That's me growling, not my dogs. But I'm growling at my dogs, or rather at the mysteries and ironies of training dogs, living with dogs, trying to figure out dogs.
Last week, when our housekeeper, Vanessa, arrived to help keep household chaos at bay, not only had I made the bed and straightened up the kitchen in advance, but I had the dogs on stay, ready to enact our visitor-greeting ritual (see my November 18 post).
Wolfie and Lexi are wildly fond of Vanessa, so it is especially important to me to keep them in check when she comes. When Vanessa came in, I put her on stand-stay by the door, then released Lexi to say hello. By the time I told Lexi to stop the love-fest and leave the room, Wolfie was whining with excitement. I called him to me, but while I was doing that, Lexi went back to steal more kisses from Vanessa. This made Wolfie upset—I could not blame him—and while I was correcting Lexi, he rushed over to Vanessa, without permission. I scolded Lexi, retrieved Wolfie, and made him walk calmly (this took three tries) and sit in front of Vanessa to be petted.
As the dogs finally left the room Vanessa said, “Gosh, this is so much easier when you aren't here.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“You know, when you're gone, and your husband lets me in.”
“Yes?” I said, my voice rising. “What happens then?”
“He just puts the dogs on stay, and then releases them.”
“And they mob you, right? Smash into your kneecaps, knock you over?”
“Not at all. They just come and say hello and then they go away.”
“On their own? They go away on their own?”
“Sure. It's over in a minute. It's a lot easier than what you're doing.”
I am aghast. I have been training dogs, our dogs, since 1980. Every dog we've had since then I've taken to obedience classes—some of them, like Lexi, for a full two years. I have sat at the feet of eight different trainers. I have read every dog training book, watched every dog training TV program and video I could lay my hands on. I have done everything I could to bond with my dogs: fed them, groomed them, played with them, worked and exercised them. I have dedicated major areas of my brain and my life to them.
And now it turns out that my husband—who tolerates dogs only for my sake, who doesn't feed or exercise or otherwise interact with them unless I specifically ask him to—is more successful in implementing the visitor-greeting ritual than I am.
What's going on? I can't bear the thought that he has some innate gift, some pheromone-related thing that causes dogs to pay attention to him and not to me. There has to be an intelligible reason behind this, something I can grasp, and emulate.
After
days of mulling this over, here is all I can come up with: when
someone comes to the door, my husband's main concern is with who it
is, whereas mine is with how the dogs will behave. The dogs, bless
their hearts, feel this intense focus of mine, and that makes them
excited, and they do the very things I don't want them to.
I guess I just care too much, am too invested in their behavior. I am convinced that people will judge who I am by how my dogs act. Strangely, I never felt this way about my children, and they, in consequence, never let me down. From an early age, I trusted them to do the right thing.
Maybe
it's time for me simply to trust my dogs.
Good friends invited us to celebrate Thanksgiving with them. Our contribution, aside from our irrepressible charm, was limited to a few bottles of wine. It was my easiest Thanksgiving ever, and one of the best.
But that was yesterday. Today is another story.
Vermont's stick season (no leaves on the trees, no snow on the ground, just sticks everywhere) is in full swing. The clouds hover above the treetops, and the brightest color outside the window is the dull yellow of the dead grass.
It's stick season in my soul as well. No spark, no oomph, just existential dread clogging up my vitals. So oomphless am I, in fact, that after asking my husband's permission (I'll explain later) I decided to spend the day in my pajamas, in and around the bed.
Now spending the day in pajamas when I don't have a fever symbolizes a major abdication for me, second only to watching TV in the daytime. Spend a day in pajamas and before you know it, you've stopped washing your hair, then your teeth fall out (because you've also stopped brushing your teeth), then you stop going out (after all, you're in your pajamas) and instead you start keeping cats, lots of them, in the house and you stop changing the litter....
You can see why I had to ask my husband's permission before setting foot on that slippery slope. Since the man is utterly lacking in tragic imagination, he willingly gave me his blessing—heck, he even smiled. And later, when I asked, he took the dogs out into the field and threw balls for them to tire them out. I'm married to an enabler!
So here I sit, in bed, in my pajamas (hair and teeth brushed, however—noblesse oblige) trying to salvage the day in the only way I know: writing.
When it gets dark, I'll go downstairs and make a fire in the stove. Then, still in my pajamas, I'll walk through the attached garage to the attached chicken coop, say a few words to the chickens, and close them in for the night.
