Actually getting to walk a dog! Part 2

 There I was, poised to harness an 80 pound dog when my dog-walking "mentor" gently asked the relevant question: "Do you have treats in your pocket and poop bags as well?"  

Well, gosh, no. I carried neither treats nor poop bags.  What a loser.  No wonder I have not yet been certified to walk a dog. What dog would want to be seen with me?  How alarming to be out, strolling the grounds, and pooping, and having your so-called certified dog-walker not be able to pick up that poop!  

So we begin again. We get poop bags. We get treats. We get a leash. We get a walkie-talkie. Then we try and get a dog.

There are a couple of dozen dogs at this local SPCA  so one would think getting a dog on a leash and taking it for a walk would be easy. Not so much.  As I previously reported, there are a lot of steps between "wanting to walk the dog" and actually "walking the dog."  And seriously, we don't really walk the dog so much as let the dog out of its very sad, tiny concrete room to go out and pee and perhaps poop and maybe get to run around in one of the yards. There isn't a lot of walking involved. There is, however, a lot of struggling and jumping and wrangling involved.

These dogs, most of them, have come from families. And now they are in small rooms, alone. They often have to pee and poop in those rooms, where they have a small bed and a food and water bowl. The dogs hate to be in the small 10 x 10 room so when they see a person sneaking into the room they go crazy. They jump, they wiggle, they jump more. Trying to put a harness (which is what they need to wear to exit the room) on a leaping, over-excited dog is like trying to harness a small tornado. It's very difficult.

After what seems like ten minutes, once the harness is on and you get to leave their prison cell, they are all energy. They just want to get outside, to be let go, to chase a stick or fetch a ball or simply zoom from one side of that yard to the other.  And then they want to be petted. Lots of pets. Lots of love. Then, maybe, they will let you walk them for five minutes before you must take them back to their cell. And leave them.

My training is complete. Next week I will get my shift assignment and will have two hours to walk whatever dogs need walking at that time. As happy as I will be for that allotment, the  dogs will be happier.  After all, I am not in a 100 square foot concrete cell. They are.  All I hope is that I make them feel better, 20 minutes at a time.

Being certified as a dog walker, Part 1

 Heeding the call from the Sonoma SPCA for volunteers, I am currently taking classes on being a volunteer dog walker. Now, one would not guess that there's a lot to learn about walking dogs, especially if one has been walking dogs for more than 50 years. But that would be a faulty assumption! It seems there are hundreds of things to learn about leashing up a canine and strolling it across the property.

In short, it is harder to be a certified SPCA dog walker than it is to be a parent! No one really gets a lot of lessons in parenting, you just sink or swim. Someone might help you with diapering skills or explain how to sterilize baby bottles but other than reading a couple of books about sleep patterns and the right stroller to buy, most parenting is on-the-job training. And usually the kids turn out okay!

But the dog walking curriculum covers everything from different dog collars and harnesses, leashes, dog safety (from dog and human points of view), how to give a dog a treat, how to pet them, how to rate their poop on a seven point scale, when to maintain eye contact, how to manage a huge dog as it pulls you across the muddy lawn, and on and on. All of the information is good but so far I have gone to three classes, had one Zoom meeting and I have yet to actually walk a dog!

But I will persevere! Tomorrow I get to "shadow" a dog walker to see how it is actually done. I am sure I will learn more valuable tips on dog management but I just want to meet the dogs and walk them and make them happy for a few minutes. Turns out that if you are a stellar dog walker and last at the job long enough you can eventually be trusted to take the dog off the SPCA property!  Perhaps take a dog to the beach!  Or to a park, or go on a hike! Needless to say, I am looking forward to this sort of adventure.

I will keep you posted on how the training progresses and if I actually get to walk a dog. 

Noise or not?

Working in an industry where there are people in your face all the time, when you must deal with people on their terms, when the daily chatter of hotel life is non-stop, it makes you crave quiet. When you come home after an eight hour shift there is nothing you want except silence. No music, no talk, nothing. Just quiet. That was me, for years.  I would play music on my days off, sometimes not even then. With the loud, constant ringing I have in my ears most of the time, quiet was fine.

