My turn

This one's for Jack and Uncle Earl.

When Jack died, just a few days before Christmas, I was lucky to have the support of friends. My friend Scott helped me by carrying Jack's 65 pound body out of my house and putting it in my car to take to the vet; my friend Linda helped me by driving me to the vet, taking me out for food, cleaning my house and putting away all dog-reminder items while I showered, and then taking me out to Vaughans's Lounge and getting me drunk.

Jack

My dog, Jack Waterman, died yesterday. He was an older dog; 11 years. He had been having some bad arthritis pain, which I expected to nurse him through for many more years. Yesterday, he was unwilling to go out to the park. I thought it was joint pain; I gave him a pain pill and he lay on the living room carpet, panting, while I worked at my desk.

After a little while, he moved next to me, lying on the rug by my chair. I came down to the floor and stroked his face, trying to understand what he was feeling. He was still panting, heavily, and I could see that his tongue was pale lavender instead of pink. I thought about getting him to the vet, but how? If he was unable to walk, how could I get a 65 pound dog in the car?

We have a local house-call vet in the neighborhood; their office hours begin at 10 am. It was just about that time, and I was keying in the phone number, when Jack got to his feet.

He staggered weakly into the bedroom, a distance of maybe 6 feet, and then he lay down. I touched him and felt his body move with his breath, then I ducked back to my desk to grab my phone.

When I got back seconds later, he was gone.

Thank you to my good friends Linda and Scott, who helped me get Jack's body to the veterinarian clinic. Jack's ashes will be spread in a national park somewhere.

Thanks to all my good friends who hugged me and let me cry and tell stories of Jack. Thanks to all my friends online who sent me good wishes.

Jack and his friend Franny

Jack was a good dog.

A two-Boston morning

This morning at the Crescent Park dog run, Jack got to play with not one, but two Boston terriers!

First was Lily; she was a tiny girl.

Later in the morning, Jackson arrived.

Jack really likes to play with small dogs, and Boston terriers are one of his favorite kind of dogs. I think it's because they have such expressive faces.

Feeling at home

Jack is starting to feel at home in the new house. There's still a lot to be done, paintings to hang and boxes to unpack, but he is settling in.

It took him a while to feel comfy, but now he is finally back to using his dog bed again.

Good boy!

Marked

This morning, at the usual time, I threw on some pants, wrapped myself in a scarf, zipped up my fleece jacket, clipped Jack, the dog, to his lead and headed out the door for our walk. Jack usually gets two good walks a day, and like every morning, when he sees me take up the leash, he starts to prance and leap, he's so excited.

We headed out into the bright cold morning. My neighbor's Lincoln was pulling up to the curb, and since I hadn't seen them in a week or so, when Andy and Jera stepped out onto the sidewalk, I stopped for a moment to chat.

We were chatting and suddenly as I looked at her, Jera's eyes went wide and Andy shrieked. "Look at him. Bad dog!"

Jack was PEEING on me!! I guess he was impatient to get going.

No dog treats for you today, buddy.

Working my butt off!

Train grafitti. Click any image to "embiggen."

I have two final papers due - I have to submit the drafts on Monday, and then revise them over the Thanksgiving holiday.

So that's why I have been neglecting my blog. Hope you all don't mind. I've shared some photos of my neighborhood.

Single shotgun house with an incredible blooming senna shrub

Creole cottage on Dauphine Street

Beautiful old rose growing on a Bywater fence - Reve d'Or, maybe?

Jack, hanging out on the gallery outside of Vaughan's Lounge

Enjoy.

Camp Bow Wow

Today Jack had an interview at Camp Bow Wow.

It's a doggie day-care and boarding place, over in the Lower Garden District. Before they accept your dog for care, you have to leave him there for three hours to be observed by the staff while playing with other dogs.

We probably won't leave Jack for day care, unless extreme circumstances require, but we do want to be able to travel out of town. You have to get a reservation early for the holidays, so I wanted to find the right place now.

Jack's an old hand at boarding - he loved the Topanga Pet Resort so much he'd never give a backward glance each time I dropped him off. The staff there loved him so much that even if they had a waiting list for boarding, they'd still take him in.

The folks at Camp Bow Wow seemed to like Jack, too.  I was allowed to watch the first five minutes of his day on video cameras in the waiting area. The trainer returned, and said, "He's going to be fine! We'll see you later!" When I picked him up after my class, he had a personalized folder with a photo!

When I told some of my classmates I had to go pick up my dog, I learned that several of them had used Camp Bow Wow. At first I was a little embarrassed to say the name, so when someone asked where I had dropped him, I said, "It's a place down on Tchoupitoulas."

"Camp Bow Wow?" she asked. She knows the place well.

Even our professor has boarded his dogs at Camp Bow Wow.

