Walking with Waldo

What is that smell?

“I smell the smelly smell of something that smells smelly.”

-Spongebob Squarepants

Waldo and I are on our first walk of the morning. The sky is clear, there is next to no wind and it is cold. It’s still quite sleepy out and full wakefulness comes gradually as the fog of slumber slowly drains from my mind. As I exhale, I watch my breath condense in steamy clouds and then just hang there, a foot or so in front of my face, as if time were suspended. The yellowed grass still bears patches of ice left over from the last snowstorm and I have to be careful where I step. The sidewalks and driveways have been cleared of ice and snow, but where we walk, beneath the barren apple and pear trees, around the thickets of bushes where rabbits make their homes, it can be treacherous and I keep my eyes open to avoid the worst of it. I can see Waldo’s breath as well, as he trots about the grounds, sniffing everywhere, his odar (odor ranging and direction) on full power. He stops and sticks the tip of his nose a fraction of an inch above the stinkiest poop, that even I can smell from where I stand, and spends a full minute taking it all in. It seems his nasal superpower (some estimates are between 10,000 and 100,000 times more sensitive than human’s) not only picks up the faintest of odors, it’s also able to distinguish between a wide variety of nuance. There must be a lot of information there he needs to process. I wonder what all that smell tells him. It begs the question, what’s it like to see the world through your nose?

Of course, dogs do have a good sense of sight as well as of smell. In broad daylight, it’s not as good as we humans have, but it’s good. They can see better in low light than we can, but it’s not very good vision then. To watch Waldo, you’d think that sight was merely a long-range alert system, telling him what to seek out and sniff. At least most of the time. Humans are very visual and spend most of their sensory attention on what they see. No wonder. My eyesight is good, although I wear glasses. But when I take a whiff of the freezing air, I don’t smell much of anything. Today, I have a runny nose from the cold and most of what I smell is snot, which doesn’t smell like much at all.

Waldo’s hearing is quite good too, including sounds octaves higher than I can sense. It seems to me that he uses it more as passive sonar in order to find things that may be interesting to sniff than as primary input. Like the way he uses his sense of sight. My second most used sense is hearing. I have excellent hearing for my age. I like to ignore the visual input, sometimes by closing my eyes and sometimes by just not paying attention to it, and focus on what I can hear. It not only puts my awareness squarely in the moment, it also opens up an entire universe not accessible by sight. Gay, piping birdsong, the sound of wind tickling leaves, the thunderous turbulent noise of an approaching gust of wind as it elbows its way through trees and around bushes, the slapping sound of my footfalls as I walk, the tinkling babble of water in a nearby brook as it flows around rocks and branches that try to block its run to the sea, all of this and much more can open my attention to a world I cannot see. But I have never used it to find something to smell.

Then there is the sense of touch. I do use it, sometimes, to locate things when I want my eyes on something else. Like finding the button on the key fob in my pocket so I can lock or unlock the car door. I don’t consciously use touch much anymore, to explore the world. I did when I was much younger and sometimes still do to enhance my visual experience. For example, if I want to test if something is wet or to check its temperature. Humans have densely packed tactile sensors on their fingertips and tongues. Dogs have the same on their tongues and I think that when Waldo licks some piece of yuk on the ground, he’s doing it to see what it feels like more than taste it. The pads on his paws are way too thick and cornified to be able to feel much so he probably doesn’t use his feet’s sense of touch for exploring his world. Touch does not offer Waldo much to compete with his sense of smell.

To be continued next week…

Nice to smell you.

Atop Mt. Kilimanjaro, Uhuru Peak, Tanzania 08/25/2010.
5895 meters, 19341 feet

Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth.

-Henry David Thoreau

The day is a little warmer than it has been – temps are in the high forties and low fifties. Nature is still in hibernation mode on the rail-trail, though.   The spring equinox hasn’t arrived yet and she slumbers on in a cloak of dead leaves and naked limbs. There are some subtle stirrings, though, harbingers of greener, lusher times to come. The birds are back. I can see some of them, although not well enough to identify most of them, and I can hear those that I can’t see.  They sometimes come in flocks and, in places, are quite noisy. Things get awfully quiet when a cold spell hits, and then the birds are back in abundance on the warmer days. Either they follow the warm air as it moves around the country, or, when it gets cold, they disappear into some warm cozy cocoon somewhere out of sight and hearing. Either way, they are back, even if intermittently.