The time: the late 1950s
The place: Birmingham, Alabama
My mother, my father and I are driving home after Thanksgiving dinner with an American family.
“What a meal!” my mother says. “Do you suppose it was typical?”
“I don't know,” my father answers, “but I have just eaten a dinner composed entirely of desserts. First, there was that red gelatin with grapes, on a leaf of lettuce. Why do Americans put a dessert on lettuce, and serve it at the beginning?”
“I've also seen them put pears from a can on lettuce,” my mother says.
“Tonight they put, all in one plate, sweet potatoes with those things like cotton balls on top—another dessert—and green beans. I cannot eat green beans on the same plate with dessert!”
“But they also gave you turkey, and that wasn't dessert. The turkey was the size of a pig! Mrs. Hillman had cooked it all alone. These American women, I don't know how they do it, without a maid to help them. But they don't get upset about anything, and their hair is always combed. Did you see?” my mother says, growing animated, “At the end of the meal Mr. Hillman and the boy took all the dirty dishes to the kitchen.”
“It is a strange country,” my father nods. “For instance, those round red slices they served with the turkey...”
“Ay! For a moment it reminded me of membrillo, quince paste...”
“But membrillo is never that sweet! No, no, this was too sweet, and it was followed by the final dessert: a pie with nuts. Even the cold tea they gave us to drink had sugar. My tongue is stuck to my teeth. In Spain this would never have happened.” My parents fall silent for a moment.
“But these Americans are so kind,” my mother says. “They don't understand anything we say, I can see their eyes open wide whenever I start to speak. Still, they invite us. They like a lot of butter, though. Maybe they don't have enough olive oil. In the store they only sell it in little bottles, very expensive.”
“Today they put butter on everything—on the turkey, on the green beans, on the bread, in the crust of the pie. How can we digest all that butter without wine? We may be a little sick tonight.”
My mother is laughing now. “You should have seen your face when they offered you a glass of milk with the pie!”
“That is the first time I have been offered a glass of milk since I was in short pants.”
“But they have so much good will, these Americans. They tried so much to explain the tradition to us. I think they said it was about eating with the Indians.”
“Impossible,” says my father. “The Indians were all killed...”
The conversation continues as we drive through the darkened streets. In the back seat, I barely hear it. I have fallen in love with the boy who helped clear the dishes, and a whole new continent is opening up before me.
O.k., that's it. I'm throwing in the towel, crying uncle, waving the white flag, giving up, capitulating. I'm not cooking dog food anymore.
Those of you who read my October 25 and October 30 posts know that I've been cooking my dogs' food for almost a month. And I've come to the conclusion that it's insane to keep doing it. Here's why:
Our freezer isn't big enough to store food for both dogs for even a single week, and ideally, to save time and labor, I'd like to fix two weeks' worth of food at a time.
To get around the freezer space problem, I decided to cook the meat and vegetables part of the meals separately from the rice. That way I could freeze the meat and veg, and cook the rice as needed. But that meant cooking rice every day and a half or so, and meat and veg every week, and remembering to defrost the next day's meat every morning, and keeping track of how the rice was holding up for each meal. Plus, since the dogs are different sizes, I had to remember how much rice and how much meat and veg each needed to eat at every meal. Should we ever go on a trip, I realized, I could never explain all this to the dog-sitter.
Ever since I started cooking for them, the dogs have been ravenously, constantly hungry. I've re-checked their protein intake and increased their rations to no effect. Two hours after a meal, they're famished, like me after dinner in a Chinese restaurant. And watching them patrol the kitchen for the smallest crumb, or inhale the seed hulls at the bottom of the bird feeder, or hearing them whine piteously when I start preparing their food has an unwholesome effect on my nerves. It makes me feel worried, unsettled and dispirited..
But I'm not going wholly back to kibble. I'll be supplementing it with vegetables, eggs, meat, powdered milk, canned fish—whatever comes to hand and seems healthy.
I'll be happier, and so will Lexi and Wolfie, for dog does not live by bread alone, but also by the feeling of easy communion with a non-frazzled mistress.
November
23, 2008
This fall, one of the strategies I invented against the economic crisis was to scavenge pumpkins. The week after Halloween, people were as glad to get rid of them as my chickens were to eat them. Last week, however, when everything froze up, I noticed that it was taking the chickens a lot longer to eat their pumpkin. It must have hurt their beaks to bang them over and over into that block of orange ice.
