Trinny has gone to Doggie Heaven

I cannot even express how much it hurt to have her put down this evening, but she was so sick and she was beginning to show signs that she was in pain. We couldn't keep her with us anymore, it wasn't fair to her.

We held her as the injection took hold and we wept. That was four hours ago. I am still leaking tears.

Goodbye, Trinny. We will miss your goofy personality, your long, fawn-like uncoordinated legs, your jack-in-the-box greetings. You were an exceptionally good dog, sweet natured and pure of heart, and your absence has already left a searingly painful hole in my heart.

The down-side of pet ownership…

A little more than a year ago, Sasha died unexpectedly. She was a sweet little Maltese who had an unhappy life until she came to us and was reunited with her brother and litter-mate, Nash. Nash survives her and, with Candy, his nemesis and sweetheart, at his side, he did not long grieve Sasha’s passing.

Shortly before Sasha passed on, we took in an elderly Fox Terrier. This sweet old lady never put a foot wrong in her life…she spent her first fourteen years with a family that, when they decided to move to the UK, decided that the UK quarantine was more than they were willing to deal with, and decided to either find the dog another home or, failing that, put her down. After a lifetime of being a faithful member of the household, this poor old girl was facing a lethal injection for no greater crime than just being a dog. My husband, the soft-hearted, couldn’t see that and opened the doors for her.

Last year Trinny, the Foxy, had to undergo some surgery for tumours. It took her a while to recuperate…she’s 15 now and at the end of her expected life span…but recover she did. Within a few weeks she was gambolling on the back lawn and leaping like a jack-in-the-box to greet us when we returned from shopping. My husband, who has been afraid of dogs his whole life until we got the Maltese, which are little more than animated stuffed animals, has taken firmly to Trinny. She is a sporting dog who is more dog than stuffed toy, and she has the most meltingly beautiful, dark, soulful doe eyes! Good natured and personable, Trinny just leaps her way into your heart.

This weekend I noticed she seemed down, and Monday she seemed to be disoriented, staggering about a bit. She seemed to be favouring her right front paw, but not as if it were injured. By Tuesday she hadn’t gotten any better and Hubby and I had a discussion about her health.

This is a difficult thing to do. How do you put a price on a pet’s life, especially if you have the resources to pay for surgeries and such? At what point do you stop? My primary concern was that her tumours had metastasized to the brain or spinal cord…surgery and chemo would not improve the quality of her life, it would simply subject her to more pain and feeling sick. If she were a much younger dog, then perhaps it would be a viable option, but for a dog who is already at the end of her life span, I cannot justify making her last days those of pain from surgeries and malaise from chemo drugs. Her symptoms could also be those of a mild stroke, but whatever the cause, she obviously needed a trip to the vet.

So, yesterday morning we headed for the vet’s office. Lately, Hubby has been taking Trinny our for walks on the beach…she just loves the beach…so when she saw the leash and got a ride in the car, I am certain she expected to end up at the beach. The look of confusion and disappointment on her face when we got out of the car in the vet’s parking lot was just sad. Poor thing, once inside she knew where we were and she does not have happy associations with the vet’s office after those two surgeries. She sat down next to me and started to moan.

The vet said that my fears were justified, that in an old dog like her that had had such a big tumour, metastasis could well be the problem and, given her age, stroke could also be a cause for her symptoms. I put her on the floor and let her stagger around for a minute so he could see what I was talking about. He concurred, then noticed something I had completely overlooked: she was holding her head funny.

On the examining table again, Trinny had every inch of her spine poked and prodded until the vet decided she could have a pinched nerve and her stiff posture and drunken gait could all be from that. He still did not rule out more dire possibilities, but gave her a shot of cortisone in the neck. I was handed a packet of Prednisone for her, with instructions to bring her back if she wasn’t better by the time the Prednisone was gone.

