Tag Archives: memoir

Bella, The flying Dog

Posted on February 3, 2013 by rachelmankowitz
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Cricket and Bella do the sniff

 

 

            We first met Bella when she was four months old and too small for the pink harness tightened around her chest. She looked like a sling shot, popping out of the harness, leaping from it, trying to fly.

Bella is a tan and silver Yorkshire terrier mixed with some unknown, big-headed dog. She lives down the hill from us and we see her leaning out the passenger side window of the car when her family drives up the hill. She gets great joy out of hanging her head out of the window like a daredevil.

Cricket likes Bella, up to a point. She likes that they are the same size, and both girls. She likes that Bella seems happy and friendly. It’s only when Bella starts to invade personal space that Cricket rethinks her feelings. Cricket mistakes enthusiasm for aggression and growls, and Bella mistakes the growling for an invitation to play, which gets dangerous and requires lifting Cricket up so she doesn’t attack Bella with her teeth.

One day, we came home to find Bella running loose down the hill.          It was a shock to drive around the corner and see Bella running down the hill towards us. It was raining, just a little, but enough to make the sky grey and visibility a little muffled. Bella was racing down the middle of the street towards our car and her parents were waving frantically at us.

Mom parked the car at the top of the hill, in front of our house, and was about to walk down the hill to help, when Bella’s parents called out and asked if we could bring Cricket in case Bella would run to her and then be easier to catch. They told us that Bella had slipped her collar off and gone racing around the block.

Cricket was thrilled to have her leash put on and she was very excited to see Grandma and Bella’s Mom, and she seemed to know that something important was happening. Bella ran to Cricket right away and came almost close enough for us to grab her collar, but then she sped away again.

We created a three pointed trap, with Cricket and Grandma at one corner, then me and Bella’s Mom at the others, all blocking potential escape routes until Bella had no where to go. Bella was soaking wet after running through wet grass for half an hour. And once she was caught, her mom held her, belly and legs out and dangling, ready for the towel her Dad had brought out for her.

Cricket was ready to go for a walk of her own after all of that excitement, but I was wiped out. Just walking back up the hill was more than I could handle, once the adrenaline wore out. But I also wanted something more to happen. I’ve felt that way after every dog-saving event. It’s not that I want a reward, though a little statue of me catching the dog would be nice for the top of my bookcase. Cricket and I were at loose ends for a little while, but then we were ready for our afternoon nap. We were pooped.

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The three girls, momentarily untangled

We met up with Bella the other day for the first time since Butterfly has been here. Bella was her rambunctious self and Cricket stood back a bit, but Butterfly went up close and examined her new friend. She stood there without budging, no matter how many times Bella raced from side to side and flattened into play pose.

Eventually, Bella calmed down, and Cricket inched forward, and the three of them did some mutual sniffing. Butterfly didn’t seem to mind being the peacemaker between Cricket and Bella. She accepted their different energies and knew how to manage them. She’s very Zen.

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Zen Butterfly

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To Bark Or Not To Bark

Posted on January 27, 2013 by rachelmankowitz
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The barker

The side effects of barking: dry mouth, people inexplicably avoid you, throat pain, strong abs.

Cricket barks at everyone. She barks at children who pass by. She barks the mailman to death. She barks at strangers walking up the street. I can’t teach her to be polite and reserve judgment. I can’t teach her that she’s pushing people away from me with her behavior. Cricket even barks at the wind.

Cricket stands at Grandma’s bedroom window, with three of her feet on the pillow and one on Grandma’s head, and barks at noises outside that seem threatening. Like children at play.

I toy with the idea of getting her a six shooter and a sheriff’s star to wear on her collar.

I wonder if Butterfly is sitting there in the hall listening to Cricket bark, and asking herself, “To bark or not to bark?” I’m afraid she will decide to emulate Cricket and bark more and more over time. But I hope she won’t. I hope she will continue to walk up into Cricket’s face and ask her, why are you barking now?

When Butterfly first came home, she was silent. I’d never met a non-barking dog in person and I wondered if she would be my first. But the second night she was home, she was in the kitchen alone, with a pet gate separating her from her new family, and she let out one deep bark, like a basso profundo coming from this little body, to let us know she did not like being alone.

She did it again the next day when Cricket was getting groomed in the bathtub. She was clearly afraid that Cricket was being tortured.

