A Dog in the Life

In my last post, I used a weaving term, "dog on the loom," and mentioned how I felt that was demeaning to dogs.  Dogs have been a part of my life almost from the beginning.  I can't really imagine not having dogs around, although there are times when I claim that life would be easier without them.  Easier, perhaps, but not nearly as fulfilling.

Dinah, the Ur-MinPin with Me on my Skates

Early 1950s, Laurel, Montana

When I was a small child, my parents decided that every boy should have a dog.  For some reason they headed over to the Paradise Valley south of Livingston and picked up a small black dog that had just been weaned.  I do not remember any time without Dinah in my early life, but apparently I was old enough to talk as the story I grew up with is that my parents asked me to name the pup and I said "Dinah."  I guess someone else in our acquaintance had a black dog with that name.  Dinah curled up on the floor at my mother's feet and rode the 100+ miles home to Laurel without any complaint.  That did it.  She was not my dog, but my mothers from that point on.

Dinah was a fierce protector though.  The thing about Miniature Pinschers is that they have absolutely no idea how small they really are.  Bred originally as ratters, they can be absolutely fearless.  Dinah would take on any dog that dared to come near our home, and once, on top of Skalkaho Pass, she took on a bear.  Mother thought we'd lost the dog at that point, but no, the bear took off for the tall timber rather than face such a concentrated bundle of fury.

She lived for fifteen years, and when she died, Mother said "No more.  I can't take it."  That was in the mid 1960s.  In 1969, after a month in Montana with my friend John, I returned with Hans, a purebred Keeshond, in the car.  Mother took one look at Hans and said, "That's a nice dog you have, John."  When John replied, "He's not my dog, Mrs. Spellman," Mother came back with "Oh yes he is, John, because he's not ours."  But, sure enough, I moved into an apartment in Berkeley, and Hans stayed with my parents.  When I moved to Montana, I wanted to bring Hans with me, but Mother said no.  "He's my dog!"

Gotta Love the Hair

Sandra Stedinger, Me, and Yazzie

Cross Country Skiing at Chief Joseph Pass, Montana

Winter 1976

Living in Montana, in a log cabin in the woods, I had to have a dog, and since Hans was still in California with Mother, Animal Control in Missoula furnished me with a Cairn Terrier with the very un-Scottish name of Yazzie.  Yazzie might have had a Navajo name (Yazzie means little in the Diné language), but he was a true Scotsman, er dog.  Whenever we would march with the Scottish Heritage Society in various parades, Yazzie would walk along patiently until the pipes started playing.  Then he would puff out his chest, raise his head, and proudly strut down the avenue as long as the pipes played.

Jr. was my first "second" dog.  My partner at the time, Forrest Moon, had brought his dog with him into the family.  Crescent Moon was a pure-bred Chinese Crested, but one of the throwbacks that is fully furred.  I wanted another MinPin, but Forrest was afraid of Doberman and wanted nothing that even remotely appeared to be one.  When we learned that our friend Tom Freeman had a pregnant bitch, we went to visit after the pups were born.  Mother, Little Bit, was a miniature shepherd, and the supposed father was a MinPin.  There were five puppies in the litter: two black and rust MinPins, two tiny Shepherds, and one, the runt of the litter, that was all white expect for one red ear and a red ring around the opposite eye.  We immediately said "That's our dog!"  and when Tom called us to say "Your dog's ready," we raced to St. Ignatius and brought him home.  We named him Jr. and allowed as that name could be read as either "Junior" or "J.R."  My life with Jr. lasted longer than the relationship with Forrest, but Jr. developed cancer, and on a visit to California, I took him to my mother's vet who administered the shot that put him to sleep in my arms.  It was almost more than I could bear.

