Tag: dog

We got Teddy from the Oakland, California shelter in 2009. I had just left my husband three months before and Ari and I were living in El Cerrito. We wanted a dog for a companion. When we met Teddy he roamed all over the visitor’s yard and then came over to us and laid down in the shade next to us. We thought he would be a good dog for us in spite of the shelter saying that he didn’t like cats and had barrier aggression. He was not too big and not too small. He was super cute. They said he was a spaniel/chow mix. How they knew that I have no idea.

The shelter was all wrong about him. He had no interest in cats and had zero barrier aggression. What he had was a willful disposition. When I went to take him for a walk in the rain the first time I tried to put a raincoat on him and he went 100% cujo. Ok I says. Walk in the rain and get wet. When we took him to dog training he was asked to leave. He didn’t like people getting near his head and would bite. Well, what good is training if they have to be perfect to start out with? What are we here for?

We did find out that he was a model citizen with a prong collar on. He would obediently heel and not pull ahead. He knew the difference between having the collar and not having it. When we went for a weekend we asked a friend to watch him. She took him to the very large dog park and upon exiting the car he took off and no amount of calling him would get him to return. On 1-10 we get a call, “Don’t ever do this to me again. He’s a real dog.” She took him to our house and put him in the enclosed backyard and kept an eye on him that way.

Another time we went out of town again and boarded him at a vet. They said we have to give him a shot and we said oh no that’s a bad idea because he hates shots he’ll bite. They said oh we’re trained we can do it. Upon returning they told us he’s not welcome here anymore. Why we asked. He bit a handler. We said we warned you and we never went back.

At Grindstone Ranch Teddy found his purpose. He became a lean, mean fighting machine chasing ground squirrels up and down the hills and never catching any. I had to start feeding him high energy dog food so he wouldn’t get too skinny. Dr. Burnham, the local vet was savvy and when he gave him rabies shots he sort of squashed him between the wall and a chain link door to give him his shots. Teddy still had that biting instinct. If he didn’t want to do something he would object. He nearly bit me when I tried to get him out of the back of the SUV. He loved being in the back of the SUV. I got him out by attaching a lease to his collar and pulling him out.

Eventually he got bit by a rattlesnake while going down a hole after a squirrel but he recovered nicely from that. At the ranch I also had to watch helplessly as he chased a pack of wild pigs up into the big pasture. Of course he wouldn’t recall when he was on the run. At the top of the rise I saw him way off by the bluffs chasing a pig, getting chased back, running away, and turning around to chase again. He stayed out of reach until he got bored and decided to come back to me.

He was a dog of his own recognizance. Not very friendly like most dogs are. Not a lap dog. But not unfriendly either. He would sit at your side and let himself be petted when he felt like it.

Here’s a poem by Pablo Neruda that fits Teddy and me to a “t”.

My dog has died.
I buried him in the garden
next to a rusted old machine.
Some day I’ll join him right there,
but now he’s gone with his shaggy coat,
his bad manners and his cold nose,
and I, the materialist, who never believed
in any promised heaven in the sky
for any human being,
I believe in a heaven I’ll never enter.

Yes, I believe in a heaven for all dogdom
where my dog waits for my arrival
waving his fan-like tail in friendship.
Ai, I’ll not speak of sadness here on earth,
of having lost a companion
who was never servile.
His friendship for me, like that of a porcupine
withholding its authority,
was the friendship of a star, aloof,
with no more intimacy than was called for,
with no exaggerations:
he never climbed all over my clothes
filling me full of his hair or his mange,
he never rubbed up against my knee
like other dogs obsessed with sex.

No, my dog used to gaze at me,
paying me the attention I need,
the attention required
to make a vain person like me understand
that, being a dog, he was wasting time,
but, with those eyes so much purer than mine,
he’d keep on gazing at me
with a look that reserved for me alone
all his sweet and shaggy life,
always near me, never troubling me,
and asking nothing.

Ai, how many times have I envied his tail
as we walked together on the shores of the sea
in the lonely winter of Isla Negra
where the wintering birds filled the sky
and my hairy dog was jumping about
full of the voltage of the sea’s movement:
my wandering dog, sniffing away
with his golden tail held high,
face to face with the ocean’s spray.
Joyful, joyful, joyful,
as only dogs know how to be happy
with only the autonomy
of their shameless spirit.
There are no good-byes for my dog who has died,
and we don’t now and never did lie to each other.
So now he’s gone and I buried him,
and that’s all there is to it.