Tag: duchess

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Holmes is On The Case

I’m constantly amazed at how fast Holmes’ mind works. He’s capable of amazing leaps. And once something catches his interest, he’ll stop at nothing to pursue it.

No, not Sherlock Holmes, the Great Detective.  Holmes Rochat, the Great New Dog.

Yes, for the first time in way too long, we’ve got a dog in the family again. Small-ish. Black. One year old. About as mixed as a mixed breed can be. And one of the fastest learners I’ve ever seen on four feet (or maybe even two).

Mind you, some of that is in contrast to what’s come before. Duchess the Wonder Dog was brilliant – as a combination of border collie and Lab, she could hardly be anything else – but also quite timid from some bad early experiences before we got her. Big Blake was 85 pounds of solid muscle, including his head: loving, devoted, but not exactly a canine Einstein.

With Holmes, we’re learning how to do this all over again. Largely because he’s so ready to learn himself.

Maybe it’s because he’s so young. Maybe his previous owner worked with him a bit. But Holmes listens.  Not always perfectly: we’re still working on concepts like “vets can be trusted,” “grass isn’t edible,” and “a flying hug isn’t the perfect greeting for all occasions.” But for the most part, he listens. He tries to do what you tell him. And he’s steadily forming a picture of the do’s and don’ts.

That’s awesome. And a little terrifying.

It always is when you have the power to be the Example.

“Into the Woods” put it well, with its closing advice to parents everywhere:

“Careful the things you say, children will listen,

Careful the things you do, children will see … and learn.”

We teach constantly. Not just in the conscious lessons like helping a dog learn to “sit” or a child learn to count and read, but in the thousand different ways we meet the world.

When someone shoves a dog roughly from their lap, they teach it to be fearful, even around those it should love.

When someone claims to love their neighbor but greets actual people with contempt or neglect, they teach that their word can’t be trusted … or worse, that it’s OK to mistreat those you say you love.

With our example, we teach what’s acceptable and who’s accepted, whether it’s by passing a law or paying a bill. (Dave Barry refers to the latter as the Waiter Rule: “If someone is nice to you, but rude to the waiter, they are not a nice person.”) We teach what we want to see by how we behave … and too often, we find the lessons coming right back at us, learned perfectly.

 If we want to see respect or compassion, we need to show it.

If we want to see justice, we need to confront injustice.

And if we want a nation that values everyone in it, we need to look at who’s being left out.

It starts with the small, daily actions. That’s how a dog learns it’s loved. That’s how a child learns it’s valued. It’s how a world learns the way we see it.

Big thoughts from a small dog, I know. And for now, that’s where my own attention is: watching Holmes chase butterflies, explore his new home, and learn just how much his new family loves him.

It seems so simple to put it that way.

Maybe even elementary.

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Unfinished Tales

It’s barely even March and I am already looking ahead to summer.

This is not normal for me. I’m the person who, when given a choice between the blazing hot and the freezing cold, will take the weather that requires a coat, a scarf, and a chorus of “Walking In a Winter Wonderland.” After all, you can bundle up, but there’s only so far you can peel down. And when you’re looking at the chores ahead, snow melts, but grass grows. Right?

I’m not saying I’m a complete polar bear. Spring is when life wakes up, especially life that wears baseball gloves and purple uniforms and has one chance in a hundred of seeing the World Series this year. Fall is the time of great-smelling grills and gorgeous trees that no rake can ever keep up with.

But summer? Really?

As usual, you can blame my addiction to theater. On March 16, the Longmont Theatre Company opens a two-weekend run of “Leaving Iowa,” a show about the iconic Summer Vacation Family Road Trip. And this time around, I’m playing Dad, which means I get to invoke the Ritual Repeated Parental Warning: “Now settle down back there, or I’m pulling this car over!”

But it’s more than that, really. It’s also a story about family ties over the years. About how your perspective changes when you move from child to adult (and not just by moving into the driver’s seat). And especially about how you always think there’s more time to know someone until there suddenly isn’t.

That last one hits home. No matter what the time of year. But for me, maybe especially now.

***

A few weeks ago, many of you saw my column about the recent passing of our 21-year-old cousin Melanie. I know, because so many of you chose to respond and send your sympathies, whether through the mail, online, or in the newspaper itself. It was gratifying, healing, and even a little overwhelming to see how many people cared.

