A Zen State of Mindfulness

{Prompt: Did you have any pets growing up?}

In my lifetime, I’ve had four cats and four dogs. The cats were all short-hairs: Pit-a-Pat, Charlie, Salinger, and Orion. As far as I know, Pit-a-Pat and Charlie were there when I was born. Cats were just a part of the family.

Salinger and Orion, however, were all mine. Salinger’s name obviously comes from J. D. Salinger, who certainly deserves to be honored with a naming. His name also rolls off the tongue, so it seemed like a good choice.

Salinger and me - circa 1989.

Salinger liked to live outside, probably a good idea when I was away at the hospital, doing rotations in medical school. Once I came home and a neighbor saw me with Salinger, and asked if that was my cat. It turns out that Salinger had made other friends in the apartment complex. He had been getting handouts from half the tenants.

Salinger, in his element.

Salinger was my cat when I met Dianne, and he was a little bit of a wildcat. Dianne tried to pet him and play with him, but he loved to scratch and bite so much, that he was risky to play with. That was less of a problem with Orion, who was adopted as a kitten.

Orion came into my life later, when we had a family — Dianne, two girls, and a dog (more on her later). Orion’s full name is D’artagnan Orion Gallup — “DOG”. Get it? That name was the result of a group family effort. And it should serve as a cautionary tale. Never outsource a long-lasting naming decision to other people—no matter how much you love them.

His real name — the one I prefer — is ‘Orion’, a particularly genius nod to the Siamese cat in the first Men in Black movie. In Men in Black, it is ‘Orion’ who carries the whole of the Orion galaxy affixed to his cat collar. (He’s the ‘MacGuffin’ of the whole movie.) In real life, Orion mostly responds to ‘Kitty’, although, now, being mostly deaf, he only responds to exaggerated hand-gestures and his infrared perception of perfectly heated sleeping concavities (i.e. laps).

Jasmine and Samantha cuddling young Orion.

Now, on to the dogs. (I love cats; but let’s face it… they don’t really need human interaction.) My dogs were named Lindy, Scooby, Snickers, and Maggie.

I had a hand in picking out each of these dogs from the time they were pups—meaning three exciting trips to the animal shelter, where seemingly life-and-death decisions were made. Taking only one puppy felt like leaving the rest in a state of peril — at risk of being “put down.” Even on the last trip, to the Collie breeder in Kenansville, we had to choose between one of the two females, all very likely to be adopted. Maggie was picked, on the spur of the moment, in large part because she had an easy-to-identify spot on her tail. If not for that black spot, another dog might be ‘Maggie’ right now.

Lindy’s story

My father and I picked up Lindy at the SPCA in South Raleigh, and she was named for a residential street (Linden Street) that we passed by on the way home. She was believed to be part beagle and part fox terrier.

Lindy and me - circa 1979.

She was a great source of solace following my father’s death, and she was a wonderful dog. She naturally became immortalized in cyberspace, as her name served as my primary computer password, for years and years.

Lindy, beside an incandescent lamp. 

Although I helped pick Lindy from the shelter, she ended up living with my Mom when I went to the School of Science and Math, and then to college. I didn’t see much of Lindy in her later years.

Lindy and Mom - circa 1979.

Snickers’ story

Snickers was a beautiful puppy, with the Merle colored markings of an Australian Shepherd, and the black and brown color of a Snickers bar, from whence she got her name. She had the energy of a herding dog — often nipping at our heels — and much was required to burn off that excess mischievousness.

Snickers was our dog when we were both working full-time — me, at Garner Family Practice, and Dianne, at Duke Clinical Research Institute. While Dianne and I were working, we often sent Snicker to “Doggie Day Care” to make her a little less rambunctious. Unfortunately, in her youth, Snickers suffered fractures to both of her front legs, when she leapt after a tennis ball, and over an embankment, onto the asphalt parking lot below. Although she recovered from the injury, after surgery at the NC State Vet School, she was a little more temperamental than our other dogs until the day she died.

Samantha and Jasmine wrangling Snickers.

Scooby’s story

Scooby is the dog that I remember most fondly. She was adopted by Dianne and me around the time we were engaged. It may be cliché, but she was our first baby. We picked her from a skittering litter of puppies — from a playpen at the animal shelter north of downtown Chapel Hill.

At this time, Dianne was living in an apartment complex in Carrboro with her roommate, Barb, and her roommate’s huge, cuddly part-Malamute dog, named Otis. So… Scooby came back to a two-bedroom apartment to live with Dianne, Barb, and Otis, with frequent visits by me and my cat, Salinger. There was no shortage of play and affection during her puppyhood!

Scooby was a “Collie mix”, but she was mostly white and tan in coloring, and a bit taller than a true collie or border collie. However, like a well-trained herder, she liked to go about 15 feet ahead of us on a walk, then turn sideways and look back to check on our progress. It was quite normal for her to keep tabs on our whereabouts, wherever we were.

