Freedom's Just Another Word

There is a sense of freedom that comes with the summer months.  When I was young, summer seemed to stretch on forever in a delicious amalgam of warm days, humid nights, fireflies, staying up till the wee hours, sleeping late and consuming piles of books as I lay on the back porch or rocked in the hammock. To this day, when I think of A Tale of Two Cities, I can feel vinyl sticking to my sweaty legs and smell the faintly dusty aroma of the cushions on my mother’s patio furniture.  Lord of the Rings evokes the knobbly imprint of hammock knots.  In the days when there were three channels to watch on television, you could count on a good movie late at night.  I don’t know why that’s not the case anymore. I always experienced such a joyous sense of liberation as I walked out of the last exam of the school year and into the embrace of Sherlock Holmes on the late, late show.

I haven’t experienced that feeling of liberation for ages, but I still anticipate it each spring as the school year winds down.  Summer in Monterey, California, of course, is a completely different season than summer in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.  Mark Twain once wrote, “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.”  A hundred miles to the south, Monterey has a climate mighty similar to that of the city of the Golden Gate.  The downside is that a June day is more likely to be 59 degrees with pea soup fog than 85 and sunny.  The upside is that we sleep with a comforter all year ‘round and the fall is three months of Indian Summer. 

But even though I no longer experience the tingling liberation that accompanies the last exam, even though I never leave home without a jacket, summer nonetheless brings a sense of freedom.  This has nothing, I assure you, to do with any teacher clichés.  A friend once told me that when she began student teaching, her teacher-trainer said to her, “There are three great reasons to be a teacher: June, July and August.”  I mean, really!  If that’s the best you can do, you’re just a walking argument for forced retirement.  This is not to say that I’m so noble or above the fray that I don’t celebrate a vacation from grading papers or the daily dose of teenage angst.  I willingly admit that’s part of the freedom.  Periodically, I need a break from listening. 

I love teenagers, though.  Our head of school likes to tell parents that while he would willingly go back to the days when his sons were four or five, the dean of students loves teenagers and has little to no interest in tots.  It’s true; I just don’t get them.  I mean, the concept of Blues Clues is incredibly cool, but a blue paw print can carry a conversation only so far.

The freedom of summer now has more to do with a looseness of time and place.  Maybe I’ll decide, when I wake up in the morning, that I won’t go in to school today.  I don’t, but I could.  Even more important than that, I can stay up late and sleep in.  If it is only possible that I can stay up till 2 AM and get up at 9 AM, I am a contented critter.  Push that to 10 AM and I’m delirious.  The long hours of sunlight give the sense of more time in the day.  Pick up a pleasure book at 6 PM and it feels hedonistic—you could be getting more work done; after all, the sun is still fairly high in the sky.  Want to do some puppy training at midnight?  Why not?!  We’re both awake and full of energy.

Cleo definitely enjoys the summer schedule.  She loves the snuggle potential of the more relaxed mornings.  She has embraced the summer routine: sleep until 7:30 or 8 (there has to be some light coming through the bedroom blinds), climb out of crate, stretch all four limbs thoroughly, shake out (being sure to rattle collar loudly), walk to Mama’s side of the bed and place paws on edge (push mattress if she hasn’t woken up due to rattle—see above), get lifted onto bed, position self at center of bed between Mom and Dad, curl into tight ball, go back to sleep for as long as possible (when Mom and Dad get up, curl tighter and squeeze eyes closed and they will let you sleep longer).  Eventually, she gets up, we walk to a park or the beach, and she comes home finally ready for breakfast.

She also loves the greater freedom at school.  With no students on campus, Cleo can be off leash more and can come with me almost everywhere I go.  Usually when we arrive at school, she waits politely in the back seat of the car while I gather my bags and attach the leash before giving her permission to jump out.  The other day, I gave her the “Okay” to get out without putting the leash on first.  She cocked her head and looked at me with an “Are you sure?” kind of expression.  Then she hopped out and trotted beside me to the door of the library.  As I unlocked the door, she began to walk away toward the Quad and the lawn.  There was a twinkle of adolescent rebellion in her eye.  She climbed the steps to the Quad, then looked back over her shoulder at me.  “Go ahead,” I said, and went inside.  I unlocked my office and dropped my bags at the desk, then went back to the library door to see what Cleo was up to.  She was sitting right by the door, gazing anxiously up at the window.  I opened it and she came in on the double. 

After checking that all her toys were where she had left them, she strolled out of the office to roam the library.  Doug was working on the computers upstairs and I heard a surprised, “Well, hi there!” come from his direction. 

“Everything okay up there?” I called out.  “She’s not bothering you, is she?”

“She’s great,” he assured me.  “I was crawling under my desk looking for a cable and she snuck up behind me and started licking my ear.”

There are lots of ways to share your sunshine.

Other folks bring their dogs to campus during the summer, so Cleo has made friends with Cowboy and Georgia (and now makes a beeline for their office whenever we pass it) and has grown less intimidated by Fiona who feels it is her job to herd the wild rabbits and to pee on top of Cleo’s pee whenever she can, even if she has just recently emptied her bladder. 

Cleo keeps a vigilant eye
on outdoor goings on.

One of Cleo’s favorite activities is to race back and forth across the Quad, aiming for at least four laps to each one of mine.  She bounces, ears flapping, from breezeway to lawn and back again, making brief detours to investigate an interesting smell now and then. 

If we’re the only ones in the library, she carries her squeaky monkey (a gift from a parent) just outside the office door and entertains herself happily.  Occasionally, she tours the floor to ceiling windows that comprise the library’s outer walls.  She effects a perimeter check for arriving gardeners, passing colleagues or unruly gophers.  When she’s sleepy, she climbs onto the chair in my office, observing the falcons that fly over the canyon until her eyes close.

