Every morning, as I limp down the hallway from the bedroom to the kitchen, no matter how stiff I am with arthritis, no matter how poorly I’ve slept, as soon as I get to the kitchen, my heart becomes lighter.
“Good morning, fur children,” I chirp. They woof and growl and gambol and pant. They know it’s cookie time for the canine contingent, but coffee time for me.
I make a brief detour to turn on the coffee pot. Priorities.
There’s no more time to waste. Eager faces surround me as I approach the huge dog biscuit container on the table in the corner. It’s shaped like a giant dog biscuit — lest I forget. The dogs , with their acute senses of smell, are more than aware of where to find the biscuits. Eyes not required.
They know my hands are the true source of all biscuits, so they watch me with their eyes. Excitement mounts.
Bishop is an Australian Shepherd. Lacking sheep, he stares at me, with the apparent objective of engendering guilt. It works pretty well. He is also Bonnie’s love slave.
Then there’s Nan, the Norwich Terrier. Nan stares, but adds sound effects. Grunts and agonized moans. She’s starving she says. She hasn’t eaten in … minutes. She will repeat this performance whether she is still chewing the biscuit she just got or it’s been a whole night since her last treat.
And last, but not at all least, there’s Bonnie. She bounces up and down, bounds around the kitchen like a mad thing, twirling and spinning, yapping and prancing. She’s young and full of joie de vivre. Shortly, she will be full of biscuits.
They all believe if they don’t remind me, I will forget them and their cookies. These dogs have never missed a treat or a meal in their lives but you’d never guess it.
The sun streaks in through the windows, the smell of coffee fills the room. Joyous gurgling and crunching from the furry ones and I’m off to the office to check my email and see what surprises the night has brought. Another day is begun.
Can you set a price on love? Can you set a number to it? Can you calculate it by the cost of health care, toys, dog food? Grooming?
Tinker Belle was a Petit Basset Griffon Vendeen, also called PBGVs or Petites. They are a medium-sized, shaggy rabbit hound from the Vendée region of France, but have become over the past 20 years, quite popular as pets, though they are definitely not a dog for just anyone. They are smart, funny (they will do almost anything to make you laugh), noisy, and into everything.
Tinker Belle was special. From the day I brought her home from the airport (she had just flown up from her breeder’s home in North Carolina), she wasn’t like any other puppy I’d ever met. She was incredibly smart. As a rule, hounds are intelligent, but she was something else. Housebreaking? We showed her the doggy door. She was henceforth housebroken. She could open any door, any gate and close them behind her. She would open jars of peanut butter without leaving a fang mark to note her passing. All you’d find was a perfectly clean empty jar that had previously been an unopened, brand new jar.
She was deeply sensitive. Probably born to be a therapy dog, she knew who was in pain, she knew who was sick. She knew where you hurt. She was the only dog who would never step on a healing incision, but would cuddle close to you, look at you with her dark, soft eyes and tell you everything would be fine. She never hurt a living thing, not human or anything else … except for small varmints she hunted in the yard. She was, after all, a hound and a hunter at that, born to track, point and if necessary, kill prey.
She was the smartest of our five dogs, the smartest dog of my life. Not just a little bit smarter than normal. A huge amount smarter. When you looked into Tinker’s eyes, it wasn’t like looking into the eyes of a dog. She was a human in a dog suit. She knew. We called her Tinker the Thinker because she planned, she remembered. She held grudges. More on that. For all that, she was Omega (the bottom) in the pack, we thought it was mostly her own choice. She had no interest in leadership. Too much responsibility maybe? But the other dogs knew her value. When they needed her, other dogs would tap into her expertise in gate opening, package disassembly, cabinet burglary, trash can raiding and other criminal activities. Throughout her life, she housebroke each new puppy. A couple of hours with Tinker, and the job was done. It was remarkable. Almost spooky. She then mothered them until they betrayed her by growing up and playing with other dogs.
