Meet the Dogs (Martha)

Martha was discovered by an animal rescue group out to retrieve a cat from an eighty-two-year-old woman dying of cancer. I was at the SPCA when they brought the animals in. They told me they’d found them in a decrepit inner-city row house. Inside, the house was a maze of stacked newspapers, dirty dishes, sacks of clothes, and other debris. The underfed cat was barely alive, and then a neighbor told them there was also a dog. They dreaded what they might find, but to their surprise, she turned out to be a stout and friendly, seemingly perfectly happy dog of about six years.

Though the woman was barely able to feed herself, the dog had managed to get to the corner store to beg for handouts, where people had been generous. (When we first brought her home, every time we sat down for a meal, she would plant herself next to someone and bark, evidently her M.O. for getting sandwiches in her old neighborhood, but she adapted quickly to our regular meal plan and soon forgot those ways.)

And why wouldn’t they have given her snacks? Could you say no to that face? Martha was a lovely, small Norwegian elkhound. Her face expressed many things, sweetness, joy, but also a heartrending wistfulness. She would lie on the deck and stare into the distance with such an intent gaze that I had to wonder if she was remembering the old woman she’d lived with. I knew the woman must have been kind, because Martha exuded grace. She assumed the best of everyone and carried herself always in a manner that showed her to be strong, gentle, modest, and, at the same time, regal.

She did have two fears. One was of storms, when she would shake, sweat (though I know dogs don’t sweat, but something like it), and glue herself to my legs; the other was of being left, or so I imagined from her worried looks. So I never left her anywhere.

When we took walks, she did not need a leash. With the fiendish runaways I have now, I can barely imagine it. And when I did use a leash with her, for the sake of fearful humans, she hung her head with shame, as if she were being punished and led to jail. (The experts say dogs don’t feel shame, but any dog owner knows better.) Part of the reason she didn’t need a leash was that she was crippled in one front leg, perhaps with arthritis, but likely from an early broken leg that did not heal correctly. She dug a deep, wide hole under a large spirea bush just off the deck, and she would doze contentedly in there through hot summer afternoons.

Martha was cheerful, and fun. She never begrudged our putting a Santa hat on her at Christmas or other nonsense. She always went along with a joke. When it snowed, Martha went into paroxysms of joy—shoving her nose into the snow and tossing it into the air, rolling in it, and running as frisky as a puppy, despite her bum leg. She was never aggressive, nor was she submissive. She was simply the Queen of the Dogs, and all dogs respected her.


She shed pillowsful of sticky, fluffy undercoat; she squeezed her hairy, rotund body smack against me under the covers, panting heavily, when it rained at night; I had to have her coat professionally washed because it was so thick; I had to keep up with nail clipping because she did not wear down the nails on her hurt leg; I had to lift her up constantly into cars and onto sofas, chairs, and beds, and up stairs; and in the end, I had to take her to the vet too many times when she got cancer. I could not bear to part with her, so I did not do the merciful thing soon enough. But finally I did.

During my trips driving to and from the vet with Martha over those months, I had watched an ordinary event unfold, extraordinary only to the primary parties involved. A family was moving out of their beloved home. I had seen the “For Sale” sign going up and coming down; I saw the swing set dismantled; and finally I saw the moving van’s arrival. On my very last trip home from the vet, with Martha’s body in the back seat, I spotted the family sitting outside on some benches. They had those bottles of liquid and the plastic wands to blow bubbles, like little kids use, only they were older kids with their mother. They seemed to be having some sort of farewell ceremony for their old house, blowing bubbles into the wind to say goodbye. It was impossibly corny and apt, and I couldn’t help feeling a harsh irony at witnessing their bittersweet farewell while I was descending into my own black grief. It felt like a sharp cut, and I still have trouble passing that house.

But fade out that memory in favor of another. For a few years we had four dogs, an intense pack for our small house and yard. The members were Momo, Martha, and two others, Nadia and Scout, who I will describe in the next posts. Nadia always gratefully assumed the role of omega dog--bottom rank, class clown, willing playmate to all. Scout, a tall, blond, imposing German shepherd, the one who shook Momo in the previous post, was another story. She made her power in the pack known and had no hesitation enforcing her authority with the other dogs, except Martha.

Martha’s position as lead dog was never in question, and I savor the memory of the four of them outside in the back yard, the three younger ones running in a crazy, rambunctious circle around Martha, chasing each other and bouncing together in a frenzy of play. In the center, Martha lies proudly watching them, occasionally barking out with matronly enthusiasm, the queen enjoying the festival of her knights as they joust, joke, and tumble together, for her amusement.

Farewell, my friend!