Baby Jr. on my shoulder

Late 1980s, Missoula, Montana

On the way home from that trip, I stopped at a rest area just north of Grants Pass, Oregon, and before I could get out of my truck, an Asian woman approached.  She was driving a large motor home and was having mechanical problems.  For some reason she figured I would know what was wrong, poor mistaken fool that she was, but I went over and climbed under her rig where I saw a hose just dangling.  I suggested that she return to Grants Pass rather than try to climb the mountains to Roseburg, and as I straightened up, I noticed several ribbons hanging from her mirror.  Turns out she was in the business of raising and showing Miniature Pinschers.  We had a brief conversation about the breed, and when she learned that I had just had Jr. put down, she asked if I wanted another dog.  Long story short, when she got to Missoula for the Five Valleys Kennel Club Show in June, I picked up Speedy, a beautiful stag red MinPin who became the new love of my life.

From that time till now there has not been a moment without dogs in my life.  While living with Speedy, I learned of a dog over in Wallace, Idaho, that needed a new home.  My partner Gary and I took Speedy with us and went to visit Faylene.  Speedy and Faylene played well together, and in another couple of weeks, there were four of us at home.  Then we got a call from our friend Lance who worked with the Bitterroot Humane Society in Hamilton, Montana.  They had a MinPin who needed a new home.  Gary and I drove to Hamilton, and adopted Rocky.  Both Faylene and Rocky developed diabetes, and needed to have insulin shots twice a day.  As we began preparations for a vacation trip to Puerto Vallarta, we needed to find someone who could administer those shots.  Finding someone to house/dog sit is one thing.  Finding someone willing to shoot your dog twice a day is another matter entirely.

A visit to the Missoula Humane Society got us a connection to someone who could do just that, and by the way, we have a MinPin here, would you like to see her?  One thing led to another, and that's when Minnie entered our lives.  We now had four Miniature Pinschers in the house, two with diabetes, and one the tiniest thing we'd ever seen (well, apart from Jr. when we first got him).  Minnie is still with us, the oldest of the now five MinPins who share our lives.  I fear that her time is almost over as she's at least fifteen years old now and is getting a bit feeble.  But spunk?  Boy does she have spunk.  Unfortunately, she does not really have any bladder control these days, so she has been banished from our bed.  (The other four still sleep with us.)  This morning, I took her into the shower with me and gave her a bath which she desperately needed.  While Kevin dried her off, I took my shower trying to get all the short black hairs off my body.  She smells better now, but it won't last.  Tonight, while she's asleep, she'll undoubtedly pee all over herself again.  She has trouble standing up, but she'll run across the room to be with me, and once outside, she runs all over the yard.  Did I say she has spunk?

Minnie after her bath

Plains, Montana

January 15th, 2015

The remainder of our pack?  There's Gypsy who came to live with me while I was in California looking after Mother during the last year of her life.  My profile picture for this blog shows me holding Gypsy on a southern Oregon beach.  I'll never forget the first time I put Gypsy on Mother's bed in the nursing home.  Momma looked at this small black dog and said, "Is that my Dinah?"  "No, Momma.  She just looks like Dinah."  Gypsy spent a lot of time at the nursing home with me.  Major came to us when a friend found him running loose in an industrial area.  We placed an ad, but no one responded, so he became our boy.  Harley was an owner turn in at the Bitterroot Humane Society.  He's a love, but he has moments when he turns into Cujo in seconds.  I'm sure that's why he was turned in, but my question is, what did that family do to make him so aggressive?  And finally, there's Rocky II, whom we saw at PetSmart in Missoula when we were going in to buy another 40 pound bag of Eukanuba.  Life Savers Animal Rescue from Polson was there with various dogs available for adoption.  What can I say, Rocky left with us.

I consider all of our dogs "rescues."  None came from a pet store or breeder.  If you have it in your heart to add an animal to your life, you can't beat taking a shelter animal into your home.  It will enrich your days more than anything you can imagine.

