Wish They All Could Be California Girls

For Karen and me, not much good came out of Los Angeles in 1984. We'd moved there without a plan, with our two dogs, Lyric and Holden, and were soon overcome by a fear and loathing of the mass of humanity we found ourselves amidst. We decided that the logical reaction to our new found misanthropy would be to increase the canine to human ratio in our household. We decided to get a puppy.

There were two primary rationales for getting a puppy. Lyric, the Seeing Eye dog, was smart, young and strong, everything a German shepherd should be. Our other dog, Holden, was a fat, dim-witted, beagle mix, and he was simply not an ideal playmate for her. Often, in her fun, Lyric would send Holden sprawling, and we didn't want him to get hurt. We wanted Lyric to have as full a life as possible, and we thought that should include a relationship with a dog with which she could have some parity. Forcing her to play with Holden seemed like forcing Bobby Fisher to play chess with Sling Blade (look, he liked fried potatoes, OK?). It couldn't be very satisfying for Lyric.

Furthermore, Sling Blade…I mean, Holden, needed another dog, too, we believed. Though he may have been satisfied with Lyric as a playmate, since Lyric was a guide dog, when we went out, Holden would be left alone. Holden was a bad boy when left alone, prone to tremendous acts of destruction, and we reasoned that if he wasn't left all alone, but had a better behaved dog keeping him company, then maybe that would help him straighten up and fly right. We knew even then that was unlikely, but, who knows, maybe.

Let me say right now that both of the above rationales were based on false premises. After thirty years as a dogman, I'll say, with some certainty, that an intelligent dog does not need an equal for a playmate, and, with total certainty, that leaving a good dog home alone with a destructive one is much more likely to corrupt the good one than it is to mend the ways of the bad. But, back in 1984, we were at the beginning of our learning curve, and those two reasons for getting another dog seemed reasonable enough.

Anyway, Los Angeles sucked and we wanted a puppy!

We found an ad in the paper and decided to get a three month old, German shepherd/Australian shepherd mix, puppy. We figured this would be a dog that could keep up with Lyric and who might be smart enough to reform Holden. We got to the house, and met both the parents. The father, a German shepherd, was a very friendly, stable, fellow. The Australian shepherd mother seemed just a little "off," but to be fair a couple of strangers were looking over her puppies, so I guess she had every right to be.

There were four or five puppies, but we were instantly drawn to one little grey and white female who seemed more outgoing than the others. We named her Chelsea, and took her away in the car to begin her new life.

Chelsea was not only adorable, she was perfect. She was alert and interested, liked the car ride, and didn't cry for a second when separated from everything she'd ever known. She was infested with fleas, so the very first thing we had to do, before we even brought her in the house, was give her a flea dip.

It's easy to forget now just how awful a problem fleas used to be. Whatever horrifying odorless poison is in the Frontline Plus and other flea and tick products we use today is an absolute godsend. Back in 1984, the only way to de-flea a dog was to immerse it in a fluid that stunk like kerosene, let it dry, and then dip the dog again. When we first saw Chelsea, we thought she had some small scabs on her. On closer inspection, we saw they were flea colonies, massed so as to appear solid. The flea treatment had to be traumatic for a three month old puppy, but Chelsea went through the ordeal with a happy dignity.

I haven't thought about Chelsea as a puppy for a long time, and now the memory of her is flooding me with warmth. The pictures that appear with this article are not Chelsea, but they show basically what she looked like then. She was so smart, and happy, and bright-eyed, and eager to join her family.

Lyric and Holden both accepted Chelsea at once, and she was thrilled to have two other dogs to play and live with. Everyone was happy, at least for a while.

Lyric, Holden and Chelsea would live together for the rest of their long lives. Other dogs would come and go, but those three remained the core of the pack for their entire lives. Going to California might have been a bad idea, but when we left, we had our Chelsea, so, as it turns out, something good came out of us being in Los Angeles that awful summer of 1984.

© 2009, All Rights Reserved, Rich Sands

ScottsdaleDogMan.com

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Apocalypse 1984

To engage in a little understatement here, it was probably not the best idea for me and Karen to move to Los Angeles in 1984. We didn't know anyone in L.A. and we had no jobs at a time when unemployment was at levels comparable to today. We were thousands of dollars in debt to student loans, which were taken out at 17% interest. Really, all we had that was worth anything was each other, and Lyric, Karen's Seeing Eye dog, and Holden, our little mutt.

