DOGGONE

The morning begins with the case of two barking dogs behind the fence that separates our yard from the neighbor’s yard. I don’t know anything about hound dogs' hearing abilities, but when I approach my desk to write, those two hounds start barking. I also don’t know whether the yapping is a “get busy” signal for me, or the canines identify me as a wandering raccoon, or the armadillo that has grown so fat it can hardly climb out of the backyard coulee. In any case, as long as I’m working in the backroom office, the hounds yap.

According to Jean Houston’s book about mystical dogs, there’s a legend attached to the story about the expulsion of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden that says as they were leaving the Garden, the dog and cat, in particular, decided to follow them into their lonely exile. The animals agreed to be partners with the exiles, forever afterward promising to be loving companions that would share humans’ lives as “teachers and beloveds.” Houston relates that storyteller Joseph Bruchac suggests animals are wiser than human beings because they don’t forget how to behave.

Houston continues by saying when she loses perspective she looks into the eyes of Luna, her white German shepherd who holds out her paw to connect Houston to what is really important — friendship, love, the greater life of which we are part. She attributes that action as steadfastness. I wouldn’t go so far as to dub those barking dogs “holy guides,” as Houston does, but their barking is steadfast, and her treatise about mystical dogs is worth a read.

The Greenlaws, part of my bloodline, have been great dog lovers, and I’ve owned several canines in my life, the last being a German Shepherd. Her name was Tina, and when she barked at garbage collectors on the LSU campus back when (?), she was banished from the vicinity of GI housing where my husband and I resided for five years. She became a “country dog” but came to an unfortunate ending because she raided chicken houses.

My great Uncle Ed immortalized his terrier in Zip Greenlaw, a copy of which is in the LSU library archives, claiming that the dog’s habit of digging holes in the yard on West End Boulevard, New Orleans, Louisiana, was simply a matter of making holes to let something out and also making a way to let something in. The hole was a feature he could wiggle into but also could be forced out by larger creatures (maybe an armadillo ?). Unfortunately, someone put out poisoned meat for Zip, and he died. He was buried in one of the holes he had made in the backyard.

Back to Houston, who says that we have been on journeys with dogs for thousands of years “as hunters, companions of the road, friends at the hearth.” She says that in her next incarnation, she plans to be a dog, “the kind who lives an unscheduled life…who can sneak into its owner’s library when no one is looking and read a book…It is not inconsequential that the English language allows for the dyslexia of the spelling of the word dog: God spelled backward…”*

Well, I’m again alert to the barking next door as a beautiful cardinal lands on the patio, cocks his head, and appears to be listening to the music that I know will cease once I put “Finis” to this doggone story.
 
*Mystical Dogs, Animals as Guides to Our Inner Life by Jean Houston

 

 

FENCES

In “Mending Wall,” Robert Frost concludes a short poem with the often-quoted line, “Good fences make good neighbors.” Today, I thought of Frost’s poem as I looked out at our new cedar fence that divides our yard and the backyard of a new neighbor who lives on one side of our home in New Iberia, Louisiana. On the opposite side of our yard, I look out at a sagging, gray-colored, older fence, one that leans toward our drive, and which I prefer because it reminds me of the neighbor who planted satsuma trees on his side of the fence and from which we have always plucked overhanging fruit.

This good neighbor died of pancreatic cancer several decades ago. He was an amiable man who came over, at no one’s request, and raked our entire front yard following a major Louisiana hurricane. He verged on mute because he performed the task quietly, then returned to his side of the fence as if he had tended to the grooming of his own yard. I never knew anything about this neighbor’s lineage, but when satsumas form and hang over his old fence, in my mind I see a face that looks almost Native American.

He had hair the color of the ravens that nest in a tree beside his former home, a sallow complexion (perhaps caused by his disease) but he was a handsome, lonely looking fellow (although he had a wife and three young children). When I remember this man who spontaneously performed small tasks in my yard, I think of Cherokee people I had seen near Silva, North Carolina, persons whose appearance resembled the quiet neighbor, who lived and continue to live  in harmony with nature, have kind hearts, and are known as wonder workers.