And now she lets out a few barks every day. It’s a more restrained statement than Cricket’s high pitched rush of verbiage. But it’s insistent and purposeful and she expects to be answered promptly. She barks at me in the morning, when she thinks I’m sleeping too late. She walks over to my head and stares at me, and then she barks.

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The student barker

My dream is that having Butterfly around will make Cricket feel more secure and she won’t need to be the security guard anymore. And the barking will calm down.

The other day, we were out walking and Cricket barked at a stranger who dared to walk down the sidewalk. Butterfly walked in front of Cricket to block her view of the man, and offered her tushy as an interesting sniffing opportunity. And Cricket stopped barking.

Cricket isn’t the only barker in our neighborhood. We have a barking chorus that gets set off at certain times. When one dog starts, others inevitably pick up the song. It’s call and response, or in the case of the basset hound, howl and response. If one dog notices someone passing by who needs to be remarked upon, the chorus sends the message to everyone along the street who needs to be warned.

My bedroom is in the attic and my windows collect the noise from the neighborhood as if everything is happening about an inch away from me, so the barkatorium is especially pronounced for me.

Maybe the point of the barking chorus is to teach me that barking, even in excess, is normal. It’s not just Cricket who barks like this. Dogs want to be understood as much as people do. They want to communicate with each other and feel connected to each other and to us.

The fact is, when we walk around the neighborhood I rely on the dogs to bark to let me know they are there. They make the world less quiet and lonely. They let me know that they see me and that my presence matters to them.

I don’t want Butterfly to bark as much as Cricket does, or with that vehemence, but I’m glad she knows how to bark and feels safe letting herself be heard. I want her to feel like she has the right to bark, and I want her to know that the old cliché about children, that they should be seen and not heard, is crap. Children and dogs need to bark in order to be seen and heard by the people who love them.

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The loved ones

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The Social Butterfly

Posted on January 20, 2013 by rachelmankowitz
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Butterfly at Grandma’s colorful feet

 

            When Butterfly first came home from the shelter she didn’t make eye contact with me or Mom, and I was afraid she wouldn’t be able to bond with us. They told us not to expect too much from her after spending her whole eight years in a puppy mill. She was afraid of being picked up or petted, but she licked my hand to say hello, so we started there.

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Butterfly’s tongue

She was hyper vigilant even in sleep, curling up in a ball, waking at any noise. The first time she was able to sleep on her side, with her legs stretched out and her belly exposed, I knew what a triumph that was. A few weeks later, she started to do a little move where she twisted her head to expose her neck and chest for scratching. And then, just once, she rolled entirely onto her back.

But she has been a social butterfly with other dogs from the very beginning, especially in contrast to Cricket. Butterfly will walk up to any dog, big or small, yappy or shy. She doesn’t let Cricket’s fear or standoffishness deter her. The other day we took the girls out for a long walk around the neighborhood. We went to the left instead of the right this time and met a male dachshund and his human mother. Cricket kept her distance, because she usually does. But Butterfly was drawn straight to him. She sniffed his nose. Then she sniffed his butt. He peed obsessively against the telephone pole on his lawn.

Butterfly clearly liked him, but whenever he tried to sniff her butt, she hopped away like a good southern belle, exclaiming, “well, I never…” But she didn’t want to leave. When we finally convinced Butterfly to leave, she was in a great mood. Her hips twitched from side to side, and her nose and tail were up in the air.

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The girls get all tangled with their friend Bella

            Cricket is not a social butterfly. When we’re outside and strangers walk by, Cricket automatically barks her head off. She needs to tell them that this is her neighborhood, her street, her sidewalk, and they have no business near by. Butterfly just stands there and studies them. She isn’t upset by Cricket’s barking. She almost doesn’t seem to notice it. She just seems curious, and like a scientist, she is taking time to patiently examine the evidence.

But in the house, Butterfly barks. She especially likes to bark at the doggy in the mirror. She’ll be walking around in my room, surveying the territory, and then look to her left and see another little white dog. The mirror on the closet is full length so she can see herself down to the toes, and she barks and hops and gets into play pose as if she really believes that another dog has come into the room to challenge her.

Butterfly’s biggest challenge is to teach Cricket how to be her friend. It is an uphill battle, with a lot of grumbling and suspicion and hiding under beds and hoarding treats. But right now, Butterfly is napping only inches away from Cricket on the bed. They are getting closer every day, whether Cricket likes it or not.

