Such a strange thing it is, love. No need for words, just presence. I was prepared, and calm, and right there when she took her last breath. Yet, I would give anything and everything to be able to live together, side-by-side, for the rest of my life. Call me crazy but such is real love.
Mu 2003-2017.
A long absence of personal posts = a move to the country.
Even with all kinds of ups and downs (including a chaotic renovation process) this has been wondrous time for our dogs. It’s been close to miraculous to see them to “become themselves”, to shed some bad habits, clearly gain confidence, and become very relaxed. (Note that our dogs are rescues and both Mu and T had major issues; the former with skittishness and separation anxiety, the latter with dog aggressiveness.) To our knowledge, they both have been city dogs, until this June:
Mu and T have just arrived to the farm.
After being a tad nervous with the FedEx truck and all the renovation people around, T clearly took on the job of being the guardian of the house. But: in Brooklyn both of them used to get nervous exited with every ring of the doorbell; almost getting into a fight over who would run to the door. Here, it’s clearly T who is in charge of everyone’s safety.
T on alert.
The countryside has also been great for T’s health. He has a broken left hip that was operated on 1.5 years ago and that will never be 100% perfect again. So T still limps, perhaps every other week, but it’s much easier to provide him with opportunities to be outdoors and to be as active as he needs to and wants to. Due to this, his hip muscles have grown back. When he’s feeling good, he can run FAST.
And, it’s clear neither of our dogs are dog-aggressive. When thinking back to the first months of T having joined us in Brooklyn, I’m not surprise T reacted anxiously, even aggressively, to other dogs. He came from the streets and his hip was broken! (It took 3 vets to diagnose that, but we also grew anxious because of T’s behaviour — and he must have reacted to that as well.) It’s amazing how well he tolerates his new pack member, the fearless bundle of energy called Indi:
There are some problems as well. It’s not so easy to socialize the puppy when you don’t walk her in the busy city streets but in the forest. That’s why she went to the puppy class and will continue her obedience training.
Another challenge is that all three have developed an incredible prey drive (we almost lost Indi when she and T ran after a deer). No e-collar or invisible fence helped. So these three got a big dog run. It’s not the biggest hit yet (Mu hates to be apart from us), but I’m sure in time:
This is not to say cities are not for dogs. Many dogs thrive in the active environment of a city. And in NYC, with the generous off-leash hours in Central and Prospect Park, dogs get to have an amazing time with tens and hundreds of friends.
Still, it’s hard to imagine we’d ever bring them back to the city to live there for good. Maybe it wasn’t just the city with its sensory overload but our seemingly busy life, the continuous sense of rush (which is exciting and tiring). While country living is not perfect, for us or for the dogs, there’s now often this feeling:
After a blogging break, a little rant that has been brewing inside of me for the past weeks: A set of thoughts inspired by travel, dogs (of course), sustainable living, and finally, soap. I’ve been thinking of the road to knowing and self-awareness.
I used to do yoga. I used to do, and talk about, almost nothing but. My name was Minakshi. I was the happiest (and the most desperate) when practicing, both the physical and devotional paths. I had moments (and realize this is merely my personal sentiment) of divine clarity and intense belonging to the world. So I felt I was a bit more ‘aware’ of what life is about, than the average person.
Then I adopted the Mu, kind of by accident or because of temporary insanity. All of a sudden I didn’t have so much time for practice and reflection. All of a sudden I had left my yoga community.
But suddenly I begun to feel, like this blogger on HuffPo, about her adopted pit bull:
Even if you don’t believe in a God above, this bond will feel like it was magically planned many moons ago, where the stars aligned perfectly and placed you two exactly where you needed to be to find one another. And you will be so blessed.
Nobody tells you your heart will change. But it does. You judge less. You care more. You learn how to accept life a heck of a lot better than before. You learn how to forgive and how to let go and how to live in the moment.
They should have told me I was going to learn how to love better. That loving this Pit Bull was going to change my whole life.
Even now, that I’m about to write something quite skeptical about the text above, and about my own experience, I’m taken by emotion, knowing exactly what the blogger means. And feeling like, yes, I know a bit more about life than those without a dog, particularly those without a pitt bull or two.
Recently, I’ve also felt that I’m wiser, more experienced, than a certain someone from my past. That someone contacted me, having found an Indian guru, and hence wanting to apologize about a long-forgotten conflict between us (signing off the message: “All in One”).
My thoughts: Oh, that’s sweet. And: Oh, I’ve been there. (I have — I’ve sent a couple of intense emails when I had started to practice yoga etc., wanting to clear old misunderstandings and share kindness.)
And yet, as David Sedaris wrote a few weeks back in the New Yorker,
As I grow older, I find that the people I know become crazy in one of two ways. The first is animal crazy—more specifically, dog crazy. They’re the ones who, when asked if they have children, are likely to answer, “A black lab and a sheltie-beagle mix named Tuckahoe.” Then they add—they always add—“They were rescues!”
The other way is to become food-crazy (look at this New York Times Lemon Ricotta Bundt Cake I just made for the first time).