When Griffin, our big male Petit Basset Griffon Vendeen came to live with us a few months after Tinker, they became The Couple. inseparable, deeply in love. They ate together, played together, slept together, sang together. When about a year later, we briefly had a little Norwich Terrier pup and Griffin (what a dog!) abandoned Tinker to go slobbering after Sally … well … Tinker’s heart was broken. She became depressed, would not play anymore with humans or other dogs. For the next 10 years, Tinker refused to so much as look at Griffin. Worse, she apparently blamed us, her humans for having brought another girl into the house. In retribution for our crimes, Tinker began her Reign of Terror.
Tinker took to destroying everything she could get her fangs on when she was three years old. She’d done a modest amount of puppy chewing, but nothing extraordinary. She was more thief than a chewer. She would steal your stuff and hide it. Shoes, toys (Kaity was very young), towels, stuffed animals. After Griffin betrayed her with that stupid little bitch — Sally was indeed the polar opposite of Tinker being the dumbest dog I’ve ever known and ill-tempered to boot — Tinker was no longer a playful thief. She was out to get us.
Nothing was safe. She had a particular passion for destroying expensive electronic devices. Cell phones, remote controls, portable DVD players, computers. If she could get a fang to them, she killed them. She would do more damage in under a minute than I thought possible. For Garry and I, it meant we couldn’t leave the room together unless we put everything away where Tink couldn’t get it. Tinker would strike quickly and she was lethal. If we were going to bed for the night, every single movable item that was less than 6 feet off the ground had to be put away. If she couldn’t get to any small expensive electronic items, she ate the sofa, the rocking chair, the coffee table, a lot of books, many DVDs …. and for dessert, shoes were always yummy. For many years, I didn’t own any shoes without tooth marks. We called such items “Tinkerized” and we had a grading system ranging from 10 – Utterly destroyed, to 1 – Only shows if you look closely. Most of my shoes fell into the 2 to 3 range and since she tended to start at the heel, I figured most folks wouldn’t notice.
Kaitlin’s toys were safe if Kaity was currently paying a lot of attention to Tinker. If not, she was punished with the beheading of any doll Tinker could find. She didn’t bother with limbs, but always went straight for the head. She gutted stuffed things with grim efficiency.
During one memorable intermission, Garry and I went to the kitchen to grab something to drink and she dismembered our remote controls. We were gone, by the clock, about a minute. The kitchen is adjacent to the sofa were we watch TV, so she managed to do this with us not 10 feet away. It cost me a couple of hundred dollars to replace them. She pulled off the backs, tore out the batteries (but never ate them), then ripped out the wiring and boards. She didn’t waste any time, either. If she had the leisure, she’d also tear out the keys and generally mangle the cases, but if time was limited, she went straight to the guts of the thing. She was good.
For 10 years, we lived under siege. If you didn’t want it Tinkerized, you couldn’t leave it exposed, not for a minute.
Yet we loved Tinker and for the last year of her life, after we brought Bonnie home, Tinker became a real dog again. Under the influence of Bonnie, the friendliest, happiest, most charming Scottie on earth, Tinker came out of her sullens and played with Bonnie. She ran around the yard and played tag, joined the chorus when the other dogs pointed their muzzles at the sky and sang. Hounds have such beautiful voices and Tinker’s was the most beautiful of all. When she sang, nature sang with her. I suppose this is a matter of taste, but for those of us who love hounds, you know what I mean. Singing is a social function for canines. When a pack sings, it isn’t an alert. It’s a chorus. They are really truly singing together. Each dog has a part, joining in, then pausing and rejoining at the right moment. Tinker was a baritone, the deepest and loudest of the canine voices and Bonnie is a coloratura soprano, very musical, but light.
Almost exactly a year ago, Tinker died of cancer. She had shown no symptoms except a slight slowing down and a very minimally reduced appetite. One day, she collapsed. She was riddled with cancer. There was no organ in her body that was unaffected. How in the world she had so effectively hidden her illness is mind-boggling, but she did. A couple of weeks later, Griffin had a massive stroke and died. They were almost exactly the same age and I don’t believe for a minute that the timing of their passing was mere coincidence. Despite Griffin’s infidelity, the two PBGVs were Karmically joined and could not live without each other.
