nakedjen

Happiness is a warm puppy.

Photo by The Professor

It has been one week since Clyde found me and decided that he was here to stay.
One week.

It's also, just so we're all clear, been three weeks since Stella graduated and it's still less than a year since Buddha also graduated and so, well, my heart is kind of mixed up about all of this loss and gain and dogs crossing over and back again.

However, I must admit I am the luckiest dogma in the entire world. Clyde is, truly, the blessing I needed most right this second and I'm so grateful for all his puppy energy and that he chose to find his way to me.

When he arrived last week he was 10 months old of unbridled untrained Labrador insanity.

I'm happy to tell you that he is also incredibly smart and compliant and remembers everything you teach him, pretty much on the first try.

Labradors, like most dogs, are dogs that thrive on routine. And consistency. And lots and lots of love. I'm big on love.

Clyde has learned lots of manners in his first week. He had a vet visit on Monday, was neutered on Tuesday, has had to stay *quiet* and adjust to his crate for parts of each day the rest of this week and he's managed all of it without any real fuss. He's figured out that we only go to the bathroom outside and how to tell me when he needs to go, he's learned how to walk nicely on a leash (thank you HALTI) and to wait at every crosswalk and corner before we cross and also to allow all people to go in and out of doors before he does.

Honestly, in one week this is a lot of learning for a puppy. I'm hoping he'll continue all of this so he can be a truly good canine citizen.

Those of us who love our dogs, really LOVE our dogs. We're sometimes quick to make excuses for their bad behaviour. However, dogs with bad behaviour are not just a problem not just for their owners, but for our whole society. They give all the dogs a bad rep.  Then again, we all know what it is really about is how well the dogs have trained their humans. All the very BEST dogs know that if they've done their job right, they've got a good human trained to fluff the pillows just so, make certain their beds are all exactly how they like them, cook them delicious breakfasts and dinners, serve a tennis ball in just the right way across a long empty field and always a pocket full of the very best treats.  These dogs have trained their humans to share the couch, share the bed, but most of all share their hearts unconditionally.  Those are the very best dog citizens. 

It's just been one week. So far, Clyde is doing well to show up and be the very best dog he possibly can. 

No One Will Ever Believe You

OG Clyde

Clyde was from Colorado.

I wonder how many of you actually know that?

Just days after Gatsby died in a snowbank in my arms (I really thought I'd have Gatsby forever, until I got Clyde), like maybe three days I think, Than showed up on my sister's doorstep in Provo, Utah with a weeks old black lab mix puppy he had adopted for me.  It probably surprises no one else but me that when my very best dog (up until that moment he really was) died in my arms I sought refuge in Utah, but that is exactly what I did.  I bolted from Steamboat Springs where I had been living with a gaggle of boys on the side of a snowy ski mountain and wailed into a pillow under the covers in her guest bedroom in the dark. 

Until Than showed up to retrieve my heart and carry me back to me, back to Colorado ever so gently on the four paws of a black lab.

At another time in my life, another time when I felt that perhaps the Universe just wasn't actually hearing me, or I wasn't listening to what the Universe was saying is probably more the truth of the matter, I was on the precipice of abandoning my community in Santa Cruz, literally stepping into what may have been my last road trip on this planet (for all I know, honestly) to move myself to Boulder. Things just were that unhappy and sad and not good for me and I was certain that a geographical fix was going to be the perfect answer. That Clyde and I should call Boulder home.

A phone call, a last minute dream about furniture placement, changed all of that and instead of Boulder, we both ended up in a small cabin in the woods in Bonny Doon. 

It is impossible to know what might have been.

I did live in Boulder, once.  In a hobbit house.  I also lived in Colorado Springs, quite by accident, for all the wrong reasons with all the wrong boys doing all the very wrong things. 

That was before Clyde. 

Clyde was from Colorado, but he never actually lived in Colorado with me.

He lived in all the other spaces and places. Until he decided that it was time to graduate and we all remember how he glowed, literally, and transformed and took his final breath and moved through me and and then…

Then there was Buddha. And Stella. The dogs that changed my whole world. Turned it from upside down to right side up even if I was uncertain that I had been living upside down to begin with, the dogs knew how to right my world and fix things that I never understood needed fixing.

They were superglue for my broken heart. Mending it with dog slobber and keeping me on this planet, right here, often when I was certain I was going to float away like small particles of dust.  Those dogs. Both of them with separate and unique purposes.  Those dogs.  Forcing me to face all that I never knew I actually needed to be and should be in this world.

Buddha and Stella

Those dogs. Repairing me. Showing up for me and teaching me exactly how I need to show up for others in this world.  If you’re not going to actually show up heart first, what is the point of showing up at all?  If you’re not prepared to love like it’s your job, your only job, you might want to re-think why you’re choosing to love at all.  These were the lessons those dogs, Buddha and Stella, taught me best over the last 14 years.  We walked thousands of miles together and found ourselves, somehow, in Utah, the place where Clyde had found me and with my own heart and soul mended and love found, Buddha and Stella also graduated to their next grand adventure.

I will admit I didn’t believe I was ready. I am never ready.  Not for that goodbye. Not to be the girl who lost both dogs. The dogs who taught me to love fiercely and first and with my heart bare and always ready to give.  To give all the balls back and share all my sandwiches with whomever asked. The girl who would now always say yes because that's just what we do. We say yes because yes allows for all the possibilities. 

I also wasn’t ready for what happened next. I am uncertain even the very best of us who love dogs the most would be ready for what happened next.

Clyde came back.

Clyde B.

Because of course he did.

I know it’s difficult to believe it.  You’d have to be full of *woo* and understand a dog’s purpose.  Their hearts and souls work in familiar yet mysterious ways.  Sometimes we’re meant to travel together in life for specific work and lessons.  Love lessons. Life lessons. Lessons only a dog can provide.