2014 In Review, Part I

On this, the 23rd of December 2014, it seems appropriate to write up a review of the preceding year. and since I always intersperse my words with my photos, I'm choosing to write this review on the basis of the photos I've taken over the course of the year--one photo for every month, which means that I'll divide this into two parts, each covering six months.  What follows today then is January through June.  On Friday, Boxing Day as it were, I'll box up the year and put it away.

My kitchen orchid in full bloom

January 5, 2014

January is not normally known for its floral displays, at least not in northwestern Montana.  But one of the big additions to my life this year has been my increased interest in flowers.  My mother always had house plants, and one of the hardest things for her in our move to California was giving up all her African violets which would not have been allowed into the Golden State.  I bought the orchid pictured above three years ago as a decoration for my gallery space on Missoula's First Friday opening night.  I'd never had orchids, but this one bloomed for quite some time, then, as happens, lost its blooms.  January 2014 was the second time it had bloomed in our new home, and I was glad to be able to catch its beauty in pixels.  Since then, my friend Hank gave me his two large orchids and I have great hope that I will see them bloom as well, some time soon.  In addition to the three orchids, I have had great luck with my Christmas Cactus, which bloomed three times during 2014, and I added an Orchid Cactus this spring.  This latter plant has been growing like crazy, its various shoots are now covering my coffee table, and I can't wait to see it bloom this spring.  The ones blooming in the greenhouse where I bought mine looked like a Christmas Cactus on steroids.

Gypsy in the Snow

February 24, 2014

February was a winter wonderland.  With one exception, all the days I spent camera in hand brought back pictures of snow scapes.  Snow on our driveway, snow on the mountains, snow on the trees, snow by the river.  It was like a photographic exposition of Wolfgang Borchert's story Der Viele, Viele Schnee (I cannot find an English translation of this story so I'll call it The Very Great Snowfall) which I read in my early days at Berkeley.  Borchert was writing from his experience on the Eastern (Russian) Front as a soldier in Hitler's Wehrmacht.  Most reviewers comment on the ubiquity of the snow and the silence it engenders, somewhere in Russia.  With five Miniature Pinschers in the house, we never have to worry about silence.  Or perhaps, silence would be a cause for worry.

St. David's Day Cactus

March 1, 2014

March brought more snow, and I have photos a plenty of dogs, deer, mountains, etc. in the snow, but by the 20th of the month, my pictures show bare ground.  I did get a wonderful shot of an Amish buggy at the Mission General Store in St. Ignatius, now one of my favorite photos, but we didn't travel much in March, other than running Kevin's bread route.  My question for the month is "What do you call a Christmas Cactus that blooms on March First?"  Perhaps a St. David's Day Cactus, as the feast day for that Welsh Saint is the first of March.

The Polson Docks on Flathead Lake with the Mission Mountains in the background

April 10, 2014

My photos for April show that grass was turning green, even if there was still considerable snow in the mountains around us.  I have pictures of Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep on the highway, white-tailed deer in the back yard, a herd of elk in a field nearby, cows just down the road, and our first bear (actually the only bear I saw all year) just off Prospect Creek Road leading to Thompson Pass.  But perhaps the most iconic photo I took in April was the one showing the heavy snowpack in the Mission Mountains while Flathead Lake was still too low for boating.  Not sure that anyone would want to be out boating in a Montana April, even if I did see one brave gent driving his convertible down Highway 200 with the top down.

Dahlia After the Rain

May 4, 2014

And what do April Showers bring if not May Flowers?  May was a glorious month.  Kevin had I don't know how many cubic yards of top soil brought in so we could plant a garden.  This was to be a vegetable garden.  My flowers stayed in pots on the deck.  I discovered Dahlias.  Never had them before, but I have them now.  Lots of different sizes, shapes, colors.  What beautiful plants--and they'll bloom all summer long if I remember to dead head them.  May also saw me back out in the wild, GPS in hand, geocaching, beginning with a meeting with other cachers out at Trout Creek.  Mother's Day took us to the Amber Bear Inn in Heron, Montana for Sunday Brunch with Doug Jones and Adar Benjamin, and more geocaching.  Yet another passion of mine, cars, was fed by a visit to Sandpoint, Idaho and their annual classic car show on the 17th.  And still more geocaching.