She seems a bit more cheerful this morning…although I am sure the nice fat chunks of cheese (with her Prednisone buried inside) she is getting twice a day are at least partly responsible for her eagerness at seeing me at the kitchen door. Hubby and I have come to an agreement on handling the last days of our dog babies’ lives and if this, indeed, turns out to be a recurrence of her tumour, then we’ll take her to the beach for a final walk, then go together with her to the vet where we will hold her and pet her as she slips into her final sleep.

My husband does not want to put a price on the lives of our little canine babies, but I see the situation differently. It isn’t a matter of the money, it is a matter of the animal’s comfort and well-being. What is kinder for the dog: repeated surgeries and chemo that will negatively impact the quality of its continued life? Or letting the dog fall to sleep…permanently…while being petted and comforted by its people? There has to be a balance between our desire to keep the animal alive and at our sides and the animal’s need for surcease from suffering.

We are looking for a puppy…a Yorkie, this time. Hopefully we will find one and have her home while Trinny is still with us so that Trin can enjoy the baby, too. She’s a gentle old dog and I think a puppy in the house would be delightful for her…she loves snuggling up with the Maltese when they allow it. We are trying to enjoy her as much as we can, but I can’t shake the Sword of Damocles I see hanging over her head. Fifteen is the expected life span of these dogs and she has reached it. Hopefully, she’ll go on a few more years…she’s not frail or fragile or incontinent or anything like that…and her life will be a happy one as she continues to enrich ours,

But if she doesn’t, then we embark upon the hardest part of being pet owners…letting them go for their sake instead of keeping them on for our own.

Winter mornings

A few years back, when Nash was our only dog, we fretted what to do for him on rainy days when we were out. We were living in the cottage when had only a narrow strip of pavement for a back garden, and no shelter whatsoever. We settled on a little doghouse made of a resin-like plastic, reasoning that while it wasn’t the Ritz (as Nash seemed to view the inside of the cottage), it was a roof over his shaggy little head and shelter from the brisk wind.

Nash, of course, disagreed, He determinedly refused to consider the structure, preferring to stand pathetically at the back door, dripping wet, those big brown eyes silently pleading for us to let his shivering little dog body into the warmth of the house. It worked every time and the doghouse because one of this bits of flotsam that we all accumulate until we eventually gave it away and it became the white elephant of another person who had a similar back garden…and a similarly inclined dog.

We moved to this house three years ago and put a bed on the tiled, covered, lighted patio for Nash. Now, you must understand, Nash (and all additional doggies) sleep inside the house at night during cool weather, but when we go out, we feel obliged to provide a comfortable, sheltered place for him to rest until we get home. He took to that little basket and pad and made it his own until Candy joined the family and promptly chewed it to bits.

Subsequently, a couple of old carpets served as an insulation against the cold ceramic tile floor and the dogs seemed happy enough with their indoor and outdoor beds until Trinny came along. The other dogs, being Maltese, are fluffy little creatures that need monthly grooming and haircuts. Top their natural fuzz with a fleecy little jersey, and they stay warm and happy on all but the coldest days. Trinny, on the other hand, is a long-legged fox terrier with a coarse, close coat and no winter undergrowth. When the weather turns mild, Trinny quakes like an aspen and clatters those big teeth of hers resoundingly. A jersey helped, but didn’t solve the problem, so we looked into the matter of a new dog bed.

We scouted around and settled on a large hard-plastic bed that was vented at the bottom and had a rim around the base to keep the bed up off the ground. This would prevent cold from so easily leaking through the base of the bed and, if wind blew rain onto the patio floor, would keep the bed dry. With an assortment of old blankets, pillows and mats, along with each other for body heat, we expected them to make a little dogpile for warmth and live happily ever after.