At some point you realize that noise is different for each of us.  Depending on where you work, you might be surrounded by noise all the time but it might not be intrusive. Or you might be the person who doesn't mind the background confetti of sounds, always ongoing. Maybe that background chatter doesn't feel personal so it is easy to ignore it, like constant white noise.  

The other evening, I sat at a nice bar in a nice restaurant having a glass of wine while waiting for some take-out food. The place was noisy, as restaurants usually are, but surprisingly I found that the noise was mildly entertaining.  Noise was coming from the patrons at the tables, noise was in back of me from the hostess stand, chatter from other people sitting at the bar, clattering from the open kitchen, a slight murmur from the bartenders as they worked. Many layers of noise but none of it disturbing or annoying. (Of course the glass of wine and the promise of good food probably were factors in the lack of annoyance.) And I realized that it wasn't sounds that bugged me. It was when the noise intruded on my personal space: people chatting at me when I didn't want to chat, the telephone ringing when I didn't want to answer it. That kind of noise over an eight hour shift made me crave the silence.

Since my life doesn't have eight hour shifts much anymore, I am going to start paying attention more to sounds that I like and that I enjoy.  Except for the cawing of crows, I really like the sounds birds make and I live in a bird-rich area, so I'll start with appreciating that. I might have to sit at restaurant bars more often and bask in the happy noises emanating from that venue. Maybe I will even begin to listen to music when I am alone and enjoy the companionship of that kind of "noise." Maybe my solitary world will become less silent and maybe even more joyful. 

Who knows? Change is good. 

Parents - Siblings - Self

Talking to my older brother Steve the other day, we remarked on how detached we sometimes felt from our other siblings, other people, the world. Not in a bad way, but just slightly removed and thus slightly unemotional.  Maybe it's a generational thing; so many of us baby boomer kids were raised by parents who really had no idea what they were doing and thus were not the most forthcoming with affections, connections, communications.

Or maybe it was just our parents. They didn't have many friends other than in-laws, there were never dinner parties at our house where adults mingled and they never discussed relationships outside of aunts, uncles and cousins.  Our parents really had very little outside life. And it was clear that they didn't really know how to be concerned parents. Perhaps they didn't even like being parents, who knows? But there was never any dialogue about how they felt about us kids, never any positive affirmation about our joys or any support about our sorrows.  That's a huge generalization, of course, because I do remember them being very excited when one of my younger brothers won some science fair award and went on to the state contest. But other than bland comments about grades on report cards or a mediocre, short-lived response about a hand-made Mothers or Fathers Day card, there wasn't a lot of personal interaction.

Now, I could be wrong. I could have entirely forgot that my Mom read to us every night or encouraged us to tell her about our day at school or guided us through making cookies for the first time. That might have happened. But I don't remember it.

The relationship with my siblings is fine. We are all very different people but we all get along. (Mostly.) I know people who haven't spoken to their siblings in years and have no interest in doing so. At least the six of us talk on the phone now and then and we hold no rancor against each other. But I wouldn't say that we are all really connected. Some of us are in touch frequently but some of us, not so much. Do we love each other? Not for me to say. Do I love my siblings?  Yes. And that's a stronger "yes" for some than others.  I like them all as well, some of them more than others but that's probably just because some are more familiar than others, I see them and interact with them more frequently.  And because we are all very different, it's easy to like each one as a separate entity, not just as a sibling.  Would I answer a call from any of them in the middle of the night and drive to their house if they asked?  100% yes.

But there is a coolness in our relationships. A slight distance that one doesn't usually find with really good friends. Maybe it's difficult to be friends with your siblings, maybe there's too much shared genetic language, too much knowledge of our past that precludes close friendship.  I don't know.  

Anyway, just mulling over the past.  And the present. 