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Blurry but happy. At least Butterfly is.

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The Reluctant Mentor

Posted on January 13, 2013 by rachelmankowitz
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Cricket is exhausted by her new job

Cricket is a reluctant mentor. She resents the way Butterfly follows her around. She hides treats she doesn’t even like, because she doesn’t want Butterfly to have them.

But, Butterfly thinks Cricket is her leader. When Cricket barks, Butterfly barks, or whimpers, or looks to Cricket for answers to the questions of the universe. When Cricket pees, Butterfly pees. If Cricket stops to sniff a bush, Butterfly stops, sniffs, and thinks, this is what I am supposed to do.

Cricket’s most important job has been to teach Butterfly to poop and pee outdoors. Butterfly is eight years old and she’s not used to having to hold it in and wait to be taken outside. She’s not used to thinking of poop as something that shouldn’t be left in the house. And Cricket is teaching her otherwise. I’d like to think that Cricket is pooping more often each day as a generous form of inspiration for Butterfly, to teach her the joys of pooping outdoors. But it could also be because she is an emotional eater and has been eating more since Butterfly came home.

Cricket is an adventurer and Butterfly is learning from that. She’s learning how to run and play and go further afield. She’s learning that long walks and sending pee mail messages and sniffing new places is fun, and safe.

She’s learning that you can get away with standing your ground and being stubborn sometimes and no one will hit you. They may just pull on your leash and make grumbly noises, but that won’t kill them, or you.

The first few days, maybe even more than a week, that Butterfly was home, she was uninterested in toys. We gave her two toys from Cricket’s box, carefully choosing ones she’d never shown interest in, but Butterfly ignored them. And then she found Ducky on the floor next to my bed and she fell in love. The duck quacks when you squeeze it and has been one of Cricket’s favorites since she was a puppy, with surgery scars to prove it. Now Butterfly tries to bring Ducky with her whenever she goes out for a walk (the answer is no). She licks him the way she would lick one of her puppies and that seems to calm her. But Cricket is not pleased.

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Butterfly loves ducky

Butterfly tries to forget quickly after each time Cricket snarls at her, or blocks her way up the stairs. She chooses to forgive Cricket over and over.

There are some things Butterfly has not picked up yet. She’s not in love with the variety of foods Cricket enjoys. She doesn’t see the point of cheese, or red bell peppers, or morning pancakes with maple syrup. She hasn’t learned how to bark menacingly at strangers, or hide under the bed in a huff. She hasn’t learned how to revel in a warm lap and really relax, yet.

Butterfly has tried running after sticks and chewing on them the way Cricket does out on the lawn in the mornings, but sticks are an acquired taste.

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Don’t take my stick!

            Just once, Butterfly tried to pee like Cricket, with her right leg lifted an inexplicable inch off the ground. But she found that position uncomfortable and ineffective. I’m not sure why Cricket does it, being a girl and all.

After all of that mentoring, Cricket has some aggression to get out of her system and she has taken to bringing me her rope toy when it gets to be too much and she needs to play tug of war. While Cricket tugs and jumps and growls and is suspended in midair, Butterfly hops around and pants and tries to get in the game. She can’t fit her teeth around the rope, though, and Cricket is grateful for that.

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Cricket is levitating

            Once tug is over, they’re both exhausted and ready for a nap. Cricket has taught Butterfly all about napping. So once Cricket is asleep, Butterfly will stretch out on the floor, legs in front of her like a fallen cow. Just like Cricket.

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Fallen Cow pose

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How My Dogs Watch TV

Posted on January 6, 2013 by rachelmankowitz

Butterfly at the computer

Butterfly at the computer

 

 

After twenty years of loyal service to the family, my small color TV finally collapsed a few years ago and we were forced to update. Cricket had been indifferent to the TV for the most part, until the flat screen arrived. Suddenly, she noticed strangers in her house. She stood in front of the TV and barked at Hugh Grant and tried to push at him through the screen. She searched behind the TV to see where the invader had come from.

Cricket prefers to watch Grandma

Cricket prefers to watch Grandma

Cricket is mostly indifferent to the TV now. But she does notice when the TV goes off, because that’s an important signal that something in her environment is going to change. Maybe her people are going to bed and she has to choose which room to visit, or maybe she’s going out for a walk, or, worst option, maybe her people are leaving the house without her.

