How Precious Was That While, page 32
When we moved, we made a huge forest dog yard with a big doghouse. We would have preferred to let them run free, but couldn’t; we wanted neither destruction of forest creatures nor destruction of our pets when they encountered rattlesnakes. Their mother had died when she tackled a big rattlesnake. Then Tipsy ailed. There was another fight with Bubbles, and I went out and let Tipsy into the house yard, to separate them. I conjecture that Bubbles came, and said “Hey, let’s play!” and Tipsy snapped at her. Tipsy walked through the yard, and to the screened door of the pool enclosure, which had stuck open, and settled down beside the pool. I hadn’t intended this, but realized that it might be for the best. So we got her a cushion to lie on, and a blanket to cover her, and she stayed there. We put baffles up so that she wouldn’t wander into the pool, though she seemed to be savvy about that. But she was fading. She would get up to go out for natural functions, but barely had strength to walk. Finally, we bundled her up and took her to the vet, who concluded that she had a bad fever. He boarded her and fought to get the fever down. After several days he phoned: the fever was down, and in another day or so we could pick her up. But next day he phoned again, regretfully: Tipsy had cancer. It had been concealed by the other illness, but now was apparent. She was terminal. There was nothing to do but put her down. Cheryl seemed to be jinxed; every pet she had died early, through no fault of hers. So Tipsy was gone, and we were down to two. I worried how Bubbles would be, when Lucky died. The dogs knew the horses, but would that be company enough? Then in February 1991 Lucky faded. He wasn’t moving, but lifted his head when I checked on him; it was a cold night, and soon he was dead. I put him on the wheelbarrow and took him to the forest and dug a grave and buried him. -
Bubbles seemed not to understand. Now she was alone. We let her into the backyard, closer to the house. Then, experimenting, we let her into the house for the day—and though she had never been a house dog, she behaved perfectly. We put her out for the nights, and she slept close by. After a few days we gambled again, and left her in for the night—and she remained housebroken. Thus the outdoor dog became an indoor dog, and she turned out to be the best indoor dog we had had. It wasn’t just that she was house trained, it was that she was so well behaved generally. She messed on nothing, she chewed on nothing, she made no clamor. This dog, adopted more or less incidentally, and always an also-ran in our awareness, though Cam did like her and considered her her own, at the age of about twelve won our hearts anew. All she wanted was to be reasonably close to us, and she treated us equally, without jealousy. When we separated in the house, she would settle down halfway between. It took her time to learn to navigate the stairs, because they were new to her experience and daunting. Once she was with me in the study, and I was going downstairs in the evening, and it was growing dark. She hesitated at the top, so I called to her to come on down. She started down, lost her footing, and tumbled several stairs to the landing. She wasn’t hurt, but I was chagrined; now I realized that her caution had been because she couldn’t see well enough to be sure of her footing in the dusk. Thereafter I always turned on the light, and never pressed her; she knew her limits. She was not used to much attention; it took her time to get used to my patting her or rubbing her ears in passing. Cam gradually taught her to play. In her old age, she was finally learning the joys of being a family dog. She would sleep on the floor in our bedroom at night, and I would take her out first thing in the morning, when I fed the horses. I found she didn’t need a leash; she stayed with me, and behaved around the horses. She enjoyed licking up the feed they spilled. So it was compatible.
But after almost a year she was evidently failing; she started to be incontinent. One morning I woke to find Cam gone, and she was sleeping on the couch downstairs, because Bubbles hadn’t been able to make it upstairs. We took the dog to the vet, who X-rayed her: she had a big tumor, which they could remove surgically, but they felt it was probably not worth the pain and distress for the dog being ill in a strange place. It had been bad enough for Tipsy, whom we would have spared the last week’s pain had we known there was to be no recovery. So we made the decision to put her down. Cam stayed in the waiting room while I went in with vet and dog, and stroked her head while the vet gave her the fatal shot. There was no pain, no alarm; she just laid her head down and was gone. We were glad that at least we had been able to give her that one scant year of comfort; she was with us at the end, and we were with her. We had never punished her for anything in her life; she was just a nice dog, never offending.