Have you ever considered how amazing it is that these little creatures whom we presume to be so much less intelligent than we are, stymie us at every possible turn? The bed was plenty big for Trinny and the Maltese Mafia, but they didn’t see it that way. Night after night either Hubby or I would have to go out onto the patio and scold the growling little white thugs into letting Trinny into it. And heaven forfend she should have to get up in the night and make her way out to the doggie loo…Nash and Candy would rearrange themselves to take up all the space in the bed and warn off poor Trinny when she got back from answering nature’s call and she, not a stupid old girl, would begin a rather ritualized bark that would not only awaken us from a sound sleep and notify us of her predicament and her need for our intervention. The big doggie bed, as a means of canine social engineering and shared warmth, was a bust.

Winter is fast approaching and not only are the nights cold, the days are beginning to have a decided nip to them. Trinny comes to the kitchen door, clattering her teeth and trembling pathetically in an attempt to gain admittance to the doggie bed in the cubby in our bathroom, but we want the dogs outside during the day. So, yesterday, we made another trip to the pet store, looking for an “igloo” style dog house that might do a better job of retaining doggie body heat during the colder days and evenings. Nash, we knew, would probably turn up his little nose at such a structure, since he had adamantly refused to use the original dog house, but maybe Trinny would find a measure of comfort there.

But there were no igloos that would suit our purposes and disheartened, we started to leave. Out of the corner of my eye, however, high up on an overhead shelf, I spotted some objects that looked rather like denim cocoons. Shaped rather like WWII Quonset huts made of channel-stitched and fluff-filled denim, they had a circular doorway and a padded floor and looked to be just about the size of the travel kennel that our groomer uses to transport the furbabies. It took only a quick examination to determine that these might just be the answer.

Sure enough, Trinny took to it like a duck to water. After I tossed in a smelly little rug from the old doggie bed and a treat, she clambered in, dragging her long legs behind her, and curled up for a snooze. When she pokes her head out to see what’s going on she looks rather like a turtle with a blue denim shell, but she’s obviously quite pleased with her cocoon and, most importantly, isn’t shivering every time I see her.

The Maltese Mafia, however, are rather a different kettle of fish. Candy dislikes the thing intensely and, rather than crawl inside to escape the chill, climbs on top of the thing, collapsing it into a close facsimile of a regular soft-sided dog bed. Nash is not so reluctant to climb in and take a snooze, but he’s not exactly thrilled when Candy climbs on top while he is inside and collapses the whole thing on top of him.

The chill of early morning, however, has a way of overcoming even the strongest resistance. We let the babies outside at about 6 in the morning to do their doggie business, after which they usually hop into the big doggie bed together for another snooze. But now the mornings have a deep chill to them and the open bed has been stored until the warm mornings of summer return. And today, despite her reluctance, the morning cold drove Candy into one of the cocoons to snuggle up with Nash, and this was the scene on the patio as hubby left for work this morning:

Old dogs, new tricks, and hadeda birds

I usually park in the drive way, so the doggies don’t realize I have arrived home from a jaunt until they hear the garage door motor grind to life. And, ordinarily, they wait until they actually see me before they start their chorus of greetings. It was with great surprise…and a secret soupçon of pleasure…that I heard their little barky voices as soon as the garage door began its torturous journey upwards.

My joy, however, was short-lived. I stepped out onto the patio not to the expected milling of little doggie bodies milling about my ankles, but to the sight of all three of them milling about a hadeda bird they had managed to surround on top of the pool cover!

I enticed them away with the magic word. “Goodies!” I warbled. “Who wants a goodie?”

Six big brown eyes turned instantly in my direction, twelve little doggie legs churned madly off the pool cover and onto the patio, all making an eager beeline directly in my direction. The bird staggered around the patio cover for a few moments, then folded her ruffled wing feathers neatly against her body and then slowly, with great dignity, stalked her way off the pool cover, onto the lawn, and around the corner of the house where the little pack of goodie-snarfing wolf-descendants could no long see her.

