Best in the World

Kinook, my love, I write about the dogs that came before you, and I can't wait to get to write about you soon. 

And as I write, I understand how much I've grown in my capacity to love and care. You are the best dog in the world for two reasons: one, you are bright, empathic, kind, polite, dignified, patient and a pleasant, undemanding, easy companion. You have never chewed things that weren't yours, I could trust a great deal with you, from objects, to guarding the house when I was gone, to your watching over my client sessions when I'm working from home. 

To those who might protest your title, let me explain: the Best Dog in the World is a poetic way to say that you, my adorable pup, are the most beloved dog, in my eyes the most beautiful, and in my heart, the brightest.

The second reason for you being my best pup is that while caring for you I have learned to love more, with more compassion, more empathy, more responsibility, more commitment, and most important of all, more presence. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and these eyes of mine opened wider than before to take in the love which appears as beauty.

You are so beautiful, and I can see it! You are so loveable, and I can feel it. You are an awesome dog, and I can appreciate it. 

Ookie, did you feel loved? How much were you able to trust me? How close was I to being the best human in the world for you?

Kinook Sweet Sixteen

The Dogs That Came Before, Part Four: Mocha

Mocha

Mocha literally came out of the blue and chose me. I was a new immigrant to Israel, my boyfriend Victor whom I’d known since high school, and who had immigrated to Israel a few years before me, was driving, showing me around my new home country. Returning from a trip on a hot Israeli day (one of the three hundred hot days a year in the area), we parked in the parking lot of his apartment building, close to the street. As soon as I opened the passenger door, a small black dog looking like a fluffy toy poodle mix came straight to me, stood on her hind legs, placed her front paws on my thigh, and looked me in the eye with a smiling face, wagging her tail.

“Can we keep her?” We and not “I” as Victor and I were talking marriage. After a few initial ‘no’ answers and a few practicality questions about where she was going to live and who would care for her, Victor agreed and Mocha came upstairs with us.

Victor’s mother greeted us with contagious enthusiasm, jumping of joy: “Yes! A dog! How happy I am!” Okay, this was the fairy tale version. In reality, for some reason that escapes me, the enthusiasm declines with age, and the reasonable adult response is, and was: “No! I don’t want a dog in my house!” And Mocha went to live with me.

I lived in a Merkaz Klita, a centre for new immigrants, in a room shared with Iudith Fleissig, a Romanian doctor from Transylvania who had arrived to Israel on the same plane as I did. The immigrant centre had rooms which led to an atrium inside the building, and Hebrew lessons classrooms at the ground floor. My next door neighbours to the left were an adult son and his elder mother from Russia, and to the right, a family from Morocco. Iudith was not a dog enthusiast, but she did not protest my bringing one to our room. Her personality was calm and easygoing, much unlike mine – I was anxious and reactive – and after she moved to another, dog-free room, we became close friends, and remained so to this day.

Mocha was gentle and easy, a sweet tempered pleasant dog with very few demands of her own. She travelled well and kept me company in bed. Like all poodles, she didn’t shed – she had wool, not fur, and her coat needed grooming, which I did with a pair of household scissors and some common sense.

One sunny September day, Victor, Mocha and I drove to Jerusalem for the weekend. Jerusalem is inland, on a mountain, and a few degrees cooler than the Mediterranean coast where we lived. When we arrived, Mocha emerged happily from the car, bouncing up and down with delight at the cooler weather. I didn’t join her: I had anaemia, likely as a result of having starved myself for months in order to become thin and, I was hoping, to feel lovable. I didn’t know about the anaemia at the time, and the lowered red blood cells were correlated with a deep-seated fatigue and a gloomy mood. Victor and I had arguments; I was unhappy and impossible to please, and Victor tried his best, and failed. We eventually broke up.

