Tag Archives: family

The Barking Tour of Washington, D.C.

Posted on March 10, 2013 by rachelmankowitz

 

Back in January, we went to Washington, DC to celebrate my great aunt’s 97th birthday, a month late. She’s a very young 97, still my Grandpa’s feisty baby sister.

Mom visits her cousin and her aunt once or twice a year, and they’ve become very close. This is the cousin who lent us her NYC pied a terre after the hurricane when our power was out on Long Island. She and Mom are both painfully empathetic, and feel like they should have done more with their lives, even as they continue to choose to put their energy into other people instead.

A few years ago I gave Mom a list of questions and a tape recorder to bring with her on her visit to see her aunt. I’d been reading my grandfather’s unfinished memoir, and finding a lot of holes in the story, and I realized I had a potential treasure trove of information in my great aunt. I transcribed the tapes, listening over and over to get every word down, and I became very familiar with her voice and rhythm and the stories of her life. But I was looking forward to hearing from her in person. I was also eager to see her daughter and to meet her grand dog, Zoe.

We had to drive to D.C., because any other method of transportation, with both dogs, would have been untenable. I can’t even imagine the damage Cricket could do on a train.

We put the dogs in their harnesses, in their doggy beds, in the back seat of the car. Butterfly sat on her bed and drooled, but within seconds, Cricket was out of her harness and behind my neck in the front passenger seat. She moved around, as she usually does, between my neck, my lap, and her favorite spot, behind my back with her nose stuck behind Grandma’s shoulder. Her answer to anxiety is to stay as close to her people as possible.

Cricket the co-pilot

Cricket the co-pilot

The longest Butterfly had been in a car before, with us, was the half hour back from the animal shelter in November, so I didn’t know what to expect. She started out panting and drooling, but after half an hour she moved on to vomiting white foam.

Butterfly with her paper towel bib

Butterfly with her paper towel bib

We stopped the car, to clean and dry her bed, and to take both dogs for a walk to get some fresh air, but once Butterfly was back in the car the vomiting continued. Two and a half hours into the trip, I’d used up a whole roll of paper towels and half a box of tissues, and we had to stop at a super market for more.

Overall Butterfly vomited seven times.

We arrived in the Capitol Hill neighborhood at around four thirty in the afternoon and Zoë and her Mom came out to greet us. Butterfly was happy to have her paws on solid ground again. And even Cricket kept her volume at a low bark for the first meeting. We walked over to Zoe’s local dog park down the block, and met a lot of friendly and talkative Washingtonians.

Zoe demonstrated her unique poopie dance for us. She walked in second position plie, on her tippy toes, in a very large circle, before she finally felt ready to poop. Butterfly was fascinated by this variation. Where was the hopping and twirling? Why one big circle when you could do ten circles and a spiral?

Zoe is a Cockapoo, like Cricket, but Cricket is fourteen pounds and mostly white with apricot markings, and Zoe is 27 pounds, with red hair and a Golden Retriever-like personality. She loves everyone.

Once inside her house, Zoe galloped across the floor and leapt onto her seeing chair to watch the neighborhood through the window. I’ve been told that she barks, but I’m not sure I believe it of her. She has only one flaw, like Butterfly, occasionally she still poops and pees in the house. Her trainer taught her to respond to the words “potty outside” to help her differentiate between doing her business on the dining room carpet and out in the backyard. But that sounds too much like “party outside” to me. I’m afraid Zoe does her business in the house to get ready for the big party outside. She’s a very social girl.

Mom’s cousin is a devotee of take out menus. There is a precious folder in the kitchen with a menu from every restaurant in Washington DC. We ordered in and the dogs had Chicken Satay, Zoe’s choice.

Three girls eating all in a row

Three girls eating all in a row

After a night’s sleep, or collapse, at the hotel, we went back to the Capitol Hill neighborhood and walked around town with the three dogs. Everyone knew Zoë. We stopped in one store after another where the owners offered her and the girls special treats. There was the kitchen supply store and the children’s book store and the furniture and chotchkes store. You could tell it was a dog friendly neighborhood because there were silver dog bowls full of water at regular intervals along the street. Eventually, we sat at an outdoor café and fed the dogs pieces of our grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch.