Before I retired, my day was spent indoors, or inside a metal cocoon going down the highway. I interacted with many people, most of whom I barely knew or had only a working relationship. My exposure to the larger world was limited to a few days here and there, scattered throughout the years. Like when I climbed Kilimanjaro, or went on a ten-day canoe trip on the Boundary Waters in Minnesota. I’ve always loved being out in the wilderness, surviving on what I could find and what I carried with me on my back. It’s rejuvenating, somehow, to leave the artificial, man-made environment that defines most of our lives. It feels sort of like going back to the essentials of what it means to be alive.

Since I retired, things have changed. Now, thanks to Waldo and his canine needs, I’m surrounded by nature every day. Even though we’re still inside a city limits, it feels like we’re out in the country — the artificiality of humanity surrounds us, but it’s mostly unseen and easily ignored. I get to directly experience the ebb and flow of life as it changes with the seasons. I see the budding of trees (maples, sycamores and black walnuts), bushes and weeds I can’t identify that then become fully leafed-out and flowering, followed by the bearing of seeds of various kinds that fall on the ground, the cycle ending with bare limbs and twigs buried in orange dead leafage and then snow. I see and hear the coming and goings of various animals – squirrels, rabbits, chipmunks and an occasional opossum, that are there in abundance on warm days and then gone when the temperature drops. Some animals are present only in the warmer months, like chipmunks, robins, sparrows, the Emmy bird and bugs (noseeums, gnats, mosquitoes, flies, crickets, beetles, ticks – the list is huge) and gone when it gets cold.

I experience the changing of the seasons intimately, because I’m in whatever weather the day has to offer, for up to three hours at a time. Long enough to grow icicles on my hood in freezing rain, to have my cheeks and nose become numb with the cold as my armpits moisten my shirt with sweat. I watch the bowing of Waldo’s leash, fully extended, as it’s blown about by a strong wind. On a snowy day, I tramp through deep snow, my feet and gaiters buried to above my ankles. In the summer, I get up before dawn to start our daily six mile walk before it gets too hot. I slog through pouring rain and grit my teeth against the cold, gusting wind. And I do this every damn day. On the rare occasion we skip the rail-trail, we still go out for half-mile poop and pee breaks, roughly fifteen minutes at a time, four or five times a day.

And Waldo is with me each and every time. He is the force of nature that propels me forward, literally as well as figuratively. Oh, I enjoy being outside every day, but I know that if it weren’t for Waldo, I would find some excuse to stay inside, sitting in my recliner, growing roots. I would stay in my artificial box I call a home and witness only that small part of nature I can see through my living-room window.

And Waldo has become so much else. He is my constant companion. My charge that, totally dependent on me for everything, I care for and worry about, whose welfare I am constantly thinking about. The surest way to fall in love with something, including inanimate objects, like cars or airplanes, is to tend to their needs, daily, hourly and in detail. Best of all, I can say that Waldo is my friend.

Waldo has changed my life, and so much for the better.

Today, with Waldo on the rail-trail.

Waldo as a little puppy on his farm in Pennsylvania.

Continued from last week…

It’s only after you’ve stepped outside your comfort zone that you begin to change, grow and transform.

-Roy T. Bennett

When I first brought Waldo home in the car from the farm, he was obviously uncomfortable. It was a seven and a half hour drive from his birthplace in Pennsylvania to his new home in Marlborough, Massachusetts. I stopped every couple of hours and lifted him out of the car to pee. He sat where I put him on the ground and wouldn’t move, too insecure to relieve himself. Finally, he couldn’t hold it anymore and he did what he needed to do. Slowly, he became comfortable with being on a leash and in my company and we were able to go for walks.

When we first got to our apartment, he wouldn’t go up or down the stairs. I had to carry him up and down and then encourage him to navigate the stairs on his own by lifting or lowering his front paws onto the next stair, followed by his hind paws. This took a couple of weeks, but he finally was willing to go up and down without hesitation. Thank God, he then weighed some forty pounds.

For months, when we walked around the property and we came close to the street, he would chase after the cars as they went by – not in the street, but on the grass next to it. I don’t think this was all instinctive herding — his tail was tucked and he was quite agitated. After many months, CBD oil and discouragement from me, he now is used to the car-sheep and ignores them as he walks along next to them. He even stops at street crossings and waits for me to tell him it’s okay to cross. Which he then does, after looking both ways.

