When I first moved to the US at age 12, in my early, fumbly English, I ended up with amalgams of expressions that no one ever bothered to correct, or to notice I was saying wrong, or maybe to want to change because they were funny. “Nip it in the butt” sounded logical. If you want something to stop from happening again, a good, painful butt-nipping seemed appropriate. Wake up and smell the roses. Don’t look a gifted horse in the mouth (My friend caught me on that one and said, “If the horse can count to five with his front hoof…?”). My finest hour in ESLdom came when one of the expressions that had accompanied me for decades starred as the joke in a popular TV show. You mean, it isn’t “It's a doggie dog world?” But that had made so much sense to me! The world is a funny, crazy mix of people. We are like puppies, all chasing each other around, and hoping for attention and love.
This is not the whole of me, but it is, surprisingly, the quite-a-lot of me: my symbiotic and integral experience with beings of immeasurably soulful eyes, who have walked beside me throughout my whole life. My name is Denise, and I am a “Dog Person.”
Strolling through the park nowadays with my hound LeeLoo by my side, I often hear people explain about their dogs, "He/she is a rescue." A rescue. It refers to the lucky dog having been plucked from a horrible living situation or an uncertain fate and brought to safety and subsequent adoption to a family – or as some shelters call it: to their forever home.
But who rescues whom?
From my earliest memories growing up in Lima, Odín was there, named by my dad after a Norse god to match his German Shepherd’s grandeur. Odín was a steady presence in our lives: alert, loyal, and nurturing. I remember stabilizing my toddler walk holding on to him, placing my hand on his back like a furry handrail – a perfect guide for a child. I learned to walk with his help, and during the many nights when my parents would scream at each other in anger, Odín was there to stabilize me again. I could fully bury my face on his neck and muffle the angst on his lovely gold and black coat.
He passed away when I was around 10 years old, and to ease the grief, my parents got us a newborn Collie puppy. There is something so magical about watching a little being navigate new life, and Ronie and I, growing together, became like siblings. When the time came to make the arduous move to the US, my parents didn’t hesitate to go through all the documentation and rounds of vaccinations to fly Ronie with us to Los Angeles. It was costly and difficult, but he was such an important part of our family, and I think to some extent my parents thought he would make relocation easier for my brother and me.
Those were difficult days: the massive sale of our belongings in Lima, having to downsize to a few suitcases, no furniture or toys, all our records…soundtracks of our childhood, from The Beatles, to the thousand-times-played Sound of Music, to my mom and dad’s collection of Tangos – Gardel, Troilo, Goyeneche – all gone. They say about death: “You can’t take it with you.” Then immigration is a little death. But it is also a little birth. On my good days, I would say with excitement that we were moving to the US “to be closer to Disneyland.”
And on the worst day, Ronie was gone. One afternoon in our new and teeny Los Angeles apartment. No sign of him. My dad said the back door had probably been left open, and he had accidentally gotten out. Another theory was that he had been stolen, since he was a pure-bred dog and still young enough to fetch a good sum of money. Even at one point, when frustration led to infighting, my mom insinuated that my dad had sold him secretly to line his own pockets, since we were struggling and her savings in Peruvian Soles had been decimated by the exchange to Dollars and by the cost of our move.
We never found Ronie. The heartbreak added to our displacement in the US. The days of putting up posters and poring through cages at shelters looking for him set the tone for the eventual disillusion of our move to the US. The grand plans our parents had talked about were whittled down to daily survival. I remember crying at night with my brother Luis Héctor – our little twin, ironically-named ‘Hollywood Beds,’ in a perpendicular angle of each other. Hollywood Beds, as the furniture salesman had told my parents they were called, were supposed to be all the rage for modern, space thrifty L.A. dwellers: two narrow twin beds with a large corner square of a table, into which one of the beds could be partially rolled under for day use, the two beds and table making an L-shaped couch. Much more glamorous sounding than just saying, “The living room is your bedroom now.” The beds had heavy and rough, uncomfortable-on-your-skin, brown plaid tweed covers of a serious ugly that only the 70’s could forgive. Eventually, they came to be a quirky part of our lives, as memories of sitting there laughing our asses off with our mom replaced their ridiculous nature. Many things were worse, but many things were better, and in retrospect today, many things are wonderful.
Happiness always found us, and so did generous dogs to fill our arms and make us laugh. There was Tiny, the foofy white puff of a poodle, who farted disproportionately massively for her size, and who my macho-fronting, Peruvian brother said he could not walk in public, but who he ended up completely loving. And then, when I was an adult and married, came the Bosco years. Bosco was a typical San Francisco black lab mutt, with a white tuxedo spot on his chest that roughly resembled the map of Italy, and who had been a stray in Hunter’s Point. He scampered into our house one afternoon, courtesy of a rocker dude friend of ours, just as I sat on the floor with the Chronicle classifieds sprawled out, looking through ads for dogs. Bosco saw my daughter grow from a newborn, and he was her furry handrail when she, in turn, needed help to learn to walk.