Still, when a friend offered her leftover pumpkins, I could not turn them down. They were beautiful pumpkins, bright orange, and not a mark on them. And they were frozen solid. Driving home, I considered the situation. If I put the frozen pumpkins in the chicken house, the hens wouldn't touch them. Then a thaw would come, the pumpkins would get squishy, and the chickens might eat one or two before everything froze again, or the pumpkins rotted. A shameful waste of pumpkins, either way.
I took the five pumpkins in the house and put them on the kitchen counter to defrost overnight. What would I find in the morning? Would the pumpkins deliquesce like Dali watches? Would they explode and spatter everything with juice and seeds?
Next morning the pumpkins still sat, orange and intact, on my blue counter. They were not rotten or moldy or icky in anyway--just a bit soft. No way was I going to throw them on the compost. They were food, filled with vitamins and calories, and somebody—the chickens or the dogs—would benefit from them. But I would have to cook them.
I took a deep breath, sharpened my Chinese chopper, and set my big stock pot on the stove. I chopped the five pumpkins--saving the seeds for the chickens--and steamed them (this took a long time). When they were done, I cooled them and strained them and stuffed them into sixteen quart-sized jars, which I wedged into our overflowing freezer. Then I scrubbed the stock pot in the sink and wiped my brow.
There, I said, that's done! Waste not, want not. That will show AIG and those other malefactors....
But wait. Waste not? How many hours had I spent trying not to waste the five pumpkins? How much of my unique spirit and creative energy had gone into those sixteen jars? “An expense of spirit in a waste of shame,” Shakespeare wrote. He was talking about lust. I am talking about pumpkins. Still, if we're talking economics here, the expense of spirit has definitely got to be accounted for.
November
22, 2008
I knew it was coming. When I found her two days ago, hunched over and pecking listlessly at the wall, I knew her sickness was upon her again, her lower abdomen flabby and distended. When this happened for the first time in August, I feared that scourge of good layers—egg binding. I soaked her in a warm bath, dried her off, and provided that chicken panacea: warmth and isolation. In just 24 hours she was looking perky and ready to rejoin the flock.
But this time it was different. The temperature has stayed well below freezing for about a week, so there was no way I could bathe her. Still, I put her in a cardboard box with the top open and a heat lamp suspended over it. But it didn't help. Yesterday, when I offered her water, she drank a couple of drops, just to please me. This morning, she didn't drink at all. When I went to close the coop doors for the night, I knew what I would find.
I turned off the heat lamp and carried the box into the feed room, so as not to upset the rest of the chickens.
Rest in peace, red hen. You were a good and faithful layer. We made your big brown eggs into omelettes, gave them to the food bank, fed them to the dogs. Your last, super-sized egg is in our fridge right now. Tomorrow we will take you into the woods, and in the night the red fox will come—but you will not mind this—and carry you to his den. His wife needs to build up her reserves, to last through the winter and make babies in the spring. You will be their Thanksgiving dinner.
November
21, 2008
Spent the evening out yesterday: our book group met at a friend's house. Before leaving the house I had to make sure that dogs and husband were fed, and the chickens closed in for the night. I had to make a pile of things to take with me: bottle of wine, books to return, books to lend. I had to think about my clothes. I had to arrange a ride. In my quasi-Cistercian Vermont existence, this is a lot of commotion. But it was wonderful to enter a space other than my own, see faces, hear voices (lots of voices), eat food that someone had deliciously cooked, and talk about half a dozen topics that I normally don't ever think about.
The book group comprises only women. When we gather, there is a feeling of expansiveness, of here we are again, just us, and isn't it terrific? I think that in contemporary life the book group has come to replace the village well, that pleasant place where women could be sure to meet with other women, and laugh and be themselves, and come away with a jar full of water, and a lightened mood.
Stayed in tonight, and oh, what bliss! Nothing to think ahead about. Just the evening spreading out in front of me like a meadow. Fire in the stove, books if I want them, dogs at my feet. Time to be quiet, to digest last night's tumult. There's nothing like the contemplative life....
In fact, there's nothing like the balanced life, at least for me. I'm no more a Cistercian than I am a socialite, though I am each by turns. The trick lies in the balance between the two. Too many outings and I become critical, intolerant and disenchanted with humanity. Too much isolation and I turn morose, depleted, and unable to take action.
