Dogs Are Angels without Wings

 

Nine years ago, after spending nearly a year looking for a new dog, we went to a pet adoption at a local shop. Inside a fenced-in area were a number of black lab puppies. We weren’t looking for a puppy; we’d previously adopted an older dog. But in with the puppies was an “older brother.” When we entered the shop, he put his front paws on the fence as if to say, “Pick me! Please pick me!”

            He looked like just the dog we wanted. We walked him outside on a leash, and he was very good. He didn’t pull. He waited patiently while we were interviewed and filled out forms, and then he was ours. We bought him a new collar and took him home.

            They told us he was two years old, but when we looked at the paperwork, he was only 18 months, and still needed to learn house manners. But he was ours, and we promised that ours was his forever home. We would never turn him in.

            His previous family surrendered him because they were getting a divorce. Horrified by this information, I asked if they’d also given their children up for adoption. A dog is that important to me.

            The people at the shelter called him Abe. I hate that name, so we quickly settled on Merlin. At times as a puppy his ability to escape our fenced-in yard made us wonder if we shouldn’t have named him Houdini.

            Merlin had many dog friends in the neighborhood, and they’d dog-sniff when they passed each other on walks. He knew which houses had people who gave him treats, too.

            Once, when he was feeling under the weather, one of his dog friends wrote him a get well note and attached it to a little bag of that dog’s favorite treats.

            Merlin was so well-known in the neighborhood that we were known as Merlin’s parents. We even had name tags: Merlin’s Mom and Merlin’s Dad, with our names in smaller print underneath. We used these for neighborhood gatherings.

            Merlin had many fears: thunder, squeaking dog toys, the toaster, the microwave and the air fryer. He liked being outside. When the fire sirens sounded, he would howl, singing the song of his people.

            He loved bones, and would bury them for a few days to season them. When he thought no one was looking, he’d toss a bone in the air and pounce on it when it landed. If he saw you watching, he’d walk away, as if nothing happened, and you could almost imagine him whistling.

            His favorite game was “run, puppy, run,” in  which he’d bump into the person he was with, then run from one end of the yard to the other until he ran out of breath. He’d run toward his person as if he were going to crash into them, and swerve at the last moment to avoid them.

            As a puppy, while perfecting this game, he once smashed into my knee, knocking me to the ground. It took several minutes before I could get up. He stood beside me until I did. He then walked beside me all the way to the house. He wouldn’t come in. I suppose he thought he was in trouble. It took quite a bit of coaxing to get him to come in, and lots of hugs to convince him we weren’t angry with him.

            He loved walks, and occasionally, I’d take him to the gazebo park in town, with its trails and bridges. Even though he wasn’t really a water dog, and would never use the pool we got him, he loved nothing better than to walk into the stream that ran through the park, splashing around and drinking the water.

            We were planning to go once the weather cooled down enough to take a walk that long. But it was not to be.

            A few months ago he started having a little trouble getting off the chair he “wasn’t allowed on.” In the past week or two, he began to avoid sitting, slithering from a stand to lying down. A smaller dog than our previous pure-bred labs, we hadn’t expected him to have hip problems. But we decided he needed something to ease his pain and took him to the vet.

Just the day before he went off his food. I thought it might be from the hip pain. I made him a ground beef and rice mixture, and he did eat some of that, loving people food as he did.

The vet ran some blood tests to make sure his problems didn’t stem from a tick bite. What she found was far worse. His blood work was way off, and an ultrasound showed bleeding into his abdomen. She said it was caused by an aggressive form of cancer that, until the day I took him to the vet, I didn’t know he had. (Previous blood work a couple of months ago showed nothing.) She wanted to take him then and there and put him down. I said no, because Jeff and I both needed to say our goodbyes. This was so sudden.

That was yesterday. This morning we went together to the vet’s and stayed with him until he crossed the Rainbow Bridge. We petted him and cried until his body cooled. And then we left to try to resume our lives.

            There’s a huge emptiness in our home now.

Merlin is not in any pain now, and he can run with my childhood dog, Jet, and our previous dogs, Nugget and Tug. He doesn’t have to be afraid of thunder now – or microwaves, toasters or air fryers.

Dogs don’t live as long as people because it doesn’t take them as long to reach perfection.

Merlin Price, April, 2011 – August 17, 2022

Yn fy nghalon am byth

 

What's Wrong with Pretty?

 [This is a reprint of a blog that  was posted early on in my blog career that only one person read]

Perhaps I’m a victim of my time. When I was growing up, movie stars were gorgeous. They were not overweight, their hair was beautifully coiffed at all times in public and they wore lovely clothes. They did not look like anyone I knew.

