Green Teachings of Shirelle

Life Lessons from a Divine Knucklehead
1. Auflage 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9912281-3-3
Verlag: Cavalleria Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 253 Seiten

This unique book is many things: an amusing and moving memoir about a memorable dog, a poetic ode to a human-animal connection, and a serious philosophical, psychological, and spiritual inquiry into the lessons a man gleaned from the simple-minded brilliance of a teacher, a lover, a liver of life to the fullest... a Knucklehead. There has never before been a book like 'The Teachings of Shirelle.' Take a walk with this pooch, and you might never look at life, love, or yourself the same again.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Green, Douglas

Leseproben

Part Two:

Role Model

Chapter Seven:

Love and Romance

Others kept trying to define our relationship. She was my child, my girlfriend, even my wife. I saw her more as a Guardian Angel.

But she had a love, a true love. A boyfriend.

The dog of her life was an Akita-Chow mix she met at the dog park. Kuma (Japanese for bear) was an antisocial rescue, who could only be petted by his patient owner Laura. Outside of her, his life had been endless misunderstanding, until he met Shirelle. It took a few encounters, but they figured each other out. And once they did, no other pooch had a chance to be included. Every meeting was an explosion: Shirelle as alpha female, thrilled to be chased by alpha male Kuma, beating the senses out of each other whenever he caught up.

Occasionally they would have play dates at homes together, with not a second’s rest, giving Laura and me the blessing of exhausted dogs at night. When one of us would leave town, and play dates stretched into sleepovers, the equation improved: Three days of Kuma = One week of Shirelle asleep!

On one occasion, I noticed both, in my back yard, covered in mud. This was interesting, since it hadn’t rained. In their beating each other to smithereens, they had broken open a water pipe, which now gushed like a fireplug. Didn’t even slow them down.

For all my griping about Shirelle’s wake of damage over the years, even when she tripped me down a hill and rendered my arm unusable for weeks, I got off easy. One day at the dog park, Kuma accidentally slammed into Laura from behind. She fell onto her tailbone, cracked it, and was in a body cast for months. The doctors told her that if the angle of the fall had been one degree different, she would have had the same injury as Christopher Reeve.

And not that much later, Kuma was peeing red, leading to the discovery of a grapefruit-sized tumor in his kidney. It was removed, but his stomach soon followed, and he had to be put down.

And not long after that, Laura married a wonderful man, who tolerated my speech about Kuma at their wedding, and the multitude of crazy dogs that shared their bed happily ever after.

*

Shirelle had matured and learned manners, so greetings were no longer lethal. But that didn’t mean they were peaceful. Like most dogs, she would discover someone visiting or returning, and explode. Screaming joy to the world, her torso leaping, twisting, pulled by her giant-hummingbird heart, with the rest of her just a tail yanked along in bounce.

Who else tells us we’re so important? Who says your walking into the room throws them into paroxysms of ecstasy? We know of movie stars or pop singers who can’t enter a public place without fans screaming and fainting. But what of the rest of us? Who tells us we’re the most exciting and relevant thing in the world?

So why don’t we do it for each other? The last time someone you adore walked into the room, how did you act? Did you leap up and let your heart show what it felt? Or were you cool? (Cool. One step from cold. The opposite of life.)

And why are we cool? Because we expect the same from the other. So the one being I was able to treat the way Shirelle treated us all, with explosive thrill at each hello, was, of course, Shirelle.

*

I wonder if dogs have any sense of beauty at all. They have a strong associative sense, and want to be around those with whom they associate good things, via smell, behavior, experience. They preen, licking themselves, rolling in stink, making themselves what they want to be. And they adore – Shirelle could spend hours lying on the floor just gazing at me or other friends. And of course they have preferences when it comes to food.

But is there an aesthetic sense? I ask because of her beauty. Certainly a dog’s beauty has no evolutionary purpose (some might say beauty makes a dog more likely to survive in a human world, but how does that argument account for bulldogs or Boston terriers?). Outside of my bathing her, brushing her coat, or cutting her nails, and occasional dental cleanings, I did nothing for her looks. Yet no creature has ever been more beautiful.

It wasn’t just me. Strangers on the street would say it, people passing by restaurants, “What a beauty!” “May I pet him? He’s so beautiful!” Apparently, she never knew what they were saying or feeling. She probably learned that sitting politely got more petting than barking did, but the beauty was unconscious.

