Soapbox

Blossom went after Tucker this morning.

   It has been a few weeks since I saw anything but the occasional… lets say "bossiness" from her. I thought she had worked that all out. They sometimes share the lambswool dog pad in the evenings while we watch TV.
   But I have gotten lazy, and stopped watching for 'claiming' behavior, where she tries to keep him away from me, which seemed to be the genesis for most of the problems between them in the past.
   We were all 3 in the front room and I was reading something on the computer and suddenly she was on him like a fury.

   Tucker tried to back out of the room but Blossom would not stand down. I lept to my feet and ran shouting after them as Blossom actually took him down the stairs in a roiling ball of fur and teeth.
   I caught up with them at the bottom and managed to get hold of her collar- she was still attacking!- and yanked her away. She immediately became compliant and walked quietly to the crate with Steve.

   Tucker was injured this time. Not seriously: a few tiny nicks on his nose and a scraped area high on one front leg that  still oozes a bit and no doubt stings but doesn't look bad. But it is the first time she ever actually laid a tooth on him- and that upsets me. Always before I thought she was just trying to dominate him, but not to really hurt him. This time, she bit.
   We're going backward.

   My trust and confidence have been injured too. I'm afraid to have them together now. Every time she even walks over to him I get anxious. This evening, after they ate, she started over to check out his empty bowl- a normal occurrance- except she darted her head in instead of just casually walkng over.
  Or did she? Was I imagining it? I grabbed her collar and pulled her away and put her back in the crate until I got Tucker upstairs and gated in the bedroom.

   Dopey me. I had this stupid idea that we were going to ride in like white knights and rescue Blossom, and  help her heal her emotional wounds, and wow what great dog people we are, aren't we? Pat yourself on the back, Trace!
   But I have used every trick in my small bag of tricks, and while I thought it was going well, i guess it wasn't. I don't know how to do this after all. I can't spend the rest of their days keeping them apart! Are they ok together when I"m not around? Is it safe to leave them alone if there is no human in the house for Blossom to 'claim" and fight over? I have always assumed so, but…

   As I sat with Tucker gently cleaning his scrapes and telling him what a fine, brave boy he was to let me do it, I started to tear up.
I love Blossom. She has a good heart, and is so affectionate… maybe she just needs to be an only dog. Maybe she needs a home where she gets all the love and doesn't have to share.
   But just the thought of finding somewhere else for her to live, making her start all over one more time, makes my stomach hurt. I feel like one of those people who adopt a Russian orphan and then it turns out the child has all these terrible adandonment issues and scream and break things and set fires so the parents give the child back.
Ick. 
   I don't want to do that. I feel like I have failed a sweet dog… but really, I don't know how to do this any way other than the way I have been doing it. And that doesn't seem to be working.

     "This food is not nearly bad enough" Ted commented as we sat in the shade and ate our Bourbon chicken. "This is the State Fair: we can do much  better."
      By which, of course, he meant 'worse'.
      Well the state fair is nothing if not filled with opportunities for bad food. I'm told there are deep fried Doritos this year. Aren't Doritos already fried? Are these batter dipped and fried again? Wait- don't tell me. I don't want to know.

      Because the donut burger they came out with a few years ago is not quite disgusting enough, this year the Krispy Kreme (never trust a doughnut that can't spell) folks offer a "Sloppy Doughnut" too: manwich between 2 glazed doughnuts. 
      Also on my "WTF?" list: the dairy barn now offers "Sweet corn" as an ice cream flavor. Yes, this is a thing. I'm not sure it should be. No, I did not try it, being (in my old age) something of an ice cream snob. Perhaps it is quite yummy.
      But I don't think so.

      We don't do rides or games, but if you poke around, there's lots of stuff to see, even though it's usually always the same stuff. Tradition! I enjoyed looking at the native Ohio prairie flower exhibit and the whole tent about bee-keeping, where I bought some heirloom seeds which I was assured bees like.
    We waved at Smokey the Bear and reminisced about bygone years when the kids were so amazed that Smokey knew so much about them. As we walked on I heard someone behind us say "Wait- Dad, how did Smokey know my name?" and smiled.

