TGIF

It’s been a long hard week. I’m depleted. Gilbert’s death left me utterly stunned and I was prepared for it. Shock, confusion, despair.  Now I don’t know what to do. So much of my life was built around having a dog. 

I remember when I divorced and I was living in her dreams wondering how I got there and remembering the life I’d lost to satisfy her desires.

Now I have to wonder if I’d change anything with Gilbert gone.

I had a dog because I hunted and fished and loved the outdoors. It was great to share this experience with them.  He was always the best companion. 

But I didn’t take courses every evening, or go out dancing every evening like I did when I didn’t have a dog. I travelled overseas without a dog.  I lingered in museums and art galleries.  I ate in restaurants rather than outside.  

I had a cat and they’re less demanding.  Leaving them at home alone, they rather like it. Like women who prefer your house to themselves.  My cat enjoyed the company and entertainment as her due but didn’t seem to need me.

A dog needs you.  His life revolves around you.  I miss waking up with Gilbert. He would sometimes be sitting by the side of my head watching for my eyes to open so we could start a new day. He bracketed my day. With a dog I have routine. I get up at a certain time and go to bed at a certain time. It’s like having children. They’re a healthy influence, like social police.  

Before my dog I’d work all night and work all day and sometimes take breaks for pee or coffee but not really have balance.  Gilbert would lie by the door to tell me he had to go outside and if I didn’t take him he’d pee or poop on the carpet. A puppy, like a baby, is very commanding. I was trained to respond to Gilbert’ s desire to have a break and it was always good for me to have a break. He was friends with the animal body of myself that carried about my big brain that was egotistical and self centred and often up my own ass. A dog is really aware and social with other dogs so he forced me to ‘chit chat’ with neighbours.  I liked talking all night with another person about the meaning of life or telling jokes or being with a person wondering when we’d make the two backed beast but I didn’t like ‘niceties’.  A dog I all about sniffing ass and genitals.  I’ve mostly ignored the office politics of that sort of behaviour too focused.  It’s okay to stop and comment on the weather, or sniff ass to find out if what a person says they’re eating is what they really are eating.

Gilbert was a master at recognizing phonics.  He also alerted me to danger

Now I’m wondering if I’d continue escaping to the woods in my camper without a dog. I remember enjoying walking up Davie in high heels, sitting in a cafe all dressed to the nines and watching the world go by.  I wear sensible shoes with Gilbert and never a tuxedo.  My tuxedo days were when I didn’t have dogs.  My life today is a dog’s life.  Covid has made it even more so.  My dream of retirement wasn’t ballroom dancing with lovely lusting ladies but campfires and RV’s and a dog. I loved Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley in search of America.

Gilbert never cared what I wore. I could be dressed in skirt and blouse or blue jeans and t shirt. He only cared if I included him.  He never judged my friends on their religion. He liked my Christian friends, Hindu friends, Sikh friends, Buddhist friends, Zoroastrian friends, and Pagan Friends. He liked my straight and gay friends. He liked the grandfathers, grandmothers, somen ,men and children. He especially liked the children except when he was sick. He identified as a 7 year old human mostly.  A lot of the time he was a big baby but if anyone threatened us he was there beside me, a scared ferocious little guy who would never leave my side. I’ve had friends run and leave me in face of danger.  Women and men have started fights repeatedly that I’ve been left alone to finish.  

The laws are such that you can’t leave a dog outside. I used to be able to go into a store and leave my bigger dog Shinto, a cross Irish Setter/English Springer outside the store.  I tied my Scotty terrier outside the store and people came and hit him. One woman told her child to ‘get him to bite you, take this stick, poke, him, we makes lots of insurance money.’’  My friend and I were sitting right there on the cafe patio with the dog tied to the tree cowering from this child being pushed at him.  I wished I had a license to kill.  

My Scotty, Stuart was fearless, charging straight at the biggest raccoons when they came down the dock. Shinto, Stuart and even Gilbert could defend themselves against the wild but not the civilized evil.  If I’m going to continue living in a city I have to have a dog I can pick up.

I had to pick up Gilbert with one hand and grab the stoned young guys throat with the other when his off the leash Rottweiler in the leashed park ran straight at Gilbert.  Strangling an idiot with one hand confused this psychopath dual but I’m getting too old for this shit. A half dozens times over the years I’ve scooped up charging off leash dogs , pit bulls and rotty’s and thrown them back at the owners but I really am getting too old for this.The last guy with a pit bull charged blind old weak heart Gilbert and I just got between the dogs so the pit attacked my leg but couldn’t kill Gilbert. So I told the guy, get your dog on a leash and he said “I’ll kill you. I’ll fucking kill you if you touched my dog”.  And I realized I could still take him but his dog might get Gilbert and because he had one of those fancy liberal race cards I’d be described as a bully because I won and ddin’t die so I let him spit in my face and Gilbert and I went home. 

I’ve protected women and children and other men all my life.  I think a German Shepherd would be a good companion and maybe he could take care of me in my old age. But the guys who have shot guns at me would have just as soon shot my dog as let the dog protect me.  In Canada all the criminals are armed by the state but the law abiding citizens are stripped of any right to self protection. If you can afford a lawyer maybe you can get protection but it takes a year of your life to survive a criminal attack,

The famous case in Canada the government made sure everyone knew about because it was an object lesson was the 90 year old WWI vet in Surrey. A 20 year drug dealing addicted thug kicked down the door of this guy in a wheel chair kicked over his wheelchair and then proceeded to rummage through his cockroach and bed bug infested bachelor suite where the vets grow old in Canada because of the Nazi and Communist leadership who hated Queen and Country.  But this guy had taken a Luger from a German soldier he’d fought hand to hand in WWI . He crawled to the bedside cabinet and took that Luger he’d kept from the bottom drawer and shot a man who had broken into his one room , kicked over his wheelchair, put the boots to him on the floor and was proceeding to steal from him and maybe would kill him before he left.  HE shot that animals and then was punished and persecuted by the Canadian courts for 6 months to a year.  He was forced to watch and participate in thier self importance bad stage of vapid talk and pompous self importance.  The end of his life was punishment and persecution. A year involved with the idiots and their bullies.  He was finally freed from the ugliest process , an object lesson to all honest law abiding citizens. There is absolutely no reason for the courts to masturbate for a year over such a case making the innocent suffer until they may or may not be freed.  

