Instinct


A break in the rain. A touch of blue through the clouds. Instead of sleeping by the pellet stove, my dog Annie paces by the door. Something rouses her from her winter hibernation. I feel it, too. Must go out. Though I try to do my indoor chores, the beach across the highway beckons.

Then comes a frustrating phone call. I am still trying to find a home for Annie’s brother Chico. My last resort was the no-kill shelter an hour away from here. I had called to make an appointment to “surrender” him next week. The girl who called me back this morning said they have their quota of “bully” dogs and cannot take him right now. I can call next week to see about getting him on a waiting list. Meanwhile, I may have to bring him home. I took him to a kennel because I could not contain him. Even a six-foot fence wouldn’t hold him. Neighbors were starting to complain.

Annie and I have had a good time together, truly bonding. I have faced the truth that I can only handle one dog, and Chico has made the choice which one by his need to run away. But I love him and don’t want him to be euthanized. Apparently being a little bit pit bull is like being a little bit black in the slavery days. People don’t want you if you’re a “bully dog,” even though they are not necessarily killer dogs. In fact, they’re naturally sweet, loving and eager to please.

So Chico might be coming back to the house next week. Meanwhile, Annie and I must take advantage of our time together. We even tried sleeping together, but she has this need to be very very close and sticks her feet straight out, her nails digging into my face, my arm, my chest. It was nice, but I sent her back to her own bed.

Back to today. Instinct called us outside, led us to the beach. It’s a balmy 50-something degrees, hazy, a little drippy, but tolerable. We went to Ona Beach, a couple miles south, with a long wooded trail to the sand. We skirted big mud puddles and sloshed across soaked grass. Annie darted here and there, sniffing, pouncing, trotting, her tail wagging, her eyes bright.

Across the bridge over Beaver Creek, we reached the sand. So many smells. Seaweed. Poop. Dead murres. Crab shells. Fish slime. We walked and ran south, Annie darting up and down the wet rock cliffs, throwing herself into the sand to rub on something smelly, pulling me to where the waves shot their frilly underskirts toward our feet.

At my age and with so many past foot and ankle injuries, I’m delighted that the dogs have taught me to run again. The little girl in me sent my feet skimming across the sand behind my dog, and all my worries dropped away. When we got tired, we found a sheltered spot under some trees. It was like our private fort. Sitting on pine needles and moss, we snuggled and watched a group of teenagers go by, one girl in a Santa hat.

Rested, we trotted north around the bend, skirting the edge of the creek. Suddenly Annie ran and jumped into the creek. The backwash soaked my shoes and socks, but I was too busy laughing to care. She took a big drink, jumped out and jumped back in. She went deeper, and I saw my dog discover for the first time that she could swim. Instinct. She and Chico are half lab. The dog paddle is like running in the water. Now she wanted more and more of it.

But it was time to go home and dry off. On the short ride home, she stared out the window, smiling, and so did I.

I don’t know what’s going to happen next week. All I know is that when nature calls you out, get away from the computer and go.

Cold

Cold. Cold that bites. Cold that burns. Cold that hurts my teeth, chills my lungs, makes my nose bleed. Cold that flattens autumn’s poppies, cold that kills the farmers’ crops. Cold that swallows the fire-heat from the pellet stove so the house is never really warm. Day after day, so cold I dare not leave my dog outside for fear she will die. At night, Annie sleeps on the big chair by the living room window, waking when the pellet stove comes on, when the temperature has dropped below 55 degrees in the house. I hear her tags jingling as she comes down the hall and places her giant paws on my bed. I pet her soft fur and invite her up, but she can’t quite make the jump and she needs to go out. I indulge her every whim because I have sent her brother away, and the loss is so new to both of us.

In my robe and slippers, I lean against the doorframe as I did so many times for my old dog Sadie. Without my glasses, the lights in the inky sky look like starbursts. As Annie chases something in the dark, I move out into the colder cold. The deck is oddly dry. My feet crunch on the frozen grass and the spongy ground beneath it. Annie squats, then bounds across the lawn and rattles through the leaves piled up against the chain link fence. As I stare at the sky, she comes running toward me, flying across the deck and into the warmth of the house. I slowly follow, locking the doors, wishing my companion good night as I crawl back into bed, grateful for my electric blanket.