There's a fine line for me between too much staying in and too much going out, too much silence and too much chatter, too many faces and too much solitude. It's the eternal Goldilocks dilemma, and it's taking me a lifetime to figure out what feels just right. But I'm getting closer to it all the time.
November
20, 2008
In truth, I'm just a would-be vegetarian. Left to my own devices, I would rejoice in a diet of cheese, eggs, veggies, and dessert. But I cook and eat meat because I'm married to a man who truly would go into a decline if he didn't have some meat on a regular basis.
I prefer pork to beef, chicken to pork, and fish to chicken. And I like my animal protein cut into unrecognizable bits and sprinkled sparingly on top of pasta or rice. Put an anatomically-correct chicken leg on my plate, with its knee cartilage intact, and I'll just sip my wine and concentrate on the conversation, thank you very much.
So
it was strictly in the spirit of supporting the community that I
accompanied my husband to the village fire department's annual game
dinner. This event, which heralds the opening of rifle season for
deer and other quadrupeds, is so well attended that long lines form
outside the fire hall. This year it was flurrying snow as we waited,
but even so a fog of meat-saturated vapors enveloped us. You're in
Vermont now, I said to myself, taking shallow breaths. You will
remain at your husband's side and make nice with everyone you meet.
In no time at all, we were in front of steaming vats of meat, paper plate in hand. “How about some venison stew?” a burly fellow offered. “Some bear roast for you?” said his colleague. “Got some nice elk sausage here...” said the next. I smiled brightly and kept sidling down the line until I arrived at the turnip and squash section. Seeing my empty plate, the fireman in charge of veg (I wondered if he was being punished for something) gave me a double portion of each. Then I grabbed a piece of blueberry pie and joined my husband.
The next day, I heard shots around our house, and I got out the bright orange scarves and tied them around the dogs' necks. Even though our land is posted, we dare not walk in our woods for the next month or so. And that's too bad, because by the time the season's over there will be snow on the ground, and walking will be more difficult.
As I write, I can see “our” little herd of two does and two fawns grazing in the front field, getting the last of the green grass. Be careful, I want to tell them. Don't wander too far from the edge of the woods. You never know who's watching.
I don't much like game dinners, and I resent it that I can't walk in my own woods because of the threat of errant bullets. And those sweet-looking deer never fail to arouse my protective instincts. Nevertheless, I believe that hunting is a good thing, since it is the most humane way to procure meat for those who must have it--just think how the quality of life of wild game compares to that of cattle, pigs and chickens in industrial farms.
When I consider this, I feel a moral imperative to jump into a camouflage outfit, grab a rifle, and head into the woods to get for my spouse the meat he craves. But learning to shoot--not to mention learning to hunt and field-dress the carcass, and then lugging it home--sounds extremely difficult and time-consuming. Far more difficult and time-consuming, in my opinion, than it would be for my husband and the rest of the meat-eating world to learn to like tofu.
November
18, 2008
When Wolfie was seven months old, one day a bunch of people came to the house for a meeting followed by dinner. I put him and nine-year-old Lexi on down-stays in the living room, and they lay like statues until, at the end of the evening, the guests begged to pay their respects to them. My dogs, they exclaimed, were the best trained they'd ever seen.
Those were the good old days.
Wolfie's second birthday is less than two weeks away, and I'm sorry to say that, in the matter of greeting guests politely, he's acting like a two-month old puppy who happens to weigh 90+ pounds.
Here's how things are supposed to work: somebody knocks on the door. The dogs rush to see who it is, making an impressive noise. Since they're both German Shepherds, the noise is quite impressive, and they know it. I put them on down-stays several yards from the door, then let the person in. I put the person on stand-stay by the door. I go to Lexi (rank hath its privileges) and say, in a calm, almost indifferent tone, “Would you like to say hello?” Lexi walks over with her ears back and her tail wagging and gets petted by the guest. When I say “Enough!” she goes away and takes a nap, or whatever.
Then it's Wolfie's turn. I call him to me and have him walk quietly and serenely by my side until we reach the guest, whereupon Wolfie sits and gets a bit of petting. Again, I say “Enough!” and he goes off to do his thing, leaving us humans alone.
For weeks we practiced this ritual whenever anybody showed up at our door, and had it pretty well in hand. And then last week various people showed up three days in a row and, out of the blue, the dogs' behavior was abysmal.
