If I could only remember the name of that dog, would he smell just as...ah, never mind

Here it is Saturday and all I've managed to do is 1) piss-off my boss 2) wash dog spit off a few windows in preparation for holidays guests 3) wash one chair slip-cover 4) cancel my riding lessons and 5) complete my employee self-review form (something I'd poke my eyes out to avoid if it would help...I'd at least consider that option anyway...).

Our household somehow managed to get one of the seemingly zillion viruses out there this year that *are not* the seasonal flu or H1N1. Daddy was watching the first snow fall in London. Mom was missing work with some random Ick, holding a little kid with the same plus ear infections, project and performance goal writing deadlines crashing around me. Anyone who has taken care of a sick child while being miserably ill themselves knows how exactly unfun that is. Daddy is home now, child is becoming itchy and spotted as a likely reaction to antibiotics, and I am going to bed. Daddy is heading to the 24-7 clinic near us for a visit, already past small people bedtime.

The house smells like Wet Dog, the snoozing lumps of fur occasionally snoring, growling, or running in their sleep. Our super duper pinky-purple commercial carpet circa 1983 has recently been freed from roaming clumps of dog fur, a condition which is likely to last another 15 minutes or so now that the dogs are in for the night.


Yeti is limping again on his right front foot where he hyper-extended his knee wrestling giant dog style with his girlfriend, half his age. He's a old man of 7 now with one more point to go to win his Champion [fancy pants] show dog title. He's done well now that he is slow and dignified in stead of the goof-ball teenager he was in his youth, puppy yo yo on a leash for the judge in the breed ring. So much for the regal, reserved Great Pyrenees. Yeti says, "Hey! Pet The Dog! Whoohoo!" He's missing most of his teeth, some shattered and extracted when a neighbor dog attacked him, Yeti trying to protect me. He got a canine root canal that time rather than extract a tooth that sinks more than in inch up into his skull. Dentistry for dogs costs as much as it does for people but he got to keep half his tooth and it saved us and him the pain and grief of caring for that kind of extraction which was only a little cheaper. It was one of those VISA Moments. The rest he's worn down to nubbins chewing on sticks (firewood logs he's stolen from our wood pile to be more accurate).


Still, Yeti is a beauty, a once in a lifetime dog, a Good Dog of the highest magnitude. He charisma shines everywhere he goes. Despite all the incredibly dogs our friend who bred him put up in the fanciest of shows or those that were on animal shows on television, the one everyone remembers is Yeti, her show dog too silly to finish.


We never wanted a show dog, or I should say my husband had no clue what he'd be getting into and I wanted to run the other way and quickly. It started with us living in an area where the sheriff is 20 minutes on a good day, assuming the 911 dispatcher actually thinks you have an emergency. Gun shots in the city warrant a response. In the country, not so much.


I knew a time would likely come when I would be alone at home during the day with no one near by to hear a gun shot, certainly not a scream. I also know that although I'm a good shot, I did not want to count on a gun looking after me. No one is going to take my dog away and use him against me. His job is to save my life by giving his if it came to that and I believe he would do so willingly, not matter how much it might break my heart. I also knew that the time to bring a puppy into our lives would absolutely not be when we decided to have a human child. Heck no, you could not pay me enough to raise the two from babies together, at the same time.


A series of strange incidents one month got the ball rolling, so to speak. We found out through our extensive area email network that a home had been badly burglarized to the south of us. We knew we were a vunerable community so we were all on the lookout. We didn't have to wait long, the bad boys pulled up to a neighbor's house to take a look around, not realizing there was someone home recuperating from a surgery of some sort. She quietly wrote down all the particulars before easing a back door open to release their formidable, large black dog to say hello to the new arrivals. The gentlemen departed hastily and were arrested not long after. End of incident #1.


Incident #2 is hard for me to know exactly what happened so I'll share the pieces such assembled from various alleged sources. I know there is an aspect of truth to the story but the accuracy of my version is certainly in question. Apparently, some gentleman was having an argument with his girlfriend riding shotgun while driving her Jeep Cherokee down the freeway high on Meth and her baby in the back. He did the sensible thing at this point which was to take a small-town-looking exit and begin driving out of town where they could have a more proper knock-down, drag-out fight, or something...


