I think we as humans tend to follow the rule that familiarity breeds, not contempt, but fondness. The things we like the best are those we know the best, and unconsciously our patterns of love (and hate) follow not what is rational, but what is familiar.
I could get all depressing on this and talk about why racism and sexism and suchlike are a natural extension of this tendency, but it's not what I want to do today. What I want to write about is that it just hit me today- Bruno is a beautiful dog. He's canine perfection, and I couldn't get a handsomer companion. (Let me explain before you dismiss me as a fanatic.)
All this whole time I've had him I've been comparing him to Ginger, and usually unfavorably- Ginger had brown eyes so dark they looked black, so Bruno's are not as soulful and intelligent-looking because they are orange-brown instead. Ginger was slim and streamlined, Bruno is therefore not as graceful because he is stocky and muscular. Ginger's tail hung low most of the time, therefore Bruno is not as pretty with his curly tail. And so on. Every time I thought about his physical appearance, I compared him to Ginger, and since Ginger was the first dog I ever owned and really connected with, my brain pattern of what beauty is in dogs was based on her. I didn't admit this to anyone publicly- I didn't want to look like a jerk or a snob.
It's taken a nearly a year to retrain my brain to find Bruno attractive. Whenever people told me, "What a handsome dog you have!" I'd smile and thank them, figuring they were just being nice. I thought of him as a nice enough dog, but not a pretty one. I saw him as a hodgepodge of parts from different breeds because of his mongrel ancestry, and not as an integrated whole. I'd think, "Hmm, I like his ears, but they should be set a little higher on his head," or "I like the shape of his muzzle, but his lips are too loose and flappy."
Last week I took him for a run on the bike path along the lower Clackamas River in Oregon City, and we passed a full-blooded German Shepherd. The thought popped into my head- "My dog is way better put-together and handsome than that one!" And today I felt nothing but pride seeing him lying out in the yard. This is a really new feeling for me. Sometimes in the past I had to force myself to see the good in him, with all the trouble he's caused, sticking with him because I owe it to him, but today love comes easily.
A miracle.
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Sunday, October 24, 2010
okay, I'm a deadbeat
I did say that I would try to keep up with this, but my old demons have caught up with me:
1. Who's reading this anyhow? Why should anyone care? (And yes, I know you're there, Mom, but you don't need to read a blog to know how I'm doing and what I'm up to.) I don't do anything that interesting, and writing about my dog is not going to gain me readers (everyone knows that no one loves your dog as much as you do- it's pretty much a given.)
2. On the off chance that I DO become successful and gain regular readers, I'm going to have to deal with malicious comments and personal attacks. I see this all the time on my favorite blogs I read- vicious, ignorant commenters. I wonder how writers can stand it without falling apart, and some even remove their comment section entirely. I don't know if I'm strong enough.
3. Sheer laziness. I'm lazy, I'm the first person to admit it. I didn't feel like driving five miles to a wireless hotspot to get on the internet. It seems wasteful, and I hate driving for frivolous things (liberal guilt about polluting the environment with my inefficient old putt-putt of a car. I want to put a sign on the back that says "I'M SORRY I CAN'T GO ANY FASTER" to apologize to anyone who gets stuck behind me.)
But now that I'm here, I might as well give an update.
I am COMPLETELY out of money. I have 150 dollars in my bank account, and ZERO cash stashed anywhere else. Still figuring out what to do about this. Fortunately I have a very loving (and enabling) family that lets me live with them rent-free, so I don't have to worry about being kicked out on the street or starving, but it demands a re-think of my choices in the past, and what to do next.
Sad news on the pet-owning front: Maggie (my family's Aussie) killed our elderly barn cat, Clementine. It's a miracle Clementine made it to old age (16 years) in the first place, being an outside-only cat in a place with many predators, but she was tough. It was really hard to see her go in such a hideous way. Maggie flushed her out of the barn where Clementine slept during the day (she was entirely nocturnal, and therefore had no dealings with Maggie before) and grabbed the cat by the neck and shook her violently, over and over. But this didn't give Clementine a quick death (that would have been better.) I think poor Clementine actually suffocated from being carried by the neck for that long. Maggie ran all around the yard and refused to break her hold on the cat, while we humans screamed and ran after. It was just horrible. Finally Clementine stopped struggling and Maggie tried to cache her kill for later (like wild predators do) by burying it with leaves and mud. I swooped in and gathered up the bloody, muddy cat, but it was too late.