It’s a good life, but I’m not envious of her as I answer emails, write new student welcome letters or revise informational materials.  I’m enjoying the freedom summer still brings, but it is only made sweeter by the responsibility that preceded it and that will surely follow.  Is it true that freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose?  At the moment, Cleo and I--we miss our students.

To see Cleo in action, click Cleo at the Beach or Cleo Loves Digging.

Travel Expands the Mind, They Say.

It’s been quiet around school these last couple of weeks and Cleo has been a bit lonely.  She’s used to having a couple hundred people on campus.  There are always students on the grass beyond her window or folks passing to and fro outside our office door.  Since Commencement, though, the lawn is empty and the traffic in the library has dwindled to nearly nothing.  On the other hand, she has very much enjoyed having full run of the library, exploring the stacks, unearthing the occasional long forgotten, dried out highlighter, climbing the stairs to the third floor Mac lab to poke her nose through the railing for a bird’s eye view of the librarian’s desk.  No matter where she is, the moment she hears the clack of the library door opening, she rushes to greet the newcomer like a prisoner in a Siberian gulag.  She is especially happy when Carol, our librarian, sorts back issues of magazines or shelves books because she can follow her around from one floor to another and back again.

This past week was particularly difficult for Cleo because I was out of town for three days and her social calendar was reduced even further.  My husband did his best to keep her entertained, taking her to the beach every morning, playing ball in the backyard, giving her extended snuggles before bedtime.  He told me that a friend of ours came over to the house and Cleo practically drowned her in spit, so effusive and unrelenting was her greeting.  It occurred to me that Cleo’s sense of family is unusually large.  Yes, my husband and I are very much at the center, but concentric rings define Cleo’s family with our late-teen son and our cats, our twenty-something daughter and her boyfriend, our favorite neighbors and my husband’s writing partner, the teacher of our obedience class, a few dogs, and a couple dozen individuals at school all comprising members of her extended family.  And it’s clear from the way she relates to all of these folks that she sees them not as friends, which is how she sees just about anyone else she meets regardless of species, but as relatives.

Bradshaw's new book.

In his really wonderful new book Dog Sense, biologist John Bradshaw explains the recent research that proves that dogs aren’t really pack-oriented, but rather family-oriented.   Dogs are descended from the grey wolf, but began their separation about ten thousand years ago.   The wolves who became domesticated were those who could not only bear, but actually enjoy being in the presence and company of humankind.  It is from these that today’s dogs are descended.  Today’s wolves, on the extreme other hand, come from ancestors that were so anti-human, so reclusive and wild, that they were able to survive the concerted eradication efforts of generations upon generations of frightened anti-wolf human beings. 

Wolf research didn’t really come into its own until wolves had become so rare that one of the few places they could be studied was in zoos.  Unfortunately, through a complete lack of understanding of how wolves operate, zoos would gather individuals from many different areas, then throw them together thinking they would form a pack.  As biologists studied the zoo groups, they noted that the wolves constantly fought to maintain a hierarchy.  They dubbed the top wolf or wolves the “Alpha,” the bottom wolf or wolves the “Omega” and theorized that dominant behavior kept the Alphas on top and submissive behavior kept the Omegas alive.

What the zoo biologists failed to understand, however, is that in the wild, packs are actually made up exclusively of a single family and fights for status are completely unheard of.  The so-called Alphas are, in fact, the parents of all of the other wolves in the pack, and so are given deference automatically. The only time wolves actually fight for “dominance” is when one family encounters a member or members of another.

A particularly lovely point Bradshaw makes is that through the thousands of years of human-dog companionship, dogs have shown that they are highly unusual among non-human animals in their ability to form family bonds with a variety of species.  When we humans refer to ourselves as our dog’s mom or dad (or grandmother), we’re not being fanciful, we’re being accurate, certainly as far as our dogs identify us.  As if we needed another reason to love them!

So Cleo does see my husband and me, a few dogs, our two cats, our own kids, some students and adults at school, and a few other folks as her family.  Which got me to thinking this past week.  My puppy’s family is so much larger than my own.

As I mentioned, I was out of town for three days last week.  In fact, I traveled thirty hours round trip in order to be in Bethesda, Maryland for forty hours.  Granted, the way the flights were originally set up, I should have traveled about half that amount of time, but the journey home turned into a twenty-one hour saga thanks to late planes, missed connections and San Francisco fog.  Had I known, before setting out, that my return trip would be so fraught, would I still have gone?  In a heartbeat.

The purpose of my cross-country junket was my only niece’s graduation from middle school.  For months before I went, my husband enjoyed saying to me, with only slightly exaggerated disbelief, “You’re flying three thousand miles for a junior high graduation?!”  Yes.  Yes, that is correct.  Even counting every member of my extended family, it is not as large as Cleo’s, though, granted, that could be because my sense of family is more narrow than hers.  Still, my family of origin now consists of my two sisters and me, so any chance to celebrate a milestone with them is an opportunity not to be missed.

My sisters are less than two years apart in age.  As they were growing up, especially in their tween or early teen years, this led to some friction.  One of my favorite stories about them is The Story of the Note.  My sisters shared a room (which is odd since I, the youngest by several years, had a room to myself).  They slept in matching canopy beds.  This kind of bed has a post at each corner to elevate the canopy, and a newel that fits into each post to hold the canopy in place.  The hollow in the post, into which the newel would fit, provided a perfect “mail box” for my sisters who, when they were refusing to speak to each other, would leave little messages in each other’s bed post.  One day, my middle sister left my oldest sister this note:  “Dear Kathy, I hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate you.  Love, Jan.”

My sister, Jan, meets Cleo.

As we grew up, we drifted geographically apart, Kathy moving to Colorado, Jan staying on the East Coast but migrating south from our Pennsylvania hometown to Washington, DC, me ending up in Monterey, California.  Our parents’ deaths left us with no central gathering place for holidays, so the three of us were together at weddings and rare special events.  It was more common to meet by twos at one home or another.  I have always loved my sisters; they’re my sisters, after all.  What a delight to be reminded of how much I like them as well.  The forty hours we were together were filled with lots of talking, laughter, easy enjoyment of each other, passions in common, obsessions in common, neuroses in common (always easier to bear when shared).  We celebrated successes, mourned losses, and comingled kvetchings. 