    There were a couple of signs where fair urged visitors to take a selfie with the Butter cow and post it to Instagram. Like this is going to go viral, and soon people at other state fairs will be bummed because those wild and crazy folks in Ohio get a butter cow to take selfies with. Maybe it will: life is just that weird.

    We skipped the fair last year and while I'm sure it will always be one giant freak show that smells like a french fry left out in the sun too long, I wondered if there had been some changes. There were.
     The Sky glider seems to have been shortened by at least one giant pole. Since this is the ONLY ride we ever do, I felt a teensy bit cheated.
    The big-ass Bar-b-Que place with the entire dead pig with an apple in its mouth is gone. (As a kid I finally decided that the pig was plastic, because it looked the same every year, and how long could a dead pig- even a cooked one- sit out in the sun? That reduced the gross-out factor every time I walked by quite a bit.)
     At the horse show they did not have anyone playing that weird, "Take me out to the Ballgame" organ. Instead, they just played recorded music, including, while the guy in the John Deere zambonied the ring, "She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy". I don't know if this is a permanent change or if the old lady who plays organ was out sick today. At first I loved the change. Then I began to feel nostaligic for the organ. Tradition! Such is the perverse nature of the human heart.

     I definitely saw some new events at the Horse show. When we walked in, they were running Mule team agility. Only one hitch was actually mules, the others were draft horses. They had to navigate an obstacle course and I swear one team did weave poles! OK- weave cones. And it was really slow. But it was a thing!
    As we watched these teams performing what was once a useful skill, I remarked that, when society collapses, the folks who own draft horses who know how to pull and turn and back up with be sitting pretty while the rest of us dig up our front yards with our hands to plant potatoes.

     A competition was announced called "Unicorn hitches" which I was excited about. But, it turns out this is NOT teams of unicorns pulling wagons (which was a massive disappointment) and was just teams of 3 horses with a single horse out in front.
     And then we saw– a horse dressed like a unicorn. This was an exhibition of 'reining' which basically consisted of the horses twirling around in circles and then running around the ring and then stopping quickly. And the first horse had a golden horn strapped to its forehead. It looked a little bit embarrassed, frankly.
    The second horse in that exhibition had a ton of glitter all over it's rump. Like 'a 3 year old decorating a picture for mommy' ton. Ted wondered, since the first horse was a unicorn and this one was all sparkley, maybe he was supposed to be a vampire horse? But the song he ran around to was about being a star.
    We also saw break-dancing on horseback. It was a bunch of fearless kids doing something called "vaulting" – somersaulting and hanging sideways and jumping on and off the backs of some incredibly patient horses.
     The last competition of the afternoon had only one entrant and one horse. She trotted around the ring a few times and ~surprise!~ they gave her a blue ribbon. I totally called her the winner as soon as she came in. Do I know my horses or what?

    I don't remember the NRA being such a big presence at the fair before. They had a booth and a tent. Yay guns. There was also a booth selling 'humorous' signs to put on your house, a large number of which proclaimed the owners absolute right to shoot you dead and bury you in his back yard, which is totally hi-LARious because it's not like people in this country ever shoot innocent folks who come to the door asking for directions or anything.
    There was also a booth selling really disturbing… ok, I'll go ahead and call them "Religious" t-shirts, even though they were more sado-masochistic fettish-ist than Christian. One featured Christ's flayed and bloody back and said "Read Between the Lines". Another showed 3 men dying in the most god-awful way mankind ever dreamed up with the caption "Public Display of Affection".
    Right.
     Another vendor was selling personalized flags to hang by your front door. The example they had up showed a bottle and said,                            "It's 5 o'clock somewhere! The Johnsons"
Which tells people driving past, "No matter when you knock on our door… we're probably gonna answer it drunk." Awesome.

    After we had digested lunch we got a cup of french fries. Probably about once a year everyone should have a cup of State Fair fries: the long thin ones that hang out the top of a cup- greasy, salty and crisp and volcanically hot, then dipped in a ton of ketchup. This is necessary for medicinal purposes. Sure your arteries take a hit, but when you bite into the first one, the endorphin rush is incredible.
   After we had digested them, we got a funnel cake to share. I know- more fried food. But I was careful to select a booth that also sold deep fried twinkies, deep-fried Snickers bars and chocolate covered cheesecake on a stick. I figured, with so many calories in them, there would be very few left over to be in our little funnel cake. (Though at the fair, "light on the powdered sugar please" turns out to be 3 giant shakes of the sugar sifter instead of 6).

