We were taking a late afternoon walk, my dogs and I, around the hayfield, trying to make the most of its company before snow buries it for another winter. We were three quarters the way around, counterclockwise, on the eastern side when I caught whiff of the familiar scent of Velvet pipe tobacco and the sound of a Maine accent I'd heard before, following it.
"So, how does it feel, bein' done and all? Ya ah a doctah, now, aintcha?"
He stepped out of the trees as he spoke, not an old man, but older than me, wearing a red and black buffalo plaid jacket, rubber boots, and a crumpled brown fedora. His took his pipe out of his mouth and gestured, "Nice dogs."
We'd met a couple of years ago when my yellow Lab and I got off the beaten path in the early twilight. He must have recognized the old man as well, because he made no move to growl. The black one, too, was uncharacteristically quiet and both sat, also uncharacteristically, as if on command. "Thanks," I said, "and yes I am, got my passing scores this week. I can't do much with it, though, since I'm not licensed, but that'll come. As to how it feels, I'm not sure. I can't quite figure it yet."
"Makes sense," he said, kneeling down to pat the dogs, who wagged the tips of their tails in response, back and forth across the leaf-strewn stubble. "Fer all ya put inta this, it has to feel kinda strange, kinda like maybe ya don't know how to feel. That's understandable."
He's got good therapeutic technique, I thought, showing empathy and paraphrasing what I say while being non-committal. "To tell the truth, I'm a bit afraid to feel. In the past, whenever I've gotten this close, something always came up to get in the way. It's hard to believe there's nothing 'out there' lying in wait for me. Though there is finding a residency. Still, it's a little anticlimactic."
He nodded, stood up, and looked away to the west. A cloudless winter sky passing into sunset was his view. He puffed on his pipe in silence a moment or two before he spoke again. "How could it not be? Ya been doin' this, med school, what, seven years now? It's been more yer life than an education." The way he said it, sounded like "edgikayshun."
"Yes, it has, with all the good and some of the bad associated with it. Not everyone I know expected me to finish. I never had any doubt, I just didn't know when. Oddly, it feels like something I want to keep to myself instead of shouting from the rooftops. Almost like it's too...too..."
"Too personal? Kinda like havin' a baby? Ya tell ever'one after it comes, but ya don't mention anythin' 'bout how ya made it in the first place. I think that's 'bout right. Shows respect fer what ya been through." He turned his pipe over, knocking ashes onto the ground, and refilled it.
"Listen," he said, "some things you gotta respect, things that make ya who ya'ah, what ya pay fer in ways you can't imagine when you staht out. You didn't know it would take seven years, you couldn't. Nobody could. What matters is, ya did it. Faced down all the demons and come further than ya evah thought ya could. Yuh've done what ya were s'posed to, what ya always been s'posed to. Time'll come fer shoutin' -- right now, just love it. Love it and respect it, cuz things like this don't come 'long ever day."
Before I could reply, he reached down and patted the dogs once again, "You take care uh this fella, ya heah?" They looked at me and wagged, leaves flying as though caught up by a breeze. "As fer you," he said, straightening up and looking me in the eye meaningfully, "Residency'll come too, don't worry, maybe where ya least expect it. Been good seein' ya." Then he nodded and walked back into the trees.
"You, too," I said, watching the angel in the hayfield vanish as he was swallowed up by the woods.
(Photo copyright 2013, by the author, all rights reserved)
"I just needed a little psychoanalysis -- did I say that right?"
"Yes, Jake, you said it fine."
"It's my first big word, you know. Will you take me out to the bathroom now?"
"Sure, hop down and let's go."
Having a patient sit on your lap probably isn't quite what Dr. Freud would approve, but neither did he have patients with fur. Then again, the potential for soiled trousers may been precisely the reason why he insisted on sitting behind patients while they reclined on a couch. And all this time we've thought it was to avoid contaminating the transference. I mean, who knew?
Furthermore, under most circumstances the idea of taking a patient out to the bathroom is questionable, rather like taking one out to the ballgame, except there are conditions where that could be considered therapeutic. You think I'm kidding? Not at all. Exposure therapy for what most clinicians call Baseball Stress Disorder. It happens a lot in cities with major league teams, though more cases are reported in Boston and New York, depending on whether the Yankees or Red Sox won the pennant any given year. Actually, the DSM-IV labels it Post-Pennant Syndrome (PPS) -- I'm sure you've heard of it, it's been in all the papers. This morning however, since my patient was Jake the Puppy, a visit to the front yard was hardly a boundary violation.