The house was so quiet with the two hounds gone. We didn’t have to hide everything anymore, though it took us months to realize it was safe, that I could leave my laptop out at night and no dog would bother it. After the two hounds passed, the pack did not sing for half a year. One day, mourning ended and they started to sing again. Now, they sing twice a day, early in the morning (get up Mom) and in the evening (pause that show, time for the chorus).
What was Tinker’s true cost? We paid $700 for her when she was a puppy. Who knows how much her medical care cost over the years? Who remembers? That’s such a basic part of the contract between dogs and their keepers. They love us, we care for them. Other damages? Thousands of dollars in electronic gear, furniture, shoes, books, DVDs, videotapes, dolls, stuffies and who knows what else.
But she paid us back, you see. Because when I was terribly ill, Tinker never left my side. When I was back from surgery, missing another piece of me and in pain, Tinker was there, never placing a paw where it would hurt me. How does it add up? How much was the love worth? What is the true cost of a lifetime love of my dearest friend?
Bonnie, our proud and fierce Scottish Terrier, rules our world. With four iron paws encased in velvet gloves, she share her home with us. We are grateful.
Recently, we upgraded her sleeping arrangement and got her a new sofa. The back of the sofa is the perfect height to align her with the picture window. Of course, we have also put pillows along the back so that she will be more comfortable sitting there and viewing her realm.
We live to serve her royal self.
Undaunted by vacuüm cleaners or other machinery, she protects us from unrelated dogs that might wander near our property, especially the two mastiffs who live next door.
She saves us from the peril of evil socks and fuzzy blankets, steals those devil paper napkins (she knows the evil that lurks therein). She will sleep next to us, her big head on our feet, and we know who is in favor today by where she lays her head. She will never sleep on a lap. She is a terrier and her feet need to be in contact with ground in case she needs to launch herself into action.
Since we have a doggy door, she may need to fly out to protect her domain at any moment without warning.
The back of the sofa is Bonnie’s special place, the cushions on the back of the sofa her throne. From her lofty perch, she can see her domain.
I believe she has a secret Facebook account with thousands of friends. I just haven’t been able to prove it yet.
Bonnie and her caretaker. She really likes Garry better, but will settle for me.
Meet Bonnie Annie Laurie, who loves us enough to let us fulfill her needs.
We have two dogs. We have had as many as five, but time and age have reduced the size of the pack. Our current crew consists of our two terriers — Bonnie our gallant Scottie lass, and Nan, an attractive older Norwich terrier.
Bonnie is just 5 — playful, smart and very funny. I am convinced she has her own Facebook account, thousands of fans, and is on my laptop the moment my back is turned. She is atypically an extremely friendly, outgoing little girl. Although she is the dominant dog in the household, she’s so charming, other dogs don’t mind that she is a bit bossy.
We only got Nan last Autumn. She’s heading towards 11 years old and her owner didn’t want her any more. She thought we’d give her a good home and so we have, though I dread knowing that she doesn’t have a long life ahead of her.
She has attached herself to me as no dog ever has before. I sometimes think she isn’t sure how she wound up here. She clings to me because, after 10 years in one home, she is displaced. I wish I’d had her when she was younger. We’d have made her happy. Now, she is my velcro girl. She follows me everywhere, sleeps at my feet in the office and by my side on the sofa. She follows me into the bathroom, sits politely and waits for me to finish, wash my hands, then trots with me to wherever I’m heading. Except while we sleep, she is never more than inches away from me.
All the dogs follow me to the kitchen. Dogs are such optimists. They’re always sure if we are near food, some is sure to fall their way. I’m a sucker, which means they are often right.
For a very long time, when both of us were working full-time, we had cats, then we had a cat and two ferrets, then we had the same cat and one, then two dogs. Then Big Guy, our cat, passed away. We moved to the country and the number of dogs kept growing … and then time started to reduce their numbers. I miss the pack, but we are so short of money that we can no longer afford to maintain so many dogs and even the two we have puts a serious strain on our so-to-speak finances. Every trip to the vet is terrifying on two levels … lest we discover one of our dogs is ill and whether or not we can afford whatever medical care might be involved.