I appreciate it and I thank all of you. It brought a lot of love and warmth to a season that had suddenly become too cold even for me.

As much as I love winter, it’s become a little haunted for us. Mel left us in January. Last year, so did our long-time canine queen, Duchess the Wonder Dog. Four years ago in February, we said goodbye to Grandma Elsie. A few years before that, it was Melanie’s dad Andy – January again. Story upon story, soul upon soul.

Sometimes we had a lot of warning before the final chapter. Sometimes none at all. Always, afterward, there are the feelings of questions not asked, things not done, stories not told. It happens even when you’re close, and if there’s been any distance at all, it only magnifies the lost opportunities.

I once wrote about a folk song called “Kilkelly, Ireland,” where an Irish father and an immigrant son exchange letters across the Atlantic for 30 years. The father is always asking the son to come home to visit, the son never seems to – and by the time he finally is ready to, Dad has already passed on.

There will always be a Kilkelly moment. There will always be one last thing you meant to do or say, because as people, we never go into moments thinking they’ll be the last one. There will always be something more you wanted them to experience, whether it’s to see a great-grandchild arrive or to enter college and begin life.

Living stories don’t end neatly.

At the same time, as a kind person reminded me, they also don’t truly end.

We are all more than just ourselves. We carry pieces of every person we’ve ever loved, every story that ever intersected with our own. They shaped us, influenced us, colored the way we see the world.

And when they leave, that touch remains. We carry a little of their flame.

Their story goes on.

And so, when I mount the stage in a couple of weeks, I won’t do so alone. In fact, I’ll be carrying quite a crowd.

I just hope there’s room for all of us in the station wagon.

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Ghosts of Christmas Past

Each Christmas, the same lyrics echo on the speakers:

 

“Through the years, we all will be together,

If the fates allow … “

 

And each year, we get reminded of the ones that the fates aren’t allowing to return.

Don’t get me wrong. Christmas Day is my favorite day of the year. From childhood into my early teens, I would sit up all night on Christmas Eve, softly singing carols to stay awake until 6 a.m. That’s the magic moment when my sisters and I were allowed to sneak downstairs and ogle the tree and the presents beneath, though not to awaken Mom and Dad (who usually came down around 7 a.m. when Grandma Elsie started making coffee.).

To this day, it’s still a great day for us to bask in the presence of family, spending quiet moments in the morning with each other before taking off to Heather’s mom or dad or sister and the relatives that have gathered with them. But each time, for just a moment, our minds visit a few others as well.

Some are simply separated by distance, like my parents and sisters in Washington State, with their collection of the little nieces and nephews. Reachable in theory – and maybe someday in practice – but kept apart for now by time, money, and logistics.

Others are a little more final.

Folks like my English grandmother and Heather’s, who brought their own touch to the season, from teasing Christmas carols to full dinners (complete with burned carrots).

Or like Heather’s uncle Andy (the brother of our disabled ward Missy), a lighthearted soul who left the holidays too soon.

Or like Duchess the Wonder Dog, who we still half-expect to hear digging into the wrapping-paper trash and sneaking into the stockings. After all, it’s our first Christmas without her.

For many, the holidays can bring this back powerfully, even painfully. Our own church has a “Blue Christmas” service for when the memories weigh heavily, and I’m sure it’s not the only one. It’s not an easy thing to be reminded of the empty seats at the table, especially if they became vacant during the holidays or not long after.

And yet, as hard as it is, it’s also an odd source of comfort.

It’s a reminder that they’re not truly gone. Not entirely.

OK, so they’re not exactly going to walk through the door bearing a fruitcake in the next five minutes. But at this time of all times, they live on. In hearts. In memories. In a dozen stories that get retold. Gone, perhaps, but not forgotten.

And in that, as much as anything, the Christmas season shows its power.

It’s a time to remember those who showed you love – and to show it in return to those with you, while you can. To draw together those who are close, and remember those who are far. To carry on what you’ve been left, as best as you know how.

It’s not always easy. Sometimes it’s more than a little bittersweet. But it, too, is part of the beauty of the season.

Be open to the memories, whether they’re triggered by an old ornament, a stray song on the radio, or just a piece of wrapping paper that looks like a dog chewed it. If you can, let them lift you up rather than weigh you down. After all, this is the time for loving visitors.