It all came about because Jake has been thinking about a behavior problem that troubles us both. It concerns his proclivity for growling and barring his teeth when he's sitting, contentedly, on my lap and I happen to move. I thought it was a dominance issue, his answer to the age-old question, Who's the boss? But he said it wasn't that way at all.
According to Jake, he spent most of his early life scratching and clawing for his share of the food, blanket, and play toys at various adoption centers between Arkansas and Maine. It wasn't horrid, he said, but it was dog eat dog and since he was a little baby puppy, he had to learn to be tough. Now, things are different. He has his very own crate, food and bowl, a big brother, the Cat and me, and he's very happy. But when he growls, he says it's because he feels like he's back at the animal shelter. I told him not to worry, it was an unconscious response, and now that it's out in the open, he'll be more able to regulate his behavior. And since he wants to be a "good dog," like his older brother, the motivation for change is already built-in to his character structure.
It was a good session and Jake accomplished a lot. Naturally, there was the question of fee, since the therapeutic frame must be maintained. "Jake?" I asked, stopping for a moment at the door.
"Mm? Are we going out or not? You know what happens when we don't."
"I know and we are, but first, I need to be paid for my services. Psychiatric help is five cents, please."
"Grrrrr."
(Photo copyright 2011 by the author)
The past few days have been early ones -- on the order of 5.00ish AM -- because the puppy's potty alarm is set to go off the instant dawn's dim drapery settles over the tips of the tops of the trees in the hayfield. If he's got a snooze button, I haven't found it. "Oh...my... G...it's...early," I'll groan, pulling cargo shorts over a left knee that lately, aches like an old war wound, and creep out the front door grateful that few venture down the lane at this hour and any who do, look as bleary-eyed and brain-dead as me.
About my knee, I tore a medial meniscus (the cartilage pad that serves as a cushion between femur and tibia) and medial collateral ligament one evening about seven years ago when training my big dog who was then a puppy. I wish I could say it was a college football injury resulting from a game-winning quarterback scramble John Elway would envy, but alas, it wasn't. The ligament is fine but it just occurred to me, this ache feels like that ache, the meniscus. I know, restrict motion, apply ice prn, take ibuprofen, and call my doctor if it worsens. Sigh.
Anyway, what I was going to tell you, before my knee so rudely interrupted, was a discovery I made while sipping coffee this morning and watching a bit of Sneakers (1992), one of my favorite films, starring Robert Redford. The dogs were engrossed in a post-breakfast game of Dino Dogs, imitating the T-Rex and Velocoraptor in the closing scenes of Jurassic Park (1993). Dino Dogs, by the way, is distinguished solely from its oriental martial arts cousin, FangWa, by the absence of sneezing. Both entail vigorous play, but FangWa intersperses play with episodes of vigorous sneezing. Don't ask me why, I didn't make up the rules.
In the midst of all this sensory overload, I noticed Redford was wearing a light blue chambray or denim shirt and khaki slacks. That's when the lights came on, my jaw dropped open, and the caffeine kicked in. Aside from the fact that I'm six inches taller, from the neck down, Redford and I have virtually the same body. Cut off our heads (metaphorically speaking, please), dress us in slacks and a loose fitting shirt and by golly, we're like Cheech and Chong. Well, not them exactly, but you get the idea.
It would be my luck, of course, to have the resemblance halt at the neck. I mean, how many women do you know who are going to smile and bat their eyelashes, their pupils having suddenly and uncontrollably dilated larger than silver dollars, if I were to attempt this as an opening line at a cocktail party: "Ahem, Robert Redford and I have similar body types." That's what I thought, not very many. I may as well scribble the word "boring" across my forehead right now in indelible black Sharpie. Nope, about the best I can do is write about it and let sleeping dogs lie -- which, by the way, they're both doing, at last.
Whew.
(Creative Commons image by jb2.0 via Flickr) 
The moment I saw it, I knew I'd found the perfect gift. MicroMouse, the radio-controlled rodent for the cat who has everything. Not that mine is in quite that enviable a position, largely due to the fact that designers seem to think cats like "cute," and this little guy is bored with it. Toys loaded with catnip are also out because the last thing I need is to be awakened at three in the morning by a drunken feline yowling off-key renditions of My Wild Irish Rose.