And in 2003, there came Roxie. She is one of the prettiest dogs I have ever seen. A Border Collie – what the experts call Tri-Colored. I could map her multiple types of fur, in hue and texture, as if I was charting countries on a Mapamundi. Her fortes were loving us…and stemware demolition. Roxie could topple anything with her massive, hairy fan of a tail. We had learned not to put any glasses on the coffee table in our living room, which was the perfect height for her destructive “Tail of Terror” to come sweeping through. She, like Bosco, helped me through difficult times by just looking at me with her deep, caramel eyes. And she helped me with the greatest loss. I remember her licking my hands frantically, when I would cry, home alone. These were the guttural cries, those of frightening proportion, that even scare you as they choke the air in the room, and which no one has ever heard because you can only let them happen in your place of solitude. Roxie was there to witness that, and in her way, she saved my life. Years later, I held her paw as she exited this world, and told her, “I love you forever.”
Today, there is 1-1/2-year-old LeeLoo, or as I sometimes call her, Pouncy McFurlington. With a gorgeous, ‘how does Nature get off, showing off like that?’ marbled, orange and black brindle coat, she is simple, clumsy, and sweet and, as Jimmy says, seems to think licking can solve anything. Sneeze once, and she will turn her head immediately. Sneeze twice, and she is coming! You are getting fully pounced on and fully licked. It reminds me of the old school cartoons, with the ever-present, snowy mountain Saint Bernard, carrying the obligatory small liquor barrel under his chin. An ambulatory first responder. That is LeeLoo; she is ready! She is a rescue dog from a trailer park in Merced County, and who before coming to live with us at age 13 weeks, almost died and spent nine days in emergency care. Her foster mom has told us stories of miniscule LeeLoo convulsing on the kitchen floor, clutched by a rampant case of Parvo, developed due to the negligence of the people that had her in Merced. The Milo Foundation saved her life, and that of her five litter mates. Lucky pup and lucky me.
I could catalog my life based on milestones in education, or based on my chain of ever-northern-moving migrations, but this is one of the beautiful threads that has marked my path.
It has been, thankfully, a doggie dog world.
I ponder now at the coincidence that my first and last dogs are named after deities – one Norse, one from a Sci-Fi cult film. Grace lives within them, as it has within all living creatures that have enriched my life. I could never rate the doggies I have known and loved. So jokingly, I turn, kiss LeeLoo and say with deliberate punctuation, "You are the best...dog...alive...today." Hopefully that echoes in me. I am the rescue, and I can gently say to myself, “You are the best version of yourself alive today.”
This is not the whole of me, but it is, surprisingly, the quite-a-lot of me: my symbiotic and integral experience with beings of immeasurably soulful eyes, who have walked beside me throughout my whole life. My name is Denise, and I am a “Dog Person.”
Strolling through the park nowadays with my hound LeeLoo by my side, I often hear people explain about their dogs, "He/she is a rescue." A rescue. It refers to the lucky dog having been plucked from a horrible living situation or an uncertain fate and brought to safety and subsequent adoption to a family – or as some shelters call it: to their forever home.
But who rescues whom?
From my earliest memories growing up in Lima, Odín was there, named by my dad after a Norse god to match his German Shepherd’s grandeur. Odín was a steady presence in our lives: alert, loyal, and nurturing. I remember stabilizing my toddler walk holding on to him, placing my hand on his back like a furry handrail – a perfect guide for a child. I learned to walk with his help, and during the many nights when my parents would scream at each other in anger, Odín was there to stabilize me again. I could fully bury my face on his neck and muffle the angst on his lovely gold and black coat.
He passed away when I was around 10 years old, and to ease the grief, my parents got us a newborn Collie puppy. There is something so magical about watching a little being navigate new life, and Ronie and I, growing together, became like siblings. When the time came to make the arduous move to the US, my parents didn’t hesitate to go through all the documentation and rounds of vaccinations to fly Ronie with us to Los Angeles. It was costly and difficult, but he was such an important part of our family, and I think to some extent my parents thought he would make relocation easier for my brother and me.
Those were difficult days: the massive sale of our belongings in Lima, having to downsize to a few suitcases, no furniture or toys, all our records…soundtracks of our childhood, from The Beatles, to the thousand-times-played Sound of Music, to my mom and dad’s collection of Tangos – Gardel, Troilo, Goyeneche – all gone. They say about death: “You can’t take it with you.” Then immigration is a little death. But it is also a little birth. On my good days, I would say with excitement that we were moving to the US “to be closer to Disneyland.”
And on the worst day, Ronie was gone. One afternoon in our new and teeny Los Angeles apartment. No sign of him. My dad said the back door had probably been left open, and he had accidentally gotten out. Another theory was that he had been stolen, since he was a pure-bred dog and still young enough to fetch a good sum of money. Even at one point, when frustration led to infighting, my mom insinuated that my dad had sold him secretly to line his own pockets, since we were struggling and her savings in Peruvian Soles had been decimated by the exchange to Dollars and by the cost of our move.
