Dogs and Children

Dogs and Children
By: Victoria Tatum

It must have been my dog that made Blue decide to date me. His family had raised a few Labrador retrievers, and at the time I met him his dad Jim had a black lab named Covey, as in Willie McCovey. Covey had paws the size of baseballs, which served him well when he escaped from Jim’s office to chase ducks on the San Lorenzo River. As soon as he tired of running, Covey jumped in the river for a ride downstream to the Boardwalk, where he stole corndogs from innocent children.

With this family history, it should have been no surprise when Blue ordered my dog his own burger at In “N Out. Bud traveled in the right rear corner of my Toyota shortbed truck, his head hanging out the camper shell window. Blue ordered an extra burger no fixings, no bun, thus giving new meaning to the term “drive-through,” as the camper shell and Buddy’s head passed the drive-through window.

When I packed my belongings into the truck and moved from West Berkeley to Santa Cruz to be with Blue, I saved space in the right rear corner of the camper shell for Bud. He was as happy about the move as I.

Wherever Blue and I lived, we set up Bud’s bed under a table, giving him the cave-like quarters dogs need. He had free reign of the backyard where we settled to raise our family, chasing cats and, unqualified guard dog that he was, wagging his tail at intruders. But even docile ones like Bud have an uncanny sense of danger and adventure. They know before we pack our bags if we are going on a trip, and watch vigilantly to be sure they aren’t left behind. If someone is dangerous but gives no outward signs our human senses can detect, dogs who are normally docile sniff it out, growling and barking. Our retrievers, despite the occasional false alarm --a bronze dog statue or a log that looks like a bear-- are our deliverers and our angels.

Like Covey, Bud was a wanderer. He couldn’t jump the fence with his stubby legs, but he dug under the fence instead or chewed his way through. He was living testimony to the fact that Labradors should be fixed. Bud, however, lost his balls with little glory.

Glory or no glory, Bud was my fertility angel when, early in my pregnancy with Carly, I walked into the vet’s office and Dr. Miller asked me if I wanted to breed him. Dr. Miller’s Labrador Rosie conceived with Bud just two weeks before the truant was impounded and taken in a prison van to the vet’s, where by strict orders of the SPCA, I was not allowed to see him until he was neutered. Bud had a rap sheet with the SPCA three pages long.

Shortly after the fateful impounding, my friend Jim’s wife Helen called out of the blue and said her family was ready for a puppy. “What timing,” I said, and a few months later Helen, pregnant with her first son and accompanied by her daughters, went home with Buddy’s son Buster.
Bud was my fertility angel when Carly was born two weeks ahead of her predicted due date. A couple of nights before, he tried to scratch his way through the sheetrock to get out of the garage. Being an animal, he smelled what was going on. I let him out, stood in the dark while he peed, and an hour later my water broke.

The morning after Bud ate through the sheetrock, I met our midwife Mary Ann at her office. “Go home and get ready,” she said, “The contractions will start this afternoon.”
I went to the drugstore and picked up the necessary supplies. I got my hair cut. I put Jimmy Cliff in the tape deck of my truck and sang “Many Rivers to Cross” to the baby preparing to enter the world.

Strong contractions started sweeping over me that afternoon when I was standing in line at Safeway. I waited my turn, but inside I was yelling, “Get out of my way! I’m in labor!”

At two in the morning we drove to the hospital. By noon I was fully dilated, but I pushed for four hours. Mary Ann arrived before dawn and stayed all day. My mother came and hung out with me in the sunny courtyard, where I rode out the steadily increasing contractions on the lawn. Connie, my sister-in-law and a labor and delivery nurse, came in on her day off. Mary the nurse on duty was there. When Mary’s shift ended she stayed, and Connie’s friend Nancy came on. Thirty-six hours after our arrival, Carly was born in the company of her parents and four amazing women.

The Old Testament and ancient Hindu texts make reference to midwives. From this we can infer that women have always had midwives. I believe every birthing mother should have, if not a midwife, a few women in the room.

I put Carly in the old fashioned pram passed down from Blue’s mom and pushed the pram into the backyard. I parked Bud next to the pram for protection and slipped on my gardening gloves. Carly gazed up at the giant redwood tree and sucked on her pacifier for long stretches while I gardened. When her hands started flailing I knew the binky had popped out. I slipped off my gloves, popped the binky back in, and returned to my work. When Carly started walking, she and her pram protector were best friends. They played tug-of-war with the stick before she could talk.

I attribute Carly’s independence as a baby to her feeling safe in the world. Her brother Eliot did not feel so secure. From the day he was born he needed us close by. When he started to walk, Bud’s wagging tail was a grave threat. Bud was old and slow by then, but it didn’t matter to Eliot. He dodged Buddy’s wildly wagging tail like a point guard on a full court press.
Eliot’s birth was not the blink-and-it’s-over delivery I was hoping for after the Carly marathon. I had heard stories of women giving birth to their second babies before the midwife could get there, so the five hours of labor with Eliot seemed like an eternity. He was also born two weeks past his due date. Eliot grew in the womb at his own pace, just as he continued to develop thereafter, teaching me to put away my own time line and go by his.

Nor was he the idyllic water birth I had envisioned. After an hour in the hospital tub I abandoned my water dream and moved to the bed. Eliot was born face up which made pushing more painful, but at least the second time around I knew what to do. There are things they don’t think to tell you in the birthing class.

When I was in the bath Blue fanned me with a towel. I told him I felt as if he were fanning me with banana leaves and feeding me figs. While I was in the shower letting the hot water run on my lower back, he washed my feet, like Jesus washing the feet of his disciples.

Carly and Eliot were little when Buddy died. For Carly the sorrow came a year later, and she cried a lot at bedtime. For Eliot the sorrow came seven years later when he was ten. That was the way his developmental delay worked; he went through the same major stages Carly did, only much later and for longer. So it was that his best friend was Buddy’s successor Shoe.

Shoe had long legs that could have propelled him over any fence, but he showed no proclivity to wander. This was probably because he was neutered as a pup, but there were personality factors at work as well. Bud had a block of a head that hung so low his nose was always to the ground, and the scents he picked up naturally lead him away from us. Unlike Buddy, Shoe was a bundle of energy but he was unfailingly loyal to his pack: me, Blue, Carly, and Eliot.

Shoe waited for Eliot to get home from school, and the two of them walked around the backyard together for hours. That was the miracle: Shoe walked. Eliot held the stick and Shoe followed calmly until he gave it up. By the time Eliot was ten he carried on long conversations with anyone who would listen, but up until then Shoe was the only one outside his family with whom he talked at length. As they walked around the backyard, Eliot held what were not so much monologues as dialogues with one person talking. While Eliot talked, Shoe rolled his eyes up at him and wagged his tail limply.

There were three possible reasons for this. One, they exchanged testosterone like Ritalin and were mutually sedated. Two, animal soul saw into human soul and visa versa. And three, Bud may have left this earth but his soul resided in our yard, assuring us that he was still part of the family.

Hear Victoria's latest interview at: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/yoga/blog/2007/11/15/Author-Extraordinaire-Victoria-Tatum

Author Victoria Tatum 's novel The Virgin’s Children was released by Rain Publishing Inc.
Ask for your copy at a local bookstore near you, or visit www.rainbooks.com or www.amazon.com for more information