How To Find a GOOD Real Estate Agent

Successful house hunting requires a good real estate agent, and a good real estate agent is probably not going to be a friend or family member, a friend of a friend, or the husband, wife, or other relative of a friend. Unless you're really lucky, those people will not be at the top end of the profession. Lots of people have a real estate license because they've taken the required classes and paid the annual fee, but that doesn't mean they're good at it. You want a real estate agent who is truly a professional. That's someone who has done it for a living for at least three years, not just dabbled in it part-time.

Many house hunters wind up with the real estate agent who answers the phone when they call to ask about a house that's listed in the newspaper. They go with the agent to see the house, the agent offers to show them other houses, and that's the way a business relationship involving hundreds--or at least tens--of thousands of dollars starts. That person might never have sold a house before, might have no clue about the area the person wants to buy in, and might not have even bought a house of their own before, but if a buyer decides to use that person as an agent, the agent will be in a position to fail to show the buyer an appropriate selection of houses, neglect to follow up on the buyer's interests in a timely manner, have no knowledge of the neighborhood the house is in, and cost the buyer thousands of dollars in the negotiating process.

I suggest two options for finding a quality real estate agent. The first is to do a little research on the Internet and find out which agents are making the most money and which have the largest number of sales under their belt in the last couple of years. Some agents specialize as buyer's agents, so their sales statistics will be focused less on the number of houses they listed and more on the number of people they worked with to buy a house. The second method is to talk to friends and colleagues about the agents they used when buying a house. Once someone has some experience with an agent, you will know that agent's strengths and weaknesses--for example, if the agent takes a day or so to return a customer's phone call, that's a sign of a bad agent--and friends and colleagues are likely to tell you these things.

With either option, you should interview the agent, dump him/her quickly if you're not happy with them for whatever reason (there are plenty more out there), and be careful what you sign--some buyer's agents insist on a contract that will commit you to them for a number of months. If you're convinced that signing an agreement will increase the person's loyalty to you as opposed to the seller, then go for it, but you can do it on your terms--two months instead of six, for example.

It might seem a bit mean to avoid giving your business to someone just starting out, especially if they are a friend or a family member. After all, you'd be willing to go to a brand new doctor, right? If you answered yes, that probably means that you were thinking, yeah, a brand new doctor just out of med school would know all the latest science on diseases and medications and all of the new diagnostic techniques. But real estate is much different. Knowledge in real estate means knowledge of neighborhoods, good working relations with fellow agents, and experience on nailing down a deal--stuff that can't be taught in a generic real estate class. A house probably will be your biggest purchase ever, but as they say, it's your money.

My Mother's House, Part I

The process of finding a house for my mom and dad required factoring in their interests along with mine, Tom's, and three dogs'. My mom and dad wanted a house with at least four bedrooms, a family room, a fireplace, a decent sized yard, a two-car garage, and a price tag under $700K. I wanted a place that would give Tom and me privacy, would give us several rooms for our furniture, etc., since we would be selling our condo in Arlington, VA, in order to live there, and would require no more than a half hour's commute for me to work. Plus, I wanted to minimize the amount of stairs my mom and dad would routinely need to use to get around in the house. Tom wanted a place that would not require us to be on the loan, given that we were trying to marshal our money and credit for major work on our house in Annapolis. The dogs needed a fenced yard.

I called Darrell Lewis, the agent my friend Stephanie had recommended to me several years ago when Tom and I decided to buy a condo. Darrell had helped her find an incredibly good buy in Arlington, and she noted that not only was he a pleasure to work with, attentive to what she was looking for, and responsive in terms of phone calls and follow ups, he also knew the area extremely well. We had the same experience when we worked with him. When Darrell got my call, he remembered me immediately. We arranged to meet up, and meanwhile he e-mailed me an array of links to information about specific houses that seemed to come close to my requirements. Some realtors won't let you know that this is possible, or they'll send you a censored version. The good ones don't hide info from their clients.

Each time we'd go out in Darrell's Cadillac, he would prepare a list of at least eight places to see and if the houses were occupied, he'd let the residents know we were coming, and then have a print out of our route so that I could navigate. Along the way, we'd talk about houses, neighborhoods, buyers, sellers, people in general, politics, and Persian rugs. A few weeks and about 40 houses later, I found the one I wanted: nice neighborhood, about 20-30 minutes from my work depending on traffic, nice house, fenced yard, carport, family room with a fireplace, five bedrooms, three bathrooms, and the lower floor (which was below grade on the front side of the house and above grade in the back so that the main entrance is on the upper floor) made a very nice "in-law apartment" for Tom, the dogs, and me.

But it had more. The bathrooms had been updated. It had a white pergola with vines growing on it off the kitchen entrance through French doors at the front of the house, perfect for an outdoor breakfast or lunch during nice weather. It had two decks, one off the upper floor and another one along the whole back side of the house. It had lots of storage, including a separate storage shed. But particularly enchanting, especially given the decks, was the backyard. It was a woods of our own, with tall trees, many with bird houses, and the fact that the house was on a hil gave both floors beautiful views of our little wilderness. An added plus was the fact that behind the house was a continuation of the woods, land owned by the state of Virginia as part of the Annandale campus of Northern Virginia Community College (NOVA).