Biggie-dog, the Foxy, had a harder time relinquishing her hunting instincts than the little white Maltese fluff balls. She dithered a couple of times at the ironwork that surrounds the patio, taking a step back towards the pool, but the lure of goodies is strong. She could see me standing at the kitchen door, my customary spot for dispensing dog treats, where the other two little miscreants were already bouncing up and down, loudly demanding their promised boon. Eventually the certainty of the treat won out over the potential fun of continuing to torment the bird and she, too, squeezed herself between the iron bars and presented herself at the kitchen door for the dog biscuit.

Treats in hand, I led the dogs through the house and out into the front courtyard and, once they were unable to return to the back garden and resume harassing the bird, gave them the promised treats. Checking through my bedroom window a few minutes later, I could see the bird indignantly striding back and forth across the lawn, occasionally stopping to twitch a ruffled feather into place with her long dark beak, her continued aggravation obvious. It wasn’t until she considered herself sufficiently presentable to rejoin her brethren that she powerfully flapped those long wings and, with a raucous cry, lifted off for less dangerous pastures.

Biggie-dog has been having difficulty integrating with the others and we have begun to grow concerned. At 14, she’s always been an “only dog,” and while she is friendly to other dogs, really has had no real experience in the group interactions and sharing that is part of being a multi-dog household. We do not allow our dogs to fight…aggression between them is swiftly and soundly discouraged…but you cannot force acceptance on them. At night, when there is just one large bed for the three of them, Biggie-dog often barks for us to come out and force the other two to let her into the bed, and if she gets up in the night for a drink of water or a pee break, the other two will spread out and growl at her on her return, prompting her to make that single yark, repeated incessantly, that brings us out to silence the growls from the Maltese Mafia.

But yesterday I saw them working together in a remarkably well orchestrated show of cooperation, as if their differences had been laid aside in order to pursue a common goal. Old dogs can learn new tricks after all!

I have a very nice life...

I have a very nice life.

It’s not perfect, by any stretch of the imagination, but at this time in my life I am living better than at any time in my past.

For some people, life is a struggle from the moment they are born…and it remains a struggle until the day they die. The definition of struggle is subjective, of course, dependent on the lowest common denominator for survival in the society in question. But in my life, the struggle to simply survive, to have enough to eat and a warm, dry place to rest my head, often came perilously close to being lost.

A person living in a tipsy shack on the edges of Gugulethu might find that comment laughable, since I grew up in America, but it is no less true for all that my definition of privation is richer than hers might be. Before the word “homeless” came into common use, I found myself so, staying with a series of friends and working peripatetically. When I was able to establish my own place, it was an endless struggle to earn enough money to pay for that roof and eat. There were infinite days of hunger, eating one scant meal a day or living on unsweetened, milkless oatmeal for days at a time. There was a time that my entire cache of personal possessions could be rolled up into a sleeping bag and carried on my back.

This life of privation was not freely chosen, not a vagabond manifestation of my hippie soul or artistic free spirit, but the culmination of a series of events in my life, most of them not of my choosing. From the sexist paradigm that deprived me of a scholarship opportunity in favour of a less-deserving male student to the corporate ball-gazing that deprived me of a respectable career opportunity because their tests told them I was “too smart to be happy doing this work,” I found myself uneducated, unqualified, and unemployed.

For most of my life I compounded an unfortunate beginning with expedient choices that had short term advantages but were long term disasters. But hardship creates limits, not only on opportunity but on your thinking. Long term planning is not possible when you have been forced to focus and plan only as far as the next meal or the next night’s rest. It was a relief to come to a place where I could plan week by week instead of day by day. And it was a luxury when I could indulge in month-to-month living, although no less a struggle.

My life has never been one of plenty. Even when I reached a time of having an abundance of stuff, I knew no other way to live than to battle my way through life. I never lived in an upscale community, I could barely afford to buy a house in a working class neighbourhood and then it was a never-ending struggle to scrape together enough money to pay the mortgage. Twice I came perilously close to foreclosure, and only managed to get out from under by refinancing the house…increasing my debt and monthly burden, and paying the instalments from the proceeds of the new loan, a strategy calculated to end badly, but the only solution available.