    I always like to hit the craft exhibit: quilts and cakes, etc. I would say that quilting will also be useful after the societal apocalypse, but these amazing creations weren't Amish quilts- they were machine made, and not with a treadle machine. But the knitters and crocheters and heck yes the gals who still spin wool: they'll be a hot ticket!
    There was a case of things made from 'repurposed materials' and featured a wedding dress made from- and I am not making this up- used dryer sheets. Unlike the cute belt made from aluminum can pop-tops or the purse made from the top of a pair of jeans, a wedding dress made from dryer sheets is not actually a useful thing, even if it does have a slip made from grocery bags so it's not completely transparent. Obviously, "useful after the apocalypse' was not a requirement for the category.
    I guess this year's 'wacky' category was shit made from Brillo pads, because there was a display featuring everything from  a dolphin sculpture to shoes and a coat, all made out of Brillo pads. The coat used pads without soap but the dolphin was all pink and wooly, and if there was a sprinkler incident, it would probably start to foam.

   Well, people can make things with anything. I haven't figured out why- but then, with so much of the fair I haven't figured out why. Like those sloppy doughnuts.

I've been making a mental list today of all the things that will never happen again.

~I won't see him trot down the street in his jaunty red coat.
~I won't enjoy the way the tips of his silky black ears bob up and down when he trots ahead of me.
~I won't ever stroke those silky black ears.
~Rocket won't ever acidentally tumble down the stairs to me while I'm on the laundry room level.
~I won't ever watch with affection as he runs toward the steps or even just a curb, gathers himself for a jump too early, leaps with 4 paws spread… and lands in a sprawl.
~He will never again jump off the deck steps with his coat flapping behind him like a Superman cape.
~I won't have to spend hours in the spring brushing him, marveling at how a small, short-haired dog can have such a dense coat.
~No one will ever quietly but determinedly insert his head under any hand within reach, so insistent on getting you to pet him that we joked his theme song was You Must Love Me.
~When I come home, there won't be two dogs to meet me.

    Rocket was the kind of dog of whom non-dog people would say "I might get myself a dog… if it could be just like Rocket. "

    Quiet and unassertive, small enough to be non-threatening but big enough to hold his own, Rocket came to us one Easter Sunday when the family had gathered in Amesville to say goodbye to Julie and Craig's beloved dog Babes, whose time clearly had come. As she lay exhausted, with adoring children stopping by to pet her and say farwell, a little black and white dog wandered into the yard. Rail thin and covered with fleas and ticks, his bright dark eyes and bobbing ears caught my young daughter's grieving heart and didn't let go.
     I was still in Columbus, about to leave for Amesville when the phone rang.
      "I want to warn you Trace" Julie said "there's this little stray dog here, and Katie is determined that you are going to adopt it."
       "Us? We already have a dog" I insisted.
       "I know. The neighbors say they've seen it wandering about for a while now- it's clearly half-starved, so I let her give it some of Babes' food, and she really, really wants to bring this little guy home. Seems like a sweet tempered dog," she added "and cute. …Looks a little bit like Babes, actually."

    When I arrived in Amesville I took one look at that little cheerful, border collie/terrier-ish face, with the tiny white line up his muzzle, and then at the hopeful face of my daughter and thought Oh crap- I am taking home another dog!
   Rocket and Boomer always got along well. Well, Rocket was so non-dominant that he got on with everyone. Whatever he experienced while on his own left him easily frightened by loud noises or sudden movements and flapping laundry was his particular phobia. But the funniest part was the way he would herd the big herding dog if he knew Boomer was up to no good. 
   Katie decided she would teach him how to roll over. Rocket was so incredibly food motivated that she figured it would be easy. The problem was, he was too food motivated. The thought of the impending treat would get him so excited that sometimes he just couldn't complete the entire maneuver before jumping up Now? treat now? Sometimes he would forget to even lay down first and as soon as she held the treat up he would try to roll- resulting in a spin instead.
   Rocket wouldn't chase balls or frisbees (though he would chase dogs who were chasing toys and bark at them in true border collie fashion) but he loved little soft stuffed things. We called them his Babies and he would carry them round in his mouth for hours, sometimes whining as if he wanted to tell us something about them.
   When Tucker the Destructer came along all the remaining babies were disemboweled and shredded, but by then Rocket didn't really seem to care about them any more.