I'm reminded again that New Orleans is a small town.

Yappy hour

 

 Every bar in the Bywater has a sign at the door - "No Pets Allowed."

They also have waterbowls outside the front door, and a stash of dog treats behind the bar.

This is a city that breaks the rules.

There are three dog-friendly bars within walking distance of my house - they are dog friendly depending on the bartender. At Vaughan's Lounge, when Krinkle or Beth is tending bar, Jack is welcome. They both love him. The regulars like him too. LJ's a real softie for dogs.

There are other regular dogs at Vaughans. Linda brings her two little Lhasas. Another woman brings her dowager hound, Nola. Greg brings his shepherd, Heather. There's never a conflict when one dog is in the bar-room and another one enters, but sometimes there's a little barking, which is loud and annoying enough that one dog owner decides to go out on the gallery. Usually it's whoever is a smoker, but I've chosen to take Jack out, if I think I've had enough time inside.

J & J's

J & J's Sports Bar can be dog-friendly - but sometimes not. It depends, as I say, on the bartender. Once, I brought Jack inside and everyone at the bar patted him. As almost a formality, I asked the bartender - who I didn't recognize - if it was OK if he came in. "No, it's against the rules," he said. "Sorry."

"Okay," I said. "I'll come back another time without him." When I said it, I was looking at the treat bag behind his shoulder, where another bartender had given Jack a bacon-treat a couple days before.

I've never tried to bring Jack inside Markeys Bar, but that's because Markeys has some good sidewalk tables where he's welcome.

Jack doesn't drink. He's my designated walker.

Vaughan's Lounge

In the afternoon - some afternoons, not all - we take our walk, and our feet naturally lead us to the corner of Lessups and Dauphine Streets here in the Bywater, to Vaughan's Lounge.

My afternoon sojourn is usually one drink long. That's all I need to relax, and that's all Jack needs of adoration and praise before he's ready to go back to our place for his dinner.

A miscellaney

 

I'm not doing a very good job of journal ling, or blogging, these days. School is demanding!

Here's a sample of what's been occupying me this week.

After a week of rain, today is a glorious, cool, perfect Sunday! Perfect for taking Jack to the dog run in Crescent Park, where he found a couple of friends.

He doesn't get to play much, so this made him happy. He romped with a couple of puppies - really, puppies - and I think it tired him out!

I have these new shoes that are eye-shockingly bright! They looked much more subdued online. But they feel so good, I'm keeping them.

When I went to get a new haircut, I was a bit early, so I had a glass of wine in a neighborhood bar across the street.  Great, older place, quiet and dark. The clock doesn't work, so it wasn't 8:05.

My stylist is trying to move my part to the other side of my head. I like it, but I'm always trying to push it the other way before I remember!

Saw this exquisite little oxalis blooming beside my driveway. Look at the shape of its three-way leaves!

This cucumber salad was beautiful and delicious, but how are you supposed to eat it? I tried rolling up the ribbons first, before I gave up and cut it all into pieces.

Jack and I are going for a walk at 2:00. Dem Saints are playing at 3:00! Better find a good bar to watch it from!

I didn't see that coming!

The park - a different day!

This morning Jack and I were in the dog run at Crescent Park, and suddenly huge fat drops of rain started pattering down around us.

We're only a short distance from my house, but that's compounded by the double-back I had to do to get to the railroad track crossing and then back to my house. By the time I stood at the crosswalk to Chartres Street, I was absolutely soaked, and so was Jack.

I didn't take a photo for fear of getting my phone wet.

I got back to my house and once Jack got up on the porch, he shook himself - well, at least he didn't do it in the house!

Starting the day with a cold shower!

Boxing Day

The days are passing very swiftly now. In two days, the moving and storage company comes to pack up our stuff.  We have been boxing stuff up ourselves, though, because this isn't a move like our last move (almost twenty years ago).

For this move, we are separating everything we own into four piles: Store. Donate. Discard. Move to New Orleans.

Our rental house in New Orleans is fully furnished, so very little is coming with us - just clothes, treasures, and important books and papers. That means that we will pay to store whatever we keep - it's a compelling argument to downsize.

It's odd to examine the bits and pieces of crap we've surrounded ourselves with for nearly twenty years. That rusty baking sheet? The paper towel holder? Tupperware?

Grey grey day

Is June Gloom coming early this year?

It's grey outside, and chilly.

Jack doesn't mind it, though; he likes lounging on the back deck in almost any weather.

Jack the dirty dog

Jack slipped out the door this afternoon as we were bringing groceries in the house, and when he returned later, he bounded inside with his feet absolutely filthy with black, foul-smelling mud, tracking footprints all over the wood floor.