Waldo still has moments when he comes across something new and startles. Jumping back from the new object — a snow shovel, a snow blower (not operating) or a Vespa — ears back, tail tucked, he eyes the thing suspiciously and gives it a wide berth. I roll my eyes, tell him it’s okay and call him over closer to the offending object. He pauses, puts his head low and slowly, haltingly, comes over to give the thing a close look and a sniff. That done, he turns his head and continues on his Waldo-way as if nothing happened. Waldo trusts me now.

Today, it’s really cold. The wind bites through my pants, chilling my legs, and blusters my exposed cheeks and nose, making them numb. Icicles grow on my mustache, condensed from my steamy breath. My fingers hurt from the cold, despite the heavy gloves, and I pick up my pace to generate more body heat.

The rail-trail landscape is bleak — skeletal trees and bushes, yellowed grass and patches of ice scattered on the dun-colored ground, tinted orange by masses of dead oak and maple leaves. I hear no birds – they’ve either gone south or are hiding in some cozy nook or other. I miss talking to the Emmy bird. Guess that’ll have to wait for spring and warmer weather. Even the squirrels are nowhere to be seen today. There are a few people and dogs that we pass, but not many.

Waldo trots along, sniffing and picking up sticks. On occasion, he will turn around, come close to me, stick in mouth, and try to get me to play keep-away. We do this awkward dance as we work our way down the path, both tugging at the overvalued stick. Finally, he lets go and I give it a toss, landing out in front of us, but within the eight-meter length of his leash. His tail is up and he gallops after it in a rush. Once again in possession of the precious thing, he brings it back to me and the game starts all over again. This is not what his breed was genetically selected to do, but he’s having a grand old time doing it anyway.

Waldo has changed in so many ways. He’s a work in progress, for sure, but he’s gone from being a farm dog to a city dog. He was not created to live in a city; none of us were. The city was created for us to live in and we adapt as best we can. The best part? He seems to be very happy about his adaptation.

And I am eternally grateful to have him in my life in the city.

Waldo today towing my grandson on the rail-trail.

Cold, rainy, foggy day on the rail-trail.

The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.

-William Arthur Ward

It’s cold out, about thirty degrees, and rainy. The past few days have been warm enough to melt the patchy sheets of ice that made it slow going in places. I can now walk on the rail-trail tarmac without risking a fall that could cause me significant injury and Waldo a hiatus from his beloved daily walks. Waldo, he was never at as significant risk of injury as I was. He’s closer to the ground and has four supports keeping him up to my two. Not that I haven’t seen him fall on the ice; I have. He doesn’t seem bothered by it, though. He goes along, doing his Waldo thing, and sometimes even seems to think that sliding on the ice is kind of fun. But, until the next snowstorm, that’s now a thing of the past.

I watch him as he saunters down the path, out in front at the end of his eight-meter leash, gently (most of the time) pulling me along behind him. Maybe I should train him to be a sled dog. But, if he were a sled dog, he would have to be the lead dog. He does not like being behind anyone. On the other hand, I don’t think that pulling on the leash is his goal. I think he just gets into a hyperactive state of mind where he feels, “Gotta go, gotta go, gotta go!” I think he just wants to let it all out and run full throttle. Unfortunately, the leash won’t allow him to. I know he loves to gallop to nowhere as fast as he can — I’ve seen it when I let him off-leash in fenced-in areas. And who can blame him. His genes have been selected to run after sheep in wide open fields.

I got a puppy who was born on a farm without leash or fences, bred to wander far and wide, running at will, wherever he might want to go. Have I done him a disservice by bringing him into city life? Allowing his only freedom to be within small fenced-in areas or at the end of a tether? I struggle with this a little, but if the only places where there are border collies are on farms, there wouldn’t be very many border collies. And Waldo is really such a sweet dog. The world could use more like him. I think, instead, it is my responsibility to try to bend his instincts to life in the city.

When I knew I was going to retire, I looked online for a border collie puppy. I researched their needs and decided it would be good for me to be forced to get out and exercise an active dog. Border collie puppies for sale are not hard to find, but I had in mind owning a tricolor dog, don’t know exactly why, and they are not that easy to come by. When I saw Waldo’s picture on the computer screen, I decided he was the one I wanted and I bought him. It was still five months before my retirement and I didn’t want to get a dog if I couldn’t be with him regularly – that wouldn’t be fair to the dog. So, I made arrangements to buy the dog, then have the breeder keep him until I was ready to pick him up. I visited him once for three days three months before retirement and finally picked him up three weeks before my final day at work.