The television is a big part of my life. I use it for background noise while I’m typing or cooking. I use it for company when I’m lonely. I use it for mood alteration when I get depressed. I had to make a point of not keeping a TV in my bedroom, because I’d never get to sleep.

When Butterfly first came home from the shelter, she was mesmerized by the TV. She was barely making eye contact with her people yet, but wherever she was in the living room, her eyes and ears were focused on that TV. I picked her up on my lap to watch a video on the computer of another Lhasa Apso, just like her, growling about something. She was fascinated. She couldn’t look away from the screen. Cricket could have cared less. She did the doggy equivalent of rolling her eyes, but Butterfly was riveted.

Side view of Butterfly - riveted

Side view of Butterfly – riveted

 

Cricket has just finished rolling her eyes

Cricket has just finished rolling her eyes

 

Butterfly was sleeping when the puppies came on the TV. I was watching a show called “Too Cute” on Animal Planet, where they follow puppies and kittens from birth to adoption. And the puppies started to squeak. Butterfly stood up, looked around in confusion and then walked over to the staircase behind the TV. She looked up, as if the puppies were up in the attic and she needed to go to them.

I’ve often thought I should leave the TV on for the dogs when I go out, in case they get lonely or bored. But Cricket tends to wait for us on the stairs, avoiding the living room entirely. Butterfly might watch the TV, but then I worry about what will be on. Even if there’s something cute and fluffy on when I leave the house, I might come back to crocodiles terrorizing puppies in a back yard. And I don’t think Butterfly would survive that.

 

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Cricket Loves Grandma

Posted on December 30, 2012 by rachelmankowitz

Generous Grandma

Generous Grandma

 

 

            Cricket sits on Grandma’s lap to share potato chips. For breakfast, she gets the leftover pancakes, or English muffins, on a plate. During dinner, she will stuff her self onto the chair with Grandma and watch her eat, coming dangerously close to licking the plate.

Cricket has favorite foods, like pumpkin pie and Parmesan cheese, but anything Grandma is eating must at least be sampled. A lick of wine from a finger. A pitted olive. A carrot stick. When it is time for Grandma’s midnight snack, Cricket follows her into the kitchen to stare into the well lit fridge and help choose.

This goes on all day

This goes on all day

But Cricket loves her grandma for more than food. She climbs up on to Grandma’s lap and stretches out, draping herself across until her head hangs off one side and her legs dangle from the other. Cricket watches TV from the lap, and gets her scratchies there, and whispers secret messages that only Grandma can hear.

In the morning, Cricket, who is usually sleeping on Grandma’s head, wakes her Grandma up and leads her to the bathroom. She watches from the floor in the kitchen as Grandma makes her morning coffee. Before Butterfly arrived, when Cricket was an only dog, she would then race down the stairs to the front door and wait for the long lead to be attached to her collar so that, while Grandma drank her coffee on the porch, Cricket could run like the wind across the front yard and feel the joy in the air.

When Grandma leaves the house, Cricket stands by the front door, looking out through the glass panels, radiating guilt as loudly as possible. Then she waits on the second to top step of the staircase and squints down at the front door, sometimes for hours. Eventually she makes do with my lap, but it is not the same.

Waiting For Grandma

Waiting For Grandma

I’ve always wondered why Cricket chose her grandma as her primary person. Cricket was supposed to be mine. I chose her. I read all of the books. I stayed up nights when she was a puppy. I taught her how to climb stairs and chase sticks. I spent months trying to teach her how to sit, lie down, do a pirouette. But she chose Grandma. I know she loves me, but I also know I’m second best.

And now I have a second dog, Butterfly, who sleeps on my bed and snuggles into my side. And I love it. But I’ve been missing Cricket. And it turns out that Cricket misses me too. She wants both of her people to herself. Even if I am second best, I am still hers. Cricket loves her grandma, but she loves her Mommy too.

 

My sleepy girl

My sleepy girl

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Grooming Cricket

Posted on December 23, 2012 by rachelmankowitz

The trimmer! Grr!

The trimmer! Grr!

 

Grooming Cricket means taking my life in my hands. She will bite the hand that feeds her if it also tries to remove the goop from her eyes. The breeder who raised Cricket from puppyhood told us that grooming would be no problem. Just buy a man’s electric shaver at the drug store and clip away. Then hold her feet and clip her nails with the special nail clipper. Easy peasy. She even demonstrated the nail clipping on eight week old, two pound Cricket and it was simple. For her.