Since he can't seem to get enough of the four-legged variety lately, I figured this would be a close second, kind of like a consolation prize at the county fair. Apparently, he thinks so too because not only is he quite happy with it while I'm running the controls, he's started looking for it on his own. Like your typical human, I took it for granted that I could leave it in the cupboard when we weren't playing. I forgot I was dealing with a cat who is smarter than your average bear.
You think I'm kidding, but I'm not. This is the one who practiced picking up pieces of food with his paw (right, not left) until not only could he do it easily, but now scoops up water with it, as well. Anyway, I heard some scuffling last night in the kitchen, followed by the sound of the cupboard door banging. Thinking this was a variant of his "come and feed me" signal and not a STAT page, I didn't rush. A few minutes later, however, instead of staring at his dish, I found him on the floor, pawing at MicroMouse.
The darned cat's observant. You and I knew that already because we've talked about how he tries to work the doorknob. But this is something else. He must have seen me place the mouse in the cupboard earlier in the day, and then searched until he found it. I think it's pretty safe to say he's at Piaget's sensorimotor stage. At this point in human development, rather than an object being "out of sight, out of mind," a child is able to form mental representations of the object, and when it's not immediately present, proceed to look for it.
When he began banging the cupboard door again at midnight, I decided the mouse needed a new home. So, I took both cat and mouse into the bedroom, and made a big show of placing his toy in the dresser drawer. Like that was going to make a difference. As soon as I put him down, he was back at the cupboard as if the witness of his own senses wasn't enough to convince him. Either that, or he thought where there had been one, he might find another. Fortunately, he left off about ten minutes after the lights were out. And of course, he was back at it this morning.
It's obviously time to call in an expert. "Dear Dr. Frankenstein, what should I do? I think I've created a monster."
(Photo by the author -- sorry for the blurring, motion is hard to capture)
This morning after Christmas Day, I'm sipping coffee from a Black Dog pottery mug given me by my dog and cat. How they manage to get out and do any shopping always amazes me. People often comment, with a smile, when they see my dog sitting in the driver's seat of the car, "Who's your chauffeur?" Either there's more to this than a joke or the two of them have figured out how to call United Parcel Service.
What's even more amazing is their choice: it's precisely the same mug I admired a few days ago and said nothing about. The Black Dog is a tavern located on Martha's Vineyard, a little island off the coast of Massachusetts, and you can purchase a variety of items, including sweatshirts like the one they also gave me, emblazoned with their logo . I'm assuming, however, that both came from the Black Dog store located in the Old Port. The cat gets sea sick enough just driving in the car -- I can only imagine what he would have been like taking the ferry out to the Vineyard.
On the other hand, it's also possible they contacted a more Northern Source. Christmas morning, they're both difficult to rouse and I've long suspected they were up late socializing after I've called it a night. I say this because the eggnog and cookies I left for Santa (well out of the reach of canine and feline snackers) were gone yesterday when I got up. That still doesn't explain how they managed to choose the one I liked.
You're probably chuckling over all of this as am I. But it really has a deeper purpose. If the road to hell is lined with good intentions, as I mentioned a few days ago, then cynicism is its doormat. Disillusionment is not the necessary corollary of adulthood and maturity. We all experience disappointments and loss, but becoming hard of heart and having our vision of life and the world darkened until we watch, suspiciously, for pain and hurt at every turn is tragic.
Any blow struck for goodness is always, always better than giving into despair. To paraphrase the 16th century church reformer, Martin Luther, the devil flees in the face of our laughter. Obviously, humor alone isn't going to solve the world's problems, but the optimism that lies beneath it and suffuses into our ways of thinking and dealing with one another can be transforming. Speaking for myself, I can always use more of that.
(Photo of Black Dog pottery mug by the author)
It started way too early this morning, the scratching, the scraping, the sounds of someone making bank shots on an ice rink. Except for the fact that my stairway hasn't iced over in a century. I threw back the covers and crept stealthily (you didn't know I could be stealthy, did you?) around the corner, stopped still, reached for the light switch, and...nothing. Midnight's "Wayne Gretzky" was nowhere to be seen.
