Click on photos to enlarge.
Bigger and brighter and more exotic flowers abound in the garden, but this is Zoe’s choice. Actually, she was starting to eat it when I caught her and she quickly shifted to pretending she was smelling it.
For Cee’s FOTD
For Brian’s Last on the Card prompt we are to share the last photo we took in the month. I thought I was taking a video of Zoe and Coco rushing around the yard in a frenetic 10 minute chase, but alas, I took a photo instead. They are a bit of a blur, which they were for 10 minutes. Wish I’d captured it.
What are the chances that I would capture this action while I was exercising in the pool? But, I had noticed a large golden-orb weaver spider on my neighbor’s wall and although I knew it was too far away to get a good photo, I was listening to an Audible book and the phone was in reaching distance, so I thought I’d try. Coco and Zoe jogged over to check out my action and this is what resulted. Since i was holding the camera in my hands, I captured most of it, other than the recovery action which meant I had to set the camera down. Please click on photos to enlarge and read the story.
Breakfast Sandwich
My puppies heed no boundaries. They flop down where they will.
Coco crowds me, head on shoulder, in my bed until
I need my arm for writing and to gratify my need,
I nudge her very gently, but still, she does not heed
the necessity for space between us on the bed,
so promptly she moves closer to lie on my arm instead.
She appreciates its flavor as she licks it fondly, then,
extends her pastel tongue to lick it all again.
Then Zoe comes to join us from her place down by my hip,
and expresses her love likewise with a little lip.
Then her tongue extends as well so I am doubly tasted.
massaged with love’s caresses until I’m thoroughly basted.
At length, both fall asleep again, their energy depleted,
and our morning’s sandwich is finally completed.
I wedge myself out gently so our sandwiching is done,
extracting my meat from between its canine bun.
Prompt words for today are boundary, gratify, flavor, likewise, pastel and promptly. It is almost impossible to get photos with one’s arms pinned to the side but this was as close as I could get.
If you read my post yesterday, you know that we lost Diego on Saturday. When I took him to the vet thinking he had a bad tooth, I discovered his lungs were actually riddled with cancer and we had to make the decision to save him from a more agonizing slow death over the next two weeks. Obviously, I was devastated and as I completed the shrine for my friend Gloria, who died a few weeks ago and my husband Bob and parents as well as my sister Betty and her husband Denis, Leah and Ryan completed side shrines for their own departed family and shrines.
On Sunday, we went to a talk about death and the importance of making our life all we wish it to be and approaching Dia de Muertos as a celebration of our lost loved ones rather than a mourning. We then went to lunch and as we left the restaurant, we decided to visit a small crafts fair we saw set up in a tent a short way away. As Leah and Ryan browsed the aisles, I was drawn to a booth of small rescue dogs available for adoption. I watched little boys playing with five small pit bull puppies and then saw a beautiful woman approach with a small chocolate brown dog almost the twin sister to Zoe. She explained that it, too, was a rescue dog she’d found abandoned on the streets of Guadalajara. Her name was Chocolate and she was presumed to be about a year old. When she was spade, they had discovered she was pregnant with three puppies, all too small for survival.
Wanting to show her to Ryan and Leah, I asked if I could take her for a walk, and the lady said yes. I thought I would say I’d found a new dog, jokingly, but of course the joke was on me as we all fell in love with her. It was all Ryan could do to keep Leah from adopting one of the tiny pit bull puppies. At any rate, with no idea at all of replacing Diego, the synchronicity of finding a dog named Chocolaté—the same name as the dog stolen from my yard nineteen years before—who needed a home just as Diego had eleven years before, created the decision to honor Diego’s leaving with the arrival of another in need of a home, and so we welcomed Chocolaté into our lives as a living memorial to Diego. R.I.P.. dear friend and companion.
This morning, Chocolate claims Zoe’s favorite spot, nuzzled into Mom’s neck and hair.
Small Comforts
On this particular Dia de los Muertos, death feels more personal, less a remembrance of past losses and more a dwelling with a recent one. The new little dog buries herself closer, her snout beneath my neck, nose snuggled into my hair. Her long pointed ear brushes my glasses frame.
Finally stilled from the excitement of a new sister who is nearly a reflected shadow of herself, Zoe sleeps in the long cavern between my knees and ankles so I am swaddled in small dogs. Not a recompense for the loss of my old friend Diego, but rather a slight adjustment of attention, a comfort of sorts, consolation like the hug of that stranger in the vet’s office yesterday morning, after we had sent Diego to his final sleep.