Cricket and Butterfly at the book store (Zoe's on the other side of the door)

Cricket and Butterfly at the book store (Zoe’s on the other side of the door)

Zoe and her mom were approached on the street to volunteer in a program where kids learn to read by reading to dogs. Zoe would be perfect for the job. There’s just nothing indifferent or mean about her, and she would love the attention.

We were a funny looking group: Mom’s cousin in her ankle boot from a recent foot injury, me with my awkward stomping walk, and the dogs pulling in three different directions. But we had a good time and wore ourselves out completely.

After a nap, though, we were ready for the big event, dinner with my great aunt at her apartment. Zoe is an experienced elevator rider, but my girls were still struggling with the moving wall that tried to catch their tails. As soon as the elevator door opened on her grandma’s floor, Zoe raced down the hall to get to the apartment as fast as possible. She was clearly her Grandma’s girl. She slathered on the kisses and then ran inside to find the living room rug with the raised squares that was clearly designed for doggy back scratching.

Zoe's magic carpet

Zoe’s magic carpet

The girls followed Zoe into the apartment and sniffed every corner. Cricket started to bark, but her new people barked back, and she was shocked into silence, for a little while anyway. When we started to eat dinner, cooked entirely by my 97 year old great aunt, the dogs spread out on the floor of the dining room to rest. There were two different types of chicken on the table, which eventually led to whimpering that, surprisingly, did not come from either of my dogs. It was Zoe.

Zoe’s whimpering woke the other dogs and they started begging for chicken and searching through the bowls of dog food in the kitchen for other hidden treasures. Meanwhile, the humans listened to stories about the Carp that lived in the Bathtub, for years, and had to be shifted out of the tub whenever one of the humans actually needed a bath. I could hear my Grandpa in his little sister’s voice, his sense of humor, his magical glee about the absurdities of life.

I wish I could show you the raised eyebrow she adds to every story, but I’m not allowed to take pictures of her. She does exist though, I promise.

On our last morning in DC, Mom’s cousin took us on a driving tour of the city with Cricket barking her commentary on the Capitol building, the White House, the Smithsonian, the Lincoln Memorial and everything in between.

We were there before the inauguration, so we got to see the porta-potties being lined up along the mall. Cricket barked at them too.

When it was time to leave, I gave Zoe a big hug and soaked up as much love as I could. The whole time we were there, Cricket never had a bad moment with her cousin. They ate together and slept together and walked together and Cricket, who growls at every dog she meets, couldn’t think of anything growly to say.

Butterfly slept in Cricket's bed the whole way home

Butterfly slept in Cricket’s bed the whole way home

Butterfly took a few drops of Pepto Bismal for the trip home, and Cricket was dosed with the doggy version of an anti-anxiety medication, so the seven hour ride home was largely uneventful, which gave me time to think about the trip. Zoe and her Mom and her Grandma were wonderful. The city was fascinating. Butterfly made a great impression with her little pink tongue. But Cricket was still struggling.

Except, there was one moment in the car during the drive around the city that morning. Butterfly was on my lap in the back seat, with Cricket stretched out next to me, temporarily quiet. Somewhere along the way, Butterfly rested her head on Cricket’s back, and Cricket let her stay there.

It’s a place to start.

Cricket, on my lap, and drugged

Cricket, on my lap, and drugged

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Cricket’s Second Training Class

Posted on October 14, 2012 by rachelmankowitz

 

 

We tried another training class when Cricket was a year and a half old. She’d been getting bad reports from the groomers for biting and general recalcitrance, and Mom had heard about this teacher from a friend of a friend and we decided to make the effort to try again.

The new teacher ran her school out of a small store front. The floor was rubbery and easy to clean, and the room was big enough to take six dogs per class with two owners each, with a row of chairs for the non participating owners.