I knew my mom and dad would like the house--it had most of their wish list--but at that point I had very little interest in convincing them that it was the right place. They had said that it was up to me, and my dad's condition and the poor treatment he was getting back in Indiana meant that I needed to shift from finding a house to closing on a house.

Eldercare Lessons

My mom and dad are the only people I know whom real estate agents have dumped out of frustration. They looked at a lot of houses in the Annapolis area and then a few in Virginia, but nothing quite worked--no garage, not enough bedrooms, no basement, yard too small--and Tom and I eventually concluded that they didn't really want to move.

When the crunch came--when my mom and dad became unable to care for themselves, I realized that I had wasted a lot of time. This wasn't a matter of siblings being unable to agree on who will take care of mom and dad. I'm an only child. My dad had had a series of illness--all without me being there--that I should have added up to realize that when a man is in his 80s and has had a stroke, cancer, heart, hearing, and eye problems, it's probably beyond the point in time when he and my mom--who does not drive--should be expected to watch over themselves, even though they were doing pretty well until their 88th year.

Part of the problem was that they were doing pretty well, they were happy where they were, they'd spent nearly all their lives in the area, and the extended family was for the most part less than a hundred miles away. Wasn't it better to leave well enough alone?

Well, not quite, because as the days, months, and years went buy, things were changing just as they do for everyone in their 80s. They were slowly approaching a health crisis, and in this case it lasted for months before it turned fatal for my dad. During those four months, I was madly juggling house hunting/buying (including arranging for a loan), calls to doctors, hospitals, and nursing homes, and long talks with my mom, who was at home alone, on top of working a full-time job. In the course of all this, I learned the following things that I am applying to my mother's care and hope to be able to apply to my own welfare and Tom's when we get older. Those of you who read this might well have learned your own lessons while trying to care for elderly parents or other aging family members. I invite you to send them to me so I can add them to the list.

1. Many doctors do not consider elderly patients as deserving of the same care and consideration as younger patients. They will delay visiting your loved one at the hospital and be dismissive to you as a family member. "Well, what can you expect, he's 88 years old" becomes an excuse for the doctor's preference to do something other than give your parent the best care.

2. Nurses working night shifts at hospitals and nursing homes like peace and quiet during their shift, even at the expense of your elderly loved one. Let's face it, few people get used to working nights, especially women who have young children that require their attention, causing a lack of sleep. When these folks get to work, they want a quiet shift so that the stress of working at night is minimized. Old people often have a condition called "sundowning," where there days and nights are mixed up that ruin the tranquility of the workplace. If drugs will cause your elderly loved one to quiet down, then the nurses will see to it that they get the drugs, even if it means calling a doctor to authorize it and even if the drugs will complicate the overall treatment of what has caused the elderly person to be in the hospital. My dad was having trouble sleeping at night in the rehabilitation department of Union Hospital in Terre Haute. After complaints from the nurses, his rehabilitation doctor (not a neurologist, not a psychiatrist) was given halydol--an antipsychotic drug that I had asked them not to give him--AND DOUBLED HIS BLOOD PRESSURE MEDICINE. The next day his condition declined dramatically--he could barely move. I consider this one of several turning points that not only set back his recovery but directly contributed to his death.

3. Warnings that certain drugs can be fatal to the elderly (so-called black box drugs) are routinely ignored by medical professionals. If your elderly loved one is not sleeping at night, they will be given one of these hazardous drugs, most designed to treat severe psychotic illness--and you won't know about it unless you ask. Even if you tell the nurses caring for your loved one at a hospital or nursing home that you don't want black box drugs given, they might comply initially, but when they think you're no longer focused on the issue, they'll start dosing them out again after getting a doctor's permission.

4. Getting a home loan is not easy for the elderly, even if they have a lot of money in the bank and a steady pension income, and an impeccable credit record.

5. If you or someone you love is in their 80s, their chances of being "healthy" one day and dead the next are astronomically higher than for those under 80. If your loved one is 80 or older and has been hospitalized, expect a phone call with bad news at any time.

6. Your elderly family member may exhibit aggressive behavior of the kind you've never seen before; it is a natural but primitive response to change, so don't let it hurt your feelings. When he was in the hospital in Indianapolis, the nurses called the police on my dad because he had become combative. It took four physically fit men in their 30s to hold him down. Why did he get combative? Because he wanted out of there.

7. Nurses would rather have their elderly patients wear diapers or a catheter than take them to the bathroom. One of the standards for quality nursing home care is the percentage of patients who become incontinent while staying at the home. I'm pretty sure this is because the reason many of the elderly become incontinent because their toilet needs are neglected by the home's staff. My dad would call to be assisted to go to the bathroom and was ignored. His nurses had him in diapers, so they didn't have to worry about a messy bed, and helping a big man get up was a chore. I used to get calls from the nursing home complaining that my dad kept falling out of his bed or sliding out of his wheel chair. When I asked him why he did this, he said, "I know it's not going to hurt me, and it's the only way I can get their attention."