The cold, dry spell has lasted five days now. Tomorrow it is expected to turn to freezing rain and snow. I stay up late to watch the weather report, wondering if I can still drive to Albany to see my husband Fred in his nursing home. The reporter urges drivers to pack chains, flashlights, shovels, kitty litter, blankets and food. Snow is a worry, but the real enemy is the ice that may lie beneath it. Nothing is expected to fall until tomorrow night. Do I trust their schedule?

Meanwhile, I envy my father’s high of 54 degrees back in California, even if it is raining there. Our 30 degrees, up from 21 two night ago, is the warmest on the Oregon weather map. Being Oregonians, we are supposed to cheerfully endure the winter weather, but this California native has decided her idea of hell is cold.

Mary’s gone, John showed up

To follow up on last week’s post about the nursing home, Mary did pass away last week. Fred had no idea someone died so close to his room, although he has a vague memory of paramedics coming. When I walked by on Friday, the room was empty except for a portable heater, a decoration on the wall and a tiny cat bed with a stuffed toy cat sitting on the floor. By the next time I visit, the staff will have eradicated the big water stain on the carpet and someone else will be moving in. That’s how it goes at Timberwood.

John the musician, who didn’t come last week, was there on Friday, and I have to say he is wonderful. I need to get his last name and find out if he has any CDs. I will let you know. His voice, his guitar playing and his patter with this somewhat difficult audience are outstanding. We all enjoyed singing along. It’s amazing how people with dementia may not be able to talk or even remember the names of their loved ones, yet they remember all the words of the songs. Music is magic, and I’m glad I can offer some of that magic sometimes.

Doggone It

I had all these funny stories to share about my dogs, about how Chico learned to jump the fence, about how I built a barrier of a broken-down wheelbarrow, ladder and compost bin, and Chico found another spot to jump the fence. Then I dragged two very large and heavy boards to the new place, and he jumped somewhere else. Then I stood out in the yard and played goalie by the gate because he was jumping there. But finally he started jumping/climbing the six-foot chain link enclosure I had built earlier this year at great expense. He no longer wanted to stay in the yard and play with his sister; he just wanted to jump and run.

I learned not to chase him because he just kept going. If I left a gate open, he would sneak in. The trick was to catch him before he jumped over the fence again. But suddenly this weekend, he not only learned to jump anywhere there wasn’t a tree behind the fence, he learned to get over the supposedly dog-proof enclosure. I put in a call to the dog trainer to see if she could come help me work on training him to come when I called and see what could be done to dog-proof the yard. We were still playing phone tag when Chico got out over and over this morning.

My neighbor, who has been most patient, complained that my dog was trying to kill his cat. Furthermore, he had caught him trying to kill another dog on the next street. Sooner or later, dear, sweet Chico was going to get hurt or killed. Many of my gun-toting neighbors would not hesitate to shoot a dog who was attacking their animals. Nor could I spend all of my free time chasing that dog, never able to relax in my own yard.

Chico had to go. As soon as I got him corraled, I put him in the car. For now, he is at the kennel where my old dog used to board. I want to find him a loving home where he has all the room he needs to run. I will keep his sister Annie for now. I know she is more brokenhearted than I am. And yet, we are both relieved to be free of the pressure of trying to keep in a dog who needs to run away.

I feel like a failure. Fred and I did a great job with Sadie, our old dog. We provided a very good life for her and were with her when she died. But then we took in Hallie for only a couple weeks before we decided she was too wild and had to go back to the shelter. And now, after all the noise I’ve made about my two puppies and all the stories I’ve told, I handed Chico over to a stranger.

Riding in the car, he sat on the passenger seat with his head against the cushion, looking like he might be sick. He knew this wasn’t good. I was crying, and we were riding down windy roads he had never seen before. This was not a trip to the beach. Back at home, I see his beautiful self everywhere I look but I also feel the relief, too.

Dr. Hurty, if you’re still reading my blog, I tried my best, but with Fred gone to a nursing home, I was outnumbered and overpowered. I am looking for a good home for Chico. All I ask is that they love him and take good care of him. He’s a beautiful dog with a loving heart. He’s my baby, but it’s time for him to move on.

Small blessings

The entertainer, “John,” didn’t show up at the nursing home on Friday. Westy, the new assistant activities director, was on her own for the first time. She plays a little piano and tried to get the organ going, but didn’t get far. Having brought my fake book and piano glasses, just in case, I jumped on the organ and played. I don’t play the organ either. I just played the lower register and tried to keep my feet off the pedals. Music at Timberwood doesn’t have to be perfect; it just has to be enthusiastic.