Give a moment to the past. And then, when you’re ready, celebrate in the present.

And have yourself a merry little Christmas now.

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The Last Choice

“Blake and Du –“

I stopped, took a breath, tried again. “Blake! Do you want some food?”

Big Blake, our muscular English Labrador, bounded down the stairs to breakfast. As he did, I realized once again how hard this was going to be.

Duchess the Wonder Dog wasn’t there. She wasn’t going to be. Not in this world.

Strange how a small dog can leave such a big hole.

We had her for one more Christmas, the gift that Heather and I really wanted most, curious and loving and even cunning enough to steal part of Blake’s Christmas bone. But the cancer became too much. Piece by piece it was stealing her. Stairs had become terrifying for her, requiring us to lift her and hold her close. Her legs needed more and more help simply to stand. She’d lost any interest in dog food, though she still dived into people food with gusto.

Finally, 41 days after her diagnosis, it became time. Time for the kindest, hardest choice of all. Heather had already cried all her tears and held her close, comforting and reassuring. My own face grew wetter and wetter as I stroked and patted Duchess’s fur,  a stream of thank-yous and I-love-yous falling from my mouth.

We both had to be there. There was no question about that. We had been at her side since she was a three-year-old rescue dog and we weren’t going to leave now.

The time came. The eyes closed. The hearts broke.

I’ve never had to make this choice before.

Nearly 14 years old. That’s a long time for any dog. Too short for any heart.

But long enough to fill our hearts with memories.

There was our first meeting in Wichita when she was still timid and fearful from a little-known past. We greeted her, welcomed her, loaded her in the car – and 20 minutes later, our car was hit by a driver turning left against the light. I lifted a frozen Duchess to get her out of the busy intersection and she bit my arms in panic, the first and only time she would ever do so.

I still carry those faint marks on each arm. A memory made tangible.

The years since then could fill a book. They’ve certainly filled a lot of columns. Even in her most timid days, she loved children, letting them climb all over her. Our Kansas dog rejoiced to discover Colorado mountains, roaming far and wide until called close again by Heather’s voice. She charged through any fresh snowfall with glee, spinning through the back yard like a furry tornado, driving her snout deep into the whiteness until she earned the nickname “Snownose.”

Her timidity muted over the years – calmed by love, time, and pizza – but never entirely went away. (Right after a move, we learned that Duchess’s anxiety could become powerful enough to claw through a bedroom door.) But she had her own courage and awareness. A neighbor’s dog that jumped the fence and began barking at Heather soon found a black-and-white growling guardian in front of her. Our disabled ward Missy found that Duchess treated her with loving care … even if the cute doggy didn’t always linger long enough for a pat. A young friend of Missy’s named Hunter declared at a softball game that Duchess’s middle name was Hunter, too – and from that moment, it was.

On and on the stories go. Written in love, held by memory.

That same love made the choice to end her pain necessary … and darned near impossible.

How do you say good-bye to a hello that has lasted so long?

Maybe we never really do.

Maybe that’s how you know you loved and were loved.

My last photo of her was taken a few hours before the end. She had just wolfed down a Wendy’s cheeseburger, a gift that brought joy and excitement with it. As she licked up her lips and looked up with a smile, she seemed – just for a moment – to have become a puppy again. To shed the years and the pain and simply be Duchess.

A final gift. A welcome one.

Thank you, my good girl. Thank you so much.

You may never know it, but you rescued us, too.

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Holding On

Pets have a way of making the holidays unforgettable.

There was our long-ago cat Twinkle, for example, who discovered the joys of Christmas-tree tinsel. She not only lived, she shared the results in glorious Technicolor behind the television for all the family to see.

There’s our mighty Big Blake, the English Labrador who has spun entire trees like a propeller in his eagerness to charge past them and greet a guest.

And of course, any time Duchess the Wonder Dog has met a new-fallen snow, the result has been somewhere between the Dance of Joy and a high-powered Indy 500 winner.

Well, this time around, Duchess is at the center of another holiday memory – this one a little less high-adrenaline and a little more painful.

This Christmas, Duchess appears to have cancer.

We discovered it by accident. Having the genius of a border collie and the curiosity of a Lab, Duch had figured out long ago how to break into our pedal trash can.  She hadn’t been looking too well after her latest garbage raid, so we brought her into the vet to be looked at.