But there have also been moments lately when I’ve felt I don’t know as much, I’m not as much aware as Mr X and Friend Y, or Ms. Z. That is when I’ve looked at the maps people share on Facebook about the countries they’ve visited. I haven’t seen anything compared to them!
… Until someone noted (on Facebook as well) that those who tend to consume organic kale, wear recycled/vintage clothes, and clean their apartments with eco-friendly detergents, tend to have huge carbon footprints as they travel so much… And I felt a bit better, perhaps again more in the know.
What do we really know, then? What makes us wise about ourselves and the world? Who knows.
Or, maybe… When taking a bath today, I read once again the crazed rants of Dr. Bronner’s Magic All-One soap bottles. (For those who don’t know, Dr. B was not only a maker of organic soaps but a very spiritual man — and he included all kinds of good messages in the label of his soaps.)
One message went like this:
Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web we do to ourselves.
While not a unique message, today I read it as new. It made me think that self-realization, and world awareness is actually simple. While the negative of the web is true (if we destroy others, we destroy us), it goes in the other way, the way of caring, understanding, and knowledge. Whether we love a dog or downward-facing dog, a guru or bundt cakes, or distant shores we haven’t visited yet — that love we give to ourselves. When we feel we know something big and fundamental about the universe, that knowledge is, at the end, our knowledge about us.
We have these different triggers, maybe different at different times in life, that open us to see. Travel, or friends, or spiritual practice, or soap bottles. All-One.
Mr. T is going for his hip surgery tomorrow. It isn’t so bad – in other words, not a hip replacement but Femoral Head Osteotomy (FHO).
Two vets we took him to said it’s the knee (“Just give him anti-inflammatory and let him rest and it’ll be just fine.” “Typical structural issue for pitbulls, expect the other knee to go as well.” )
The expert surgeon laughed at that and noted that T has probably been hit by a car early on in his life so the hip is out of socket or otherwise injured. Most likely, FHO will do the job.
He also noted, as all the other vets that have seen Mr. T (including his trainers) that T is “a great dog”.
I’m sure most vets tell the owners exactly that. But we hear the same comment also from people with other kind of knowledge about pits.
The “great dog”, I suspect, means a couple of things – the double life of T:
The reason I’m chronicling the above examples is that, apart from the bad rap in the media, these are two very concrete and everyday discourses that we are faced with.
Two stories: a great dog, now well-adjusted and rehabilitated rescue, playing in Prospect Park after having a massive dog cookie at Choice Market while the owners drink their morning coffee. A great dog, is it a Colby, does it fight, why did you have it fixed, at the projects on Marcy. It’s easy to detest the latter discourse. But at the same time, this reflects same unfortunate divides everywhere: Class, race, gender (are there female fighting dog breeders?); defining the double life of T.
[The picture is by the wonderful artist-photographer Mark Blackshear — he is working on his Dog Series…]
I used to see dogs in Prospect Park, wearing an extra collar around their neck, and thought it was because of extensive barking. By now, I’m very much aware of the use of e-collars in off-leash training (especially for hunting dogs) and the controversies and potential dangers of this.
As I have written here before, when adopting T we were told by the assessors at the shelter that he’s submissive (and house-trained and…). Very soon we discovered that clearly that was not the case.
We were recommended a trainer by several people — whom we knew already by his fantastic reputation. We were lucky to get him to work with us. After evaluating T he noted that much of T’s aggression is about insecurity and about not having been socialized with other dogs. Given that we live in the city with very few off-leash opportunities without other dogs, he recommended the consistent use of the e-collar when we are outdoors for the next 6 months. He trained us on how to use the collar in 2 sessions at home, and then in 8 sessions in the park.
This, however, doesn’t mean that T gets every ‘correction’ through the e-collar. This means that he wears it — and if he’s about to initiate a fight, we can be sure we can call him back before anything happens, i.e., as a preventive measure. (If there’s a confrontation already happening, using the collar might just aggravate the situation, make the dog more aggressive.) That said, using the collar to call T back has to be the last resort, after normal recall, so that T won’t become confused and fearful of all his actions.
Yes, it’s a long morning. But we are starting to see the results, that is, a more relaxed, happy dog — only after a few weeks of training.
Yet, the e-collar is not THE CURE here. It’s simply the safety mechanism that allows us to slowly introduce T to existence where he doesn’t need to react to other dogs.
The blog Shiba Shake (that I love) has a series of very critical, but realistic, posts about the e-collar. I love what she writes, as this highlights the nature of the collar NOT as a daily training tool:
Shock collars are not magic and they do not deliver a touch. We may use terms like gentle training collar or gentle current but that does not change the true nature of shock collars. If we want to use a shock collar, then we should accept it for what it is.
And I love what our trainer writes in his website:
In my world, honesty is the only policy. If you want to fix a problem, you must work to a goal of 100% effectiveness. You must be consistent and patient. Everyone wants things to happen overnight but that’s never the case. You must be honest with what is working and be versatile in your approach. Recognize things as they are and not how you want them to be.
We had to recognize how T really was, and what we had to do to be able to keep him, and to keep him and other dogs safe. For now, one of the tools is the e-collar.
Minna Aslama Horowitz 