Dogs have a sixth sense, maybe people too - Rocky's Story

Rocky's story- a story from my book
(this is Rocky in the photo)

Rocky

I showed up at the shelter one day and saw a big black and white border collie mix who seemed friendly and eager for contact with people. I tend to like the bigger dogs, and as he was fairly run of the mill in looks and on the large side, I figured he might end up there awhile so something inside me decided to focus on Rocky. There was something of the looks of Jake (another dog in my book) in him and there was a responsiveness and chummy sort of willingness to relate to me. When I first started walking Rocky he was fairly well behaved and happy to be petted and loved and talked to and he and Blue, my Australian Cattle Dog, and I would wander all over town. He was fairly good with cats when I walked him past the cat cages, and he was easy enough to handle, so I could drop in and pick him up and go for a walk when I had the time. None of the other dogs where particularly grabbing me, so I just sort of fell in with Rocky. Blue and I walked Rocky for a few months, sometimes he would pull but not too badly He really enjoyed walking all over town with us and rewarded us with his loving responses and looks back at me while on the leash walking. You could tell he liked people. I kept wondering as I often do with the dogs” how did you end up here?” He was so well adjusted. After being at the shelter for a while he grew more impatient and started to dislike cats and smaller dogs to the point where he would bark and lunge towards them and I’d have to really pull him back and reprimand him but something about him would make me continue walking him. He never seemed to become despondent or depressed at the shelter over time, just crabby and intolerant.

Porky as referred to in previous blog post
tailsfromtheshelter.blogspot.com/2009/12/why-ones-i-love-always-go.html

After some time Porky showed up and in contrast, seemed to go downhill rather quickly. He was sensitive and shell shocked by all the noise and commotion and some of the other dogs would pick fights with him to the extent that he would be reluctant to come out of his outdoor kennel in order to even go for walks.Rocky was a little too much of a handful to take with Blue and Porky at one time so I'd walk Rocky and then take Porky afterwards.I was getting a little exhausted from all this dog juggling, and I didn’t always have time to conveniently, devote to walking both of them separately so I started praying that Rocky would soon find a good home. I'm not a particularly religious person, more on the "new age spiritual" side, I always figure some of these dogs can use all the help they can get. Some people came to look at him once but they had recently lost their precious dog named Rocky and the woman was too distraught to get another dog named Rocky quite so soon. I kept thinking” you could change his name to Socks or something, because he had white feet, but these people just came to the conclusion that he was not the dog for them. So there I go back to praying and putting my spiritual feelers out for the right situation for Rocky to arise. I popped into the shelter one morning, and reached around the office door to grab a leash as is my usual custom, and the gals who work there said to me” have you heard the great news about Rocky?” and I’m like “no what happened?” Apparently the man who initially brought him in was a neighbor to his original owner who was going to adopt Rocky because his owner was in the military and got called away to transfer to a military base back East. The neighbor had told the original owner who loved the dog but thought it was unfair to drag him across the country and keep him in a kennel until they found appropriate housing, that the dog was doing well. The dog and neighbor were not doing well. The neighbor tried to surrender Rocky to the shelter, only they were full at the time and the staff told the man he’d have to wait before surrendering him, at which point the man said” I’m just going to go shoot that damn dog” or something to that effect. Well there was another patron standing there at that moment who generously offered to pay for the dog to stay at a kennel until the shelter had room to take him. I'm always so amazed at the kindness and generosity of some people. I had never heard any of this previous history of Rocky's until that moment. So all this time goes by and I’m walking Rocky and taking good care of him and putting my spiritual feelers out praying that he finds an appropriate home. Well the owner who apparently loved Rocky and was trying to spare him discomfort in moving had a funny feeling that something was wrong. He said he kept thinking about Rocky as they were finally settled into a new house and looking to get another dog just like Rocky to replace him. He kept having this strange intuition and said something compelled him to look on the Petfinder website http://www.petfinder.com/index.html for our Shelter and low and behold, he see’s Rocky’s picture on the site listing him as available for adoption. He called up and the shelter staff, told him what had happened with the neighbor and the previous owner said, if he had known how awful it was for Rocky and how dangerously close to being killed the dog was he would have taken him with the family across the country and kenneled him there until they found a new home. Besides, their 2 year old daughter had leukemia and Rocky was her special dog and I suppose it must have been really difficult to be sick, move and loose your special dog.Now they were going to surprise her and reunite them. The people made arrangements with a pet transport service to take the dog across country and reunite him with the family.
So all along I kept wondering why, as long as Rocky stayed at the shelter, he never went that far down hill? He became crabby and part of that was, we think the man who was going to kill him had had a smaller dog that was mean to Rocky as Rocky had never before displayed issues with cats or small dogs. I wonder if somewhere inside Rocky he knew he was going to be reunited with his beloved family? I wonder what compelled me to focus on him and pray for him and if somehow the previous owner heard those pleas through the psychic mists, from clear across the country? I hope the little girl is helped to heal now, at least she’ll have a big wallop of joy in getting her precious doggie back. I’m so happy for all of them. I too got my wish, and in Rocky getting reunited with his precious family, I was able to spend time with Porky who is so sensitive and really needs me, and is sitting by my side as I write this, as my foster dog, doing really well, loving to be loved and grateful for the peace and quiet of a home as opposed to the noise and racket and fighting between some dogs in the shelter setting. Porky too, had a miraculous twist which can be read in my blog post on his story http://tailsfromtheshelter.blogspot.com/2009/12/why-ones-i-love-always-go.html