The trouble started at the point where Wolfie was supposed to walk calmly and serenely towards the guest. Instead, he would plunge forward, mobbing the person and saying, to all effects, Where, oh where have you been all my life? Pet me, touch me, take me away with you forever!
While I was correcting Wolfie and hauling him back so we could start the guest approach again, Lexi, who wasn't born yesterday, would circle back and sneak in some extra petting from the guest, who so far hadn't been released from his stand-stay at the front door. This petting bonus would of course strike Wolfie as grossly unfair, making him all the more determined to reach the guest before the supply of affection ran out. It was chaotic, and, for me, humiliating. My two dogs were out of control. When the last set of people showed up, I shamefully abdicated: I shut the dogs away, and answered the door.
What's with my dogs? German Shepherds are supposed to be one-(wo)man dogs, polite but aloof with strangers. Yet Lexi and Wolfie have never met a person they haven't adored. We used to blame this on Lexi's unknown ancestry (she was a pound puppy), but Wolfie's father came straight from Germany, and there are serious Schutzhund dogs all over Wolfie's pedigree. The only good thing I can say about Wolfie and Lexi on this subject is that they have never jumped up on anyone.
Since the dogs are so friendly, why not, you ask, just let them have their way with guests? That might work if they were, say, Pugs. But two big specimens of what Cesar Millan calls a“powerful breed” bounding forward with the chummiest intentions can be alarming, even to dog lovers. I've got to get the guest-greeting ritual under control.
As a good (former) Catholic, before considering the situation I did an examination of conscience. And all became clear. Over the last several months, Wolfie, once a callow adolescent, has become unbelievably charming. He's big, he's sweet, he (finally!) clearly loves me. He minds beautifully inside the house, and pretty much outdoors. He lays his big head on my knee and looks into my eyes. He sighs, and throws himself at my feet. Who could resist? He's so tall that I can, without bending, pet him whenever he's at my side, which means that he gets a lot of “unearned” petting. Which, according to some schools of thought, makes him think that he can get away with anything. That he is, heaven help us, the boss.
I recall reading something about a last spurt of rebelliousness as a dog reaches the age of two. But that's just an average, and German Shepherds don't reach true maturity until they're at least three. Is there no end to this? Can't I just relax and “Let go, let Dog”? Is eternal vigilance the price of dog ownership?
I'm afraid it is. Otherwise, it wouldn't be so interesting.
November
17, 2008
Last winter was an especially cold and icy one in Vermont, and a plague of cabin fever raged across the land. “Never again!” my yoga teacher/herbalist/painter/gardener friend and I swore when it was over. (My friend's name is Dona Friedman, and you can see her work at artistseyestudio.com)
When the days started getting shorter this fall we began casting about for ways to keep ourselves and our friends lively and amused in the dark days ahead. We wanted something easy, basically an excuse to get together with people we like on a regular basis and with a minimum of fuss.
Just about everyone who moves to Vermont—or is born here and decides to stay—has an interesting story. People around here invent their lives and themselves in the best existentialist sense of the word. They blow glass, raise sheep, dry herbs, give massages, run for office...and there's never enough time to hear their stories when you meet them at a party or the post office.
Why not, my friend and I said, ask one of these interesting friends and neighbors to talk informally about his or her life and passions, and invite other friends and neighbors to drop in and listen? In a word, why not have a Salon?
So
we did. Yesterday, Sunday, was the first one. There were nine
people in all. Joanne Smith told us of her transformation from
knitting aficionada in Connecticut to serious shepherd in Vermont.
She was eloquent and witty, and told us amazing and intimate things
about sheep. She let us feel the soft, lustrous yarns spun from the
prize-winning wool of her Romneys. She spread out a sheepskin that
would have made Jason and the Argonauts set sail for Vermont. She
told us about Toby, her sheepdog, more of a friend and colleague
than a dog. (You can see Joanne's farm, her sheep, and Toby at
bearmountainfarm.com)
We drank wine, ate cheese, asked Joanne questions and talked about whatever came into our heads. There was a fire going in the stove, and our little living room rang with talk and laughter.
It was way more fun than a movie, or a play, or a cocktail party. It was a salon, i.e., people turning to each other for stimulation, companionship, and that mysterious something that humans have been getting, since time immemorial, from sitting around a fire, talking.