Twenty-five years later, it's hard for me to imagine what we were thinking. We had one bachelor's degree between the two of us, a junker car, and absolutely no plan. Nevertheless, we rented a house in Glendale that we couldn't afford, and we set out to conquer the world.

These were great times for Lyric and Holden. Karen was going through a phase of custom cooking for the dogs, and homemaking biscuits. We had a huge yard they could play in, and we lived a few blocks away from a massive dog park that we took them to daily.

One of the reasons we got Holden in the first place was so that when Karen got back from training with Lyric, there would be a playmate waiting for her. Lyric adored Holden from the start, and once he got used to her, Holden reciprocated. Lyric loved spending time with Holden, and even took to grooming him daily. She knew he was still basically a puppy, and she loved mothering him.

The mothering didn't extend to the dog park, though. Lyric lived to go to the park. She would chase sticks endlessly and also just run with the exuberant energy of a German shepherd in the prime of her life. While she was doing this, Holden would leisurely wander the park, mainly sticking to the perimeters. Holden wasn't a dog who enjoyed vigorous exercise. For him the park was mainly an opportunity for a good sniff, followed by a poop, which he always took while as close to the road as possible, so he could look at cars as they whizzed by and be sure the drivers were looking at him while he produced his little masterpieces. But I digress.

There was just one problem. Almost every time we went to the park, at one time or another, Lyric steamrolled Holden.

This is another example of what I would call a dog's sense of humor. Lyric thought it was funny to see Holden at a distance of 25 yards or more, when Holden was sniffing and paying no attention. Then Lyric would charge him like a bull, and just smash into him, sometimes at full speed sending him flying and sometimes at a glancing angle simply knocking him down. Holden would get to his feet, dazed and confused, while Lyric laughed like a maniac and pranced away.

She never injured Holden, and he didn't hold it against her, long-term, anyway. It took him completely by surprise every time, which is why Lyric thought it was so funny. There was nothing mean-spirited in this steamrolling game, and at home, after the park, Lyric would gently groom her little brother before they both enjoyed their dinner that mom had made them.

At the same time, Karen and I began exploring L.A. In 1984, at least, there was a definite air of the apocalypse to Los Angeles. The summer Olympics were in L.A. that year, so the city was jam packed. It was also the year crack began appearing in cities. AIDS was still new, and seemed like a possible plague precursor. Unemployment in LA was higher than 10%, and it seemed that an air of sinister violence hung over everything.

We were out in Hollywood one hot and sticky weekend night. The street was full of weird, scary looking, people. A young Hispanic man was shouting to a soft drink vendor, "Put plenty o' coke in that Coca Cola, man!" and it seemed violence might be eminent if he didn't. There were bright lights and 80's clothes and music everywhere, and the air stunk from pollution, patchouli and piss.

I don't know what it was about that particular night, but it affected both Karen and me profoundly. It seemed impossible that Armageddon wasn't right around the corner, perhaps as close as Burbank. We saw that night, as if for the first time, just how bad people could be, and what a fragile hold "society" had over them. The world seemed violent and dangerous and full of people we didn't want to be around, or, worse, become.

Lyric and Holden brought us so much happiness, and society was letting us down. We decided to get another dog. We rationalized that Holden wasn't really a suitable playmate for Lyric, who was so much smarter, bigger and faster than he was. We thought it would be nice to get a third dog, one who could keep up with Lyric. Holden wouldn't get steamrolled anymore, and, we asked ourselves, are three dogs really any more trouble than two? (The answer is, "No." However, it's a slippery slope. Four dogs really aren't any harder than five, and so on. That's how we eventually ended up with six at a time).

There is one difference in having three dogs instead of two that we didn't know about, but which wouldn't have stopped us had we realized. When you have two dogs, you have pets. Once you hit three, though, you're part of a pack. That summer of 1984, in a strange city, repelled by humanity, we added a German Shepherd/Australian shepherd mix we named Chelsea to our family, and the group of dogs I refer to as our first pack was completed.



© 2009, All Rights Reserved, Rich Sands
ScottsdaleDogMan.com
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Dog Torture at 30,000 Feet

(Over the next several days, I'll be telling a more sustained story than I normally do. My goal for this site has always been to have every story stand on its own, independent of anything previously published. The chronology of the next four or five days entries will be sequential, comprising a larger narrative, though at the same time I hope they will each stand on their own merits, apart from the larger arc.)

It was late spring of 1984, and it turned out that Big Brother wasn't in charge after all. Ronald Reagan was. To a couple flaming liberals freshly graduated from college, this wasn't necessarily preferable.

