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Recovering Dog Tries To Get Back To Work

May 21, 2010

Pearl in Office

I have never much liked Western medicine.  Perhaps my antipathy started with the allergy shots I got for years as a child.  (There’s nothing like an injection once a week to put you right off the smell of rubbing alcohol.)

I’ve also always been a bit suspicious of veterinarians, especially in New York City.  They often seem to be altogether too proactive when suggesting costly diagnostic tests and procedures.  (Could that have anything to do with high rent?)  They also sometimes look askance at my dog’s home-done (i.e. inept and patchy) grooming.

But today, I blog in awe of Western medicine,  a New York City vet, and steroids. I am even almost sympathetic with Floyd Landis.

Yesterday, and the day before, I wrote about my genuine (if not fully voiced) fears that our beloved dog was on her last legs.  (These would be her two front legs, since her hind ones were suddenly completely paralyzed.)  I shouldn’t joke about this—it’s really been terribly sad.

But, a few doses of steroids (for her, not me), and I find myself amazingly light-hearted.  Pearl is not exactly back on her feet, but she can just about push herself up, and she is definitely in much less pain.

She is even back to her old insistence on a ritualistic personal schedule; meaning that, when I was briefly out, leaving her on a pleasant airy pillow, she dragged herself across a large room and hall into her habitual “office” (my closet).   (I think she’s always had a secret affection for Act IV, Scene VI of King Lear, when Lear points out that even a dog is obeyed in office.)

(Sorry.)

(P.S. –yes, to those of you who follow this blog; the drawing above was originally posted here.)

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21st Day of National Poetry Month – The Body Is Not Your Good Dog.

April 21, 2010



Good Dog! (Not Your Body)

The 21st day of National Poetry Month, and I have a terrible, terrible cold.  So far, I’ve managed to spare you the poem devoted to “rhinovirus,” but I found, in trying to write tonight’s draft poem, that I could not stay completely away from the subject of the fickleness of the body.

Note, in reading the draft poem, that pauses are only intended to be taken based on punctuation–commas, semi-colons, periods–and not at the ends of lines (unless punctuated.)

Here, Body

The body is not your good dog.
It may sit, lie down, roll over,
do tricks for food, and seem to love;
but there’s a limit to its Rover

aspect.  It will get sick just when
you tell it not to.  There’s no yanking
on that leash.  It will decay
when you say stay;  there’s no spanking

with a rolled-up newspaper,
not even the Times, which can train
it to heel, to keep
to the right side of that called sane.

It won’t obey you even when
it knows what you desperately want,
when its lesson has been learned
before, again; still, it will vaunt

its own fleshly, furry ways,
taking up all room upon your bed,
refusing to hush when hushed,
and, except when dancing, to be led.

Categories: dog, elephants, poetry, Uncategorized, writing exercises
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Examining Self-Sabotage (A Shot Foot) (Old Dog New Tricks)

March 23, 2010



A Shot Food

An article in today’s New York Times discusses self-sabotage—that is, many people’s unfortunate tendency to ensure that expectations of disappointment are not disappointed: the bizarre attraction to shooting one’s self in the foot,  because (i)  a wound in the foot looks like a stigmata (i.e. is a good accoutrement to a martyrdom guise), and (ii) a familiar pain feels safer than the risk of an unknown pain (or even pleasure).

I, for one, am very good at this type of self-sabotage.  The article talks of repeated masochistic love affairs.  I’m offering, as an example, a long masochistic love affair with fatigue.  (Let’s not get too personal here.)

If I stand back a little from my own conduct vis-a-vis fatigue, I am aware that much of it– taking too many things on; getting to, and leaving from, my office too late in the day; drinking a very strong cup of tea upon my arrival at home in the evening; doing a lot of goofy evening stuff (i.e. blogging), then staying up very very late reading and re-reading silly books, or doing a crossword, or trolling the internet; getting up super-early to do some of the same exhausted internetty/reading/goofy types of strong-tea-fueled pastimes–is not productive or even all that pleasurable.

If questioned, I will say that my staying up late happens by chance, as if I just get carried away (every single night).  If questioned harder, I might admit that the late nights are an act of will—I’ll say that I need that time to myself to feel that my life is expansive.

If questioned extremely probingly, I may even admit that my schedule of late, crowded (but slightly aimless) nights is one that I stick to with extreme rigidity, despite the resulting exhaustion and reduced productivity.