I had dreams, but unlike others, I never mistook those dreams for reality, entitlement, or even goals. Life had ground me into a pragmatist, a person who knew her dreams were just that…castles in the air…pretty fictions to be enjoyed but never mistaken for reality…or even possibility. One of my favourite dreams was to come to a place where I could work for the pleasure of it, not for the necessity. In this dream, I would have a fine house…not opulent, but generously sized and nicely situated in a pretty garden…and I would drive a nice car. My life would have security and I would feel loved and valued by my partner. In this dream I would have a nice car…practical, of course, so I would not feel guilty for having it…but a quality marque. I would not have to worry about money…and although I would be able to surround myself with things of beauty and quality, lavishness didn’t seem to be a part of my dreams. And I would be forever relieved of the drudgery of housework…I had laboured as my mother’s maid from the time I was big enough to drag a chair to the kitchen sink and wash the dinner dishes, and the ultimate luxury, to my mind, was someone to wash my dishes and clean my bathroom on a regular basis without stressing my budget.

It is perhaps a supreme irony that I grew up in the richest nation on Earth and could not partake in its wealth. I was born with a fine native intelligence but that is not enough in a society that values educational certification over intellect and quickness, that values one gender over another, that substitutes supposition for empiricism. Like most women of my generation, I ultimately looked to marriage for my salvation but I soon found myself in another situation of short term gain followed by long term loss: marriage should never be entered into with ulterior motives, no matter how compelling they might be.

Ultimately I was able to have a life free of hunger and privation, but maintaining that life was an endless struggle. Always, I was one payday away from disaster, one severance package away from losing it all. In Silicon Valley, where I lived most of my adult life and where big companies eat little companies and giant corporations swallow big companies whole without warning, sudden unemployment is a fact of life. But in a place where an executive secretary earns less than $5000 a month but the monthly payment on a modest tract home in a lower middle-class neighbourhood can take all that and more, the distance between affluence and desperation can be measured in weeks of unemployment after a sudden downsizing or corporate buy out. When it takes all you can earn to just keep above water, when you are no longer earning, you drown quickly. And all of the months of princely earnings do not blunt the sword that hangs portentously over your head…on the day the pay checks stop, the sinking begins.

And so I found myself widowed, alone, my income cut in half, my obligations undiminished. Life insurance is an unattainable luxury when you have to worry from one month to the next if you will have enough money to make your modest mortgage payment, when you don’t have enough to put new tires on the 14-year-old truck or the 24-year old station wagon, when you have given up all of your costly vices and still have to scrounge for change for enough gas to get to work. What had been a modestly successful effort by two people to live with a modicum of comfort became the uphill battle of one person to survive.

But there was an epiphany in that sudden plunge into widowhood and self-sufficiency: the sure and certain knowledge that if I kept doing the same things, I would keep getting the same results. A never-ending length of days full of scrimping and struggling stretched before me…unless I changed something.

And so I did. I took out that loan and finished the renovation of my house. I took a long term temp job that paid rather well because the boss was especially odious and couldn’t keep employees from throwing up their hands and walking out…they had to bribe us with fat salaries to stay in our jobs. I just ignored her nasty barbs, icy demeanour and picky personality and put those voluptuous pay checks in the bank. And I began rewriting my life rules.

The first rule I rewrote was the one that said I had to pinch every penny and live close to the bone. I finally remembered that worry is a wholly unproductive activity…the only thing it is good for is to increase stress levels.

The next rule I rewrote was the one about being appropriate. I started wearing brighter colours, I quit fretting about my weight, and opened myself to new experiences, people, even foods.

I then decided that people who live in the past have no future and began planning the next chapter in my life rather than staying stuck in old ones.

Funny thing about opening yourself to new stuff…new stuff happens! Today, that little old tract house is someone else’s burden and I have a lovely, spacious home set in a third of a landscaped acre. My old pickup has been replaced by a Mercedes SUV, and that horrible boss is ancient history: now I employ the sweetest little maid you could ever want to meet and a weekly gardener. My new husband is a professional man who earns a respectable income, is investment savvy, and pays the bills without stressing me about finances. “It hurt me to think of you alone and struggling like when I met you,” he told me the day he increased his life insurance…this, despite his being considerably younger than I am.

