MaxedOutMama
Saturday, December 25, 2004
Christmas 2004
I wish you the type of Christmas young children know when the excitement and anticipation fills their hearts to bursting.
I wish you the type of joy that Christmas lights seen against the darkness represent - not a denial of the dark but a perception of the beautiful moments held within that dark. If you are with family and friends this year, I hope you enjoy every beautiful moment.
If you are missing someone this year, then I hope you can remember the times when they were with you, and let the memory of those moments fill your heart with joy. We would not miss those not with us if they had not been so precious to us, and so their absence is only felt because we have been so blessed by their presence.
I have a dog who another dog of mine found out in the brush one February. She was freezing and starving, gashed up, and one leg was pretty much destroyed. The hip was dislocated, the bones were shattered and disjointed, and at one spot bent at right angles to one another. I think when my dog first found her she was close to death, because I saw him running out there to the brush with dog biscuits. I thought he was burying them for some reason. A day later we found a shaking, staggering 3 1/2 month old puppy stashed in the shed, with offerings of bones spread around her.
The Rescue Dog In Training (RDIT) found her; he had been an abused puppy himself. Chief No-Nag had picked him up at the pound, because the RDIT was going to be put down for being vicious. Needless to say, I was not happy when Chief No-Nag returned from the pound with a snarling psychotic attack puppy with medical problems who hated all females with a passion. I was still quite ill at this time, and money was short - but Chief No-Nag insisted nobody was hopeless, and the dog would be fine. I warned him that if we didn't succeed we would have to take the responsibility of having the dog put down, and that I wasn't going to have a dangerous, lightning-fast 80 lb dog around the place.
We worked with RDIT for months to try to get him to calm down, act kindly, and cooperate with the Patriarch Dog (a giant and elderly Golden Retriever) and humans instead of attacking. RDIT viewed absolutely everyone except Chief No-Nag as a threat. The RDIT wanted affection, but had a deep sense of grievance, and asked for affection by biting and snapping. Of course such a strategy is quite self-defeating, but each such defeat only reinforced his feelings of anger, grievance and isolation. So when the RDIT showed up with the puppy in tow, I could not tell him that his kind impulses were wrong. Dogs are just as sensitive to hypocrisy as people.
It was too late to have surgery done on the leg, but it we took her to Tuskegee's Veterinary School and had it pulled out and splinted. The cast was about as large as the puppy; the surgeon told us she would have very little use of the leg but he thought she would survive under heavy antibiotics. The splint had to be kept dry, so every four hours for the next five weeks one of us had to get up, bag it, and take the Brat Princess out.
After we finally took the splint off, the leg was frozen (and the hip was still out of joint). I did physical therapy on that leg several times a day for months. After about six weeks the hip snapped back in place. It was 2 1/2 months before she could put any weight on it. The Brat Princess is determined, and 18 months later she has no disability at all. She stands on her hind legs to box with Rescue Dog, runs like the wind, and leaps 5 feet straight up to get into the truck. The leg is shorter, and if you look closely you can tell it is misshapen, but most people notice nothing odd about her at all.
Rescue Dog's heart grew three sizes over the course of the Brat Princess's rehabilitation, which he followed with intense concern and empathy, wincing as she winced and whining as she whined. He is now my dog, my monitor dog. I have a neurological disease, and Rescue Dog can detect downturns in my condition weeks before they become apparent, allowing me time to head off disaster with medication and rest. The Patriarch, possibly because he always had a very low opinion of human intelligence, had evolved this medical protocol by himself after I became severely ill.
When I went blind, the Patriarch led me around. When I had seizures, the Patriarch warned me. The rest of the time, the Patriarch watched my diet and exercise closely. My autonomic nervous system was failing, so, for example, I couldn't maintain my body temperature or tell whether I needed to eat or not. And my memory was pretty much gone, so about half the time I couldn't figure out whether I had eaten or taken my medication. As far as I could figure ever figure out, the Patriarch was trying to keep me in some sort of metabolic zone he measured by smell. Some days he would make me walk a lot; some days he would hardly let me out of the house. He would bark at me to make me eat or take my medicine, and snarl and scream if I tried to lie down when he thought it was inadvisable. The Patriarch saved my life.