Just because the trimmer is on the other side doesn't make it less of a monster

Just because the trimmer is on the other side doesn’t make it less of a monster

The first shaver we bought snagged on Cricket’s cottony hair and the motor heated up too quickly and the noise upset her. When I tried to clip her nails she bit me. We bought her a muzzle but she snapped it off her nose in triumph.

Are the scissors any better?

Are the scissors any better?

We took Cricket to a groomer after it became clear that I was not a master with the clippers and she looked like she’d been attacked with a weed whacker. Cricket was frightened as soon as we walked in. I think the other dogs must have been warning her off. She gripped my shoulder with her toenails and didn’t want to be handed off to the lady with the bad disposition behind the counter. I removed her collar and leash, and blushed when the groomer examined the horrible haircut.

I thought I’d feel better back in the car, but I didn’t. I wasn’t happy about leaving Cricket with that woman. Not just because she was a stranger but because if I’d had hair on my back it would all have been standing up.

I had the flutters, like an old fashioned English lady with bad nerves, and I couldn’t leave the apartment again to pick Cricket up two hours later. She came running up the stairs with Mom behind her, and I didn’t recognize my puppy. I sat down on the kitchen floor and held her wiggly body and cried. Blubbered. Threw a tantrum really, because I was afraid I could not love this poodle looking dog.

She looked like a stranger. And she smelled like one of those frou-frou poodles with the pompoms on their asses and she didn’t look like anyone I would know, or like. She didn’t understand why I was reacting so badly. She thought she was still the same dog and I was still the same Mommy and I should have been licking her the way she was licking me (though I’d told her repeatedly that I do not do such things).

My favorite version of Cricket’s haircut is when the hair on her body and face is pretty short, but her ears are long and swing out like wings, just like her Cocker Spaniel mommy. I don’t like when the groomers shave her nose, or leave it round and fluffy like a Bichon. And I don’t like when the hair on her body is long enough to get matted and hide debris in the layers. She doesn’t need a shelf of hair on her forehead or a pompom on her tail. She needs to be well trimmed in the hygienic areas so the poop won’t stick.

Cricket tried a lot of different groomers. There was the one who put purple bows in her hair and didn’t take the hair out of her ears or clean up the “hygienic areas,” and charged us extra because Cricket was so difficult.

Then there was the groomer who was also a vet tech, and managed to cut Cricket’s ear and had to do emergency care to stop the bleeding. Then she nicked her foot as well. We were given a credit for a free haircut with another groomer, but by then Cricket was even more reluctant.

Cricket refuses to look in the mirror after her haircut.

Cricket refuses to look in the mirror after her haircut.

Cricket is legitimately difficult. I’ve watched her at the vet when they try to give her a shot, or, god forbid, clip her nails. She has to be held by two people and she still wiggles and cries and shrieks like she’s being tortured. I don’t know why she’s like this. I’ve worked hard to counteract it. I tried reflexology on her feet to get her used to having her toes touched. And I worked on small grooming tasks at home, paying her for each snip of hair with chicken treats. But she still gets very frightened and very angry. I have to believe some of this is just genetic. But I keep worrying that it’s really all my fault. I didn’t raise her right.

This last time we got a groomer who knew when to push Cricket, and when not to push her. She was the perfect groomer, except that she shaped Cricket’s tail into a pompom, like tiny topiary. After a few weeks it was overgrown and matted, so I cut it off and she’s back to her stumpy-tailed look.

Now that Butterfly is here, I’m hoping that Cricket will learn some better manners. She was so jealous when Butterfly had her bath, that she offered herself up for the second shift in the tub. Peer pressure, you’ve gotta love it.

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Cricket and the Mailman

Posted on December 16, 2012 by rachelmankowitz

Cricket watches for the mailman

Cricket watches for the mailman

 

 

            I don’t remember when Cricket discovered that the mailman was the embodiment of evil, but it happened early in her life. She sees him on our street and starts to bark. The closer he gets to our house, the more hysterical her tone of voice – higher pitched and in a faster and faster rhythm until she’s throwing herself against the front door and snarling at him through the glass.

I’ve tried everything to discourage Cricket’s obsessive reaction to the mailman. I used to call her upstairs with the bag of treats in my hand, but I could never break the treats into small enough pieces to outlast the mailman. She still had plenty of time to get back downstairs and bark her message.