8. Therapists will use Medicare against you to avoid having to work hard to help elderly patients. The therapists at Meadows Manor East, the nursing home my dad was sent to when he was released from Union Hospital, found my dad to be hard to manage sometimes, so they dropped him as a patient. Twice. The first time the physical therapist told me that my dad was making some progress. The nurse all told me that my dad was making progress. But then suddenly my mom got a letter from Medicare saying that my dad was being dropped from therapy. When I confronted the therapists about it, they said that to continue therapy would be an abuse of Medicare, which would pay significantly more for my dad's care in a nursing home if he was undergoing rehabilitation as opposed to just custodial care. They claimed that he had not been making progress over a two week period even though every time I asked specifically about how he was doing in therapy, I was told he was doing fine. After my dad was sent to the hospital because the drugs Meadows East was giving him--the black box drugs--were causing him to be comatose during the day and crazy at night, he returned to Meadows East. The doctor prescribed therapy for him once again, but the therapists tried for one day and then called me to say it wasn't working out and that they had decided to drop him. One day. Now if they were right, then why did my dad do so well at therapy a week later at Fairfax Nursing Center in Fairfax, VA? He was making progress for weeks until the day he was hospitalized for pneumonia.

9. With any medical treatment your loved one receives, find out what type of follow-up care will be required and make sure it gets done. My dad had a tube surgically implanted in his stomach because all the medications he had been on had impaired his ability to swallow. The doctor who proposed that it be installed was worried that my dad would aspirate his food and get pneumonia. Unfortunately, in tandem with the installing of the tube was the requirement that mucus that accumulated over time in the back of his throat be suctioned out because he couldn't swallow it down himself. Mucus accumulates a lot of germs and normally it goes into the stomach where the acids there kill them. In my dad's case, the nursing staff failed to follow through on the suctioning, and that failure caused the germs to stay in the mucus in the back of his throat, where they proceeded to multiply and eventually get into his lungs and cause pneumonia, the very thing the stomach tube was supposed to prevent. I'm sure suctioning out mucus is not the most pleasant job in the world for nurses, and elderly patients come and go for a variety of reasons, so maybe they don't connect this particular failure with deadly negligence. For whatever reason, it falls in the loved one's court to make sure it happens.

10. You might be right and the doctor might be wrong, and the consequences of his error could be deadly, especially with the elderly, so insist that the doctor take your view seriously and prove that your wrong. When my dad was rushed to the Fairfax Hospital's emergency room, I stayed there with him until 1 a.m. or so to talk to the doctor. During our talk, the doctor said, "we need to find out what the source is for this infection." I said, "What about the back of his throat, maybe mucus has accumulated there since he can't swallow?" The doctor said, "If that were the case, he would be coughing more." In hindsight I should have said, "Why don't you look and see?" Twenty-four hours later, when my dad's vital signs dropped the first time, they did look and found a huge accumulation of very nasty stuff. An hour later he was dead.

(To be continued . . . )

Shifting Gears for the Holidays

I like cars, like my dad did. I don't know nearly as much about them as he did, but I know enough of the basics to make me conversant in situations where a diagnosis is necessary. My dad liked American luxury cars--Cadillacs and Lincolns; I like sports cars. From anywhere.

Sports car aficionados usually like to drive with stick shifts so they can have that special feeling of "being one with the car." I know how to drive a stick--Tom taught me when we were in college on an old white Ford sedan, because he was hoping that I would like driving a stick as much as he did. (The Green family grew up driving with stick shifts.) But as noted above, I had grown up with luxury cars, so I guess it was too late for me to absorb the thrill of guiding a car through the gears when I knew that if properly equipped, it could do so on its own, leaving me time to push the buttons on my GPS, floss my teeth, fiddle with my iPod, and dig through my purse to find my badge so as not to delay traffic going through the gate at work.

People have gears too. People work together best when they're all in the same gear, as if we all assume that working on a common task requires a common commitment of effort. Maybe one reason the holiday season is so nice is that we all are running at the same speed in order to shop, travel, decorate, wrap, cook, host, visit, etc., in the same short time period.

I'm always tempted to resist getting into the holiday traffic flow, thinking maybe I could just pull over and park for a while and let the pack go around me. Somehow those Christmas Eves spent with Jim and Tammy Faye Baker, them cooking and me wrapping at 2 a.m. while everyone else in the house had been asleep for hours, took a toll on me. Every year I think, maybe we could do a "destination Christmas"--spend a few days together in an exotic place we've never been before; let someone else do the cooking and dispense with the tree so that we don't have to worry about putting anything under it.

This year is particularly tough. For a sports car driver, I'm having a hard time finding the accelerator pedal. My mind reverts a lot to mental before-and-after pictures--one of a lazy boy recliner chair with an 88-year-old man in it and one in which the chair is empty.