I suppose this is what keeps me going back to help the shelter dogs. The longer I stay on, the more the stories twist and turn and interweave over time, sometimes in miraculous ways- or seemingly unexplained coincidences, take your pick!

(it takes a brief moment of advertising to get to the beautiful song- it's worth it)

Colby (the dog and the Starving Armenian)- a story from my book

(A little background, in case you don't read my other blogs which can be found by clicking on-view my complete profile. I'm the granddaughter of an Armenian immigrant who fled the genocide in Turkey in 1915. During this time the term- Starving Armenian- was used a lot as the people who were not killed fled, often with no food and nothing but the clothes on their backs. Don't ask me what cosmic joke saw fit to allow me, the granddaughter of an Armenian genocide survivor, to end up with anorexia as a way to handle the distressing situations of my life, but so be it.The anorexia was in the past, I'm quite healthy and have been for a long time, it's just part of the overall story)

Colby

Colby and I had some karmic business to attend to, not that I always go in for this sort of stuff but often times life stares you in the face and offers you a chance to find resolution. Colby came into the shelter as a stray, and immediately became so disheartened that he stopped eating. As a former anorexic myself, how could I not be moved by such a dog. He spent his days curled up into a tiny ball with his hipbones sticking out, right up next to the gate in an outdoor group kennel. He wanted to make sure that if the door were opened he'd be the first one out. It was as if by lying in that spot he was willfully projecting himself out of there. His other dog mates would romp around with each other or lay up under the leanto, but not Colby. He was finally moved to his own private pen that had an individual doghouse in it, that we had put a blanket in. He'd crawl into the doghouse and sleep there most of the day. The staff was so worried that he'd starve to death on their watch, that they put him on anti-anxiety medication. I started walking him in the hopes that the special attention and exercise might help him to work up an appetite. If ever a dog could convey the persona of a disaffected jazz musician, he was it. He was a real cool cat of a dog. He stood fairly tall for a dog 70lbs. at normal weight, and was just so naturally low key. He'd walk alongside Blue( my dog) and I in a very well mannered disaffected way. He enjoyed being petted and receiving attention and had a lovelorn "I can't imagine why you'd want to bother expending energy on me" sort of look in his eye. We'd walk downtown at a leisurely pace. At times I'd stop to grab a coffee or snack, and tie the dogs up to a post for a few minutes. They would just sit politely waiting for me. Colby had the saddest eyes with the most pained look in them. It was a combination of pain and distance, with a touch of daring to yearn to come back from whatever faraway place he'd escape to. It was as if he wasn't sure whether or not to continue living, and whether engaging again with people, was really worth the trouble. He decided that his living situation at the shelter was intolerable and since he couldn’t escape he stopped eating. I had been in this situation myself years ago and was struck that this animal came to the same conclusion to handle its suffering as I had, but then his circumstances started to change a little with my consistent walks and attention. Perhaps this was truly full circle for me. I could intervene in his life and make a difference, even though in my own life my suffering went unnoticed. He wasn't needy, just dejected. His sadness just made you love him even more. I took to putting him in my car with Blue while I drove around town doing errands, just so he would be less lonely. He didn't always smell so terrific and he was too skinny for me to wash him and let him sit outside in the cold until he dried off, so I just damp towel washed him and put him in my car on a giant horse blanket. Such are the sacrifices one makes for troubled animals with broken hearts. Besides, the car had 100,000. miles on it anyway. I’d take him for long walks of at least an hour or so. He grew fond of us and started to finally regain some of the weight he'd lost and his hipbones became less pronounced. He would visually key in on my car as it pulled into the parking lot and also as it pulled away .He would sing in a low, muted, grumbly, "wu wu wu” at times when he saw me approaching, which was the height of enthusiasm for him. One day, I had him in the front passenger seat of my car while we were traveling to a small artsy town 15 miles away. He was curled up with his head facing me and resting on my emergency brake. He looked up at me with such profound love and tenderness that tears came to my eyes. I would have adopted him then and there but my husband wasn’t as smitten with him as I was. The shelter staff felt sorry for him too, and one of the gals was aching to foster him if he wasn’t adopted soon. We had our yearly benefit luncheon for the shelter at our local community center so I took Colby and my dog Blue over there with me in the car. I had had them in the car previously, but only unattended for twenty minutes at a time, before I returned to check on them. I got carried away at the benefit and found myself talking to a couple of the board members discussing the lengths we go to for our pets. I playfully found myself chiming in with ”yeah I know what you mean, I’ve got this dog who’s on anti-anxiety medication with me in my car” Then I realized they had been in the car for over two hours instead of the usual twenty minutes we were all accustomed to. All of a sudden, I was the one experiencing anxiety. I jokingly quipped “my husbands been wanting a new car anyway, maybe this will be the deciding factor” and I excused myself and went to check on them. I didn’t know what to expect; seat cushions torn up? Stuffing everywhere? When I finally reached the car, Colby was sprawled out on the back seat yawning and stretching, and Blue was in the far back. Not one sign of damage anywhere. Phew! A couple of weeks later Colby was adopted. I ran into the women who had adopted him while they were walking together downtown. She seemed so sweet, kind and gentle: a female complement to his sensitive nature. He came right up to me and I patted him on the head. I was so happy for them both. My little Colby cheese dog, my nickname for him, finally back to health.