Not the same thing as Diego’s past gentle nuzzles for attention as I lay in the hammock, fitting in those moments of mutual attention before Zoe’s insertion of herself between us, demanding attention from us both. Here is no filling of an empty space, but rather the creation of a new one in my life. One not unaccompanied by problems, for although she shares Diego’s calm exterior, she also shares Zoe’s propensity for mischief. Minutes after we arrived home from the craft fair where I found her attached to the leash of the Guadalajara vet who had rescued her from the street and harbored her as she looked for a new home for her, I found her on top of the the altar, eating the dead bread in front of my friend Gloria’s picture, ignoring the dog bones in front of Diego’s. The papel picado on the front of the altar had been shredded by her ascent, the pot of marigolds turned on its side.
Just that morning, Zoe had stood to snatch the bread from in front of the side altar Ryan had constructed for his grandmother and friend. Peas in a pod, these two chiweenies, one blonde, one the color of chocolate, like her name, pronounced Chahcōlah’tay, in the Spanish manner.
Now as I lie in bed, this new intruder whistles into my ear with each breath, huffing as though it is an effort, or like blowing out birthday candles, puff by puff. It is a trial joining. If it doesn’t work out, I have the kind doctor’s phone number who promises to drive back from Guadalajara to reclaim her. She breathes wheezingly into my ear, as though one time for each second of her short life.
I recall Diego’s gentled breathing there on the floor of the vet’s office. All of us coming down to her comfortable level as we administered that last relief, her lungs filled with a foreshadowing of an otherwise more painful death. So it is myself I cry for as the tears slide out again––an indulgence I can’t seem to stop. The new small dog adjusts her ear away as my sideways tears drip onto it. She nuzzles closer, and Zoe digs herself deeper. Small comforts in an inevitable world.
While looking for my favorite photo of Diego, which I still haven’t found, I came upon this laudatory poem written in his honor a few years ago, so it seemed fitting to publish it again. Here is a link: https://judydykstrabrown.com/2020/05/08/hail-diego/
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/17/opinion/dogs-puppies-adolescence.html?smid=em-share
This brilliant article was sent to me by my friend Laurie. You may not be able to read it unless you subscribe to the NY Times, but if you can read it and have been reading about my puppy Zoe’s recent behavior, you’ll see it describes her to a “T.”
I had more naughty photos, but WP thought it was appropriate to erase my entire blog after a half hour’s work collecting the photos, so I had to start all over again. Is anyone else having problems like this? I was updating and saving… then all vanished.
Traviesa
My dog just ate my wood carving and that is why I need to vent.
Although I have looked everywhere, I can’t find its equivalent.
Sometimes she’s angelic, but at other times a pest.
I’ll leave it up to you which version I like best.
When she’s hushed and loving I fear that I’m forgetful
of all the other times when she’s mischievous and fitful.
I get up and go over to give her a fond pet,
but when I do I step upon a spot that’s slick and wet
and realize that once again she’s had a little pee
in a spot here in the living room she knows that I can’t see
when seated at my writing desk. My back to where she’s been,
I cannot be a witness to her most recent sin.
I know her name is Zoe, but too often I forget
the name that has been given to my most recent pet.
So I call her “Traviesa,” which pops into memory
for “naughty girl” is what she is most frequently.
Prompts today are wet, fitful, angelic, equivalent, quotation, wood carving and hush.
Traviesa
Zoe is a naughty imp, impetuous and furtive.
It does me not one bit of good to try to be assertive.
When I employ tactics in trying to curb her,
I admit it does nothing at all to disturb her.
Her larger brothers turn wild as well
to cope with this little sister from Hell.
When I try to train them with whistle or bribe,
it does nothing at all to curb my wild tribe.
In the end I give up and retreat to my room
leaving the floor mat, my plants and the broom
to be rendered asunder by one tiny pup
who’s developed a creed that she’ll never give up
until every tactic she knows is deployed
to insure every thing in her path is destroyed.
Then she’ll turn on her brothers ten times her size
and pester them ruthlessly with no reprise.
My head I shake slowly. My hands? I throw up,
hoping that one day she’ll surely grow up.
Then I’ll recount fondly when she was a pup!
On the other hand. . . .
Prompts for the day are imp, furtive, impetuous, employ and train whistle. (Traviesa means naughty in Spanish.)
There is a video to post with this but I’m running out of time. I’ll post it later…
I set out the money for my massage guy on the coffee table as I’ve done a hundred times. Fifteen minutes later, I heard a commotion in the guest bedroom. This is what I found:
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 