At the time when we got the RDIT the Patriarch was already 13 and failing, so the Patriarch was trying to teach his RDIT to take over the difficult task of taking care of Poor Stupid Staggering Two-Legs (me). The Patriarch succeeded before he had to pass the torch. The Rescue Dog has continued my rehabilitation, allowing me to return to work. I don't think we would have succeeded in making a real dog out of the psychotic puppy that RDIT was without the example of the Brat Princess, so as unlikely as it sounds, she has been an integral piece of the canine trinity largely responsible for the continued existence of this blogger.
Every once in a while the Brat Princess will lose her composure completely. Usually this occurs when I have been out walking with them and Chief No-Nag returns in the truck. She starts to run up to him to greet him as he gets out of the truck, but then veers off and circles. The circles get larger and larger, she runs faster and faster, and then she starts throwing in acrobatics. The Rescue Dog watches in wagging kindly satisfied admiration as she darts through an obstacle course of trees and bushes she has laid out for herself. She corners with extravagant speed on both legs, leaps, spins, and vaults. Eventually, panting, she comes up to the three of us and stares at us with a bemused expression, as if asking if we understand that life is wonderful.
We do. We know. We understand that sort of helpless, heart-bursting joy. We understand that every painful therapy and step she took now forms only a dark background to the brilliant exuberant light of such moments. We've had such moments ourselves. We are four hopeless cases who are doing well, and we know that as we have been rescued from hopeless situations by the undeserved and unlikely kindness of others, our job is now to continue the chain of generosity and joy by helping others.
I wish all of you a very exuberantly joyful and gleefully Merry Christmas. Every child deserves to have wonderful Christmas mornings and the experience of overwhelming joyful excitement. By creating such mornings for them we are teaching them about the reality of life no less than by enforcing rules of behavior and the need for self-discipline.
I wish you the type of joy that Christmas lights seen against the darkness represent - not a denial of the dark but a perception of the beautiful moments held within that dark. If you are with family and friends this year, I hope you enjoy every beautiful moment.
If you are missing someone this year, then I hope you can remember the times when they were with you, and let the memory of those moments fill your heart with joy. We would not miss those not with us if they had not been so precious to us, and so their absence is only felt because we have been so blessed by their presence.
I have a dog who another dog of mine found out in the brush one February. She was freezing and starving, gashed up, and one leg was pretty much destroyed. The hip was dislocated, the bones were shattered and disjointed, and at one spot bent at right angles to one another. I think when my dog first found her she was close to death, because I saw him running out there to the brush with dog biscuits. I thought he was burying them for some reason. A day later we found a shaking, staggering 3 1/2 month old puppy stashed in the shed, with offerings of bones spread around her.
The Rescue Dog In Training (RDIT) found her; he had been an abused puppy himself. Chief No-Nag had picked him up at the pound, because the RDIT was going to be put down for being vicious. Needless to say, I was not happy when Chief No-Nag returned from the pound with a snarling psychotic attack puppy with medical problems who hated all females with a passion. I was still quite ill at this time, and money was short - but Chief No-Nag insisted nobody was hopeless, and the dog would be fine. I warned him that if we didn't succeed we would have to take the responsibility of having the dog put down, and that I wasn't going to have a dangerous, lightning-fast 80 lb dog around the place.
We worked with RDIT for months to try to get him to calm down, act kindly, and cooperate with the Patriarch Dog (a giant and elderly Golden Retriever) and humans instead of attacking. RDIT viewed absolutely everyone except Chief No-Nag as a threat. The RDIT wanted affection, but had a deep sense of grievance, and asked for affection by biting and snapping. Of course such a strategy is quite self-defeating, but each such defeat only reinforced his feelings of anger, grievance and isolation. So when the RDIT showed up with the puppy in tow, I could not tell him that his kind impulses were wrong. Dogs are just as sensitive to hypocrisy as people.