The teacher had a long haired German shepherd who came in for the first class to demonstrate what the training could accomplish. He stayed quietly in his crate until he was called. She showed us how they played tug of war with a flexible flying saucer, but as soon as she said drop it, he did, and sat down like a gentleman. Then she showed us some of his tricks, like being shot and playing dead and coming back to life. But most of all she showed us that he listened to her. He was well behaved and happy. She never yelled at him or, God forbid, hit him, or sprayed him with a water bottle.

She talked about how to teach a behavior by capturing it as it happened and naming it and rewarding it. So instead of forcing him into a sit or lie down, she’d wear her treat bag and click when he did what she wanted and name the behavior until he recognized the name.

She wore the treat bag attached to her belt loop. It looked like a mini-fanny pack, but she wore it in front so she could reach the treats easily. She showed us how to press the clicker and immediately feed the treats to the dog to reward the correct behavior.

I already felt like a failure before the class started, because most of the other students were continuing on directly from puppy class in the fall. Cricket was older than the other dogs, but she didn’t mind. She’s not much of a shame puppy.

There was a Golden Retriever, who liked to roll over into submissive position every few minutes, and a German shepherd who wore a kerchief at his neck. There was a black lab, second to the Golden in submissiveness, but more playful. And then there was the Mastiff, this enormous bull of a dog, with a chain collar around his neck, because he was stronger than both of his parents. His bark was deep and loud, especially in the small room. And then there was Cricket, the oldest and smallest dog in the class.

The teacher sent us home with a list of things to buy, including a new harness for Cricket, which would be our third attempt to switch over to a harness from a collar and leash. Cricket has a Houdini-like talent for escaping the little vests in the middle of the street.

Cricket actually enjoyed training, at home. She loved the treats. We finally discovered one brand of chicken treats that worked every time, even when everything else was hit or miss, so we bought in bulk. But once we got to class, it was as if the treats had gone rancid, even though I’d cleaned the treat bag and filled it with fresh treats right before class. Cricket would sit there and pant at me and not hear any of my instructions, and even if she took a treat in her mouth, she’d spit it onto the floor.

Oh, and she climbed out of her new harness within the first few minutes of class.

The teacher called Cricket relentless. It wasn’t a compliment. She also said that I wasn’t holding my ground enough. I wasn’t matching her relentlessness the way I should be.

Cricket learned how to sit and stay and, sometimes, to lie down on command. She learned that she loves chicken treats. I learned that teaching new skills to a reluctant student is torture, and that I’m not good at being consistent. I learned that I hate the sound of the clicker and that I’m not built to be a dog trainer.

My one real success, though, was mat training. I placed the mat on the floor and gave Cricket her treat when she stood on it, even with one paw. Then she got treats for sitting on the mat. Then, she got treats for staying on the mat. Cricket loved this game. She loved the endless treats she could get just for sitting there and staring at me. She could stay on the mat for almost two minutes at a time, as long as I gave her a days worth of treats to make it worth her while, and as long as nothing more exciting came along, like the mailman.

 

 

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Delilah’s Diabetes

Posted on September 23, 2012 by rachelmankowitz

When Delilah was about eight years old, and I was fourteen, she developed diabetes. I don’t know how we discovered it, but we were sensitive to certain signs because my father had been diagnosed with type-two diabetes about four years earlier. Delilah was a healthy, if skinny, Doberman Pinscher until she got sick. She wasn’t the most energetic creature, but as soon as the door bell rang, she would start to bark, like the guard dog she was born to be. Except that, as the person entered the house, Delilah would walk backward up the stairs, and continue to bark from a safe distance.

She spent a lot of time out in the backyard. Mom would leave the back door open, with the screen door in place, so if Delilah wanted to go outside she could push the door open with her nose, and if she wanted to come back in she could bark once or twice. But more often than not she’d just rest on the back porch.

I never saw Delilah jump off the porch, I only heard about it, that this mostly quiet dog could get so worked up over the little birds who nested under the roof of the garage that she would stand on the porch with her front feet on the railing and then leap into the air to catch a bird. The drop from the porch railing looked steep to me, but Delilah was an athlete and took it in stride.

