On Buddies, Dogs and Humans

by Penny Costello

I’ve taken the past couple of months off from feeding the 5 Women Mayhem pipeline. This wasn’t a planned hiatus, or intentional in any way. I wasn’t suffering from classic writer’s block. I just didn’t feel like I had anything to say. The well was dry, awaiting recharge.

After a year of COVID, campaigns, and rancorous commentary on all sides, I hit my limit. Enough of the pundits, politicians, and proselytizers speaking in pompous certainty that their viewpoints, ideologies and dogma hold the keys to sanity and salvation, if only the idiots who see things differently would somehow see the light. I was tired of the noise, and didn’t feel I had anything clarifying, inspiring or redemptive to add.

Don’t get me wrong. I am a firm believer in the productive roles that dissent and spirited discourse contribute to a healthy democracy. But those ideals have been reduced to dyssent and dyscourse, (“dys” defined as a combining form meaning “ill,” “bad,” used in the formation of compound words like ‘dysfunction’). I say this because it seems to me that most of us have stopped listening, and thinking about what we've heard. We react rather than respond. We post snappy, snarky retorts in social media comments and wrap ourselves in smug self-satisfaction.

Too many of us have made up our minds, and there’s no need to think about it further. It’s their problem, not ours if they don’t like it. When we label each other as radicals (liberals AND conservatives), socialists, racists, and so many other ‘ists’, we don’t see each other as Americans, or even as Humans anymore.

Down that road lies madness, divisiveness, derision, misery, and ultimately, hatred.

I spend a lot of my time with dogs. My dogs, friends’ dogs, family members’ dogs. I have a chance to really observe the ways they interact with each other within our familiar sphere at home and out in the more public sphere at local dog parks. Like people, various dog breeds have personality traits that are predictable based on their lineage, culture, and upbringing. And, also like people, there are traits or behaviors that are situational, or have been established by training, past experiences or trauma.

Boone

When we do get together with friends and their dogs for play dates and romps, these are called Good Dog Club meetings. And the first and foremost rule for all members of the Good Dog Club is, “Be a Buddy, Not a Butthead.”

One recent day in particular, I was at the dog park with my pack. Boone, my Lab/Heeler mix can be protective if he sees the need, but mostly he plays the peacemaker. 

Idgy, a sweet Chihuahua/Pug/Jack Russell Terrier mix is small but mighty, she can totally run with the big dogs, and one of her nicknames is Mildred Fierce. And Simon, my “granddog” is a sweet and spunky Bichon Frise/Vizsla mix.

Idgy

Idgy weighs about 12 pounds, and sometimes when a bigger dog runs up to her, she’ll snarl a bit, establish her boundary, and then move on. Simon also gets uneasy when bigger dogs run up to him, and he’s been known to growl or snap a bit at them. His response seems to be one of those based on some negative experience. I don’t know what happened for him, but he became more reactive around age five. Now he has a particular dislike for Chocolate Labs and Huskies. He doesn’t take the time to get to know them. He just doesn’t like them. 

Simon

Could breedism be the canine counterpart to racism? Or, perhaps, since so many of us have been at home full time with our dogs for a year due to COVID, have they grown more possessive or protective of us (xenophobic)?

Usually, I can see these potential snarl encounters coming and divert their attention or disperse the tension and all is well. On this particular day, however, Idgy and Simon would team up, present a united, snarly front to pretty much every dog who came into our path. I tried at first to keep it positive and light.

“Come on, Pups,” I’d say. “It’s alright. Be a buddy. Come on. We’re good.” But it happened several times and they were not getting the ‘buddy not a butthead’ message. I finally had enough. I called them to me in a not-so-happy tone. I put them both on their leashes. And, I’ll admit, I yelled at them.

“Now SIT!” I scolded. “What in the hell is going on with you two? THIS IS NOT WHO WE ARE!”

Idgy and Simon sat looking up at me, waiting for the next command with that ‘Wow she’s serious!’ look on their faces. And I began to notice a few other dog owners nearby looking at me, too. So, we walked on for a bit, Boone making friends along the way, Idgy and Simon walking obediently beside me on their leashes. After we walked through a couple of groups of people and dogs, me talking to them and praising them for being buddies, I let them run again. When we encountered other dogs after that, I encouraged them as we approached. They were exemplary buddies from that point on, and we had a lovely time.

After that day, I began to reflect on those similarities between people in society and dogs at the dog park. I’ve since had some amusing fantasies about putting leashes on certain governors, senators and congressional representatives on both sides of the aisle and making them SIT!

How wonderful it would be to be able to say to them, “This is NOT who we are! Need I remind you of the first rule of the Good American Club?”

It works as well for humans as it does for dogs, Folks. And it has a snappy acronym – BABNAB. Be a buddy. No one can have too many.