I brought a portable crate for when I had to work nights (which I mostly did) and put it in the physician’s office just outside the ER. That way, I could keep him in the crate and take him out when needed, with lots of visits for pets and pats in between. He slept the rest of the time. He was remarkably quiet and the ED staff fell in love with him. Waldo and I lived like this – home, work, home, work — until my last night on the job – the night of my seventieth birthday. That was a lot of change for the little puppy and I know he felt pretty insecure.

Since I got Waldo, I’ve paid attention to the fact that Waldo wasn’t bred for a city life and tried to find a way to make him happy as he adjusted to it. You know, maybe the fact that I had to pay attention to Waldo’s adjustments made mine easier.

Life is always easier when you focus on problems outside of yourself.

To be continued next week…

Wald in the city, towing my grandson.

Atop Kilimanjaro, Tanzania, 2010
19,341 ft

Old age is just a record of one’s whole life.

-Muhammad Ali

When I was younger, I decided that, rather than saving up money for retirement, I should use what money I had to do the things I wanted to do while I was still young and could enjoy it. What was the point, I argued with myself, to be old and feeble and have lots of money, but no vitality to take advantage of it? So, I traveled on a shoestring, learned how to do things that cost a lot of money, like flying small planes, went on adventures by third class in Africa, and spent what money I had building a laser instead of buying a car. I met a lot of people from many different cultures, gained a nodding familiarity with a few languages, learned that all people are much more like me than they are different from me and befriended many. I studied what interested me intellectually without regard to how viable that study might be to my making a living – relativistic astrophysics, Tibetan Buddhism, and the Ethiopian language, Amharic, to name just a few.

Now, I’m retired and have just enough wherewithal to live. No big nest-egg for me. And I don’t regret it a bit. Though the spirit is eager, the flesh, well, not so much. I’m seventy-one and, although quite healthy, my body will just not let me beat the crap out of it the way it used to. So, though I might fantasize about going and spending a summer climbing around the Himalayas, I can walk with Waldo and remember my time climbing Kilimanjaro and let the Himalayas go. I am content to watch Waldo as he joyfully explores his little piece of wilderness and reminisce about the time I raised a cheetah in Africa. Oh, I still travel a little, but not on the scale or with the exposure to risk that I used to. And I’m still mentally with it enough that I can study and learn what I want from the comfort of my easy-chair.

The need to go out and gain as much experience of life as I could, when I was young, has now, in my retirement, morphed into a deep-seated curiosity of how to integrate everything that I experienced. My mind is compelled to draw together all I’ve seen into some kind of Universal Understanding of Life. To answer the question, “What the hell was that all about?” To sort out the most important things in life from those that are merely chaff. And to pass on whatever conclusions and insights I gained to my children, grandchildren and anyone else who’ll listen.

Waldo is playing an interesting role in all of this. As I see him romp and play, explore the rail-trail, learn how to integrate his instincts with living in a city environment filled with and controlled by human beings and all of their accoutrements, I am pulled out of myself, enabled to see it all removed from my inner experience.   I see the world through the eyes of a young animal, new to the world, who struggles to develop an understanding of dog-life-in-the-city from a nearly clean slate. I experience with him, to some degree, what it’s like to experience life unencumbered by the concepts, ideas, preconceptions, hopes and fears that are intrinsic to the human condition. What does Waldo think the summum bonum (greatest good) is? A steak in his dish? Or maybe just the freedom to experience the moment as it unfolds?

The day is chilly, but not cold. Waldo trots along down the rail-trail, tail wagging, ears up and nose alert. He does S turns back and forth across the path, trying to take it all in. I fantasize what he’s thinking – What’s that smell? Did I just hear a bird? Or was it a squirrel? What’s that blotch of white stuff on the ground? It smells weird. Ugh, it don’t taste so good. I know, what I really need is a good stick. Here, stick, here, stick! There’s gotta be a stick around here somewhere. What’s that over there?  I’m right there with him and, for a second, I understand everything.

The most important thing in life is right here, right now, in this moment.

In the here and now with Waldo

Enjoying the rail-trail.