   As Rocket got on in years he got gray, and his back legs started to shake. Sometimes I worried that he would fall over, they shook so much. Then I started putting fish oil on his food- and the shaking stopped! His hips were awfully weak though, and on a slick surface like the kitchen floor they would sometimes just slide out from under him. Nobody said old age was graceful.
   He became very hard of hearing, and soon it was clear he was getting senile as well. Sometimes we would find him standing and staring into corners. But he was still a sweet old dog, and pretty game, when he had the energy.

    He really wasn't comfortable with stairs, which isolated him on the living room level in the evenings when we were all upstairs. Walking down the hall I would see him standing with his front paws up on the bottom step, looking up to where all the people were. The sight of his wee gray head and slightly confused dark eyes peering up always tugged at my heart, and I would go sit on the bottom step for a minute and stroke his still-soft ears… until he would wander off again.
    Around Christmas, Rocket stopped wanting to eat his kibble and we noticed he wasn't drinking much water. I got some big bones to boil for a thin broth which he liked and started experimenting with cooking his food. Pretty soon I hit on a recipie: brown rice, a chicken breast, sweet potato, carrots, maybe some peas or spinach. Then into the nutri-bullet with a little broth to whiz into a paste that he could lick up. But he wouldn't eat much at a time, so soon I was feeding him 4 or 5 times a day, plus extra fluid offerings. If I didn't keep an eye on him he would sometimes pee in the house, so I had to be careful not to be away from the house for too long, and did a lot of washing of the throw rugs in the kitchen.

    It was a gradual thing, so I hadn't noticed how much of my day was focused on Rocket's care. I made a raised platform for his food bowl, since he had trouble bending his head to the floor. I learned to listen whenever I woke up for the click-click of toenails that told me Rocket was awake, because if he was on the move, I needed to get him out before he made a puddle. Tucker became my helper: when I heard him walk over to the bed, I knew that he had heard Rocket downstairs stirring. I kept boots by the back door so that I could slip my feet in and run out to carry him down the steps when I just couldn't bear the thought of him landing in a sprawled heap.
    Looking back, I had become his hospice nurse.

    Tuesday night Rocket had a small stroke, While he recovered his strength the next day, his already confused mind  lost its grip completely. He had been a wanderer for a while, but this was different. It reminded me of the way a zoo animal paces compulsively, and he seemed unable to stop. For hours he would prowl around and around the house, getting stuck behind chairs and in corners when he would wander back there and seem unable to understand why he couldn't got forward. After a few hours I would finally manage to coax him into laying down and he would sleep for an hour or two, only to lurch to his feet and start walking again.

    At night I gated him into the living and dining rooms, because the carpet there gave him better footing. I moved chairs and boxes to block off  places where he could get stuck and spent the night in the living room chair. Every so often he would wander over and let me pet him. Sometimes the attention seemed to soothe him, other times I wasn't sure he had any idea who I was or what I was doing.
   By Friday morning we were both exhausted, and I knew it was time to set him free. I was sure that it was time… but oh, it hurt.

   Anyone who has ever loved a pet has walked this road. The road starts out so sunny and broad, with lots of running and sniffing, and chasing sticks and good dog treats. Sometimes it ends abruptly, sometimes it slowly stretches into rough terrain and deep shadows.
    I'm not sure how difficult Rocket's road has been the past few years. But one thing is clear: the little dog who started down this road with me left his gray, weak body behind. His spirit had already fled the pains of this earth.  All I could do was walk to the end of the road with what was left of him, as I promised I would do all those years ago when I told Katie we could bring  him home.