But there it was again, only softer, like the distant padding of gloved fists against a punching bag, paddita, paddita, faintly echoing off the wooden bedroom floor and out the space beneath the door. Aha!, I thought, starting onto the steps in slow motion, I've got you now! At that moment, the cat joined me, bounding up two at a time before I could urge caution.
Suddenly, it stopped, and I stopped, and the cat froze, as though by ESP we became aware of each other at the same instant. Then, almost level with my left ear, I heard it again. Pummeling, lightly pounding, then heavier and more rapid. Sounds of leaping up the inner wall space, once, twice, and then more pounding. It was like a scene from The Premature Burial with Edgar Allen Poe at his best.
I turned to the cat and mouthed, "It's a chipmunk between the walls." He looked at me as if to say, "I didn't quite get that, would you speak up a bit, please?" and made pawing motions of his own. I may be thick but I can take a hint, so I began scratching on our side of the "tomb" to see what would happen. Silence. I scratched harder, off and on, up the wall, side to side. Nothing.
I even tried what I thought might be the chipmunk equivalent of Morse Code, tapping out an SOS: dot dot dot dash dash dash dot dot dot. Hey, it couldn't hurt, right? No response. Sighing, I looked at the cat who, I'd swear, sighed in return, and we headed back to bed.
We'd just gotten comfortable when it started again, only this time much, much louder and accompanied by scampering (or "skating," if you prefer) back and forth. Certain the little guy wasn't trapped after all, the cat and I ran up the stairs with me shouting, "Beware evildoers an
d late night disrupters of sleep -- Mr. Incredible is here!" I guess that was enough, because I heard paws scrambling madly from one wall to the next, into the attic and I'm sure, out the ventilator.
Once more in bed, the cat doing his "Good job, Beggar," paw thing against me and the dog snoring happily, I imagined the conversation at the local Chipmunk's Bar and Grill going something like this: "Give me a stiff one, Charlie. You know that guy in the house everybody says is so nice? He lights up the fireplace and it's all warm and cuddly? Lemme tell you, he's not so nice."
(Creative Commons vector illustration of Mr. Incredible, done in CorelDraw, by dpencilpusher via Flickr. "Mr. Incredible" is property of Disney/Pixar)
I was lying in bed this morning, trying to persuade myself to abandon the comfortable warmth of goose down blanket combined with Yello
w Labrador, when I heard scuffling next to the bed. I'd shed my long sleeve T-shirt during the night because it was too warm and thought, Oh no, the cat's got it. He went through a chewing stage at one point, not unlike a puppy, and I figured he was at it again. I reached down to relieve him of temptation, and "Oh, my God!" plopped out of my mouth at the same time a mouse plopped out of the shirt onto the bed.
If that doesn't get your heart racing, it's time to get an implanted defibrillator. Microseconds passed and I realized it was dead, despite no evidence of trauma. The little guy likely had a heart attack while being the unwitting accomplice in a game of "Your Mother Warned You There Might Be Days Like This." Well-fed, my cat has no need of supplementing his diet with rodent a la sushi. He just wants to play, and for all I know, was trying to revive his companion with the feline version of CPR. I wonder what the ratio of breaths to compressions is for a mouse?
Anyway, sufficiently roused, shall we say, I deposited the mouse in the trash, dressed, and took the dog out into the first snow of the season. It's quite lovely, as you can tell from the photo. We got about five inches of the light, powdery variety that is easy to shovel and will probably melt quickly, much to the chagrin of the fellow who plows my driveway and barnyard.
I'd like to say winter arrived in a "startling" fashion, but as you know, the cat has been monitoring the price of mice on the Tom and Jerry exchange for several months. A thoughtful investor, he never misses a "buying opportunity" when he can get one. At the moment he's in the upstairs bedroom, intently inspecting the closet door, as though trying to send a subliminal message to whomever he smells within. I'm sure he's using a carefully contrived deception like, "The cat's asleep, the cat's asleep." Gary Larson (The Far Side) would be impressed.
(Photo by the author)
I mentioned pumpkin eggnog yesterday and I have Harvey Perley Hood to thank for it. I don't know if he came up with the idea in 1846, but it's a good one. So's ginger snap and if you can obtain Hood products in your part of the country, you've got a treat coming. No, they don't subsidize my medical education, so call this word-of-mouth advertising. On the other hand, if there are any family members reading this and the company wants to contribute, I'm open to sponsors -- I'll even let my dog wear the T-shirt when we walk. That's got to be worth something, don't you think?