This sequester that everyone is making fun of and ignoring is going to make our already difficult lives much worse. It’s going to put a lot of people out of work. It’s going to reduce access to medical care for older people living on Medicare. We aren’t going to get through unscathed and just because nothing seems to be happening, don’t believe for a moment it won’t. A lot of people are going to lose their jobs. Not only is our personal security going to suffer, but national security is going down the tubes too. When you have to furlough the army and empty the jails because you can’t afford prisoners, it doesn’t bode well, especially after you lay off the police, teachers, and all the other guardians of our quality of life.
Meanwhile, because I can’t worry about everything, I worry about the dogs. Ourselves too. Our future, such as it may be. Wondering if we really have a future or if we are looking at the end of life as we know it.
In Washington D.C., our elected officials have nothing to worry about. They’ve got medical benefits, guaranteed wages. They have all the things they think we should do without because we aren’t nearly as important as they are. The worst thing that’s going to happen to them is they will lose the use of government jets for junkets! Wow, that’s harsh.
All this is happening because the people who are supposed to take care of us are more interested in maintaining their political principles than in what happens to us, the folks they are sworn to protect. It’s going to get ugly. We will cling together and hug our dogs against the darkness.
Wherever I go and whatever I do, Nan comes with me. To the kitchen, to the bathroom, to my office. All day, every day, she stays right by my feet. When I get up to go into the kitchen, she comes with me, so close to my feet that I sometimes have difficulty avoiding falling over her and landing in a tangle of fur, feet, fingers and toes.
My Protector
When Nan first came here last September, it seemed she had no interest in anything but cadging snacks, but since then she has attached to me as no dog ever has. If I would let her sleep with me, she would, but we have a “no dogs in the bed” rule. Bad backs and a selfish need to keep one place in the house dog-hair free (more or less) … but otherwise, from the moment I get out of bed in the morning until I haul my butt off to bed late at night, Nan is within an arm’s length.
She laughs at me!
Nan is a beautiful, champion Norwich Terrier. She is 10 years old, going on 11. Until she came to live with us, she had spent her whole life with one family. I didn’t know how well she’d fit in here but she needed a home. Our dogs are as easy-going as any dogs anywhere, and we have owned Norwich and other terriers before … so this was probably her best chance of finding a comfortable place to live out her years … and I hope there are many more to come.
Her Royal Highness
There’s a bit of friction between the two terriers — typical for dogs with a feisty temperament — mostly because they are possessive. As time has gone one, they get on better. As I watch, they are sleeping together in heap between Garry and I on the love seat. Nan is tight next to my feet, Bonnie, our Scottish Terrier, has her head on Garry’s leg (which is probably asleep).
Perfect pal
Once our furry pals are settled in, we hate to move and disturb them. Finally, when we just have to get up or we have completely lost sensation in our feet, we apologize profusely for bothering them. I hope they understand.
Buying a vacuum cleaner when you own pets, especially long-haired dogs or cats, is a big deal. Normal people go to a store and buy a vacuum cleaner. Almost any reasonably good machine will do the job and last for years.
For pet owners and especially for those of us who have more than a few pets, in our case dogs, buying a vacuum cleaner is a major life event, potentially a life-altering event. For us, pet hair is not a sidebar: it’s the central theme of life. During shedding season, which for long-haired breeds is all year — though much worse from late summer through autumn — the house looks like someone slashed open a cushion and spread the stuffing everywhere. Vacuuming is a massive undertaking performed daily. Failing to vacuum for a couple of days might make the house a candidate for condemnation and/or a Hazmat team.
When our Australian Shepherd is blowing his coat, no amount of vacuuming is enough. Everything is covered in fur. Note the main difference between purebred and mixed breed dogs is that purebreds “blow their coats” while mixed breeds simply “shed.” The results are identical, but it sounds classier for purebreds.