A younger woman, Sherri, who’s Jean’s daughter, joined me, and we sang together. Fred and Jean hung nearby, singing along.

Loy, who is always shouting obscenities, actually said, “Hey, that’s good.” A miracle. Somebody else grumbled, “You can’t sleep around here with all that music.” Oh well.

As we finished, one of the aides asked me to go to Room 104. Mary Lavelle’s daughter wanted to know about my blog, but she didn’t want to leave her mother’s room. Mary was dying. Coming in, I had noticed the furniture moved around. They were planning to move her to a hospital bed. But when I ducked into that darkened room and saw how close to death she was, I doubted Mary would live long enough to change beds.

It was dark and quiet in Room 104, on the other side of the building from where we had been joyously singing old show tunes. Watching Louise hold her mother’s hand, one could see everything in her face: fear, grief at losing her mother, relief that the years of suffering for both of them would soon be over, anger that this had to happen.

Everyone is on the same cycle of life, but it seems accelerated at Timberwood. Poor Viola, whom I wrote about last week, spent a couple days in the hospital. They thought she had a heart attack, but Friday she was back, walking around bent over like the letter R, carrying her purse and her Bible, saying she had to go home. Again.

Fred sat staring into space when I arrived. Slowly, as he recognized me, he smiled, reaching for me, his eyes wet with tears. We hugged. He smelled bad, but I have learned to ignore it.

I took Fred to Sweet Waters Family Restaurant for lunch. He had hash and eggs, I had a BLT and salad. Every bite tasted so crisp and fresh and wonderful to me. I’m appreciating small blessings these days. We splurged on pie: lemon meringue for Fred, peanut butter fudge for me. You don’t get to do that sort of thing at the nursing home. We lingered there a long time.

We didn’t talk much, although he did ask why he had to stay at Timberwood. I reminded him of his Alzheimer’s and his need for more care than I can give. “Oh yes,” he said, sighing. His hands have started to shake more violently, and it’s getting difficult for him to hold a coffee cup or maneuver a fork. I don’t want to think about what will happen next.

Fred has forgotten my name, but he still knows he loves me. We hold hands and hug a lot. We sing along with the radio, and I tell stories to make him laugh. Friday the sun was shining on his bedspread in such a way that we could make shadow puppets, and that made him laugh, too. Laughter, music and touch hold us together. For now.

As I drove away on I-5, I could see the sun coming through a rain cloud and the rays spreading over the fields. Another small blessing.

Where Did They Go?

“It breaks my heart,” one of the aides told me yesterday as we watched the aftereffects of an early Thanksgiving dinner at the memory care center/aka nursing home where my husband Fred lives. The dinner itself was beautiful, with lots of family members joining their impaired loved ones. We ate our turkey dinners off paper plates with plastic utensils, but it didn’t matter if it wasn’t the family china and silver or that some of the residents needed to be spoon fed. It was a party.

Most of the guests left right after lunch. Perhaps they had arrived earlier. Coming from the coast, almost two hours away, I barely made it in time for the meal and missed the piano music that preceded it. The parking lot was full when I got there, but within an hour, there were plenty of empty spaces.

Among those who remained behind were a couple I assume were the daughter and son-in-law of sweet old woman who walks bent over like the letter R. I’ll call her Viola to protect their privacy. They sat together on the couch for a long time, but then Viola’s loved ones were ready to leave, too. Apparently they have practiced this maneuver before. Viola is amazingly smart at Scrabble, but she is always talking about going home, so perhaps the truth would have created a bigger problem.

This sweet young aide asked Viola to come with her for a minute to help with something.

“No, we’re leaving,” said Viola.

“It’ll only take a minute, and I really need your help,” said the girl.

“Well, all right.” And the aide led Viola off to another room while her daughter and son-in-law hurried to the exit.

When poor Viola returned, they were gone. She couldn’t understand. She searched everywhere for them, saying, “They wouldn’t leave without me.” For over an hour, she walked around the building, bent at a right angle, whimpering her daughter’s name. “Lynn, Lynn.” That’s when the aide said it broke her heart. It broke mine, too.