My 1980 Triumph TR7, Entry 5 in the Plains Day Parade

June 7, 2014

June First took me to the Ross Creek Cedars between Noxon and Troy, Montana.  I have wanted to visit this preserve for many years, and by 2014, the trip was long past due.  That may be why I visited the Cedar Grove three times over the summer.  Or it may be because the grove reminds me of the redwood forests in Northern California. June also saw my hibiscus blooming.  There are now four hibiscus plants in different colors and sizes growing in the den.  Plains Day and the Hot Springs Homesteaders' Day were festive occasions here in Sanders County.  The garden grew well.  Lots more geocaching around the area, and all in all, a good month to be alive.  In fact, I have no regrets for the first half of 2014, and while there are always things we could have done differently, I’m pleased with the way my life is going.  Come back on Friday for the second half of the year.

We Wish You a Merry Christmas!

Rattlesnake Creek in January
Taken 1/3/09 in Missoula, Montana

Looking back at the year 2009, I can only say that it's been a strange and sometimes wild ride. I started my new job on December 1st, 2008, so there was no time for any holiday outings either last Christmas or New Years.

The beginning of January I was able to get Kevin out on cross-country skis. We headed up Spring Gulch at the trailhead to the Rattlesnake Wilderness Area, just a few miles from home. Kevin never quite got the technique required to manage skinny skis with no metal edges. He prefers downhill skiing. I did get a good shot of Rattlesnake Creek with its banks covered with snow. One of the few photos I'm proud of from 2009. I'm sorry to say that was the only ski trip I took all winter.

Mid January found me taking my first (and so far only) business trip out-of-state. My boss, a co-worker and I flew from Missoula to San José California, then rented a car to drive on to Monterey where we had meetings with the staff at the Defense Language Institute. That trip got off to a rocky start when our plane was unable to land in Seattle, but flew on to Portland instead, which really messed up our connections. Still, we made it to Monterey and had a good time there. I'd driven through Monterey before--years and years before--but had never spent a night there, so we were able to do a bit of sightseeing and wonderful eating while in the area. Our hotel was just at the end of Cannery Row, so I had to reread Steinbeck before the trip. It was worth it.

Toward the very end of January, Kevin stopped by my office with bad news. My former partner, Gary Pitts, had moved to Denver in May, 2008, looking for a more urban experience and higher pay. Apparently Denver was not the promised land, and in late January, Gary committed suicide. He had taken our twelve-year-old diabetic dog Rocky with him, and while there was nothing more I could do for Gary, I could do something for Rocky who was now in the hands of Denver Animal Control. Having secured their agreement to release the fellow to my care, Kevin and I headed out, driving to Denver and back in one long weekend. Along the way we stayed overnight with a good friend in Big Timber, Montana, and once in Denver we stayed with Gary's best friend from New Orleans days, Miss Lurline, AKA Terry Hurley and his partner Al. When we picked Rocky up, I wasn't sure he'd make the trip home alive. He was in pretty rough shape. Who knows how long he'd been alone in Gary's apartment before Animal Control rescued him, and while Rocky wears a tag noting that he is diabetic, Gary hadn't left any instructions as to how much insulin he needed. I'm happy to say that eleven months later, Rocky is doing fine, has a thick black shiny coat and a great disposition.

Spring came and went with no high spots, and thankfully no more low spots, and eventually Summer arrived. The one major change in our lives was the addition of yet another rescue. A friend had found a male MinPin running loose in an industrial area, tried unsuccessfully to find an owner, and asked if we would take care of him while she advertised a "found dog." We readily agreed, and Major, as we named him, became part of our family, albeit one we had to watch constantly as his preferred activity was to run away.