And then she got sick. The vet sent Mom home with hypodermic needles, alcohol wipes, and vials of insulin. She had to get the shots daily, with Mom learning how to pinch an inch of skin and plunge in the needle where Delilah was least likely to feel it.

Delilah was on insulin for almost a year before she died. I don’t even remember her showing signs of deterioration by the time summer came.

I had a habit of waking up early on Saturday mornings to clean the kitchen before my parents woke up. I generally woke up anxious, and scrubbing counter tops calmed me down. One Saturday morning in July, I was halfway down the stairs when I saw Delilah on the floor of the dining room. There was a greenish grey aura around her, like a dark version of the chalk outline the police on TV draw around dead bodies. This dog who had been brown and black, now seemed grey. I knew she was dead, and I panicked and ran back upstairs to hide in my room and let someone else find her.

By the time I came back downstairs a few hours later, my parents were there. They’d found her, wrapped her in a blanket, and moved her body to the back porch, because nothing could be done while it was still the Sabbath.

It was summer, so it was past nine o’clock by the time the Sabbath was over. It was dark by then, and raining. Suddenly, my father thought burying her was an immediate necessity. It couldn’t wait until the morning. It couldn’t be handled by the vet. He couldn’t ask friends to come and help. I had to help carry the blanket covered dog down the porch steps, to the back corner of the backyard, dig a hole, put her in, and cover the hole with dirt.

Mom tells me it was more common back then to bury a dog yourself, but by the time I was fifteen, it didn’t feel common at all, it felt illegal and disturbing. I was crying and shaking and my father was yelling at me to hurry up and to shut up.

It wasn’t a good way to say goodbye to someone who had been family to me for more than half of my life. And it was too dramatic for Delilah. She would have preferred something quiet and peaceful, with the TV on in the background and a few gentle pats on the head.

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Delilah’s Puppies

Posted on September 16, 2012 by rachelmankowitz

         

Delilah was a pure bred Doberman Pinscher. We adopted her from a breeder when I was six or seven years old on the condition that her first litter would go back to the breeder (and he would supply the stud and medical care). My father fed her from the table and spoke to her in German, but she liked to sleep on my bed in the afternoons, after barking at strangers passing by all day.

She had a job, though, and that was to get pregnant as soon as her body was ready. Mom woke me up when Delilah went into labor. I think it was sunrise or shortly afterwards, because the rays of the sun were shooting through the windows in the little vestibule between the kitchen and the dining room. The vestibule was just the right size for Delilah, her puppies, Mom, my brother, and me.

I remember Delilah breathing heavily, panting, with sweat dripping from her tongue. She had a kind of crazed look on her face, but very serious, especially after each bag of puppy slid out of her. The bags were grayish brown and slimy, but Delilah was conscientious about freeing each puppy from its cocoon, and cleaning it thoroughly so it could start to breathe and walk freely.

Suddenly, Delilah was a warrior. Any attempt to get close to her puppies without her permission and she’d bare her teeth and growl.

At around six weeks, the puppies were sent to the breeder for a medical visit. My father brought me with him to the breeder’s workshop to pick them up. I got there just in time to see a row of puppy tails on the work bench, unattached to the puppies. They had their ears wired up as well, with what looked like copper wire laced through each ear like a long row of earrings.

The puppies were warm, squeaky and cuddly, and when my parents brought them back to the breeder for good at eight weeks old, I was sad, but I wasn’t heart broken. I’d thought of them as borrowed, from the beginning.

The second litter of puppies was different. My father thought he could make money as a breeder on his own. He paid the original breeder a stud fee, and then the resulting puppies were ours to sell, free and clear.

My brother and I were away at sleep away camp during the pregnancy and arrived home a few days after the puppies were born. My father made sure to tell us that there had been eight puppies originally, but that Delilah had rolled onto one and killed it. When I repeated the story to my mother recently, she said no, it was a still birth. Delilah didn’t kill her own baby, why would you think that? But Delilah did, supposedly, leave a mark on the foot of one of the seven puppies, a boy, and I named him Wounder.