It was too late to have surgery done on the leg, but it we took her to Tuskegee's Veterinary School and had it pulled out and splinted. The cast was about as large as the puppy; the surgeon told us she would have very little use of the leg but he thought she would survive under heavy antibiotics. The splint had to be kept dry, so every four hours for the next five weeks one of us had to get up, bag it, and take the Brat Princess out.
After we finally took the splint off, the leg was frozen (and the hip was still out of joint). I did physical therapy on that leg several times a day for months. After about six weeks the hip snapped back in place. It was 2 1/2 months before she could put any weight on it. The Brat Princess is determined, and 18 months later she has no disability at all. She stands on her hind legs to box with Rescue Dog, runs like the wind, and leaps 5 feet straight up to get into the truck. The leg is shorter, and if you look closely you can tell it is misshapen, but most people notice nothing odd about her at all.
Rescue Dog's heart grew three sizes over the course of the Brat Princess's rehabilitation, which he followed with intense concern and empathy, wincing as she winced and whining as she whined. He is now my dog, my monitor dog. I have a neurological disease, and Rescue Dog can detect downturns in my condition weeks before they become apparent, allowing me time to head off disaster with medication and rest. The Patriarch, possibly because he always had a very low opinion of human intelligence, had evolved this medical protocol by himself after I became severely ill.
When I went blind, the Patriarch led me around. When I had seizures, the Patriarch warned me. The rest of the time, the Patriarch watched my diet and exercise closely. My autonomic nervous system was failing, so, for example, I couldn't maintain my body temperature or tell whether I needed to eat or not. And my memory was pretty much gone, so about half the time I couldn't figure out whether I had eaten or taken my medication. As far as I could figure ever figure out, the Patriarch was trying to keep me in some sort of metabolic zone he measured by smell. Some days he would make me walk a lot; some days he would hardly let me out of the house. He would bark at me to make me eat or take my medicine, and snarl and scream if I tried to lie down when he thought it was inadvisable. The Patriarch saved my life.
At the time when we got the RDIT the Patriarch was already 13 and failing, so the Patriarch was trying to teach his RDIT to take over the difficult task of taking care of Poor Stupid Staggering Two-Legs (me). The Patriarch succeeded before he had to pass the torch. The Rescue Dog has continued my rehabilitation, allowing me to return to work. I don't think we would have succeeded in making a real dog out of the psychotic puppy that RDIT was without the example of the Brat Princess, so as unlikely as it sounds, she has been an integral piece of the canine trinity largely responsible for the continued existence of this blogger.
Every once in a while the Brat Princess will lose her composure completely. Usually this occurs when I have been out walking with them and Chief No-Nag returns in the truck. She starts to run up to him to greet him as he gets out of the truck, but then veers off and circles. The circles get larger and larger, she runs faster and faster, and then she starts throwing in acrobatics. The Rescue Dog watches in wagging kindly satisfied admiration as she darts through an obstacle course of trees and bushes she has laid out for herself. She corners with extravagant speed on both legs, leaps, spins, and vaults. Eventually, panting, she comes up to the three of us and stares at us with a bemused expression, as if asking if we understand that life is wonderful.
We do. We know. We understand that sort of helpless, heart-bursting joy. We understand that every painful therapy and step she took now forms only a dark background to the brilliant exuberant light of such moments. We've had such moments ourselves. We are four hopeless cases who are doing well, and we know that as we have been rescued from hopeless situations by the undeserved and unlikely kindness of others, our job is now to continue the chain of generosity and joy by helping others.
I wish all of you a very exuberantly joyful and gleefully Merry Christmas. Every child deserves to have wonderful Christmas mornings and the experience of overwhelming joyful excitement. By creating such mornings for them we are teaching them about the reality of life no less than by enforcing rules of behavior and the need for self-discipline.
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Excellent post, at the appropriate time.
Wishing you and yours all the very best this Christmas and New Year's.
