Letting Go of Shakespeare
“If you have tears, prepare to shed them now.”
–William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar
In the past two weeks I haven’t done very much. I haven’t written a blog. I haven’t been to a yoga class. I haven’t walked through the bogs or watched What Not to Wear or called my mother, all tactics usually guaranteed to lift my spirits. Most important, in this my self-proclaimed Year of Giving, I haven’t given away a single thing.
This. Is. Resistance.
Resistance happens when the flow of your life is dammed by your own obstacles, your own obtuseness, and/or your own obstinacy. But, you say, I had a good reason for not being here, not going there, not doing this or achieving that. There’s always a good reason.
And I had a very good reason. Indeed, I had lots of good reasons, all of which amounted to this: I was sitting alone in my too-quiet house with no job and a dying dog feeling very sorry for myself.
Shakespeare has been my dearest companion since we adopted him in Las Vegas 13 years ago. A big, shaggy black mutt of sweet and even temperament, he’d been abandoned by his previous owners. Nameless and homeless and ageless, he was a grand dog who deserved a grand name—so I called him Shakespeare and took him home as an early Christmas present for me and Mikey. We fell in love with him, and he with us. Everyone loved Shakespeare, he was easy to love.
But ultimately he was my dog. Perhaps because he remembered that I saved him, and he thought it was his turn to save me. And he did save me—over and over again. Shakespeare saw me through lay-offs and break-ups and cross-country moves. He led me on long walks when, blinded by endless tears during my divorce, I took my grief outside where Mikey couldn’t see. He served as my sentry, positioning himself by my bedroom door for his watch every night. He curled up at my feet when I collapsed on the couch after work, too tired to move. And one evening when I fell asleep after putting the kettle on, thereby setting the kitchen on fire, it was Shakespeare who roused me just in time.
Such Sweet Sorrow
So there I was, sitting alone in my house feeling sorry for my poor self, with no job and a dying dog. Dr. B said that Shakespeare had cancer, but given his advanced age, surgery and chemo really weren’t options. He gave us meds to make our ailing dog more comfortable, and sent us home.
For a few weeks, Shakespeare seemed to rally. But then he took a sudden turn for worse. He couldn’t walk, he wouldn’t eat, he cried in his sleep. He was failing—fast. I sat by him, day after day, praising and petting him, as he slipped into the next world.
Resistance was futile. Shakespeare died. And I gave myself the time to mourn.
Saved by the Beagle–Not!
Here’s a great story about two dogs who saved their owner from a devastating fire. A similar incident happened to me. I put on the tea kettle, and –long story short– the pot never whistled, I fell asleep, and the tea kettle caught fire. Shakespeare, our mutt from the pound, woke me up, while Freddie the Beagle snored. Thank you, Shakespeare!
http://m.sacbee.com/sacramento/db_98822/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=1kbBqXy7
Freddie’s New Best Friend
With Mikey off at college, Freddie and I were getting a little lonely. Sure, we had Shakespeare and Ursula the Cat, but Shakespeare is very old now, and not up to much trouble. And whatever trouble Ursula makes, she’s keeping to herself.
The thought of another long New England winter stuck inside without Mikey was as woeful as a howl. So we got a roommate.
This was a risky strategy. Freddie still doesn’t like strangers much, especially male strangers. We figured we’d have to navigate the transitional period carefully. But there wasn’t much time. As soon as the roommate moved in, Mikey and I went to the Colonel’s house in Las Vegas for the holidays.
He was on his own–with Freddie.
I kept waiting for the call to come. For the roommate to say, “Sorry, this beagle is too high-maintenance. I’m outta here.”
But the call never came.
Long story short: Freddie couldn’t be happier. He loves our new living arrangements. And here’s why.
The roommate believes in wet food for dogs. I still feed Freddie and Shakespeare dry food every morning, but that’s just the appetizer.
When Freddie’s new best friend comes home every night, he mixes up a swell combo of dry and wet food and serves it up, thereby endearing himself to Freddie forever.
And here we were worried that Freddie might not take to a new man in the house.
We should have known better. With Freddie, it’s all about the food.
Always.
Free at Last!
Check out this amazing story about beagles recused from a lab in Spain:
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/video-rescued-beagle-dogs-experience-sunlight-first-time-221217299.html
Freddie Does Doga
Doga is yoga for dogs. If you think I’m kidding, think again. (Or check out www.dogadog.com). People do yoga with their dogs—supposedly granting pooches the same benefits bestowed on human practitioners.
There was a time not so long again when I would have pooh-poohed doga—and yoga, for that matter. But that was a year and 30 pounds ago. When Mikey left for college, both Freddie and I fell into a funk, mine fueled by chocolate, Freddie’s by cheese. (Freddie loves cheese.) I got flabby; Freddie got fat.
Then I discovered yoga. All winter long—and it was so long this year—I meditated on my empty nest as I mastered the intricacies of Downward Dog, while Freddie howled for his long lost Mikey master.