I believed the story – that Delilah had stepped on him, and wounded him – and somehow, in my nine year old brain, that transposed into “Wounder.” Maybe I was trying to combine the two things I saw in him, “wound” and “wonder.” But the final version resonated as more meaningful to me, even then, before I’d ever heard of a Freudian slip.

Mom put an ad in the paper after a few more weeks, and people came by to look at the puppies. But no one bought them. Maybe it was because we weren’t registered breeders or the paperwork wasn’t good enough, or we were asking for too much money.

My father was angry that the puppies didn’t magically sell themselves, and he abdicated responsibility for them. Eventually my mother had to bring the puppies to the animal shelter to be adopted out, because, she said, we just couldn’t keep eight full grown Doberman Pinschers in one house.

The shelter took all of the puppies but one, Wounder. They said he was too rambunctious, climbing on counters and showing them he was boss. I loved that about him. I was sure that my father would have to let me keep Wounder now, but he said no. We couldn’t have an un-neutered son and his un-spayed mother in the same house, and my father refused to have either of them fixed, so Wounder would have to go.

My mother tried to find him a home, but no one would take him, even for free. She had to take him to the pound, where, I knew, they put unadoptable dogs down after a specified period of time. I was told that he was adopted from there, but I’m not sure I believe that.

Delilah went back to sleeping on my bed every afternoon and barking at strangers who came to the door. But I never forgot Wounder, and I don’t think Delilah forgot him or the rest of her puppies either. They were her babies, after all.

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The Lucky Ladybug

Posted on September 9, 2012 by rachelmankowitz

            One day a few years ago, I noticed that I was being followed by ladybugs. There would be one on the wall behind my bed, then another one on my dresser, then out on the porch and on my wrist. I asked around, in case there was a surplus of ladybugs and everyone was having this experience and I was told, instead, that ladybugs are lucky.

Now, I have not been an especially lucky person. I don’t win contests or get discovered in malt shops. I gain weight easily and get injured easily. I tend to wish on eyelashes more than I should. But these ladybugs kept following me around.

A few weeks ago, there was a ladybug on my bedside table for twenty-four hours. At first, I thought it had come here to die. It was so still. I tried to move papers out from underneath it, and it didn’t move. But then mom nudged it with a finger, because she’s braver than I am, and it lifted its wings for a second and then settled back down. Maybe it liked having the light of my table lamp aimed at its back, maybe it was doing a little light reading, or maybe it had something it wanted to tell me.

I felt honored to be chosen like that. Honored to be the safe place for a ladybug to rest and recuperate or to pause before the next big journey. I wondered if my luck would change now that a ladybug had chosen me.

But in the research I did online it said the ladybug has to land on your body to bring good luck, and she didn’t do that. She stayed for twenty four hours and then disappeared.

Then, just recently, the ladybug returned, crawling up the length of my red comforter, looking like she fit right in. She walked right up onto my hand and then flew to my shoulder and tried to crawl up my neck and into my hair. That was a bit too creepy for me.

But is it the same lady bug? Is she persisting in trying to get her magic across to me? I would like to believe that. I would like to believe in the power of magical thinking, not just as an anti-depressant, but as an agent of change in the world. Just like prayer has been proven to have an effect, not just on the person who prays, but on the people she prays for, I want to believe the same about ladybugs. That just the act of wishing for and believing in luck can change the energy in the world, and change what happens next.

 

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Solomon, the dastardly Doberman

Posted on September 2, 2012 by rachelmankowitz

 

            Solomon was the first significant dog in my life. We have no pictures of him, probably because he was never stationary long enough to be caught on film. He was a Doberman Pinscher with clipped ears and tail, and he was mythological in personality. He was a puppy when I was still in diapers, and he used to grab the used cloth diapers away from my mother before she could clean them.

It was odd, looking back, for my Jewish father to be drawn to a pure bred, German dog. He came from a generation of Jewish people who refused to even buy a German car. But he liked the idea of a guard dog to protect his house, or his castle.

