On Pets

Six-month old BO has landed. The newest presidential dog provoked some really strong feelings in me, nothing like the social justice/socialism/communism I consider a craft, mission, and passion. Having a pet is farther up the List, like swimming, good espresso, feeling Ochun. The Obama Family is lucky, and smart, to have a pet. The old saying goes they are Man's Best Friend. But one of my weaknesses for the unelected Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain & Northern Ireland is that she is a life-long dog owner and horse breeder. She's reared, birthed, coddled, trained, and buried a host of dogs - corgis and labradors. I feel I know something of her fundamental trustworthiness because of her insistence that her dogs be with her, travel with her. I know they must give her the kind of relief we ourselves cannot give each other even in private moments let alone public ones.

I grew up with collies, which is a described as a herding (or pastoral) dog. But my parents' first dog was a German Shepard named KING. I don't remember KING. My mother got him when he was a pup and I was in cloth diapers, and having no mother, my own mother got a bottle and nursed the King. Still, as he got older, that Nature came out and he became rather dangerous, first the furniture, then ... yours truly. King had to go.

Then they got a collie, LAD JANLO, which was a rendering of my parents first names. Lad died a natural death of old age with my father, whom my mother had already divorced and moved us human children to California.

My mother started a kennel. Collies again, of course. The Bitch was bred and birthed several beautiful little pups, sable. Lad was Tri-color. One night we went out to dinner. My mother, step-father, sisters and me. Mexican Food. I remember the evening even though I must have been in 4th grade, 1977ish. When we got home from dinner and began to wander through the dark house, I heard my step-father call out with some urgency. Then, my mother's "Oh, no!". The back door to the backyard slid open. I came out of my room to see what the commotion was. Our pool light lit a dull green across the pool I practiced laps in. And floating in the water were the several little furry plumps of collies. Their Mother was in her kennel nearby, in view of the whole disaster. The pups had apparently done what dogs do and dug holes under the fencing around the kennel, gotten into the pool, and couldn't get out. The holes too small for Mama to get through. We got the pups out, cried and cried. My mother and I took each lifeless body and began to administer mouth-to-mouth. My step-father discouraged this, wanted to spare us I guess. It was an incredible night. Nothing could spare us. What a cold, dark, damp, lifeless night that was.

The kennel ended that night.

Years later, we bought another collie. It was originally a family dog, so my sister won the poll to name her JADE, after a Brooke Shields character. I won the tag for her kennel name, which American Kennel Club dogs have to have: Love Nest's Plantagenet, for my mother and step-father's home and for the historic name of English kings. Love Nest's Plantagenet Jade [Jade for short] became officially my dog soon after. This doesn't mean I combed her like I was supposed to. Collies shed! And my mother would get angry at the shreds of Jade's coat all over the carpets in the house and blowing in the backyard.

It was at this time I really fell in love. Dogs have an instinct bred into them and just because you put them in a house and give them human names doesn't end that instinct. The human instict seems to be bred out of us, but really we just turn to drugs and violence and indifference, human sicknesses. Anyway, Jade made sure I got up for school in the morning, laying her long nose on my bed by my face. She laid next to me while I did my homework, wrote in my journal of all my woes ["Woe is Me!!!"], slept next to me while I watched infinite hours of TV, and struggled with all the moods a young boy needing to Come Out went through. When I was especially full of the melacholia wickeds [as Katharine Hepburn calls it], Jade would come into my room, insist I take her paw, and look at me. I would drop the paw, discouraged, and Jade wold lift it again until I held it. Magic dog! She wouldn't let me be alone, bless her! Whenever I dared get in our pool to do laps or play, Jade came frantically to the edge, barking at me, seeming to want to leap in after me ... like ... like ... that Bitch mama must have wanted to do years before.

When I went to college back in St. Louis I had to leave Jade. When I moved to San Francisco I couldn't find a place that allowed pets. At any rate, I told myself Jade was better off in her domain of that backyard, monitoring the horses passing on the trail behind our house. This is how I imagined her. This is how my mother described Jade's golden years.

One day, she came up to the back door, stretched out for a nap, and never woke up. My sister found her. I can't remember who called me. Jade was buried in her spot by the back gate to the horse trail, where she spent those twilight years.

Jehovah was my next pet. A rat. That's right, a rat. And I indeed named it Jehovah. Rats are very smart creatures. He quickly learned his name, would come when called. He loved cooked [cooled] brussels sprouts (my favorite vegetable) and popcorn. I would close my bedroom door, let him out of his big cage, and he would explore my room and always come when called. I would sit him on my shoulder, and he would somehow manage to recline as if to nap or stick his nose into my ear and lick the inside of my ear.

Jehovah died while I was away in Cuba.

I vowed never to get a pet again. Didn't want to abandon a creature like that again. But after moving to Los Angeles's Koreatown, I rescued a very small, newborn CAT! I am allergic to cats. But the sight of this frail, barely able to walk thing on Pico and Normandie, oblivious to the dangers around it and those dangers oblivious to it, I scooped him up and brought him to the house I shared. I named him OBI SECO, he being black and white and obi seco being a term of art for coconut. Obi Seco grew strong. He had other cats in the house to commune with, a huge yard to stalk and climb, various planters to nap in. When I came home, I would call out to him, sometimes anxious that he'd left as magically as he came ... but he would emerge from the brush, galloping towards me. I could hear him purring.

That house began to go to hell. Another story. I had to leave. I got an apartment in Long Beach, and Obi Seco, literally reared in what must have seemed like Nature, was suddenly confined to a studio apartment. I never heard him make a sound, but now he cried and moaned all day and all night. He began to tear up carpet, blinds, scratch at the door. The night he ripped a large slit in the bathroom screen and tried to jump out two storeys below, I had to make a change. Another house-mate who escaped the madness offered to house Obi at his sister's. She had a house, large yard, other cats.

Humans abandon their young, sacrifice their blood for wars, starve some as being "undeserving poor." Pets - animals, that is: normal, adjusted beasts of Nature - are much more civilized than us. They will love us unconditionally and what's more: they do not hold back their nurture instinct, another uncivilized trait humans seem to cherish with maturity. This is a characteristic I know must at some remote level sustain the human subject [i.e., the "owner"]. This is why I know Queen Elizabeth II must be decent. LBJ's Beagles. Reagan's Pomeranians. Of course, Franklin D. Roosevelt's Bull Terriers. Henry II's corgis. Queen Elizabeth I's pocket terriers. Queen Victoria's Pomeranians, greyhounds, sky terriers, dachshunds, pugs, Pekinese, and ... yes: COLLIES. Lincoln loved mongrels. Bill Clinton, like the Queen: labradors. Mary Queen of Scots loved her Toy Spanel so much she kept it under her large skirts and it wasn't found until after her head was cut off. It is too often said of pet lovers that they are more at ease with their pet companions than with humans of their own species: well, of course we are! We all want to be loved, and having a caring companion for a pet shows that we can be loved, and that civilization is not totally lost.