“Late one evening, tired and exhausted, I sat down by a big sycamore and called my dogs to me.  ‘It’s all over’, I said. ‘There’ll be no more lessons.  I’ve worked hard and I’ve done my best.  From now on it’s all up to you.  Hunting season is a few days away and I’m going to let you rest for I want you to be in good shape the night it opens.’

It was wonderful indeed how I could have heart-to-heart talks with my dogs and they always seemed to understand.  Each question I asked was answered in their own doggish way.

Although they couldn’t talk in my terms, they had a language all their own that was easy to understand.  Sometimes I would see the answer in their eyes, and again it would be in the friendly wagging of their tails.  Other times I would hear the answer in a low whine or feel it in the soft caress of a warm flicking tongue.  In some way, they would always answer”.  (pg. 66)

Later in the book Rawls recounts a conversation spoken during a field trial for coon hounds in which many fine hounds from several states participated.  There had been an unexpected snow storm during the trial for Billy and his hounds, trapping them in the forest over night.  Finally, they were found by a team of searches from trial. One of the men in the search party, Mr. Kyle, comments as follows:  (pg. 184.)

” ‘Men’, said Mr. Kyle, ‘people have been trying to understand dogs ever since the beginning of time.  One never knows what they’ll do.  You can read every day where a dog saved the life of a drowning child, or lay down his life for his master.  Some people call this loyalty.  I don’t.  I may be wrong, but I call it love – the deepest kind of love….. It’s a shame that people all over the world can’t have that kind of love in their hearts,’ he said.  ‘There would be no wars, slaughter, or murder; no greed or selfinshness.  It would be the kind of world that God wants us to have – a wonderful world’ “.

They must think we  dog breeders and owners are a totally retarded, demented lot.  They know nothing of the intense bond that we live every minute with our dogs; that the dogs are our very life.  If they are sick, how could we not know?  It would be as if we ourselves are sick but then we don’t know it.  Of course we know if we are sick, so we know when our dogs are sick.

My prayer is that Paris will live until Wednesday and his evaluation, and that his condition can be treated with medication.  Otherwise, well, otherwise, let me see…..  I don’t see a very pretty picture ahead.

To me, I’ve never seen him so loving and beautiful as he had been in recent weeks.  I have brushed his coat a few times this week.  I have never seen such a magnificent coat on a male borzoi, or I should say, I’ve never seen one better.  The feel of the silkiness of his abundant hairs, fur really, through my fingers creates the most pleasing sensation.  I made him look especially perfect and beautiful.  He, as if he knows he is loved and beautiful, lives his joy to be in my presence and here at home every minute; his joy is infinite; as is his borzoi love; perfect love; infinite love.  There is no other kind of love like this when you receive it.  It is so powerful, unique; it crushes me under its weightiness, like when he leans on me, and pushes me into the side of the counter, and I can no longer move myself from one place to another.  Paris is a large dog and a heavy dog in relation to my size; almost equal in weight, so if he wants to immobilize me, he can!  So I stop, I stop moving and living anymore; why should I; why would I want to;  I want to be with Paris.

Mikhailya-Paris, June 2004

His legs did not grow straight and long enough for him to be a show dog, but he was endowed with much that was stunning in a male borzoi.  I fantasized about breeding him for his wonderful breed type characteristics: his prey drive, his dramatically black nose, his dark eyes and full black eye rim, a beautiful tail held down low, a correct scissor bite, and his perfect temperament.  Surely, his bad front could be overlooked for all of that.  But our lives did not allow for us to breed him.  After the birth of Mikhailya’s litter in December 2008, three male pups, we neutered him.

Other wrongs followed, although they never would have had Bob not died.  I tried sending him with Tresor to his placement home but that situation did not work out for him.  He was happily returned on Christmas Eve, 2011.  My heart felt as if it would burst with love watching him walk in the door.  Paris was home.  Sometimes, we don’t know how much we love them until we lose them, or know that we shall.  Sometimes, it is easy to overlook a dog less flashy or outgoing than another.  Paris was quiet, never causing a disturbance, yet his strong presence was always felt, like a spirit.  If there could be a link to Opal, it would be through Paris.  He was her protector and guardian from the moment she walked into our home late January 2005 when she was a mere three months old.  He never left her side, and the love that developed between them was a precious picture to see enacted.