As Solomon got older, he was a very handsome dog, but not kid friendly. He was eighty pounds of muscle and he only did what he wanted to do. He didn’t like cuddles or playing catch. He certainly didn’t want to play dress up with me. He had a habit of escaping from the backyard and leading a parade of cars trying to catch him as he ran down the street.

One time, he ran away and took over someone’s lawn. He wouldn’t let the family into or out of their house for a whole day, until they were able to get to his name tag and call my parents to come get him. That’s probably when my parents called a trainer to help them manage him better. But the trainer said that my father’s aggressive response, jerking Solomon’s chain and yelling at him, and my mother’s very opposite submissive response, were the problem. And my parents knew they couldn’t change each other any more than they could change Solomon, so that was the last of the trainer.

When Solomon was four years old, and I was five, he was diagnosed with Parvo. I looked up the parvovirus online recently, and the symptoms didn’t sound good: bloody diarrhea, vomiting, anorexia, lethargy, fever, and severe weight loss. He stayed overnight at the vet and they sent him home with medication and an uncertain prognosis.

A few days later he was stretched out on our kitchen floor, listless. Our kitchen was very seventies, with orange and yellow wallpaper and a lot of light coming through the windows and the open back door. I sat on the floor with him. He was still alive but this vigorous, aggressive creature was wiped out by his disease. He was still and silent and he watched me solemnly as if he was finally seeing me. I don’t know what he was trying to communicate. Maybe he was asking me why he had to be so sick. Maybe he hoped I could make him better. Maybe he was just relieved to have someone with him while he died.

My mother covered him with a yellow knitted blanket, and stayed with us in the kitchen. I don’t remember if she was cleaning the kitchen or making dinner but it seemed like she was keeping busy because she was too sad to look at him. I sat there next to him and patted his head and looked into his eyes and I felt like we were together in this.

People underestimate what children can feel and understand, because children don’t have the words yet to tell you what they know. But I felt his grief and I stayed with him until he was gone, because that’s what I would have wanted him to do for me.

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Cricket and the Brown Mouse

Posted on August 19, 2012 by rachelmankowitz

 

            A few years ago, I walked into the kitchen and saw a tiny brown mouse eating from Cricket’s food bowl. Cricket had left half of her breakfast scattered on the floor around her bowl, trusting that she could come back to it later if nothing better came up in the mean time. But there was this tiny brown mouse, holding a twig of her dry food in its hands and getting ready to nibble. I wasn’t sure what I was seeing at first, because I’d never seen a mouse stand still like that, not with a human and a dog nearby.          Finally, Cricket stepped forward and gave a low growl. Not the bark she’d have handed the mail man, but a warning none the less. And the little mouse backed up, dropped the food, and ran away. Clearly it was a baby mouse, just learning the run and hide rules of the tribe.

There may have been mice over the years, but I hadn’t seen them again, until I recently noticed mouse droppings in the corner of my bedroom, near the stairs. Then mom heard scritch scratching overnight in her room. And then we saw a brown mouse scamper behind the plant table in the kitchen. So Mom went to the store to buy mousetraps.

Once, when I was a kid, we had a glue trap. The guy at the store had recommended it as more humane than the regular mousetrap, but then I saw a mouse caught on the glue. It was still alive, but struggling to get free, and with each movement it became more trapped. I almost threw up, and then I cried inconsolably. Mom promised me she’d never use a glue trap again, but she made no promises about regular traps. Because you’re just not supposed to accept having mice in your house. It’s not clean, or healthy, or polite.

Mom put out the new traps, but because we hadn’t used them in years, she’d forgotten how to set them correctly. She placed one on a paper towel and shoved it under the plant table, and the next thing we knew, Cricket had pulled the paper towel out and eaten the cheese, leaving the trap unsprung.

The way Cricket barks at humans and chases squirrels outside of the house, you’d think she’d notice, and mind, the presence of tiny interlopers, especially near her food or by her bed. But she hasn’t been barking at them. They must have been around for months before we noticed, and she never told us.