I like my life. I live in a beautiful home set in a beautiful garden, all located in one of the most beautiful cities in the world. My house and garden are superbly kept with very little effort on my part. I can buy what I want in the supermarket, although years of frugal living have conspired to keep me from being a spendthrift and I still shop the sales…but now it’s the steak and chops sales rather than hamburger!

Most of all, my life is filled with love. A horde of happy yappy little doggies dance at my feet when I return from an outing, my maid hugs me when she comes to work with her handsome little baby boy tied to her back and again when she goes home in the afternoon. And my husband…he has half a dozen pet names for me, he brings me chocolate when I least expect it, and tells me he loves me without warning or prompting.

Yes, I like my life. It is full, it is abundant, it is rich with those things necessary for a life of comfort and security and love.

Pity I had to come half way around the world to achieve it.

Life’s Odd Little Details…

I have been sick. Not just sick, but sick. And this weekend I finally began feeling a little bit like normal myself.

In the weeks I have been under the weather, life has continued apace. For three weeks I battled one of the worst sinus infections I have ever had, taking three double-strength courses of antibiotics before it was finally brought under control. Unfortunately, that much antibiotic tends to have side effects…and I immediately came down with a fungus infection which, mercifully, was short lived. This was followed by a virus that attacked my joints and muscles and digestive system and lasted nearly a week, which was followed by a mild cold or an allergy…which has reactivated the sinus infection, but much milder than before. Today I’m sitting up, my mind is clear…although my head is still a bit stuffed up…and I feel like I just might make it through the day without resorting either to a nap or pain pills.

Hubby managed to time his business trip to Richard’s Bay…to see the old rotor off to Europe…to coincide with my virus and managed to escape unscathed. Nashie’s sister, Sasha, is getting along better each day…she is now sleeping with the other doggies in the doggie bed, rather than huddling alone on a cushion.

Nashie seems to be unaffected by the addition of another dog to the mix, but Candy is ambivalent. On the one hand, she makes regular attempts to play with Sasha…but on the other hand, she doesn’t want to sleep in the doggie bed when Sasha is in it. Nash, however, has bigger fish to fry…he is being romantically pursued by a Hadeda bird. Yup, you read that right…a Hadeda bird.

We have a really big back garden and after a rain it is not unusual to see a small flock of these big, loud creatures probing the back lawn for grubs and worms. Recently, a single bird has been dropping by and, rather than silently harvesting the goodies from the soil beneath the lawn, it stands in the middle of the open space and raucously calls for Nash to come out. At first we didn’t get what was going on…we opened the doggie door for Nash to rush out and chase the bird…his normal response to them…but instead of flying immediately up into a tree to escape his attentions, the bird took off running! And it ran until Nash came within catching distance, at which time it flew up onto the garden wall, only to come back down and resume the game as soon as he had retreated to a safe distance.

A few days later we saw the bird collecting nesting materials in the back garden and came to the conclusion that it was female, so Hubby christened her “Cleo.” Her visits became more and more frequent, and she became more and more bold. When Nash didn’t respond to her rasping calls, she came looking for him. She would tap with her beak on the window he uses as a doggie door, or flutter her wings against it and, considering the size of her, it made quite ruckus!

This has become a regular thing now, and over the weekend she actually perched herself on a patio chair outside the bedroom window and peered inside, looking for him, crying hoarsely for him to come outside and play. Silly bird…

So, today I’m back on the road to recovery, surrounded by little white doggies and listening to the hoarse song of a lovesick Hadeda bird…my rather unconventional life seems to be coming back on track…

Our family grows

First there was Nash.