By the way, Sig loved the discipline angle. Then again, he likes wearing leather, too.
Mama, you're a class act.
Sig, Carl and Alfred
Wishing you and yours all the very best this Christmas and New Year's.
By the way, Sig loved the discipline angle. Then again, he likes wearing leather, too.
Mama, you're a class act.
Sig, Carl and Alfred
# posted by 
: 9:09 PM
: 9:09 PM
I literally have tears in my eyes bacause of this post. What an amazing story. What a wonderful tale and a movie just waiting to be made. Thank you.
I didn't go work today, but I was up until 4 AM wrapping presents for underprivileged kids. I caught an hour of sleep and then drove around town dropping them off on doorsteps. Then I was at a senior center bringing more gifts and helping to cook Christmas dinnner for some wonderful people, alot of whom will not get a visit from family today. After that I came home to a wonderful wife and adorable son that was anxiously awaiting my arrival so he could open his gifts. Tomorrow he is going with me to visit the senior home and take small packages of fudge to shut-ins that are in "my flock". You see, I am an Ordained Reverend, not a fact I disclose much, as it usually doesn't matter in my comments and posts, but today, in this story, I see the wonderful interconnectedness of All.
May you have many years to bring Joy, Enlightenment and sheer hilarity to many people. May whatever God you pray to Bless you with Abundance and even more blessings every day.
I didn't go work today, but I was up until 4 AM wrapping presents for underprivileged kids. I caught an hour of sleep and then drove around town dropping them off on doorsteps. Then I was at a senior center bringing more gifts and helping to cook Christmas dinnner for some wonderful people, alot of whom will not get a visit from family today. After that I came home to a wonderful wife and adorable son that was anxiously awaiting my arrival so he could open his gifts. Tomorrow he is going with me to visit the senior home and take small packages of fudge to shut-ins that are in "my flock". You see, I am an Ordained Reverend, not a fact I disclose much, as it usually doesn't matter in my comments and posts, but today, in this story, I see the wonderful interconnectedness of All.
May you have many years to bring Joy, Enlightenment and sheer hilarity to many people. May whatever God you pray to Bless you with Abundance and even more blessings every day.
Kender,
I pray to the One God of the Bible and Judeo-Christian tradition. God has been good to me; I'm glad you saw the interconnectedness of all things in this slightly bizarre story. That's the way I look at it too.
I'll bet your son will have wonderful memories of Christmas with his father when he grows up. It's an odd thing, but showing a child that we cope with other people's misfortunes by taking care of them provides a great sense of psychological security in later life.
Sigmund, Carl and Alfred,
My dogs love leather too! You would not want to leave any of Sig's lying around - it wouldn't last long.
It's a hot garment here in the sweltering lowlands of Georgia, so we humans tend to wear a lot of cotton.
I enjoy your blog, even though you terrify me.
Felis,
I loved your pictures of the birds in your last post. That was wonderful, and I can assure you I enjoyed that quite as much as you enjoyed reading this story. My 70-odd Canadian geese are always glad to hear of other humans who understand that birds like friendship too. Birds are quite smart, in my experience.
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I pray to the One God of the Bible and Judeo-Christian tradition. God has been good to me; I'm glad you saw the interconnectedness of all things in this slightly bizarre story. That's the way I look at it too.
I'll bet your son will have wonderful memories of Christmas with his father when he grows up. It's an odd thing, but showing a child that we cope with other people's misfortunes by taking care of them provides a great sense of psychological security in later life.
Sigmund, Carl and Alfred,
My dogs love leather too! You would not want to leave any of Sig's lying around - it wouldn't last long.
It's a hot garment here in the sweltering lowlands of Georgia, so we humans tend to wear a lot of cotton.
I enjoy your blog, even though you terrify me.
Felis,
I loved your pictures of the birds in your last post. That was wonderful, and I can assure you I enjoyed that quite as much as you enjoyed reading this story. My 70-odd Canadian geese are always glad to hear of other humans who understand that birds like friendship too. Birds are quite smart, in my experience.
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