There'll have to be some limits, of course, otherwise every Tom, Dick, and Dairy in the country will try to sign him up. I'd have to quit school to manage his accounts and that would defeat the whole purpose. Despite his natural charm, he's never aspired to a career in marketing and I want to be a doctor. But I have absolutely no objections to an orange reflective vest emblazoned with the company logo.
Why an orange reflective one? Because hunting season's started and even those of us who believe in preserving the right to arm bears (you read that right) need to be protected when walking down the road. It's not stylish but it could be -- especially if it had (hint, hint) a Hood logo brightly displayed on the sides. Hey, this could start a fad with humans wanting them, too -- pawtographed by my dog.
Rap musicians -- Snoop Dog, naturally, has the honor of being first -- would wear them on stage and eventually I'll wager we'll see them at the White House. The First Kids Secret Service detail will see them as a way to better blend in at school since they'll have become a status symbol and everyone will be wearing one. Though, by now, we'll have expanded the color scheme and employed Ralph Lauren to produce designer versions for Chaps and Polo. Eat your heart out, Giorgio Armani, this is an American tradition we're starting here.
The best thing about it all? Hood grows beyond it's wildest dreams, my dog gets to meet the First Pup, and I graduate from medical school debt free. Why didn't I think of this sooner?
My dog's horoscope suggested he structure his time today. I'm not kidding. Now, it's true I haven't looked at his Paw Pilot calender lately, so this might be good advice, but I try not to intrude. It's his business (no pun intended) and we all need respect. Still, one wouldn't want to tempt the stars, would one?
Now, admittedly, there's a bit of a problem with this forecast -- I'm not entirely certain of his birth date. When I adopted him, it was assumed he was born in early January, a Capricorn according to those in the know. But he could just as well be an Aquarius, in which case he's predicted to learn something new about himself today. My dog as Mr. Introspective -- who would ever have guessed?
Then again (pardon my indecision here) he might be a Sagittarius and he should restrain his natural inclination to be involved in everything all at once. Cultivate the inner therapist, observe, scratch your whiskers and when your person offers you a cookie, ask, "And how do you feel about that?"
It's really too bad he wasn't born in October because Libra fits him perfectly: "You have no interest in being intellectual; you're all about feelings." That's absolutely spot on. Don't get me wrong, this is not to say he's, ahem, a bone head, but given a choice I think he'd prefer Dogs are from Mars, Cats are from Venus to The Journal of Cat Communication. He's just not that into academics.
He is a Puppy School graduate, though, and has a diploma to prove it. And he does have his Paw Pilot, but you can bet your life I'm not getting him a phone application for it, at least not until he can pay the monthly bill himself. You've got to draw the line somewhere.
(Image via Wikipedia)
"Can I pet your dog?" she asked with a winning smile. "Of course," I replied and my dog eagerly wagged his agreement. She and her sister were playing a game to see which one could pet the most dogs in PetSmart yesterday. Not that I would have, but there was such confidence and trust in her smile that I couldn't have turned down her request had I tried.
You can't pet just any dog. They really are like people; some only look approachable. Once you're near enough to tell, there's a reserve, a reticence that says, "Look, but don't touch." Clearly, the young girl had been instructed by her mother to be polite and ask first, always good advice.
But what struck me about it all was her trust. There were other children in the store but only she and her sister were going about, petting one dog then another. Even her sister (I think they were twins), whom I met later, wasn't quite as certain as Girl Number One (I never got names).
As I say, she wasn't incautious; she knew to ask, but her manner not only suggested a confidence that I would approve but one that made me wish to approve. I'm sure both she and my dog would have likely been disappointed had I refused, but I don't think that would have stopped her from looking elsewhere for another "objet de petting." She was too engaged, too willing to put herself forward, to allow a setback to get in her way.
Trust reproduces itself. It doesn't do, expecting to be trusted while being suspicious of everyone else. I'm not saying we should be naive -- the girl I mentioned was far from that -- but naivete is not the only option. Being confident that our trust will be reciprocated is a much better one. After all, it would be tragic to go through life never having petted at least one dog.
(Image via Flikr: "My Pet Dog Turbo" by Dylan)