My husband was never very fond of dogs, having been rather savagely bitten as a child...on two occasions...but while dating me, he grew rather fond of my ancient little Pekingese, Chloe. When I came to South Africa, Chloe had to stay behind...I feared she was too old to survive the trip...so when I arrived here, it was to an empty house. My furniture was in transit, my dog had a new home, and my husband was at work all day.

But he is a kind-hearted man and loves me enough to face his fear of dogs. Leafing through one of the local circulars one day, I came across a small ad about an elderly woman in our town known to everyone as the "Dog Lady." She was known to be a person who would rescue abandoned animals and care for them until she could rehome them. Unfortunately, she had unexpectedly died recently and left a houseful of animals with no caretaker. The woman's daughter and granddaughter had taken on the task of finding homes for a dozen or more dogs and cats, and were advertising for interested homes.

After conferring with my husband, I called the ad and gave them a rather detailed set of specifications: an adult dog, small sized, housebroken, gentle natured, preferably female. I explained that my husband was not keen on dogs and if we were to get one, it had to be as non-threatening and "user friendly" as possible. The following day two rescuers showed up at my house for a visit, and with them was fluffy white little Nash.

It was a surprising visit. Nashie is a very friendly, open personality dog but not highly active or energetic. So he walked up to Hubby with a wag in his plumed tail and a smile on his doggie face, stretched himself up and put a paw on Hubby's leg. They bonded. We had a dog.

The nice thing about the Maltese breed is they have hair, not fur, so they don't shed or have dander or activate my allergies. The not-so-nice thing about the Maltese breed is that they have hair, not fur, so their hair never stops growing and if you don't take them to the groomers every month, they quickly come to look like animated dustmops. Nashie had recently been groomed, so his body hair was cut short, and he looked like a dapper little gentleman. But there were a couple of things that seemed a little off: he wasn't a very good eater and was therefore a little on the thin side, and he had breath bad enough to wilt plants. That last particularly concerned me, so I whisked him off to the vet and soon learned the two were related: he was thin and not eating because his teeth were bad...which was causing the bad breath. Further, his teeth were so bad that he was on the verge of sepsis! The very next day he was put under and emerged with only 7 teeth left in his whole mouth! After two courses of antibiotics he was finally healed and we were to quickly learn just how formidable his appetite really was!

But he was lonely. Having been abandoned several times (failed placements), Nash had developed separation anxiety and everytime we left him alone, he howled nonstop until we returned, much to the chagrin of our neighbours. After trying behaviour modification and tranquilizers, we finally found the solution to his anxiety problems: enter Miss Candy (AKA Evil Doggie, Mad Thing, and Toothsome Wench).

Hubby took me to the SPCA for Valentine's Day and we found a rambunctious, long-legged, spring-loaded young Maltese/Jack Russell female who had the beautiful white coat of a Maltese and the boundless energy of the Jack Russell. After filling out a five page form, paying R265, and having our home and garden inspected (!), we were approved as an adoptive home under the SPCA's guidelines, and Candy was ours.

It was slow going in the beginning. Candy had been a street dog and what manners she had were bad. She nipped me and Hubby, she dug in the garden, she was aggressive with Nash, and she was given to bursts of mad, frenetic activity, racing around our large garden like the devil himself was perched on her ostrich-plume of a tail. And Nash's little nose was put squarely out of joint by her arrival, his position as spoiled darling of the household in jeopardy. The Count of Maltese Cristo was definitely not enamoured of his Countess! But time is the greatest of healers and eventually Candy acceded to our discipline and Nash came to tolerate her antics and within the span of just a few months they were friends...and Nash stopped howling when we left him home.

We made a cosy little family, the two dog-babies and their indulgent parents, and had no serious thought about adding to the family, but a year and a half after Candy joined us, the daughter of the Dog Lady called us out of the blue...Nash's sister, Sasha, with whom he had lived the first six years of his life, needed a new home. Her second family was emigrating to the UK, which has a six month quarantine for incoming dogs (at the expense of the owner), and she was about to be homeless again. Were we interested?