After a while, Viola started talking about walking home. “I’ll have to walk. It’s 14 miles, but I have to go home. I’ve got my purse and my Bible. I’m all ready. I just don’t know how they could leave me like this.”

Would it really have been worse to tell her the truth? By the time I left, she was playing Scrabble with the activities director, but I could see her looking around, still wondering how her daughter could just leave her like that.

Meanwhile, another woman was having a tantrum, a man kept yelling and trying to hit people, and another woman pushed a wheelchair over a lady’s red, swollen toes. Mary, who sat closest to me as we watched “Anne of Green Gables” on the big-screen TV, kept saying, “Hi, Hon,” complaining that her back hurt and asking if she could go home with me. “In a few minutes. After the movie,” I lied. An aide came by and she started up with her. “Hi, Hon.”

Thank God Fred accepts my departures. Sometimes he cries, but he understands that I have to go. I hold my tears until I get to the car. I don’t even see the first 20 miles.
***
Alzheimer’s Disease, suffered by 5.3 million Americans, is the sixth leading cause of death, and it’s a terrible way to go. If you don’t know what to buy someone for Christmas, consider a donation in their name to the Alzheimer’s Association, http://www.alz.org.

Blues in the night

So there I was sitting on the driveway with a flashlight and a box of Milkbones, playing my harmonica and thinking about life without my dogs. It was cold and clear, the stars so bright, but not bright enough to help me see a black dog in the night.

An hour earlier, I had been happily eating dinner when I saw Annie at the sliding glass door. Uh-oh. Sure enough, I had left the gate to their pen open. Fingers crossed, I searched the yard, but Chico had jumped the fence. Now Annie was looking to me to find him. I put on my heavy coat, grabbed the flashlight and leash and set off down the street, around the corner, straining to see, calling “Chico, come”. Nothing. I came back home, walked through the neighbor’s yard, saw him watching TV in his cozy living room filled with the mounted heads of deer, elk and other animals he has killed. No dog.

Having seen other people’s trash carts out,reminding me it was trash night, I decided to pull mine out, too. Maybe Chico would see the open garage with the light on and come home. No. Annie got out. With her dog super-powers, she soon located her brother and they both went flying down the street. I went after them. Occasionally I saw them, running, tongues out, tails wagging, united and happy. I opened the tailgate of my car and sat there. Sure enough, the dogs came, but they gave me a grin and dashed into the forest where the growth is too thick for me to go in there.

That’s when I closed things up and settled in with my harmonica, making up tunes in the key of D. The dogs approached; they like my music. I tossed a handful of treats onto the pavement. Annie came closer. As she wolfed them down, I grabbed her and dragged her in. Once she was safely locked away, I followed the same procedure for Chico. Both dogs were soaked and muddy. I dried them off and cranked up the pellet stove.

Soon the escapees were sleeping on the floor, exhausted and happy, perhaps dreaming of the sound of a harmonica playing in the night.

It’s like that gossip game

Yesterday I wrote about my frustration trying to find out what happened in the big auto crash that closed Highway 101 on Wednesday night. My first source said there was one fatality and that it took place at the entrance to South Beach State Park. My second source said at least two people died and it was near the post office. In truth, now that story finally came out in today’s local newspaper, nobody died. It was a head-on crash, a Toyota against a Geo Metro, at the entrance to the post office. The guy in the Metro got hurt bad, but he didn’t die. He has multiple fractures and internal injuries, and he’s going to hurt for a long time, but he is expected to live. The drunk driver who caused the accident was driving on the wrong side of the road in the dark with no headlights on. She was not injured. She did go to jail for drunk driving, assault and other charges.

That’s what happens when people share bits and pieces of a story in a small town. Two days after it happened, the newspaper published the story of the accident, and the radio stations reported what they read in the newspaper. It was a long wait.

Meanwhile, the TV stations have already gone on to other subjects, mostly the whopper storm that hit us last night. Thank God no trees fell on my house and the power stayed on. Now the sun is actually shining in South Beach again, but the waves are huge, sending sheets of white froth all the way across the beaches and up the cliffs. Even inside my house on the land side of the highway, I can hear the ocean roaring.

Then everything stopped

I rolled onto Highway 101 last night thinking this is the first time in ages I have left for church choir in the dark. Just then I came around a bend and saw a long line of red taillights. Blue and red police lights flashed way up ahead. Uh-oh.