I was 24 years old, alone, penniless, and looking for freedom to travel, date, dance and devour life with no commitments or responsibilities. I gave Mocha away to Michelle, a young Moroccan neighbour who liked the dog, but didn’t hesitate leaving her alone in the room for hours and days at a time. There were nights when I could hear Mocha howl a heartbreaking lament from Michelle’s room, and one time a teen cousin of mine and his friend broke into Michelle’s room to rescue the dog. We found her alone, an uneaten, dry piece of meat lying around in her food bowl. The next day, in the morning, when she returned home, Michelle apologized profusely for leaving Mocha behind, and took her back, promising that from now on she would take good care of her. I did not believe her, but lied to myself and acted like I did. I let Michelle have Mocha again, and soon after that, Mocha died.

A wave of regrets and remorse came over me as I saw the small body lying down near the building’s entrance, and then I did what I knew best to do at that time: I tensed up my body, switched my mind to something else, and numbed myself down from feeling any sadness, guilt or remorse at all.

I also made sure to not adopt any animals for a few good years.

Of course, the day Dubi and Pupi crossed my threshold and came to live with me was not at all planned. And that’s another story.

(To be continued)

The Dogs That Came Before, Part Three: Grizzly

“Someone is likely looking for him, so don’t count on keeping this dog, Tana!”

“Sure, Dad, but I couldn’t let him out there on the street to be run by a car”

I could hear hope in my father’s words, who didn’t want another dog, and having seen me heartbroken after Mushi’s death, reluctantly accepted this new fluffy animal in his home. Three adults and a dog sharing a one-bedroom apartment was a challenge and one had to find more room in his or her heart than in their living space to accommodate another creature.

So Dad found a piece of rope, placed it around the neck of new housemate, and took him for a walk. Mrs. Tudor, a lively old grandma’ who lived two floors below, saw Dad and the dog walking together, and ran upstairs to my stepmom, Eliza, folded in two with laughter: “What happened to Mr. Saler?” she exclaimed between fits of laughter. “He has been captured by another dog, hasn’t he?” (A couple of weeks later, Mrs. Tudor ended up at the other end of the pointing finger, when her grandson brought a red Irish Setter to her home, a dog who immediately proceeded to eat homemade French Crepes from her hand and steal her heart)

The new dog was ill with respiratory problems, every now and then stopping and coughing, his tiny body caught in convulsions fighting something inside him, probably infection and mucus that bothered his breathing. His nose was warm and dry, and never became the cold, wet nose that is the staple of a vital dog. My father’s wish was half fulfilled: we discovered the dog’s previous human, a woman who lived in a private home right across from our building. When she saw my parents and I walk with our new canine companion down the street, she stopped us to exclaim that this used to be her dog, and told us how she had bathed him, then she left him outside in her fenced yard, to dry. It was too cold for him on that chilly October day, and he became ill. She then left the gate open for him to leave if he wanted to, so he did. The woman proceeded to assure us that she did not want the dog back, and we were welcome to keep him. My father resigned to the news, and I was appalled at the woman’s cruelty and complete lack of care and responsibility for the dog, and at the same time, I was relieved to keep him.

The dog looked much like a Puli, the Hungarian sheep dog, and since his coat was gray, the Romanian word for gray being ‘gri’ (pronounced gree), our family’s collective dog naming brainstorming session produced the name Grizzly.

He had a name, and he was ours. We bought the collar and the leash, took him to the vet, nursed him back to health and we were again an extended dog-blessed family. Dad proceeded to train him to walk leash off, and Grizzly walked leisurely with either of us, but unlike Mushi, who was happy to walk with anyone who invited him, Grizzly refused to walk with strangers, and glued his behind to the ground until one of his own pack would take over the leash. Also unlike Mushi, whose rage fits threatened his pack members, but he was always sweet to strangers, Grizzly was never aggressive towards me, my father or my stepmother, but territorial to strangers. He had earned a good home, he was going to defend it, and he would take no prisoners! A young man I briefly dated who played the violin came to our home to take me out on a date, and the tiny bear-named and bear-hearted doggy sank his teeth in my friend’s right hand, the one that holds the bow. Later I dated Cezar, a handsome, well-dressed young man who sported expensive soft leather boots he had received as a gift from his mother’s friend in Germany, a real treat in the scarcity-afflicted place and times we lived in. Cezar was greeted promptly with a growl and a bite straight into the glove-like leather of his rare boots, and, even though he elected to continue dating me, as apparently I was well worth the small price he had paid, during each subsequent date he proceeded to ring the door bell, then hide in the elevator with the door barely cracked to safely peep through until I came out alone to join him.