I would have been satisfied to be without pets at that point, and so we were, for a year and a half. Then Penny saw a box of puppies at the entrance to a store, free to good homes. In the afternoon when she passed again there was only one left. They said they would take her to the pound. Penny couldn’t stand the thought, so she took the puppy and named her Obsidian, because her back was glossy black. But Penny already had one or two dogs—it depends on how one counts a long-term boarder—and couldn’t keep another. She did it right from the outset, keeping Obsidian in a dog crate for the nights; dogs really don’t mind, and just sleep, and there is no chewing of furniture or messing of rugs. She hoped the hearing ear folk would take her for training, but they found the dog too active. Indeed, Obsidian was hyperactive, super-friendly but impossible to turn off. Just as Penny herself had been, as a child. Cam pondered it for months, and finally in September 1993 drove down and took Obsidian off Penny’s hands. Thus she became our seventh dog, following Canute, Conny, Cenji, Lucky, Tipsy, and Bubbles, and the largest, peaking at 96½ pounds. She was thought to be part Labrador and part Rottweiler, but though her color was Rottweiler, she wasn’t solid enough. She nevertheless filled out into one supremely robust, healthy dog, in our care. She loved people, but had never learned to play people style; she played dog style, chasing, playing keepaway with toys, and pretend-fighting. So I learned to chase her, and growl at her, and pretend to attack her. I would grab her paw, not hard, and she would set her teeth on my hand, not hard, in fake attack and counter. I tried to teach her how to be petted, but she never quite caught on to that. She also had trouble learning not to jam her nose into people’s crotches, a regular embarrassment with visitors. Whoever was newest was most interesting. But she truly liked those she knew of old, such as Penny, John, Alan, and Peg, and when one of them visited, she would get so excited she leaked urine on the rug. For all her pushiness, she was sensitive, and couldn’t stand to be among strangers. When we boarded her for a few days she was so upset that she wasn’t eating or drinking, and wouldn’t come out of the cage; Cam had to go back and get her directly. It wasn’t that she had been mistreated; she just longed to be home. So when we considered attending the 1995 World Science Fiction convention in Glasgow, Scotland, we thought about Obsidian spending two weeks in the kennel, and weren’t sure she would survive it. She couldn’t board with Penny or Alan, because they were going to Scotland too. So in the end we stayed home, and I used the time to read Terry Goodkind’s huge Stone of Tears, which took one week, and learned to use Windows 95 and Word 7 on my new Pentium computer system instead. So the novel got a blurb, and I was secure in my new system. I would have liked to see the old country, England, after fifty-five years, but it wasn’t to be. As time passed, Obsidian oriented increasingly on Cam, and it got to the point where she growled at me whenever I approached my wife. Since we do have a lot of business together, even after forty years of marriage, that has been a source of stress for the dog. It disturbs her when I even walk by the chair Cam is sitting in. I had thought our mistake with our first dog, Canute, was bringing him into a changing family situation; Cheryl’s arrival as a baby made the dog think he was being displaced. But here was Obsidian in a steady situation, yet she developed her own notions and stresses. So maybe Canute’s stress and kidney stones that took him out young would have happened anyway.
