Saturday, December 14, 2019

A Dog's (Short) Tale

It was a beautiful sunny afternoon when we met.  My husband and I had just looked at a piece of land in Wakulla County and were discussing what to have for lunch as we came to a stop sign.  We stopped and I looked up the road to see a very large truck approaching at a high rate of speed - and closer to us, a dog so intent on sniffing something that it didn't see the truck coming.  Knowing what was about to happen, I jumped out of the car and called the dog.  It picked up its head and ran straight to me.

The truck whooshed by and the young dog ran around me in circles before flopping over and giving me her belly.  I petted her tummy and she jumped up, eager to play.  My heart ached for her playfulness despite being so thin; I could see her ribs, backbone and hip bones.  And she was little over puppyhood.  The decision was made immediately - this dog would be coming home with us and I took her back to the car.


She was so good on the ride home, though she wanted to be in my lap.  I got in the back seat with her and she snuggled right up and tried to kiss me.  Her breath was a nightmare...  she'd been eating roadkill in her efforts to survive and her kisses smelled like death.  I got her to calm down and she laid down on the seat and fell asleep with her head in my lap.  Stroking her big head and looking at her too-thin body, I wondered about her.  I thought that someone had loved her once.  She was very affectionate and wanted to please me.  But she'd obviously been out here long enough to be starving.  The temperatures were to drop to freezing tonight and she probably wouldn't have survived that.

At home, she explored everywhere.  Lois was cautious and the cats displeased, but the now-named Hootie loved it all.  We started with food, feeding her a little bit several times over the course of the next few hours, not wanting her to wolf a bunch down and then have it come back up.  She was covered in ticks, so my husband took her out on the back porch and took off as many as he could find, then I pulled a few more off while he got a bath ready for her.


She remained calm and accepting through all of this, and when it was over, she seemed grateful.


She found her place – this would become Hootie’s chair.  Because it was going to be cold that night and she had no fat on her to help keep her warm, she got a blanket to snuggle into.  That kept her comfy but it also helped her feel safe.  She wouldn’t come upstairs at bedtime, so she stayed in her chair.


We came down the next morning to find a puddle in the livingroom.  So, not totally housebroken…  she’d also gotten into a few things, so we went and bought a large crate for her to spend the night in.  We also got Greenies to help with her breath, Milkbones for her teeth and to supply a few calories.    While Lois wasn’t pleased with her new sibling, she LOVED the “Let’s fatten up Hootie” diet!  Hootie gets treats; Lois gets treats!    What’s not to love about THAT?  Hootie took to her crate well.  When she was feeling unsure of herself, she would retreat to the crate and look out into the room from her safe haven.  I draped a blanket over the top, so it would hold in some warmth.                                                                                                      

Come Monday, we got an appointment with the vet to scan for a microchip and get vaccinations.  No chip, all vaccinations administered, and judged to be in pretty good shape in spite of being very thin.  She came back home with heartworm preventative and a flea/tick control.  The basics taken care of, we settled into daily life.  Hootie also had an appointment to be spayed in two weeks after she’d put on a little weight.  She spent her days in the back yard while we were at work basking in the sun and she was just as enthusiastic eater as Lois.  The breath-mint treats and good diet fixed the horrible breath.  She got lots of hugs and pets and walks.  This was OUR DOG now.  One of my friends came by to meet Hootie, who was very sweet and well-behaved until my friend sat down…


Hootie decided she was a lap dog!   My friend didn’t mind though, and she sat and cooed and pet Hootie for a good long while.  When she left, she said Hootie was the sweetest dog she’d ever met – and I agreed.  There was a beautiful soul living in that fur.

Not long after that though, she began becoming a little withdrawn.  Still loved eating and getting pets, but not as outgoing.  I began to wonder if she was having trouble seeing.  Then a few days later, the pacing began.  She went round and round, only stopping to put her head in a corner or small space that was dark.


Even in her chair, she faced the wall and would press her head against it.  This alarmed me, as I had read somewhere that head-pressing was a sign of neurological damage.  I called the vet first thing the next morning and they made space for her in their schedule that day.

