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

 

 

PAW PRINTS ON MY SOUL

Monks, nuns, and sisters in Orders that practice the Benedictine way of life are noted for hospitality when newcomers knock on their monastery or convent doors. The Anglican sisters in the Community of St. Mary, a Benedictine Order, carry on this tradition here at Sewanee, Tennessee. As an associate of CSM, I’ve met a diverse group of pilgrims who come here on individual and group retreats, as well as regulars who attend services at the convent and share breakfast with the sisters after weekday and Sunday Eucharists.

Last week Deb Gerace, an overnight guest from Kennesaw, Georgia, sat next to me at breakfast in the refectory, and I learned that she was only here for an 'overnight' —“just to step back for a little while,” she said. I asked her if she was a priest on retreat.

“No, a chaplain and therapy dog handler.” She laughed, assuming that I’d think this a strange vocation.

“At a church?”

“Everywhere. My husband Mike and I, and our two former rescue dogs who have become therapy dogs — Sammy and Babycakes — minister to homebound at our own church in Kennesaw, Georgia, to people in nursing homes, rehab centers, and schools…wherever we’re needed.”

Gerace has told the story of training two dogs (who have their own disabilities) for this ministry in Paw Prints on my Soul, describing the dogs as having good dispositions, energy, loyalty, and a willingness to please. Two initial “gigs” for which the dogs trained were at Christ Episcopal Church Gerace attends, the church’s pre-school and in a visit with a cancer patient. On another occasion, they dressed in costumes while Gerace, also a singer/guitarist, gave a music performance and Sammy entertained with a learned wolf howl at a special Halloween show.

Lap sitting, bed sitting, performing to music, the dogs became the inspiration and therapy for the sick and dying, “often triggering a stream of consciousness from somewhere deep inside the jumbled memories of bed-ridden people,” Gerace writes. She and her husband Mike later joined a Chaplain Crises Training group so that they could visit post-disaster areas and share Sammy and Babycakes with traumatized survivors.

St. Mary’s Convent already has its special healing dog, Penny, an adopted part pit bull, part Labrador retriever who has never had any training in healing or crises intervention, but she’s the Convent’s hospitality hostess and has her own “pew” in the chapel — a basket lined with blankets right behind Prioress Madeleine Mary’s chair. This gentle, calm canine attends all the Chapel services and knows when to settle in for the prayers and when to get up at the dismissal. Sister Elizabeth says that Penny has tended several sisters when they were ill, not by invitation but by intuiting that she’s needed, sleeping in their rooms until they recover. I’m allergic to animal dander, particularly cat dander, but I can now be near Penny without suffering allergic reactions. I’ve never heard Penny bark! Sister Madeleine Mary relates that she’s known Penny to growl at strangers they encounter on walks near the Convent because she knows they aren’t sisters or associates, but she isn’t the kind of dog to greet people with aggressive behavior; in contrast, she runs up to greet Convent visitors, gently brushes up against them, receives a few pats on her head, then goes her way. All of us associated with St. Mary’s Convent know that Penny joins the healer dogs, Sammy and Babycakes, in being a creature that leaves paw prints on others’ souls.

While doing research recently, I read a book entitled Mystical Dogs by Jean Houston that described the mystical qualities of dogs and the comfort they provide during dark nights a human may experience. She tells the story of a prison pet partnership program in which inmates train dogs to serve the physically disabled, the elderly, and the blind. “…Our present day canine friends inspire and support us through that stage of the mystic path known in some traditions as ‘the dark night of the soul…over and over again throughout my lifetime, with its share of personal dark nights, my dogs have known not only what my soul has needed, but also that I would survive, even when I felt that I would have a hard time doing so…they have known how to supply the faith, the warmth, the rapt attention, and the bodily presence that human friends and helpers cannot always provide…”

Houston believes that animals aren’t afraid of the darker aspects of life and are happy with us even when we feel broken, explaining that they like nothing better than searching for lost things, whether it’s a buried bone or a missing part of a human soul.