Blessing Of The Animals

You touch
the right one and a whole half of the universe
wakes up, a new half.

— William Stafford, “Choosing a Dog”

   
HERE'S THE FIRST THING you should know:

When I sit next to my dog, Abbe, right before she falls asleep, and I stroke her fine-boned head, she turns just enough that her nose nuzzles between my wrist and my sleeve. I keep my hand very still on the top of her head as she breathes in my scent and sighs. The whole house goes quiet then, everything in it just breathing: the cat and the couch, the tulips and the vase, the mirror and the broom. All of us under the spell of a dog — a puppy, really — who has known nothing so far in life but canine grace.

That’s the first thing you should know.

A MILE FROM MY HOUSE in Bellingham, Washington, there’s a Unitarian church with white siding and the requisite signboard out front, with fine, literary sayings posted on massive sheets of paper. I have a postcard of one of those signs pinned to my bulletin board: “You are constantly invited to be what you are. — Emerson.” For some reason it’s a message I need to hear often, this permission to be myself. I’ve passed by the Unitarian church many times and attended a few secular events there, but I’ve never gone to a service.

The other day I read a notice in the paper about the annual “blessing of the animals” ceremony this Sunday at the church. And because Abbe is six months old and full of vast enthusiasm for any enterprise that involves new people and dogs, and because I’m still in that eager new-dog-owner phase where I’m delighted for any opportunity to show off my puppy, I decide to take her. On Sunday morning I gather her collar and leash, her treats and poop bags, her water bottle and bowl; I give her a quick brush-down as she turns in tight circles, trying to grab the brush’s handle in her mouth. “We have to look nice for church,” I say in that motherly tone I’ve taken to so easily, too easily, my voice a little hoarse from being elevated to such a high, unfamiliar pitch. 

At the last minute I remember my cat, Madrona. Since it would not be a blessing to cart her to church, I quickly print out my favorite picture of her: resting on my improvised altar, paws tucked beneath her chest, a tiny brass Buddha in the foreground — just Madrona being her prickly bodhisattva self. She often strolls into that room when I’m sitting in meditation, brushes against the curve of my crossed legs until I pet her, then settles down on the altar, assuming her place as a deity to be worshiped. No one has to invite her to be what she is. My cat knows she’s bigger than the Buddha, that she could kick Buddha’s ass if it came down to it, and I’ve often entered this room to find that serene little statue knocked on its side, its tiny hands still forming a perfect mudra of peace.  

HERE'S ANOTHER THING you should know:

I’ve had only one other dog in my life, a Great Dane named Sheba. She was tall, of course, with a smooth, brindled coat. I remember her primarily from photographs: Here’s Sheba, a puppy still, in the barren backyard of my parents’ new home in the nascent suburbs of the San Fernando Valley, circa 1960. Eventually there will be tall eucalyptus trees in the yard, and a swimming pool, and a jungle gym that will start to rust the moment it’s assembled, but for now there’s just this big, skinny dog, a newly planted lawn, and some saplings lined up by the fence.

I can’t yet talk, can’t yet walk. In the photos I’m just a blob with big eyes and a spit curl quivering on top of my bulbous head. After my father has drunk his Ovaltine and Tang and gone off to work, it’s just me and my mother and my three-year-old brother and this big, lanky dog stuck in a clean, new house, wondering what to do with ourselves. 

The dog doesn’t wonder too long. She knows her job is to protect us from whatever dangers present themselves. She follows my mother from kitchen to bathroom to bedroom to yard, barks at the sedans cruising up and down our cul-de-sac, cocks her head with suspicion when the phone rings. She nudges the little baby in my mother’s arms when it cries. 

That baby eventually begins to leave her mother’s arms and get down on the floor to crawl, to walk, to run. This puts her at eye level with the dog, who herds her around the green shag carpet and away from the screen door to the patio. Sheba is just the right height for a toddler to pat her on the head with a fist, or walk under the archway of those enormous legs. Eventually the girl will haul herself onto Sheba’s back and squeal, “Giddyap!” and the dog will comply, moving slowly, swaying like a camel. When the girl is ill with a fever, she’ll recline into Sheba’s belly, sweating and licking salt off her upper lip. 

When I’m eight years old, my family will go on a long car trip to a place like Carlsbad Caverns or SeaWorld or Sequoia National Park. Sheba is too big to go, so we leave her at a kennel. I remember watching the closed gray doors of that kennel from the back of the station wagon as we pull away.

I remember, too, that Sheba dies while we’re gone. I remember driving up to the kennel, the heat rippling up from the black asphalt; I remember waiting in the car as our father strides through those gray doors and stays gone longer than seems necessary. My brothers and I roll down the windows and whine for ice cream; my mother fans herself with a map. My father finally reappears, sans dog, his face white, his mouth set in a grim line of displeasure. He walks slowly, too slowly, back to the suddenly silent car.

But now I know this whole scene is a figment of memory. My mother tells me it happened at home: Alone in the house with Sheba, who was vomiting bile, my mother wrestled the 130-pound dog into the car by herself, sobbing and telling her it would be all right. She took the dog to the vet, who called later in the day to say Sheba had died from a twisted colon, a common ailment among big breeds. I must have come home from school — where I’d recently been admonished not to sing “The Star-Spangled Banner” with my classmates because my voice was off-key; where my only solace was quiet reading time; where even the games at recess had become dangerous, the heavy rubber ball bouncing at me with more force than necessary. I must have come home wanting to bend my whole body over Sheba’s back and lie there like a rag doll, allowing the memory of school to subside, and instead I saw my mother’s red face, her eyes rimmed with smudged mascara. She told me, in the way you tell a child such things, that Sheba had been “put to sleep.” 

Put to sleep. It’s such a kind phrase. After all, I was put to sleep every night of my childhood with kisses and hugs and promises of a good day tomorrow. And every morning Sheba lifted her ponderous head and turned her caramel gaze on me as I woke. For those few moments — before the world rushed in to let me know my place — I existed as nothing more than an object of her adoration, a body to be loved.

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