Karen and I were living in Bloomington, IL, the town we'd gone to college in, with Karen's first Seeing Eye dog, Lyric, and Holden, a generally worthless cur whom we nonetheless adored irrationally.

For reasons too convoluted and stupid to go into here, we decided that it would be a good idea to move to Los Angeles to begin our adult lives together. We didn't have jobs, didn't know a soul there, but with Randy Newman's, "I Love L.A.," echoing in our obviously hollow heads, we knew without doubt that it was going to be the Promised Land for us.


We just had to get there. We were working on a tight budget, so we had to get there as efficiently and economically as possible. It was decided that I would drive from Illinois, in a Chevy Malibu stuffed with our belongings, and find us a place to live, and then Karen, Lyric, and Holden, would fly out.


Because this is a web site of dog stories, I'm going to skip my nightmare solo trek across the continent, involving major engine trouble in Denver. Bad as my trip might have been, it was nothing compared to poor Holden's.

Karen and I always considered the dogs to be ours, jointly. But Lyric was Karen's first Seeing Eye dog, so there was a special bond, and Holden was my special boy, because…well, because Holden needed to be someone's special boy, didn't he? Not every dog can be a Seeing Eye dog, or handsome, or smart, or consistently housebroken. I won't argue that Holden had any intrinsic or objective worth, just that every dog, A.K.C. champ or lowly cur, deserves to be someone's special boy or girl.


Initially, we considered me driving to L.A. with Holden. The difficulty there was Holden was a terrible traveler. He was alternately carsick and disruptively buoyant, with a hound's howl that he could keep up for hours when he was unhappy, and at that stage of his life, car rides made Holden unhappy. Obviously we knew he wouldn't like the experience of flying more than driving, but at least it would be over for him much more quickly.


We had used acepromazine successfully on Holden before. Acepromazine is best described as knock-out drops for dogs. If you wanted to date-rape a dog, acepromazine is what you might want to slip it. I know now that acepromazine is not absolutely safe for all dogs, but our vet at the time said it was, and none of our dogs has ever had an adverse reaction to it. One little white pill, and Holden would sleep peacefully for a two-hour car trip. Two pills, and we had the bio-equivalent of a dead dog on our hands. For his cross-country voyage, it was decided that Holden would have four acepromazine tablets.

As a Seeing Eye dog, Lyric was, of course, entitled to not only fly in the plane's cabin, but to board first with Karen. As a worthless mongrel, Holden was lucky the airline let him fly as a piece of luggage. A special crate had been purchased for Holden, and furnished with his blanket and Myron, a pink, stuffed, pig that was Holden's favorite toy. He had been given one acepromazine for the two hour drive to the airport, and slept like a contented baby for the entire ride.


Upon arrival at O'Hare, Holden's sweater was put on him, he was placed in his crate, and given the rest of his tranquilizers. Karen reported that he was doped up to the gills. Then Karen brought the crate to the guys who would load Holden onto the plane, and extracted promises from them to be extra careful with him.


The second Holden was transferred to the custody of the airport crew, he woke up and began to scream. His screaming got louder as he was carried away from Karen and taken to the plane.


I wasn't there, so I'm not sure how Karen did this, but after she and Lyric boarded, she had a chance to ask a crew member how Holden was doing.

"He's making an awful lot of noise," she was told.


Five or six hours later, the plane arrived in L.A. Karen and Lyric were the first to disembark (ah, the perks of being sightless!), and we hurried to the area where we were to pick up Holden. We were there waiting as the crew member carried Holden in his crate out of the baggage area. We knew it was Holden because we heard the screaming as soon as the door to the luggage area opened.


The crate was set down in front of us, and Holden grew quiet. I was on the floor, opening the crate to let my poor boy free.


Holden half crawled, half staggered, out of his crate. His eyes remained on the floor.


"Holden, my good boy!" I exclaimed, petting and hugging him. He continued to look at the floor, and turned away. He didn't seem to have any idea who I was, or Karen and Lyric, for that matter. Never a bright bulb, the light behind Holden's eyes was completely out.


Holden ultimately recovered, mostly, but he was never quite the same dog again. At the risk of sounding ridiculous, his innocence was gone. Before his flight, he still had a puppy's outlook on life as an invariably joyful place. Then he'd been drugged, put in a box, taken away from his mom, and put in a small, cold, noisy place, alone, for hours. The dog that got off the plane in L.A. wasn't a puppy anymore. His flight had been a rite of passage, a journey into the existential void from which one can never fully return.