I came to a stop behind a pickup truck. We inched ahead a half mile or so, then stopped again. Time passed. We turned off our engines and our headlights. I called the church and said I might not be there on time. Meanwhile, it seemed so peaceful sitting on the two-lane highway under a nearly full moon. It was so quiet. I felt a sense of community as we all turned from moving vehicles to human beings stuck on the road together.

After 15 minutes or so, my phone rang. A fellow singer had gotten caught in the backup somewhere behind me. He had heard on his police radio that a fatal accident up ahead would force closure of the highway for at least an hour. They had already closed the Yaquina Bridge. He was turning around and heading home. I said I’d stick it out awhile. It really was comfortable not having to do anything. I called my husband in his nursing home, and we had a nice talk. For once I wasn’t rushing around.

After awhile, I called my co-director to tell her I might not make it to the church at all. I listened to country music, opened the window and breathed the warm windy air and watched the world around me. No point in worrying about my altered schedule. What was happening to me was a minor inconvenience compared to the tragedy up the road where someone had died and someone had lost somebody they loved.

After an hour and a half, as three more police cars zoomed toward the scene, I did the math and realized it was no longer worth trying to get to Newport. I pulled out of line and turned around, driving slowly past a long queue of headlights. The cars thinned out near my turnoff, but I found an emergency vehicle and a guy directing traffic right at that intersection. I opened my window. “Can I go?” “You can go, ma’am,” he said.

In a few minutes, I was home, undressed and enjoying the warmth of my newly rejuvenated spa. Ahhh.

I enjoyed my evening off, but I have grown increasingly frustrated as I have tried to find out exactly what happened. The TV stations all broadcast news of Portland and didn’t say a word about anything here last night. All the local news on the Internet was old. The radio stations had given over the airways to pretaped shows. One country station let an announcer break in to tell us the road was closed. Nothing more. Even today, I can’t find any more than that online.

Two people in my yoga class were trapped on the north end of the bridge. They said the road was closed for 2 1/2 hours. They were pretty sure more than one person had died. They walked toward the scene and saw bodies on the road. All I can do now is wait for the local paper to come out tomorrow and hope somebody had the initiative to cover the crash.

Meanwhile, it was a good taste of what might happen if an emergency makes it impossible to cross the bridge into Newport. Highway 101 is the only through road. Those of us in South Beach and Seal Rock, located between the Yaquina and Alsea Bay Bridges, would be isolated without stores, without gas, without a way to get to jobs, schools or medical care. We would be forced to work together to survive, and we might have to revert to the ways of old, turning the beach into a highway, taking ferries across the bays or finding muddy logging roads through the trees to civilization farther inland.

As I sit here in the middle of a windstorm that threatens to take down trees, knock out the electricity and carry small dogs and children away, I can’t help but think about how little it would take to completely change our lives.

Wouldn’t you know?


So, I heard about a gig that I really, really want, but I can’t apply until it is officially announced. Meanwhile, my dear Annie refused to go outside, so I decided to take her with me to the post office and go on to walk on a wilderness trail. I wasn’t prepared to see any humans, but who is the first person I saw as we headed for the trail? The person who would be my boss. There I was with my yellow dog pulling me, despite me chanting, “Heel, Annie, heel.” I had no makeup on, raggedy hair, and was wearing my oversized Salvation Army pants that keep falling down. Swell. But this is what a writer looks like when she’s working at home.

“Hi,” I called, smiling. What else could I do? “Hello,” he replied, a look of disapproval on his face.

Oh well, if I get an interview, maybe when I show up dressed like a professional, I’ll look so swell he won’t recognize me. Anything is possible. Besides, do I want to work for somebody who doesn’t like dogs?

***
Sweet Annie is the one whose obstinacy led to me falling into the back wall of our house and spraining my wrist three weeks ago. I couldn’t see who was behind me, but I think both Annie and her brother Chico were there. All I know is that suddenly I was flying and I knew I was going to hit hard. It took a couple days for me to forgive the pups, but Annie is back to sitting in my lap while we watch TV. Yes, she weighs over 60 pounds. She was a saint in the car today.

Training these pups is a work in progress. My wrist is healing. It will be fine by Thanksgiving. To all those who say, “Get rid of those damned dogs,” I say, “No.” Both dogs and I have come so far it would be wrong to quit now. Look at that picture. Aren’t they sweet?

Besides, I need them to lick the envelopes for my Christmas cards.;-)