I wonder if she’s friends with the mice behind our backs, bringing them food, tossing them a ball every once in a while, acting as guard dog for them when humans come near.

But maybe they’re just too small to seem like a threat to her. She doesn’t bark at ants either.

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Walking with Cricket

Posted on August 12, 2012 by rachelmankowitz

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Cricket and I used to do a two mile walk around the neighborhood, when the weather was right and we’d been cooped up too long in the house. I’d fill a bag with her necessities: a Tupperware cup full of water, extra poopie bags, and a paper towel or two in case of emergencies. Cricket knew that a bag like that signaled a long walk and once she had her leash on, she raced down the stairs with the leash flailing behind her and jumped up to reach the door knob with her nose. She had to wait for me to turn it, though.

The first few minutes of the walk were a blur of effort for her, dragging me, like a horse with a plow, past the corner and down the block until we had truly reached THE WALK ZONE, which was at least a block past the shorter PEE ZONE. Then Cricket could focus on her sniffing without fear that it would all end too soon.

Walking smoothes out her brain chemicals, and the neighborhood fills her up with smells and experiences that keep her mind busy for hours afterwards. She doesn’t mind hot weather, or cold weather. In fact she would drag me out in ice and snow if she could, though not rain, raindrops are like poison darts on her head.

Walking with Cricket helps to calm me down, too. If I wake up anxious, which I usually do, with twenty different ideas of what the day should hold running through my head, I take Cricket out for a walk, and burn off the extra energy. Walking with Cricket, instead of on the treadmill, has the added benefit of forcing me outdoors, where there are beautiful things to look at. My neighborhood is especially beautiful, filled with dogwoods and maples and birds and flowers, and the ground isn’t flat, so when we go up and down the hills, we get a whole new look at the view.

I still try to take Cricket out on her walks around the neighborhood, but in the forty-five minutes it used to take to do two miles, I can barely do one. Some days, I just walk slowly. Other days, my legs go wonky, and I look like a marionette. My hands curl up and my face twitches. On those days, walking uphill is like climbing Kilimanjaro and walking downhill is a race against gravity.

The doctors don’t know what’s wrong with me, but Cricket doesn’t mind if I walk funny. She runs circles around me when I’m slow, and gets twice the exercise in the same amount of time. Or she goes out with her Grandma, and barks all of the details of her adventure to me when she returns.

I wish I could put her on the treadmill to help her burn off the energy left over after her shortened walks. I worked on that with her when she was little. I built her up gradually, from standing on the unmoving treadmill, to walking at the slowest speed for two minutes. But then, abruptly, she changed her mind about the experiment. Maybe she decided that she didn’t like the ground moving under her feet, or she didn’t see the point of a walk with no peeing component and nothing to sniff.

My dream is to be healthy enough to take Cricket out for the longest walk she can stand. She will empty her bladder so completely that even she can’t believe she has any more pee left to give. She’ll drink all of the water in her Tupperware cup, and meet as many dogs as she can. And then, without any prompting from me, she will look up and say, Mommy, I’m ready to go home.

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Cricket still seems like a stranger

Posted on August 5, 2012 by rachelmankowitz

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Cricket still seems like a stranger. I don’t know how to explain this. I love her, and I miss her if I’m away from her for a few hours, and I’m jealous of all the time she spends with Mom instead of with me. But when I’m sad or angry or lonely, I don’t see an echo of it in her face. I feel like when I look into her eyes, we are not really seeing past the surfaces of each other. We are not soul mates.

When Cricket first came home, I was addicted to the digital camera, trying to capture every different look on her face, so that I could get to know her: the way her lower teeth jut out so she looks like a fighter, the places where her hair is curly and where it is straight, and the wide variety of her different chirps and growls.

I know which foods she likes, and how small the first piece of a new food needs to be in order for her to try it. I know how often eating a small piece of cheese will remind her that she has dinner in her bowl.