Opal has been gone since 2006, and Paris still remains here, but now approaching the end of his life, no longer with his full health.  I picked up on something being amiss the day he was returned, and it turns out to be a problem with his heart.  It was finally, definitively diagnosed today, in May 2012.  Only being eight years old, I feel he is being robbed of longevity and the essence of being a healthy borzoi, one that can run on the trails and bridal paths in Watchung Reservation as he did as a youngster, and with Tresor prior to the placement.  He still tries, but the exhaustion is evident when he returns to me, and sometimes, he cannot go on and stops there, on the trail, exhausted, and I have to wait a long while before he can walk on again.

I will be discussing his case with a veterinarian tomorrow in the Westfield practice we use.  My niece, also a veterinarian, had the test results and had anguish and dismay in her voice as she explained the sad results to me previously.

I am hopeful that a heart medication can give him some relief.  It is my wish that he can be kept comfortable and enjoy more time to live, for he takes such joy in life.  I do not want to let him go, after so foolishly letting him go with Tresor.   Paris belonged here, and it is here alone that he will live out his days with the best of care and comforts.

I brushed him out a few days ago and marveled at his stunning beauty.  It is just not the beauty consistent with the current USA borzoi standard.  Nonetheless, it cannot be denied that Paris is a stunning and beautiful dog.  If he passes away, as sad as it will make me feel, I will derive some comfort knowing that he will be reunited with Opal.  Together, they will wait for me in a special place where I can find them when I pass away from this most imperfect of worlds.

I saw one or two that I could have potentially asked to purchase as a companion dog for myself, to finish its title and then enjoy.  Then, I remembered I already had three such dogs at home.  And, two sadly gone:  Opal and Tresor, along with my husband, Bob.  For now, all of this is enough for me, after all, I do live alone.   It is nice for me to experience the realization that I am so deeply committed to the breed, bound by an endless expanse of love that is infinite, perhaps because of my love for and loss of Opal and the generosity of Bob who allowed these dogs into our lives.  Although for now, all will remain as it is, I am comforted to know my friends remain as they are, true friends, and I am less alone than had I never embraced these fine dogs and made room for them in my busy life.

Sitting ringside is always fun, especially as a true spectator.  I will always remember the excitement of watching  judges at  specialty shows and trying to guess what they will do, and know you will often be wrong.  Judges often deliver surprises at specialties – I have seen it happen many times.  So, one could say that sitting ringside is a very unique experience in a small category of exciting entertainment.

Casanova "Lara's River of Dreams" in repose at Blyss

It’s true that I fought hard against my fate for decades.  I never wished for the bad things that happened to me but did anyway.    I still regret the great losses, time spent unproductively,  goals never achieved,  true loves that I lost, and how it feels to be left with so little of what was truly important to me.  Yet, I ask myself from time to time how it happened that I am here today without it having been part of a plan?  Because, I have survived and today life is good.  I am blessed to see nature’s pristine beauty displayed just beyond every window.  The house is situated is such a way that the windows are level with the tops of the trees surrounding it. And they welcome the sunlight into every room with a golden radiance that illuminates all it contains.  It must have been a goal all along, a subliminal goal, to have my own special place, mine alone where I could be safe and happy.   Then, I achieved the goal I did not know I had.   I now understand that I am where I am meant to be.  And, I do believe that perhaps being where I am meant to be is worth more than the sum of my acquisitions and achievements and with whom I am.  For by myself, I will always be well.

By myself, I will surely never be alone again.  I will always have the companionship of the many new friends I have made in recent years.  I am referencing the friends Bob and I   made together as a couple through our interest in borzoi  taking ballroom dancing lessons for many years.  Moreover, there will always be a borzoi by my side.  You know, a Borzoi, those big, white, Russian hunting hounds.  My home is a perfect place to keep one.  He will be here to shelter me from harm and grace my meager life: it is perfect love, infinite love.