By Spring, I was down three dress sizes. Freddie, meanwhile, was fatter than ever. I tried long walks through the cranberry bogs—his favorite place!—accessible once more now that the snow and ice had gone. Shakespeare, 14 years old and counting, happily kept up, despite his arthritic hips; Freddie panted and whined and finally simply sat his stubborn tail down on the trail and refused to move.
Something had to be done. Yoga had lifted my spirits; maybe it would work on Freddie. Certainly Suzi Teitelman, the creator of Doga, swears by it. And her dog Doga—yes, you read that right!—looks healthy and happy enough.
So I’m giving yoga for dogs a chance. We’ve tried stretching and breathing and chanting (which sounds suspiciously like howling). So far, the only pose Freddie has mastered is Savasana, also known as Corpse Pose, in which you simply lie on the floor and do nothing.
As it turns out, Freddie is very good at doing nothing. They say the ability to sit, quiet the mind, and do nothing is what enlightenment is all about.
In which case maybe Freddie’s been the enlightened one all along.
Beagle Versus Cat: Round One
In the champion’s corner, Freddie the Bad-Ass Beagle, 36 pounds of trouble. In the challenger’s corner, Pinhead the Pissed-Off Tabby, 7 ½ pounds of hiss.
It’s the fight of the year at the lakeside cottage, which may very well prove way too small a space for these two. Pinhead comes to us from the Myles Standish Humane Society (www.standishhumanesociety.com), where she was billed as a cat who “loved dogs.”
Well, there are dogs, and then there’s Freddie. She loves Shakespeare our congenial mutt, but so far she hates Freddie. Freddie is noisy and mischievous and has nearly thirty pounds on the miffed feline—and if he keeps eating all her food when she’s not looking, he’ll be even bigger.
But Pinhead is quick, agile, and light on her feet. Add to all that her trademark growl—which puts her on even footing with any dog—and what we’ve got here is a classic showdown.
Stay tuned as the match continues…and a free autographed copy of Fixing Freddie to anyone who can come up with a better name for poor Pinhead!
Move It, Doggie–Or Not!
If you’ve ever moved cross country—or even across town—with a pet, you know how miserable it can be. Our congenial pound puppy Shakespeare has traveled from coast to coast in planes and automobiles, without incident.
We’ve never had to move Freddie—and thank goodness for that! Just the thought of moving the stubborn, stalwart beagle from place to place is exhausting. It’s hard enough to move him off the couch.
But some folks aren’t so lucky. For a hilarious worst-case scenario look at moving with dogs, check out:
http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/11/dogs-dont-understand-basic-concepts.html
And consider yourself lucky if you can put off moving for another decade or too!
The Howl of the Empty Nester
The last thing my youngest child Mikey does before he leaves for college is say goodbye to his dog. The jean-clad 18-year-old pushes his baseball cap off his forehead, folds his long legs under him, and meets his hound nose to nose. Boy to beagle.
I look away, as much to hide my reaction as to afford them some privacy. I am not prepared to cry, not yet. I expected to at least make it out of the driveway before dissolving into tears.
Leave it to Freddie to undermine my hard-won composure. The adorable puppy Mikey couldn’t live without six years ago soon morphed into the adolescent canine from hell, pooping in my shoes and peeing on my dates and pulverizing my custom-built cherry kitchen cabinets. Like Mikey, he’s supposedly all grown-up now—but only slightly less trouble.
One last ruffle of Freddie’s silky beagle ears and we are good to go. My little Kia Sportage is carefully packed with all of the accoutrements today’s college students require: microwave and mini-refrigerator, 32-inch flat screen TV, desktop computer and every video game console known to teenage boys. Oh, yeah, and some jeans, T-shirts, and underwear that Mikey stuffs into a duffle bag 5 minutes before we leave. I did wash them; here’s hoping that they’re still clean.
Mikey slips into the passenger seat, pushes it back into a prone position, and promptly falls asleep. I drive, navigating a tumble of back roads through southern Massachusetts and western Connecticut. Normally such a lovely Indian summer morning excursion would soothe my soul, but every mile brings me closer to a life without kids, a life I’m not sure I know how to live.
I’ve been a mother longer than I’ve been a grown-up. I had my daughter Alexis at 21, my son Greg at 23, and Mikey—my last hurrah—at 36. When the older ones left home, I had Mikey at home to soften the blow.
Now all I have at home to soften the blow is Freddie and his pal Shakespeare, the 13-year-old shaggy mutt from the pound we adopted that first terrible Christmas after the divorce. An old deaf dog and a young noisy dog—fine company for a middle-aged single mother who really needs to get a life.
It’s taken me ten years—the same length of time I was married to Mikey’s dad—to get used to not having a husband around. After more than thirty years of raising children, I could be dead before I get used to not having a kid around.