I was upset with Grizzly’s aggression, and lacked any resources to take charge of his training. I don’t recall training services back then, nor did I read any dog training books. When it came to dog training, we were on our own, and we did a less than ideal job of it.

Grizzly travelled with us on our holidays, like Cici had travelled too, to the seaside and the mountains, and he was an easy travelling companion (when he wasn’t in his own home, guarding it!). My parents and I stayed in a ‘zimmer’ – a private home’s room used as hotel – and for a few coins we would gather meat leftovers for Grizzly from a diner’s helpful waitress. Dad found it funny to hide away together with Eliza while the dog walked a few meters ahead, and Grizzly panicked, turned back to look for them, and when he found them he would bark at them and give them crap for their behaviour.

Inside me burned a secret that I did not dare to share with anyone until many years later: I did not, and could not love Grizzly as much as I loved Mushi. I did not understand why, and had no understanding about grief and trauma, and I was ashamed of this diminished ability to feel affection for the dog whose life depended on me. When the time came for me to leave Romania and immigrate to Israel, I had no difficulty leaving Grizzly behind, in my parents’ care. I left and haven’t looked back.

Dad and Eliza took good care of the dog until the day they both fell ill and had to be hospitalized at the same time. They found a loving family, a mother, father, and a daughter about my age, who happily adopted Grizzly and made him their own, giving him all the love he deserved until he died of old age. The family kept in touch with my parents, calling every time the doggy did something they found funny and remarkable, which was quite often; and then my parents would tell me all about it in detailed letters, which made me smile.

Grizzly with his new guardian

Six years after my immigration to Israel, I visited Romania, in 1991, and I met with Grizzly and his new family. Nothing in his behaviour indicated that he remembered me, and given the emotional numbness that I had when he was mine, I would not be surprised to know that he never cared too much about me either. He was clearly happy and loved with his new family, and that was that.

Grizzly with Tana, Dad, Eliza and new guardian Mom

On Grief and Regrets

Grief, I find, is not a one thing. 

There is the pain of separation, then there are regrets about mistakes made, especially when it's too late to make any direct amends (amends can always be made towards the world at large).

And then there's habit: learning to live with a completely new reality, some of which is more difficult, and some of which is easier. 

Regrets are painful, but potentially useful when resolving to learn from them and do things differently, so they can foster growth. Making mistakes calls for making amends, and the only way I can repair any damage done with the mistakes I made in caring for Kinook, now that she's gone, is by writing about them in the book. This way, other dog guardians may do things differently and more usefully than I did. At the same time, parents of human children and guardians of pets alike will make mistakes by the flawed and fallible nature of our humanity, and when amends are possible, they will replace regrets, and thus we, as individuals and as a species, grow kinder, stronger, and better skilled.

The pain of separation is pure, clean pain, sharp and precise like a cutting knife. When a wave of this pain washes over me, I have no stories to tell, no wishes to make, no hairs to split in analysis; the only words that come to mind are: 'I miss you so much!' and then, there are tears, and feelings

The Dogs that Came Before, Part Two: Mushi

 Mushi was a gorgeous English Cocker Spaniel with shiny, wavy mirror-like fur, long ears and fluffy legs and feet. He was a playful little fellow who adored rough play, and our favourite game was him biting strongly into my long sleeve, and then flying around like a carousel while I was spinning.

I would have readily invited Mushi to sleep in bed with me and cuddle – as he was a cuddly pup, if Dad would not have decided to impose some strict rules about him: the dog was to not be allowed in either Dad’s and Eliza’s bedroom, nor in my room, but he was to sleep alone in the corridor, both room doors closed. My heart felt heavy and sinking to what I considered a both cruel and unnecessary rule which caused my new little friend to go to sleep while crying for company, a young pack animal having to pass the night away from his pack members. It was January in the cold Romanian winter, and Mushi was sleeping in the cool air draft flowing from underneath both doors.