And my lovely niece, full of joy and grace?  One has to guard against the temptation, with an only niece, to overindulge a sense of her perfection.  There is no doubt that she is beautiful, oh-so-smart, hardworking, dedicated, that she is a deeply good person.  But how would I have known that everyone from the head of school to her eighth grade teachers to her kindergarten teacher think she is all those things, too, if I hadn’t flown three thousand miles for a junior high graduation?

Cleo’s extended family is a gift.  But when the family you have is choice, it doesn’t matter if it’s small.

Baby Steps and New Beginnings

Last week saw both Commencement and Graduation: Commencement at my school, Graduation for Cleo and me from beginner’s class.  The last couple months of a school year are always particularly intense and usually culminate for me in an everything’s-done-and-I-finally-have-some-down-time illness of one kind or another.  If I could just remind myself that the end of the school year only opens the door for the press of preparation for the next one, I might remember that I don’t have time to be sick and save myself the boredom of being stuck in bed.  But I’m at least upright now and neither Cleo, quietly chewing on a toy nearby, nor my computer is likely to be disturbed by a little coughing.

Cleo at School

I had never been to a dog training graduation before last Monday.  Honestly, I’ve never done formal dog training before Cleo.  It’s the goal of her becoming a certified therapy dog that prompted me to seek the counsel of a professional.  I had no idea it would be so much fun.  It reminds me a lot of acting—lots of criticism and correction, brief moments of praise.  I spent the first twenty-five plus years of my working life as a professional actor, so I feel right at home in this environment.  Of course, Cleo is so bright and excited about learning that she adores the classes.  She struts around the training track like the blue blood that she is, kicking out her legs like the perfect show dog.  Given the fact that all of her siblings who show, which is most of them, have earned their championship points, strutting around the Del Monte Kennel Club classroom at the Monterey County Fairgrounds should come naturally to her.  I’m the one who has to work at it.

Three weeks ago, at the class the week before graduation, Cleo was amazing.  She is the youngest dog in the class, barely six months old when we started, and she is full of energy and curiosity.  Sometimes this causes an attention span deficit, but at that last class, she embodied the words “concentration” and “focus.”  About three-quarters of the way through the class, we were practicing the down stay.  One of the student teams, an Italian Greyhound and his man, had struggled with “down” for the entire two months of the course.  The IG simply has an aversion to putting his elbows on the floor.  Cleo has no such qualms.  Usually when we are practicing the five minute down stay, she sacks out on her side and takes a nap.  That dog can sleep anywhere.  It’s a gift.  She always lays herself out in the same way: flat on her side, back straight, tail gently curved, all four legs sticking out bolt straight in front of her, a canine model of a rectangle.  One time as we practiced, the fellow next to us, the dad of a Golden Retriever, looked over at Cleo and said, “Oh look.  Your dog got run over by a steam-roller.” 

Anyway, it being the final class before graduation, the teacher wanted to make a last ditch, all-out effort to help the IG get over his phobia and take a load off.  Really, it was a pitiful thing to see him stretched out in a crouch, front legs trembling as he tried to do what his dad wanted, while desperately fighting against elbow contamination.  For at least ten minutes we were in that down stay.  Not once, not once, did Cleo squirm or try to get up.  She didn’t even lie down on her side.  She simply attentively stayed.  Meanwhile, the team next to us, an Australian Shepherd and her woman, quickly became bored.  The woman started chatting with anyone within range.  The Aussie got up to wander around.  A tug on the leash brought the woman’s attention, at least temporarily, back to her dog.  It didn’t last and the Aussie was up again.  Cleo gazed for a time at the wandering dog, then looked back to me with a smug expression.  You’d never catch her wandering around like that.  She all but rolled her eyes.  By this point, the Aussie’s mom was completely turned around with her back to her dog.  The Aussie had decided this was a good time to visit Cleo.  She loomed over the puppy.  Cleo looked up at her calmly.  When the Aussie leaned down to touch noses, Cleo pushed her away as if to say, “You are gonna be in so much trouble!”  Just at that moment, the trainer looked up from the IG and snapped, “Get that dog away from that Bedlington!”  I’m only mildly embarrassed to report that Cleo and I both snickered a little bit.  It’s hard to be gracious when your dog is perfect. 

Based on that last class, I was feeling pretty confident going into the graduation ceremonies.  We arrived at class five minutes early.  Everyone else had arrived twenty minutes early.  The testing was already underway.  Everything was different.  Humans and dogs were clustered in chairs on the opposite side of the room from our usual training area.  A small ring had been set up and one team of our classmates was going through the paces: Heal, right turn, about turn, slow, fast, normal pace.  A bolt of nerves shot through me.  I asked a classmate what Cleo and I had missed and she directed me to a registration table.  We signed in and got our number.  We would be going last.  There were fifteen teams ahead of us and Cleo was bouncing out of her skin with the excitement and newness of it all.  I’m sure my discomfort did nothing to help her calm down.  She wanted to greet every dog, jump on every human.  There were kids in the room who had never been present before.  Kids!  Cleo’s favorites!  I debated—should I take her outside to blow off some steam?  But I didn’t know how many teams had already gone.  What if we were called and Cleo missed her chance to graduate?  Every time I thought about going out, it seemed as if it was almost our turn.  At least, I thought, I can walk her around our usual ring so we can practice and calm down a bit.  That used up about twenty minutes.