My husband met me there from work, and when the vet called us in, I showed him video from the night before that showed her pacing unsteadily and pressing her head on the walls and standing in corners.  He took her into the back to weigh her (all the weight she’d put on was gone again) and watch her walk around.  Then he brought her back in.


And gave us the bad news.  She had neurological damage, probably caused by distemper or rabies.  And I learned that both of those are viruses.  Often, they first show up as lung issues.  The dog coughs or swallows more than usual.  Hootie did that.  As the virus moves to the brain, they become unsteady on their feet and engage in the pacing and head-pressing.  If it’s rabies, it progresses to being unable to swallow water, but the saliva is still active, causing the foamy mouth symptom.  For both diseases, there is no conclusive test until after death.  Distemper does have a small chance of cure if caught VERY early, but in this case, (if it were distemper) it was already in the brain.  And it could have been in her system for almost all the 6 months of her life, so the vaccines we gave her the previous week wouldn’t have done anything about it.  Vaccines PREVENT.  They don’t cure.

We were, of course, distraught.  In less than two weeks, this beautiful creature had made a home in our hearts.  But when our long-time, trusted vet said that if she were his dog, he’d put her to sleep because it wouldn’t get any better than this and would get much worse in very short order, we decided to put our beautiful, funny, loving Hootie to sleep.

We stroked her and talked to her and told her how much we loved her as our vet injected her…  and then she was gone.


Yes.  That’s a picture of our dead dog.  You may be wondering why I felt it was necessary to include this.

Christmas is coming, and the animal shelters all over the country are asking people to adopt a puppy or dog (they do it year round, but I suspect more people actually do it this time of year).  If the urge to get a puppy is hitting you hard, please think long and hard about it before committing. 

Pets are a responsibility.  They aren’t for until you get tired of it, or you can’t afford to take it to the vet, or it chews up something you left lying around.  They aren’t lawn ornaments for you to leave in the fence and ignore or chain to a tree and forget to feed and water.  They are not temporary!

If you can’t afford to vaccinate your dog or feed your dog – DON’T get a dog.
If you don’t have time to spend with a dog, taking it for walks or playing – DON’T get a dog.
If you value your things more than a furry, loving being – DON’T get a dog.
If you aren’t willing to commit to 10 to 15 years, caring for it appropriately for every age – DON’T GET A DOG.

We were ready, willing, and able to make all of the above commitments to Hootie – but because someone else didn’t care enough for their dog, we only got to have her for almost two weeks.  The disease that took her was totally preventable. In spite of all the wonderful moments we had with Hootie, that last picture will stick in my mind forever.  It didn’t have to be this way.  

We will grieve Hootie for very long time.

PLEASE BE A RESPONSIBLE PET OWNER IF YOU DECIDE TO ADOPT AN ANIMAL THIS CHRISTMAS.  They are not toys to be discarded when you get tired of them.  They are living, breathing, loving souls who will love you unconditionally if you take care of them and treat them right. 








Wednesday, December 11, 2019

Taking Care of Church Business


Things pile up in my head.  It’s kind of like having a mental squirrel that finds nuts of information and thoughts and emotions and stuffs them in the empty spaces of my mind.  I wouldn’t mind this so much if the squirrel didn’t do it all higglety-pigglety so that it all appears to be trivia rather than actual knowledge.  Sometimes he buries those nuts and forgets where he put them.  Then when I need them, I can’t find them.  An organized squirrel – that’s what I need.

In spite of my squirrel’s disarray, occasionally he piles things close enough together that they start to take on some meaning.  A stray word here and there and suddenly, it’s as if two bits of information join hands and start jumping up and down waving and yelling “here I am!!!”  I don’t know if that makes me smart, intuitive, or just crazy, but once in a while, all those things come together to make sense.

The word that started this whole thought process this time is stewardship.  Every year, someone takes charge of stewardship and writes you a letter or talks to you asking you to search your heart and make a financial pledge to the church.  Beverly Spencer did a wonderful job of that last year.  When I received her letter, I sat right down and took a realistic look at my finances and figured out what I could pledge to give every week, including the weeks I wasn’t here so that I could write a check to cover those days as well without worrying about it.  Her words inspired me to do it. 