The tummy upset proved to be none too serious. But while looking at her gut, the doctor happened to notice some nodules in Duchess’s chest. That glance and a follow-up soon brought the M-word – metastasis.

This wasn’t necessarily the end of the road, the first vet hastened to explain. Depending on what an oncologist saw or didn’t see, it could be possible to drive things back, to beat this. Still, the shadow of the word had entered the conversation. And it’s a hard one to evict.

Cancer.

I hate the word. I hate even typing it, like pressing the keys might somehow make it more real. Cancer has already made too many marks on people I love. My Mom survived it. One of my grandmothers didn’t. Nor did Heather’s grandma, or her 40-year-old uncle, or … well, the list is too long. At one name, it would be too long.

I hate the thought that, with one bad turn, every Christmas memory of Duchess might become final.

Even before this, we’d been trying to steel ourselves against that possibility. At 13 years and almost eight months, Duchess has been slowing down. Her step is a little more careful, her hearing not quite so sharp – though all bets are still off when food is involved. Her heart is still as big as ever, but the body that houses it has some miles on it.

But she keeps going. And we get used to that. The mind doesn’t like to acknowledge change and especially painful change. Not until it’s forced to.

Even now, I don’t know if we’re there yet.

It’s not the most comfortable thought for the holidays. But then, none of us is assured a Norman Rockwell Christmas. Sometimes “the most wonderful time of the year” carries pain, or anxiety, or uncertainty. Much as we might wish otherwise, the bad stuff doesn’t take a vacation for the holidays.

But that doesn’t mean we can’t hold on to something more.

I refuse to let fear for Duchess’s future poison her present. Whatever the doctors finally say, she’s still our dog, well-loved and cherished by us for over 10 years. Those chances for love aren’t going away yet. And we are going to continue to seize every one of them, whether it’s for one year, or three, or enough to make a canine Methuselah.

We will not let fear drive out joy.

Duchess has amazed us many times over the years. Maybe the Wonder Dog has another miracle left.

But whatever lies ahead, her love is here now.

Powerful.

Unmistakable.

Unforgettable.

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Totally Floored

When in the course of home improvement events, it becomes necessary for one family to dissolve the fabric-covered bands which have connected one piece of flooring with another, a decent respect to the opinions of the Times-Call’s readership requires that they should declare that this was a heck of a way to spend a holiday weekend.

Yes, while the rest of Longmont was practicing its skill with legal and quasi-legal exploding objects, we were busy ripping up a lot of downstairs carpet. This was mostly due to the efforts of a few generations of house pets, all of which had important messages to leave in the former dining room, if you catch my drift. So when our own Duchess the Wonder Dog decided to leave her own updates and found the mailbox already full – in the form of a ruined padding – well, it was time to introduce some “postal reform.”

In the course of this expedition, we quickly found certain truths to be self-evident. They didn’t exactly involve life, liberty, and the pursuit of cheap Chinese incendiaries, but many of them will be familiar to home owners nonetheless:

1) When outfitted properly in goggles, breath mask, gloves and knee pads, you will vaguely resemble a junior Darth Vader on his way to umpire his first minor-league baseball game. Except that Darth Vader’s goggles never fogged up in the middle of the job.

2) It is amazing how much you can accomplish in one night when you don’t care how much sleep, sanity, or major vertebrae you lose.

3) There is a proper, simple way of removing carpet strip by strip for easy portability. Somewhere in the third hour, that way will be discarded in favor of attempting to fold half the room up like a piece of oversized origami. Again, you really didn’t need those vertebrae anyway.

4) Few things in life are more entertaining than ripping up the long strips of tacks and nails that held the carpet down.

5) Few things in life are more painful than rediscovering those same strips with your sock-clad feet.

6) There is always one more staple. Even if you scour the floor with a magnifying glass, a metal detector, and the great-grandson of Sherlock Holmes, once you paint your primer on the plywood, a dozen staples will magically appear like the next row of sweets in a Candy Crush game. You will become very familiar with your floor scraper  and a certain level of vocabulary.

7) It takes longer to disperse primer fumes than anyone would realize. Longer than a baseball All-Star game. Longer than an especially intransigent session of Congress. Possibly longer than a geological age of the Earth.