We never found Ronie. The heartbreak added to our displacement in the US. The days of putting up posters and poring through cages at shelters looking for him set the tone for the eventual disillusion of our move to the US. The grand plans our parents had talked about were whittled down to daily survival. I remember crying at night with my brother Luis Héctor – our little twin, ironically-named ‘Hollywood Beds,’ in a perpendicular angle of each other. Hollywood Beds, as the furniture salesman had told my parents they were called, were supposed to be all the rage for modern, space thrifty L.A. dwellers: two narrow twin beds with a large corner square of a table, into which one of the beds could be partially rolled under for day use, the two beds and table making an L-shaped couch. Much more glamorous sounding than just saying, “The living room is your bedroom now.” The beds had heavy and rough, uncomfortable-on-your-skin, brown plaid tweed covers of a serious ugly that only the 70’s could forgive. Eventually, they came to be a quirky part of our lives, as memories of sitting there laughing our asses off with our mom replaced their ridiculous nature. Many things were worse, but many things were better, and in retrospect today, many things are wonderful.
Happiness always found us, and so did generous dogs to fill our arms and make us laugh. There was Tiny, the foofy white puff of a poodle, who farted disproportionately massively for her size, and who my macho-fronting, Peruvian brother said he could not walk in public, but who he ended up completely loving. And then, when I was an adult and married, came the Bosco years. Bosco was a typical San Francisco black lab mutt, with a white tuxedo spot on his chest that roughly resembled the map of Italy, and who had been a stray in Hunter’s Point. He scampered into our house one afternoon, courtesy of a rocker dude friend of ours, just as I sat on the floor with the Chronicle classifieds sprawled out, looking through ads for dogs. Bosco saw my daughter grow from a newborn, and he was her furry handrail when she, in turn, needed help to learn to walk.
And in 2003, there came Roxie. She is one of the prettiest dogs I have ever seen. A Border Collie – what the experts call Tri-Colored. I could map her multiple types of fur, in hue and texture, as if I was charting countries on a Mapamundi. Her fortes were loving us…and stemware demolition. Roxie could topple anything with her massive, hairy fan of a tail. We had learned not to put any glasses on the coffee table in our living room, which was the perfect height for her destructive “Tail of Terror” to come sweeping through. She, like Bosco, helped me through difficult times by just looking at me with her deep, caramel eyes. And she helped me with the greatest loss. I remember her licking my hands frantically, when I would cry, home alone. These were the guttural cries, those of frightening proportion, that even scare you as they choke the air in the room, and which no one has ever heard because you can only let them happen in your place of solitude. Roxie was there to witness that, and in her way, she saved my life. Years later, I held her paw as she exited this world, and told her, “I love you forever.”
Today, there is 1-1/2-year-old LeeLoo, or as I sometimes call her, Pouncy McFurlington. With a gorgeous, ‘how does Nature get off, showing off like that?’ marbled, orange and black brindle coat, she is simple, clumsy, and sweet and, as Jimmy says, seems to think licking can solve anything. Sneeze once, and she will turn her head immediately. Sneeze twice, and she is coming! You are getting fully pounced on and fully licked. It reminds me of the old school cartoons, with the ever-present, snowy mountain Saint Bernard, carrying the obligatory small liquor barrel under his chin. An ambulatory first responder. That is LeeLoo; she is ready! She is a rescue dog from a trailer park in Merced County, and who before coming to live with us at age 13 weeks, almost died and spent nine days in emergency care. Her foster mom has told us stories of miniscule LeeLoo convulsing on the kitchen floor, clutched by a rampant case of Parvo, developed due to the negligence of the people that had her in Merced. The Milo Foundation saved her life, and that of her five litter mates. Lucky pup and lucky me.
I could catalog my life based on milestones in education, or based on my chain of ever-northern-moving migrations, but this is one of the beautiful threads that has marked my path.
It has been, thankfully, a doggie dog world.
I ponder now at the coincidence that my first and last dogs are named after deities – one Norse, one from a Sci-Fi cult film. Grace lives within them, as it has within all living creatures that have enriched my life. I could never rate the doggies I have known and loved. So jokingly, I turn, kiss LeeLoo and say with deliberate punctuation, "You are the best...dog...alive...today." Hopefully that echoes in me. I am the rescue, and I can gently say to myself, “You are the best version of yourself alive today.”
The Milo Foundation – Please Donate Online
http://www.milofoundation.org
Other ways to contribute:
Instead of using the standard Amazon site, use
Smile.Amazon.com
to benefit Milo or the organization of your choice.
Each purchase will donate 0.5% of your total. Not much, but better than zero.
A Brief History of the St. Bernard Rescue Dog
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/a-brief-history-of-the-st-bernard-rescue-dog-13787665/
http://www.milofoundation.org
Other ways to contribute:
Instead of using the standard Amazon site, use
Smile.Amazon.com
to benefit Milo or the organization of your choice.
Each purchase will donate 0.5% of your total. Not much, but better than zero.
A Brief History of the St. Bernard Rescue Dog
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/a-brief-history-of-the-st-bernard-rescue-dog-13787665/