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

ScottsdaleDogMan.blogspot.com

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
ScottsdaleDogMan.blogspot.com

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