So we grew together,

Like a double cherry, seeming parted,

But yet an union in partition,

Two lovely berries moulded on one stem…

-A Midsummer Night’s Dream 3.2.208-11

It’s a fine winter day on the rail-trail. The temperature is in the low thirties, the sky is a cloudless blue, the sun is bright, the wind is light and the path is clear of snow, ice and slush. Waldo is doing his Waldo thing, trotting along with nose less than an inch above the ground, in search of something interesting. He goes off-trail toward a rail fence. Something over there got his attention and he’s crawling under the lowest board to get to it. His body is stiff with curiosity, his legs pushing him on his belly toward some treasure.

I can see his excitement in his posture. I don’t smell what he does (thank God) and I pretend I don’t see him stick out his tongue and lick the target of his attentions (ugh!). But I not only see how he feels about the experience, I, somehow, feel it too. It’s a shared experience – I’m right there with him. It’s curious and it’s magic.

We must be a lot alike for that to happen. After all, 84% of dog and human DNA is the same. To put this in perspective, chimpanzees and humans share 99% of the same DNA, birds and humans (whose evolutionary paths parted hundreds of millions of years ago) share 65% and humans and bananas share about 50%. So, dogs and humans are biologically close, but, more than that, we are spiritually close.

No rational person who has loved a dog can doubt that dogs have consciousness. They are aware, they understand language, they interact with us. You say, “Sit,” the dog sits. You throw a ball, the dog brings the ball back to you. The dog whines, you take him outside. The dog paws his bowl, you give him food and water. These require a common understanding of what it means to sit, what a ball is for, that one has to pee and poop and that there are biological needs for nutrition and hydration. And it also requires that each of you understands that the other understands what is meant. But this only scratches the surface.

I know, beyond a reasonable doubt, that when I see Waldo dancing down the rail-trail, stick in mouth, tail wagging, eyes besparkled, that he is feeling something that, if I felt it, I would call happy. When he is startled by something unfamiliar to him, causing him to have his tail tucked, ears back and a crouched posture, I know he feels something I would label fear. When I am upset with him, he looks at me with those damn doe-eyes that melt my heart and I know he knows I’m upset and, although he probably wouldn’t label it “mad,” I know he knows what I’m feeling. When I call him to me and give him pats, rubs and head-hugs, he responds with licks, love nibbles and body rubs and I know he knows what I’m feeling. But we not only understand what the other feels, we feel it. We have a rapport, an empathy, an emotional, no, a spiritual, give-and-take. I can’t imagine how this could be possible if we didn’t share a great deal of the same experience of what it means to be alive – more than what we don’t share. Of course, this isn’t unique to dogs. You can bond with chimpanzees and birds as well. Bananas, well, not so much. But they taste good.

It’s magical how much Waldo and I can share nonverbally. I can feel what Waldo feels and I know he can feel what I feel. The accuracy of what we feel about the other may be questionable, but it is consistent with our reactions to our feelings and our interactions because of them. How do you know when you are communicating with another person? How do you know they can accurately parse your words into meaning and understand what you’re trying to say? You know when they consistently respond in an appropriate fashion. How do I know Waldo and I feel what the other is experiencing on a deep and precognitive level? Because we can have an interaction based on that, one that is consistent and predictable. Our bonding has put us in a place where we interact by intuitively “speaking” to each other on a level that is subliminal and profound.

Yep, Waldo and I, we grok each other.

Chillin after our walk.

Cold? This aint cold! Come on, old man!

Many human beings say that they enjoy the winter, but what they really enjoy is feeling proof against it.

-Richard Adams

It’s about two degrees, with wind chill, on the rail-trail. I’m dressed in gloves with liners and down parka, with hood up, overlying a fleece jacket. I’m even wearing a balaclava to protect my face. Waldo is dressed in his sable-fur birthday suit. A storm visited us a couple of days ago and the ground is crunchy with an icy sheet of snow, even where the path has been plowed.

Gusty winds of up to twenty miles an hour play havoc with my temperature regulation, particularly in my fingers. I keep one gloved hand warm in a pocket while holding the leash handle with the other. When the fingers start hurting too much in the gloved hand out in the arctic air, I switch them up. This lasts about twenty minutes, then I have to switch hands again. After an hour or so, just about the time we get to our turnaround point, I’ve worked up enough body-heat that the circulation is bounding in my fingers and they no longer get cold.