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Talking to my dead dog

 It's true. I talk to my dead dog. Watching TV. Cooking dinner. Driving in the car, walking through the park, sitting on the deck under my umbrella while having a cocktail.  I talk to Cooper.

No, he does not respond. I have not gone that far off the rails. Yet. 

This past week I watched Hannah, Gabe and Annie's dog, and several times I called Hannah "Cooper" as in "wasn't that a great sunset, Cooper" while Hannah looked at me askance. 

I realize that having Cooper die after living with me for 15 years means a little cognitive dissonance is appropriate on my part.  I get that. It's not that I am delusional about his death. It's simply that I lived with that dog for a long time and now that he's gone, he's still my trusty Pony-Pal-Pokey. (If you don't get that reference, well, too bad.) So I still talk out loud to him, I address comments to him and in some odd way, it is comforting.

When creatures you love die, whether they are human or animal, there seems to be a resistance to letting them go. Not so much for old parents, but for peers who die too young or really good friends who die and of course, for pets. We know our old parents need to die, so we welcome (in a way) their demise.  But friends and pets, not so much. How surprising is it then, once they are gone, that we continue to converse with them? Not surprising at all, at least to me.  

With my pets, I simply talk to them, make comments that they would understand and, in the end, I simply wish they were still in the room with me. How cool would it be if my great dog Webber, the large, goofy Golden Retriever, had been friends with the small, stellar dog Cooper?  What fun they would have had.

I will continue to talk to my dead dog Cooper and my previously dead dog Webber and all the dead people I loved and have known.  If they listen, great. If not, also great. In the end, it's all good. 

Missing Cooper

 It has been one month since I had to let Cooper go. The first couple of days were odd, not as sad as I would have anticipated, just rather flat. Then I had Hannah, Gabe and Annie's dog, for ten days and that kept me occupied.  But eventually Hannah left and I was then ambushed by the reality of Cooper's absence.

Cooper was not a rambunctious dog; he was a stately breed of canine. Not too noisy, not too barky, not too friendly. Definitely not a Golden Retriever type of dog. But Cooper had some very rigid habits and those habits became mine as well because, well, we lived together for many years and thus shared space and time.  For example, every day at 4:00 p.m. (in the cottage where I currently live) we would walk down the path to the large swimming pool and we would walk around the pool twice. Cooper would then bound up the stairs like he was a puppy, back up the path and wait by the cottage door because 4:00 was when Cooper got his Greenie. No exceptions. Cooper could be sound asleep at 3:59 but at 4:00 he was wide awake, waiting by the door.

Same thing with dinner.  He liked his meal served at precisely 5:00 p.m.  At that hour Cooper would stare at me unflinchingly until I got up, got his bowl and gave him dinner.  Didn't matter if we were at home, at a friend's house, in a different time zone. He knew when 5:00 came and he wanted his dinner right then. No exceptions.

When I made toast for myself, Cooper always got a bite.  I would always cut a small corner off of the toast and when I was done eating he would get his bite. Several times after he was gone I was still reaching for a knife to cut that little corner off for him. 

Cooper was a quiet dog but he made a lot of noise when he slept. Not just snoring (although he was good at that) but little snorting noises, long musical sighs, tiny barks as he dreamt.  Nighttime is so quiet without those little dog noises. I miss that.

So many other examples....living with a creature for more than 15 years means you are connected in more ways than I can describe. He knew when it was cocktail hour,  he knew when to trick me into going outside so he could get a cookie, he knew how to look so pitiful that a second cookie was inevitable. He knew which of my friends was a softie for dogs and which didn't really care about dogs, and he respected both of those opinions. Cooper loved parties because there was always a chance of sneaking a bite from some sympathetic dog lover.

I do miss his jaunty walk and his disdain for cats, his eagerness to chase a squirrel and his disregard for birds. Undoubtedly I will be missing him for quite some time. His absence is keenly felt.