What people don't understand is in much of the coastal PNW, the rural areas are such by virtue of zoning only. There are no truly uninhabited, unwatched, unguarded areas per say, especially those zoned RA-some number which means Rural *Residential* followed by the number of acres allowed as a minimum lot size. Hello, people live here! Mister Boyfriend is driving along this (RA5) winding road now, beating his girlfriend while navigating up the mountain with baby on board. He finds a wide enough spot in the road to pull off, the entrance to our tiny neighborhood. The noise awoke a near-by homeowner who, did not wish to be named at the time, who found Boyfriend trying to strangle Girlfriend in front of his house. The story is the came to an end only when the neighbor wielded an axe, threatening to cause serious harm if Boyfriend didn't stop (knowing the possible selection of neighbors, I believe this part is true and I don't blame them one bit). Boyfriend abandons second degree murder attempt and speeds off in Cherokee with Baby still on board. Sheriff dispatcher deems the dumped, half-strangled, childless Girlfriend an actual emergency and police arrive to sort it all out with the axe defending neighbor. I was told the baby was deposited with Girlfriend's mother and Boyfriend was on the loose for some time before being picked up, fortunately without further harm to anyone.


OKaaaay, I say. I'm not terribly excited about wack-job city people thinking my yard is The Country where they can head out to visit and commit their crimes, or whatever, in our yards. F-ing lovely.


Incident #3 occurs shortly after all this while everyone is still jumpy. Yet another neighbor gal is home alone with young children and hears mean talking loudly, stomping around in their back yard which generally appears to be a forest to the uninformed. She goes outside to find out what these men are doing in her yard to find them somewhat confrontational and holding large bladed weapons (also know as machetes), demanding to know where, "the vacant lot is" that they'd like to develop. I have no idea how this situation was resolved but our poor neighbor was quite upset over the idea of large man swinging huge knives while stomping though her yard.


Time to consider A Very Large Dog.


A spent a significant amount of my youth with a family who had obedience champion Rottweilers. I am not at all a Dog Person but I love those dogs dearly and I treasure the time I spent with the people who were more family than my own. I knew what questions to ask and where to look and how big a deal it was for us to choose a dog that would be appropriate for our needs and it was not going to be an insane ball of happy, tail-wagging energy that powers a lab until mere moments before they drop dead. I wanted large, mellow, thoughtful, gentle, and well, lazy but with a little scary thrown in. We looked at English Mastiffs, Greater Swiss Mountain Dogs. The breeders were people who fell into my, "uncomfortably strange" category and I wanted nothing of the dogs they chose to breed. We sort-of slacked off on our search, not really knowing where or what to look for next. I loved Rotts but they could be a little edgy with small children for my taste and for us to start off with. Newfoundlands were incredibly hairy with lots of spit and little on the scary front beyond size. We scratched our heads some.


The first Great Pyrenees I met was sitting outside a cafe near the water waiting for his Person. He was huge and white and regal, breathtaking. I asked his Person if it was a white Newfoundland, a question I have come to restrain an eye-roll over. No, he politely said, and told me what he was. I asked to pet his incredibly dog who felt and acted like a white version of Aslan of Narnia, so gentle and royal. I thought, "Now THAT is a dog." I tried very hard to hold the name in my mind but it had slipped away, the memory space over-written by calculus homework and designing consumer electronics factories.

My husband and I were walking a more newly made friend to her car after a community meeting over a challenging and contentious political battle among our tiny rural communities and the bureaucracies of large cities and the federal government. This woman was quiet and a little awkward, thoughtful and brilliant. She was at the top in her field and knew the shape of our community problem well. Her name was one public and private citizens spoke with noticeable awe. We sought her out for her help, having heard her name as someone willing to do battle to save our small communities, our carefully preserved private landscapes.

She was saying she would not be able to attend the meeting Sunday, could we go? She had a dog show she couldn't miss. Absent mindedly, but not without interest, I asked her what kind of dog she showed and there was that name, dropped into my hand like a shiny coin, the one I'd forgotten. The royal white dogs who watched their People with dozing eyes while strangers slid fingers through their deep coat offering only a simple swish of tail in return. I grabbed my husband to ask did he know what they were? Hadn't he heard of them? I was so surprised I would ever find any. And, here they were.

Running in Tall Heels

Saturday afternoon and I have a few hours at best to groom the weather from 4 horses. Wind twists their hair into ropes tight and thick enough to anchor ships, wind or witch knots they're called. It's clear and cold, our first true winter day after 50F of must and matted leaves. I start with Pete, a pig to be sure. He and Bella have been turned out together all week and have become an average color of grey-brown. Pete's had a grand time of rolling, smashing grime into his wind knots, black dreadlocks. Thanks buddy, I love picking through filthy, detangler greased ropes with freezing fingers. I begin by pulling his blanket and rubbing his coat down, freeing his legs, belly, face, and neck from mats of dirt. Then, I start in on what Pete's mane a week ago. I sigh, looking around at the other 3 horses I know I'll never get to today, eyeing Cinderella's set of witch woven braids and wondering if another week will leave them much worse.

Wind knots really are spun together like ropes. Soaked in detangler, you can slowly pull them apart with you fingers, unwinding and untangling. It's a tedious task but a long mane takes years to grow. I keep the Haflinger's double-coated hair braided during the winter or I pay for my lack of attention by performing this sticky, grimy ritual.