8) Speaking of ancient epochs, it will also be discovered that there is a certain fascination in home archaeology. Beneath that carpet will be an indelible record of every family that ever passed through the house, lacking only Egyptian hieroglyphics and Roman graffiti to be complete. You will quickly see how many dogs have lived there. You will quickly appreciate what nearly four decades of Christmas Eve dinners for the entire extended family looks like. You’ll even find the occasional artifact from the last poor souls to lay down a carpet here, which gives you an extra 3 cents to put toward the new flooring. Little did they know they were paying it forward.

Finally, with a new appreciation for your house (and a new resolve that liquid beverages will never be allowed in it again), you are ready for the loud BOOM – not from fireworks, but from your bank account abruptly disgorging the funds needed to recover your primer-painted plywood with something human beings can walk on. You will celebrate wearily but wholeheartedly. And if you’re like me, somewhere inside you’ll rejoice that you’ve mastered one more staple of an actual adult’s skill set.

Or maybe that should be “one more foundation brick” of it. Because you are never, ever going to mention staples again for as long as you live.

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A Duchess in Waiting

When I leave for the store at night, Duchess parks herself beside the window and waits.  It’s a familiar position.

For the newcomers, Duchess the Wonder Dog is the older of our two canines, a 13-year-old mix of border collie and black Lab. She’s shy enough to stay nearly invisible when strangers are around and brilliant enough to have figured out how to beat a pedal trash can and get at the goodies inside.

But what she does best, and what she does often, is wait.

For years, that’s been part of her duties as furry bodyguard to my wife Heather, whom she has been devoted to ever since they reached an understanding over pizza. And like the passage in Ruth, the understanding is simple: “Whither thou goes, I shall go.”

When Heather is in bed not feeling well, Duchess waits nearby.

When Heather gets up, Duchess waits close behind, even if that means following her into the bathroom.

If someone rings the bell, Duchess lets our big dog Blake be the security guard, barking at the door in challenge – her job is to be the messenger, running back to “tell” Heather, and wait by her side.

And of course, she does the waiting any dog might do, whether it’s in the front room to wait for one of us to return, or near the table to see if a stray bit of food might slip. (Admittedly, Big Blake is the master of the latter, with eyes and jaws that are about as opportunistic as a rising politician.)

Now, as the years go by, she’s added some new waiting. Sometimes it’s harder to watch.

She sometimes waits by our bed with intense eyes, trying to see how she can get all the way up when her legs no longer want to do the job.

She waits behind Heather just a beat too long, especially in the kitchen, where my wife will suddenly turn to find a furry hurdle in her path that wasn’t there before.

She still waits with devotion, love and care. But now, there’s a bit of age in the mix as well. And it’s hard to see. We like to think that the ones we love won’t change, can’t change. We don’t like acknowledging that even the best of times can be all too short.

That’s true of dogs. Of people. Of almost anything in the world we give our heart to.

And yet, despite the frailties and the changes, the core remains the same.

Duchess is still Duchess. Her other waiting hasn’t stopped, even if it has become more tentative at times. Her loving heart and curious mind are still there. Sometimes the body is, too, especially on snowy winter days that still make her energetic beyond belief.

So much changing, but so much the same. It’s both the reason the changes hurt so much at times, and the great comfort in the midst of them.

And it’s the unchanging pieces we’ll always remember.

I don’t mean this to be an early eulogy. The time to mourn is later – hopefully much, much later. A love that is still present should be celebrated, embraced, and enjoyed. Leave the future to its time. You’re together now, and now is the time to appreciate it.

Sure, a time will come when things move slower and with more care. But don’t ever let the celebration stop, even if it has to move at a more deliberate tempo.

After all, love is well worth the wait.

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Say McWhat?

A couple of years ago, our dog Duchess acquired a middle name for the first time.

“Her middle name is Hunter,” declared a young boy at one of Missy’s summer softball games – a player who, by amazing coincidence, was named Hunter himself. As the pronouncement was made, Heather and I silently tested out the new addition to our timid canine.

Duchess Hunter Rochat. Hm.

It wasn’t bad. And it fit her old habit of chasing down every rabbit in the backyard that she could find, back in her younger days in Kansas. So, without further ado or ceremony, Duchess Hunter Rochat it was.

If only things were that simple for the British.

Some of you may have been following one of the sillier stories in the news cycle: a $300 million polar research boat for the United Kingdom whose name was thrown open to an online poll. The National Environment Research Council was probably hoping for a name connected with penguins, or explorers, or something else sober and traditional.