    Of course Katie took off work and drove up to help him go, just as she had brought him to us so long ago. At the designated hour, after carrying him over to Tucker to say goodbye, we took him to the vet's office. I left him in his little red coat, because I made it for him, and he looked so jaunty and brave in it. Wrapped in a towel, I held him in my arms and stroked his head while the vet told him what a fine fellow he has been and gave him his injection. And then, just as with Boomer before him, his fine little heart stopped beating there with my arms around him.
    Katie lives in Athens now, so while it broke her heart to say goodbye, hopefully she isn't wounded over and over each day by the hundred little ways in which Rocket is no longer with her. I am. No little black and white form curled, napping on this rug or that. No small food bowl to trip over in the kitchen.  A tuft of dark hair in the vacuum cleaner. Small footprints still frozen in the mud of the back yard.
    A score of times a day I am confronted with the things I will never see or do again because Rocket is no longer with me. Sometimes, they just make me wistful, and sometimes I weep, in a mixture of grief and guilt, and relief. What a hard road it was for both of us those last 2 days.

    But there is, perhaps, one last part to this story. As Rocket was slipping away and we prepared for the end, a new young dog was coming into the circle. Just as Rocket had come while Babes was leaving us, Julie found a dog in need of a home, sweet in temperament, who seems perfect for her family. Nothing is official, but I can't help but wonder if Babes and Rocket aren't both perhaps behind the scenes, arranging things. We'll see.

    As I walked with Rocket to the shadows and he slipped into the darkness without me, I could only hope that the old dog he was will meet the dashing young puppy that he used to be, and the two of them will run on together.

   Once upon a time there was a tiny little girl with strawberry curls, a determined chin and a deep belly laugh. She slept in a crib in the corner right over there with 5 brightly colored elephants called "The Temptations" in a dancing mobile over her head.  I remember the first time she took a 3 hour nap in the afternoon and I came in here twice to make sure she was still breathing.
   I painted this room a very pale mauve, made her curtains in a darker shade and all around the walls galloped a wallpaper border of antique carousel horses.
   For her second birthday she got  a big girl bed'- a red toddler frame that I found discounted at Service Merchandise. I snuck it into her room at night and tied mylar balloons to the head and foot so that when she woke and peeked out of her crib there it was, in that corner, over there. Years later I found an old answering machine casette that still had a message on it accidently recorded that day when my sister called to wish her happy birthday.
         I got gaboons, Aunt Beggy, and a big girl bed!!
   Oh, she was such a big girl!

   On the wall around her bed I put a set of 101 Dalmations wall decals that I found: a smiling Perdita and several inquisitive puppies who explored that corner of the room, leaving footprints behind. Sometimes she would stand on her bed and talk to them. And on the ceiling, of course- glow-in-the-dark stars, because her brother had a wonderful collection over his head, and nothing would do but Katie had the same.
    By now she was a bigger girl, with platinum blonde curls which she hated to have brushed, so I corralled them into the sweetest little braids. She climbed trees and rode her bike and played with dolls, as bigger girls do. By 3rd or 4th grade she was bored with the decore in her room- said they were too 'baby' and she wanted something else.
   So I started well in advance- bought a dresser and chest which I finished and painted wedgewood blue with natural wood tops and hid in the garage under an old quilt. I found a beige carpet to replace the pinkish carpet remnant she had, and arranged for her to spend the day and night before her birthday with the White family down the street.
   As soon as she was out of the house I dragged furnitre, laid down drop cloths and started peeliing off decals and wallpaper border. I hung new curtains and painted the walls a very pale blue- except in the closet, because there just wasn't time to take everything out to paint in there. ( and so it is that those beautiful carousel horses still run across the back of her closet. )
   I barely managed to get the drop cloths up, rug down and new furniture in place before Donna and Larry, unable to think of any more reasons to keep her away, had to bring her back. When she walked in and saw her birthday gift, I was quite proud of myself, and I hope she was pleased with the truly big girl room I made her.