Untwisting Pete's first rope goes as expected, pulling strand under strand until the bunch unravels and I rake a brush through the lengths. Shifting my weight in preparation for concentrating on the next knot reminds me of how cold feet become standing still on frozen ground. I sigh again, Pete rolling his eyes at my white breath floating past. The next is far more stubborn and caked with ground in mud. I'm not sure I can get this one out but past experience says they look worse than they really are. At some point, I pause and look around, noticing our neighbor leaning on the far fence rail watching, I don't know for how long. They also have horses and even those who don't notice that many of our large guests come and go over time. I figure he's wondering about the dainty, black horse and the pile of rounds and dieing needles that was recently a Frasier Fir. My husband is moving about behind me, pulling branches deemed too small to be useful as firewood into a burn pile. I wave our neighbor.

Our neighbor, we'll call him Michael, and his wife life in an equally odd house next door to us with a driveway in between. They have a younger teenage son and two horses, a mare-ish deep dun Spanish Mustang and a tall, young black and white Paint. Michael and his son enjoy Scouts together and Michael rides mounted SCA events, among others. They prefer to keep their horses barefoot, something I generally support and prefer but have not always been able to manage in a practical sense. I don't feel strongly enough about the benefits to the exclusion of alternatives, like say, horse shoes, so I often resort to steel when bare feet aren't enough. Michael knows how to keep his own horses trimmed, saving great hassle and expensive I am sure, avoiding the every 6 to 9 week horse foot ritual, finished when I hand a well-earned check over to our Farrier.

Michael likes Pete, petting his neck gentle, blowing softly into his nose in horse greeting. I tell the story of Pete and the Fir tree, one starting a new life with us, the other at the end, decaying under wavy bunches of moss and splotchy lichen. We arrange with my husband to have Michael's son come over and help split the monstrous rounds into sections manageable with the hydraulic splitter I've promised to buy.

I ramble on and make my way back to Pete's life to date. Michael looks him over, smoothing his hands over joints and coat until Pete's feet bring him pause. There is something for all of us to dislike or despise about the people in Pete's story. For my sister, it was knowing he had never been a horse, watching him suck sweet fall leaves into his mouth for the first time made her cry. For me, it's the terrible lack of of interest or understanding regarding the behavior of young mammals that resulted in Pete being beaten. A day came when my sister watched him hide in the corner of his stall and shake in fear, having given way the entirety of even his 12' x 12' universe to avoid pain when a human opened his stall door. Michael said little while attending to my monologue, untwisting wind knots, until he started handling Pete's feet.

Michael stood up abruptly and asked if he could come trim Pete's feet in the morning, and his son would come with splitting maul to earn funds for a trip he wanted to take with classmates later in the school year. Pete had shoes on in front, why I did not know since he clearly would not need protection from rough ground in a stall. I acknowledged that his feet were indeed long and I was concerned about that along with their odd shape, happy to have the help shortening them with our farrier scheduled still more than a week out. Michael's intensity an insistence left me feeling a little uncomfortable but I have never known our neighbors to be anything less than good, kind people and I was grateful for the help.

I watched Michael turn down our driveway toward my husband to make arrangements for the rounds, the winter sun slanting at a shallow angle with the ground. My hands were stiff, the witches work and Pete's mud-rolling got the better of me, I was loosing light and the temperature was dropping by the minute. I crossed the yard with a stiff walk, returning to an anxious Pete tied to the fence. I raked the knots as close to the ends of his hair as I could and unceremoniously cut them free, leaving a chunk of mane gone. He'd given up his flag of tail trailing behind in that imagined show that would never come. Now, it'd also take until next year for him to grow back the hack I'd take from his mane. I rebraided him and tied them off with un-matching, white Haflinger rubber bands. "Well Mister," I thought, "that's what you get for all that rolling." Pete tossed his head, trying to free himself from the new braids.

The next morning, Michael and his son arrived promptly as planned. I dressed in layers awaiting the cold morning air. I read once that grooming a horse burns as many calories as a brisk tennis match. I have no idea if this is true but I can say that, generally speaking, equestrian activities tend to keep you warmed up after the first few minutes, unless you're holding horses for the vet or farrier. During those times, the cold soaks up through the soles of your boots and into your toes no matter how fancy the socks are. The chill creeps up your legs and into all your bones. It's hard to keep warm, standing still for hours at a time in the Pacific NW, outside of July through September, and even then, only if it isn't raining.