Meanwhile, the whole family had entered an existential void from which we were lucky to ultimately escape; we were the four newest citizens of America's Wasteland, Los Angeles.

© 2009, All Rights Reserved, Rich Sands
ScottsdaleDogMan.com
ScottsdaleDogMan.blogspot.com

The Impassable

After Karen got back to Bloomington with her first Seeing Eye dog, Lyric, she liked to work her for miles a day. Karen and Lyric would often walk from our apartment to Illinois State University, in Normal, a couple of miles away and back.


I've written about Karen's initial meeting of Lyric, but didn't have an opportunity to describe the kind of dog she was. A long-haired German shepherd, she had a delicate, absolutely feminine, beauty. She could speak pages with her eyes, and nuance her eyes' pronouncements with a nearly imperceptible adjustment of the angle of her ears. Everyone who knew her was awed by her beauty and grace, and sensed there was something of the ethereal to her.



After Karen's initial experience with her at The Seeing Eye, Lyric loved her more completely than I've ever known another dog to love a person. For whatever reason, Lyric loved me instantly, but, in general, it took a long time to get to know her. It wasn't that she was in any way unfriendly, she was simply deeply involved with the people she already loved, and, unlike most dogs, you had to earn Lyric's love and trust. Once you did, though, you had a beautiful, smart, athletic shepherd, who would adore you forever and make you feel particularly special for garnering her attention.


Lyric was also manipulative in some ways. Not being a dog with an insatiable appetite, Lyric found that she could mess with us regarding food. She'd refuse to eat kibble for two days, and we'd freak out. Oh, no, she's going to die! So, different foods were brought and rejected, or nibbled and discarded. Lyric loved Milk Bones, though, and managed to extort first two or three, and, before long, eight or nine large Milk Bones a day out of us. Of course she didn't need her kibble, she was living on cookies. When those would be cut back, she'd remain on strike against regular dog food, until we did something special, like pour milk on it.

Understand, Karen and I were young, and Lyric, along with Holden, was our first dog. Of all the dogs I've subsequently owned, or known, Lyric, in her prime, was far and away the most manipulative. She was also gorgeous, the first Seeing Eye dog I'd ever known, and had a magical presence about her. All these factors combined to cause us to spend several years, and I'm embarrassed to admit this, just bending over to kiss her ass. Not that she didn't deserve the best, but she was getting specially cooked chicken breasts, while we were living on frozen burritos.


After a few years, we managed to put an end to the food manipulation. Cookies remained prominent in Lyric's diet, but we got her to eat kibble by remembering the basic maxim, that no dog has ever, in history, voluntarily starved herself to death to make a point. All that seems kind of obvious now, but when you're in your early twenties and on your first dog, it's something you have to learn for yourself, I suppose.

As I've said before, Lyric had a quality that reminded us of a college girl, a co-ed. She loved campuses and quads, and with her long hair and serious minded ways, with those deep, searching, brown eyes that could still secretly dance with mischievous energy, I always thought of her as, perhaps, a graduate student in Comparative Lit, or maybe Renaissance Art. Certainly not in any discipline which would allow one to make a living if they were to ever leave college.


But back to the initial months with Lyric. Every day, Karen would work her for hours, and they both loved it. From the time they arrived home in late summer, they'd leave the apartment on their own every day, whether Karen had any place to be or not, and just walk. This was the time long before Lyric's hips started to hurt, and before Karen became engrossed in school, when they could really concentrate on being with each other and developing as a team. As I think back on it, those months might have been the happiest of Karen's life.


The daily walks continued, never less than an hour, as fall turned to winter in central Illinois, and I saw my two girls turn into a stellar team, never having a problem.


One day, though, in late November, Karen and Lyric left, and, a minute later, I heard barking down the street. By the time I got downstairs, they were back at the apartment.


"Lyric's freaking out," Karen said. "There's something around the corner, and she's just stopping and barking and refusing to take me past it." 

Seeing Eye dogs are taught to refuse to lead their people into danger, even if they are ordered to do so. It's called "intelligent disobedience" and is one of the fundamental principles of guide dog training.


"Maybe there's a big hole or something," I suggested.


"She'd be able to work me around that," Karen said.

Then we got around the corner, and there it was, the impassable. It stood, arrogant in its power over all it beheld. It was a snowman, and it was scaring Lyric horribly. She couldn't dare bring herself to pass it and drag Karen down with her, when the snowman attacked, or whatever Lyric imagined it would do.