She traveled with us from Chapel Hill to Pittsburgh, where I bitterly remember taking her for rather short, brisk walks in the winter, down an unevenly paved alleyway near our back door, left onto a side street, and then back to our house on the corner of Beechwood and Wilkins. This walk was particularly unpleasant — nay, impossible — on the day we had a snowstorm that left 24 inches of snow. On top of everything else, this walk was often in the dark, before or after a shift at the hospital where I was working more than full-time, during residency.

But her life wasn’t too bad — too housebound. We sometimes took her to Frick Park, where in the pre-internet days, we somehow heard of an unleashed doggy play-time in the park. (Some of our first dog parent friends were a neurologist and her husband, who owned a playful Dalmatian.) This play time was our first introduction to group dog play, and to the unique — sometimes eccentric — character of various pet owners.

It’s kind of amazing that the dogs were allowed to play unleashed and unfenced in a section of the park. It gives you an idea of just how expansive Frick Park must be, to allow a whole section to be dedicated to free dog play. There must have been a lot of people who had to rethink their walking path, when they saw all the dogs frolicking on the hillside.

Scooby followed us to Columbia, South Carolina, where our most common walk was around the pan-flat streets of our suburban neighborhood. It was on the outskirts of town, about a mile from Fort Jackson, where it wasn’t unusual to here the sounds of artillery exercises.

We also would go for a walk at Sesquicentennial Park, where the sandhills of the Carolinas can only support the growth of the aptly named Scrub pine. (I don’t think any pine tree is particularly majestic; but the scrub pine is distinctly unmajestic in comparison to the Longleaf pine or the Loblolly pine.)

Scooby was the unwilling nanny for our twin girls when they were born in 1994, and she must have given me many a forlorn look while I was feeding sugar water to Jasmine, or changing the position of the “Bili-blankets” on both of our early arrivals.

From Columbia, we moved to Sanford, in North Carolina, and an aging Scooby frequently joined us when we went to play volleyball on the sand courts at OT Sloan Park. And then to Cary where we played on the broad, grassy field at Lake Crabtree County Park, near RDU. Jasmine and Samantha were often nearby, in a shared, teal-and-baby-blue playpen. I don’t really know how we got through a game without interruption, but somehow it worked. More than likely there were interruptions, but if there were, our volleyball friends never seemed upset. Those were good times.

Not long before Scooby passed away, I decided to take her with me on a trip to the Outer Banks. I think we went from lighthouse to lighthouse (Currituck, Bodie, Hatteras, and Ocracoke), getting some nice photographs, and basically spending some time together to enjoy the smell of the salt water on the ocean breezes, and the feel of the sand beneath our feet and our paws.

She had to be euthanized shortly after that, and thankfully she died in our company, surrounded by her loving family. As she was quietly sleeping, from a sedative, the veterinarian gave us the room. I pushed the final dose of medicine, and as she stopped breathing, I lost my composure, and I felt hot tears rolling down my cheeks.

Dianne and I remembered the excitement we had when we picked her out during college, years before, when we were still young and foolish. In contrast, by the time that Scooby died, we had full-time jobs, children, and responsibilities. We had gone through the hardest years of our parenthood. And we had been through the wringer with medical concerns (including major surgery). We had grown up so much during Scooby’s lifetime that she was hard to let go. We’ll never forget the magic of the “Scooby years”.

Little Scooby in her pink collar — keeping a close eye on me.

Maggie’s story

If we hadn’t chosen Scooby at the pound years before, we might not have chosen Maggie years later. When I retired, in 2019, I made a list of the things that I might do with my time, and after six or more years without a pet, I thought retirement might be the perfect time to give a dog the proper amount of devotion — walking, training, and playing with them all day.

Dianne and I debated the merits of various medium-sized dog breeds, and given our experience with the “collie mix” we had before, we decided to see what a full breed collie had to offer. I think it’s fair to say that Maggie exceeded our expectations, being the most affectionate, obedient, athletic, and beautiful dog we’ve ever had.

The only downside is that everyone of a certain age has a story about a collie that they knew as a youngster. And they want to tell you about it!

She is the smartest dog, no doubt — so smart that we often have to figure out who is playing mind games with whom. Are we training her, or is she training us? I’m sure it’s a little of both… but, you know what… I’m Ok with that.

Maggie’s story isn’t done, and our story isn’t done, either. She hasn’t seen us through the kind of trials and tribulations that our other pets have. She hasn’t suffered from an injury or absence or neglect. Perhaps you could say she is pampered — living the life of Reilly, so to speak — but that’s probably for the best.

After a while, the challenges… the vicissitudes of life can be exhausting. After a while you just want to sit down on the side of a chair and rub the really soft curly fur behind your dog’s ears, or laugh at her expression when she does a head tilt of bewilderment (like when your wife is screaming at the Washington Redskins defense), or just reach a Zen state of mindfulness as you and your dog walk along a wandering path, a path into the woods, filled with tall loblolly pines.

Steve and a young Maggie at a brewery in Durham.