Many long-haired breeds are bred to have huge coats and most owners who aren’t showing their dogs clip them. Even clipped, there’s still an awful lot of fur. We adopted our Aussie; he had been a show dog … and the absolutely heaviest coated Aussie I’ve ever seen. All of that coat falls out annually. You can comb and brush him daily; there’s always more. The volume is astonishing. No mixed breed dog could generate such a gigantic mess. I always swore I would never own a dog with that much fur. I’ve turned down free pups and full-grown show dogs because they had too much fur. I had a breeder beg me to take one of her Samoyeds. He was gorgeous and a champion, only 8 months old … if I was willing to bathe and groom him myself.
I was young and hardy then. But I looked at him and I said, NO. A large (he was bigger than most Samoyeds), snow-white dog with a coat designed to withstand an arctic winter? I love dogs, but not that much. Yet despite more than forty years of dodging that particular bullet, I still wound up with a dog that sheds enough fur to carpet the world in hair. Somehow, I lost focus long enough to adopt him … and here we are, up to our eyeballs in fur.
If you happen to own (for example) a Great Pyrenees, a Sheltie, an Australian Shepherd (think Collie without a tail), anything that looks like Lassie, a sled dog (any sled dog including mixes), an Old English Sheepdog (possibly THE worst of all, being triple-coated), a long-haired St. Bernard (the list goes on), you are permanently in search of a better vacuum cleaner. It’s a mission.
Thus the purchase is an event requiring consultation, discussion and complex negotiations. What are the parameters? First and foremost, that baby has to suck. You want a machine that will pull the wall to wall carpeting off the floor, pull the cushions off the sofa and try to eat the draperies.
You have to balance the percent of carpeting versus hardwood flooring, number of stairs, weight, portability, how hard is it to clean it out because pet hair really clogs the works and finally, price. If you don’t keep clearing it, no vacuum will survive long. You quickly learn that small, light machines are a waste of money. If it doesn’t have a bag, anything other than a small hand vac will die in short order. You need power. You need a bag. You need strength of character, the understanding that you are going to have to deal with filth and lots of it. You need amperage, determination and above all, you need sucking power. Nothing can be too powerful. Your budget determines the limit, so within what you can manage, you try to get the best sucker available.
Bagless machines are weenies. We multiple pet owners need bags. Big ones.
The terriers don’t shed much. The short-haired dachshund doesn’t shed much. The Aussie sheds enough for 10 normal dogs and in the fall, it’s indescribably awful. Every morning, the house is covered in fur, great gobs of is. Huge piles of it cover the rugs, floor, and sofas. It infests the upholstery, adheres to the drapes, forms giant cobwebs that make your house look like the Adams family redux.
We’ve burned out two vacuum cleaners in less than a year, both bagless. This time, we bought a Hoover Commercial Portapower Vacuum Cleaner, 8.3 Lbs, Black. Typical five-star reviews say stuff like “This little commercial vacuum cleaner is one of the best buys out there. I can clean up Great Pyrenees hair with ease and empty out the bag and start over again without clogging up the vacuum like other machines I have killed with dog hair.” This customer understands our needs.
Will will also need an upright to deal with rugs? Probably, but affording ONE machine was hard enough. A second will have to wait until next month at the very least.
I have a morning routine that rarely varies except for an early appointment, something I try hard to avoid.
I wake up. I lay there a while, contemplating if there’s any chance I can go back to sleep. I can’t. I never can, so I don’t know why I keep trying. Hope springs eternal.
I brush my teeth, throw some clothing on. Grabbing the telephone and cell, I cross the hall to my office put the phones on the desk, look to see if anything needs to go to the kitchen. I gather yesterday’s coffee mug and any dishes and head to the kitchen. Down the hallway, I open the gate that keeps the dogs out of places I don’t want them going unsupervised. They greet me. I greet them. They are extremely glad to see me, and act like they haven’t seen me for years rather than a few hours. A biscuit is coming, oh boy, a biscuit and if they can manage to be extra cute, maybe two. They know my routine better than I do and can hear me as soon as I stir in the bedroom.
