Whirl

Did you know that basset hounds were originally bred to track and kill badgers?

Think about this for a moment. Badgers are nocturnal carnivores who live in elaborate tunnels which they defend with absolute ferocity. A badger hound would require a strong sense of smell to track the animal during daylight. It would also need to be short enough to fit into a badger’s den, and stout enough to drag the animal out. Most importantly, the dog would have to be stupid enough to actually go down that hole in the first place.

In this regard, humble Stanley was the crowning achievement of his breed.

He was our first basset and-like most things I’ve purchased in my life-he was bought on impulse. I don’t mean to imply he was found on an end-cap at the grocery store. It’s just that we brought Stanley into our home without a heck of a lot of planning. I’d always been fascinated with the breed. I knew nothing about them mind you, but they looked so cool and laid back-how could you not want one?

However, the official justification for Stanley was my son. He’d never really had a dog and, allowing that we had just moved halfway around the world, it seemed reasonable to get him one. Since I had just taken a job that would keep me on the road 70% of the time, it should have occurred to me to ask my spouse what seemed reasonable to her.

Stanley clearly received his genetic cards from the bottom of the deck. Our first inkling of this was his first round of vaccinations. Everything was fine at the clinic, but by the time we got home his face had swollen to twice its’ size. We quickly rushed him back to the vet and learned he was allergic-to everything I think, including air.

From that moment on we kept Benadryl on hand at all times-just in case he ate something dangerous. And he often did: poison ivy, flowers, carpet, mulch…even rocks. In one spectacular feat he managed to catch and devour a sizzling brat as it moved the very short distance between our grill and the ground (resulting in second degree burns). He even evolved a passionate taste for bees-which of course he was allergic to-and would snatch them from the air as they worked the flowers in our back yard.

We were able to keep this under control because the dog was agoraphobic. He was terrified of walks and even hated to spend time alone in our fenced back yard.. We took him to the basset waddle in Troy Michigan, hoping he would take to the other dogs. But poor Stanley could not handle being around so much activity. He and I ended up spending our afternoon together in the car.

But the fact that he spent 99% of his time inside never seemed to deter this houndish instincts. For instance he loved to bury things. My daughter and I once watched him dig an imaginary pit in the middle of our couch-using both feet. He would take a coveted object, pick a spot in the carpet, and dig a hole. He would spend hours digging these holes-they must have been huge! Then he’d nose the object into the hole and use his nose to cover it with imaginary dirt. He did this so often that at times his nose was worn pink.

Despite these disadvantages (and the added veterinary bills), he was an absolute joy for all of us. He was loving, and funny, and kind. He held a central place in our family and the years passed quickly. We loved him, and of course he never failed to return the favor-always waddling over for a petting whenever we entered the room.

Our first sign of trouble came when he ran into a door at full speed. Stanley had never been all that graceful so this had happened before (he once ran into a wall with a stick in his mouth; lodging it into the back of his throat; prompting yet another trip to the vet). But this incident had a different feel to it. I noticed his left eye was sort of glassy, so we scheduled another trip to the vet (we were on first a first name basis, by then).

It was Glaucoma. A very common problem with bassets as they age. As this disease causes a buildup of pressure against the optic nerve, he must have been in terrible pain for weeks. The doctor removed his eye (a procedure called enucleation) and all was well for another couple of years. But eventually, even with regular trips to a specialist and daily medication, he lost the other eye. My first instinct was to have him put down. I couldn’t imagine how he could function in our world without his sight. Thankfully, on the morning of the procedure our son talked me out of it.

So Stanley entered a new phase in his life just as our family entered one as well. My wife and I were splitting up, and my son was starting college, our daughter had fallen in love and the whole world was spinning for all of us.

But in many ways, Stanley was happier. He could find his way around the house, and later my apartment-so well in fact that visitors often failed to realize he was blind. And his agoraphobia was cured! He enjoyed being outside and taking walks with me. I could let him go on the large grassy yard behind the apartment and at last he was a dog: able to wander, roll, fart and sniff without fear (something every guy should have a chance to do).