But I am a sports car driver, and the pack is catching up to me. The giving season began at work with the Combined Federal Campaign, and the organizers for our office are always members of the under 30 generation that so many of my fellow baby boomers consider to be so self-centered. Amid the hub-bub of holiday plans is a special feeling of excitement--the anticipation of Inauguration Day, the change in our set of customers, and the growing conclusion that the President-Elect is someone special even in the context of his prestigious predecessors.

More personally though, the family is coming. Thanksgiving Day in Annapolis will be quiet for Tom, my mom, the dogs, and me, but on Friday, Dan, Sheri, and our granddog, Mingus, will meet up with us at my mom's house in Annandale, a place that is new to us as far as celebrating the holidays goes. Our Thanksgiving dinner will be Saturday and will feature ham, not turkey. How's that for flaunting tradition--or creating a new one? With a little luck, we'll translate some of that holiday energy into finishing off the last two major house projects--turning one room into a sewing room for my mom and another into a workout room for me.

I've been stockpiling gifts for birthday and Christmas celebrations with friends and families in December, including the one occasion when we'll all be together--Angela's birthday, which we will all celebrate at a restaurant of her choice in New York City and eat birthday cake and hang out together at Dan and Sheri's home in New Jersey.

With the plans ahead of me and the people involved in them, I don't think I'll have to worry about leading the pack, as I have often felt I had to do in previous holiday seasons. My days of relying on Jim and Tammy Faye are long gone. I'll do my share, but I think we'll all be in the same gear. No need to race in any case--this holiday season is a particularly long one, stretching into late January. It will give us all a chance for reflection, a chance to recognize the joys brought by both the pack and its individual members, and an opportunity to let our memories and traditions begin to refill empty chairs.

Eulogy for Arthur Edward Dowell, 27 January 1920 - 11 October 2008

After three hospitals and two stays in a nursing home here in Terre Haute over the course of about three months, it took a 12-hour non-stop cross-country ambulance ride to Virginia to give my dad another chance at life after a stalled recovery from brain surgery. He arrived tired but happy at the Fairfax Nursing Center at about 9 p.m. His face brightened when he saw me as they rolled him in. The next day, he started three types of rehabilitation therapy and steadily improved in each. My mom and I visited him every day, and although he would have plenty of times when his mind was not clear, we had many conversations about a wide range of things related to the life together that we were looking forward to, the house that he would be moving into, the status of the house in Terre Haute, and an assortment of other matters.

But amid all this good care, Death was catching up with us. My dad caught pneumonia and was hospitalized. The infectious disease specialist who contacted me to tell me they were going to give my dad a powerful new antibiotic told me that people in their ninth decade could appear healthy one day and die the next. And so that is what happened. My dad’s vital signs dropped suddenly early last Saturday. The hospital immediately called me to tell me that had happened but that his vital signs were back stable again. The next call I got about an hour later was that he was dead.

Although Death took my dad, I have no doubt that in his mind he was going to join his mother, his dad, and his four brothers. He had seen them. He had called to them. My dad told the nursing home staff in Terre Haute that his brother Firman had died even though no one had told my dad that Uncle Firman had died the previous week. And whether you or I believe in the Afterlife, we can all agree that my dad no long has to deal with feeding tubes, needles, IVs, catheters, walkers, and medications.

Those of us whom my dad left behind remember him as a vigorous, strong, yet gentle and kind man whose life was full and varied up until his last few weeks. He loved cars, and asked me repeatedly about the welfare of his ancient Ford station wagon when he got to Virginia. One time when I left his bedside, he told me to drive carefully. I replied, “By the way, I’m driving your Lincoln.” Without missing a beat, he grinned and exclaimed, “Well you better drive extra carefully then!”

He loved working with his hands. I remember many times as a child watching my grandfather working in his garden in Fontanet along with his youngest son, my dad, and then when my grandfather could no longer work the land, he and I would both watch my dad plow, hoe, and harvest. Not in any way would I disparage college professors, but I’m betting there are very few who have taught themselves plumbing, electrical wiring, and carpentry, and practiced those trades until they were 88 years old.

My dad loved the teaching profession. His success at teaching and mentoring his students and more junior colleagues makes a mockery of those institutions that have the “publish or perish” philosophy. Without a doubt his interest in international politics was contagious—he was the cause of my own interest in that field. His experience in World War II and his patriotism were all part of the reason international relations fascinated him. His knowledge of history was deep and broad. There were times when we talked that I felt like I was sitting in one of his classes. How I’d love to have that feeling again!

But most of all, my dad loved his family. Not a week went by while I was growing up that he didn’t go see his mom and dad at least once and usually more often than that. He brought his parents home into the 20th century, most notably from my perspective by helping to install indoor plumbing so there was no longer a need for those long icy winter walks to the out house. He genuinely enjoyed getting together with his brothers and sister and discussing with them the issues of the day, usually over a beer or two, often with a football game on the TV in the background, and sometimes rather heatedly.