By the time we pull into the parking lot at Mikey’s dorm on the outskirts of the University of Connecticut’s lovely Storrs campus, the sun is high in the sky. It’s unspeakably hot for New England, and naturally Mikey’s un-air conditioned room is on the fourth floor.
After lugging all that stuff up four floors, we are both wringing wet as we hike with 7,000 excited freshmen and proud parents to the U Conn auditorium for the Convocation. I look around at the other brave-faced moms, and wonder how many of them are now empty nesters, too.
It is dark by the time I give Mikey one last hug and one (not the last) hundred bucks and head for home in an empty car. I do not cry. I make a wrong turn somewhere and end up lost in the wilds of the Constitution state, trying to find my way to a freeway—any freeway—on unlit, unmarked roads. I do not cry.
At midnight I arrive home to a happy Shakespeare and a forlorn Freddie. Freddie always sleeps with Mikey on his bed; but now he’s stuck with Shakespeare on the floor in my room. I crawl under the sheets, turn off the light, and stare out the window at the moon shining on the lake. I do not cry.
The next day is Saturday. Everyone calls to check up on me—my mother from Las Vegas, my older son Greg from Los Angeles, my daughter Alexis via Skype from Lausanne.
“I’m fine,” I say as I leash up Freddie for our daily walk through the cranberry bogs. Shakespeare doesn’t need a lead, but Freddie follows his nose and never looks back. So I have to keep the single-minded beagle under tight rein—not easy, as the determined canine is built like a tank.
And I am fine—at least until the song Let’s Go Fly a Kite from the movie Mary Poppins plays unexpectedly on my iPod. I downloaded that song on my last trip to Switzerland, so I could teach it to my little granddaughter Elektra. I sang all my babies to sleep with that song; we sang it together in the car on road trips.
I stop short. Freddie tugs on the leash, hard, toppling me to the ground. I just sit there in the dirt. Freddie howls.
And I howl right along with him.
Get Fit with Freddie—Not!
In this month’s issue of Self magazine, there’s an entire section devoted to exercising with your dog, or as they put it on the cover, “Firm Up With Your Pup.” (See http://www.self.com/fitness/workouts/2010/08/get-fit-moves-with-your-pet-slideshow#slide=1.)
This is great, I thought as I flipped to the moves created by Los Angeles trainer and fellow dog owner Gunnar Peterson, which are supposedly designed to help you “unleash your dream body with your tail-wagging work out pal.”
Peterson’s “best-in-show body” boot camp consists of half a dozen squats, lunges, crunches, and push-ups, mostly done holding a ball or tug toy that your pooch is supposed to fetch when you release it upon completion of the move.
Right. First of all, Freddie doesn’t fetch, much less wait patiently to fetch. Or he’d chase a chicken leg to China, but run after a ball I’ve been holding to his head while I tone my thighs? I don’t think so.
Freddie’s idea of exercise: leading me on a wild goose chase in the rain through the bogs, lunging for the food dish before Shakespeare can get to it, and leaping upon my leather couch to bark at the boaters on the lake.
Seems like only very well-trained canines could master this fitness program. I’d love to meet Gunnar’s dogs. Betcha they’re not beagles.
A Dog without His Boy: One Sad Beagle!
Every boy needs a dog—and every dog needs his boy. But with Mikey off to college at the end of the month, his beagle Freddie will be nothing less than bereft. (As will I.)
When Freddie was a puppy, he ate everything—cabinets, books, shoes (not my favorite pumps—again!), blankets, knobs, chair legs, seat cushions…you name it, he ate it. An animal behaviorist—aka doggie shrink—diagnosed Freddie with separation anxiety. Freddie was lonely, and while Mikey was at school he took out his anger and frustration on my things. Yes, my things; with an uncanny precision Freddie left Mikey’s things intact during his daily feeding frenzy.
And that was just middle school! What will Freddie do now, when his beloved Mikey goes off to college, leaving him alone with our pound mutt Shakespeare and me—both of us too tired and too old for such a ruckus?
Shakespeare won’t live forever, he’s at least 12 now and the vet warns us that as a big dog his days may be numbered. Then it will be just Freddie and me.
The only solution might be—you guessed it—another beagle. As in beagle rescue:
Am I crazy or what?
BUY THE BOOK!
The millions of readers and moviegoers who enjoyed Marley & Me, A Three Dog Life, Merle’s Door, and Amazing Gracie will bark out loud to this memoir too! In this hilarious and heartwarming memoir, single mother Paula Munier takes on the world’s worst beagle—and loses every time. The puppy that destroys her kitchen cabinets, bites her dates, pees on her neighbors, and bays at the moon is her worst nightmare—and her son’s best friend.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Paula Munier has been a dog person her whole life. Raised by a father with a penchant for Weimaraners, Vizslas, and Great Danes, she got her first dog of her own on her tenth birthday—a black miniature poodle named Rogue. Since then she has shared her life with numerous dogs, cats, fish, and a bearded lizard, all of whom together caused far less trouble than just one small beagle named Freddie. Read more...