   Now that the Dalmations were gone, that wall by her bed became home first for a dozen pictures of American Girl dolls that she cut from a catalogue. Then, one shocking day, I saw them crumpled in her trash can and looked up to reallize that Samantha and Addie and their friends had been replaced by pictures of NSync, cut from a Tiger Beat magazine. Ok, NOW she was a big girl!
    But some things didn't change. She still had a determined chin, a she still wanted to rescue every stray she ever found, from the baby birds who spent one hapless night in a cardboard box to the pit bull mix she found who spent almost a week with us.
    I spent a lot of nights in this room, sleeping on the fold-out chair when Katie had a fever or one of her vomiting spells (which she, thankfully, outgrew) so I could reach out and stroke her forehead, or hold her hand. But of course that ended as she got older and her room door was closed to me. Just as I did at that age, Katie wanted to study and relax by herself in her room rather than downstairs, and long periods of time would go by when I wouldn't see either child unless they were at the dinner table or the computer.

   And then one day, as big girls do, she packed her things and went off to college and left this room behind. I was a little blue without her wonderful companionship, but she wasn't far away. I started to use her room as a sort of den, retreating to her bed to read and nap on quiet afternoons. I think I felt close to her here, in her room; both the room and I waiting for her to come home.
   And so she did move home at last, though between work and being at Lindsay's house she wasn't home much, and when she was, she was usually in her with the door closed and the TV on. I knew she didn't want to be living here with her parents and brother- she wanted to be in her own place, with Lindsay, just as I had chafed to get my own place with Ted after college. I knew her time with us was short now, and I wanted to spend as much of it with her as I could- but didn't want to be in the way- the old lady, hanging around, thinking she was so entertaining when really, they just wanted to be with each other. She liked to go shopping with me though, so we did that a lot.

   And in the fullness of time, she found a place to live in Athens and some job prospects, and she did exactly what every parents hopes their child will one day do: she packed her things for good this time and moved away. I helped carry things to the truck and waved them on their way Drive carefully! Call me when you get there! and walked back into my house. I looked at the dogs, loungeing in the kitchen.
   "She's gone. She doesn't live her any more" I said. They wagged their tails. "It doesn't feel any different to you than any time she leaves the house- but it is. You don't know yet. But I do."

  I walked upstairs and opened the door to her room. It looked bleak and abandoned- if not exactly empty. I never thought I would be one of those mothers; one of those desperate, silly women who mourn when their children do exactly what they are supposed to do: grow up and get a life of their own. But I could feel a definite aching coming on.
   I decided the best way to combat it was to keep busy. I put on my audiobook, grabbed the vacuum cleaner and some boxes and start cleaning and sorting what was left in Katies- I mean, in the spare room. I took things down from shelves, dusted them and sorted "She's definitely going to want this eventually' from 'maybe' and "oh this is just trash". On the back of one shelf I found a picture of Clay Aiken and remembered, back when she was in middle school and I took Katie and her friend Blair and their red shoes downtown to see the American Idols on tour with their "We love you Clay" sign. I smiled.
   When I opened the closet, the shelf was still piled high. I started pulling things out to sort them and there, across the back wall, behind a straw hat, some embroidered purses and the sword she bought in Toledo SPain on a school trip, were the carousel horses. I reached out and touched them, traced my finger along their curving lines… and started to cry.

    See, it's not that she's gone. She's beeen gone before. I've gotten quite used to that. It's that it's not Katie's room any more. It still has some of her things stored here, but it's the spare room now. Ted has been looking forward to useing it for his bike trainer and to do morning yoga, and I decided that seeing it empty, with nail holes and carpet marks is just too forlorn. Too miserable. So I'm making plans: I moved a plant and some pictures up here, and I'm going to get a little bright throw rug. We've looked at a small sofa with a fold-out bed for the corner so Katie can sleep there if she ever visits overnight. I might set up a small table in the corner where her crib used to be and keep my watercolor things here- make it my 'den' again.
   Katie will probably think "Wow- Mom and Dad couldn't wait to get rid of me!". Because she doesn't know.

    I have a spare room now, where once I had a little girl with bright, laughing eyes and a deep belly laugh. I wouldn't trade the smart, sassy woman who just moved out for that little girl with her Dalmation wall stickers… but oh… I  find that I don't want a spare room nearly as much as I thought I did.