The balaclava is a sheet of neoprene with a large hole for the eyes and a smaller one for the nostrils so I can breathe through my nose. Even smaller holes over my lips allow me to breathe through from my mouth. It puts pressure on my glasses and isn’t really very comfortable. When I exhale, my steamy breath is redirected, if I’m not careful, up under my ice-cold glasses, causing them to fog up so I can’t see a thing. I can pull the lower part down so it’s crumpled under my chin, leaving a large hole that exposes my entire face, but if I do, it’s not long before my misty breath grows icicles on my mustache. All that ice on my upper lip hurts — a lot. It’s not long before I’m trying to figure out how to get rid of body heat as my armpits get damp from sweat. I’m constantly making tweaks here and there, trying to adjust to my varying temperature needs.

Waldo, he just goes on down the trail, bounding in the snow, even rolling in it, tail switching back and forth, not bothered by the cold at all. He doesn’t slow down, he doesn’t shiver, he doesn’t limp. Sometimes he’ll stop and bury his nose in a snowbank as if he’s found a rabbit hole. He loves the stuff. Thank God. I would have some real trouble getting a cold, anxious, fifty-five pound dog back to our car when we’re three miles away. But, unlike this wimpy old man, the young pup doesn’t seem to need any protection from the cold, other than what he was born with.

It strikes me that there is something of a metaphor here. It doesn’t take too much of a stretch in the imagination to see old age and retirement as a kind of wintering. Just as I dress warmly before I go out into the elements in the winter, I braced for my retirement with a warm puppy. Living with a young dog has its difficult times, just like walking in the winter wonderland has its slippery, windy, and freezing moments. But Waldo makes all of it bearable. He gives me an inner warmth that flows from my heart and spills out over my life. I have family and friends that I love dearly as well, but Waldo is here twenty-four/seven. He protects me from the cold reality of the approaching end of life (something that is still far off, but inevitable) with his puppy antics and joyful heart.

In return, I provide him with a security blanket of support and safety. I feed and house him, exercise him, engage in play with him and keep him out of trouble that could easily do him serious harm.   I don’t think he thinks he needs all that I do for him, but I also think he is very grateful for what he’s got. Waldo is a happy, playful, sweet and loving dog.

And Waldo is catching up. In about ten years, I figure we will be at about the same equivalent age. Then I can provide for him the same protection against the cold winter of his life as he does for me now.

Side by side, Waldo and I walk life’s trail, to its inescapable end.

Definition of hubris.
No, you cannot take that home!

On our morning poo and pee break, when it was warmer.

When the Man waked up he said, “What is Wild Dog doing here?” And the woman said, “His name is not Wild Dog any more, but the First Friend because he will be our friend for always and always and always.

-Rudyard Kipling (Jungle Book)

Meriam-Webster defines family as “a group of individuals living under one roof and usually under one head.” Waldo and I do live under the same roof and we are both very individualistic. Just who is the “head,” if there even is such a thing, is under some dispute and to be determined. A pack is defined as, among other things, “a group of often predatory animals of the same kind,” or, “a group of domesticated animals trained to hunt or run together.” Many dog lovers consider their pets to be family and many animal behaviorists believe that pet dogs see their human companions as part of their pack. Dogs and people have shared lives for some 10,000 to 30,000 years. I believe that the relationship between people and dogs has evolved to be neither a family, nor a pack, and yet it shares elements of both.

Clearly, the bond between Waldo and me is deeper and stronger than a friendship. Still, we are different enough from one another and it is difficult, despite the strength of the emotional attachment between us, to think of us as family. Dogs know that their human companions are not dogs, so how could they confuse them with members of their pack? I would argue that something else has evolved between man and dog over that 20,000 or so years, something that is, in many ways, unique to that relationship. Maybe we should call ourselves a tribe – that seems to me to have the essential elements of both family and pack; but, “tribe” seems to put an emotional distance between Waldo and me that doesn’t fit.

“An intensional definition gives the meaning of a term by specifying necessary and sufficient conditions for when the term should be used.” These are what you find in a dictionary. Let’s try a different approach. “An extensional definition of a concept or term formulates its meaning by specifying its extension, that is, every object that falls under the definition of the concept or term in question.” The problem with these is that it’s hard to specify every example of a concept. Maybe, though, a typical example will do here.