I hesitate to mention it, but even a new boyfriend is on the scene, well, of sorts, unwilling though he may be – or so he says.  He comes to visit me.  I tease him and call him “Dream Boat Baby”, or just “Dream Boat”, because that is what he is: my “dream-boat” who enables me to simply float away and make all of my problems disappear whenever we are together.   I know he loves me in his own hidden-away-heart-of-hearts that he fiercely guards.  Ever stoic, he would never let on to me anything either resembling his approval or that he returns my affection.  He says, in so many words, not literally, ”Don’t get hung up on me, Baby”, only in silence with every inhale and exhale he respires in my presence.   His faults loom large.  They are the relationship kisses-of-death, every one of them insurmountable and colossal. He tells me regularly that he is a bad man.  In matters of love, it does not mean a thing.  He is perfect to me. Today, Joannie asked me if it were true that I was in love with him….. she sensed it….

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There is the new girl-friend from my church, so ill and alone that I can only say she touches my heart.   I am happy to step in with my companionship – we have so much in common, my own life suffering from its own terminal illness, a death of the heart.  To find a person in need of something with whom I can share and give only proves there is still an element in me somewhere of whatever it is that makes me, how shall I say, human or alive.  Like others before her, she is welcome here.  I can cook her a meal; I can get us a fun meal from McDonald’s, a coffee drink, a delicious soft-serve ice-cream sundae, and things with extra sugar and ketchup.  Most of all, we can talk like girl friends and laugh, and especially laugh at ourselves and our pathetic plights!  We should have met as 10 year old children instead of 50 or 60 year old broken down women.  What does it matter, this decade or that.

***********************************

I have another very long time friend. E.L., who cares for me deeply and genuinely.  She seems to see and understand my problems, particularly my emotional, psychological problems clearly and has set out to help me fix them.  I should be embarrassed but no.  I am a train wreck and it is very obvious.   The husband of another good friend, A.P., even sees the decrepitude of the current state here and has offered his help, help I desperately need in the kennel.  Another good friend, C.S., whom I met with our husbands 20 years ago in ballroom dancing class and now lives in Mountainside, walked in the other day and asked me if she could send her cleaning lady over to my house ASAP.  I knew she was right, and the affirmative was the only allowable answer.   With a clean house again, I should be okay.  This wonderful person, the cleaning lady from Brazil, will come on board on a regular basis.  A clean house upstairs, a clean kennel downstairs: life looks good.

*******************************

I have had to make some very negative assessments of some other long-time friends, very long-time friend, M.K., and my sister-in-law, C.D., who together have been very hostile to me for quite some time.  I feel their attacks are sadistic and unjustified; in one case, the woman, C.D., is actually indirectly stalking me she is so pathologically obsesssed with me.  C.D. has succeeded in seducing my absolute-best-friend-in-the-world, against me to such a degree that I am left with no choice but to label it “an emotional affair” and separate myself from her, nothing short of tragic.  Not having received a reply from my friend in response to an email I sent her two weeks ago, she can’t be that upset about my decision.  She knows where she stands now with me.    I guess that is okay with her.  It’s reality.  It’s the truth.  She has hot only chosen C.D over me, but has compassion for C.D. and her unique problems.  Moreover, she believes my own mother was and is a wonderful person, and it is I who is the messed up person in these relationships and I should just get over it. What I have now gotten over is us.  All 50 years of us. Gone.

And now, with much on my mind and at a very late hour, I shall be off to bed with:

• Dreams of a certain man I know simply as “Dream Boat” with whom I sail away in slumber…..
• Comfort knowing my three borzoi are well and happy in their very clean kennel downstairs.

As my borzoi are my priority so are those for whom  I deeply care, especially  friends old and new, who deeply care about me. I feel it; it is real.

Estelle Lord with Mikhailya and Tresor as a puppy.  Watchung Reservations, a field. June 2009.

Life goes on.