We made a few trips up to the cabin, but never spent the night there, and didn't take the camper out for any overnights either. In August we did have a visit from my old Berkeley friend Sandy Stedinger and her husband Jon. They had been camping in Glacier National Park, and Sandy was able to spend an additional week with Kevin and me while Jon flew home to San Diego. Sandy and I put the canoe in the Bitterroot and floated from Lolo to Maclay Flats one afternoon. That was the only time I had the canoe in the water all year.

Canoeing the Bitterroot River
August, 2009

In September, I got to drive a University van and took a delegation of five academics from VietNam to Glacier National Park. We had good weather for the whole day, a seventeen hour drive that took us to Holland Lake, Hungry Horse Reservoir, lunch at the Isaac Walton Inn in Essex, East Glacier, then up and over the Going-to-the-Sun highway across the center of Glacier Park. Four of the five VietNamese were from Can Tho University in the Mekong Delta. They were studying the effects of climate change--a field of study that is vital as the Mekong is disappearing as the waters rise.

Two Medicine Lake, Glacier National Park
Taken August 30, 2009

By early October, I was climbing the walls and Kevin insisted that I had to take some time off work for some R&R. With that encouragement, I agreed, and we put all four dogs in the truck and took off for Mount Rushmore. Kevin had never been to that presidential site, and I'm always up for a road trip, so why not. I've written up the first five days of that trip in my blog, and will eventually post the final day, but long story short, early October 2009 was the wrong time to take a vacation--at least in the frozen northland. I've taken to calling the trip "The 2000 Mile Sunday Drive," but a Sunday Drive should never include rain, snow, blizzards and wind, wind and more wind. Especially when you're driving a 3/4 ton, four-wheel drive pickup loaded with a 3,000 pound camper. We got about 7 miles to the gallon on the trip and saw more snow covered roads than I care to see in a one-week period. The storms covered Wyoming, and my first (and so far only) view of Devil's Tower was of a huge pillar reaching up into the low-hanging clouds. Fortunately, by the time we reached Rapid City, the snow had stopped falling and Mount Rushmore was glorious with bright blue sky and white ground.

Part of my rationale for the trip was that it would allow me to continue collecting photographs of the 56 county court houses in Montana, and I insisted that our route would have to include the few Montana counties I had never visited. By the time we got home, just in time for record cold temperatures (near zero in mid October), I could say that I have now been in all of Montana's counties, and I have photographs of the Court Houses from about 2/3s of them. Major got away from us three times during the trip--he almost got to find himself a new home in Cody, Wyoming--but all six of us returned safely to Missoula. (Thank you, Kevin, for all that driving.)

Black Roses on my Birthday Cake
Taken 10/17/09 in Missoula, Montana

Just after returning from the trip, I turned 60. Hard to believe I'm that old--but I'm not sure what 60 is supposed to feel like. I think I'm much younger than my father was at 60, but I never talked about age with him, so who knows. And speaking of birthdays, today, Christmas Eve, Kevin turns 55. Just a kid--a kid who got stuck with having a birthday the day before Christmas.

The Missoula Gay Men's Chorus presented our fifth annual Christmas Cabaret in early December, and I sang bass as usual. This year I did not sing any solo, but enjoyed the camaraderie of my fellow choristers and the response of the full house. This was our most traditional concert in ten years of singing together, and also, I feel, our best performance. I wish you all could have been there.

This Christmas finds us spending a quiet time at home, just the six of us. We wish you and yours a most joyful Christmas, fully keeping in mind the reason for the season. We ask you to join us in prayers for Peace on Earth, and for the safety of our soldiers and the people of Iraq and Afghanistan. Finally, may 2010 bring you happiness, health and a truly wonder-filled year.

Love, laughter, hugs and kisses.

From our home to yours
Rocky, Bryan, Gypsy, Minnie, Kevin, Major
Taken 12/24/09 in Missoula, Montana