Gentle words were used, and avoidance of the snowman was practiced until it was gone. I assume it was somehow the first snowman Lyric had ever seen, but given that we didn't raise her, I can't really know. Maybe it was the first, or maybe, while she was being raised by her foster family, a snowman had broken into the house and eaten the baby. You just never know.


To note again, I have virtually no photos of Lyric (or anything else). Except for the graduation picture, the other shots are purely decorative, and are of dogs with some quality or another that reminds me of Lyric. All the dogs shown here are beautiful, but I wish you could have really seen Lyric. Of course every dog is special, but, Lyric, she was really something extra special, and she was already getting old when the graduation picture was taken. She was still beautiful, but in her prime...

© 2009, All Rights Reserved, Rich Sands
ScottsdaleDogMan.com
ScottsdaleDogMan.blogspot.com
 

Holden’s Sweater

Do clothes make the man? In many cases, it seems they do. Police uniforms, priests' vestments, prisoners' orange jumpsuits, all instantly define their wearer. It's further been my observation that clothes can make the dog, or, I should say, that clothes can make the dog sick. I'm referring to Holden's sweater.



Holden was my first dog, and I've written about him at some length in the past. He was ostensibly a beagle-mix, a fat, dim-witted, coarse-coated fellow, foul smelling and ill humored. To make him even less appealing, he was something of a sickly puppy.

In his first year, the harsh Illinois winter made Holden sick, giving him a cough. Since his hair was fairly short, we bought him a red argyle sweater to keep his chest warm. Because he was big-boned (I'm joking; he was fat), the only sweaters that fit Holden were, in all respects aside from his neck and chest, far too big for him, so they would hang in the back, half-way down his tail.



That first year, Holden loved his sweater. It did minimize his coughing, and he managed to be a badly behaved, though generally healthy, puppy because of it. In those olden days, dogs would just be "let out." Of course, Holden was especially terrible about coming back when it was time. He preferred to roam the neighborhood, looking for garbage to eat or doing god knows what. Most of our neighbors didn't know my name, or Karen's, but everyone knew Holden, because we were screaming for him so often.

Once we left the house to go look for him, because he'd been gone for too long, and we were walking down the street calling for him. We came across some strangers. I asked them if they'd seen a little yellow dog.



"Oh, Holden?" they asked. "No, we haven't seen him tonight." These people might have been strangers to us, but they definitely knew Holden.



We walked a little farther looking for him, and ran into another stranger. We asked him if he'd seen a little, yellow, dog.



"Was he wearing a cape?" the guy asked.

"No," I said, "It's a sweater. It just hangs long in the back."



For that first year, whenever Holden started to cough, we'd put the sweater on him. In his second year, when he was no longer a puppy, we continued to do the same. By this time, though, when Holden was coughing and feeling poorly, he didn't have even his characteristic minimal energy. By the second year, if Holden was sick, and was wearing his sweater, he was feeling essentially incapacitated.



Though Holden was a low-energy dog, who liked to conserve his calories, he was still capable of being a bad boy, especially in new situations. We were renters, and it's always more difficult to rent with dogs, and we had either two (Holden and Lyric) or three (add Chelsea). So when we met potential landlords, it was imperative that we present as a well-behaved pack. Lyric, the Seeing Eye dog, was, of course, a perfect charmer, and Chelsea was always a good girl, but Holden was unpredictable and could be decidedly squirrelly.

Then we made the discovery that controlled Holden from then on, in situations where he needed to be controlled. I don't remember how we discovered this, but we found out that if Holden was acting up, and being a little wild, if we put the sweater on him he instantly became placid. Since he associated the sweater with not feeling well, a quasi-Pavlovian syndrome had developed. When the sweater was put on him, Holden instantly believed he was sick, and acted accordingly sedate. We were able to present him to landlords and pass him off as an elderly, sedate, harmless fellow, instead of the little tub of trouble he actually was.



I wish I had some pictures of Holden, particularly in his sweater, but you'll just have to use your imagination. He looked a lot like the second dog shown in this article, except a dirty yellow color. Aesthetically unappealing as he might have been, though, Holden will always be remembered, by at least one anonymous guy in Bloomington, as that dog wearing a cape, and that's an epitaph I think Holden would be pleased with.