Michael had arrived with his gear and was ready to get to work. Pete was not at all comfortable having a stranger and a man handle his feet. Michael had prepared by eating sweet-smelling oatmeal for breakfast for Pete to notice when exchanging breath in greeting. They walked together while Michael stroked Pete's rumpled and dusty coat on his neck, speaking softly to the horse all the while. Pete settled but was still not happy about allowing his feet to be handled. All together, it took us 3 hours or so to get through trimming all four feet. Pete tried nipping, leaning, pulling, hopping, and finally rearing but he was never able to escape the inevitable clutch that trapped his foot. And yet, no one hit him. At first, he seemed to anticipate being hit, and then he tried to see if he could get us to. Later, the fear left him and then it was about control of his body and his space. Pete did not win and still, he had not been hurt. He had many tricks but only so much fight in him. Standing in a stall for 6 years did little to build strength and athleticism, especially while standing on three legs.

First, Pete's front shoes came off, one at a time. Then, Michael cut away excess hoof carefully until we could see the anatomy of what has going on underneath. As Michael had been unpacking his tools and sharpening his trimming knife, he was explaining what he had seen in Pete's feet the day before that had brought him back on a Sunday morning in the cold to trim feet for his neighbor's horse. Pete's feet were indeed long, but they were also very upright. The angles were such that all of the outside of his hoof was nearly straight up and down, as much so as a hoof can really be. The angle of the hoof should support the cannon bone (or pedal bone, used to move the hoof and shaped much like a small hoof inside the tough fingernail-like exterior) parallel to the ground. The tissue around the cannon bone is delicate and requires blood-flow to keep alive. Without that, the tissue and bone die quickly causing the cannon bone to eventually fall through the sole of the hoof, a disease referred to as, "founder" or laminitis. And, so the saying goes, if you loose the hoof, you loose the horse and you do. Pete's feet were so straight upright and his heels so tall that extreme pressure was being applied to his toes, crushing that delicate tissue and undoubtedly causing pain, if Pete could still feel his toes at all. Michael was anxious to bring relief to Pete and as soon as possible. Michael's uncomfortably strong drive to return as soon as he could and the intensity he had radiated to the point of uncomfortable for me the day before was now understandable. The part of Pete's story Michael instantly came to hate was his feet and his mood in this respect did not improve as we progressed through the history of Pete's neglect or, perhaps, the ignorance of his people who let him down.

Michael's trimming revealed a hoof with infectious, bruise-colored purple infection in large oblong welts around each nail hole caused by poor overall health, standing in a stall without air or movement or unsanitary conditions or some combination of factors. The external layer of his hoof wall was separated from the sole of his hoof, the initiation of laminitis. Where the hoof was still connected layers below the initial material, a wide stripe of stretched hoof wall was present, also a visible indicator of a hoof beginning to fail. Pete is young and he is exactly where he needs to be, turned out on uneven, soft ground with other horses and a quality diet. Michael was able to remove a good portion of the over-grown hoof and restore the exterior angles to the extent that the laminitis process would be less likely to continue. Taking his hoof back to a normal position in one go would have been very hard on Pete's legs and feet. With another 10 days or so before our farrier arrived, Pete should have the time he needed to recover and then go through the entire process again to bring him back to a healthy stance. Pete should be able to recover and maybe even fully after another two or three trimmings. If he had continued as he had, he may have been irretrievably lame in the same amount of time.

I asked Michael if there was a deliberate reason someone might choose to have a horses feet trimmed in that way. He had seen this done only with gaited horses such as Tennessee Walkers. The tall heels would throw the horse forward and require greater lift in the front legs to recover balance in their forward movement, exaggerating the appearance of their gait. Pete was from a family of Arabians expected to move in such an extreme way, a random genetic trait that Pete was not born with no matter what names appeared in his pedigree. His feet were trimmed for a show career he would never have. Pete was a cull but no one wanted to believe it and they carried on as though it was not true. Pete is a lovely horse who will make a nice mount for a smaller adult or young rider. He has what dressage riders like to see but he does not have the elastic, tall movement that can only be built of genetics, years of conditioning and training, or short-cuts to create the look of what the horse does not have naturally. The idea that someone had, out of ignorance or intent, created the shape of Pete's feet for him to flounder in tall heels, crept like the cold from the frozen turf into Michael. It seemed as though I could feel him grind his teeth from 3 ft away.

I watch Pete run across the turn-out pasture where I left everyone for the weekend while the rain has left us. Tomorrow, our farrier arrives and I will stand in the cold holding horses for hours and hope I make it to work in time for our staff meeting. There is something for all of us to hate about Pete's past but there is also something for each of us to love about his future, even if it is only watch enjoy being a horse for a while. The horses are happy to be out in the winter sun like the rest of us and Cinderella runs bucking across the pasture, shaggy like a golden yak. Pete slows and circles to look at me with his tail held high in his new winter blanket, nostrils flared and snorting into the air, breath like a frozen dragon.