Sandi Kahn Shelton

Well, once again I am thinking about dogs. It may be that I am in a Dog Period of Life.

This is Shep, my friend Leslie’s dog–and as you can see, he’s an aspiring writer. I was over at her house one day, working on my novel on her wonderful screened porch. (This was back in the fall, when screened porches could be used for things other than storage.) Leslie was over on the other couch, working on her novel, and our friend Nancy was on still a third couch, doing hers…and then, as happens when so many people are working together all claiming words for themselves out of thin air, I started noticing something.

Leslie and Nancy were typing furiously away, and I was…not.

It was clear to me what was happening. Arlo Guthrie had explained this phenomenon once in one of his concerts, when he was talking about going away on a retreat to write with Pete Seeger. He and Pete Seeger were in a little cabin together, and Pete was writing away fast and furious, writing song after song, and Arlo was coming up with nothing, just nada. And then Arlo realized that all the ideas, you see, were coming in through the cabin’s front door, and they were landing on Pete’s paper before they could even make their way to Arlo.

I don’t know what Arlo did to rectify the situation, but in my case, I did what any sane person would do: I suggested lunch.

We went into the kitchen and made a feast of chicken salad, carrot soup, homemade bread Nancy had brought, chocolate, huge pots of Darjeeling tea. We talked and laughed and told funny stories and traded recipes, all the things we always do.

And when I looked out on the porch, this picture that you see before you is what I saw: Shep, who had been sleeping next to my feet the whole time, had taken over my novel for me.

I particularly like the way his paw is poised on the keys, and how he’s staring off at the doorway, watching the ideas float in–clearly now just for him, just for my novel which even a dog could see was needed them desperately.

When I came back, all he’d actually typed was lllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll, but I knew it was a message to me: A dog can be a writer’s best friend.

Who says you can’t teach an old dog new tricks?

This is Jordie, who is 11 1/2 years old–which means that he doesn’t want to hear much about anything new in the world. Frankly, he’s got enough responsibility to deal with just handling his rather demanding snowman doll, the occasional Kleenex that needs rescuing out of the trash can, and of course, lobbying for more carrots.

Despite this, I bought him a bed.

I put it on the carpet next to our bed, where he has slept since he first came to our house when he was a puppy.

I said, “Here, Jordie, come here! Come here and look at your new bed.”

He came and looked at it. Then he looked at me.

I said excitedly, “This is your new bed! Look! A brand new soft bed for you!”

He looked at me and tilted his head to the side, obviously wondering if I had lost my mind. Do I not have enough to keep track of in this house? And now you’re expecting me to –what? What will satisfy you people?

“It will be good for your hips,” I told him. Then I went to the kitchen, and fifteen minutes later, I was surprised to hear a muffled swishing sound from the hallway as well as grunting sounds. He was dragging his bed to the kitchen.

That evening, he tried hard to drag it everywhere, making low gutteral talking noises to it, like he does when he’s giving instructions to his snowman. (Already, the snowman has had to be punished several times, and as a result is missing one of his rope arms.) You could see it was hard work, pulling and pushing this huge fluffy bed around the room. He’d have to stop every once in a while, just to glare at it for being so much trouble. Once he laid down across the room from it, and just eyed it suspiciously, refusing to close his eyes when it was in the room.

When it came time for bed, I took it back in our bedroom and put it in his spot. He stood there uncertainly, looking at me and then at the bed. Then finally he got in his spot, curling himself up in a tiny little ball so he wouldn’t have to touch the bed.

The next morning I found it in the middle of the room.

We went on like that for night after night. Finally he stopped trying to drag it around, or to reason with it through growling–but still every night he curled his huge self up so he wouldn’t impinge on its space.

And then one night–I was just about to put the thing up in the attic, figuring that this was just one more tactical mistake I’ve made in figuring out what people really, really need–and voila! He just figured it out. He was standing there looking at this bed, and you could almost see the light go on behind his rheumy old eyes.

My god, what if this isn’t another stuffed animal I have to carry in my mouth and teach life lessons to? What if they’re not expecting me to civilize this thing?

Without any more fuss, he plopped himself down right in the middle of the fattest, most cushiony part of the bed–and he’s slept there ever since.

You can teach an old dog new tricks, I guess. It just takes about six weeks.

The New Year isn’t even three weeks old, and already a lot of people are fed up with it.