I buried her in the yard, and dragged a log and some rocks over the site so dogs or other animals can't dig her up. Clementine looked she was just curled up to rest and it was so hard to leave her in that hole and shovel dirt over her open eyes.
One spot of hope in that circus of horror was Bruno's behavior during the incident. While he was definitely an accomplice in flushing the cat out of her hiding place, when I went ballistic yelling and screaming and kicking Maggie, he got the heck out of there- ran right to the house and demanded to be let in. I didn't know this until it was all over, and I said, "I need to look for Bruno, I lost him in the confusion." I feel bad for scaring him like that, but it shows that his prey drive can be overruled. His desire to kill the cat was less than his fear of a loud, scary situation, so I have hope that if a similar thing happens again (God forbid) I could stop him from killing. Hopefully I will not have to find out.
And if anyone is curious, Maggie is a purebred Australian Shepherd, and no, Aussies are NOT supposed to be a "cat killer" breed. (That dubious honor goes to German Shepherds and Siberian Huskies.) I don't know if she is a genetic anomaly, or if this behavior developed because she was not introduced to cats as a puppy, and she has been rewarded for killing other animals in the past (rats and an opossum.)
1. Who's reading this anyhow? Why should anyone care? (And yes, I know you're there, Mom, but you don't need to read a blog to know how I'm doing and what I'm up to.) I don't do anything that interesting, and writing about my dog is not going to gain me readers (everyone knows that no one loves your dog as much as you do- it's pretty much a given.)
2. On the off chance that I DO become successful and gain regular readers, I'm going to have to deal with malicious comments and personal attacks. I see this all the time on my favorite blogs I read- vicious, ignorant commenters. I wonder how writers can stand it without falling apart, and some even remove their comment section entirely. I don't know if I'm strong enough.
3. Sheer laziness. I'm lazy, I'm the first person to admit it. I didn't feel like driving five miles to a wireless hotspot to get on the internet. It seems wasteful, and I hate driving for frivolous things (liberal guilt about polluting the environment with my inefficient old putt-putt of a car. I want to put a sign on the back that says "I'M SORRY I CAN'T GO ANY FASTER" to apologize to anyone who gets stuck behind me.)
But now that I'm here, I might as well give an update.
I am COMPLETELY out of money. I have 150 dollars in my bank account, and ZERO cash stashed anywhere else. Still figuring out what to do about this. Fortunately I have a very loving (and enabling) family that lets me live with them rent-free, so I don't have to worry about being kicked out on the street or starving, but it demands a re-think of my choices in the past, and what to do next.
Sad news on the pet-owning front: Maggie (my family's Aussie) killed our elderly barn cat, Clementine. It's a miracle Clementine made it to old age (16 years) in the first place, being an outside-only cat in a place with many predators, but she was tough. It was really hard to see her go in such a hideous way. Maggie flushed her out of the barn where Clementine slept during the day (she was entirely nocturnal, and therefore had no dealings with Maggie before) and grabbed the cat by the neck and shook her violently, over and over. But this didn't give Clementine a quick death (that would have been better.) I think poor Clementine actually suffocated from being carried by the neck for that long. Maggie ran all around the yard and refused to break her hold on the cat, while we humans screamed and ran after. It was just horrible. Finally Clementine stopped struggling and Maggie tried to cache her kill for later (like wild predators do) by burying it with leaves and mud. I swooped in and gathered up the bloody, muddy cat, but it was too late.
I buried her in the yard, and dragged a log and some rocks over the site so dogs or other animals can't dig her up. Clementine looked she was just curled up to rest and it was so hard to leave her in that hole and shovel dirt over her open eyes.
One spot of hope in that circus of horror was Bruno's behavior during the incident. While he was definitely an accomplice in flushing the cat out of her hiding place, when I went ballistic yelling and screaming and kicking Maggie, he got the heck out of there- ran right to the house and demanded to be let in. I didn't know this until it was all over, and I said, "I need to look for Bruno, I lost him in the confusion." I feel bad for scaring him like that, but it shows that his prey drive can be overruled. His desire to kill the cat was less than his fear of a loud, scary situation, so I have hope that if a similar thing happens again (God forbid) I could stop him from killing. Hopefully I will not have to find out.
And if anyone is curious, Maggie is a purebred Australian Shepherd, and no, Aussies are NOT supposed to be a "cat killer" breed. (That dubious honor goes to German Shepherds and Siberian Huskies.) I don't know if she is a genetic anomaly, or if this behavior developed because she was not introduced to cats as a puppy, and she has been rewarded for killing other animals in the past (rats and an opossum.)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)