A Beagle Named Dixie

"Lightning hit that oak tree we've been looking at for years.  And oh I know this summer we'll miss the shade.  We just made it through the coldest winter we ever knew, and our old hound Dixie passed away."
From Lucky Man by Mark Chestnutt

Dixie was probably the sweetest dog I ever had.  She was an amazing dog in spite of herself.  Dixie was the dog that EVERYONE loved.  Even people who did not like dogs liked Dixie.  When I would joke that I had too many dogs and needed to get rid of some of them, there were an infinite number of people who instantly said they would take Dixie.

I know absolutely nothing about her young life.  With the exception of brief spurts, Dixie was timid.  Her time in the "wild" led her to know what to do with wild small animals, living or dead.  The other dogs only saw chipmunks, squirrels, crayfish, whatever as toys, Dixie would play with them first, then proceed to treat them as snacks.

I wasn't really looking for a dog when I saw Dixie, but maybe I was;  I already had three beagles.  I was driving down a street near my house when I saw a small beagle run out in front of me.  I looked at it in the rear view mirror and watched the school bus behind me nearly hit it.  I couldn't let it continue to run down the street so I turned around and went back and got her.  She was a little afraid of me, but came to me in short order.  She was very grubby so I put her in the bed of my truck and went back home.  En route, she tried to jump out.  I stepped on the brake to stop her.
Once back at home, I wasn't sure I was going to keep her, so I put her in the small garage and ran the errands that I was originally out for.  When I got home, I peeked in on her and she had made a perfect little beagle bed out of a pile of rope sitting on top of a straw bale I had.  She was adorable and she had a new home.

She got along great with the other dogs and obviously had some house training.  There might have been a few accidents, but they were rare.  Given her small stature, I thought she was a puppy.  When the vet told me she was likely four, I thought he meant months.  I was shocked when he said years.

Dixie continued to fit in with the beagle clan.  While I have had dogs that I could understand why someone got rid of, I could never understand how someone could have gotten rid of Dixie, she was that sweet.  She had an odd way of sitting where her back legs would almost cross dantily.

As Dixie got older, she went from the diminutive "puppy" that I thought she was to a small dog and then to a fat dog.  No matter what I fed her, she put on weight.  She didn't like exercise, but was an enormous dog for how little she ate.  The vet diagnosed her with a thyroid problem and she was put on Solixine for most of her adult life.  This did allow her to eat more normally and loose weight, but she still enjoyed her nap time, especially on the couch.
Much later in life, she started to have seizures.  Once again the miracle of modern veterinary medicine came to the rescue and for a few cents a day, the seizures stopped permanently.  One side effect of this medicine was that it could make a dog lethargic.  No difference was noticed.
As with just about any dog, she did occasionally get out, but it always seemed to be by accident, never an intentional leaving of the fenced area.  I was always worried she would be kept by whoever found her when she did get out.

She was a joy to walk and almost never tugged on the leash, staying just a few steps behind.  As with all older dogs, the walks got shorter and shorter as she aged.  She acted old long before her time, seeing life with me as some sort of extended retirement.
For the last several years of her life, she could not handle stairs.  She could go up them just fine, but going down stairs almost always resulted in a couple steps followed by a great tumble the rest of the way.  It was a miracle she was never hurt.  For many years, she would have to be carried down the deck stairs to do her business.
Then she would got back up the stairs to the back door and bark, she deserved to be let back in.
The steep stairs inside were always watched with one eye in case she tried to come down on her own.

Because she acted old, her aging wasn't very noticeable, but there were changes.  She was always flight over fight so she had to be fed alone or she would loose her food.  She never had accidents in the house, but required more attention.  She began to absolutely hate the cold.

Eventually she got to the point where I just seemed to know the joy she brought the world was near and end.  I was at a late day mandatory work function.  As I sat there listening to the speakers, I just knew she had died.  There was no doubt in my mind.
I was right.
I still miss Dixie. She died nearly the same time as Sammy which made it extra hard.  Dixie was one of the few dogs Sammy still liked.  Sammy and Dixie were buried together and a paw paw tree was planted over them.

"I'm living the life of a Lucky Man.  Counting my blessings, holding your..." paw.

A Beagle named Lucky

How does the joke go?
A man sees an acquaintance with his dog.  The dog has bandages, is missing an eye, is limping, etc.
The man asks the owner what happened and the owner relates a few amazing tales of one-in-a-million shots resulting the dog's injuries.  The questioner is astonished and asks the dogs name.
"Lucky." the owner responds.

My dog Lucky was a case of life imitating art - or at least that joke.

Lucky was not a very pretty dog.  This is almost assuredly at least partially the result of a not very friendly beginning of life.
I don't know very much about the early part of his life, but he was found near where I worked (before I worked there).  Our department secretary ended up taking him home where he became the family dog, or more particularly her son's dog.
What we know about his early life can be read in his appearance.  His head was misproportioned as a result of injuries while young.  He had an enormous overbite and oddly shaped eyes.  Couple with this he had old-dog fat all his life, had coarse gnarly fur, walked with an odd gait and was never able to walk in a straight line.  The overbite was his striking feature.  It prevented him from eating normally and in order to drink he had to put is upper jaw on the rim of the bowl as he drank from the bowl.
A fish doesn't see the water he swims in so Lucky likely just saw himself as any other dog might.