A sidelight on the animals: our vet in Gulfport, Florida, was just the closest one we could find that we liked. He was a character. His name was Dr. Shinn, and he truly had the welfare of the animals at heart. We got lectured about caring for them, and if we didn’t heed his words, we could just find another vet. Everyone got lectured similarly. His words made sense to us, and we did heed them, and got along well. When our dog Canute developed kidney stones, it took more than one session of surgery to get them out. Times were lean for us then, and Dr. Shinn knew it, and did not charge us for the surgery. When we brought a stray cat in to get spayed, so that an animal shelter would take her, he didn’t charge us. He was an opinionated conservative politically, while we were liberal, but it didn’t matter; we all cared about the animals. When Panda Cat got hit by a car, and his back was broken, we brought him in to that office; he couldn’t be saved, and had to be put down, but the assistant vet mentioned a Basenji dog they had patched up, hurt similarly on the road. We took him, and that was Cenji Basenji, free from the vet, despite what would have been a horrendous medical bill for the original owner. I wrote a newspaper article on the vet, with his permission and cooperation, that many readers liked and the veterinary association did not. Shinn was a maverick, with his own methods, not universally approved of. But they worked. Later my career advanced, as I caught hold of the skyrocket that was fantasy, and my financial troubles were over. But we had moved, and Dr. Shinn was no longer our vet. When I had occasion to get in touch with him again, when Cenji died eleven years later, I wrote to inform Dr. Shinn of the extent to which he had extended that dog’s life. Then, later, when I spoke at a writing seminar, Dr. Shinn sent me a message through the proprietor, and a copy of his book, Shinnanigans, about his experiences as a vet, some of which I remembered. And I thought, how can I repay this good man for his prior kindnesses to us and our animals? I was sure he would not accept belated payment for the free surgeries, and in any event intervening inflation had made the amounts meaningless. Then I got it. I wrote to him, saying that my fortunes had changed, and I would now like to make a donation to any charitable cause he espoused, in his name, of the approximate value of the charges he had forgiven us. I judged these to be about $1,000 in contemporary dollars. He could not decline that. So it was that we donated that amount to his alma mater, Auburn University, their veterinary department, in his name. In that way we gave him open credit for the good he had done us in a way he surely appreciated. He deserved it.
We also had horses. Penny was a girl, and girls love horses, but we couldn’t keep a horse in the city. But when we moved to the forest in 1977, Penny said “Well?” So in 1978 we got Sky Blue, a twenty-year-old pedigreed hackney mare, a former harness racer. She was a small horse, fourteen hands, but well trained and well behaved. She was black, with white “socks”; they were low around her hind hooves, and I said that in her age her socks were sagging. Penny was ten at the time, half Blue’s age. Penny said that the happiest day of her life was when she got Blue. We got a second horse, Misty, because once again we didn’t like the idea of an animal alone. Horses crave company of their own kind. Misty was white (that is, light gray) and said to be so gentle a child could ride her. Half-true; a child could sit on her, but couldn’t make her mind; she just ignored the child. Blue was perfectly trained, but her beautiful trot felt like riding a washboard. For a time we did ride; I started on Misty, the larger horse, and Cam rode Blue, but Cam didn’t like that trot; and we switched horses in mid-ride, and from then on, I always rode Blue. Penny rode too, of course, but she had school activities, and then went away to college, so we were really the ones who stayed with the horses. When we bought horse feed, the local supplier had two types: regular and “sweet,” for extra energy. One was Carnation Roundup, the other Carnation Saddle-up; I forget which was which. Blue could choke on sweet, so we used it sparingly. I was always tempted to walk in to the store and ask for Tarnation Roundworm and Saddlesore, but never quite had the nerve; the proprietor might not have appreciated the humor. Once we had the horses grazing near where the school bus stopped, so I put up a big sign we had: WHOA! The children loved it, but the lady bus driver was Not Amused. Though Misty was younger, thirteen when we got her, she developed laminitis, an inflammation of the lining of the hoofs, and it was progressive, resisting all that the vet could do. It got to the point where she couldn’t stand in comfort, so she lay, getting up only to eat and drink. Then it got worse, and I brought water and food to her. We had to fence Blue off, because now Blue was eager to prove she had become the dominant horse and would attack Misty. It was ironic; Blue longed for company, but mistreated it when she got it. Once more we could see the problems that human beings have illustrated more openly in animals. Misty lasted for some time on the ground, but a horse is built to stand, and her left lung collapsed. Finally, reluctantly, we had her put down; we don’t like to see an animal suffer, with no hope of reprieve. We hired a man with a bulldozer to dig a hole to bury her. It was a sad event. I hate death, and it always is painful. I came daily to her grave in the pasture. On the third day I felt the grief let go a bit, but still for a month or so I came, just to stand by the grave a moment. As time passed grass started growing over it, and longleaf pine seedlings started of their own accord; most did not survive, but when we left that property, one endured, and I like to think that a new tree marked Misty’s grave.