When my grandmother and grandfather grew elderly, he looked out after them, chauffeuring them to doctors” appointments and making sure that they got the best care possible. Without my dad and my aunt, there’s no question that my grandmother could not have lived alone out in the country until literally the week before she died at age 98. He was my inspiration in so many ways and the way he cared for his parents represented the way I wanted to care for mine.

My mother and I knew before my dad died and we know it even more so now that he would have done anything to make us happy. I can remember many times when my mom and dad would visit Tom, Dan, Angela, and me at our home in Annapolis, Maryland, I’d begin to do some household maintenance project and the next thing you’d know, my dad was doing it and I was standing there watching.

Just a couple of weeks ago as my mom and I sat at my dad’s bedside in the nursing home in Virginia, she asked him if we was happy to be in Virginia and if he wanted to stay. He immediately and vigorously said yes, that they were starting a new life there. But then he looked at my mom with concern and said, “But if you don’t like it, we’ll go back to Terre Haute.”

And that’s what it was supposed to be for him—a new life. And in a way it was, because he was getting the encouragement and support in Virginia that he needed to recover and come home to a house he had never seen but that he had trusted me to buy for him. I am so thankful for that time I had with him then, his hand seeking out mine and holding it with his always-strong, warm grip. I could calm him when the confusion overtook his thoughts and encourage him to keep up the good work in his therapy. I could see how much he and my mother cared for each other even after 65 years of marriage. These were precious moments for me, and only child that I am, I want more. But if the loss of my dad to the hand of Death means that he has rejoined his mom and dad and his four brothers, then I am thankful for the peace that has been brought to him. His presence is still with all who knew him. He made the world a better place in his own way and on his own terms.

Homebuilding: Hurricane-Proof Gazebo

It's 9 November in Annapolis, Maryland, and warm enough to be sitting outside with my shoes off and a cashmere cape loose around my shoulders. But the important thing is where I'm sitting. We used to call it the "shelter by the water" and native Marylanders called it a crab shack, but now, with appropriate paperwork from Anne Arundel county and after spending a fairly large sum of money, it is an 8' x 11' gazebo on the South River (an arm of the Chesapeake Bay) supported by five white columns mounted on a clean, smooth concrete slab. Its ceiling is pegboard and its roof is a high grade medium gray metal, tilted at an angle that maximizes the waterview and minimizes the amount of time rain or snow will spend on it.

Its predecessor, which sat on metal poles in a rough cement slab had sheets of hard, semi-translucent plastic for a roof mounted in a wood frame. The cement and the poles remained in pretty good shape over the probably 20+ years of the old structure, but the winds that hit us from the west over the water during the winter took a toll on the roof, leaving chunks of plastic in our yard and gaping holes that undercut the shelter's utility in both sun and rain. It also had an impractically small homemade red brick charcoal grill built into it, which at some point we will replace with some snazzy propane-fueled thing. At one point the shelter also apparently had functioning electricity, and someday it will again.

That someday is much anticipated, not because of our desperate need to watch TV down by the water, but because the gazebo's electrification will mean that the renovation of our home will be complete. This will be the second renovation we have undertaken with our little water-front home. The first one turned an odd little termite-infested house owned by its 90-year old widowed builder who died in it (before having a chance to take his clothes out of the dryer) into a home for a mom, a dad, two kids and a dog.

The upcoming renovation has shifted from a two-phased effort to one big massive, expensive overhaul. Originally we expected first to expand the current one-story three-bedroom house to encompass the two porches that are largely unused and part of the current drive way, thereby expanding the kitchen, creating a foyer, expanding the family room, enhancing the closet and bathroom of the master bedroom, and adding a garage. The next phase would have been to put a second floor on to the house. Now we are trying for the whole thing at once, which will give us a huge five-bedroom house with outstanding waterfront views from expansive front and back decks, a sauna, and an elevator (for when my knees finally give out) that will take a year to build.

The fact that we have already spent a year or so in the design phase of the house is one of the many reasons that I'm so happy with the gazebo. It is the first step toward "Yes we can" in the process of completing the entire house project. Hear that, Anne Arundel County, which needs to grant us the permits to build (which shouldn't be a problem--it'll just cost us $$$$): YES WE CAN! Hear that, bank account? YES WE CAN!

Iraq and Mother Nature

After being in Iraq for over two months, I figured out that there are three colors native to at least this part of the country. Initially I thought there were four—the endless blue of the sky is perhaps the first thing you notice and are impressed with when you get here; but my observations suggest that over the long haul, the sky doesn't count because it is so much of a constant, and it is too bright to look at anyway. The sun is a rather weird object in Iraq during the spring, summer, and early fall. I can't say I ever saw it then, but believe me; I never had any doubt that it was around. I guess the bottom line is that you should not expect to see many multihued summer sunsets in Baghdad.