What it got was over 124,000 votes for “Boaty McBoatface.”

The name had been thrown out as a joke by a former BBC host, then took on a life of its own. By the end of the contest, according to The Guardian, it was crushing the competition with four times the votes of the second-place entry.

Alas, this week, Science Minister Jo Johnson threw cold water on the proceedings. She said the British government would review all the submissions in order to find a more “suitable” name.

McBoo.

“Admittedly, calling a boat Boaty McBoatface was a bad idea, voted on by idiots,” Guardian columnist Stuart Heritage said. “But it was our bad idea.”

I’m often a bit skeptical of Internet democracy. But this time around, I’ve got to agree. It may be ridiculous. It may be downright stupid. But it honestly deserves to survive, no matter what the regret by the gray-faced bureaucrats.

McWhy? Consider this:

1) The National Environmental Research Council wanted to attract more attention to its scientific activities through the contest. It might be fair to say, mission accomplished.

2) As my sister pointed out, it makes an excellent object lesson for anyone conducting an internet contest. When you make a choice open-ended instead of giving a pre-set ballot to choose from, you can never be quite sure what you’re going to get. I mean, imagine if Dave Barry had gotten hold of this one. (He didn’t, did he?)

3) It’s fun. Utter, glorious, stupendously silly fun. And to be honest, we need a bit more of that in the world these days.

Sure, we face serious problems everywhere we look. There’s always a crisis to consider, a candidate to defend, a cause that’s earnest and urgent. And as we all know, it doesn’t take much to stir up an online fist fight around any of these, full of sound and fury and not much real conversation.  Often, the sheer heat of the “debate” protects any of it from being read, unless you’re already a partisan of one side or another.

In the midst of all this, a boat that sounds like it came off the set of Thomas the Tank Engine might be a much-needed piece of whimsy.

Not everything has to be life-or-death. In the physical world, something put under pressure too long will deform or break. Minds need to release pressure, too, for much the same reason. And if it’s by laughing at something silly that isn’t hurting anyone – well, why McNot?

The British used to be famous for eccentricity. Surely the nation that gave the world Mr. Bean, Doctor Who, and the makeup artist for Keith Richards can accept one more excuse to sit back and laugh at itself for adding a little more weirdness to the world.

It’s healthy. It’s refreshing. It breaks people out of their ruts for a moment and makes them smile. So why not bow to the inevitable?

Or just call it Hunter. You know. Whatever floats your McBoat.

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Making Change

Duchess the Wonder Dog is wondering how to get up on our bed. It’s no small puzzle.

Not for the mind, I might add. As part lab and part border collie, Duchess is an honor student among canines. She’s especially gifted at the thesis problem of “Removing Objects From the Trash For Later Consumption: A Study in Subtlety,” bringing art to a field where her companion Big Blake has often gained renown through sheer raw talent and audacity.

But even in the most brilliant of dogs, the body has limits. And at 12 years old, those lines are a little clearer than they used to be.

Just a little bit of arthritis in the lower back and hind legs. Eyes that are blurrier than before. Even some recent balance issues (now mostly cleared up) that had my wife Heather wonder if she was trying to join the cool kids’ club, since Heather’s own MS often causes vertigo.

We’re not at the end of the line yet. I hope we won’t be for quite some time to come. And Duchess still has an energy reserve that can turn on at surprising moments, letting her tear around the back yard with great vigor.

But in dog terms, she’s closer to Helen Mirren than to Ellen Page, the Grande Dame rather than the Ingénue. A living reminder that – well, things change.

We’re not always so good at that.

We like to think otherwise, of course. After all, the easiest way to sell something in this country is still to make it “new and improved.” (An old Garfield strip once cracked “Gee, and all this time, I’ve been eating old and inferior.”) We like the latest and the greatest in our toys, our phones, any convenience we can manage.

But when change touches us personally, that’s another story. Rising hairlines. Falling assumptions. Faces that leave the building. A world that moves on regardless of what we like or don’t like – which is why Madison Avenue also does great business with nostalgia and items to fight the clock.

We don’t necessarily want to dip the universe in amber. But just like when we were kids, we often want the good stuff of growing up without the rest. Don’t touch me or the things I care about. Don’t touch my friends or family.

