One lucky dog
I've taken to walking our dogs twice a day. Remi, Mike's yellow lab, wears her harness and can pull so hard she agitates Mike's already problematic knee. Mike will sometimes join in a walk after work, though I'm even eager to go alone, happy for the movement of my body and the exercise of my relative freedom in outdoor spaces. Owondo has become so agile on three legs that my friend who saw him just before we moved back to Texas in July, a few weeks before the amputation, didn't even notice the difference when she visited us this weekend. He's still a high energy dog, and we've been teaching him "up" in an effort to make his fourth potential trick (after sit, down, and stay, of course) to stand on his hind legs and balance, like a biped.
From our walks, I've noticed that Owondo has started to get a lot of attention from random people on the street. Of the two dogs, Remi used to be the star of the show, drawing in people's eye as an exceptionally beautiful white dog- a lab with floppy ears and a big dumb grin, always eager to please. Now, Owondo has stolen the show. Everywhere we go, adults and kids alike strike up conversation, ask me what happened, how he's doing. He once got a fistful of dog food from a middle school boy who spotted him as we were passing. He gestured to me to wait, and ran inside his house and out again in a minute with a handful of food, obviously meant for a small dog, that Owondo eagerly ate before marking the tree outside their house as if to remember who to meet again next time. Once, an elderly latino man in a wheelchair pointed at him and gestured to himself, saying something in Spanish that I couldn't understand, but I took it to mean that my dog was handicapped like him.
But not all interactions are so great. Once, a middle-aged white woman, whose thick eyeshadow, dirty white tank top and too-tight jeans screamed "Meth addict", rode her beat-up bike down a neighborhood throughway street. I was relieved when she rode past us, but suddenly she turned around on the empty street, headed straight in my direction. She introduced herself and stuck out her hand for me to shake, which I did reluctantly, before she asked me where we had amputated Owondo. I told her the name of our vet, and she wanted to know what the experience had been since she apparently had a dog that needed an amputation. She asked me if it was expensive, and I suddenly felt self-conscious about how much money I had spent to keep him alive. Thinking about her now, I am relieved that she hasn't managed to become a neighbor like she promised before riding away.
Most interesting are the kids we meet along the way. Owondo has become an ambassador for all tripods in the world. Even beyond that, I most arrogantly take it upon myself to use my experience with Owondo as a teaching tool for kids who might not otherwise be exposed to other-ableness. We hear a lot of kids who tell me that, "I feel sorry for him." I, no doubt, am no better than these kids. In fact, until Owondo totally recovered from the surgery, I definitely felt sorry for him (as you can read in this blog). Now he's jumping into our BBQ pit to lick week-old grease drippings from the bottom. Now he's humping Remi, who went into and stayed in heat for two weeks before Owondo proved that he can still try despite not having an erection, much to our relief. I can safely say that Owondo is still his difficult, strange, funny self. He's just a regular dog who's figured out how to reposition his front leg squarely in the middle of his body, and whose gait more closely resembles a hoppy trot than a walk.
Tonight, on our evening walk, we approached a set of kids I had never seen before. They had come out to move the trashcan in front of their house for tomorrow's trash pickup. There were two girls and a boy, all around middle school age. One girl stayed close to the house, while the boy stood talking with the girl who had moved the trashcan out to the road. They looked at us, and I could see that they looked curious. Usually, Mike and I get asked, "Can we pet your dogs?" Sometimes kids are shy and just stand around, waiting for us to ask them if they want to pet our dogs. The closer I got to these kids, the more I expected to offer the latter, and I did ask once we were close enough. The boy said, "No thanks, but I like your brown dog." I thanked him, and before we passed by, the girl asked me, "What happened to your dog?" I decided to respond with the simple answer- that he was hit by a car a long time ago. I waited for her response, anticipating what self-important lesson I can teach these kids about life. I didn't expect that I'd be taught something so meaningful in that exchange. Instead of the usual, "I feel bad for him" that most children respond with, this girl said, "He's one lucky dog."
In that moment, a 12 year old girl turned my world upside down. With that sentence, I thought of Owondo's mom, who had been struck multiple times by cars before passing away- a life filled with procreation and food theft for the sake of survival. In that moment, I though of Owondo's sister who was pushed into a fire as a puppy and spent the rest of her short life with badly burned skin. I had always known he was lucky. He was lucky to have come to me. He was lucky to have been cared for well and to be a companion dog. He was lucky to have been rescued after the accident that forever changed his life. He was lucky to have someone bring him to America. He was lucky to have been given a second chance at having all four legs, and he was lucky when we tried our last resort- this amputation. I turned back to the girl and responded, "Yes he is." I wished I could convey how her simple sentence turned everything I've been thinking on its head, how it was so intelligent and perceptive of her to say those things. But I didn't want to become the strange lady on the street who, with no social cue whatsoever, introduces herself, shakes your hand, and opens up with more information than you care to learn. So, instead, I choked back my tears and kept walking.