Meet the Dogs (Momo)

Despite my defense of and devotion to shelter dogs, Momo came to us from a breeder, as a seven-week-old puppy. He’s a Schipperke, a breed that is originally from the Netherlands, bred down from Belgian shepherds. He is not a Toy dog and would be offended to be considered so, though personally I like Toy dogs. Schipperkes are in the Non-Sporting AKC Group. They served as boat dogs on barges in canals or ratters in shops, and proved excellent guard dogs either way.

I didn’t want to go to a breeder for a dog, but I did it for the preservation of marital peace (and there are certainly other good reasons for going to breeders). My husband had asked that I return the shepherd mix I’d just adopted from our local SPCA, a practice inconsistent with my own ethics. To solve the dilemma, my mother graciously adopted Penny, the shepherd mix, from me, giving her a much better home with thirty-five acres of rolling countryside, and I sought out a more mutually acceptable dog.

We agreed on a small dog, so after some research, I picked Momo when I figured out that the dog in Beatrix Potter’s story The Pie and the Patty Pan was a Schipperke, though with a tail. (Schipperkes have tails in England and South Africa, where, a South African friend told me, they are as common as Labrador retrievers are here, but always with tails. She kept staring at Momo’s cropped end.)

Since the dog in the Beatrix Potter tale is friendly with a cat, I guess I subconsciously assumed Momo would get along with our group of four (or so) cats (“or so” to be explained later). In reality, I fell short on both the size and character projections: with his energy level and barkativity, his sixteen pounds take up more room than a lot of heftier dogs. He also chases the cats, which Penny (the shepherd mix) did not. But he does have his winning ways.

Momo is a sharp old man of twelve now. He has almost always had an easy life. Following Carol Lee Benjamin’s book Mother Knows Best, I (sort of) trained him with rewards of affection instead of the treat-reward method, so he’s never begged much for food, only petting (more on begging later). The dogs who joined us after Momo, all cases of dogs in distress, have been beggars and frantic for food. Maybe because he never went without, Momo has always been fairly casual about food and reveals specific preferences, such for as macaroni and cheese or grits. He eats only the yolks from hardboiled eggs, and picks the cheese off of pizza. He has much self-confidence. In fact, you could say he is a little cocky. I prefer to think of it as spunky. He is sassy, in a fun way. He definitely has a sense of humor and knows when he has gotten the best of humans, dogs, or cats, and seems to relish the moment. I can see the glee in those beady black eyes.

But his peaceful life has had some drama. Once he got lost for a very scary thirty-six hours, when a giant, angry dog chased him out of a park. Eventually, a long two nights later, he found his way to a friend’s house. She called me at one a.m. with the news, and we were tearfully reunited (I swear he cried when he saw me). A few months later, I nearly had a heart attack when our then-new German shepherd picked him up in her teeth and began shaking him like a rag doll. Momo forgets that he is not as big as other dogs, but while he can be lionhearted, he is not stupid. He never got in her way again.

He would like to sleep outside the kitchen door all night in order to protect us, but now he gets arthritis, so I make him come inside. He curls up (or stretches out, little legs straight up in the air) on my bed, or sometimes goes downstairs to crash on the sofa if he thinks it’s getting too close in the bedroom, where the two other dogs also sleep. I always run a fan at night, because it does get a little close with all those dogs in there.

Momo chooses his friends. He tends to get along just fine with poodles, but picks fights with German shorthaired pointers, which is not a good idea, pound for pound. As for small children, it’s best if they stay out of the way. The friendships he made as a puppy have remained tight for life. Lucky, a tall, bold Airdale now departed, was a longtime friend, and it was to Lucky’s house that he found his way in the middle of the night that time he got lost (we lived miles away, and Lucky lived on the edge of the park that was the scene of the mishap). His best friend ever, though, happens to be Penny, the doubly adopted shepherd, who was his very first friend and who he met when we first brought him into the family.

For years, we went out to my parents’ farm every Sunday, where the two dogs would frolic the afternoons away, splashing in the stream and running back muddied and confettied with tiny green burrs. Now the farm is gone, and the dogs’ chins are grizzled and their gaits are slowed, but the friendship endures. We say they are cousins, and when we bring Momo to visit Penny, they whine with excitement and become puppies again.

About three or four months after Momo arrived, I knew he needed a companion at home. I was a volunteer at the SPCA at the time and had seen many dogs come and go, but when my eyes lit on Martha, I knew she was the one for us. Indeed, she proved to be the greatest of all dogs. I have never known one to surpass her in character and beauty, and a day doesn’t go by that I don’t think of her and miss her friendship.

To be continued.....