 

 

*** If you'd like to be notified by email when new articles are posted, please submit your email address in the "Follow by Email" field in the upper right section of the blog page. Thanks!***

Fortuitous

 

by Mary Reiman

Word of the month: fortuitous. There are several synonyms such as serendipitous, but my favorite descriptor is lucky. I am 1/8 Irish so often I celebrate being lucky.  Although I did not find any four leaf clovers this week, in Mom's scrapbook I found the following article from my hometown newspaper The Milford Mail, September 6, 1913. 

The current entrance to Milford is on the land formerly owned by my grandparents. A mile behind this area is the backroad we usually drove to town, known to us as the old mill road. Little did I know that this road held such significance to our family. 

A Horrible Accident - Auto Collides with Team and Buggy, 

Jay Bickelhaupt Killed, and Others, Badly Injured

 

The worst accident of the season occurred last Thursday night on the grade, at the old mill dam, south of town, when a car driven by Henry Skyllingstad ran into a team, driven by Glen Chaffin, which resulted in the death of Jay Bickelhaupt, a mechanic in the employ of Munson Bros. and the serious injury of Miss Genie Kumba, of Fostoria. Henry Skyllingstad was cut about the face by flying glass from the wind shield and Miss Clara Ritter, the other occupant of the car, was practically uninjured.

 

Misses Genie and Lydia Kumba had been spending the day at the C. Mauss home. In the evening Mr. and Mrs. Mauss with Misses Genie and Lydia Kumba, Miss Ritter and Miss Hamilton, started for Fostoria in Mr. Mauss’ car. After crossing the grade south of the old town, the engine in the car went wrong and the ladies started to walk back to town. They stopped at the first house and telephoned the Milford Garage to send a man down to fix the car, but the men sent went to the lower mill dam. When the ladies reached town they stopped at the garage and learning that the help had gone to the wrong place they asked that someone be sent to fix the car as Mr. Mauss was waiting there. Henry Skyllingstad found Jay Bickelhaupt and they started. Misses Genie Kumba and Ritter went with them intending to return with Mr. Mauss. The car was running at a pretty high rate of speed as it started across the grade. Glen Chaffin and Isa Stinehart were coming to town and they met the car on the grade about fifty feet from the north end.

 

As there were willows on each side of the road and the lights on the car were not working well, the occupants of each vehicle did not see the other until within about twenty feet. Henry turned the car to the left thinking to miss the team, but the off horse sprang into the car, evidently trying to jump over it. One hoof struck Bickelhaupt on the top of the head...Bickelhaupt did not move from the car and it is evident that he never knew what hit him as he did not regain consciousness before passing away about 11:30 that evening. The broken end of the buggy tongue was forced through the joint in Miss Kumba's left shoulder and broke off just beneath the skin. The injured persons were brought to Milford Hospital at once, where Drs. Fuller, Coldren and Dr. Geissinger, of Spirit Lake, cared for them. Miss Kumba is resting easy and all that medical skills and good nursing can do is being done. 

Some might say Glen Chaffin and Isa Stinehart were lucky to not be injured in that accident. The accident of a car meeting a horse and buggy on a backroad one September evening in 1913. I believe I am the lucky one. Glen and Isa were married the following year. Fortuitous for me because they are my grandparents. Fortuitous indeed!

The Goodbye Journey

By JoAnne Young

 

It was a journey I knew I would probably have to take some day.

 

A year ago my sister, Jackie, who lives quite close to the ocean in South Carolina, broke the news that she had been diagnosed with leukemia. But while she was pessimistic about the prognosis because of her age, I was more optimistic because of my faith in medical science. And sure enough, after months of treatment, she let me know she was in remission. 

 

It bought us some time, for the pandemic to subside enough to allow me to travel half a country away. Then the hope that bloomed with the vaccine. And I told her, as soon as we get our two shots, I will come. That would be good, she said. 

 

Then the news in February that she may be out of remission. 

 

She was getting her covid shots and I was close to getting my first in the next few weeks. We talked about me coming to see her as soon as both of us felt safe. 

 

In late February things took a bad turn. She was hospitalized and I waited to hear what her doctors could tell us. And she grew weaker and unable to talk on the phone. The doctors found additional bad news, and suddenly, it was time to go to her, pandemic or not, vaccine or not. 

 

Scott and I made the nearly 1,400-mile journey in the car. Twenty hours. Two and a half days. All the while, her husband telling me he didn’t know if we would make it before she was gone and, if we did, she probably would not be able to respond. 

 

And on Monday, we were there, in her land of palmetto and Carolina moon. On the coastal edge line of my only sibling. 

 

She had hung on, even as it was in some deep foreboding place between being and not being, between the light streaming through her sunroom door and the darkness to which she was headed. 

 

I could only talk to her and hope that, somehow, she could sense I had made it to her side. In the early mornings of those three days, I could take her place at the beach where she and I had walked on my last visit. Where we picked up shells and watched shrimp boats, pelicans and the rising sun. 

 

I asked silently for a sign that perhaps she knew I was there. A few minutes later I came upon a starfish and then another and another that had washed up with the high tide. 