I wake up, typically, sometime between 7:30 and 8:30 AM every day. Waldo is still asleep, which I can tell by quietly raising my head and glancing at him.   The dog is lying upside down, legs splayed wide apart, or curled up in a corner of his bed, nose tucked into his side. It takes me a few moments to clear away the cobwebs of sleep and get the juices flowing. As I stir under the covers, trying to talk myself into getting the day started, Waldo senses I’m awake and repositions himself so that his nose is at the crate door and eyes are on me. He makes low noises, trying to tell me he has to go do his business. If I dally longer, he talks to me, the volume of his voice increasing over time if I don’t get out of bed.   It’s not a whine, bark or growl. It’s not words in the typical sense either, but rather Waldo-speak. And I understand it.

I sigh, swing my legs over the edge of the bed and get dressed. “Good morning, Waldo,” I tell him. “I’m coming, give me a minute.” Waldo goes quiet when he sees I’m moving.

Once dressed, and sometimes, like now in the middle of winter, this takes awhile, I open the door to his dog domain and tell him to come out. He wastes no time and, tail wagging, walks over to the apartment front door. Stretching in a long sploot, back legs stretched out behind him, he’s now ready to go. Leash on, we quickly descend the stairs, Waldo eagerly dancing down them while I follow behind, in a half-awake state, with what can best be described as a stumble, and we’re soon outside.

Waldo waits at the bottom of the porch steps until I pass and then he’s off doing his doggy thing. Pooping and peeing is definitely a part of this, but so is romping through the snow, picking up sticks and sniffing every inch of the way along our path. Tail wagging as he prances along, he makes a warm glow grow in my chest as I watch him enjoy life.

Every so often, Waldo will look back at me as if to say, “Come on, old man! The day has begun!” I sigh and tell him, “I’m coming, I’m coming,” as I hobble along behind. Sometimes, he’ll walk back with the stick he currently has in his mouth and tempts me to try to get it from him. He wants to play. I do my best, while trying to keep from falling on the slick icy ground.

Soon, we’re back in the apartment and I remove his Halti. I pet his head, rub his shoulders and chest, give him a head hug and tell him, “I love you Waldo.” He licks me and tries to give me love nibbles, sticking his nose right where it is most disruptive to what I’m trying to do — remove my shoes and coat. By this time, I’m fully awake and it’s time for breakfast — dog food for Waldo and bagel with cheddar cheese for me.

There you go, a brief snippet of our relationship.

Label it how you will, family, pack, tribe or something else, we are a unit.

My roomie and best friend.

Oooooffff Paaaaaw
I am your father, Waldo.
oooooffff Paaaaaw

Often, when you think you’re at the end of something, you’re at the beginning of something else.

-Fred Rogers

Three weeks after I got Waldo, I worked my last shift. I don’t remember very much about it. There was nothing that stood out and the memories just got blended in with every other shift. I went home, took the dog out and went to bed. Next day, I woke up, took the dog out, and started living every day as a day off.

It’s really easy to live a compartmentalized life when you work in the ER. When you leave, you sign out whatever cases are still in the unit to your successor, who takes over their care, and you can “dump core,” wipe your attention of everything that happened. You have no beeper. When you’re done, you’re done. Most of the time, you forget about that part of your life and carry on with the rest, until it’s time to go back.

So, when I no longer had to work, it was like having a very large number of days off, all in a row. I never think about what I used to do. Never miss it, and with Waldo, never feel like I’m left with an empty hole that has to be filled. Waldo keeps me very busy.

It’s true that there were times when I would walk away from a shift knowing that I saved a life, or that I acted quickly and appropriately so that someone’s life would improve. That felt pretty good. I made a positive difference. Most jobs out there cannot supply that, at least so clearly and with so much immediacy. But there was also the dark side. Interactions with patients and coworkers were sometimes unnecessarily conflicted and management was always trying to find some way to fill my time with things other than direct patient care. Society has so many cracks that people fall between and it’s frustrating trying to find a way for patients to get the support they need. I’d guess that the dark side soaked up ninety percent of my time and energy. That, I don’t miss. I never felt like I didn’t want to go to work, a true sign of burnout, but neither do I now miss having to. One chapter closed and a new one started. It feels more like I’ve moved on to a new job, but one where I am answerable only to myself.

The decision to get a dog, so I wouldn’t just lie around and grow roots, was a good one. The rhythms of my life now revolve around Waldo and that gives it structure. He also is someone I care deeply about and care for. He is totally dependent on me and that plays into a need I seem to have for a responsibility that I must fulfill. He also provides me with laughs and chuckles and lots of pets and licks. Waldo is a warm puppy who gives me happiness. He also challenges me and helps me to grow to be a better person. When exasperated with his brattiness, I am forced to confront my own dark side and learn how to turn it toward the light.

