The Happiness of Routine

I think I was gone from home about half of the time (or more) between Labor Day and Columbus Day. I am grateful for all the opportunities I had but I am glad to be home. I now have about five weeks ahead of me before I leave Albuquerque again– the longest stretch since February of this year! What I missed most in my routine is what I actually dread most when I drag myself out of bed in the dark and coolness of the morning– running and walking the dogs. While I hate peeling myself out of my warm bed and know that I have about an hour and twenty minutes of constant movement ahead of me, I miss it more than anything when I'm away. Many times we forget to appreciate our routines because in some ways they can become monotonous and even drudgery when we do them everyday for months on end (or years!). But when they are taken away from us, we miss them. The key is to enjoy each moment we are in them which we should be doing anyway– life is about the present even though we must plan for the future. I love being out in the quiet of the morning, especially now that it's darker so fewer people out (I think a record number of people walked/ran around the park by my house this past summer) and the dogs and I can enjoy "taking our steps" as the run rising, something the Navajos believe is important to greet each day.

Hattie's 5th birthday and the debate over size of dog

Hattie is five years old today. It's hard to believe that five years ago this time we were finishing the remodel on the house and she was getting ready to survive Hurricane Katrina in Mississippi. A lot has happened in those five years as Ginger came to live with us for a short time (before flying to Chicago to be with Mom) just a few months later and then my dad died. I finished my doctorate and the list goes on. I'm not sure where Hattie is at the moment. I thought she was under the table where I'm working but I looked down and Gidget is to my left and Nestle is behind me. She's probably snoozing somewhere on a bed. She'll get one of her favorite dentastiks later and everyone else will get a rollhide bone. I was thinking about what might be interesting to blog about on Hattie's birthday and it occurred to me that there is one piece of information that was gleaned from my dissertation that relates to Hattie's size. She is our smallest dog– even at 36 pounds! She came to us at 6 pounds and just a few weeks old. Nestle is probably still the largest, hovering somewhere around 80 pounds although Gidget is almost a year old so we're not quite sure how big she'll get. For some reason, I've always thought bigger dogs worked for me although Joe told me that he wasn't sure if he would like having "such a small dog" as Hattie but he really began to appreciate her size since she can actually be a lap dog. The others would like to be lap dogs (I just typed "laptops"– the words that fall out of our fingers when we type...) but it's dangerous when Nestle lays on you and after a while you realize you can't breathe. When we were writing my dissertation survey, which reflected on if, how, and why people use dogs to help cope with human loss (by death), my chair, Dr. Virginia Shipman, suggested we ask a question about size to see if people prefer one size of dog over another. I had read in another study where they suggested studying fur length to see if one length was more helpful to people than another. When the 100-plus surveys had been analyzed, it showed that fur length didn't matter. Nor did the size of the dog. The reality is that we are unique people and we all like something different. I actually had asked Joe to bring me back a Golden Retriever from Mississipp but he found Hattie in a county shelter and picked her because she looked like a miniature Chaco. And here we are five years later.

Citation for my dissertation

For anyone who is interested in reading more about my dissertation that focused on how people use dogs to help them cope with the death loss of a human loved one, here's the link to the citation:

http://proquest.umi.com/pqdlink?did=1606882881&Fmt=7&clientI%20d=79356&RQT=309&VName=PQD

It's hard to believe it's been two years since I finished it. I have been going through the huge stacks of articles recently for my new book about the same topic. And the information has continued to grow in this area. My hope is that we can continue see new ways to use dogs and other animals so that we can find many more of them homes.

Daisy visits a senior center

I did a presentation today at the Meadowlark Senior Center in Rio Rancho. It had been scheduled a few months ago, long before Daisy got sick. Lorrie, the person who contacted me, said I could bring a dog so I took Daisy. She is a former "puller" but since she's been sick, she has really slowed down. However, being among all the people today must have excited her because she pulled and pulled. She got lots of compliments in the hall. The presentation went well and we discussed Daisy's holistic cancer treatment as well as my work on how people use dogs to help cope after human loss. They say 1 in 4 dogs gets cancer so I'm obviously not the only person going through this. One woman said my presentation made her think about her dog differently. It also seems like maybe there's a greater purpose to Daisy being sick. I took her because I want to give her as much social interaction as possible but maybe she's supposed to help other people in some way as well. I believe, despite the raw awful pain, that we are put where we are supposed to be at any one moment although sometimes we can't quite understand it from where we are currently standing.