Obituary: Cooper (2006-2022)

The details of Cooper's early years are a mystery. It is possible that his life began in the Central Valley, where over breeding and inbreeding are rampant.  Cooper was lucky to be rescued from an over-crowded shelter and brought to the SPCA in Marin county. No one really knew how old he was but looking at his teeth they thought about 14 months. Cooper (he didn't have that name then, of course) was neutered and washed and fed. And he waited.

Fifteen years ago, on a random Monday, two people set out to find a dog. Those two people stopped at the SPCA in the morning, found nothing that moved them, and thus moved on.  They visited a couple of shelters in SF. None of the dogs spoke to them. They had lunch and drove back north, a bit disappointed they didn't find a dog that day but they knew there were other days and dogs ahead. It was close to closing time but they decided to stop at the Marin county SPCA, just in case a new dog had appeared.

There was one new dog that wasn't there when they stopped by earlier. He was small. He had tall ears. You could see those ears peeking up from the gate of his 10 foot run. The two people wanted to see him closer, so the SPCA attendant went into the run and she had a difficult time picking up the little guy and an even more difficult time putting a leash around his neck. But finally we were able to take this dog into the "visiting area."  He did not want to visit. He wanted nothing from us. He didn't want to walk on the leash, play with a ball, look at us.

One of us wanted him, even though he was the opposite of what we were looking for.  He was small, he wasn't social, he wasn't friendly.  But he needed us and I needed him. We took him home, realizing, on that car ride, that he was terrified of everything: cars, noise, overpasses (he would duck) and possibly air.

The first night was OK. I let him sleep on my tall bed and he slept well. The second night I put him on the floor and it was a battle for about 15 minutes: he was small but he could jump the four feet onto the bed. I put him back on the floor. He jumped up. Back on the floor, jumped up, back on the floor.  Finally I acquiesced. He could sleep on the bed. That was that.

His name from the SPCA was "google."  I changed it (very quickly) to Cooper.  Cooper slowly learned to trust a few people but in the beginning I had to leash him to a table leg to keep him from running away. My daughter tells about the time when she first met him: he was cowering under a chair. Knowing that her words would not work, Jenn sat on the floor next to the chair for an hour or so, just putting her hand near him, chatting to the rest of us in the room. Eventually, he came out and let her pet him for a few seconds before retreating back to the chair. 

Cooper, after about 8 months, was less terrified of the world. He never warmed up to kids (I am sure he experienced kids being mean to him) and he had a true sense of distain for most other dogs until he got to know them well. In our family, he met Hannah when she was about 6 months old (and he was about 20 months old) and they became fast friends. Cooper met Bebe in Texas and gradually accepted her, especially since she outweighed Cooper by about 60 pounds. (He knew when to pick his battles.)

We often called him the "gay professor" because he had that demeanor.  Cooper looked proper, especially when he wore his bowtie, and he looked wise. But he also looked a tiny bit gay. He wasn't, at least as far as we knew, but seriously, who knows? And maybe right now he is at Big Gay Al's Animal Sanctuary.  That would make us all happy.

Cooper hated car rides but he and I drove from SF to Texas many times. Cooper would put up with the drive because his reward was staying in a hotel. He loved hotels. He loved that they were not the car, that he could sleep on the bed and listen to TV while I went out to find dinner.  Cooper loved running down hotel corridors, chasing a toy, getting exercise.

Cooper had small legs, a long body and very tall ears. He had a jaunty walk and his confident manner made people smile out loud. "What kind of dog is that?" people would ask as we walked by.  "The good kind" was my answer. 

Cooper had no college degree, had no resume, didn't have a bank account, but he leaves behind a world of love and good energy. Cooper made me laugh every day and looked at me as more than his food provider. (Hmm, well, who knows about that!) I think Cooper was a discerning spirit, but for those to whom he opened his heart, the payback was huge. If you loved him, he loved you. Forever.

I loved him and will, forever.

Cooper leaves behind his owner, his aunties Jenn, Dar, Annie, Sue, his uncles Gabe, Steve, Tom and Mike and many others.  He will also be missed by many friends. The list is huge.

There will be a small burial service in a few weeks.