Clyde found me last Sunday.  Just two days after Stella graduated.  He has been on quite a raucous journey of only the kind CLYDE could ever have just to find his way to me. One that has included escapes and narrow misses and destruction of property and the insistence that he BELONGED with me.

My professor drove me 10 hours round trip to go retrieve Clyde on Friday.  I can assure you that LOVE looks like the man who will drive me ten hours to retrieve the beautiful crazy puppy I insist is my reincarnated dog.

I know it all sounds preposterous. I also know what I absolutely know and what Clyde knows, as well.

We’re a team. We’ve always been the very best team.

I’m just so grateful that he’s home.

I Bet You Think This Blog Is About You

Since it's been a while, you missed the part where we lost Buddha. 

That happened near the very end of March. I held my breath until I couldn't hold it any longer and when I exhaled, he exhaled one last time and graduated the way the best spirits do and went on to do whatever it is that a Buddha will do when he makes his grand exit from his work here tending to my heart and soul.  If I'm truthful and honest, I'll share that I squashed some of my missing of him in order to try to be present for his sister Stella.  She is still here. She needed me to be here for her. She needed my own heart in ways that she had never asked for before because her whole world, her life as she had known it, had also ended in that last exhale.  

Stella is now an only dog.  Not just an only dog, she's my only dog. The one who has my heart wrapped tightly in all the sinews of hers and who carries it gently on her four wobbly paws. Stella is also now clearly dying before me and I am holding my breath and I don't know when I'll be able to exhale.  I'm not ready for her to graduate as much as I know none of this is about me and all of this is about her and the way time continues to march onward even when we do everything in our power to wind the clocks backwards, to bargain with gods we don't really believe in, to cast spells and concoct potions that may keep the inevitable at bay. 

I know that howling at the moon is not going to work, but I am still howling.

*****

While sitting at therapy this afternoon, I surmised that I've got a problem with narcissists. 

A long, sordid affair.  Ugly and abusive in parts.  A rare gift in others. I even uttered that there were moments that were like a symphony they were so beautiful to me. 

One does not just have a problem with narcissists, I realize.  There's obviously a certain personality flaw, some sort of kink in my own hardware, some space where the light doesn't exactly shine through that creates an opportunity or, better yet, an attraction for me.  Or to me.  Or...well, this is why I have a really good therapist. 

I own that have absolutely played my own part in all of this. I'm the writer of the narrative that is my life story. These characters came into my life because I invited them. I'm not an innocent bystander. Yet in owning my story, my history, I need to also own all the parts of it, including those that are difficult to embody.  I threw up today in therapy from the nausea of remembering. 

*****

I know I'm a privileged person to sit here and write on a blog, of all places, about my dead dog, my dying dog and my mental health issues.  

They're connected. 

My dog keeps me on the planet. She helps me to stay present and sane.  Her heart ties my heart here and keeps me from floating too far away.  

I don't know if I'll be able to exhale. 

I don't know why it's been so long

"Pleasures
First look from morning's window
The rediscovered book
Fascinated faces
Snow, the change of the seasons
The newspaper
The dog
Dialectics
Showering, swimming
Old music
Comfortable shoes
Comprehension
New music
Writing, planting
Traveling
Singing
Being friendly" 
— Bertolt Brecht 

• What I am reading A million years ago, I was fortunate enough to stumble into a theatre on a very cold February night in East Berlin and see a performance of this play. That same year, I also saw it performed with breathtaking brilliance by none other than Dame Judi Dench in the title role at the Barbican Theatre in London. That cast also included Zoe Wanamaker and Tilda Swinton (and I saw the play, not joking, for like $5 because, well, London 1984).  All this to say that it still speaks to us now, just as it did then, perhaps even more so.  Mother Courage lost all her children in the war. We're still losing the battle. As humans, I am afraid, we may never actually learn that our past is prologue. 

• What I am eating  Ultimate comfort food. It's FREEZING in SLC right now. Big pot of this. It lasts. My professor is missing (not really, but he is not here this week) and this warms up and allows me to eat quickly after working all day at the clinic and dashing to other evening activities. 

• What I am Listening To  You pulled me up when you took my hand/There was silence in my heart/And now I'm striking up the band/They lit the bonfire but now we can light the lamp. Dirty Projectors latest release, Lamp Lit Prose, is a testament to everything that made me fall in love with them many years ago and remember that they're just good medicine for me. They're quirky, they're not everyone's favourite, but they're one of mine. 

• What I am watching  Rickey Jackson served nearly 40 years in an Ohio prison on death row for a crime he did not commit. He shares part of his story. 

• What I am thinking about When the powers that be decided to scrap the Medical Marijuana proposition that the good people of Utah voted for and passed, they also scrapped edibles along with it.  And with that, they scrapped my own plans to relaunch Dreamsweet Organics as a medicinal edibles company.  It is no secret that I have been also talking about how someone should actually come up with a CBD infused KOMBUCHA, so, hey, I'm glad to see that Dave was already thinking about this and was working away at it.  I also can't help but smile that he's calling this product DREAM CATCHER. Ahem. I've been aligned with this company since it was just one single offering on a shelf in small independent health food stores. I'm proud of his success. I honored to have been a part of it.
  
  And...I'm also still very angry at my so-called representatives in the state of Utah for preventing the citizens from having what they actually wanted in the name of Jesus Christ our Saviour, Amen.  Eventually this state will learn that democracy is not spelled MORMON. 

• What I am really feeling: Frustrated.  Introverted, as well.  I'm supposed to be at a party right this minute.  I didn't go because I decided pajamas and warm socks and a big black dog sitting in my lap were far more my style right now. I know, shocking.