Here he looks properly embarrassed as I try to clean him up.  I don't think he likes having people clean his feet, because he slipped away and back out the door. I chased him up to the street and found him stopped, stark-still, at the top.

He was staring up the road to where two deer were standing, just near the drainage culvert. They stood as still as he, and stared at him.

So that's where he was - chasing deer through the ravine.

Blue Dog

Yes, I know it looks like he's blue on his eyebrow. That's the light. The ink is only on his cheek and throat.

Jack has been a remarkably well-adjusted dog, for a rescue dog, but he does have his little ways.

Some dogs can be destructible when left alone, bored. Our first dog, Trooper, when left alone, chewed up the carved leg of an antique table, in a house we rented from a Cornell professor.

Jack's predecessor, Kotzie, once chewed up one of my very favorite shoes - this was the left member of a pair of Amalfi high heels that I treasured because they were the only high heels I've ever owned that I could wear for eight hours. I nearly wept when I found it, mangled and covered in drool.

But Jack is different. Jack doesn't chew up shoes or furniture. His fixation is exceedingly narrow. He consistently attacks only two items. Eyeglasses and pens.

He eats little plastic objects. The eyeglasses are usually drug-store cheaters, costing less than ten bucks. We arrive home to find lenses and mangled ear-pieces scattered on the living room rug. Twice, though, he's attacked [The Man I Love]'s prescription glasses - a couple hundred dollars damage.

The other object of his fixation is plastic pens. Yesterday when [The Man I Love] came home from work, the remains of a pen were scattered on the rug.

But this time Jack's guilt was obvious. It marked him with a stain.  He has a blue spot on his cheek, and another blotch under his jaw. His lily white paws are streaked blue, too.

He takes these objects from the low-slung coffee table in our living room, and you'd think this would teach us not to leave things there when we're out of the house. I guess it takes a lot of training to teach old dogs new tricks.

Fall deer

Our street - no deer in this photo

Jack and I went out this morning, as we do every morning, around 6:45, for our walk. Today it was misty and obscured. We walk north on the street, round the curve and then up a low rise. Jack likes to sniff the low branches that verge on the street.

When we climbed up the rise, we were overlooking a steep, falling away oak grove down the hillside. Down there, this morning, we looked and there were two young buck deer, dueling, head to head.

They looked like two boys on a playground, shoving one another fitfully, a little half-heartedly, like waiting for a teacher to separate them. Their heads butted together. I could hear their antlers clashing, a high, brittle clatter, like hard plastic. They pushed, butted, came apart, and then butted once again, antlers clacking.

Jack put his front paws atop the asphalt berm bordering the street, and looked down at them, and perhaps something - his breath, his animal energy - alerted them. The two bucks stopped dueling and turned their heads our way, and then they froze.

They stared at us, their big ears flaring, totally still. Then, instantly, they turned and bolted in opposite directions into the woods.

Weekly Jack

Jack has a new denning place.

Inside my shower!!

After this Tuesday, I'm with him. I want to hide away.

Perfect evening

The canyon is mellow, mist at sunset.

Jack's happy. He had a good day, playing with his friend Seamus the poodle, and eating treats.

Happy Easter, everyone!

Seamus and Lola, Jack's best friends.

Getting comfortable

A little too comfortable. I came into the living room to find Jack curled up comfortably on the couch, a pillow behind his head.

He felt so entitled to be there, he didn't move at my command, and I had to push him off physically. Chagrined, he sat blinking at me while I scolded him.

Then I led him to his dog bed, across the room, and he snuggled into it while I told him he was a good boy.

We have to put a footstool on the couch when we go out to prevent dog-napping on the couch, but he did this while I was home!!

I had a dream

I had a dream last night that my dog pooped in the house. In my dream, I could smell the mess, but people talking to me in my dream assured me that it wasn't true.

When I woke up the smell was still there.

I lurched out of bed. Jack is a creature of habit, so I looked in the places where he'd "had an accident" before - in the corner of my bedroom and in the corner of my husband's office. Nothing. Jack, the culprit himself, lounged innocently in the hallway.

I stumbled to my bathroom to put in my contact lenses. Gah!

He'd found a new shit site. The linoleum and the throw rug were blotched with his droppings. Interestingly, he'd gone into the stand-up shower and performed a perfect pirouette there.

I blindly mopped up the linoleum wth paper towels and Lysol, turned on the shower, and put the rug under the spray. Then I put in my lenses.

While the shower ran, I checked the front of the house, and found that the bathroom number had been a second act. Another perfect circle of turds were in the living room corner that has been his customary "oops" place.

I banished the perpetrator to the outside deck with a chew stick and started in on this mess. I checked the shower. Everything was clean.

Then I put on some coffee.

Poor Jack. Gastric distress isn't fun. But at least he found the shower.