The Dog Chronicles: Andie Sunday 11/15/2015

 

Even the most determined hermit cannot be insulated from events that so often sweep the world with terror, horror and death. How often do good people find themselves engaged as passive integers in a formulation of complexity and evil. Paris is on our mind these days. Many of us have history with Paris as do I and my father before me. There are few places on earth that exemplify the richness in form and process which is the very heart and soul that is Joie de vivre. Poor little Andie, she probably wonders why I haunt the cottage weeping to the Edith Piaf’s rendition of the La Marseillaise. http://adgitadiaries.com/2015/11/14/paris-2/ .

It’s not as if there were no signs. A Ba bird, a tiny yellow finch in this case, has been trying desperately to breach the study window and enter the room redolent with images of Trace and Bodhi Dog that line the walls, recalling icons in a Byzantine church. There is no energy in these icons, only memories of a passionate full life now entered into a truth quite different than reality had previously assumed. Ba birds, at least in Egypt where I encountered one in a frenetic flight to Luxor, represent the soul of a deceased person, who has not left the world.

One can imagine the chill I felt when looking at its tiny form gently clinging to the screen and looking straight at me.  It followed me from room to room and back again. For some reason this particular event disturbed my equanimity for days and then the Paris massacre happened. It continues to amaze me how the mind seeks to fantasize the unknown, reducing it to the strange dramas of dreams and omens.

All this, of course, doesn’t phase Andie in the least. For days she has been trying to obtain command of the  art table in front of the Ba bird window. So, I pulled out the work chair, upon which she jumped and proceeded to make a nest that gave her a panoramic view of the garden and a clear view of the coming and goings of birds, including the Ba Bird.

The normal days here find the village nestled into one the the most beautiful Autumns in years. Early in the morning, just before sunrise, the depressions between the rolling hills of bronzed/gold vineyards is tule fog and misty clumps of tree stands in brilliant colors contrasting to distant stands of dark green Redwoods.

Andie, as usual, with an unerring instinct for that which is decidedly not good for her has found some unique dog treats this past week: a rubber seal ring, a huge rubber-band, two bottle caps, and an object ((how shall I describe this?)  that is either a health vibrator or a marital aid. It was about nine inches long, flesh colored and contained a stretch of ridges. It’s girth disqualified it from being an industrial sized pencil. It appeared around Halloween, but clearly was too small to have been a costume, but certainly an accessory—-enough said! She discovered it in a pile of leaves beneath the second story window of a neighbor.

The other significant find caused me some alarm, first, because I didn’t discover it until potty time, and second, the implications were rather upsetting.  Here dear readers of the delicate sort, you  might want to switch the channel for a few moments. Andie’s poop was a strange color and tangled in it were these twisted narrow lengths of whitish strands. ‘OhMyGawd,’ I thought, she has worms. How is that possible? She has taken her medicine on a regular schedule. Am I going to get worms after all those dog kisses? I do admit that Andie’s kisses are quite sweet and her kibble breath very endearing.

So, I quickly gathered her and  it up,  rushed to the Vets for a consultation and waited for the Lab results. Turns out—Andie had eaten a sheet of Bounty fabric softener. I recalled several days earlier that a few of them has escaped my neighbor’s recycle bin and then, I assumed disappeared, because they had been returned to the garbage can. All that cost me a neat $85.00. Andie is a dumpster diver in the making and how oh how I must find a way to curb her appetite for the strange and exotic. Well, maybe not curb exactly for that latter description rather succinctly describes me and I turned out OK—sort of.

Andie’s godmother has suggested I enhance Andie’s meals with vegetables. At first I tried raw carrots, which she would have none of and I discovered were dropped here and there throughout the house. Later, they were missing. She had gathered them and deposited the collection in her day floor bed, along with sticks, some rose hips, an acorn, part of an apple and what looked like a large brown leaf. She’s acting like a crazed squirrel preparing for the end times. Finally she accepted cooked green beans and carrots mixed into to her dinner meal. The collections have stopped. All is mostly well with the world, because she doesn’t know about Paris and I protect her from monsters of all kinds, including raw carrots. Bon Appetit.