Cleo sometimes refuses to pee at school.  I realize this seems like something of a digression, but bear with me here.  The peeing thing is not, I promise, because I have made the mistake of taking her out to pee and then dragging her immediately back inside.  We always play after she pees, sometimes for half an hour.  But there will be days she shows no interest in going from the time we leave the house until we get back home.  Then she’ll rush outside and squat like she’s desperate.  Okay, so graduation day was one of those days.  There had been no peeing since 8 AM.  It was now 6:45 PM.  So when Cleo started urgently pacing back and forth on the mat, sniffing the ground, I had a pretty good idea of what was on her mind.  Did I immediately run her outside?  No, I dithered.  And as I stood there dithering, she squatted and peed on the mat.  If you are saying, “Good God, woman, what is the matter with you?” I completely agree with you.  I can only reply, “I have no idea.”  I just don’t know what comes over me in situations like this, when I feel stupid and out of my element.  It’s as if my autonomy and good sense simply desert me.  At school, I make tough decisions left and right.  I have no trouble being assertive.  But put me in a world where I am ignorant of the customs, expectations, mores, and I’m a dithering basket case.  But I’m also a huge believer in Beginner’s Mind.  The humbling moments are good for us.  Like the moment the trainer stopped in mid conversation to shout across the room, “Mom!  I knew she was going to do that!  How come you didn’t?”  Um, I did?  I was just being too stupid to do anything about it?

Our turn finally came.  We were complemented on our healing.  Stand for inspection went about as could be expected—one jump up and several attempts to taste the hand of the judge.  Our finish was lovely, a tidy turn around and perfectly square sit.  We joined five other teams for the group exercises: sit stay and down stay.  We’ve got this one nailed, I thought to myself.  By the third time I had to make Cleo lie down again and the second time I had to stop her from visiting the German Shepherd next to us, I was a tad less confident.  To add insult to injury, the German Shepherd had the same smug look on his face that Cleo had worn just the week before.  I didn’t dare look at the Shepherd’s dad.  We scored 140 out of 160 points.  We didn’t even place in the top four.  What would Cleo’s siblings think about that performance? 

One of my colleagues, Pam, is a very experienced dog trainer.  She attends the advanced class with the same teacher, and the next day she asked how we had done.  I told her the whole gory story.  She laughed and said, “Let me tell you about my weekend.”  On Saturday, she and her Corgi Lizzie (whose name has been changed to protect the four-legged) had gone somewhere near Fresno to compete in a dog trial.  Her Corgi, she reminded me, actually holds a title in these trials.  They entered the ring with style and Lizzie sat attentively at her mom’s heels.  They got the go ahead, and Pam said brightly, “Lizzie, heel!”  Pam stepped out smartly only to realize, three steps later, that she was on her own.  She looked back.  Lizzie gazed up at her.  “You’re allowed one extra command,” Pam told me, “so I said firmly, ‘Lizzie, heel!’”  Pam ended up walking the entire course by herself, her Corgi obstinately watching her the entire way.  “I think it was just too hot for her,” Pam said, shrugging.  I felt a lot better.

And so, Graduation week culminated in Commencement.  As I’ve said, the last couple months of the school year are intense in my position.  This year, for many reasons, was particularly challenging.  One of those reasons was the down-to-the-wire nail biter question of whether one of our seniors would be able to graduate or not.  Emily is the last person a casual observer would peg for depression.  She is beautiful, talented, unfailingly cheerful and wittier than a person her age has any right to be. She took up residence in my heart the first month of her freshman year and has had squatters’ rights there ever since.  Last November, everything started to fall apart.  For no reason that she can pinpoint, she spiraled into depression and couldn’t find her way out.  She tried to keep her misery hidden, but finally the mask slipped, fell and shattered.  She could barely get out of bed let alone focus on homework or completing projects for her classes. 

The compassion of my colleagues can’t be overstated.  They supported Emily, extended deadlines, waited, extended the deadlines again.  Emily’s family rallied around her.  She plunged herself into counseling, accepted the idea of medication with a willingness I don’t often see.  She forthrightly said, “If it has even a chance of helping me feel better, I’ll try it.”  Over and over I told her that the school would give her time, that she could walk through Commencement with her class, but finish her requirements over the summer, receiving her diploma once she had gotten everything in, no harm, no foul.  And each time she told me, “No, I want to graduate on time.  I’m kinda done with high school.” 

When you are deeply depressed, it’s far easier to think about working than to actually get the work done.  It’s hard to concentrate, heck, it’s hard to get out of bed some days.  And motivation?  Never heard of it.  Emily’s teachers finally gave her until 1 PM the day before Commencement; they had to have time to read and evaluate the work she handed in.  She submitted the last piece of the last project with three minutes to spare. 

Our Commencement is held outside in the Quad formed by classrooms, the library and the theatre.  It overlooks wooded hills and a canyon through which peregrine falcons and vultures glide daily.  Late in the afternoon before Commencement, I was putting name labels on the audience seats so families would know which seats were theirs.  The Academic Dean sauntered from his office to find me.  “Emily’s cleared.  She can graduate,” he told me.  “Then I’ll go ahead and release her diploma,” I said, turning to tape a nametag to the seatback in front of me so he wouldn’t see the tears in my eyes.  At that moment, a gust of wind whipped through Quad and one nametag, way on the opposite side of the Quad, ripped from its seatback and fluttered to the ground.  I ran over to pick it up before it could blow away.  Even before I turned it over, I knew what it would say.  It bore Emily’s last name.  I held it up for my colleague to see.  “Our little butterfly,” he said, “has flown away.”

And so she has.  She was radiant on Commencement day in the cap and gown she’d been too busy to pick up and iron because she’d been writing papers.  She hasn’t found her way completely out of the hole of depression, but she is getting better.  And whatever happens next, there is time for exploration and learning about life.  There is time for college later, when she’s ready.  She didn’t graduate at the top of her class, but that doesn’t make her any less special and it certainly doesn’t shake her place in my heart.

As for Cleo and me, we graduated, too.  And on Monday, we start the Intermediate Class.

From Here to Eternity?