I know that she will wait for Grandma on the second step from the top, and cry to be picked up when Grandma comes home, and then scrabble to be put down just as quickly. I know where she hides her treasures: under the second pillow on my bed, in the corner of my couch, under Grandma’s bed, behind the cushion on Grandma’s chair.

I know that the sound of the treadmill puts her to sleep. And unzipping the guitar bag makes her angry.

But we haven’t started to look more like each other over time, or developed similar mannerisms. We are nothing alike, and that makes me feel like I’m the stranger, and I’m the one who doesn’t belong.

But I still love her. And whenever I forget that I love her this much, she sparks again. Like when she waits for me at the front door, with her face peeking through the curtain. Or when she runs upstairs in the morning and jumps on my chest to wake me up so we can spend the day together.

I wonder if Cricket keeps a list in her head too, of all of the wacky things she knows about me: the way I smell in the morning, the careful way I pluck goop from the corner of her eye, the look on my face when I see her at the front door.

I am nothing like her, but she loves me anyway. I think I’m okay with that.

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Vacation with Cricket

Posted on July 29, 2012 by rachelmankowitz

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            We took Cricket on vacation to Lake George one weekend, a few years ago. She slithered out of her car harness within the first thirty seconds of the trip, and then stood with her front feet on the seat divider and barked at everything she saw out the window for the six hour drive north.

            We found a motel that accepted dogs and wasn’t too expensive. And then we risked walking around town, but Cricket barked at everyone. Little children hid behind their parents. Grown men laughed, until they realized there was real bite behind her bark. We stayed in after that. Cricket spent the whole night standing on my bed, barking at every noise in the motel, and jumping on my feet like an alarm clock with sharp toenails.

            The next morning, we walked behind the motel, where there was a tiny scrap of beach, with a dock and a few boats. We rented a row boat, two oars, and three life preservers. Cricket was not thrilled when one of the life preservers was wrapped around her waist, and she held onto my shoulder and dug in with her nails when I tried to carry her into the boat. Water is not her favorite thing, even tiny bathtub shaped water or raindrop shaped water, let alone a huge lake full of the wet stuff.

Once we were safely in the boat and away from the dock, though, she settled down. Pretty soon, she fell asleep to the lapping of the lake water at the sides of the boat. I was still antsy. I worried that we wouldn’t recognize our particular dock once we were out into the belly of the lake. And I worried that we’d lose an oar and I’d only be able to row in circles and never make it back to dry land. But once we were out far enough, and I couldn’t see the crowded line of beaches with the crowded row of motels behind it, I started to relax. I didn’t feel guilty or anxious or worthless or angry or frantic to accomplish something. Maybe if we had stayed out on the water longer, all of that noise would have filtered back into my head and found its normal level, but for a few minutes, there was peace.

When we rowed back to shore, I wasn’t quite ready to leave yet. I asked Mom if she would mind if we sat out by the motel’s pool for a little while before getting in the car for the ride home, and Mom and Cricket both agreed to the plan.

There were leaves at the bottom of the pool, and maybe some algae scattered around, so I didn’t have to actually go swimming. Cricket sat with Mom on a beach chair, and I sat on the side of the pool and dangled my feet in the water. It was the manageable compromise for me, between what I wanted to do (swim) and what I could tolerate. Swishing my legs in the water was nice.

I wish, instead of a vacation, I could move into a nice little house, with a washer and dryer and a dishwasher and central air conditioning, and a backyard pool, where I could swim without worrying who would see me. I’d probably still wear a t-shirt and shorts over my bathing suit though, just in case the back yard fence wasn’t high enough.

That vacation to Lake George was the last one we all took together. I get too anxious, about Cricket barking at strangers, about money, and about not getting enough work done to really enjoy the trip. But mostly, I have the same object permanence problem babies have. If you cover my eyes and I can’t see home, I’m not sure it exists anymore. Going away on vacation makes me think I’ll never be able to go home again.

So, Mom goes on vacations by herself, or with her friends, and Cricket and I stay home, and worry about her. That’s the manageable compromise we’ve come up with, for now.

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