What’s the answer to this kind of self-sabotage?  The article talks of medication, therapy.

But I look to the sage of my apartment, my dog, Pearl.  Pearl (nearly fifteen) is an extreme creature of habit, particularly now that she is losing her vision.  Pearl knows, for example, the direction that each of her walkers (me, my husband, daughters, nephews) like to take her in (North or South), the exact places (within my building) where her walker will get nervous of her bladder control and pick her up and carry her,  the amount of time each walker will let her sniff and mosey.  Pearl then enforces these patterns, tugging in the walker’s habitual direction, stopping stock still in the spots where she is supposed to be carried, turning recalcitrant when a normally tolerant walker tries to pick up the pace.

Most of Pearl’s walkers just let Pearl have her way.  But sometimes the patterns simply have to be changed, when, for example, Pearl’s side of the sidewalk is covered with salt.  It’s hard to shift Pearl—you have to tug her with some determination, which because she is small, cute, fluffy, can be embarrassing.   She will eventually follow the walker’s tug, however, and then, oddly (after a day or so),  she will become just about as rigid about the new habit as she was about the old.

Which means, I guess, that old dogs can learn new tricks.

Of course, some kind of tug must be there, a determination to make the change.   (I have a feeling I’ll be up late.)

Categories: dog, Stress, Uncategorized
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“Marching Orders” From My Dog Pearl

March 8, 2010

Pearl Being Exuberant

T.S. Eliot said that April is the cruelest month.  I tend to think it’s March.

March is a teaser.  You step out in the mornings into air that feels suddenly, caressingly, warm.  Your heart lifts.   Then, after maybe a minute,  you become aware of a damp undercurrent.   You realize, unless you manage to collide with an angle of absolutely direct sunlight, that the caress was like the touch of a best-selling vampire wearing gloves.   All it truly is, is warmer than it’s been.

It’s dark when you get out of the subway after work–still dark.   Your eyes fixate on the big hard mounds of extremely gritty snow in the middle or on the edges of certain pubic spaces.

You just know it’s going to start raining soon (probably on the weekend.)   You imagine big pools of water collecting at street corners,  pools so murky that people will risk injury by veering taxi cab rather than get close to them, even people who have spent monsoon seasons in Calcutta.

You tell yourself that this is March, predictably unpredictable, that Spring really is coming.  But, since you are stuck inside for the nice parts of the day, it’s hard to feel good.  In fact, you feel pretty lousy.

At times like this, I tell myself that I should emulate the one great sage I know, that is, my dog Pearl.

Pearl is a very old dog.   She seems, unfortunately, to be going blind.  She sees my shape moving from living room into kitchen with absolute clarity.   But once she tracks me into the kitchen, she can’t always tell if I’m holding a treat in my hand or if I’ve dropped it in front of her, or if I have dropped it in front of her, where exactly.  On evening walks, she’ll almost bump into things (like park benches) or  halt in sudden fear or disorientation.

That part is pretty sad.

Most of the time Pearl is beyond sedentary.  (Sedentary derives from the word “to sit”;  Pearl doesn’t bother with sitting; she’s generally stretched out flat.)    But there are moments, on a nearly daily basis, that still  bring out a joyful puppydom.    These often follow that difficult evening walk.   There is a stretch of carpeting in  my building’s hallway, between elevator and my apartment door,  that she has always found to be an irresistible running track—the carpet is firm,  and at that point in the walk, she’s free–of leash, of whatever “business” took her outside, of any further duties for that day.

She goes, to put it mildly, bananas—running back and forth, circling, grinning a weird canine side grin.   She will run until she’s almost choking, and then (she’s not the smartest creature in the world),  run a little more.

What Pearl seems to understand is that new energy comes from the expenditure of energy,  new joy from old joy, from jumping into joy, and  that joy doesn’t need to be saved up, it just needs to be savored.

Some might say I’m anthropomorphizing.  Some might say that I’m not, that what Pearl does is simply easier for a dog.   Either view seems to offer me something palpable:   to find exuberance, be exuberant (even about the routine, the mundane,  especially about the routine, the mundane);   to get through March, march right on through it.

Of course, once Pearl is back in the apartment, she usually collapses again.  (After one more quick exploration of the kitchen.)

That part sounds good too.

PS – for a poem about Pearl’s exuberance, check out this.