Waldo’s independent streak also allows me to have a life independent of him. After all, a human life that only has dog in it would be pretty shallow. He is perfectly content to spend a couple of hours entertaining himself so I can get the intellectual and emotional stimulation I need from reading, writing and interacting with friends and family. I just need to be sure he gets enough exercise, which I need too (hence the six-mile daily walks), and plenty of playtime to entertain his mind. The pets, pats, rubs and cuddles come spontaneously and don’t have to be planned for.

So, was my retirement a good decision? Yeah, it was. It was time to move on. I’m just not so sure I would call it retirement. It’s more like a nontraditional job, one that is more oriented toward my, and Waldo’s, personal growth than any other job I’ve had. But, I still have to roll out of bed every damn day and get to work.

It’s just more a work of love.

So many sticks, so little time.

Drop what stick?

If it wasn’t for puppies, some people would never go for a walk.

-Anonymous

It’s been a year now since I picked up Waldo and brought him home. In three weeks, I will be retired for a year. It’s time to look back and think about what has happened over that year – to assimilate it and make it my own.

Before I retired, my life centered around my job. It was the most important regular activity in my life. For weeks on end, my day involved waking up, going to work, doing my work-thing, taking care of people I didn’t know, coming home, then resting so I could repeat it the next day. Now, the rhythm has become one of wake up, take the dog out, eat breakfast, feed the dog, do some writing, get dressed for the rail-trail, walk the rail-trail, get home, take a nap to recover from a six mile walk, take the dog out, feed the dog, meditate, make dinner, eat dinner, take the dog out, play with the dog, do some writing, take the dog out, put the dog to bed, do some writing, read a little and finally go to bed so I can repeat the process the next day. My day is very busy and I never feel like I have too much time on my hands.

The question to be asked here is, does this new life have value? Did I make the right choice when I got Waldo, and should I make other choices now?

And how does Waldo feel about it all? He is, after all, not the dog, he is Waldo. A living breathing being with his own feelings, needs and wants.

Waldo is a very good dog, and is very easy to live with. True, we have our conflicts, but they are just challenges we have to work through in order to bond more deeply. I have someone I need to care for and that, it seems, is important to me. This caring involves more than just seeing that all of Waldos physical needs, like food, water and a place to sleep, are met.

When working with people, if there was a conflict, I could usually ignore it, or address it at the moment, and then move on. There were few problems that I couldn’t walk away from. With Waldo, it’s different. He depends on me for nearly everything. I can’t ignore what happens between us and I can’t walk away from him. In that way, it’s very much like having a child. I find myself watching him and trying to figure out his psychology so I can come up with a way to work through our clashes and yet see that he has needs taken care of. When successful, the process brings us closer than we were before, just because it requires caring.

Take the thing with the sticks, for example. Waldo walks around with sticks in his mouth, all the time. As many as he can fit in there. As long as he doesn’t eat them, I’m fine with that. Except he can’t bring them into the house. Many times, I’ll tell him, “Drop it,” and he does without any trouble. But for some reason, when we return to the building where our apartment is, particularly at night, he still won’t drop the damn sticks. I can’t let him bring them inside, so we’re at an impasse. I’ve tried everything I could think of. He won’t drop the damn sticks for the most enticing treats and if I try to outwait him, we could be standing outside in the cold and dark for a half hour. Finally, one night, in desperation, I grabbed ahold of his collar and lifted up — not enough to hurt him, but I knew he didn’t like the choking sensation it caused. He dropped the sticks, then voraciously grabbed the treat I offered him. Now, all I have to do is touch his collar and he complies. Afterward, he eagerly goes inside, wagging his tail.

So, caring for Waldo is a challenge, intellectually, ethically, and emotionally, as well as an opportunity to feed, love and protect. He keeps me busy, but also engaged. And I don’t have to sacrifice time with friends and family to do it.

And Waldo? I watch him as he bounds down the rail-trail, going from sniffing one stinking thing to the next, tail flailing about, eagerly exploring his environment, and I know I must be doing something right.

Yeah, getting Waldo was a very good decision.

What about retirement? Stay tuned.

Okay, I dropped it, now what?