My father clearly did not want this dog, and acted with resentments towards him and me, saying things like: “Of course we can’t afford this or that item, because we just spent all these hundreds for a dog!”

It wasn’t long before Mushi fell ill, his appetite diminished, and his coat turned from shiny and wavy to dull and frizzy. We took him to the vet and discovered that he had been poisoned, licking pesticides off the walls, which had been treated against cockroaches. The vet prescribed his care and urged us to wash our walls with water and soap, and warned us that Mushi’s development would be delayed due to the neurotoxin in the pesticide. I was sad and mostly angry at my father as I regarded my dog’s misfortune as somehow correlated with the hostile reception he received at home. “He was unwanted!” I exclaimed, face red and wet with tears, “Look what became of him, he came to us so well and healthy, and look at him now!”

The bedroom ban was lifted and Mushi got nursed to health in bed and everywhere else. He conquered Eliza’s heart in no time, and maybe my father’s heart too, as much as my Dad’s heart was up for takes. And then one day his coat was wavy and shiny again, and his appetite returned. I celebrated!

I loved this dog so much, and was so connected to him, that I counted him in my activities, my plans and my daydreaming fantasies. I took Mushi with me to visit the rehearsals of the choir I sang in, and friends came to my home purposefully to visit him. And he would proceed to steal everyone’s heart, one after the other, so when I’d meet a friend, they’d first ask me: “How is Mushi doing?” before asking about me.

Mushi was friendly to everybody, and he was the sweetest pup indeed, with an unusual exception: when offered a treat, his eyes would lose focus, become glazed, and he would jump over his cookie with his front legs, cover it, and guard it with loud and aggressive growls. He would go on and on in this crazy trans, and I could only snap him out of it by showing him the leash and mentioning a walk. Then he would come back to his sweet puppy self, as if nothing has happened, and life went on. Later I found that male Cocker Spaniels have this genetic disease referred to as Rage Syndrome, apparently with no known cure.

I took Mushi for walks to a small patch of grass at the intersection of four narrow streets, right across a busy road from our apartment building. When other dogs joined us, I would remove his leash so he could play and run, and it would take me quite some effort getting the leash back on him. One man who walked with his brown-patched German Pointer used to laugh at me, imitating my ineffective attempts at getting Mushi to respond to my commands. He’d make a high pitched voice and say: “Oh, Mushi, would you consider the possibility of maybe coming to me if it’s not too much trouble, whenever you have a moment?” I laughed along with this man, as he did capture the essence of my approach.

Until the day I didn’t laugh again.

A German Shepherd was released to the grass park and I let go of Mushi’s leash to encourage him to play. Mushi was now ten months old, and the big dog was too much for him, so he ran away. He headed home, with me running after him and screaming, calling his name; he did not make it to the other side of the road. A truck hit him and killed him on the spot.

I had a shock and after an intense feeling of terror gripping my insides like a cold claw, I bled what looked like menstrual bleeding, but was not, it was my body’s response to the traumatic death of my dog.

I grieved Mushi and cried with Eliza in each other’s arms, her confessing me that she had not imagined that a dog’s death could hurt so much. Wherever I went the streets were filled with Cocker Spaniels, and I missed my little Mushi so much, and the guilt and regrets haunted me for a long time. I then began to value the importance of leadership and training in dog care, and teaching your dog to come to you when called as if his life depends on it, because it does.

One cloudy day in October 1984 a small grey dog with long, wavy hair was roaming the street, the same street where Mushi was killed, looking for food, sniffing and licking an ice-cream wrapping that somebody had dropped on the ground. He had no collar but he didn’t look like a stray dog, he looked clean and groomed.

Seeing this little dog on the street, something snapped in my head and I told myself: “Oh my god, this dog will be killed by a car!”. I took him away from his ice-cream wrapper, well aware that he might bite me for it, and in spite of his growling protests, I took him in my arms, went home to my parents, and presented the dog to them.