Cleo at Asilomar

The beach is the doggy version of Disneyland.  If you’ve ever taken a small child to the Magic Kingdom, you know what it is to take a puppy to the beach: the wide-eyed wonder of the first glimpse of Cinderella’s Castle, the miracle of dancing with Pooh, the overstimulation of the crowds and the shows and the sights, the sheer joy of downing a Mickey-shaped pancake, the unexpected friends waiting to share a boat ride through Pirates of the Caribbean or the bossy bullies who push in line for Indiana Jones, the temper tantrums when it’s time to leave and the sound sleep of the nap that follows—all of these are reflected in a dog’s trip to the Land of Sand and Sea.

One of the wonderful things about living where we do is that we’re only five minutes from the Pacific Ocean.  Actually, given that we live on a peninsula, we could head in three different directions and hit the ocean sooner or later.  Usually sooner.  To the south of us is Carmel Beach, designated by one travel magazine or another as one of the top five most romantic beaches in the world.  The arms of the beach embrace Carmel Bay with a tenderness that’s palpable as soon as you stand on the great dune that overlooks the water.  Whenever I go there, I always imagine the sense of safety and homecoming the first explorers must have felt as they rounded Point Lobos and got their first look at Carmel Bay.  Of course, that feeling would have been quickly dwarfed by their first glimpse of Monterey Bay, just a puff of wind to the north.  Carmel itself is a quaint faux English village, complete with cottages, postage stamp gardens and the profound inconvenience of a prohibition on street lamps.  One of its many claims to fame is the fact that, for a few years in the ‘80s, Clint Eastwood was its mayor.  It is also extremely dog friendly, thanks in part to another famous resident, animal activist and erstwhile songbird, Doris Day.  Today there are more canine residents than full time human residents in the town.

To the north of us is the opposite end of the spectrum: Marina State Beach.  Monterey Bay is shaped like a giant jellyfish.  The tendrils are the massive submarine canyon, a sister of Arizona’s Grand Canyon, carved by the Salinas River into the floor of the Bay.  Marina State Beach lies on the surface of the jellyfish, just below the centerline.  After spending a day doing volunteer beach cleanup there, one of my students exclaimed, “People have got to find somewhere else to have sex and shoot up.”  Ninety percent of the trash she found on Marina beach was used condoms and hypodermic needles.  You don’t see many tourists taking in the mid-bay beaches.  We don’t go there, either.

Our beach, or the beach I grandiosely refer to as “our beach” is Asilomar Beach.  If I continue with my somewhat whimsical descriptions of my neighborhood, and who’s to stop me, the Monterey Peninsula looks like the head of a teddy bear floating face down in the water.  Just where the right ear meets the top of the head is Asilomar Beach.  It nestles snuggly up against Spanish Bay golf course, one of the renowned Pebble Beach golf courses.  It is a perfect blend of windswept sand, craggy golden granite bones and grass dotted dunes.  Snowy plovers nest there, fighter squadrons of pelicans skim the waves, swallows do their air-dolphin act, herons fish and any number of kestrels, gulls, pipers, grebes and egrets strut, dive, and wheel in the pure joy of being alive.

Oh, to see Cleo take it all in!  The wide-eyed wonder at the open expanse of beach and ocean, the miracle of unfettered running and leaping, the overstimulation of a riot of scents on the wind and the crashing of waves and the joyful exuberance of dogs and their people, the delight of digging through sand to discover a pocket of water or of burying your nose in a pile of soggy kelp, the unexpected friend ready to share a gentle nose touch or the bossy bulldog who sends you scampering back to your parents, the temper tantrums when it’s time to leave and the sound sleep of the nap that follows. 

Even though we’ve been to the beach countless times by now, as soon as Cleo realizes the direction the car is taking, she begins to squeak with excitement.  She gazes raptly out the window, panting impatiently at the delay of a red light.  As we park, she presses her nose to the glass, trying to catch a peek of a dog or the shoreline.  When I open her door, she plunks into a sit with a “Hurry up and get the stupid leash on” attitude.

On an unseasonable 70 degree day in late January, Cleo had her first beach adventure.  Being her usual affable self, she greeted and was admired by virtually every human she encountered.  On the rare occasions that the person didn’t stop to admire her, she paused and gazed after them as if trying to puzzle out what could possibly be the matter with them.  The socializing with people thing she pretty much had down from the moment she drew breath.  Socializing with dogs has been a slower process.  This first day, confined to her leash, she did alright.  She touched noses happily, but anything more assertive and she was cowering on Daddy’s feet. 

She manages a nose touch.

After several visits, we experimented with letting her off of her leash and she was most impressive, cavorting and leaping, running at our sides, never straying far from us.  One day, a gentle Golden Retriever came galumphing through the waves.  When he spotted Cleo, he turned sharply and started up the sand, tail wagging.  It was clear that all he wanted to do was say hello, but gentle as he was, Cleo tucked her tail between her legs and backed away from him.  As he came slowly on, she backed away more urgently.  One padding step forward on his part, three skittering steps backward on hers.  We were nearby and it wouldn’t have been a problem except for the fact that, for a reason known only to herself, Cleo turned and began backing towards the ocean.  Her expression turned from anxious to startled when she suddenly found herself ankle deep in cold water.  Unfortunately, rather than springing forward, she leapt backwards into deeper water.  “Honey!” I exclaimed, whacking my poor husband across the stomach.  Just at that moment, a wave broke over Cleo’s head, completely submerging her. 

I have three flashes of memory after that: Cleo swimming as if she were born to it, me taking a step forward, her making a mighty leap.  The next thing I’m completely sure of is that I am standing on the beach with a very wet Cleo in my arms, my jeans soaked from the knees down and my shoes squishing with saltwater.  For a moment she clung to me, her face buried in my neck.  Then she looked around.  Then she asked to be put down.  In an instant she was dashing back and forth, so proud of herself for having survived her first (and so far only) swim.  As we walked back up the beach, we passed a couple who had admired her on the way in.  The husband leaned down to her and said, “Well, not so fluffy now, are ya?”  She didn’t mind.  She just planted her soaking paws on his knee and laughed into his face.