Mistress of perversity that I am, I make them wait. I go to the sink, put mugs, dishes, glasses, etc. and wash them. The dogs are going nuts by now. I push the button on the coffee machine. The reassuring sound of coffee beginning its drip through the coffee into the canister begins.
Each dog has his or her own special little sound to indicate how very much a biscuit would improve their morning and how starving they all are. Bishop, an Australian Shepherd who lacks a tail, wags his entire rump with excitement, tongue lolling. Bonnie hops around like a messy black pogo stick and Nan grumbles loudly and tries to eat my fingers. I give a medium-size tasteless dry biscuit to Bishop and a tiny one to each of the terriers. They are ecstatic. I, like most dog owners, have tasted a bit of one of these biscuits and they are completely tasteless and incredibly dry. But the dogs act like it’s caviar. They will perform tricks for them, and if it makes them happy, who am I to argue?
Is there enough coffee yet ? Nope, not yet. When I turn around, I am engulfed by dogs. I’m just a stupid human and probably don’t remember that I already gave them biscuits. I discuss the issue with them at some length, and sometimes, they wangle a second biscuit … not that they really need one, but they are awfully cute.
I get a clean mug, put sweetener and half-and-half in it, and go look in the living room to see just how much of a mess they’ve made. Usually the entire room is covered with Bishop’s fur. He’s blowing his coat now, so it’s worse than usual, but it’s always bad. He has a heavy coat and seems to lose an amount of fur equivalent to one small dog per day this time of year. The rest of the year, it’s only half that much. If it’s really horrendous, I grab the special pet hair vacuums in which I invested not long ago and try to clean up a bit so Garry won’t have to do it when he finally gets up.
By then, coffee is done. Into a cup, off to the office, followed by a parade of dogs. I never go anywhere unaccompanied. I am always leading a parade of canines who feel I shouldn’t be allowed to go to the bathroom without supervision.
It was such a pretty morning. The sun was up and it was that yellow amber you see only in the middle of October in New England. It makes everything glow … barring rain. No rain this morning. Nice. We have had a lot of rain recently. So, instead of pouring myself that cup of coffee, I go back to the office and grab the camera. I love the way the light looks as it comes into the windows in the morning so I have to take a few pictures, even though they will probably look identical to all the other pictures I’ve taken of the same windows. No matter. You never know when you just might strike gold and one of them will be something special. Then I hobble down the stairs to the front yard. My arthritis doesn’t begin to loosen up for an hour or two after I get up, but the light is not going to wait.
The woods on our property is usually uninteresting — even in October — consisting mostly of bronze oak trees. This year for some reason, many oaks have turned brilliant yellow and some have sections of scarlet … most unusual. I roam the northern edge of our property, then into the back yard shooting east toward the morning sun. I’ve been trying to capture a particular quality of light as it filters through the leaves. I’ve been trying to capture this for more than 40 years. I’m still at it. Maybe you can’t capture it except with your eyes. I’ll never give up trying.
Back into the house and out to the deck, where I have a higher angle to work from and can also shoot south and high up into the east woods.
Down from the deck, through the yard, in through the front door … and three of the fur children are waiting at the top of the stairs, completely blocking my path. They love doing this because their heads and mine are at the same level as I come upstairs. They think this is the best game in the world and get crazed with excitement anytime anyone comes up from the lower level. This happens quite a few times on any given day, but for them, it never gets old. I take a few pictures. Blurry, of course, because they are in motion, but maybe one or two won’t be useless. I’d use flash, but they hate it and will instantly vanish if I use it. Worse, they actually know when I pop the flash up and will run before I fire off a single shot.
That’s the story of today’s picture gallery and a snapshot of my world.
There are too many pictures to use them all today, but over time, I’ll probably post all of them. Every photograph was taken no more than a few yards from the house, and all on our own property.
The sun went behind clouds just a few moments after I finished shooting, so it’s just as well I didn’t wait.
Coffee time! And photo editing time, too. Another day has begun.
With camera in hand, exploring European lands, cultures, food, and drink...mostly with a plan, but sometimes enjoying the adventure of just getting lost.