Capoeira with dogs

I walked Mongo and Pascual(my dog) together today. It was very windy and often times animals can get all worked up when it's windy or stormy. For some reason the animals that tend to be a handful to begin with are the ones even more affected by the wind. I took Mongo out and then brought him over to my car in order to get Pascual out. I kept him on a rather short leash so he would not jump up on my car and scratch it( I learned this from experience) as Pascual jumped out of the car Mongo got excited and lunged ahead to greet and sniff him, throwing me off balance to the extent of practically sitting on Mongo before I regained my footing, as I almost toppled over his back. That was incident number one in which I had a close call. This event alerted me to "the jogo perigoso" or dangerous game a reference to a Capoeira, Brazilian martial arts term, that was in store. I've had enough experience to know that windy, stormy days and one close call in terms of loosing my footing is a warning sign/ wake up call to cut things short and minimize risk. I kept thinking I'd take Mongo out for a longer walk along the lines of an hour but when we got to the fairgrounds and started running around in the big field, me encouraging Mongo to run in circles with and around me to expell energy, until he did some kind of lurching far ahead of me movement and I had to spin around in yet another Capoeira styled move so as I could side flip and land on two feet, with one more gancho(hook kick) to free my leg from the leash, at this point, I decided to cut it short to a twenty minute walk. Working with shelter dogs, one quickly learns that it is best not to tempt fate. I enclosed a youtube video of the Capoeira Mestre Bira Almeida a.k.a. Mestre Acordeon( he is playing the musical instrument the berimbau, while supervising the students). He has a more spiritual and creative/artistic approach/philosophy of Capoeira which has rekindled my interest, practice, and study of Capoeira after many years away( from the martial art form and Brazilian dance). I have also learned that this training helps in all walks or dog walks of life, it is a state of mind. Mestra Accordeon has a wonderful book explaining his view of Capoeira http://www.amazon.com/Capoeira-Brazilian-History-Philosophy-Practice/dp/0938190296#reader_0938190296

Lenny Returns

Poor Lenny, he's such a charming, eager little fellow, desperate to be loved. It seems he chewed up the t.v. remote control, and that was enough to return him to the shelter. I'm curious to know how it is possible, that after close to a month of being adopted, the people hadn't bonded with him enough to overlook this, after all, remote control's are rather cheap at the big box stores but for whatever true reason, Lenny was returned. He recognizes me, pleads with me," take me out, get me outa here". I only have so much time, I pet Lenny and then take Mongo out with Blue. He did well, he's getting better walking more nicely on the leash. My corrections are easier, more of a one armed jerk back rather than a full body throttle like in the past. Pascual, my dog, is still lollygagging at his senior pace. I don't think I'll bring him next time with Mongo, that way I'll be able to walk faster, but I thought it would be good for Mongo to be around another dog so he's not alienated from his own kind so much. I have watched the great dog trainer, Cesar Milan, socialize dogs gradually this way, introducing them to other pack members, the right pack members so as not to cause a disturbance. Mongo is becoming more warm and playful with me. A friend of mine saw us walking on the bike path and said that he looked like a happy dog, which is a grand improvement over him looking like a frozen anxious dog. With his newly uncovered lab like playfulness I have come up with more lighthearted names for him the current list is; Mongo, Mango, Mongoose. For those readers new to the blog, Mongo is the black dog, Lenny is the golden colored dog