She sees the mailman

She sees the mailman

"Mailman! Mailman! Mailman! Mailman!"

“Mailman! Mailman! Mailman! Mailman!”

She starts barking as soon as she hears his truck coming up the street, and keeps going until he is absolutely, positively, gone. Sometimes he has the nerve to park right in front of our house and then slowly bring the mail to all of the houses on our street, returning to the truck for new batches, forgetting mail and having to go back again, waiting until the end to go back and take the packages from the truck that he couldn’t carry the first time through.

We have a pet gate a few feet away from the front door because our previous dog had severe separation anxiety and would always try to leave the house when we did. So we tried closing the pet gate for Cricket so she couldn’t actually see the mailman coming. But, she can hear him. And she hears him before we do, so we never get the pet gate closed in time.

She has a mailman early warning system in her brain that I seem to lack.

One time, when the mailman arrived, I opened the door to get the mail. I probably didn’t know he was still there when I opened the door, because I would have been hiding on the stairs if I’d known, but once he was there I smiled and tried to be friendly. But he grimaced at me and asked, “Is the dog there?” in this about-to-pee-his-pants tone of voice. Cricket was standing about two feet behind me, so I closed the door and let him get on with his business.

It has generalized so that if Cricket sees a mailman when we’re out walking, even if it’s not Cricket’s mail man, she barks. And if she sees a white truck passing by, even a truck with a small amount of white on it, she barks. She has generalized her anger, like a child who was bitten by a dog who learns to fear all dogs.

Butterfly, our new dog, has not learned to fear the mailman, yet. She just stands at the top of the stairs and watches Cricket bark and throw herself at the door. I hope she doesn’t start to think this behavior is normal.

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Puppies in Paris

Posted on December 9, 2012 by rachelmankowitz
Those puppies really liked me

Those puppies really liked me

 

            When I was fifteen years old, my mom and I spent two weeks visiting my aunt in Paris. It was August, and my aunt told me that we came at the wrong time of the year, because everyone was away on vacation and there were no kids my age left in all of Paris. I discovered for myself that August was a bad time to visit because the heat is unbearable and my aunt didn’t believe in air-conditioning.

I remember noticing that there were dogs on the subway, but I don’t have a strong memory of the dogs on the streets of Paris. Maybe a lot of the French dogs were in the country for August with their owners.

A few weeks before we left for Paris, my dog, Delilah, died. And I missed her. The hope was that Paris would rejuvenate me, and Mom too. We would see the city of lights and be inspired, and hopeful. I’d spent two years learning French and being indoctrinated into the romance of Paris and cafes and the Seine and the museums. I didn’t know that I could still be depressed in Paris.

I had panic attacks. I was afraid of everything that summer: heights, food, buses. I was dizzy and sick to my stomach and anxious all the time. We found out later that my thyroid had burned out and that a lot of my symptoms were related to not having enough thyroid hormones, but at the time, I just felt awful. I was afraid to walk up the glass steps at a museum, because I could see the floor below me and I could picture myself slipping through the slatted steps to my death, like a long legged Flat Stanley. I kept trying to put my foot up on the next step. But I couldn’t do it.

It was a week and a half of that. Feeling frightened, and guilty for being such a burden, and lonely, and struggling to remember any of my two years of French.

And then we found the puppies. I thought we were just going from one flower shop to another. There are so many outdoor markets in Paris, for cheese and vegetables and flowers. But it never occurred to me there would be a row of puppy stores in the middle of it all.

Everyone in Paris seemed so aloof and sophisticated and cool and hard. And I am none of those things. All of my vulnerable, soft, lonely, hopeless feelings were rising to the surface. And then there were the puppies. And what are puppies but soft and loving and needy and vulnerable and desperate to be held and chosen and taken care of and shown attention.

I wanted to climb into the cage with the puppies and snuggle, but I was too big and the cages were too high off the ground. But I felt better. One nose kiss at a time, I started to feel better.

Poodles! In France!

Poodles! In France!