With Daddy.
Yep, it's May 22nd.
Did I mention it can be a bit chilly here?

If you'd like to see Cleo in action at the Asilomar Beach, click here: YouTube video of Cleo

Lessons From My Dog: Part 1

May is always a busy time at our school.  For students, the end of the school year is so close they can taste the summertime freedom, yet they still have the hurdle of final exams to overcome.  For faculty, there are exams to be written and read, grades and progress comments to upload, last lessons to craft.  The awards ceremony, eighth grade rising up ceremony, senior graduation all must be planned and implemented—a weeks-long process that bears a significant resemblance to staging a Broadway play.  Between adolescent antsiness and teenage angst, Cleo and I are kept pretty busy.  If we’re not conducting stern conversational reminders of the three tenets of the school—honesty, respect and responsibility—we’re turning a listening ear, a damp nose and a fuzzy flank to reassure a student that the AP exams will not determine their future success or failure, that the heartbreak of the first lost romance will fade, that the school would never allow the evil substitute teacher to ruin their college chances, or that the faculty will surely allow them to make up the work they missed while they were away winning awards at the Intel National Science Fair.

When I first started as dean of students, I wanted to fix every problem a student or parent presented to me.  I have been accused of having an overdeveloped sense of responsibility.  My sisters and I often comment on our shared need to “do” for others, to right perceived wrongs, to make the world safe for—if not Democracy, at least for those we care about.  It was an eye-opening moment when the facilitator of a stress reduction workshop I was attending turned to me and said, “You know, Joyce, I’m going to suggest a mantra for you: I am enough.”  She’d known me for all of three weeks.

I’m coming to the keen understanding that I can’t fix everything.  In fact, growth, healing, resolution, each has to be a process.  One summer I attended the Stanley H. King Counseling Institute, a week long training program for teachers who are in a position of counseling students, but who have no advanced training in the field.  What they teach is the art of listening and reflecting.  While I can’t possibly fix a student’s relationship with a demanding, hyper-critical parent, I can allow that student to know that she is heard and understood.  In fact, the very fact that I don’t immediately start spewing advice or mouthing clichés lets the student know that I hear her and even more important, that I have faith in her to effect her own solution.  It won’t be immediate, it won’t be painless, but it will be a process, and Cleo and I will be here every step of the way, if the student wants.

There is a kind of danger in deciding that your dog is going to be a therapy dog before you even meet her, in knowing that you wouldn’t even have gotten a dog if she couldn’t be trained as a therapy dog, because any other role for her would be unfair to every party that’s involved.  In the first several weeks of Cleo living with us, I experienced regular moments of despair, convinced I had ruined this perfect puppy.  If I was having trouble teaching her to heel, it was not due to her youth, but to my incompetence.  It meant I would never be able to teach her to heel, and a dog who can’t heel can’t pass therapy dog certification.  It was a catastrophe; she would be condemned to a life of loneliness, spending her days cooped up at home.  I knew what the books said, that you have to take charge when people first meet your dog.  The Sirius puppy training manual instructs us to have every visitor ask our dog to sit, down and roll over.  Visitors are not to enter the house unless the dog will obey these three commands from them.  Between school and home, Cleo met about three hundred people who had mastered none of these.  I was destroying her.

One day, a colleague, a true dog lover, swept up to Cleo, who was sitting on my lap, scooped her up and walked out of the room.  Until they were out the door, I had no idea what was going on.  Should I run after them, shouting, “What the hell are you doing with my dog?”  Or should I just relax and let them have a good time?  I opted for the latter.  When they returned about forty-five minutes later, Cleo was beside herself, four quarters of frantic energy.  It was as though her grandmother had taken her to the fair and fed her nothing but candy all day, let her skip her nap, then plopped her back in her parents’ lap when things started to get out of hand.  As I walked Cleo back to my office, a student ran up to me and said, “Your dog attacked somebody in the Quad just now.”  What!!  It seems that a student had been lying in the Quad during lunch, eyes closed, taking in the late fall sun when Cleo, unrestrained by my colleague, had exuberantly pounced on her, licking her face and nibbling on her nose. Okay, the word “attacked” might have been a bit strong for the actual situation.  A better phrase might have been, as my daughter would say, the student was “Tiggered.”  Oh, but I was convinced that Cleo had learned an indelible lesson; she was ruined.  And why?  Because I was too trusting and had simply allowed her to be snatched off my lap and into harm’s way.

Of course she wasn’t ruined.  And equally obviously, I’ve continued to make mistakes.  But she is a brilliant dog; she learns even when I’m clumsy.  Over the months, she has learned to heel.  And sit, down, come, stay and stand to greet.  Okay, we’re still working on that last one, but it’s a process.  More and more often, right after someone says, “That’s a beautiful dog,” the next comment out of their mouths is, “She is so well behaved!”  Believe me, I’m not taking credit for this.  What I am doing is trusting in the process.  Cleo is simply blossoming, unfolding, fully becoming her beautiful self.  This dog is a born therapy dog; she purely loves people.

This morning, I was sitting on the couch grading papers, Cleo napping beside me as the unseasonable May rain spittered against the windows.  Tump, tump, tump.  I looked down at Cleo.  Tump.  Tumpa-tumpy-whack-whack.  She was wagging her tail in her sleep.  Was she dreaming about the couple we met on our walk this morning?  Or about greeting her beloved daddy when he came home from his gig last night?  Who knows.  But that tail only gets going like that when there are people involved. 

There is beauty to the unfolding.  There is calm in being in the moment.  There is bounty in Slow.  It’s all a process.  And if you’re very lucky, one day you’ll be sitting on the couch next to your dog whose tail is wagging in her sleep.

