Note: The title was generated by CoPilot. These words are mine, all mine.
While Omalola was getting an ultrasound and other tests, Bruce and I walked around the L.L. Bean store in Hoffman Estates. Not many people were there, but there was something about the casual, yet elegant, outdoorsy atmosphere that made it easy to strike up conversations with strangers. I gravitated to the shoe department because LL Bean shoes look cool. The LL Bean label is a bit of status and holds a memory of visiting the store in Freeport, Maine with our second family, Gene and Bob Proctor who took us under their wing in the backwash of my brother’s death.
I told the clerk, a tall, sandy-long-haired young man my shoe size and what looked good on the shoe display wall. I enjoyed being waited on as my sandy-long-haired young man looked for appropriate styles and fits in the back room. He’d bring a box, rustle the tissue, loosen the shoe laces and hand me a shoe. I slipped it on. Nope. Try a larger size.
Shoes have a way of making you feel better than good, they are a firm base that wrap around your feet and help you stand up, just that, stand up. With the right shoes, my back straightens, my attitude slides into a confidence I did not have with my everyday beat around the farm shoes.
I think about the Bible verse that says:
“Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace” (Eph. 6: 14, ESV).
That peace, that peace, that peace, a heavy peace that felt like being numb, but I wasn’t sure which it was—peace or numb or both, had lifted around the time we brought Aiden into our lives. He’s a lively, happy puppy, eager to work, eager to grab papers or furniture covers or my gloves with my hands. His teeth pinch.
I feel naked with my feelings, those bites, whirling me right into anger that bellows and my hand flying before I think. Bruce too hates the loud. But the dog books say: Yelp like another dog. So I do. I hate the whirl of anger, how it flies out of me without thinking. I miss the quiet. Aiden is a strong, dominant dog full of challenge. I am at a loss what to do. And see bringing Aiden through this stage will take time and consistency. I don’t want to ruin him.
The guilt weighed on me. You can’t apologize to a dog. And as far as God goes I have stepped out of my Jesus clothes and stepped into shame. I turned away from the way of peace, before I could stop myself. Ugly. Then before sleep, the night before we drove to Hoffman Estates, I read St. Porphyrios’ words in Wounded by Love:
It is not necessary to concern yourself with the weeds. Don’t occupy yourself with rooting out evil. Christ does not wish us to occupy ourselves with the passions, but with the opposite. Channel the water, that is all the strength of your soul, to the flowers and you will enjoy their beauty, their fragrance their freshness.
You won’t become saints by hounding after evil. Ignore evil. Look towards Christ and He will save you. Instead of standing outside the door shooing the evil one away, treat him with disdain. If evil approaches from one direction, then calmly turn in the opposite direction. If evil comes to assault you, turn all your inner strength to good, to Christ. Pray, ‘Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.’ He knows how and in what way to have mercy on you. And when you have filled yourself with good, don’t turn anymore towards evil. In this way you become good on your own, with the grace of God. Where can evil then find a foothold? It disappears. (135)
I am teaching Aiden to look into my eyes, to put his focus on me. Eye to eye is not easy for a dog and needs reinforcement. A fierce look has stopped Omalola’s grabbing the leash and barking. It’s lovely when we are walking and she looks to me, with her soft, companionable eyes.
Aiden’s eyes are pale, the color of dried hay. His eyes looking at mine, though rewarded, carry trust, but also the wildness, the otherness I remember from Annie Dillard’s encounter with a weasel in Teaching a Stone to Talk:
Our eyes locked, and someone threw away the key.
Our look was as if two lovers, or deadly enemies, met unexpectedly on an overgrown path when each had been thinking of something else: a clearing blow to the gut. It was also a bright blow to the brain, or a sudden beating of brains, with all the charge and intimate grate of rubbed balloons. It emptied our lungs. It felled the forest, moved the fields, and drained the pond, the world dismantled and tumbled into that black hole of eyes. If you and I looked at each other that way, our skulls would split and drop to our shoulders. But we don’t. We keep our skulls. So. (14).
I can’t make Aiden look into my eyes, but I can point to my eyes and offer a reward when he locks his eyes onto mine. Then I work on extending the time for him to watch. But there can be no force, only quiet persistence and treats. The work is to focus on what Aiden does right. It seems to me it’s the same way with learning to keep ourselves turned toward God, our eyes on Jesus. St. Porphyrios suggests we don’t need to beat ourselves into that watching and it’s best not to focus on the powers of darkness to try to fight them. Seems like we are surrounded by forces that would tease our eyes away from Jesus, the good and right and pure. But the way to respond is not to fight.
St. Porphyrios says:
There are two paths that lead to God: the hard and debilitating path with fierce assaults against evil and the easy path with love. There are many who chose the hard path and ‘shed blood in order to receive Spirit until they have attained great virtue. I find the shorter and safer route is the path with love…That is, you can make a different kind of effort: to study and pray and have as your aim to advance in the love of God and of the Church. Do not fight to expel the darkness from the chamber of your soul. Open a tiny aperture for light to enter and the darkness will disappear. (136)
I have chafed at the intense emphasis contemporary Christian preacher types put on suffering, so St. Prophyrios’ words speak hope and a truth that resonates with what I know. I’ve done battle with the powers of darkness by turning to the Jesus prayer, which replaced bad thoughts with a cry for mercy. At times I’ve added, “your mercy endures forever” when I feel shaky, when I feel the mercy might not extend to me. I’m learning to recognize the embossed invitation to walk down to the pit, to say no to the heroism of feeling sorry for myself. Nope. No thank you. I’d rather let thanksgiving and love rise up like a river, flowing out of me to God and Bruce and our animals, and especially to you my readers who grace me with your eyes and ears reading or listening to this.