Let’s face it. We are an anxious, exhausted people, made worse by the fact that there is a war lingering on and a winter that isn’t quite a winter, and so you can’t quite feel good about the fact that you may need to mow your lawn soon and you haven’t had to shovel even one flake of snow yet. Worse, it seems that just in my little beleaguered circle of friends, people are suffering from pneumonia, meningitis, cysts, sudden irreversible deafness in one ear, torn ACLs, car breakdowns on highways, computer screens shattering when books fall on them, family arguments, missed appointments, clinical depression, and writing rejections.

And, as if all that isn’t bad enough, now objects are starting to go missing.

Just this week I have spent hours looking for the following items: the receipt to the replacement phone I bought that will not work out and must be returned to the store; the password to Stephanie’s bursar account so I could find out why the hell they are still sending me a bill which they know and I know that I already paid in full, otherwise they wouldn’t have let her register for classes; the headphones to my iPod…and of course, my keys.

Then today I go see my friend Deb, and wouldn’t you know that she’s as anxious and exhausted as the rest of us–really maybe worse. She has lost all her estrogen patches. FIFTY DOLLARS WORTH OF ESTROGEN PATCHES, the only things, she says, that stand between her and even the possibility of sanity since her hysterectomy three years ago.

She has spent days and days looking for these things, dreading and postponing that moment when she has to try to get her doctor on the phone and in ten seconds explain that she needs a new prescription–no, she hasn’t used them all in a riot of estrogen frenzy; no, she’s not selling them to perimenopausal women on the street; yes, she’s looked everywhere; please, please, please, for God’s sake, just write me out a new prescription so I can go and spend fifty more hard-earned dollars for another box.

“And then,” she said calmly, “I realized what had happened to them. My dog Miles ate them.”

We looked at each other.

“He ate them?” I said.

“All of them.”

“And he lived?”

“Yes.”

“But how do you know he really ate them?”

“Well, how do you think I know? He’s wearing pearls and high heels and barking about how he wants to redecorate the place. How else would I know?”

This date on the calendar has said WRITE 20 PAGES OF NOVEL for some time now.

That’s how far behind I am on my five-pages-a-day regimen, due to such interruptions as Thanksgiving and the laptop taking to crashing four or five times a day just for fun, and–oh, why not just admit it?–a certain ignorance of just what is supposed to happen next in the book.

So, twenty pages. Very do-able.

Here’s what I did to prepare myself: I called and canceled my scheduled walk with my friend Karen. I turned off the email program, took the laptop to the part of the house where the wireless thingie doesn’t reach so that I couldn’t read the entire Internet, turned down the volume on the phone ringer, and made a whole pot of Darjeeling tea.

Jordie The Writing Dog settled down on the floor by the desk where he could maintain the required vigilance that writing deserves. I read the last few pages of what I wrote when I was still in my right mind, and found a flicker of an idea still rattling around in my head, and then–oh, blessed day!–I started writing.

But then I noticed a weird thing. Whenever I would stop typing even for an instant, Writing Dog would struggle to his feet and come to stare at me. Wagging. Breathing loudly. Resting his head on my thigh. Using his head to knock my fingers off the keyboard.

I was so touched. How like a loyal golden retriever to offer such unwavering support. To say, in doggie fashion, “I know you can do it! Just keep going! Keep going! I have no idea why you need to do this, but I’m sure whatever it is is just wonderful!”

“Thank you!” I told him. “Feel free to go back to your nap. I’ll take it from here.”

But he didn’t go away. This was not encouragement. He wanted carrots. He believes carrots to be the best treats in life, and although he used to only get them for returning back to the house without making us chase him through the neighborhood, now he believes he is to get them whenever he thinks of it.

By the end of the day, here was the scoreboard:

Pages written: 3.2

Times the words “NO carrots, go lie down!” were stated: 1,457

Number of times typing hands were bumped from keyboard: 2,589

Number of carrots ultimately given to Writing Dog: 2 gazillion

This, I am proud to say, is Jordie, the sweetest dog in the world–really Mahatma Gandhi in a dog suit, although he has gotten very old and a little bit confused by the way things work.

For instance, lately he will come into a room where we are reading or watching television, and look completely baffled as to just who we might be. It’s not until one of us speaks to him that he seems reassured that–oh, yes! It’s those people I’ve lived with for the last eleven years! The ones that feed me!

But speaking of food, he has never yet met a carrot he didn’t love. (He thinks carrots and pieces of ice are treats.) Hard of hearing as he is, he never misses the rattle of the bag of carrots–or even the opening of the refrigerator door. That he knows better than he knows his own name.