© 2009, All Rights Reserved, Rich Sands
ScottsdaleDogMan.com
ScottsdaleDogMan.blogspot.com

Weekly Recap

It's been another full week here at the Dogman's Den.


Thanks for stopping by and reading my work. I am appreciative of what people's time means to them, so anyone who gives up some of their day to read these natterings has earned my gratitude. I hope you'll keep stopping by, and enjoying what you find here. If you see something you like, and want to make it viral across the internet, that's perfectly alright with me.

On Sunday, I devoted a piece to Karen, my late wife, and, I suppose, the dogwoman. I didn't set out to collect all these animals on my own.

Monday brought Levi's anti-Obama editorial that seemed to come out of nowhere. Levi's kind of an inscrutable fellow, so I guess I shouldn't be too surprised at his views.


Tuesday I was lazy, and stuck a YouTube clip of The World's Ugliest Dog Contest. Look, it was the first day I haven't written something original since I started doing this. I'm just saying, worse crimes have been committed.

On Wednesday, I told about my ugliest dog, my first dog, Holden. He was ugly, stupid, fat and smelly, but I still adored him. Go figure. I guess that's the thing about dogs.

Finally, on Thursday, I took a piss on the Rainbow Bridge. It's a lovely sentiment, and nice to imagine it's real, but when you break the thing down into its logistical components, you're looking at potentially a very bad scene.


Tomorrow: Saturday's News of the Dog. Let's hope for a better week than last one.



© 2009, All Rights Reserved, Rich Sands
ScottsdaleDogMan.com
ScottsdaleDogMan.blogspot.com

The Problem with the Rainbow Bridge

If you have a dog or cat, or spend any time on the internet, you've almost certainly come across the prose-poem called, "Rainbow Bridge." 

It's very sweet, and sentimental, and can make grown men sniffle, yet all I can do is take great solace in the knowledge that there is no such place, because, if there were, I'm afraid it wouldn't be nearly as nice as it's made out to be.


Here's the piece, of unknown authorship, for those who have somehow escaped it thus far:


Just this side of heaven is a place called Rainbow Bridge


When an animal dies that has been especially close to someone here, that pet goes to Rainbow Bridge. There are meadows and hills for all of our special friends so they can run and play together. There is plenty of food and water and sunshine, and our friends are warm and comfortable. All the animals who had been ill and old are restored to health and vigor; those who were hurt or maimed are made whole and strong again, just as we remember them in our dreams of days and times gone by.

The animals are happy and content, except for one small thing: they miss someone very special to them; who had to be left behind. They all run and play together, but the day comes when one suddenly stops and looks into the distance. The bright eyes are intent; the eager body quivers. Suddenly he begins to break away from the group, flying over the green grass, his legs carrying him faster and faster. YOU have been spotted, and when you and your special friend finally meet, you cling together in joyous reunion, never to be parted again. The happy kisses rain upon your face; your hands again caress the beloved head, and you look once more into the trusting eyes of your pet, so long gone from your life but never absent from your heart. 

 

After reading these beautiful paragraphs, who wouldn't want to meet their dearly departed pets there on the banks of the Rainbow Bridge? 

Me, for one.


If I died today, there would be forty or fifty dogs and cats waiting for me at Rainbow Bridge, all demanding my undivided attention, each considering me their one and only master. Imagine the hell that will break lose when Holden and Levi each rush to be first to see me. Poor Holden will get pulverized.


I've "owned" all my dogs and cats with Karen. Did they all meet her at Rainbow Bridge? And what about Arthur? He was Karen's Seeing Eye dog, but she died before he did? Is he sitting at the banks of the Rainbow Bridge psychotically guarding his Frisbee, waiting for me to throw it, or is he on the other side, pushing his way between Karen and Lyric? And, assuming poor Levi goes before I do, is he going to be forced to wait for me with Arthur, his tormentor, until I finally show up?


No, Rainbow Bridge is one of those things that works fine in theory, like communism or having sex with "just friends." It's only when you get to the nitty-gritty details and necessary implications and repercussions that you see the glaring flaws in these seemingly perfect ideas.



Of course we want to be with the pets we love forever. It's only natural. But under the Judea-Christian-Islamic system, animals don't have souls, and certainly won't enjoy a heavenly afterlife like that described in the Rainbow Bridge. It's peculiar, then, that this particular writing seems to appeal especially to Christians. 

According to Wikipedia (the source of all truth) the Rainbow Bridge has similarities with the Bifröst bridge of Norse Mythology, which was the bridge to Norse Heaven. Surely that's not where our American pets wait for us. So where did this idea of Rainbow Bridge come from? Could it just be made up, like every other answer offered regarding what happens after death?