No woman has protected me in Canada other than my long dead mother.  I’m afraid as a man to be in a health care institution because of the horrible abuse I’ve seen done by women to men in institutions. I’m afraid older that I won’t say the right thing to Nurse Ratchet. So many women are always offended and looking for some man to hang their sorrows on claiming that someone somewhere in the past hurt them even though all the research of note says now that women like men lie 50% of the time when it serves them. Chivalry is dead.  Good families and good women are on the run.  Invaders are on the shores waiting to attack the weakened state. Something is rotten in Denmark.

I’m thinking maybe a dog smaller than a cockapoo. I ‘m wondering if I could protect a teacup poodle.  I love cockapoos now though.  I loved having a dog with me when I went grouse hunting. I felt like I was the little guy with my Dad and older brother Ron hunting prairie chickens in the fall with our Springer.  I love bird hunting. I loved shooting ducks on the fly and having the lab retrieve them swimming out in the water to fetch them .But the springer’s kidneys went and it was thought the cold water contributed. Then I learned ducks mated for life and I’d known such pain with divorce and loss I didn’t feel good about hunting them anymore after that great northern hunt when she was cuckolding me. I couldn’t even trust her with the dog. She’d neglect letting him out and he’d be so ashamed looking at the poop and pee he’d done by the door , so sorry. 

I’ve loved the beautiful women I’ve know I could trust to leave a dog with. They are amazing women. Mothers. Grandmother. Like the Grandfathers and Fathers. They are so underrated in this Sibling Society Robert Bly so well describes.  

My mother and brother were blessed with green thumbs. God’s always gifted me with healing skills. I’ve kept the dead alive. At no small cost.  I come home some days wrestling with demons and pulling a person back from death only to lie in a ball exhausted. My dog comforts me, nestling his cheek against my tear stained cheek when I’ve lost the fight to save a drug addict from themselves or some such trauma.  He was always there. When I was out and felt I’d said the wrong thing and worried I’d been socially awkward because I don’t do that thing much anymore, more a hermit these days, full of shame and sadness and age.  The dog and I on the motorcycle were apart from this whole world of wealth and status. Alone with him and the cat at sea I felt closest to God.  I go to work and graft my spinal chord to theirs and take myself away raw.  We were taught it was ‘lending the ego’. It’s easiest when the person has something of their own. More and more the patients were victimized as children and the State says there’s no time.  There’s never any time.  I felt safe and secure with him lying by my side.  They come in with their screams like nails on chalkboards, their demands shrill, a life time of pity, and expectations of winning lotteries and entitlement for miracles and I’d shake inside at the steam roller tears and he’d be there to calm, an aura of dog bliss. His little toes twitched when he was running in his dreams.  

He told me can see and that he’s running without pain or fatigue now. I don’t want 72 virgins but a pain free day would be nice.  My dad was with him throwing ball and my brother was there too.  I didn’t see my mother but she was always there too She’d slip our Springer a piece of meat under the table after scolding dad for giving him the same.  We kids would laugh at the antics of our parents with the dog who was so loving.

If I got another cockapoo I could just carry on.  I remember she replaced her beloved toy poodle soon after the old one died. I often say you can usually tell who didn’t really want the marriage because they never re marry. I don’t feel Gilbert would feel betrayed if I got another dog.  I’d actually thought often about him having a companion but I was mostly there. I dream of going to Oxford to study as a student, I remember the time I loved so well in the library or the days in Greece and Italy walking around the museums and art galleries.  I think if I have a dog i can carry I can sneak him into places in my purse.  Gilbert was 23 pounds and an inch taller than legal for flying with me on planes.  I always was afraid we’d be caught , pulled out of line, shamed and punished.  I don’t want to put a dog in luggage compartment where the cold and noise might hurt him.  When I leave him with friends I know he’s well but I think of him always.  I can’t have a dog that barks so I can leave him in hotel rooms. Gilbert was so well trained till he lost his eyes then he was dependent and barked when I was away.  Just some.  

I talk with policeman and guards and military guys who are old We’re afraid. We can share that with each other.  We’ve seen and know what is real. We’ve protected others from the Horror.  I loved that book and loved ‘the horror, the horror’.  I remember the sick and dying.  Bowels spilling onto the dirty floor, white bones protruding from pink skin, blood in expanding pools but that’s not the same as eyes and voice of the mothers who killed their babies, the chuckling men on the dangerously insane wards.  I used to envision myself going into the dark tunnels and recesses people had escaped too but some of my patients in the backwards of the asylums, they were lost and I almost got lost too trying to find them.  The community people are different, I know the places inside where they go and I’ve been there in the suicidal insane darkness so I know the way by feel.  But now there’s no happy dog waiting for when I return.  

i have dreams of flying and crowds chasing me to learn the secret to ride on me like the drowning victims who tried to pull me down with them when I was lifesaving or the diseased who tried to share their disease in hope that a sick doctor would increase the chance of a cure being found before they died.  

I don’t like patients showing me guns or powerful men telling me who they are. I just did my job. I went to work and I came home and he was with me or when he wasn’t he was there happy to see me when we got together.  

unconditional love

I miss being nuzzled.  It was so much trouble.  Love.