It was a brief respite. Stanley was ten years old now and fading fast. He was losing control of his digestive tract (it had been through a lot over the years) and could no longer make it through the day. His hips were failing him and he could not get up to greet me when I came home. After another year I realized a couple of things: first I could not devote enough of my time to his care, and second he was suffering through each and every day. I had Stanley euthanized in May of 2003. I held him in my arms as the doctor gave the injection. He just seemed to fall asleep.

The intervening years have brought relief and guilt. I feel my children believe I did this for my own convenience and truthfully, I cannot look them in the eye and assure them this is completely false. At the point that questions of lifestyle and responsibility cross, the lines become very blurred indeed. I loved Stanley and I treasure the gift he gave our family. I knew that I could not take him forward into the next stage of my life because that new life was too unsettled to ensure his care. So I chose the time and place of his demise. I cannot, to this day, say it was the wrong choice, nor will I ever know for sure that it was the right choice.

My choice is to remember Stanley with love and believe I did well by him.

© 2007 by Rodney Gleghorn. All rights reserved.

That’s what puppies are. Just like toothpaste actually. Apply a little pressure anywhere along the length, and the stuff just never seems to stop coming.

So it is with our new puppy, Belle.

I don’t know how such a thing is possible but cute little Belle has established a positive rate of exchange. Call it her GDP—gross defecation product. She eats a cup and shits a pint. I’m in awe.

A week ago our life was much simpler. One half day later we were in love. Such a pretty little face, those glowing eyes, that playful smile.

Ten minutes after that we were two blocks away and cleaning up our first cute little pile of crap.

Now I’ve become accustomed to the stuff. I check my shoes every two minutes and my fingernails every thirty seconds—even at work.

Our other dog Parker, the one we thought was so immature just a week ago, is now looking like a professor emeritus. He refuses to help us with the training. Instead he plants himself on the far side of every room and looks at us as though we were idiots. His tail is wagging but his eyes are telling us: “deal with it”.

And so we do. We’ve spent a small fortune on industrial cleansing agents–the green stuff and the blue. And we’ve abandoned our back yard to iridescent flies the size of candy corns.

Today Katharine took Belle to the vet for her first exam. He declared her to be in fabulous shape. There really isn’t much to look at on a puppy except the tube. His examination took all of 5 minutes and cost us $16 per minute.

This little exam took me back to a much more expensive day in the veterinary emergency room some 3 years ago. We were pretty sure Parker had eaten a piece of glass. The vet pointed to a spot on the x-ray that appeared to be about an inch below Parker’s adam’s apple.

“See that foggy stuff” she said, “That’s stool.” “The glass could be anywhere between there and his hind end”.

Parker is a big dog. The meandering gray rope she was illustrating looked to be about 30 feet long. We watched every inch of that rope find its way into the new world (no glass).

It only took two days. That’s 15 feet per day, 456 feet per month, and 5,475 feet per year.

My dog produces over a mile of shit, every single year!

I think little Belle is about to break that record…all she needs is another twenty feet of tube.

© 2007 by Rodney Gleghorn. All rights reserved.

Thanks to my neighbors, I can say I was a farm boy.

Mr. and Mrs. Ray worked a small subsistence farm in what my dad called “the bottoms” (by that he meant the wide, flat, and once fertile expanses of land which surround the Red River in southwest Arkansas). The couple scratched out a life on that farm for more than 50 years. In the mid 1960’s, their children bought them the little home on a five acre plot next to ours. Their intention was to give their parents some well deserved rest—but the Rays weren’t having any of that. They worked that patch of land as though it were a 1000 acre ranch. At one time they had seven cows, a mule, what seemed like a billion chickens, at least a dozen hogs and even a dozen or so guineahens.

Dad thought they were crazy. But I loved it. It was like having a petting zoo right next door. And as I got older, it got even cooler. I went from milking cows (for a quarter) to trapping and killing rats in the stockyard (this I did for free—who wouldn’t?).

Today I can only remember bits and fragments about them…that bothers me. I can’t even remember their first names. The small things I can remember are priceless to me.

Mrs. Ray was the classic nosey neighbor. We were on the same party line, and she often listened in on our calls—which drove my mother nuts! But then she and mom would spend hours talking in her kitchen—where she churned butter every morning. In the fall, when they butchered the hogs, she would build a fire in her yard and render lard and pork rinds in a large black cast iron kettle. I’ve seen her ring a chickens neck with about as much emotion as a brick. I also watched as she calmly tended to her grandson’s big toe, after he managed to nearly cut it off with an axe.

