for me. Home from a failed road trip to see some good birds (we’d been turned back because of snow at a pass), we were enduring a massive cold snap for Sonoma county.
I was full of anger and resentment and despair, with no real target other than myself. I’d started therapy less than a month earlier, and I think something inside didn’t like that. It was fighting to pull me into the darkness for good.
I’d’ had lots of beers when I decided to go outside and lay on the porch glider. If I could just manage to pass out there, I wouldn’t be found until the morning. Just a stupid drinking accident during an unusually cold night.
I hate being cold. I fear it. Too soon, I got up and went back inside. Had some more to drink.
Then went back out. Even at the time, I questioned how serious I was about this. Just tempting fate, like staggering down country roads at night, wearing black. Letting the accident happen if it will.
I made it longer the second time, but the blackout I’d been hoping for never happened. Finally, shivering and shaking, I gave up. I couldn’t even do this right.
Somewhere out in the night, there was a pup, only six months old, out on the streets of Ukiah. With her short hair and her own loathing of the cold, she must have been shivering and miserable, too.
It took us a few weeks longer to find each other, but we did, just in time.
I don’t know why some of us are saved and some are not. I haven’t done anything to earn it. I’ve seen better people than me buried. And I know that if I’m not careful, I could lose it all in an instant.
This morning I woke up, and I thought about the year before as I lay in bed listening to the owls and coyotes and thought, “This is real wealth…owls and coyotes!” I went through my morning routine, finished a painting, ate pomegranate and toast with almond butter. When we finally got around the taking that walk, the fog was starting to lift, making me feel as though we were walking in clouds. I stopped to say good morning to the goats standing in the mist, with the sunlight illuminating each drop. How can life get this good?
During our walk, I thought a lot about all of the people who have saved my life. People who say mysterious spiritual things about “dog” and show up to help you move, without any drama, and who never tell you how to live but you know they have something you want. People who tell their story with no idea that they’re saving the life of someone else sitting silent and hungover in the zendo. Friends who show up when you didn’t even know you needed them to, with lights or lattes or laughs. Women who circle their names on phone lists and insist that you come back. People who take a chance on you and give you work when you need it. Friends who call you on your own bullshit. People who listen and encourage.
And shivering, skinny black pups who are too scared to walk past the other dogs in the shelter, and have to be carried all the way home.
Something for the Child Within
During my first year or so of therapy, I used to dread each appointment. I wanted to go, but I still dreaded it. I’d spend a fair amount of time thinking about what subject I might want to bring up and talk about. I was, I guess, trying to be in control of it all.
About three months into it, my shrink suggested that I spend some time thinking about the question of “what the child within wants.” I figured I knew the answer already. We want love, right? We want to be held, we want affection. The answers seemed trite and unhelpful.
The next week, I was back in the chair and started, as usual, trying to take control of things. But something happened, and I veered off-course. I heard myself saying, without any plan, “You know you said to think about what the child within wants? I think it wants a dog.”
I had been thinking a lot about a coworker’s dog, a big affectionate chocolate lab. Another coworker brought in a puppy that belonged to a friend. The happiest parts of my days were when I could hang out with those dogs.
My shrink didn’t tell me to go out and get a dog. He listened to my exhaustive list of reasons why it probably wouldn’t work to get a dog. He did make a suggestion: go to the pound and look at the dogs there. Don’t go to get a dog, go to observe your feelings. Just see how it feels.
And so I did. I went to the then-new shelter on Route 12 and looked around. I didn’t pursue adopting any or filling out any forms, I just tried to see how it felt. I still have a journal entry from it. I wrote that when I left, my heart was beating fast and I was feeling guilty for not telling my husband that I planned to go look or that I was interested in this at all.
I spent some more time with the idea, and eventually did get up the nerve to begin talking about it. Things feel into place; the landlord and the husband both approved. I started building a fence.
On a Saturday morning, April 8, 2006, we headed for Ukiah to see a dog named Sebastien. I remember being terribly hungover. When we arrived, we found that Sebastien had just been adopted, so we looked at Bart. Bart wanted nothing to do with us, so the staff asked me some questions, and came back with “Roxy“, a very scared Shar-pei/Black Lab mix.
The rest, as they say, is history. And tomorrow, I will have to give my beautiful, confident Laika Lou a few extra treats to celebrate our four years together so far.
I hope she is happy here; the past year has been tough, and I’ve asked a lot of her.
Sometimes I’m so busy doing all the responsible adult things I must do, that I forget that she might like a little attention.
I forget to play. I forget to stop and stretch. I forget that everyone needs to run hard once in a while and then have a little nap in the sun.
And when I forget, she’s there to remind me. A delight to both the child and the adult within.