The loss of a 13-year-old girl

Yesterday, I found a friend of mine, who I work with in the suicide world, had a heart attack on Friday. This rocked my reality. Although his daughters are about my age, sometimes we think people will live forever. And it's a reality check for him and his family as well. A short time later in the morning, I found out that the daughter of one of Denise's childhood friends (they go back to elementary school) had died of a brain tumor yesterday morning. She was 13. It was through facebook that we had connected because I had posted some photos of Denise and her Brownie troop and some birthday parties and Jen saw them and friended me. She worked tirelessly to help her daughter since her diagnosis last fall. I haven't been able to stop thinking about their road and reading the blog entries of the journey of Brianna and her family. Jen wrote how Brianna told her she didn't want to die. While it's a different kind of death than suicide, it's still a loss and the one of a young person always is painful. I know the grief journey they are on and I hope they continue to feel Brianna's presence in their lives because she is now with them, although in a different sense, and guiding them as they move forward without her physical presence.

The importance of dogs vs. the cost of vet care

None of us are immune. These are difficult times. Life itself is difficult. Each day we can be thrown any number of hurdles. Over the past few days, I've been subjected to two different circumstances that illustrate both the importance of pets and also the difficulties of paying for their care when times are tough. My first grade locker partner and I have reconnected on facebook and she recently adopted a puppy but he had to be weaned from his mother, etc. A week ago, Julie's mother died after a long illness and they buried her on Wednesday. Yesterday on facebook, Julie had posted photos that Marvin had come home it looks like either Thursday or Friday. I kept thinking of the importance of this event (I don't believe in coincidence anymore- this was meant to happen the way it did) and how Marvin came home just as Julie would need him most. On the other side of coin, there is a man who walks in the same park I walk my crew. He has two dogs who are older. A mutual friend who I walk with told me that one of his dogs (who is 14 years old) has an infection due to a seedling stuck between his pads but he can't afford vet care because he can't even pay his mortgage this month. His dogs are clearly important to him and he walks them consistently everyday. The dog already was declining in health, probably because of his age and now the man is struggling with what to do for the future of his dog who also clearly has been his companion for a long time. I can't even think of a line to finish off this posting because nothing seems to wrap it up. Maybe nothing is supposed to and I should just end it here.

Too long without a blog and a dog presentation

I didn't realize it had been three weeks since I blogged. I guess the dogs haven't done anything too exciting in that time. I am just back from San Francisco for the American Association of Suicidology conference where I was installed as the new President-Elect, a position I will hold for two years before becoming president. While there, I presented a session on how dogs help people cope with Jennifer Emmert from the San Francisco SPCA. She brought two therapy dogs and their guardians: Carol Hulse and Silver and Jo Kaufman and Kobe. As you can imagine, the dogs were a hit. When people arrived for the session, the immediately went to Silver (Kobe hadn't arrived yet) because most of us had been away from home all week and we were missing our own dogs. I'm including a few photos from the session. Near the end, when Jennifer was answering a question, I sat down in the front row and heard what sounded like snoring behind me. I kept thinking that surely it wasn't either of the women sitting behind me. Then I realized it was Kobe, sound asleep in Jo's lap! The weather has warmed up, finally, here in Albuquerque and the dogs will be taking a swim this afternoon. I convinced Nestle to get in the pool before I left but she only got as far as her paws before she jumped out. I believe the water temperature was about 63 degrees. Brrrrr! She wouldn't be a good hunting dog since she's been too spoiled at our house. The solar cover is on the pool now and I anticipate the pool water will be about 80 when we roll it off later this afternoon.