Anyway, I've already mentioned one of the three colors—that of the dust and most of Baghdad's buildings, including all of the palaces and villas I've seen, as well as the color of the trunks of the ubiquitous date palm trees (the Al-Rasheed Hotel's date bar at the 24-hour cafe has a sign on it saying that 480 types of dates are indigenous to Iraq). This color is khaki, not coincidentally the predominant shade of the US Army fatigues and the so-called "journalist vests" that all the tough civilian guys in Iraq wear to cover their 9mm pistols.

The second color is green--the shade of the former Republican Guard's wool uniforms. Even though grass grows around the Republican Palace and the hotel (thanks to constant watering) and a number of species of trees and plants in addition to the palms, the shade of green is pretty much the same everywhere, thanks to the taming process of the dust, which coats everything, including at times the sun and the sky.

It took me six weeks to detect the third color, but it became my favorite once my eyes had opened to it. It is a deep rich brown—has a lot of red in it. I think it was the squished dates on the ground at the hotel that first brought the shade to my attention, but then I realized that there's a type of rock here, I think of it as jasper, but I doubt if that's really it, that looks a lot like ripe dates (when they aren't squished). I collected particularly nice samples of these rocks, which are for the most part smooth and shiny, and carried them in my pocket and used them like large worry beads. But more than rocks and dates share this color—part of my education about this country has been to learn that shrapnel is this pretty shade, too. Or very close to it. I also started my own shrapnel collection because the destructive power of these chunks of metal that are all that's left of a multi-million dollar weapon fascinates me. They are like works of art in some twisted way, because they look sculpted. In any case, no one would mistake them for a product of Mother Nature.

So with respect to colors in Iraq, they all remind me of military stuff and war. They all make me think of sameness and regimentation and endurance over initiative. Maybe the north and the south of Iraq are different—I'd love to check that out—but in terms of the Sunni heartland, that's all there is and maybe in part that's why it is what it is . . . And unfortunately, in Iraq, a country with guns and explosives in plentiful supply and with a people who are trying to figure out what they want in life and whose loyalties are torn in any number of ways, reminders of war are a good thing because they keep you motivated and because if you forget at the wrong time, you just might get into trouble.

One last thing about the great Iraqi outdoors--be aware that from the moment you step off the plane there, you will be assigned a housefly. Sometimes I thought they were trained by Saddam's Iraqi Intelligence Service. I'm not sure if the same fly stays with you throughout your tour there, but I know that one is assigned to you each and every day, and he/she will get to know you as thoroughly as possible, including by sitting on your nose, walking on your glasses, caressing your cheek, and inspecting your mouth. I have thought, "Why can't humans appreciate this kind of attention?" but then I realized that the fact that I thought these thoughts suggests that Iraq really got to me in good ways and bad. And it will get to you, too.

Dogs' Tales: Hail Caesar!

The deep breaths of a dying dog cannot help but bring back memories of the day he joined our family, and my strongest memory of that day is of my 14 year old daughter holding a small black puppy in her lap in the middle of the back seat of our car as we took him to his new home and looking at him and touching him reverently as if he were a gift from God. He was a sniffily puppy, whose Shar-pei breeding had left him with nasal passages slightly too tight for air to go through without making some noise—but not nearly as much noise as the snoring of our first dog, Pumpkin, a bulldog named for her color and shape.

It took us a while to come up with a name for the new puppy—his breeders had called him Face because his wrinkles made him photogenic in the classic Shar-pei way, but we eventually came up with the name Caesar because he had an imperious way of seating himself prominently in the room of his choice and surveying his empire with the demeanor of a purebred who knows he is pure—nose up, mouth closed, ears alert but not perked. Some times he would dose off in this position, especially if he allowed one of us to support his head by placing our hand under his chin.

We had had a Shar-pei before we got Caesar, who we had named Hugo, because shortly after we got him he shredded a pile of newspapers we had left on the living room floor while he was home alone in a manner similar to the way the then-recent Hurricane Hugo had torn up the Gulf Coast. Hugo was a genius as dogs go. He knew a lot of words, and he could say at least one, which was “out”—he pronounced it “OOOUUWUUUT!”

Despite of or perhaps because of his intelligence, Hugo was a doggy introvert, protective of his home and family and occasionally aggressive toward strange men who dared to enter his territory. Caesar in contrast was somewhat less intelligent but considerably more outgoing. I don’t think he ever met a human he didn’t like, and for the most part he would readily welcome them into our home, after a few obligatory barks as he saw them head toward our front door. His worst performance in that regard was when he bit Alex, our future son-in-law, on the hand, but he and Alex immediately realized it was a mistake, because Caesar had always before shown Alex his deepest affection by humping his leg.

