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.