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Butterfly’s New Home

Posted on December 2, 2012 by rachelmankowitz

 

Butterfly before her bath

Butterfly before her bath

 

 

Leading up to my birthday, I was reading about dogs who had lost their homes in Hurricane Sandy. I was overwhelmed with stories about rescued dogs, and information about where to find dogs to rescue close to home. I’ve been thinking about adopting an older dog for a long time now, but I’ve been intimidated. All my life, I’ve only had one dog at a time, but lately I’ve been meeting a lot of people with two dogs, or more, and I’ve been tempted to have a pack of my own.

I talked to Mom about it and she said why don’t we just go take a look?

So, on Tuesday, November 20th, we went to North Shore Animal League, on Long Island. I loved all the big dogs. If I had a house and more energy I would have adopted five of them on the spot, especially the hound who stood on his hind legs and looked me in the eye. I’m pretty sure he winked at me.

But then there was Betsy. Her little pink tongue stuck out, and she had huge brown eyes and a sweet little snout and feathery white hair. She was a Lhasa Apso and the tag on the crate said “Adult +” so she was at least eight years old. The volunteer told us she was a puppy mill dog.

I don’t know what Mom was thinking when she encouraged me to have a visit with Betsy. She should have rushed me out of there right then.

I spent an hour with Betsy, staring into her eyes and coming up with potential names: Snowy, Dawn, Fawn, Buttercup, Cinnamon, Butterfly. I was loopy. We filled out a preapproval form and Mom said we should go home and think about it. But the longer it took to get the approval, the more I went back to see Betsy and the less likely it became that I would be able to leave without her.

I worried that Mom would not be happy, and a second dog would cost too much, and Cricket would be jealous and my own health problems would make the extra effort unmanageable. But I lost control of my brain. I was just a puppet nodding my head.

I decided on Butterfly as her new name, to fit in with the insect theme of Cricket’s name, but also because of the transformational effect I hoped we would have on each other. Love is a magical thing.

Then the vet tech took Butterfly to see the vet one last time. We’d been there for three hours by then and I could barely stand up, let alone think straight. When they came back to tell us she had a heart murmur and that we should probably leave her there and not take her home with such an uncertain future, I almost cried. They listed her issues: she was at least eight years old but probably more; she had been a breeding mama at a puppy mill and couldn’t walk on a leash or pee and poop outside; she was skittish and afraid of being touched; some of her bottom teeth had had to be removed because they were rotted out, so her tongue lolled out of her mouth; she’d had a cyst removed from under her armpit; and now the heart murmur. She’d need an echocardiogram before they could even tell us how serious it would be, and then she’d need one every six months for the rest of her life. But that was what clinched it for Mom. She has a leaky heart valve too. She would never want to be left behind in a shelter. She’d want someone to pick her up and take her home. So that’s what we did.

I carried Butterfly to the car and she stood on my lap in the backseat and looked out the windows the whole ride home. She was so much more curious than we’d expected, though she did drool up a storm, flicking droplets of water onto her forehead and onto my sweater.

Cricket was, as predicted, not happy with the interloper. The first night, I sat on the kitchen floor with them and Cricket stood with her front paws on my leg in her ownership pose accepting scratchies with noblesse oblige, and then I reached out with my free hand to pat Butterfly. Immediately, Cricket pushed my arm away from Butterfly with her nose, and then she walked across my lap and out of the room in a huff.

She’s such a person.

Cricket staring at Butterfly

Cricket staring at Butterfly

But, given her resentment, Cricket has been pretty well behaved. For the first few days she ignored Butterfly entirely, and then she started to sniff her and walk near her instead of avoiding any room Butterfly was in. It helped that Butterfly couldn’t climb the stairs, so Cricket could come up to my bedroom with me and leave the interloper downstairs for a while and pretend life had gone back to normal.

But Butterfly has been blossoming.

She’s had two baths so far. The first one took off the surface dirt and left me thinking that she was off white with grey and apricot markings. But she kept scratching her ears and neck, so we bought an oatmeal shampoo to help her skin and her second bath took off just as much dirt as the first one, and turned her into a white dog with apricot markings all over her feet and back. I’m afraid of what we’ll discover with bath number three.

We’ve had Butterfly for a week and a half now, and she’s already pooping and peeing outside. She’s gotten used to the lawn, and she walks on the leash and has made friends with every dog she’s met. But her favorite dog is Cricket. She sniffs her and follows her lead and learns from everything Cricket does. She even makes a point of finding the spot where Cricket peed and hopping into a squat to pee on that exact spot.

Cricket thinks that’s just weird.

The Girls

The Girls

 

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