He was Cheryl's family dog for a long time.  When I bought the first house after moving to Ohio, I needed a refrigerator.  Cheryl said they had one to offer for free.  I found out around the time I went to get it that they were getting rid of it due to the sale of the house as a result of an impending divorce.
When I went to get the fridge, I had Mandy and Sammy in the truck with me.  Apparently after leaving with the appliance, they had discussions around my taking of their beagle.  Due to the divorce and subsequent split and move, Lucky needed a new home.
We got a refrigerator and it came with a dog.

After a short visit to see how the three dogs would get along, Lucky came to live at the new house in early February.  Lucky wasn't so sure what to make of the change.  He had never lived with other dogs and due to the confusion, didn't want to be left alone.
Within a day or so of getting Lucky, I had an unwanted day off when torrential rain came along with melting snow and flooded the basement severely.  This is before several (successful) efforts were taken to mitigate the flood-prone basement.
The house was a Victorian with eight foot windows in the front.  Several of the windows weren't in prime condition and a couple panes were cracked.  On this flood day, as I went out to get the mail, I heard glass breaking a turned around to see Lucky trying to get to me through the pane that had gone from cracked to broken as a result of his efforts.  I hurried back inside to prevent him from cutting himself on the broken glass.
Plugged gutters are a pet peeve of mine and later that same day, I opened a second story window to get on the kitchen roof and unplug the lower gutters there.  After hearing a noise, I turned around to see Lucky standing unsteadily on the roof looking at me.
Remember the joke about the dog named Lucky?

Once the initial shock of his new life wore off, Lucky became of the pack.  Three dogs, soon to be four.
He was not a young dog and accepted this new living situation, but never really embracing it or understanding it.  As such, he developed an aloof nature I've rarely seen in other dogs.  This extended to most of his dog's life.
At this point in life, I was doing a lot of camping for recreation.  Lucky took to the tent well, but his aloof nature went along with him.  While camping at Old Man's Cave in Eastern Ohio, I recall one time when there was a group of us hiking while towing the dogs along on leashes.  Lucky, seeing no reason to stop happily walked along the trail and while merrily pooping along.  "Luckily" I saw this and was able to clean the material off the trail so as not to spoil any one else's hike.

His aloof nature meant that he was never my favorite dog, but he was a wonderful dog at the same time.  Never flashy, but always there.  He didn't chase and attack squirrels, didn't really like toys and was never very needy.
His one passion was licking his front feet.  Something he did a lot, and nothing could really stop it.

As he got older, he didn't exactly age gracefully.  His crooked walk got worse and his breath and eating would at times be odd.  Knowing something was going wrong, he went to the vet where a biopsy confirmed he had cancer in his head, spreading to his jaw.
He had to have his teeth removed, but this never really bothered him.  His jaw was so odd anyway, the teeth were merely grotesque decoration.  For a long time he showed no evidence of discomfort, so I let him be a dog.
Predictably, things eventually took a turn for the worse.  Toward the end, he went blind.  I think to Lucky, this was just another event in his topsy life.  He figured out that if he bumped into something but could put his head on it, it must be a step so he should walk up it.  He was actually able to navigate well with this assumption, but this resulted in his climbing on lots of stuff and resulting in much confusion.  Stacks of magazine continually knocked over, potted plants tipped with dirt all over.
Feeding became harder.  With his misshapen head, he needed daily help to "see" his food and get it out of his bowl.  This was more than just setting him in front of it to eat.
As he continued to age and deteriorate, he began regularly to relieve himself indoors.  I'm amazed that even healthy dogs can hold it as long as we sometimes ask them to so daily clean-up was part of having Lucky.  Daily moppings resulted in a very clean kitchen floor (at least parts of it).

I thought Lucky was actually improving at one point only to realize he had stopped even getting out of his bed anymore.  Lucky had his own special bed, separate from the other dogs.  This was his one constant in life.
I knew it was time.

As I drove him to the vet, I felt as bad as I've ever felt.  He is the only dog I've had to have put down.  I felt like I was signing a death warrant and almost turned around, but it was time - if not past it.  He was not comfortable, and not really even a dog anymore; not really living as a dog should.
When it was over, I was beside myself with what I had done.  I left quickly without saying anything or even paying the vet.  As hard as it was, intellectually I know it was the right thing to do.
Lucky was buried in the back yard in his special red, white and black blanket.  A flowering crab apple tree was planted above him.  Every spring, the tree flowered abundantly.  Showing his aloof nature, the tree which was supposed to never bear fruit annually delivered a huge crop of crab apples; showing the tree had absorbed Lucky, it never grew strait, but constantly crooked.

Lucky's life started out pretty hard.  He had a great life with Cheryl, and retired with me.
After he died, I received very nice cards from Cheryl and her ex-husband.  I still have those cards today.  The vet also sent me a copy of Rainbow Bridge - a poem for anyone who has lost a furry friend.