I think if Opal could be a flower, she would be something like a white daffodil; a “paper white” style of daffodil.  She was delicate and frail during her life as she grew; she did not grow strong and robust the way a borzoi should.  I was concerned but nobody else seemed to notice anything amiss.  Today, having so little to go by, I try to see her image in certain flowers, or hear her spirit in certain musical compositions,most especially being the two Romances for Violin in F & G major, # 1 & # 2; Op.40  by Beethoven. Then, she suddenly appears for me; her presence is alarmingly real whenever I hear them performed.  How I love to cheat by losing myself in endless reverie in either YouTube or on my on excelent CD!  See:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0YCWZnpoO0   and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxOD45-hNr8

Reply from J.K.:

Hi Lorene, Am so happy that she comes to visit with you! She was blessed to  be with you and Bob and your borzoi family! I know she is still with you and totally believe this!~ When she visits, give her a big hug for me and you take care!  J.K.

Lorene walks her Blyss Borzoi in Watchung Reservation, 2010, Deserted Village, Berkley Hights, NJ

And so there I walk in the Watchung Reservation in Mountainside, as I have so many other times before, with my dogs.   It does not matter which direction I take.  The hiking trails lead to places with names such as, starting at the eastern edge, “Watchung Stables”, “Surprise Lake”, “The Deserted Village”, ”The Loop”, the series of bridges over Blue Creek, foundations of old farm houses, the two former”corn fields” that today are combied into one, large wildflowers meadow, the mysterious  “Pine Forest”, the barn of The Deserted Village, newly restored, and in the furthest western point, Sealey’s Pond.  The Watchung Reservation is an ancient place, a four century site, where Union County has placed informative designated markers describing the scene ahead, giving names to the settlers, businesses, and professions of those who have come before me.  I have always been amazed by how many men and women came before, and the rich variety of ways they lived, worked and played.   It is I who have walked for so long and studied the tell-tale signs they left behind to know these histories have validity.

Today, as I walk in more familiar domains, I imagine I see the Blyss borzoi more clearly now, especially those lost and left behind.  I still feel as if they are walking ahead of me or running off leash on the trails.  I imagine that if I walk in their increasingly worn and faded treads, they will reappear someday and come running back to me.   One day they entered the wood and never returned.   I had to take the long road home alone.  Today, my borzoi are another chapter in the story of Watchung Reservation’s rich past, the once upon a time story of the pack of  big white Russian hounds let loose in the forest, running free.  They reside there now, in the dimension of ancient places.  It starts  just down the road a way beyond my front door.

Lorene in the Blue Ridge Mountains on a day in spring, sightseeing & homesick for Watchung Mountains

Today I got through one total waste of a day.   Yesterday was Easter.

I thought that would be nice  and make me feel better.  There was no resurrection for me.

My husband’s ashes remain where I left them, artfully placed in an urn in a glass mausoleum wall.

Projects if begun at all were left unfinished.

A morning shopping list, by day’s end, unpurchased goods:

dog food, cat food, price-club groceries, prescriptions,

and a high-way fast-food cheese-burger with black coffee

thrown in as an after thought.  That’s something I want to eat now

in place of the food in my refrigerator.  Conversations few were redundant.

In-Box empty. Written messages unsent. No ring-tone sang the silence.

No txts.  My tweet was anything but sweet.  I laughed as I told the world I screwed up.

The dumbest thing I could think of to write about myself

Was that I was hated but it made me strong.  Eminem wrote that though.

Yes  today everything went undone. The dry was wet, the wet was dry

Where is that plug, the lock, you know, the one that stops

burgularies, you know, your life from being robbed

from running out the door unlived

how shall I say, I commited the crime of lying down for awhile

but my hands were spent, if only on the dogs my only beloveds:

Brushings, baths, wet towels and soggy socks

so much of fur and me to clean and dry and later

and a new ruined raspberry silk knit sweater and even later on the evening walk

shivering in a chic Burberry too-light-weight-jacket

For the task at hand.  I made a fashion statement,

my Easter outfit.  It was the day after Easter.

And that’s what I did all day long: a silhouette against

the greening of the mountain facing me.

.

Eminem.

This is what a day looks like when meds don’t work

A mind and world adrift, shaken to their foundations

by the dimensions I transverse

In the course of a nanosecond.

Enticing me with solutions,

“I am the way”…..  I know better.

Then the “truth”, but no thanks, it never fits.

A beckon to “Come with me.”

I smell the rot of betrayal in the very breath

Not here, nor there,

Simply remain, standing alone.

In the parenthetical reprieve

That which I seek cannot be found.