Caesar was no dummy, however, and unlike Hugo he managed to figure out how to train us—especially me, I’m afraid—into getting him what he wanted when he wanted it. One of his favorite devices was to find a sock lying around, which wasn’t hard to do since my daughter, Angela, son, Dan, husband, Tom, and I aren’t the neatest people in the world. He would first take the sock and chew it a bit—he always preferred soft toys that would soak up his plentiful supply of saliva—and then come over to one of us and sit down with it obviously in his mouth. At first we laughed at him, but this was not the reaction he desired, so he upped the ante by starting to shred the sock. Matching socks being in short supply in our household, that action compelled us to respond. He wanted to toy with us first to show us who was boss, and since he was faster than any one of us, we would have to pair up to trap him, tackle him, and then pry the sock from between his teeth. In our frustration, we would inevitably ask the right question, “do you want to go outside?” and he would trot immediately to the door with all thoughts of the sock left behind.

At the door, he would respond to the command, “Sit!” and look patiently, muscles tensing slightly while when we would say, “On your mark!” leaning forward slightly when we would say, “Get set!” and bolting through the open door the instant we said, “Go!”

He had another tactic to get our attention, and that was to find a tissue or napkin that was in his reach and then treat it as if it were doggy chewing gum. We would go through the chase and tackle routine, but a tissue is a bit harder to liberate than a sock, so not only did we have to pry his mouth open—we’d have to reach halfway down his throat to pull the thing out or peel it off the roof of his mouth. At that point, we would say, “Do you want water?” and he would lead us into the kitchen to show that his bowl was empty.

We learned from Hugo that Shar-peis are particularly sensitive about their own body waste. Hugo had the luxury of a fenced-in yard for most of the time he was with us, and he picked a spot in the farthest corner of it behind a small shed to do all of his dirty work, leaving us free to roam the yard without fear of stepping into trouble.

Caesar was let out on a chain because our next house did not have a fence, so he could not show the same discretion, but he was a master at modulating his intake to regulate his outflow. He had two techniques: First, he would only drink when one of us was at home. We always kept his water bowl full when we left in the morning, and it stayed full until one of us walked through the door, at which point he would greet the returnee with passionate tail-wags and then go to his bowl and slurp.

He did the same with his food but with an added twist. He would wait to eat when we ate. If it became clear that we were not going to share our meal with him, he would go off to his food bowl and chow down. If one of us were inclined to share—usually me—he would sit at my feet and stare at me until I gave him a bite. I’d say, “Watch the piggies!”—an expression that we developed while feeding Hugo when the kids were little and we wanted him to take care not to take the fingers along with the food—and Caesar would usually gently take the food, although sometimes in his eagerness one or two of his teeth would encounter one or two of my fingers, and he would guiltily and apologeticly step back while I would admonish him in a deeper, louder, more insistent tone, “Watch the piggies!” and he would make a conscious effort to be gentler.

Often times when Tom was away playing golf or traveling, I’d take a bag of Pirate’s Booty, which I would tell Caesar were “cheesy-poofs,” Cartman’s favorite snack on “South Park,” and split it with him one bite at a time, figuring that this tactic was good for reducing my calorie consumption. This sharing system became a sort of social contract between Caesar and me, and if I didn’t keep up my end by supplying the poofs fast enough to meet his demand, he would lay one of his front paws on my knee, or if he felt I was really out of control, he would woof sternly at me to remind me that there were consequences to toying with a purebred.

Caesar knew exactly what “going for a big walk” meant and would make a break for the door when either Tom or I said those magic words. He would grudgingly sit by the door and eventually learned to stick his head through his choke-chain collar after first showing disdain for this torture device by refusing to acknowledge me holding it in front of his face.

Unfortunately, Caesar never really learned with the term “walk” meant and always chose to move at what was almost literally break-neck speed given that he was wearing a choke collar, and the only thing that really could control him was the combination of his nose and the contents of his bladder—if he caught a scent of another dog, he had to give the area a squirt to reclaim the turf. His muscular 50 pound frame was nearly too much for me to control, leaving most of these excursions to Tom.

Not too long ago, Dan pointed out to us the miracles of “The Dog Whisperer,” Cesar Milan, as a way to gain control of our dog-walking. It was fitting that Dan would be the one to enlighten us about the technique for showing our Caesar that the humans in the family were the pack leaders, because it was Dan who taught Caesar the joys of bolting down the sidewalk with us at the other end of the leash by coming home every day from high school, strapping on his rollerblades, and putting Caesar’s leash on. They would take off down the street with Caesar in the lead, running as fast as his four legs would carry him with Dan seemingly effortlessly remaining upright as if he and the dog were participating in a Maryland-style Iditarod.

I thought we were making progress with Caesar by showing him that we were the alpha-dogs, but if he slowed down at all, it was probably the insidious effects of cancer taking its toll. His days of obvious decline were rapid and seemingly painless, taking away in the span of a month his ability to walk and his desire to eat and then his desire to drink. As the family discussed what to do—to euthanize him or let him go of his own accord—I took my cues from his tail. My bottom line was that if he did not display audible signs of pain and if his tail still wagged when we would talk to him, then he was still with us in a positive way.