The Rainbow Bridge
 

There is a bridge connecting heaven and Earth. It is called The
Rainbow Bridge because of its many colors. Just this side of The
Rainbow Bridge there is a land of meadows, hills and valleys
with lush green grass.

 When a beloved pet dies, it goes to this place.  There is always
food and water and warm spring weather.  The old and frail
animals are young again.  Those who are maimed are made
whole again.  They play all day with each other.

There is only one thing missing.  They are not with their special
person who loved them on earth.  So each day they run and play
until the day comes when one of them suddenly stops playing and
looks up!  The nose twitches! The ears are up! The eyes are staring!
And this one suddenly runs from the group.

You have been seen, and when you and your special friend meet, you
take him or her in your arms and embrace. Your face is covered with
  kisses, and you look once more into the eyes of your  trusting pet.

 Then you both cross over The Rainbow Bridge together, never again
to be separated.

One (and only one) Vacation Picture

I just recently got back from vacation.  It was a cross-country motorcycle road trip.  Before the trip I bought a new Panasonic FZ150.  I love the new camera but to be honest, I didn't take any pictures that my old Kodak superzoom  couldn't have taken.  I did get to use some of the newer features of the camera though.
Many of the pictures of the trip were not taken with the FZ150 however, but with the old Nikon pocket camera.  More on that in a bit.

I have a friend who originally got me interested in photography.  He is by far a better photographer than I am and has much better equipment.  His interest is portrait photography.  Portrait photography is fiction.  I hope it doesn't need to be said that this is not a bad thing, there is a lot of written fiction that is very good.
Some portrait photography is bad fiction.  I can recall seeing family pictures (some that I'm in) with synthetic backgrounds, a wagon wheel in the background.  Fake smiles with just as fake trees in the celluloid pull-down screen.  Smiles covering unpleasantness with an approximation of a library out of focus behind.  Horrid.  I'd like to believe "family" portraits have universally gotten better in the last 40 years, but I won't hold my breath.
My friend has some pictures that are amazing.  But, they are composed pictures and people wearing clothes they would not otherwise wear, in situations and poses that they would not be in if not for the camera.  This is fiction.
At one time, I helped him with lighting as he was doing a shoot of models.  One of the models was frankly not very attractive.  Heroin sheek gone bad.  The pictures of her were very flattering.  I was amazed when I saw them.  She, along with several other models had aspirations of law school.  I'd bet anything it hasn't happened...for any of them.

On my recent vacation, many areas with gorgeous scenery were traversed.  The Bitteroots and the Cascades were amazing.  At the risk of taking an analogy too far, landscape photography is akin to documentary.  It can be stunning, powerful, but also painfully boring.  Ken Burns can take a great 2 hour informational movie and compress it into 14 long painful hours.
In my earlier motorcycle travels, many scenic pullouts where stopped at for pictures.  After traveling all over North America for more than 10 years now, the scenery is still as stunning, but it begins to fall flat in pictures.  No two mountains look the same, but the pictures in retrospect often do.  Canyons, lakes, rivers, oceans and bluffs are all worthy of pictures but they can get somewhat redundant.
There were some amazing landscape shots taken on the trip.  But looking at endless landscape photos of another person's vacation is like watching home movies (documentaries) about another person's children.  It gets old quick.
Often, scenery can't be taken in by a picture.  I love the big empty of western Dakotas and eastern Montana, but pictures don't do the expanse justice - even panoramas.  I have found that pictures with a flat road running through them do give the feeling that exists when in these big empty areas.  I have many pictures like this taken from the motorcycle while going down the road.  I have a hard time deciding which I like better, but I'm probably alone in that respect.

But the picture that captures the vacation wasn't from one of these scenic areas.  It happened at the Pacific Ocean, in Seaside, Oregon.  I had just had my picture taken touching the Pacific Ocean and was walking back.  A picture was taken that I didn't know about, and it caught me in one of those serene carefree moments rarely repeated.
The scene was near the apex of the trip.  Physically about as far from home as I got on the trip.  More importantly, metaphorically it was about as far from home as I got as well.  The moment the camera caught me could be thought of as in complete apathy but not in a negative way.  Relaxed without trying.

I wasn't sure if I should post the picture.  Technically it is terrible.  The late-day low-angle sunlight shrouds half my face in shadows.  The people in the background are distracting.  I'm in it and I do not like having my picture taken.  On a motorcycle there is only room for so much clothes so I'm wearing atypical beach clothes; cargo shorts and a slightly grubby t-shirt, socks and cheapo imitation Chuck Taylor's.
Anybody looking through a stack of pictures would not give a second glance to this picture, and it isn't even one of my favorites.  It probably is the picture I've gone back to more often though.
The moment that picture was taken though can't be repeated.  It would not be possible to compose the moment in a portrait.  It is a representation, a snapshot, of why vacation exists at all.
It is non-fiction.  Like any non-fiction, it can help put reality in perspective - hopefully.