What happens after death, to us and our pets, is the big question. Are we reunited forever in the afterlife, is there a special paradise for animals, or do we all molder for eternity in the cold earth?


I say we molder, but it doesn't matter. As long as each of us live, the love we had for each pet in our life lives on with us. As I wrote yesterday, Holden, fifteen years dead, will always be my dog. So will Lyric and Vinnie and all of them. I don't need to wait until I die and get to the Rainbow Bridge to be with them again. I'm always with them.

All the dogs and cats I've ever had are with me, inside me, now, and that sure beats the huge dog pack and clowder of cats that would be waiting to mob for me at the bridge. There would be so many jumping at me so fast, that I'd surely fall off, into who knows what sort of limbo.



© 2009, All Rights Reserved, Rich Sands
ScottsdaleDogMan.com
ScottsdaleDogMan.blogspot.com

My Ugliest Dog

Speaking ill of the dead is usually considered bad form, but, if I'm going to write truthfully, unflattering facts will need to be addressed from time to time. The fact is, the first dog I ever got on my own, with Karen, in the early 80's, was an unattractive, unintelligent, pretty much altogether unappealing, beagle mix of some horrible kind or the other, whom we named, Holden. I don't have any pictures of Holden, so those posted with this article are approximations.


Holden wasn't grotesque like the dogs in the ugliest dog contest. He was just an ugly dog. He was represented as a "beagle-mix," but exactly what that meant was anybody's guess. He was about standard beagle size, and he had floppy ears, but the resemblance essentially stopped there.

Like Levi, Holden was a yellow dog. But Levi's yellow is a bright one, evoking sunlight and gold, while Holden's yellow had a dullness, like dead leaves on a forest floor. It was a muddy yellow. He had a dark, saddle marking, visible across his back, not enough to make him two-tone, just enough to make him muddier. 

His coat was short and bristly, like a pig's. His eyes were beady. He was fat, with bad breath, and gassy, to boot. On top of all of this, Holden was dumb as a doorknob. He had a certain slyness he could call upon to do things, like escape from the house, but nothing that would indicate anything that could reasonably be termed intelligence.

The day before we got Holden, Karen and I had moved into our first apartment, a tiny second-story walk-up in a 100 year old house on Monroe St. in Bloomington, IL. The first thing we had to get was a dog. We'd been in dorms, and, setting out on our own, we were going to have dogs with us. Karen was going to get her first Seeing Eye dog in a few months, so we wanted to get a dog immediately, so it would be acclimated by the time the new Seeing Eye dog arrived.

It was early March, and when we looked through the newspaper, usually full of free dogs, we were disheartened to see very slim pickings. In fact, in the age and size range we were seeking, there was only one choice, and it was about 25 miles outside Bloomington in a little town called Rantoul. We got in our completely unroadworthy car and drove to meet our destiny.

We got to a manufactured home with a poorly constructed wire fence around the yard. It was cold, so no dogs were outside. We rang the bell and a howling arose, the likes of which I honestly haven't heard since. It was the howl of at least a dozen dogs, every one of which matched the description I've given of Holden almost exactly. They were all ages and colors, and it seemed like a dynasty of dump dogs had been assembled in this humble home.


We were shown the puppies, two of which remained for adoption. The ad had said they were three months old, but with my subsequent knowledge of dogs, I'd venture Holden was at least six months old when we met. His sister, our other choice, was too badly socialized to even approach us. Holden did, and so we took him. He proved to have been badly socialized as well.



I'm a terrible shopper. I'll always take the first one I see that meets my needs, whether it's a pair of jeans, a used car, an apartment or a puppy. I try to have someone with me during these important purchases now, but that day Karen was my companion, and she was blind, so I don't think she fully appreciated the lack of attractiveness of Holden. Or, maybe, like me, she was determined to get a dog that day, and, having no other options, it was going to be Holden.


After vomiting and urinating on us several times during the ride home, we brought him in, where he proceeded to act like a petrified freak for a week. Of course he finally came around, and grew to love us, then his sisters, Lyric and Chelsea.

I adored Holden. I doted upon him like I now do on Levi. I objected vehemently whenever anyone else pointed out that Holden was ugly and dumb (he was bad, too, but examples of that are for another day). He was my dog, and I loved him, and that's all that matters. He didn't have to do anything but be Holden to be loved, and with all his deficiencies he seemed to understand this basic fact. I think back objectively about Holden, and, as you can see, I can't exactly articulate a redeeming quality, but somehow I loved him with the same devotion as I now do Levi, who happens to be the best dog in the world. 