 

 

Our new cedar fence on the opposite side of our home divides us from a dog yard surrounded by a flimsy wire fence that two hounds push down if they’re roaming around outside and from which they could leap over and into our yard at one time but can no longer scale because of our newly-built tall cedar one. The cedar fence is handsome and was expensive to erect, but it isn’t a wall that inspires sentiment like the old sagging fence on the other side of our drive— one that brings up cogent memories within me — those of the kind-hearted neighbor who embodied Frost’s line, “Good fences make good neighbors.”

 

Photographs by Victoria I. Sullivan

 

DOGGONE

Kenyon

Allergies are awful...no two ways about it, allergies are awful. Through some genetic pipeline, I inherited most of my Grandmother Nell's allergies, and they don't improve with age. One of the worst allergies from which I suffer is an allergy to animal dander, a condition that makes me not only resentful but downright angry because it means I can't own a dog. Dogs were a vital part of my growing up and included a flatulent, half-breed cocker spaniel named Tee Nap that accompanied my family on a foolhardy trip out West when I was eleven years old. At that time, my allergy to animal dander wasn't in full bloom, and Tee Nap lay at my feet on the long road trip to Diddy Wah Diddy, unaffected by the complaints of three children stuffed into the back seat of a small, 1941 Ford coupe.

To make a long story short, the allergy to animal dander kicked in in earnest when I reached the age of 50, along with an allergy to my favorite food—shellfish. The allergy to animal dander began with a fit of sneezing over a cat that belonged to my youngest daughter and progressed rapidly to include dogs.

My family always owned female dogs, and I laughed aloud as I read an essay by E.B. White entitled "Dog Training" that describes his father's reaction to owning a "bitch" dog. White says that one day a mutt followed him home from school, and he persuaded his parents to let him keep it. It stayed with him only one night because the next morning his father took him aside and told him in a low voice that the dog was female and that it would have to go. When E.B. White asked why, his father, embarrassed, explained that the dog would be a nuisance and would attract all the male dogs in the neighborhood all the time. White wrote that this seemed like an idyllic arrangement to him, but he could tell that the new dog was doomed to live somewhere else...and was evicted. Nonetheless, in adulthood, when E.B. White bought his farm in New England, he also acquired two dachshunds and a wire-haired fox terrier, and with sheep to take care of, was "obliged to do my shepherding with [their] grotesque and sometimes underhanded assistance..."

Of course, during my childhood we just put up with broods of puppies when our female dogs beget, but nowadays, female parents are spayed. In the 40's, dogs didn't expect much in the way of medical care nor did they expect anything unusual in their diet—they subsisted on that food unknown to a dog today—"scraps," including chicken bones and leftover Rice Crispies swimming in milk, and their longevity was no less than it is today. In fact, they may have lived longer. I might add that they survived in doghouses of the same architecture that housed Snoopy in the "Peanuts" comic strip and were constantly breaking leash laws.

Back in the 90's, I was asked to ghost write a piece for the artist, George Rodrigue, about his dog Tiffany, and we met for an interview at Landry's Restaurant near Breaux Bridge, Louisiana where George had a small studio. The piece was never published, but I still have a record of the interview and the piece I wrote that was unused because Harper and Row wanted a fantasy told by Tiffany.  The two-hour interview included a lot of questions about "man and the psychic dog" that I had gleaned from a book entitled Dog by Patricia Green. Green says that a legend tells us how after the Creation, a gulf opened up between man and the animals that God had given names. Among the animals was this dog looking at the ever-widening breach and when separation was almost complete, the dog leapt across the gulf, taking its place beside man. I asked George if he thought that's what Tiffany did and he affirmed this idea.

In Dog, Ms. Green says that a psychic dog may be a devourer or creator, a wounder or healer, a contaminator or purifier and may represent the redemptive elements in man's life. It was interesting to me that Rodrigue painted the blue dog as a redemptive element. Tiffany always had to be in the foreground of his paintings.

I have friends who speak of dogs as being there for them when they experience despair or sadness and that act as an archetype in their lives. The dogs represent hope and healing, protecting their owners from danger.

I could go on at length about dogs, but the narration won't do any good as far as allergies are concerned. I'm seriously considering getting allergy shots so that I can find a dog like the one on this blog—a female black lab retriever. I already have a name for her. My black lab will be called "Kenyon" after the poet I most admire but who, unhappily, is deceased: Jane Kenyon.

I hope she won't mind being a ghost dog until I get my round of allergy shots... "Here, Kenyon..." 