Standing to Greet

The Touchstone

So much is revealed about people by their reaction to a puppy. 

There is a teacher at school with whom I work very closely.  He oversees one of the younger grades, and so we spend a lot of time comparing notes or updating each other on students’ academic, social and emotional well-being.  He’s in my office at least once every day.  I think of him as being compassionate, level headed and highly opinionated.  Before he left England, he taught developmentally disabled students and he still exhibits the patience and understanding that made him so good at that challenging work.  He grew up in the northern part of England, but moved around so much throughout his childhood and young adulthood that his accent is a patchwork quilt of diphthongs.  The word “herb” begins with a haitch, but the game Charades rhymes with Scheherazade. 

So shortly after Cleo’s arrival, this fellow came to my office to check in with me.  He gazed at the ball of fluff that was enthusiastically wagging her tail at him, and his lip curled with disgust.  “Hello, dog,” he muttered, then turned his back on her.  For days he ignored her.  Finally, one afternoon he paused on the way out my door and cast a chary look at Cleo.  “What is this thing?” he asked, gesturing towards the puppy with mild distaste.

“This is Cleo.  Remember?  The therapy dog in training?” I prompted.

“Huh.”  Cleo was looking particularly adorable at the moment, in full stuffed animal mode, but my colleague was singularly unimpressed.  He continued regarding her as if trying to puzzle out how anyone could possibly be interested in such a creature.  It’s not that he dislikes animals.  He and his wife have cats and chickens, and they are extremely fond of their own pets. 

And then I had an inspiration.  This colleague is a history teacher and the students love him for the way he brings history to life.  He is also an ardent spokesman for the underdog, for the disadvantaged or impoverished.

“She’s a Bedlington Terrier,” I said, assessing the climate.

“Mm,” he grunted, noncommittally.  Well, at least he was still looking at her; that was progress.

“Bedlingtons are from the home country—from the north of England.”

He laughed.  “Oh?”  Eureka!  He had turned back into the room.

The evolution of the
Bedlington Terrier.
This painting is from 1870.

I talked fast to keep his attention:  “People think that they were originally bred by gypsies and peasants sometime in the seventeenth or early eighteenth century to poach small game from the estates of noblemen.”  I had his attention now!  He was looking delighted.  “They’re really fast, like whippets, so they would race onto the nobleman’s land, grab a rabbit or a pheasant, and tear back to their owners before anybody even noticed.” 

And now he was downright grinning.  “It’s one of my people!” he exclaimed, laughing.  “What’s its name?” 

The Bedlington Terrier
Gustav Muss-Arnolt (American, 1858 -1927)

Hutchinsons Book Of The Dog -
Original Bookplate from 1935 Edition - Vere Temple - Bedlington Terrier
These three pictures are from The Bedlington Terrier Club of America

Every time he comes into my office or passes us on our way into or out of the library, he makes a point of greeting us both.  Don’t misunderstand me.  He’ll never be a dog person, but sometimes, open-minded tolerance is the best we can hope for.

On the other end of the dog acceptance continuum is Donald, a senior with a questionable reputation.  It’s not that Donald has ever done anything illegal or even unsavory.  He is just unusual in our school for his snobbish attitude and frequent putdowns of those around him.  Over his five years with us, I have heard more complaints about his attitude from both teachers and students than any other student currently at the school.  He bitterly complained, then finally quit when the orchestra director made another student first chair for their section.  That student, by the way, has since played at Carnegie Hall among other prestigious venues.  Donald walks around campus with a look on his face as though everything and everyone around him smells of unwashed feet.  It used to be that when I greeted him, he merely looked at me with a mildly hostile stare.

So honestly, you coulda knocked me over with a feather when he glanced into my office as he walked by the door one day, stopped dead in his tracks and gasped, “Look at the puppy.  She’s so cute!  Mrs. Sherry, may I come in and say hi?”  I could barely get out the words to tell him yes.  That first visit, he stayed for half an hour or so, playing with Cleo, patting her, cooing over her (yes, cooing).  The next day, he knocked on my door.  This time, he had a classmate in tow.  “I found her in a corner of the library crying.  Is it okay if we come in and talk to Cleo?  I think it will make her feel better.”

Over the last several months, Donald has visited Cleo, and by extension me, pretty regularly.  Not every day, but at least twice a week.  He snuggles with Cleo, taking on the role of her older brother, wrestling with her, helping to teach her not to chew on people, sometimes just looking at her.  And while he’s there, he talks to me.  He tells me about his college acceptance struggles, his anxieties about the future, his successes in class, the things he finds interesting in the world, all the many details that he worries about every day.

One afternoon as we were talking, Cleo fast asleep, splayed out across Donald’s lap, the academic dean came into my office for a conference.  “Hey, Donald,” said the AD in a hearty, man-to-man tone.  “Nice dog, huh?” 

Donald’s eyes did not leave Cleo’s sleeping face as he cradled her in his lap, gently stroking her tummy, but without missing a beat he whispered, “I love this dog.”

Sometimes, what a puppy’s unconditional acceptance reveals is a carefully guarded sensitivity.

It Takes a Pack to Raise a Puppy

Cleo came home the week before Thanksgiving, an ideal time in the life of my school as we had classes only two days of that week.  This allowed us to dip our toes in the water without, hopefully, overwhelming a little girl who had known her new pack just a scant couple of days.  I had reservations about taking her to school so soon, the long days in the office, the exposure to such a variety of people, the possibly conflicting standards of appropriate behavior.  I still wonder from time to time if I have complicated my life by allowing her training to include such a wide range of input.   But after long consideration, I decided that it was better for her to come to school with me, even if it meant periodic crate time while I was in class, than to be confined to her crate for several hours while John and I were at work.