From our walks, I've noticed that Owondo has started to get a lot of attention from random people on the street. Of the two dogs, Remi used to be the star of the show, drawing in people's eye as an exceptionally beautiful white dog- a lab with floppy ears and a big dumb grin, always eager to please. Now, Owondo has stolen the show. Everywhere we go, adults and kids alike strike up conversation, ask me what happened, how he's doing. He once got a fistful of dog food from a middle school boy who spotted him as we were passing. He gestured to me to wait, and ran inside his house and out again in a minute with a handful of food, obviously meant for a small dog, that Owondo eagerly ate before marking the tree outside their house as if to remember who to meet again next time. Once, an elderly latino man in a wheelchair pointed at him and gestured to himself, saying something in Spanish that I couldn't understand, but I took it to mean that my dog was handicapped like him.
But not all interactions are so great. Once, a middle-aged white woman, whose thick eyeshadow, dirty white tank top and too-tight jeans screamed "Meth addict", rode her beat-up bike down a neighborhood throughway street. I was relieved when she rode past us, but suddenly she turned around on the empty street, headed straight in my direction. She introduced herself and stuck out her hand for me to shake, which I did reluctantly, before she asked me where we had amputated Owondo. I told her the name of our vet, and she wanted to know what the experience had been since she apparently had a dog that needed an amputation. She asked me if it was expensive, and I suddenly felt self-conscious about how much money I had spent to keep him alive. Thinking about her now, I am relieved that she hasn't managed to become a neighbor like she promised before riding away.
Most interesting are the kids we meet along the way. Owondo has become an ambassador for all tripods in the world. Even beyond that, I most arrogantly take it upon myself to use my experience with Owondo as a teaching tool for kids who might not otherwise be exposed to other-ableness. We hear a lot of kids who tell me that, "I feel sorry for him." I, no doubt, am no better than these kids. In fact, until Owondo totally recovered from the surgery, I definitely felt sorry for him (as you can read in this blog). Now he's jumping into our BBQ pit to lick week-old grease drippings from the bottom. Now he's humping Remi, who went into and stayed in heat for two weeks before Owondo proved that he can still try despite not having an erection, much to our relief. I can safely say that Owondo is still his difficult, strange, funny self. He's just a regular dog who's figured out how to reposition his front leg squarely in the middle of his body, and whose gait more closely resembles a hoppy trot than a walk.
Tonight, on our evening walk, we approached a set of kids I had never seen before. They had come out to move the trashcan in front of their house for tomorrow's trash pickup. There were two girls and a boy, all around middle school age. One girl stayed close to the house, while the boy stood talking with the girl who had moved the trashcan out to the road. They looked at us, and I could see that they looked curious. Usually, Mike and I get asked, "Can we pet your dogs?" Sometimes kids are shy and just stand around, waiting for us to ask them if they want to pet our dogs. The closer I got to these kids, the more I expected to offer the latter, and I did ask once we were close enough. The boy said, "No thanks, but I like your brown dog." I thanked him, and before we passed by, the girl asked me, "What happened to your dog?" I decided to respond with the simple answer- that he was hit by a car a long time ago. I waited for her response, anticipating what self-important lesson I can teach these kids about life. I didn't expect that I'd be taught something so meaningful in that exchange. Instead of the usual, "I feel bad for him" that most children respond with, this girl said, "He's one lucky dog."
In that moment, a 12 year old girl turned my world upside down. With that sentence, I thought of Owondo's mom, who had been struck multiple times by cars before passing away- a life filled with procreation and food theft for the sake of survival. In that moment, I though of Owondo's sister who was pushed into a fire as a puppy and spent the rest of her short life with badly burned skin. I had always known he was lucky. He was lucky to have come to me. He was lucky to have been cared for well and to be a companion dog. He was lucky to have been rescued after the accident that forever changed his life. He was lucky to have someone bring him to America. He was lucky to have been given a second chance at having all four legs, and he was lucky when we tried our last resort- this amputation. I turned back to the girl and responded, "Yes he is." I wished I could convey how her simple sentence turned everything I've been thinking on its head, how it was so intelligent and perceptive of her to say those things. But I didn't want to become the strange lady on the street who, with no social cue whatsoever, introduces herself, shakes your hand, and opens up with more information than you care to learn. So, instead, I choked back my tears and kept walking.
I truely wish I could still have the chance to take care of owondo like just the way I love to.
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