MORE DOGGEREL

Zip Greenlaw

I don’t own a dog. At the age of 50, just when I thought I was getting over the hump called mid-life, I developed an allergy to animal dander. Now, in my family ancestry, dogs are considered one of the staples of a happy life; and if not dogs, cats. So, in a sense I’m a black sheep among a clan of dog and cat lovers; namely, my Scots ancestors, the Greenlaws,  from whence my mother came. Growing up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, we always had dogs around, tunneling holes in the backyard, sitting on the back porch barking all night, and, finally, one cocker spaniel named “Tee-Nap” that accompanied the family in a crowded Ford coupe all the way to Diddy Wah Diddy, my father’s name for California.

Great Uncle Ed Greenlaw was the consummate dogologist and ‘though he wasn’t a misanthrope, he was fond of quoting the maxim, “The more I know of man, the more I love my dog.” He immortalized his fox terrier in a pamphlet published on his own printing press entitled Zip Greenlaw, Autobiography of a Fox Terrier, that is now in the archives at Louisiana State University. Zip was a regular terror of a dog who often fought with the cat next door named Kitty Gamard and was taught to squeeze a water pistol loaded with water at grand nieces (mostly me) when Great Uncle Ed didn’t want to be disturbed. Great Uncle Ed also suffered from a disease called “children intolerance,” sorta’ like W. C. Fields. The water pistol incident is the only live memory I have of  Uncle Ed and his dog, which I immortalized (?) in a poem that I published in Grandma’sGood War: A Verse Retrospective of the Forties.

I try to avoid dog licks, pounces, and other shows of affection because such expressions usually cause me to sneeze, get teary-eyed, and itch all over. However, in cases of emergency I’ve been known to get within barking distance of short-haired hounds, namely dachshunds. These hounds exhibit a certain intelligence that Great Uncle Ed would appreciate and write about if he were still alive.

For example, the other day I visited a friend in my official capacity as a deacon in the Episcopal Church (an office which Great Uncle Ed wouldn’t have respected because he was an agnostic and spent an hour every Sunday parked in his Cadillac, waiting for his daughters to emerge from an Episcopal Church in New Orleans, Louisiana... or on some Sundays, he simply watched the trains go by until decent folk emerged from their Sunday pews, when he’d say “They’ll be all right on Monday”). Anyway, one Thursday, I put my Communion kit under my arm and took Communion to a close friend who has been confined indoors for a spell. Her constant companion is a miniature dachshund named “Gus” (oddly enough, the name of Great Uncle Ed’s cook!). Most of the time when we visit, Gus climbs into a basket in front of the hassock where my friend stretches out her legs and after playing “Man’s Best Friend Is His Dog” on his squeak toys (shades of the old water pistol), he goes to sleep for the duration of our visit.

On this particular Thursday, while I'm  preparing my miniscule altar and placing the vessels on it, Gus pulls the blanket over his head, I suppose, so that he doesn’t have to listen to the prayers – or maybe, smart dog that he is, he’s going into his closet and praying like Jesus enjoined us to do. I finally reach the part where I lift the paten with wafers on it and announce, “The gifts of God for the people of God.” When I moved to put the Communion wafer in my friend’s hands, Gus burst from his hideaway under the blanket and came over to the hassock, panting for his turn to commune. The most irreverent laugher ended our home Communion service. My friend explained to me that Gus appears at the card table on cue when the ladies put down their cards and bring out the dessert tray because they always include treats they’ve prepared for him. I had committed the sin of dog omission!

I wouldn’t want to leave anyone out of the Eucharistic Feast, even dogs to which I am allergic, so this morning after Eucharist at St. Mary’s, I asked for an increased supply of Communion wafers. Dogologists that the Sisters are, they approved an extra wafer for my next visit with Gus. I could hear Great Uncle Ed laughing up yonder.

Here’s a portion of the bit of doggerel from Grandma’sGood War:

IN DEFENSE OF DOGGEREL

It began with Great Uncle Ed who called himself a dogologist,

a man who perhaps needed the help of a skilled psychologist,

Great Uncle Ed whose favorite quotation

was the maxim of long duration,

“The more I know of men, the more I love my dog,”

a sentiment reinforced by the writing of a daily log

that became autobiography of a dog named Zip Greenlaw,

a fox terrier that would hold a water pistol in his paw

and douse children if they came near Great Uncle Ed,

more evidence that Uncle meant what he said

about not liking humans as much as those canine,

claiming Greenlaws could speak Dog, a language more divine

than, for instance, his son-in-law who spoke with vigor

about work toward a Ph.D., short for “post hole digger.”