We named the dog Grizzly.

(To be continued)

The Dogs That Came Before - Part One: Lily and Cici

When I grew up, most all of the neighbour’s children had brothers and sisters except me. When sun was setting down behind the buildings, and darker shades of pastels colored the skies above the grass and sand playground, my pals retreated to their homes to interact with siblings, while I would talk to plastic dolls and feel lonely.

My repeated requests to my parents to produce more children for my own companionship and entertainment were met with inflexible refusal. My arguments were rational: “Mom, my children will be deprived of aunts and uncles, not like me, who has so many of them thanks to you having siblings!” and if you would have heard me when I was a little school girl pleading for my cause, I promise you, you would have run to the bedroom with your partner to fulfill my request! However, Mom was better at debates than I was, and suggested I go marry a man who has brothers and sister, to solve my future children’s predicament.

That’s when I changed my strategy, and re-negotiated for siblings, or a dog.

So dog it was.

My first dog-sister was Lily, a small multi-colored mutt with black and grey, and a snow-white tip of the tail. Lily had a bright disposition, and loved chasing neighbourhood kids in circles, barking joyfully, joined by their screams of delight. I was as happy as she was with this whole playground arrangement, the chasing, the barking and the screams, but our happiness was cut short: we had a car accident when Mom was driving, and she decided that Lily brought her bad luck, and gave her away.

So here I am, back to square one, no brothers, no sisters, no dog.

One night, while my father was out of town with work, mom was sitting on the sofa, and I was reading Jack London’s stories at the kitchen table. White Fang, Call of the Wild, stories of snow and dogsleds and wolves and friendships like no other, images were dancing in front of my mind’s eye, my imagination replacing the author with my own self touching the dogs, talking to them, racing the sleds to victory. When the story I was reading ended, tears flowed down my cheeks with longing for such a special connection with a furry friend.

“Why are you crying?” asked Mom, with a concerned face.

“I want a dog!” I exclaimed between tears.

“This is it? I thought it was something serious!” Mom, usually attuned to me, missed my feelings and motives this time. But then the phone rang. It was Dad.

“Dad! I want a dog!” I yelled into the receiver, and cried some more.

There must be something about being a father away from your family, hearing your child crying on the phone.

And then, there came Cici.

Cici was a brown Dachsund, a shy cuddly sausage dog who slept with me, starting at the feet at the beginning of the night, then ending up on my pillow, nose to nose with me. She was always cold and wore a coat in the winter, and at night she crawled under the covers and against my body for warmth.

I was in my early teens when Cici joined my family, and I loved her to bits. She was an easy dog to be with, and funny to play with. She chased and battled with garlic heads, chewed on raw carrots and corn on a cob, and ate polenta. One day I worried she had tooth abscess, half her face swollen suddenly. It was a piece of polenta that stuck between her teeth and her cheek, and she couldn’t move it on her own. When she was sick, I carried her in my arms, through trams and busses, to take her to the vet, until she was well. When she got in trouble, chasing birds only to land in a dirty rain water pool, I wrapped her in my arms, ran home with her, and bathed her.

I treated Cici like my parents treated me: with love and care, and also with the clumsiness and cruelty of traumatized, unskilled parents: I beat her when I disagreed with her behaviour, like my father did with me. That was the norm in my family, and I lived up to it.

My father was the responsible person for Cici’s care – buying and preparing her food, making sure she had her walks, taking care of all dog care practicalities. “I feed her, walk her, take care of her, and she goes to you all the time!” Dad would exclaim with clear jealousy. “And what do you do for her? Play with her, that’s all that you do!” Cici preferred me, came to me when everyone would call her at the same time, and trusted me. She did not protest the veterinarian’s injections if I held her, she’d hide her face and long nose beneath my bent elbow, and be at peace. 