I know less about Mr. Ray. I can tell you that he worked a quarter acre garden with a mule and plow—well into the 1970’s. From our air conditioned living room, I remember seeing him pause in the midday sun for a drink of water. Every year, he let his pasture renew by grazing his cows in the neighbor’s field; herding them across the road in the morning and back to the barn every evening.

The division of labor was pretty typical. Both of them did the milking, and Mr. Ray did the outside heavy work—while she took care of him and pretty much everything else. She raised the chickens, but he would scout the nearby countryside for guinea eggs.

They owned the meanest dog in the neighborhood: Teddy, a scalded, half mad chow who he slept in the middle of the road. His right hind quarter was a lunar landscape of welded pink and blue skin. The scar tissue started about an inch below his tail and ran down the entire length of his leg—including the poor dog’s undercarriage. It’s no wonder he had a death wish.

And I can infer a little more. They probably married very young—she was likely in her teens. The two of them had a few rituals. Mr. Ray would read the paper to his unschooled wife every day. They drove to church every Sunday, and to town for what few supplies they needed, every other week. To me at least, they seemed to be much more in love than my parents were. Most summer evenings, I would see them holding hands on their porch, and—in younger days—the two of them procreated merrily. They raised several children and had (seemingly) thousands of Grandchildren. Christmas at the Ray’s was a huge homecoming event. Cars filled the lawn, the tree took up half their tiny living room, and gas ceramic heaters kept the tiny house very cozy.

For mom and I they were a temporary refuge.

For me they were also a source of knowledge. Through them I had a small window into a rapidly fading way of life. It was the same hard life my grandparents lived. The life that killed my paternal grandfather when my father was only 14—forcing dad to leave school to help his mother with exactly the same activities.

World War Two rescued him from that farm, but in the Rays he saw the life that almost trapped him.

He never forgave them for it.

© 2007, by Rodney Gleghorn. All rights Reserved

One of my earliest memories is of two giant fluffy creatures loping across the yard towards me. Candy and Rex were German Shepherd puppies. Rex would grow to be the classic black and tan, while Candy was black and silver. Both would be part of our lives for many, many years. Candy with us and Rex with our maternal grandmother, Maudie.

In our society today dogs are literally part of the family, living inside, sharing the furniture, going to daycare, and shopping—I can even bring my dog to work. We spend billions on them annually.

But in the 1960’s, at least in the south, at least to a country farmer, dogs were simply domesticated property. My parents were both raised on a farm during the depression. Thus they wholly subscribed to this model. And so they didn’t cut our pets very much slack—especially dad. Our grandmother held to the same view, but personally, I think she was just mean.

Grandma still lived on the family farm, or what was left of it, just a few miles northeast of Fulton, Arkansas. Her dog Rex lived a fairly long life for a country dog, which was absolutely astonishing because Maude was constantly shooting at him.

She used a 22 caliber rifle to call Rex home (and to shoot mockingbirds…another story entirely). If he was out of sight, she’d shoot in the air three times. But if she could see him she’d shoot just over his head “to get his attention”. Either Rex was good at dodging bullets or Maude was a very good shot—I strongly favor the latter theory.

But I digress. This essay started as a simple attempt to list every dog I’ve ever known. That proved too unwieldy so I tried to narrow it to a list of all the dogs that were part of my family, either as an adult or a child.

Eventually, I had a list of 14 dogs including Parker, our current dog. But I had difficulty putting the list in chronological order. I’m 48, and it’s hard to remember where my glasses are, much less a set of abstracted dates from forty years ago. So I did the most sensible thing I could think of at the time and called my mother. Though she is 84, she can recall every single transgression I ever embarked on during my childhood, so I felt it was a prudent move. She would be able to help me sort all of this out.

I was wrong. She began by instantly muddying the waters. “What about that hound of yours that had puppies?”

“Mom, I had two beagles, and both of them were male. This must have happened after I left home.”

“Those puppies were your fault.”

“How could it be my fault Mom? Are you suggesting I impregnated the hound myself? ”

“Don’t be disgusting. You begged us to bring the puppies in because the mother died.”