“If one made a hole to let something out,”

Zip wrote, “then without a shred of canine doubt,

one has also made a way to let something in,”

citing his backyard hang-out as evidence of this spin.

Zip claimed that a Ph.D. impeded rather than protected,

that man could live a life more inner directed

without advanced degree, a hole in the yard being a feature

he could wiggle into but also be forced out by larger creature…”

That’s only a portion of the piece of doggerel, but you can imagine the rest of the dialogue. The above essay about dogs is what happens to poets on a rainy day on The Mountain, but doggone, it’s the closest I can get to a creature that the One Whom None Can Hinder keeps from my “spoliation” by endowing me with an allergy to our canine friends.

DOG FOOD

DOG EATS MY CHECK

Yesterday I received an e-mail from a friend who owns a small, feisty dog whose name I won’t mention for fear of embarrassing both dog and owner with my story about certain dog misbehavior that occurred recently.  It seems that the anonymous dog, who obviously had more curiosity than sense and sharper teeth than most of her canine cousins, picked up a check I had sent to my friend that had dropped to the floor while she sat at her desk preparing a deposit slip.  The dog in question didn’t quite know how to handle money, but with her intuitive female dog faculties knew that money is something most humans drool over, yodel about, and base their lives upon.  So she tore the check in half and ate one half.  The check did nothing for her taste buds, and what it did for her digestion is not worth writing about.  Furthermore, she couldn’t even brag about obtaining a $100 check because it wouldn’t help her status in the canine world as dogs don’t give a doggone about money.   I plan to re-issue the check and will request that my friend wait for the dog to bed down for the night before she prepares another deposit slip.

DOG EATS MY SHOES

That was the first incident about dogs and their exotic appetites.  The second incident involves my old tennis shoes, which, after miles of walking, raking, and wading through mud, had achieved that scruffy look dogs admire.  They carried a palpable scent that reeked suspiciously of wet dog hair, so…So when I left them on my front doorstep one night, I discovered them the following morning in the yard, minus toes and heels, chewed to death.  I peered through the dining room window and spied a white dog with oddly-shaped black patches, sniffing around a large blue beach ball he had obviously stolen from the dormitory next door and was attempting to swallow it.  You can picture the results had he succeeded.

 

UNCLE ED'S STORY ABOUT ZIP

These incidents caused me to ponder: Is here a shortage of dog food in the world?  Has the proverbial dog bone been relegated to the graveyard in this high tech, papered over, rubber-shoed world in which we now live?  I consulted Great Uncle Ed’s book, ZIP: AN AUTOBIOGRAPY OF A FOX TERRIER, and discovered some facts about one dog who lived back in the early twentieth century:

ZIP CHEWS VIOLIN STRINGS

Zip says: “The entire Greenlaw family speaks dog fluently but they seem to think I should learn a little English.  This part of my education was delegated to Dora.  Ida tried to teach me violin and piano but gave up the effort after I chewed the strings off of her Stradivarius several times.  And she acted likewise in my piano work.  One night I had the piano going in good shape.   It woke Ida and she came to the pianorium to listen to my strange composition.  I wasn’t even thinking of eighth notes, quarter notes, or whole notes – I was after a whole rat that stole a piece of my cheese.  I would have caught him if Ida had not pulled me out of the piano case…”

DOGGEREL ABOUT ZIP

I guess this piece confirms the fact that dogs have strange tastes and will, like Cajuns, eat anything at any time.  I close with some sentimental doggerel my Great Uncle Ed quoted in ZIP, lines borrowed from Edmund Cooke:

“And all he got was bones and bread,

or the leavings of soldiers’ grub

but he’d give his heart for a pat on the head

for a friendly tickle and rub.

If there is no place for love like that,

For such four-legged fealty – well!

If I have any choice, I’ll tell you flat,

I’ll take my chance in hell.”

And so much for dog food and doggerel!  I will be away from my desk for over a week and am putting the lawn chairs indoors because who can tell what's next on a canine’s menu?