One could argue the case of her wide eyes, her long legs, her interesting pattern of orange and white. But that wasn’t it. The beauty was something far deeper. I believe that it came from a relaxed confidence. She had no doubts about her attractiveness, only concerns about how others might treat her. So she never hid or did anything “partly.” Everything was full. All the Way, or Nothing at All: That’s Life. A nice-looking person doing something halfway doesn’t draw attention. That same person consumed gets magazine covers.

There were moments when she reached an otherworldly majesty. But even the rest of the time, her beauty never faltered. She slept beautiful, she ran beautiful, she barked at squirrels beautiful. Infused with her spirit, her teeth could make me gasp with their profound primal power tempered by love. Her shed hair was an annoying mess, until you looked closely at it and saw the varying shades, the delicacy and strength. Nothing of her lacked beauty. And the overall was astounding.

One of the most stunning women I’ve ever known, an emotional whirlwind loaded with talent, had no reason not to be a successful actress and model. Except that whenever the camera took her picture, her heart pulled back. Photos missed her passionate ego, and showed only cold passive fear. I loved the frightened, funny, angry core she hid, as many others loved her great figure and bone structure. But when age devalues the gifts they appreciated, I wonder how many will seek what I had found.

Shirelle hated cameras, and would always look away when I tried to take her picture (the photos in this book tend to be exceptions; luckily I took hundreds). But her heart never hid. A blurred photo of her looking away still revealed her truth, and as Mr. Keats told us, that’s beauty, and all ye need to know about it.

*

Abandonment was her deepest fear, so my leaving town always created misery. She could never stand kennels, no matter how nice. To her, a fancy doggy day-care was just my returning her back to the pound. She wouldn’t eat or sleep, and would hurt herself trying to climb up chain-link fences to escape. So, instead, I found friends to house-sit, all grateful to me for paying them, but more so for the time with her magic heart. Always that smile, that laugh, filled from within, whenever I’d ask, “So how did it go?” And tolerance and understanding of my need to call twice a day to check.

Meanwhile, Shirelle would adapt by becoming less connected to me, more independent. So that when I returned, she’d hang out in the yard longer, pay more attention to neighbors and vermin, and sleep farther away.

As emotional protection, it worked; only when she’d first see that I was leaving her would she sink into the deep melancholy. Such as when I pulled luggage out.

Which, of course, would turn to thrilled excitement if I put her in the back seat of the car – then it wasn’t abandonment, but adventure.

*

Dogs can’t hug. People hug dogs, dogs get hugged.

But sometimes, Shirelle hugged me. Stood up on her hind legs, put her forelegs around me, pulled her chest into mine, and pressed her neck and head to me.

Sweet like a child’s butterfly kisses, but… no one had ever taught her how to do it.

Dogs can’t hug. But the nicest things in the world are Shirelle hugs.

*

Shirelle and I were dog-parking, and she was having a fine time. The belle of the giant ball, she sought out playmates – ideally ones who would chase her around, or just join her for great sniffs – of course checking back on me every once in a while.

This one day, however, love was in the air. A bulldog mix set his eye on her fine figure and decided, “That is the girl for me.” While she was drinking some water, he approached behind her and grabbed onto her haunches.

She pulled away, and his feet cheerfully fell to the ground. She went back to some other dogs, and he made another lunge. She pulled away again, turning and giving him a look – did he want to chase her? She ran in a small circle, and he followed. Great! But when she stopped, he climbed onto her backside again. She jerked away with a bark of annoyance, and walked off toward other dogs.

With “I’m Gonna Make You Love Me” singing in his heart, he ran up and gave another try. This time she turned and nipped him: “I said, Stop It!” He backed off, surprised. She walked away.

Knowing she must just be playing hard to get, he ran up and pulled himself onto her pelvis, with a giant smile on his face.

That was it. Her hair shot up along her spine, her ears flattened, and she spun around, teeth bared. Barking viciously, she chased the terrified mongrel across the park, hell-bent. When he’d fled far enough away, she relaxed, turned to me, and cheerfully trotted back, ears up and flopping, tail in the air, looking for what might be fun to do next.

I have always regretted that no one had a camera on her that day. What a great educational film that would be. How many young teens are...