Meanwhile the vet brought us a young horse who had been a ten-thousand-dollar animal, but had suffered bad illness in youth and could not be raced or ridden. We were no longer interested in riding; Blue was too old. We just wanted company for her, and had good pasture. This was a filly called Fantasy, named elsewhere but quite fitting for us. She was brown with a large white blaze on her forehead. I remarked that Blue was black, and faded into the shadows, while Fantasy was brown, and faded into the woodwork. She had been raised among people, because of her illness, and was completely friendly. I had learned early that I couldn’t use a shovel to clean out the stall when Blue was near; she must have had experience with sticks. With Fantasy there was no trouble at all; she had never been mistreated. She was a delight; you could pet her, for she would come to you. After a bad couple of nights she and Blue came to terms, and became friendly; I saw them grooming each other once, which is something Blue and Misty didn’t do. So Blue had company again, and it was great; together they ranged the farthest pastures, as had not been possible with Misty for the prior year. We considered Fantasy to be Cheryl’s horse, because Misty had been hers. But then Fantasy developed a swelling around the chest. We thought perhaps she had gotten a thorn embedded, but it was more than that. The vet was grim. He took her back, and brought a white pony to replace her, again with no charge; we just wanted company for Blue, and he wanted a suitable home for certain animals. We learned that Fantasy died, and the autopsy showed that it was her heart: it had indeed been damaged by that illness, and had taken time to take her out. She had seemed so healthy! We had her only four months, but she was a lovely horse, and we are glad to have known her for that time.
Meanwhile the white pony had no name we knew of. She had been boarded with the vet, but the family had never claimed her; a big bill was left unpaid. So now she was boarding with us; we didn’t own her, any more than we had owned Fantasy. So we named her Snowflake, because of the color and because I had had a horse named that in the Adept series; Penny reminded me. She turned out to be just as good for our purpose as Fantasy had been; she and Blue got along well from the outset, perhaps because there was no debate as to who bossed the pasture. When we moved in 1988, we built a little barn just like the one at our prior property, so that the horses had something familiar. The new property wasn’t as good for pasture, but was larger, and they had the range of about fifty acres of pine and oak trees. I cut a path through the brush—I was always good at paths—to where there was a semblance of grazing, but we didn’t depend on it; we fed them well. They used the path, and seemed to like to range among the pine trees of the tree farm. There was a pole barn out there, but they didn’t use it much. There was also an old bathtub with a pump, and we kept it filled so they could drink, but mostly they used the tub we had at the regular barn. Still, sometimes we saw them up by Ogre Corner, half a mile from the barn, looking out at our driveway. They seemed satisfied with the premises.
But Blue was old, past thirty, and her digestion was frail; her manure emerged in a liquid stream like urine. She seemed otherwise healthy, but her head was turning white. Finally she sickened at the turn of the year, 1991-92. On New Year’s Day she seemed healthy, but on the second she was ill and off her feed, and on the third morning I phoned the vet: “I fear for her life.” He had morning chores to do, so it was about four hours before he arrived. Blue was lying by the barnyard gate. I saw her take a breath as we entered—but she was dead as the vet kneeled beside her. We think it was rampaging infection from a tear in her intestinal system; that liquid manure had gotten into her blood and destroyed her system. So, again, we hired a dozer to dig a hole; we got same-day service because the owner’s son was a fan of my novels. So Blue was gone, and this was the worst one yet; she was just shy of thirty-four years old, and we had had her almost fourteen years. Penny came to pay her respects; she had been away to college, and Blue no longer knew her, but Blue was Penny’s horse, and I knew her loss was awful. I used to say that Blue’s business was raising girls; her prior mistress, Joanne Monck, had been ten when she got Blue, and was fifteen when she sold Blue to Penny, who was then ten. Joanne got married when she was twenty, so we knew that Blue had taught her the necessary aspects, and later Penny got married too. We gave Snowflake back to the vet, who had another horse who needed company. My main regret was that the vet’s van had broken, so we had to wait for other transportation, which meant that for two weeks Snowflake was alone. She could not see well or walk well, but she searched the whole tree farm, looking for Blue, unable to realize that Blue was forever gone. It was so sad. And so we were out of the horse business, as it were. For a week after Snowflake left I still went to the barn every morning, as if to feed the horses, Just Because. It was hard to let go of them. But we knew better than to start in on any new horses. It was a segment of our lives that was done.