Bella of the ball

This is beautiful Bella, a medium sized dog I'm guessing about 8 months old, maybe a Border Collie, German Shepherd mix with two gorgeous blue eyes. Like so many shelter dogs, she was way too wound up to sit pretty for photos although she did sit on command when I asked her, just not long enough for me to do the quick draw mc camera routine. Lucky Lenny got adopted and someone else was walking Mongo so I thought I'd take this pretty gal for a spin. She was a tad wound up at first dancing around me and a little jumpy/scared but after 15 minutes she calmed down considerably. With a little training and consistency she'll make a fine pet, and a gorgeous one at that

Mongo the new dog

This is Mr. Mongo or since I am a Latin Jazz music fan, Mongo Santamaria my latest nickname for him. Mongo is about 3 years old, recently neutered and I'm guessing, spent most of his life in a backyard, never having been acquainted with the simple concept of a leash. This being said, Mongo and I have been grappling with the philosophical ideas of leash, the outdoors, and the concept of teamwork. Patience and mindfulness on my part,and being excruciatingly present, as I deal with unruly dog and icy wintry walking conditions was also the order of the day. This one is a labor of love and a challenge for me as the poor guy has been quite cooped up due to the cold and nasty weather. I've taken him out, I was going to say walked him but that would be a stretch, as it was initially somewhat a battle of wills, about 3 times now. Today, seeing about 12% improvement over the last time which is actually quite an accomplishment in the big scheme of things. This guy is big, a lab/rottweiler mix and although he grew disheartened and stopped eating for a few days, he's still rather strong. After the first two visits I was on the verge of giving up, feeling too overwhelmed with his large size, strength, pent up energy, and outward focus. Many dogs will make some sort of eye contact, or recognition of me as a person attached to the other end of the leash, but he was so interested in the outside world, and so nervous from being cooped up in a cage, that he really wasn't connecting with me or making a whole lot of improvement. I am aware that I have my limitations, especially when winter is concerned, but as usual, I am a bit of a softie and decided to try one more time. Maybe he is getting used to me, as last time after our walk I spent some time with him in his indoor kennel. This last visit he showed some dog to human communication by being excited to see me, which at least inspired me to try. We progressed only a little bit, but enough to "break the ice" and make me feel like I was dealing with a concious creature, and not a brick wall. Hurray for small miracles! Someone else tried to walk him and gave up, so if I don't do it and get him under control he'll be less likely to be adopted quickly.There's my incentive, the tug at my heart strings,the push to nudge me beyond my reluctance. Here I go again, into another adventure with a dog in need. I wonder how his story will unfold?

Memories whistle through the barren branches

Something about winter when the leaves have died and fallen off the trees. I'm walking Dash around. A new dog for me, I'm walking through the streets of the old neighborhood. the memories of the big Polish man are haunting me, resounding through the cold and silent back alleys.His voice, booming through my memory. " Oh is that a German short hair pointer?" He new all the dog breeds. He and his amazing adult son, who worked on their apartments together,in the neighborhood I walked through, were always up for a chat. They adopted one of the shelter dogs I was walking one day, an adorable little heeler, much like my own. They saw her, spoke with me, and immediately went to adopt her. The big man always had a kind word for us a welcoming exchange, a bit of sharing. Such a huge man with a big heart and thick Polish accent and warmth that spread like wildfire. and now he is gone, taken by the natural world in such a quick and inconceivable way, falling in the boat hitting his head and gone to perpetual sleep in the mysterious waters below. I walk through this old neighborhood and the tears well up in my eyes. Dash has no memory of all this, he is happy to be out and about sniffing around, sliding on the ice, sloshing around in the slush, but I remember. That huge personality still echoes through the streets to me. The meeting up with his lovely wife on occasion, stunned by what had happened, but resigned to her fate, still having the distilled spirit of her dearly departed left remaining in her kind and devoted son. What a lovely family, and how sad that this mighty oak of a man has fallen. Why did this amazing person go, so seemingly before his time? Why those people who had such a warm and loving close knit family that touched everyone they met? We continue to walk on, year after year,my rescued heeler and I. New dogs, new people to meet and more stories to be found and discovered, pounding the pavement, walking the dogs, meeting our needs for exercise, kindness, and belonging.