Categories: children's illustration, dog, Uncategorized
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“Truest Love” Poem – Dog is What Spelled Backwards?

February 5, 2010

More in honor of trust and dogs.

Truest Love

The little dog lay on its back
in the semblance of
truest love.
The woman, leaning in from above, ignored
stained whiskers and breath like fish,
in the semblance of truest love.

The little dog exalted when she came home
as if she were its dearest wish,
the answer to heart’s prayer.
She said, ‘hey there,’ and stooped
to capture some wriggle.

The little dog saw her as
itself spelled backwards;  she
accepted the role, thankful that
some being had finally taken
due note of her
existence, ignoring
breath like fish.

All rights reserved.  Karin Gustafson

Categories: dog, poetry
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In Honor of Trusting (And Smiling) Dogs

February 4, 2010

Pearl (Photo By Theodosia B. Martin)

The last couple of days I’ve been writing and thinking about the deficit of trust in government.  In the midst of this, I somehow got onto the topic of the trust shared between my dog, Pearl, and myself.

One reason that Pearl trusts me so much is that I was not the one to put goggles on her (above) and photograph her.   (That’s a joke, photographer Theo Martin!)

One reason that I trust Pearl so much is that she is cheerful and loving even when wearing silly goggles.

Some scientists refuse to attribute a complex emotional life to animals.  These, it seems to me, are very dogmatic scientists, and not very good observers of the natural world.

On the other hand (and there’s always another hand), some animal owners attribute a complicated array of human strategems to animals which, frankly, trivialize the animals’ specific and particularized intelligence.

Those are topics for another ManicDDay.   This post is really just a human strategem for posting Pearl’s picture, above, and the video link here, which was received by me in a moment when it was hard to trust in the goodness this day would bring, but which made me smile.

Dogs can do that.

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Deficit of Trust in Government – How To Carry An Old Dog Downstairs

February 3, 2010

Obama and other politicians speak of “a deficit of trust” in governmental institutions.

I have a little, old, dog.  She is little enough and old enough that I generally can (must) carry her through the halls of my building, and out through the small back yard, until we get to the public sidewalk, before I can put her down without fear of prohibited incident.

I carry my dog on this journey like a baby, legs up.  She is incredibly passive in my arms, motionless through the bounces of the few flights of stairs, through the turns in the hall and yard, through the plunge into the frigid winds of lower Manhattan. Her stillness seems to reflect an absolute faith that, as her person, the one who feeds and shelters and takes care of her, I will do the right thing by her, carrying her to her appointed spots, not dropping, dislodging, or otherwise discombulating.

People are not really like dogs.  (Some may find this unfortunate.)  Yet the bases for trust are similar—a relationship or experience of a person or institution that gives rise to a feeling that the trusted one is competent, well-meaning, and that the relationship is beneficial, even necessary,  for the trustor’s well-being.

A belief in competence is paramount.  My dog is downright wiggly in unsure hands.  Babies are often like that too, fussing and crying when they sense inexperience.

Many adults do not seem to have an innate gauge of competence.  (Many voted for George W. Bush, for example.  Twice.)   Still, they must, at least, believe in competence.

Integrity’s important too, a lack of scandal.  But integrity is really a part of meaning well, of the trusted one looking out for the trusting.

Then there’s the question of benefits.  And necessity.  My dog (children too) trust me even when I have to do painful things to them, such as cleaning that yucky eye hair (that’s in the case of my dog), in part because they have been  acutely aware of all I have provided– food, shelter, college tuition (that’s in the case of my children).  It’s not as if the benefits are a quid pro quo for the painful treatment;  it’s more that the benefits somehow prove that the painful treatment is not arbitrary or mean, but a necessary part of taking care.  (Different versions of trust based on necessity/desperation arise in the case of a plumber, doctor,  accountant.)

Because benefit/necessity is so important to  maintaining trust, it’s difficult to understand how government can engender it simply by cutting taxes.  For trust to be felt, value must be provided, not just reduced expense.

Of course, the urge for endless tax-cutting arises in part because of a disbelief in government competence.  Then too, many refuse to believe that government benefits reach them.  (These kinds of people shout that the government should “keep its hands off their Medicare.”)

Others simply don’t see a need for government.  (I don’t know how these people plan to provide for fire departments, child labor laws, clean air and water.)