And so, the therapy-dog-in-training was introduced to her new workplace.  Let me just say that when Jan Balladarsch told me, “This little girl has never met a stranger,” she was not exaggerating.  Cleo adores people.  A human being is an instant friend in her eyes.  Can ya ask for anything more from a therapy dog?  I think not.  When our vet first came to check Cleo out, I mentioned to him that I was training her to be a therapy dog.  He laughed and said, “Training her?  Is that a joke?”  She does have abundant natural talent.  Certified therapy dogs have to prove themselves, though, and certification is not only what I promised the school, but also what I want for both Cleo and my students. 

To be certified with Therapy Dogs International, a dog must pass the AKC’s Canine Good Citizen Test and then be evaluated by an approved TDI gatekeeper.  Cleo will need to prove that she can:

• Accept a friendly stranger (Check, and probably an unfriendly one, too.)
• Sit politely for petting (Part of the time, and if you count trying to slobber all over your hand as “polite,” then about three-quarters of the time.)
• Accept grooming from a stranger (Bedlingtons have to be groomed because they have hair rather than fur.  This is both a great blessing as that’s what makes them hypoallergenic, but also a mild curse as their soft puppy hair is the dog world’s answer to Velcro.  It attracts all burrs, sticks and oak leaves in a three mile radius.  Anyway, check.)
• Walk well on a leash (Okay, we’re working on this one.  The world is a very exciting place full of possibilities and some of us just can’t wait to see what’s around the next corner.)
• Walk through a crowd (This is a daily activity, but again, some of us—not mentioning any names—have trouble understanding that we may not be the center of every single human being’s universe and feel the need to greet vigorously if we are ignored.)
• Sit, down and stay on command; come when called (This is the focus of the training class we’re in now and progress is pretty good.  Have I mentioned she is one smart little girl?)
• Interact positively with other dogs (Okay, we’ll come back to this one; for the moment, we plead the fifth.)
• Stay alert, but not aggressive, at loud noises or unexpected distractions (Let’s just say that we’ve made huge progress here—it helps that the school’s maintenance department head drives his Cushman past our window several times a day and that the gardeners make weekly visits with their two-stroke engines.)
• Calmly accept medical equipment like wheel chairs and crutches (Haven’t tried this yet, but my instinct is that as long as there are people attached, Cleo won’t have a problem.)
• Prove the ability to “leave it” (It’s a work in progress.)
• Confidently and calmly accept supervised separation from me (I can only say that she has plenty of visitors while I’m in class and that she loves going on walks with her Auntie Kim and several devoted admirers.)

Walking with a fan.
She heels better with her mom...

• Exhibit no sign of aggression or disturbance with running or playing children (This will be the toughest, not on the aggression front, but on the disturbance front.  She wants to join in, no matter the size of the child.  That’s fine if you’re sixteen and 5 foot 10, but it can be scary if you’re three and your eyes and the dog’s are at the same level.  You see those teeth coming at you and it doesn’t occur to you that all the dog wants to do is lick the snot off your face.)
• Show a willingness and even interest in “Saying hello” or being placed in the lap of a stranger or otherwise made available for petting (Ding, ding, ding!!  We have a winner!)

So those are the tasks of the therapy dog.  From time to time I fret that I will prove incompetent in this whole scheme, but then I remind myself to trust in Cleo when I can’t trust in myself.  Besides, she’s only seven months old.  The path before us is long and curving, and full of fascination and the unexpected.  It takes a pack to raise a puppy, and I have faith in ours.

On her first day at school, I limited her encounters so that she wouldn’t become over stimulated.  She met mostly adults and mostly avid dog people.  She met Carol, the school’s librarian, whose desk is just feet from my office.  Carol is one of those rare people who make you feel good just being in their presence, whether you’re two-legged or four-legged.  She’s kind and caring, but also arch and funny.  And she has the best sense of humor of anyone I’ve ever met.  She laughs at all my jokes.  Carol came in with Cammy, psych teacher, tech guru and the exemplar of what it means to be a teacher.  She is constantly developing, always expecting more of herself.  The phrase, “Good enough” has no place in her lexicon.  She takes a sharp interest in the lives of everyone around her and remembers details of conversations she had five years ago. Cleo thought they were both wonderful.  She chewed on their fingers, licked their noses, showed off her pink squeaky pig, accepted all of their admiration, then toddled over to the corner and peed on the rug.

She met Kim, a marine biologist whose many rings and bracelets completely fascinated Cleo.  She wanted to taste each one, but settled on jumping up and trying to catch Kim’s gesticulating hands, a game they both still seem to enjoy.  Kim and I have long discussed the merits of different dog breeds and both the pleasures and the responsibilities of dog ownership.  Well, we’ve discussed, argued about, celebrated or cried over pretty much every event in our lives for the last ten years, so when, after meeting Cleo, she paused at my office door and said, “You done good,” we were all pretty happy.

Late on the first day, we went to visit Chuck, the head of school, in his office.  Chuck and his wife Elizabeth have raised a number of gentle, beautifully behaved Labs.  Some they’ve not only raised, but rehabilitated after rescue.  They pour love, patience and consistent discipline into their dogs, and the result is as obvious as a Lab’s swinging tail.  Buck, often given the appellation “the Wonder Dog,” was a gentle spirit who was awarded a therapy dog certificate just for being himself.  The bond between the man and the Wonder Dog was one of those once in a lifetime connections and Buck’s death a few years ago was heartbreaking.

When Cleo and I walked into Chuck’s office, his eyebrows went up and he exclaimed, “Ah, here she is.  The Texarkana star.”  Cleo stopped dead in her tracks and stared at him.  Chuck was born and raised in Atlanta and still retains a regional spice in his speech.  Although the Texarkana accent could hardly be further from the Georgia one, I think Cleo recognized the sounds of her origins.  It must have been comforting to her, only a few days into her California conversion.  She walked up to him and sniffed his pant leg.  When he reached down to pat her, she immediately started chewing on his fingers.  At least she didn’t pee on his carpet. 

It was a good first day.