Already I’ve stopped trying to walk the two dogs together on my first, early morning walk down the road because Aiden challenges Oma to play and won’t stop. I’m over faced and the dogs are over faced. Oh it’s lovely to walk into quiet with Omalola, her catching my eyes, her burying her nose in grass to sniff the sniffs. And Aiden is eager for the attention I give through training. He has the potential to be a fancy obedience dog, far beyond my skills.
Well, let’s go back to L.L. Bean, my feet planted on the varnished wood floor. I particularly liked a maroon pair on the sale rack, but the tall, sandy-long-haired young man said those were the last ones, until he found one in my size in the back. Ahh, that fits. But I needed support for my feet that sometimes feel like they are collapsing in my sleep. He looked for orthotics to stuff in them. No luck. They didn’t fit right.
While I was waiting for different shoes to try, I watched another couple trying on slippers with thick soles so you could walk right outside from the living room. They were fleece lined and warm. So I added those to my purchase.
All the while I was wondering how Omalola was doing with her ultrasound to see if there was anything causing her to act like an old dog when she’s only three. When I am talking to someone on the road, she will lie down on cold pavement. She sacks out at the vet’s office and taps out when I throw the ball. It wasn’t long ago, when she was as busy as Aiden. My local vet has done thorough testing and aside from alkaline urine has found nothing wrong. He says she is healthy and I feel the ground shift under my feet because my instinct, my perception says she acts like a person with deep fatigue. Lately she’s started vomiting at assorted hours of the night, so he referred me to Thrive vet clinic for deeper diagnostics. And yes, there’s part of me that hopes they find something, so the ground stops shifting.
The clerk carried my shoe boxes to the counter, so I wouldn’t have to shlep them as I wandered through the store looking at sweaters and camping gear and their famous canvas bags, each one marked with different stripes. Gene Proctor bought a big bag for me, that I use for my horse gear. I still own a brightly colored sweater I bought in Freeport.
Then I turned and saw a woman with two dogs. Dorothy said one was a village dog—dogs that live as “parasites” in their towns, breeding with each other, without the human intervention of picking parents for litters. She said they live alongside humans on the streets, under porches. The other dog was a pitty mix. Both lay down, eyes bright and eager as they watched her. Oh my goodness the connection. I asked what to do with Aiden’s active teeth. She said grab his muzzle and say no, then give him a toy and praise him for taking the toy. She was not a fan of clicker training because there needs to be a mix of positive reinforcement and pressure/release. It nearly ruined Mrs. Horse, so I know well what she’s talking about. She recommended that I find a local dog training club where I could get help. (I have).
After we said goodbye, that was more blessing than goodbye, Bruce and I went to the counter to pay. Those packages from Amazon are fun to pick up off the porch, a sort of brown, boxed present, but they don’t beat going to an elegant store, that hasn’t worn down and looking at a variety of goods. You can meet people, strike up casual conversations, and learn new things. I still remember Jean from the make-up counter at Bergner’s, how seeing her every time I needed to refresh my Clinique was a time to catch up on her news and mine. I’m not a make-up person, but those years I found a way to wear it, that matched my personality and face. I felt beautiful. Same thing with new shoes and a good talk. With malls and physical stores dying in the wake of online shopping, we are losing an important way to meet people in person and do the age old human thing of going to a market, interacting with people and goods. But the store was eerily empty for a weekday before Christmas.
Right after lunch Doc called and said that everything looked good with Omalola’s tests. He found no reason for her vomiting and urinary issues. “You’re lucky she is so mellow. Many people would love to have a dog like her,” he said. The ground shifted under my feet. I guess my perceptions are off. But I am not sorry I asked these questions. And thanked Bruce for coming along. And I remembered how Omalola was a wild girl, how I trained her to settle and she has become a lovely walking companion and friend.
But when I studied the results of her bloodwork and urinalysis the next day, there were things I wondered about like high ph when she is on a prescription diet, protein in her urine, and we still don’t know what’s causing the vomiting. And moderate enlargement of lymph nodes. We are changing her to another prescription diet that is easier on her stomach and might be more effective with the ph in the urine than the current diet. Doc isn’t worried about the lymph nodes and decided to run another blood panel that is specialized and looks at her gut health.
The next night was darker than dark, and I was bone dog tired, when I set out to take Aiden to bravery class. It’s been a good challenge for him to try weird things like running through a gauntlet of balloons that’s covered over with a tarp or walking on a tarp that is flapping. This pup that didn’t know how to walk up and down the stairs showed willingness to try.
This time we had to climb on air bags used to pack cars on container ships. And then ask our dogs to climb aboard. I felt vulnerable with my legs stretched side to side on this bag that rocked. Aiden wanted to climb up. I hoisted him up and held him. Next we got on with another dog. When it was the big male German Shepherd’s turn to join us, I figured it was time for Aiden’s potty break. (He’d begun to stink.) Even though the German Shepherd is impeccably trained, Aiden is not and I didn’t want to be caught between them. The final exercise was to hide behind a big pile of bags and call our dogs one at a time. I figured Aiden would wander to the dogs and owners waiting their turn, my call to come meaningless, like he did the last time we tried this exercise with boxes. But surprise, surprise he poked his nose between the bags. I whispered, “Here I am” and he crawled between them to my arms.
Works Cited
Dillard, Annie. Teaching a Stone to Talk. New York, Harpers. 1982
The English Standard Version Bible. Wheaton: Crosswy, 2001. Print.
Porphyrios, Saint. Wounded by Love. Evia, Denise Harvey. 2018
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