We would greet him when we came home, and I would continue to try to entice him with food and shove the vet-prescribed prednisone pills down his throat in an effort to postpone the inevitable. Toward the end, I stuck some nice salmon scraps under his nose, and he perked up and started to eat them but then it was like some other part of his brain reminded him that eating was no longer an option on the path he was on, and he clamped his jaw shut, leaving the salmon on my fingers. I pried his mouth open and stuck it in there anyway, just in case the living side of his brain could overcome the dying side one more time.

Mostly, though, we did what we always did in the evenings, watched TV, talked, and read with our dog sleeping nearby. Sometimes after I went to bed, I couldn’t sleep, and I’d take my pillow and a blanket and lay down beside him, and he would wag his tail. Once he put his head on my hand.

One night when I did this, I could hear that his breathing was louder, but the tail still wagged. After lying next to him for a while, I went back to bed. When I got up the next morning, he was gone. Tom buried Caesar in the backyard on the opposite side from Hugo, figuring that this would make it easier for their spirits to guard the house.

Ang and Alex and Dan and his fiancée, Sheri, had made special visits to see Caesar during the days when we knew the end was near even though it was hard to see the dog they loved emaciated by disease. Caesar always brought us together as a family; regardless of the fusses we’d get into with each other, the love of Caesar Dog was always there. After Caesar died, Sheri sent me an e-card saying that a dog can never be replaced, but only remembered, and we know from experience that that is true. Hail, Caesar! We miss you, but we know that you, Hugo, and Pumpkin are at peace in doggy-heaven, looking out over us and no doubt swapping stories about the humans you knew and loved.

Dogs' Tales: Doodles and Poodle

You can never replace a dog, and we'll continue to miss Pumpkin, Hugo, and Caesar, the three dogs--a bulldog and two Shar-peis--my husband, Tom, and I have had consecutively since we bought Pumpkin in 1979. But you can acquire and love another dog or in our case three, courtesy of petfinders.com, which focuses on finding forever homes for abandoned pets and strays by providing Internet-accessible listings for a huge number of animal shelters around the country. My focus was on acquiring one or more labradoodles—a cross between a standard poodle and a Labrador retriever—because we heard good things about them from Alex, our son-in-law, and they were a breed that allowed Tom and me to compromise—I really wanted a standard poodle, and he wanted nothing to do with poodles. I spotted two ‘doodles that were listed as available at a shelter near Richmond, Virginia. After many e-mail exchanges with the shelter’s founder, we drove from our home in Annapolis, Maryland, to Richmond, Virginia, one Saturday, and after surviving an incredible amount of south-bound traffic on I-95, we adopted year-old sisters Flopsy and Mopsy.

What awesome dogs—calm, intelligent, well mannered, graceful, and gentle! Still, I was not surprised one day when Tom said, “These dogs are great, but I want a puppy.” Apparently we both subconsciously missed the joys of cleaning up and frequently stepping in the messes puppies make and of enduring the certain destruction of possessions that happen to be in reach of the sharp teeth of a teething mouth. In other words, I don’t know what the heck we were thinking, but I dutifully got back on to petfinders and spotted a standard poodle puppy. Flopsy and Mopsy must have loosened up Tom’s heart to poodles, because after an exchange of e-mails with yet another dog shelterer, we took off for a weekend in West Virginia.

My initial thought about going to West Virginia to get a dog was that it wouldn’t be that much farther than Richmond, and it is true that some places in West Virginia are not much farther from Annapolis than Richmond is. This particular place in West Virginia would have been about the same distance…if we had lived in Kentucky. In other words, our destination in West Virginia was about as far away in that state as you can get from where we live. Which was ok—we hadn’t had a road trip in a while, and when would we have a better reason to drive all the way across West Virginia?

We met the foster parent at dusk in the parking lot of a gas station in the outer reaches of Appalachia. We learned at that point that our puppy, Tanner, was not technically homeless—his owner also owned Tanner’s poodle mother and had her bred with a male poodle. Papa had papers proving his pedigree, but Mama did not. So we were buying a puppy, not adopting, and the owner acknowledged that although she did in fact take in and care for stray dogs in the area, Petfinders would frown on her using its website for the for-profit sale of puppies that had been deliberately brought into the world for that purpose. But there was no doubt this was Appalachia—as impoverished a place as we had ever seen in this country outside of a major city—so we did not hold it against the seller. In typical West Virginia fashion, Tanner was one of eight puppies, and he has the sass and self-confidence of someone who is used to living off the land yet still lives well.

The ‘doodles, who road with us to pick up their new brother, were unimpressed with Tanner’s West Virginia swagger. They were Virginia girls, and Virginians view West Virginians as uncivilized at best. When we put little Tanner in the back of the jeep with the girls, they moved as far away from him as they could, and as they huddled together, their facial expressions suggested that they believed they were sharing their space with a rat.

But now the three get along quite well; Tanner’s vulnerability when he plays with Flopsy and Mopsy is that he is considerably smaller, but that weakness gets smaller every day. The five of us are a pack, just like the Dog Whisperer says we should be. We’re still working on who is pack leader.