 

Hours later she left us. 

 

It was too fast from thinking we had some time, to knowing we had no more. And then watching them pick her up, load her into the back of a long car, and drive away. No funeral, no communal goodbye. 

 

On the 20-hour ride back to Lincoln I unpacked a lot of feelings and remembrances, regrets and understandings. It can be so easy not to see beyond childhood memories and what you think you know about a person you’ve shared time with all your life. Now, it seems, I want to know her differently. 

 

I am proud of the good soul she was, of the mad photography skills she developed later in life, of the worth she saw in getting her college degree decades after most traditional students. 

I will admire her eye for beauty and design, her caring for animals and people, and wanting the best for all of them. I will regard highly her giving nature.

And I can simply love her for her complications and how she loved me for mine. 

 

On the road to and from my sister, we crossed bridge after bridge after bridge. They spanned the wide waters of the Missouri, the Mississippi, the Tennessee, Cumberland, Ohio, the Great Pee Dee and the Little Pee Dee. 

 

Our siblings are the bridges that enable our crossings over life’s waters – from our parents to our grown-up selves, from our childhood wanderings to our adult groundings. 

 

We use those bridges while we can. Because at some point, the darkest of waters are there before us and we must find a way to cross them on our own. 

In Praise of Science...and the Human Spirit

 by Marilyn Moore

Somewhere out there, 300 million miles from Earth, is the planet Mars.  On February 18, after a ten-month journey, the rover Perseverance landed, precisely as planned, in the middle of a crater.  Perseverance is the size of a car, and its descent through a thin atmosphere, decreasing from a speed of 12,000 mph to a gentle touchdown, was cause for celebration at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory headquarters.  Scientists and engineers and physicists and pilots and mathematicians waited through seven minutes of no communication….and erupted into cheers when the cameras activated, and the picture-perfect landing appeared on the big screen.  Hoorays and fist bumps all around!  

In the coming days, Perseverance will drive across the planet, sending photographs back to Earth and gathering rocks and dust samples for analysis at a later time, when they are returned to Earth in a future mission.  The rover will make its way to the delta of an ancient river, where scientists believe evidence of long-ago life on Mars may be found.  And the cute little helicopter, Ingenuity, will demonstrate its ability to take off, fly, and land in an atmosphere with very thin air.  

I am in awe of all of this.  The distance is greater than I can imagine.  The precision of planning and execution is beyond my understanding.  And what we may learn about the planet, the universe, the patterns of life and extinction of life across eons, is just staggering.  This is science on a beyond-the-universe scale…and it matters.

And at this very same time, millions of persons around the world are being vaccinated with drugs developed to protect against Covid-19, protection against the tiniest of viruses.  The first two drugs, developed by Pfizer and Moderna, implement the finding that it is possible to attach a messenger to ribonucleic acid.  That messenger teaches our bodies’ natural defense system to develop antibodies to the spike protein on the coronavirus looks like, and to destroy that spike if it appears.  

I am in awe of all of this, too.  The understanding of cell biology, of viruses, of RNA, of the body’s defense system, of sending a message to our bodies on how to react to a corona virus spike protein….imagine if this had been known a hundred years ago, when the influenza epidemic of 1917 was raging.  But it wasn’t, and now it is.  And the scientists, the biologists and the epidemiologists and the immunologists, are learning more every day.  This is science at the most basic cellular level…and it matters.

And what is most awesome to me is that all of this, from the basic cellular level to spaces beyond the universe, is studied and understood and acted upon by human beings.  This is not magic, this is not smoke and mirrors, this is not illusion, this is all real.  The human mind that can plot with pinpoint precision the landing of a rover on Mars and can plot with pinpoint precision the delivery of a message to our immune system…this is awesome.  And even more so….the human mind that can see what’s possible, and the human spirit that endeavors to make it so.  That’s truly awesome.

The names of the vehicles on Mars right now are so right for this time in human history.  Perseverance is the rover, and it’s perseverance of scientists over the millennia, building from theory to fact to next theory to next fact, trying and failing and learning from failure to try until successful, then trying again, each step and each year adding to what is known.  That’s what perseverance looks like.  Ingenuity is the helicopter, and it’s the spark, the “what if,” the “let’s try this and see if it works,” that brings about daring new attempts, leaps in understanding, and possibilities that become realities when most doubted it could ever happen.  

On a more personal scale, a “you and me and the neighborhood” scale, it is also the qualities of perseverance and ingenuity that have sustained us through this hard, hard year.  For every single person who persevered, who kept going even when, especially when, it was hard, thank you; for every single person who looked for a way to solve a never-happened-to-us before problem, thank you.  You have added to the collective human spirit, that celebrates both effort and the spark of a new idea.  And that is awesome beyond words. 

*** If you'd like to be notified by email when new articles are posted, please submit your email address in the "Follow by Email" field in the upper right section of the blog page. Thanks!