Even on TV people were nice looking, although perhaps not as glamourous as movie stars. With the exception of very few shows, like The Honeymooners, leading men and ladies were not overweight, and men never had a five-o’clock shadow, much less a beard, unless representing another century. The only negative piece was that all of the lead roles were white people.

I’m not saying here that I lived in ugly town. Quite the contrary. The people in my neighborhood were nice looking, but average. The women looked like – well, moms. A testament to the fact that mothers weren’t always perfectly coiffed was the fact that before we went to any of the shops, mothers of my neighborhood changed into a dress – or at least a skirt – combed their hair and applied lipstick.

 And I never knew my mother to own pearls, much less wear them while vacuuming, as Beaver Cleaver’s mother did. My dad didn’t wear a sweater while sitting around the house, although he did carry a brief case, as the dads did in shows such as Father Knows Best and Leave It to Beaver. My parents didn’t have a maid or a nanny, either. My mother did sometimes break into song for no apparent reason, so I assumed other mothers behaved the same.

With the advent of color TV, something else happened. Leading roles began to be performed by people of color. Diahann Carroll was the first breakthrough African American actress to have her own show, Julia, in which she played a single, widowed mom who worked as a nurse. While having a show that portrayed a black family having the same trials and tribulations as a white one was groundbreaking, Ms. Carroll was a strikingly beautiful actress who fit in with the other actresses of the time.

But her show paved the way for other programs featuring African American actors, such as The Mod Squad, Amen, Star Trek – which featured the first interracial kiss on TV – and The Cosby Show. In time other ethnic groups were represented in the weeknight lineup, and more recently, more sexually diverse characters.

But gradually over the years, leading ladies and men in both film and TV became less elegant. Perhaps it was the revolutionary atmosphere of the ‘60s that started it. Male leads no longer looked like my dad, but more like The Beatles. Female leads no longer acted in ways my mother would. People who had heretofore been relegated to supporting roles because they lacked the beauty, the elegance or the trim figures of stars of earlier days, were now starring in their own shows.

It wasn’t just the shows that made this change. Commercials also reflected this change. Where once a beauty queen would have hawked butter, now a somewhat dowdy beautician soaked people’s nails in dishwashing liquid to prove it was gentle on hands. Margaret Hamilton, best known as the Wicked Witch of the West in the original Wizard of Oz movie, and looking less elegant without the green skin, sold Maxwell House Coffee. And commercials that required singing turned to the tone deaf to croon the jingle.

I wonder if the casting calls looked like this: tone deaf child wanted to sing in commercial. Lisp appreciated.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I don’t find a child singing off-key – or lisping, for that matter – remotely cute. I just want to send them for speech therapy.  And it certainly doesn’t encourage me to buy a product. In fact, I find that worse than having 10 different adults singing a jingle one at a time in different keys. 

I'm not trying to shame anyone here. Lots of people have speech impediments. But there are methods to correct them, and most elementary schools in this country have speech therapists who work in them.

People may like the fact that actors in film and TV are just like them. Maybe they enjoy watching people like Roseann or Archie Bunker make fools of themselves. That was never my cuppa.

It is reassuring to know that just because you don’t fit a narrow image of beauty like, perhaps, Marilyn Monroe or Twiggy, doesn’t mean you can’t have a career in acting. But I’d like to see people make an effort to look good to the best of their ability if they want to be stars. In fact, I also don't like the fake enhancements, either. Just be your best self.

I want my leading men and women to be beautiful. I want the singers to be able to sing, and I don’t want the speakers to have a speech impediment. Is that too much to ask?

When I was in college, I auditioned for plays, and I often didn't get the part because I couldn't dance. They didn't give me the part and then let me make a fool of myself. They gave it to someone who had the talent.

Perhaps it’s because I see film and TV as fantasy, not reality. I want the actors to reflect the fantasy of how I wish life was. Reality I can get without leaving home. Yes, when I was a child I dreamed of growing up to be the singers or actors of whom I was a fan. But I knew then that’s what it was: a dream. I wasn’t going to have plastic surgery or starve myself to turn into a fantasy.

I don’t look at actors as role models. They are human, just like the rest of us. But they are the cream. The people in my neighborhood don’t look like David Tennant or Meryl Streep. The lady next door could most likely not get up in front of an audience and perform in a Shakespeare play. (Of course, I'd like to think I could.)

When I turn on the TV, I want to be entertained by someone who would never be my next door neighbor. I want to be enchanted, captivated and taken to a fantasy land, that place we only find in dreams. Otherwise, I’m just looking in the mirror and not liking what I see.