Joy

It took me a long time to find joy.

And now I find that it's the simple things--a scented candle, a hot cup of coffee, a good book, a certain slant of sunlight--that inspire my happiness. It also comes from giving to others--finding that perfect book for a second grader who is so overwhelmed with happiness she can't speak, cracking a joke with an elderly man at the copy machine, making myself count backwards when helping a difficult patron, knowing everyone has their pain and their heartbreak and their own ways of dealing with it all. I do believe in karma.

With my little family--my husband, my cats and my dog--and in my little red brick house is usually where I want to be most. Up until a few years ago, I'd be hard pressed to tell you what I found uplifting. Now the easiest way for me to describe joy is to look at Cassie when she's running--her pure, unbounded enthusiasm at just being alive and able to race all over the earth.

Having a dog has taught me many things, such as, a little mud isn't gonna kill me. It's also taught me to love my family with all my heart, to relish my meals with every ounce of my soul, to fiercely protect my pack but to meet new friends with openness, to fling decorum to the wind when I sleep, to treat each day as an adventure. And to really, really love exercise.

Almost Giving Up

We brought Cassie home from a local pet store when she was 10 weeks old. Three days before we purchased her, she had been drugged, stuck on a plane, and shipped to Illinois from some unknown location in Arkansas. At the time we had no idea that buying animals from pet stores was not really legit. If the animals sold were harmed or produced from puppy mills, they wouldn’t have "papers," right? And papers encased in a baby blue folder were just what the teenaged worker at the pet store handed me after I shelled out $750.

All the papers said, really, was that Cassie was a female weimaraner pup from Arkansas and that she met the AKC standards for the breed. Nothing else.

We had much to learn about rearing a pup, and not just behavioral training. I remember standing in the backyard with our new baby, watching her totter around on her fat puppy legs. The neighbor who lived kitty-corner from us (and who had some really obnoxious, non-friendly Rottweilers) asked what breeder sold us Cassie.

“Oh, we didn’t get her from a breeder,” I said. “We bought her at a pet store.”

The woman clung to her fence and looked aghast. “A pet store! Shame on you! Don’t you know those animals all come from puppy mills? You just supported that horrible practice!”

Confused, feeling guilty and not really sure why, I scooped up my puppy and brought her into the house.

We were lucky. Cassie had no health problems—strong heart beat, all her limbs worked, all her internal organs functioned, and she already understood that when she went outside, she should poop. The only physical issue she had was kennel cough, easily treated.

Something worse was wrong with Cassie.

When we put her in her crate and went to work, she screamed all day long, to the point where neighbors thought she was dying and tried to break into the house. While in her crate, she peed all over her blanket and pillow—repeatedly. If we gave her water, she spilled it. If we slipped in a treat, she crushed it under her paws. We tried playing classical music for her while we were gone, and when that failed, we turned to country. Even Shania Twain didn't soothe her.

The problem extended outside of her crate. If Kurt and I happened to be standing outside and Cassie was inside, she would scream and howl and throw her body at the windows, trying to reach us. Once, when Kurt was shoveling snow, Cassie scaled the fence around our backyard so she could get to him. She wouldn’t go outside unless one of us went with her, and at night, when we put her back in her crate and went to bed, she whined all night long.

Cassie had separation anxiety.

From what I understand, this is somewhat common in Weimaraners, being that they are incredibly intelligent companion animals who want to be with you ALL THE TIME. But I also had suspicions. Suspicions that Cassie had been taken from her mother too early (she suckled in her sleep the first month or so that we owned her). Urinating in her crate was what she knew how to do, having spent much of her life in one. When she was small enough, Kurt and I took turns holding her against our chests, where she would fall asleep to the vibration of our heartbeats. It was almost as if she craved the physical and emotional contact and feared with every inch of her being that it would be ripped away from her again, at any moment.

That was nine years ago. We worked diligently to help Cassie get over the anxiety, and she is much more mellow at nine years of age. It’s easy to forget how hard it all was, coping with a dog so needy and seemingly so unhappy. And with her separation anxiety came all sorts of behavioral issues—she’d scratch up the door if one of us was on the other side of it. She ripped out the screen in the backdoor in her hysteria trying to get back in. We couldn’t travel because we couldn’t leave her with anyone else. Add all that on top of regular puppy mischievousness and the Kallios were headed for a nervous breakdown.

One afternoon, I sat on the floor in the loft, on the phone with Kurt. We’d been hinting around the idea that maybe we should throw in the towel and give Cassie up for adoption. Give her to the Weimaraner Rescue, to someone who could handle her better.

“I think it’s the best choice,” Kurt said, and I agreed.

As I hung up the phone, Cassie looked up at me with her bright blue puppy eyes and I started to cry. She was already beginning to lose some of her initial terror—she wagged her tail when we got home; she brought us her toys to hold while she tugged on them, and when she cuddled into you, she did it with her whole heart. Nothing this creature did was half-hearted, and here we were, about to give up on her.

I pulled her into my lap and made the decision that we were hers and she was ours—for better or for worse. I vowed to find a way to make everyone happier, healthier and better.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with puppy mills, they are basically warehouses for mass producing dogs. The puppies are seen as commodities, not as living breathing creatures, and they are treated as such, crammed into small cages which are often piled one on top of the other. Food is scant and vet care is debatable. When females can no longer breed, they are usually killed. These puppies are either sold to pet stores and, more recently, online, and many buyers end up with an animal that has never socialized with humans before; there can be behavioral, temperament, and physical defects. The latest trends in dog breeding, the “designer” puppies like Maltepoos, Chipins, and any other hot new mixed breed of the moment can rack up anywhere between $800 to $1000 a pup for mill operators. And, much like dog fighting, even with growing awareness out there, puppy mills continue to operate. According to an April 13, 2009 article in Newsweek, there are between 5,000 and 10,000 puppy mills in the U.S.