When Mom died of leukemia, I was seventeen, and shut down emotionally. Mom had suffered with mental illness for a few years, she disconnected emotionally from the world, from herself and from me, and after a few years of intense suffering, she faded away and passed on January 23 1978, one day after my seventeenth birthday. I did not shed a tear, and thinking that was something utterly wrong about losing your mother and not cry, I tried: I spent hours alone in my room thinking of something sad, so I could cry, and all my efforts were in vain.

Dad had a nervous breakdown, and went away for two months at a sanatorium in the Carpathian mountains, where he swallowed pills and took leisurely walks through the woods. And I did what I found fit with this unprecedented freedom: went to bed in my day clothes, smoking with the ash tray close to the pillow; hosted parties for my high school class mates, and hung out with them for hours after school. I would leave home early morning and come back late at night. Cici was left alone at home, with me and Dad away for all the daylight hours, and little by little she became depressed: she stopped greeting me at the door, shoe in her mouth, crying of delight, like she used to do. She stopped eating, and spent her days and nights curled in a pretzel, without a sound.

“Have pity on her!” my father pleaded with me, “Let’s give Cici away to someone who can care for her. Don’t you see she suffers?”

I didn’t see she suffered. I paid no attention, and had no empathy. I wanted her for myself, for my own pleasure, a cute toy I didn’t want to part with. My father’s daily pleas fell on deaf ears for a while, until one day when I gave up and agreed. Cici went to live with one of the secretaries in my father’s office, a woman who lived in a home with a garden with hens and a cat. I felt some sadness, a hint of emotion glimmering through the thick, dense clouds of repressed emotion, and went on to live my life.

I went to visit Cici once, and found her thin, having shed the extra fat of her little body, running around chasing mice in the garden, losing the mice to the cat, living the outdoors life, a different life, without pillow cuddles, with less food, and more movement and interaction with other animals. Cici was happy to see me, and happy to jump in my lap. I left her behind with a heavy heart, the sadness of thinking that she maybe was less happy in her new home, not being allowed in bed, the guilt of abandoning her like my mother had abandoned me, my suffering muffled through walls of ignorance, not really knowing whether it was Cici who suffered or myself, taking that muffled, dulled out pain with me on the bus as I left my old friend behind to her new life, and headed to my own.

I don’t know to tell you how many years I have spent feeling unloved and unlovable before discovering that I also was unloving. How many times I prayed and hoped that one day I’d be loved and understood, before I realized the need to learn to understand and love. I had an underlying longing to connect in ways most adults in my life did not know how, and I had no role model to learn from, with one exception, a private English teacher who listened, asked questions, and cared: Cornelia Popescu, a childless children lover, and dog lover, who always had a black Dachshund girl around. 

I had boyfriends and sex, and still didn’t know how to emotionally connect with another, but the longing burned me from the inside. When I broke up with my college sweetheart, I longed to be seen, sought and loved like only a dog can when you are oblivious, and won my arguments to a dog versus my father and his second wife, Eliza, whom we were now living with.

And along came Mushi.

Mushi was a black male Cocker Spaniel with all his pure-breed traits and papers, a two-months old adorable puppy with ears so long that we’d clip them up with clothes pins when he ate and drank, otherwise he would get food and water on his ears and shake it all on us. I don’t know how much I owed it to Mushi, and how much to Eliza, my warm, wise and loving new stepmother, that my heart softened up and I started feeling emotions again. And I fell deeply and irrevocably in love with Mushi.

-To be continued -

One More Promise to Keep

 My friend, my fur baby, my sweet puppy: when I said good bye to you as you drifted away, I was relieved to know that all my promises to you were kept.

When I adopted you, fifteen years ago, I promised to care for you to my best ability, to the very end. I told you I'd never leave you, and if I went away, I'd return to you. I promised that I'd always love you, be there for you, support and comfort you in your old age, and I did.

As you closed your eyes, and your body left me, this huge love remained. I made you one last promise: that I would write a book about you, my love, about our life together, the happy times, the dark times, the funny times, and pour this tremendous love in it. A book about us.

This blog is it, my pup, the book unfolding - my last promise to you for me to keep.