That's the thing about dogs and people. It doesn't matter to one if the other is ugly and dumb any more than it mattered to me that Holden was. He was my boy, and that's about the end of the story. 

And when I remember Holden, before words like "dumb" and "ugly" and "smelly" come to mind, I remember that I loved him with everything I had, and thinking about him does nothing but help me revisit the glow of an old friendship. The faults of dogs, or people, that we love, don't die with them, but neither do they diminish the love we feel for them. With twenty years distance, I can look back and see Holden for the poor specimen he was, but I don't feel any less love for him than I did when he was my dog. 

Excuse me. Holden will always be my dog. 


© 2009, All Rights Reserved, Rich Sands
ScottsdaleDogMan.com
ScottsdaleDogMan.blogspot.com

Cast of Characters

Over the last month, I've posted a number of stories about dogs and cats of mine, past and present, and I intend to continue such postings. While any individual piece is meant to be able to be enjoyed in isolation from the stories as a whole, it occurs to me that there are recurring "characters" in a larger narrative. Since I'm not telling these stories in any particular sequence, I have created this handy summary of who's who in the den for the reader who might become confused. 

As other dogs, or relevant people, appear, I'll update this page, so it can serve as an orientation to those attempting to understand the stories in their proper context. Some characters mentioned have not appeared yet, but certainly will. If you are new to this site, or even if you're not, press any link in a character's description to go to a story featuring that character.


Rich Sands, the dogman: The writer, originally from Park Forest, IL, then Chicago, Albuquerque, San Diego, Mexico and points in between.





Karen Sands, nee Frerichs, of Kankakee, IL: Rich's late wife. Karen passed away from breast cancer in 2002. She and Rich were college sweethearts. Karen was blind since childhood, and became a Seeing Eye dog user after she graduated from college. Karen was an attorney, specializing in criminal defense, in Albuquerque, NM, where Rich worked with her as her assistant, driver, reader, etc.

Arthur: Karen's third Seeing Eye dog. German Shepherd. Lived with Erica, raised Levi and Esmé. *


Chelsea: Mixed breed German/Australian shepherd. Member of original pack. *


Chibu: Polydactyl cat from the pack in the 90s.*


Chi-Chi: Rich's mother's present dog. 13 years old. Chihuahua.


Erica: Rich's present cat, 13 years old. Was a kitten in final days of original pack, has seen them all!



Esmé: Levi's sister, mixed-breed shepherd.*


Freddy: Rich's childhood dog, a collie-sized sheltie.*


Holden: Mixed breed, beagle, type. Small, but thick as a fireplug, physically and metaphorically. Member of original pack.*


Levi: Rich's present dog. 8 years old, mixed-breed, shepherd. 70 pounds. The best dog in the world.


Lolita: Levi's aunt, Rich and Karen's dog in the late 90s. Beautiful, black, mixed-breed shepherd. Contemporary of Vinnie, Erica, Otis and Arthur. *


Lyric: Karen's first Seeing Eye dog, leader of the original pack. German shepherd. *

Maechen: Black Chow mix. Contemporary of original pack in their old age, Erica and Vinnie.*



Mogwai: Jet black, long-haired male cat. Member of original pack.*

Otis: Rich and Karen's dog in the late 90s. Shar-Pei/lab mix. Contemporary of Lolita, Erica, Vinnie and Arthur.*


Rocky: Rich's mother's present dog (Rich's brother). 8 years old. 20 pound mixed breed.


Ruby: Spaniel-mix, contemporary of Maechen, Vinnie, contemporary of original pack in their old age. *



Vinnie: Karen's second Seeing Eye dog, black lab.*

* indicates deceased.


A Note on Photographs: I don't have any.  Literally. I believe I've posted almost all the pictures I have of any dogs mentioned. When your wife is blind, and you're a guy who doesn't think of the value of pictures, not many get taken, and those that were taken have been, by and large, lost. Except for the living dogs and cats, any pictures posted are meant to serve only as illustration, not as an actual representation of the dogs or cats in the text.


Back tomorrow with a brand new story! In the meantime, if you missed it, why not read more about Erica Kane?


© 2009, All Rights Reserved, Rich Sands

ScottsdaleDogMan.com

ScottsdaleDogMan.blogspot.com