oyal readers of Third Age Thoughts will well remember, but new recruits (and disloyal old readers) might not know, or care, why I stopped putting out new blog posts in 2020. There were probably many reasons, but the proximate cause of my stopping was Louis. We had recently gotten him as a 12 week old adorable puppy, and what with walkies, poopies, feedies, and cleanuppies, I suddenly found myself deep in the red, creative-writing-time-and-energy-wise.
I’m not complaining. It was a good time, if exhausting. Louis, who is incredibly cute, was even cuter as a baby, as this picture shows. (The picture also shows that I was much balder back in 2020 than I allow myself to believe I am now. Fortunately, memories, especially memories of how much hair I don’t have, are mercifully short. I’m starting to forget already. But I digress.)
When Louis was a baby and had to pee every few hours, I would stay up late with him to take him for his midnight stroll. I would put on the TV something with a little slow movement and soft voices, to keep me from falling asleep too deeply while simultaneously not jarring me or Louis awake with sudden noises. This was December, and the Curling finals were on each night late, and they suited just fine. While I started airing them almost as a background screensaver, I soon found myself sucked in to that fascinating, if weird, sport. I thought it was like shuffleboard, but really the eye and skill demanded make it seem more like pool, like those trick pool shots that are always popping up unrequested on Facebook. Sorry, on “Meta”.
I picked up the lingo: Curling is one of the few professional sports in which the command “Whoa!” is part of the official patois. I learned that each inning is called an “end” no matter where it occurs in the game, and that the speed at which you slide a stone is called not its speed, but its “weight”. The curving trajectory that a player imparts by spinning the stone isn’t called “English” like in pool, it’s called “curl” (hence the name, Curling). I don’t know why they don’t call it English; maybe it’s because the term originated in English Canada and it’s the same reason they don’t call them French fries in France. (Third-agers will remember decades ago when Congress tried to change the name of French fries to “Freedom fries”, because they were miffed that France didn’t like that we invaded Iraq. Don’t you wish Congress was as statesmanlike now as it was then?)
I even picked a favorite team: Team Canada women’s curling team, hailing out of Manitoba and captained (or “skipped”) by Kerri Einarson. She identifies as Métis, which is an officially recognized Canadian indigenous group, interesting (to me) because of its mixed European (mainly French, I think) and native American ancestry, formed in the mid-18th century during the height of the North American fur trade.
ANYWAY, why am I waxing nostalgic for 2020 and puppy Louis? Because we have decided, against the advice of virtually everyone we’ve told, and our own better judgement, to get another new puppy. Or maybe I should just say we’re getting a new puppy, because Louis, cute and playful though he still is, isn’t really new, or a puppy, any more.
Our journey to second-puppyhood has been plagued with so many setbacks that it’s hard not to believe that the universe is sending us a message: Don’t do it! In December, Louis bolted while walking with Kathleen (there were extenuating circumstances; it wasn’t pure Louis evil), and Kathleen took a very bad fall and broke her pelvis. We were working with other ailments that were active at the time, maybe related to her autoimmune diseases, and the new injury and old diseases each made the other much harder to manage, and to live with. We’ve had a very hard time, one of the worst six months of our lives together (and we’ve been through some hard patches in our over forty years of matrimonial bliss).
We had picked out a puppy, a cute baby sister for Louis, and were only four days from bringing her home when Kathleen had her accident, and it forced us to scuttle the whole deal. She had a significant period of immobility and constant pain, and a much longer time of convalescence, ahead of her, and we just couldn’t have a puppy underfoot. It was hard enough with Louis, who spent a lot of time during the next few months in Doggie Day Care.
Six months later, Kathleen is still not fully healed, but she’s up and walking short distances. Our first choice puppy had long since gone to a different forever home, so we restarted our search despite the wailing of well-meaning friends and neighbors (these people said we were crazy to get another dog before Kathleen’s injury—you can imagine what they’re saying now).
The Day Care that Louis patronizes somehow found itself with a brown miniature poodle as a permanent guest. I think the circumstances were similar to those in that movie where Tom Hanks couldn’t get out of the airport and had to set up house there. We thought about this situation for about a week, then called: “We’d like to come up and take this doggie off your hands! We’ll be up in fifteen minutes!”. Less than five minutes later, they called back. “I’m sorry, while you and I were on the phone earlier, my coworker was finalizing a deal with another family to take the dog. He’s gone.”
That’s twice now that Fate had prevented us from adding a dog to our family at the last minute, but we kept trying. We saw another little schnauzie-looking thing at a small dog rescue site, but once again, by the time we were able to make it down there, he had been snatched up.
Now that’s three times, and you know what they say: “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.” (And by “they”, I mean Ian Fleming in the James Bond masterpiece Goldfinger.)
But we would not be deterred from our quest, despite all reason, and a clear message from the universe! The heart wants what the heart wants, and in this house, what the heart wants is PUPPIES!
So we reached out to where we got Louis, a farm where they not only breed dogs, but also train them (some of them) to be service dogs. We picked out a little Cavapoo who they promise will never grow beyond half of Louis’s current size, and we arranged that she would stay there to get obedience and self-discipline training for about three months before we pick her up. We named her “Phoebe”.
We’ll be getting her after she has mastered the fields of heeling and sitting, with a minor in not knocking Kathleen over and breaking her pelvis. Meantime, we’re having long awkward talks with Louis so he won’t be surprised or jealous to have a new baby in the house, and understands the importance of being a Good Big Brother. I’m sure that’ll go just fine, but I’ll keep you posted.
Toodles,Dorn5/29/2024