Now that I know about puppy mills and pet stores, I can better understand my neighbor’s horrified comment all those years ago. But I no longer feel guilty. I feel that Kurt and I saved Cassie from an unknown fate. We bettered her little life, but what’s more important is that she bettered ours. For that, $750 was a small price to pay.

Works Cited:
Smalley, Suzanne. “A (Designer) Dog’s Life.” Newsweek. 13 April 2009. 52-55.

Whatever Lola Wants...

You may recall, from the last post, that I’ve never owned a female cat, mostly because I’d heard horror stories: boy cats were sweet and cuddly and loving; girl cats were psychotic. Lola is my five-pound, all-black female Cornish Rex. And I am convinced that if she had the chance, my tiny girl would go completely feral. By fate (accident?) we ended up with Lola, and now, I have to admit there’s something oddly delicious about her ferocity.

The breeder didn’t even know Lola was in the mother cat’s womb; she was a two-ounce blob that popped out after all the other kittens. Obviously Lola was the runt of her litter, an experience that gave her street smarts. To show her displeasure, she growls deep in her throat, accompanied by very bitchy hissing. When her brother Piper invades her turf, she is not above smacking him in the eyeball (she’s also attempted to do this to the landlord's wife). She catches flies in her mouth, nasty putrid ones that are so big she has to chew with her whole head to get them down. She will fight us tooth and nail on the rare (and horrifying) occasion that we have to give her a pill; even restrained in a towel, clamped in my arms, she will still fight opening her jaw, and when one of us finally does manage to pry it open, she glares at you with a hatred so deep you feel your skin withering off your very bones.

We do not let our cats roam the neighborhood, as much as they desire it. In the spring, when we start to open windows, they both crouch on the sills and howl to get out. When we can't take the yowling/screaming/caterwauling anymore, we let them romp in the backyard, where they eat grass, crawl under the deck to smell gross things, chase butterflies, and barf up that grass (usually later, on the bedspread). All of this outdoor activity is supervised. If you don’t keep an eye on them, they will disappear--this includes the dog, Cassie.

[Tangent: Since our yard is not fenced in, we’ve had many escape attempts. Recently, Cassie went outside to do her business, looked at me over her shoulder, and proceeded to creep through the copse of trees and bushes at the west end of the property. In spite of all my yelling at her to come back, she kept going until she appeared in the Hispanic neighbors’ backyard--one street behind us. The poor folks were having a barbecue and I guess Cassie couldn’t stand the scent of charring meat, so she invited herself. As Kurt ran through the yard to retrieve her, I cringed at the sounds of our poor neighbors' startled yelling. Needless to say we weren’t offered any hamburgers. Another time I turned my head for three seconds, lost Piper, and found him a block away in somebody’s open garage. I retrieved him while barefoot and in a nightgown. The point here is, we never leave the kids outside alone].

Early last Friday, I was feeling pretty generous, so I allowed Lola to come out with me and Cassie. We all moved to the driveway, into a patch of sun. I must stop here and explain that we possess a very long, very narrow driveway. The neighborhood came into being in the 50’s, and I often wonder how the old timers backed their gigantic sedans out of these suckers without scraping along the side of the houses. Anyway, there was Lola , rolling on the warm concrete, letting out clipped cries of delight. Then, all of a sudden, she surged to her feet, put back her ears, and shot off down the driveway like a bat out of hell. Her target: the squirrel at the curb.

I took off after her, my mind filled with visions of Lola darting into oncoming traffic. And worse, the damn squirrel was bigger than her; I could only imagine a bloody altercation with claws and teeth and a visit to the ER vet. Luckily, before she reached the squirrel, Lola’s attention was diverted by a group of starlings hanging out in our neighbor Tom’s front yard. She changed course to dodge into the thick of the birds. When they scattered into their air, squawking in disapproval, Lola stopped and looked all around with her eyes wide, almost as if she were thinking, “How the hell did I get over here?” I scooped her up before she could sprint any farther down the street and shuttled her back inside.

When we lived in an old ramshackle house the next town over, Lola used to bring me presents. I'd never before lived in a house that had a rodent problem, and the male cats of my childhood were apparently too domesticated to hunt for their people. I will never forget that first surprise Lola brought to me--Kurt and I were sitting up in the loft (the warmest place in the 8-roomed house) watching TV, and Lola kept yowling and rubbing against my legs. When I finally looked down, I saw the body of a tiny mouse already in the throes of rigor mortis, its brown fur blending almost perfectly with the mottled shag carpet. I was less than pleased at the time--in fact, I think I climbed up on the chair and screamed until Kurt removed the carcass. Lola repeated this gesture many times while we lived there--sometimes the mice were half her size.

Lola has a soft side. Most of the time, she is a little lover and will melt into me when I'm sitting on the couch. But when she's had enough, or when she's overstimulated, look out. The ears go back, the claws come out, and the hind legs start kicking. I admit I usually panic at these times, yelling to Kurt, "Get her off me! GET HER OFF ME!" She's five pounds but she will rip your face off if she needs to. I have no doubt that if an owl or a hawk swooped down on her to carry her away, she'd take the bird's leg with her on her way back to solid ground.

I never knew I could love a little creature so tremendously. Lola is with me constantly, attached to my hip, or "my herpe," as I fondly call her. She sleeps curled into my right armpit at night, under the blankets, and every once in awhile she'll stretch out a little paw and touch my face. She comes when I call her. She tells us what she wants and needs. She is a force to be reckoned with, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Except for when I'm eating tuna fish.