And especially don’t touch the loved ones who can’t speak for themselves.

We know better. Or we should. But that doesn’t make it easier.

My own family’s been fortunate when it comes to pets. Heck, we even had a goldfish make it to 13. But sometimes that makes things even harder as time goes on. The longer they stay, the stronger they grip. I know I wouldn’t trade anything for all the wonderful years – but I’d trade almost everything for just one more.

I know we’re not alone there.

What can you do? What we have to. Live in the moment, regardless of what it brings. Not without thought for the future, but not in fear of it, either. Enjoying the good and adding to it whenever and wherever we can.

We do touch the world even as it touches us. Especially in the lives of those closest to us.

I’ve joked before that Duchess has been Heather’s furry guardian angel for the last nine years. I sometimes wonder if she feels the same of us, taking a timid “rescue dog” and introducing her to a world where cuddles are OK and pizza crust is just a tilted plate away.

Soon our bed will have some pet steps near it. One more concession to a changing life, one more battle to keep things the same for a moment.

Duchess the Wonder Dog may wonder many things. So do I. But neither of us need wonder how much we care.

Some things, truly, never change.

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Into the Cone

Our dog Duchess has gone bonkers.

BONK! She ricochets off the kitchen’s doorframe.

BONK! She bounces off the bookshelf while charging in to get her food.

BONK! She rebounds off the nearest family member as she tries to hurry past.

“Careful!”

Yes, our little border collie-lab mix has been fitted with what the books call an “Elizabethan collar” and what everyone else calls a Cone of Shame. You know the thing. Everyone knows the thing: a big plastic cone fitted around a dog’s neck so that its head looks like it’s growing out of a cheap, old-fashioned record player.

It’s not about humiliation, of course, but about safe healing. A veterinarian uses the collar to keep a dog from getting at wounds while they’re healing – in this case, to keep Duchess from getting at a bandaged-up ear, acquired after an argument with our other dog Blake over whose bone was whose. Blake weighs 80 pounds, Duchess 45, but when her stubbornness is brought to the surface, it can be a pretty even match.

Naturally, he’s curious about her new headdress. Enough so that we’ve wondered if he needs his own, to keep Blake from sticking his big head into her constricted space. But I’m not sure our giggle reflex could survive two dogs in the cone, especially one as clumsy as Big Blake.

BONK!

It’s her first time in the big cone – quite an achievement for an 11-year-old dog. It does mean she has no previous experience to call on, though, so she’s had to figure out exactly what she can and can’t do. Her usual habit of slipping through the edge of a doorway is out, for instance. Meal times took a little practice, though now she’s able to fit her cone directly over the dish as she eats, which not only gives her a private dining space, but makes her look like a vacuum cleaner with fur and legs.

In short, Duchess has had to learn her limitations. And provided some harmless amusement while doing so.

As it happens, the laughs have been welcome. After all, this is fall in a “swing state,” meaning a barrage of political ads from every direction. On the television. On the phone. On the Internet. I’m waiting for one to show up in a Happy Meal. (“Do you want those fries? Shady McCandidate does. And he wants to give them to his special-interest buddies….”)

It’s tedious, repetitive and mind-numbingly counter-productive. If anything, the zeal ad vitriol of the ads make me less likely to vote for their sponsors. What’s needed is a way to lighten the proceedings and maybe inject a little humility into what can be a very proud profession.

Which is why I suggest that all politicians running for election be required to wear the Cone of Shame through Election Day. Both live and in all advertising.

Think about it. Even the most apocalyptic of speeches and commercials lose some of their punch when delivered by someone who looks like a failed auditioner for the Tin Man. Fundraising dinners become a challenge and broadcast interviews nearly impossible. (“Dang it … can someone help me get this microphone on? Please?”)

As with a much-loved pet, it might inspire some harmless laughter while teaching the new “conehead” their limitations and keeping them from doing excessive harm. None of these are bad things in a political process. In fact, judging by many of the candidates, a little less self-assurance might be very welcome. (There’s a reason I’ve pushed Charlie Brown for president before.)

Until that wonderful time, we’ll have to do the best we can with imagination and the mute button. And of course, a lot of patience. We’ll get through this season. Even if it’s uncomfortable and awkward and we can’t quite figure out how …

BONK!

Hmmm.

Maybe Duchess and I have more in common than I thought.