We agreed to a one week trial, concerned about how Candy would react to a new dog, but the trial was short lived. Sasha arrived here at 7 last night and I was appalled that these people had had her for 2 years and she had no collar or leash, it was winter and she had a short haircut but no jersey, and she had no toys, no blanket, no doggie bed...nothing but a bowl. Candy came from the SPCA and I expected her to arrive naked as the day she was born, but this dog supposedly was coming from a loving home and she didn't even have a collar and a tag with her name and owner's phone number, in case she got lost? By 10 pm, our bedtime, the decision was made: Sasha would stay and as soon as I finish recovering from my sinus infection and can drive again (no driving while under the influence of these pain pills!), we have to go to the vet (she has bad breath, too, and she won't let us touch her ears), the groomer (funky doggie smell!), and the pet store (collar, leash, jersey) with a stop at the kiosk where doggie ID tags are made.

Sasha needs us and, I am sure we will soon discover that, without knowing it, we needed her, too.

Winter's Embrace

Winter…7 am and still as dark as the inside of George Bush’s brain.

With the seasons reversed down here at the nether end of the globe, the shortest day of our year falls in June. June 22, to be exact, nearly a fortnight distant. Although the recent days have been bright and clear, there is an unmistakable crispness to the air that lets you know, make no mistake about it, winter is upon us.

The doggies wear their hated jerseys day and night now, huddling together in the fat, cushy doggie bed at night and squirming into the big bed full of warm people at first light. Slim, long-legged Candy, with her curly white poodle cut, wears her forest green knit turtleneck like a supermodel, platinum ears flowing, dark, expressive eyes flashing. Portly Nash, on the other hand, looks like a rotund little white-whiskered professor in his fleecy green-and-grey argyle vest.

The past few nights haven’t been cold enough to turn on the heaters, although we had a cold snap a week or so back that had us all huddled together beneath the fat new duvet we bought on holiday last year. Amazingly, South African houses are built without heating systems…unless you count fireplaces (which are no more numerous than in American homes)…and the winters here can be bone-chillingly cold, particularly with the stiff winds that are an integral part of the Cape Town experience. Those winds are a blessing in the dry, scorching summer months, for they both cool the air and remove air pollution, leaving the area a veritable playground in paradise. In the winter, however, they serve to exacerbate the deep chill.

By the time the gardener arrived at eight the sun had flung itself into the sky, but its light lacked warmth. Time being money for him, Christopher set to work immediately, his breath issuing out in a visible vapour ordinarily uncommon here. The lack of winter cloud cover proved itself a blessing, allowing the sun to grow robust enough to finally warm the crisp air and chill earth. By ten, Christopher’s jacket was draped neatly over a patio chair, his bare arms glistening with sweat as he clipped and snipped the rain-driven recent growth of what was rapidly becoming a small suburban jungle. Only Christopher’s weekly ministrations keep the enthusiastic vegetation at bay.

The afternoon was sunny and warm outside, but the thick brick walls of the house tend to retain the night-time chill. Sans furnace, with only the feeble heat of a fireplace to warm us…and then only in a small circle immediately in front of the hearth…I pondered dinner: what kind of dish can I prepare that will cook all day and warm up the house? The answer was a sudden craving for Texas chili and that truck stop delicacy, the Chili Size. A quick inventory of the cupboards revealed I need a few things, so it was off to the market and, an hour later, a rich pot of chili bubbled on the stove, sending a fragrant heat wafting through the house.

Dark descended upon us as quickly as it had decamped in the morning. At five I handed Christopher his daily pay and a quart of chili, the old mayo jar thickly wrapped in newspapers, and by six, when we sat down to heaping plates of chili, onion, and grated cheddar, the moonless night had returned. Black as bin Laden’s heart, the night hurls itself upon us without even a twilight’s warning, banishing the frail winter sun until it can screw up the courage to bring us yet another pale and pallid morning. It is winter in Cape Town.