What to do?   In order for a “deficit of trust” in government to be filled, people have to be convinced that a more secure, stable, educated, and unpolluted society is a particular benefit to them, a necessity for the future, and something government is capable of helping to provide.

A tall order.

Of course, getting rid of the scandals would help too.

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When the “Cool Crowd” Becomes the Absolutely Freezing Crowd

January 30, 2010

Question Is: Will She Make Room For You?

Last week, on a relatively balmy day, I wrote about being part of the “cool crowd”.  That is, those people who, out of carbon, monetary, or logistical concerns, keep their indoor heat low (or nonexistent.)

Today, temperatures in downtown Manhattan have sunk to the teens, and the cool crowd is likely to be shivering.  (At least anyone in my apartment is.)

Here are some tips as to how to handle these low temperatures without losing cool crowd status:

1.  Huddle with your dog in a small closet which is out of the wind and layered with clothing (both hanging and fallen to the floor.)

2.  If the dog won’t make room for you, bake.   Bread, pies, cookies.   (This uses some fossil fuels but is at least productive of something besides heat.)    People say that chopping kindling warms you twice, first when chopping, then when burning, but baking goodies warms you three times:  once in the hot oven, secondly, when supplying you with calories, and third, as an extra layer of flab.

3.  Tape a hot water bottle to your stomach, under the down blanket.   (If you are like one of the followers of this blog, try one of those toasted rice or corn cloth bags that you can heat up in a microwave.)

4.  If you don’t have a hot water bottle, or a toasted rice or corn bag, sit with a turned-on laptop on your bare stomach.  If your ears are cold, try calling your mom on your cell phone.   (That’s a joke, Mom.)  (Seriously, Mom.)   (I like long phone conversations too.)

5.  Drink hot caffeinated beverages (perhaps while talking to your mom) until you get such a splitting head-ache that you really do crave some nice cold air.

6.  Turn on James Brown.  Dance.  Make sure to close your blinds.

7.  Spend as much time as possible outdoors.  Preferably in some cozy little café.  Or, as the evening chill falls, bar.

Yes!

Categories: children's illustration, dog, New York City, Uncategorized
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Dreaded End-Of-Vacation-Sunday Night

January 3, 2010

It’s that dreaded-end-of-vacation-Sunday night.  A sick feeling drips from the back of my eyes into the center of my stomach.  Dread.  Anxiety.  Stress.   I remember suddenly all the things I was sure I would have plenty of time to do over the last few days, and simply didn’t.  What?  Do?  Remember?  Care about?

Uh-oh.

So now it’s back-to-work-Sunday-night, and any glow of vacation has somehow transformed into an ulcerous slow burn.

It’s a feeling that is probably nearly universal.

I’m guessing that even Barack Obama, as he heads back from Honolulu to DC, feels a certain queasiness.

Janet Napolitano has undoubtedly been feeling it for days.

And what about all the other people I spend virtual time with?  Is Robert Pattinson happy to be going back to LA after a holiday at home in London?  LA is certainly sunnier.   But it was announced today that he is supposedly in the top running for an award for Worst Actor of 2009 (a “Razzie”), so he can’t be feeling too great.

What about all those students going back to school?  It may be fun to, like, see friends, but getting up and going to class where you’re not allowed to text, talk, or sleep, is, like, a bummer.

And the teachers.  It’s probably pretty difficult to imagine “bright, shining, morning faces,” when you know you are going to be faced with glum, sullen, sleepy faces, and possibly, a metal detector.

In New York City, the discomfort of this end-of-vacation-Sunday-night is compounded by a vicious, flesh-biting cold.  (Which, frankly, casts all those narratives about the wonders of frigid vampire embraces into serious doubt.)  Who is going to be able to stand to even go out tomorrow morning?  And why won’t it just snow three feet and close the City down?

The only person in my world who seems truly untroubled by the dread of this Sunday night is my little old dog, Pearl, depicted below.  And even she seems to be having trouble sleeping.

Wakeful Pearl

But not much.

Not So Wakeful Pearl

If you like elephants as much as dogs, check out 1 Mississippi by Karin Gustafson.  Thanks.



Categories: children's illustration, dog, Robert Pattinson, Stress
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Dog/Elephant Christmas Activity! On Ice!

December 25, 2009

Skating At Sunset!

Thanks so much for all your support (and views)!

All rights reserved.  Karin Gustafson.

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