In all honesty, I’d never made a pledge to a church before.  When the plate was passed, I put in whatever I could afford to put in that day, but it was never something I planned for or made a conscious effort to continue.  Beverly’s words made me realize that not only did they want me to pledge, but that it was IMPORTANT.  I don’t know how I got to this somewhat advanced age without thinking about things like how the light bill got paid or the rugs vacuumed or even how the priest’s paycheck came about. 

Here’s the part where the squirrel pile in my head started making some sense.
Have you ever heard the phrase “I wish you enough?”  It’s from a story I heard a long time ago.  I don’t remember if it was on the radio or the internet, but my squirrel loved that story and gathered it up to stick in a far corner of my mind.  It goes something like this:

A man in an airport overheard a man and his grown daughter talking at the gate.  They expressed their love for each other and their sadness at parting, and as she left, her father said “I wish you enough.” When the door to the ramp closed, the man asked the father about the phrase.  He said “This has been our way of saying goodbye in my family for a long time.  This is the last time I will say goodbye to my daughter – she lives far away and I am old.  The next time she returns, it will probably be for my funeral.
“When we said ‘I wish you enough,” we were wanting the other person to have a life filled with enough good things to sustain them,” and turning his gaze from the departing plane to me, he shared the following as if reciting from memory…  “I wish you enough sun to keep your attitude bright.  I wish you enough rain to appreciate the sun more.  I wish you enough happiness to keep your spirit alive.  I wish you enough pain so that the smallest joys in life appear much bigger.  I wish you enough gain to satisfy your wanting.  I wish you enough loss to appreciate all that you possess.  I wish you enough hellos to get you through the final goodbye.”

It’s a powerful phrase, isn’t it?  I wish you enough.

It occurs to me that the church wishes me enough.  It is a place and a gathering of people whose worship of God seems to center around these very thoughts.  We come together to celebrate the joys of life – marriages, new babies, children coming of age in their understandings of the church and the teachings of Christ.  The good times we have together help us face the sad times we have together – when we lose a member of this parish to death or when someone leaves this family to move far away, literally or figuratively.  And the hope is that by coming together in joy, we are strong enough to face the bad things – and to appreciate the good just a bit more.

Stewardship.  It’s not just money, though money is how we pay for what we need.  It’s the things we do to take care of our church.  It’s planting flowers and writing to someone who needs to know someone cares.  It’s baking cookies for social minute or washing table clothes after a Senior Luncheon.  It’s pulling together to put on a funeral reception when we lose one of our own.  And yes, it is money in the plate that helps buy a new organ so we can make our joyful noise with a powerful instrument or a new HVAC so we can stay cool in the summer and warm in the winter.

When I think about my finances, I think about my family and my home.  I don’t make a lot of money, so I really have to make my dollars work for me.  I’ve got a mortgage and utility bills.  A car that uses gas. I have to buy food – note the now taller-than-me son.  Sometimes it seems like there’s a conveyor belt between my fridge and his mouth - and don’t get me started on how fast he outgrows his shoes.  My pocketbook has to keep up with the things that stay pretty much the same AND the things that change.

This church is my second home.  Like my home, it needs money to function.  There’s a mortgage and utility bills.  Like my house, there’s always something that needs fixing – the AC, a toilet, the leak under the sink – or replacing, like the roof.  This place is so much bigger than my house.  It holds a lot more people too.  Lucky for us – between all of us – we can support this place.  Everyone contributes to the upkeep of the building and grounds and the well-being of the people who work and live here.   We need to keep ahead of the surprises that can spring up like trees that fall and to maintain what we have already. 

I’ve sat through a number of stewardship talks that say “give ‘til it hurts” – but I’m not sure that’s right thinking.  Maybe it’s better to give until it feels good – because you know that it’s enough to make sure we can take care of what needs to be taken care of.  Everyone’s number is different, but I feel confident that if we all gave until it felt right and good, this church would be doing just fine.

God blesses each and every one of us with so much.  It is not so much to ask that we, in turn, bless this church and each other with our support.  Amen.