An inkling of recognition began to raise its head—I could remember that we (by “we”, of course I mean mom) hand raised a litter of puppies, but I couldn’t back down now. Besides, I also remember an exploding jug of homemade wine—and being sworn to secrecy lest my father find out. My mother could not always be trusted.

“Maybe it was one of dad’s bird dogs?”

“It was not one of those damn smelly birddogs! If it had been, I would have left the damn things to die!”

This was just posturing of course, she would never have ignored a helpless animal.

We went on for a few more minutes and she did remember some of the dates, not to mention a few more transgressions (some of which were clearly my brother’s). Plus, in addition to the mysterious pregnant hound, mom also recalled a collie puppy I’d completely forgotten—though neither of her could remember her name.

So, not including smelly bird dogs, this is the most complete and accurate list I can attest to, in chronological order—including my mother’s somewhat dubious testimony:

In our society today dogs are literally part of the family, living inside, sharing the furniture, going to daycare, and shopping—I can even bring my dog to work. We spend billions on them annually. But in the 1960’s, at least in the south, at least to a country farmer, dogs were simply domesticated property. My parents were both raised on a farm during the depression. Thus they wholly subscribed to this model and didn’t cut our pets very much slack.

It’s hard to be a dog in any environment. Primarily because they are utterly dependent on humans and it seems, more often than not, we’re real bastards. But it isn’t all our fault. Dogs tend to make some really bad decisions. Here’s a randomized list of true behaviors from various dogs I’ve known:

• Poor Dietary Choices:
  • Frequently eating paper towels, thus leading to extreme discomfort (for all of us) a day or so later.
  • Eating through drywall.

• Poor Spatial Acuity:
  • Trying to squeeze through of the narrow window of a transport cage—and getting stuck in the process.
  • Running head first into a wall with a sharp stick in his mouth—thus jamming it through the roof of his mouth and almost into his, apparently empty, cranium.

• Unwarranted Risk Taking:
  • Sleeping in the middle of the road.
  • Chasing cars.
  • Jumping out of a moving car.
  • Rushing into a burning house.
  • Catching and eating bees.
  • Taking a dump on the front seat of my brother’s truck. My brother actually deserved this one, but the dog was taking a huge risk. You should never mess (no pun intended) with a southern man’s truck.

• Poor Hunting Ability:
  • Chasing a skunk into the crawlway beneath our home.
  • Retrieving a tortoise instead of a rabbit(tortoises are not really dangerous, but pissed off redneck hunters are).

But none of this excuses any of us from our responsibility. It is our job to provide our pets with an environment that shields them from harm, and even from their own stupidity. When I look at the dogs in my life, I can see we (my parents and I) failed miserably.

Our failure is such a disservice because every one of our dogs gave us something very real—much more than just a few laughs. The puppies gave me untold hours of joy and play—a daily respite from the confusing cruelties of a master I did not get to choose. For ten years Candy was my closest friend and bodyguard—roaming the woods and fields with me, never more than a few yards away.

Mom would somehow manage to complain about the dogs and yet still fret over them. Little Bo Diddley was the first animal she allowed to live inside her house, and I know she took shelter within his enormous love. We were on vacation on the night of the fire. Our neighbor actually took Bo Diddley from the house and set him down safely in the yard. But he ran back in. To this day mom believes he was looking for us.

As I became an adult, I withdrew and hardened. As a teenager, I didn’t have time for dogs. I focused on escape; joining the Air force as soon as I finished high school. It took me a great many years to shake off the callous attitude I inherited.

When I first became a family man, I insisted our pets be kept outside. Eventually, I softened enough to allow them inside. But even then, as my children were growing, I was inconsistent. I brought them into our family just so that my children could have the same experiences as I. Yet I did so without regard to consequences, and I was too quick to toss them aside for the sake of convenience: selling them instead of taking them with us when we moved; euthanizing them instead of helping them through their final years.

This set a horrible example for my children, who both had (and still have), so much more capacity for love than I could muster. And it denied me the opportunity to open up and allow our dogs to guide me forward; to once again take refuge in their simple devotion and trust.

Today I have managed to return to a near human state. Parker is doted over to the point of making our grown children jealous. His transgressions are forgiven and his poor judgment is buffered. I owe him so much more. He lives for many who went before.

© 2007 by Rodney Gleghorn, all rights reserved.