footpad, posts by tag: dear mischa - LiveJournal (original) (raw)

Pawprints in Erebus	[Sep. 8th, 2016\|11:23 pm]Footpad
[Tags\|bargaining, bereavement, dear mischa, grief, mischa, stages of grief] [Current Mood	desolate]Dear Mischa,You know that I love you. Yup, still do.It is now three months, twenty-eight days and twenty-three hours since you died. I barely ever cry for you any more these days, although occasionally some compulsive memory or some piece of music comes up and hits an emotional chord and blindsides me with pain. Just a couple of days ago I heard Peter Gabriel's I Grieve, the simplest possible poetry with long-spaced words set in melody like jewels forever separated by the impassable gulfs of absence:I grieve for you You leave _me_and suddenly it was as if nothing had really sunk in and losing you was as incomprehensible and raw as ever. Losing someone isn't a hurt that heals, it just gets covered over with ever thicker scar tissue until you can't quite find it any more. The well of tears does not run dry; with time you are just less drawn to the water's edge.They say the pain will give way to gratitude, but that's not really true either. The gratitude hasn't grown; it was there from the beginning, and never stronger than when I sobbed over your lifeless body, but every fibre and nuance of it remains inextricably convolved with the bitter icy electric-shock pain of your loss. Nothing hurts more than remembering how thankful I am that you were my dog, because nothing more searingly illuminates the starkness of how you are, with such implacable finality, gone.But I'm okay. Really I am. Almost every day, and almost every hour of the rest. It's just once in a while that your shade walks beside me, gentle and vivid and unnaturally calm.There is a thing which I thought, in time, might eclipse you in my heart, might lay the memories of you to rest like the lowest stratum of old sepia photos in a long-forgotten drawer. That in itself is a terrible thing: to lose not only you, but to lose the loss of you, to forget why I loved you, to forget how unique and irreplaceable you were, to quench the ember of you that lives on as a part of me.But in fact it doesn't have to be that way. Thank god. The love of another, it turns out, is unfathomably different from the love of you; it is orthogonal, different in every possible way, an absolutely distinct quale; no interaction between the two, no interference, no intersection. The one is not dishonoured or diminished by the other, its light is not dimmed, and you will always be to me everything you ever were.And there is a time to rise from your grave and start to walk on.I love you, my much-loved and gentle dog. I love you very much, and I miss you and always will and there really is no end to these tears.If you're out there, if you can, if you will, wait for me: there's a far dark river and I'll see you on its shore. But I may be a little while, for I have things to do, and there is another who needs my care and my love as you did too.I think you'll like her. Wait for us and you'll see.All my love, now and always,me—This post was made on dreamwidth.org, here. If you can, please comment there (it's simple with OpenID), because LJ's bugs make it gratuitously hard for me to answer your comments on LJ.
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[Sep. 8th, 2016|11:23 pm]Footpad

[Tags**|bargaining, bereavement, dear mischa, grief, mischa, stages of grief] [Current Mood**

desolate]Dear Mischa,You know that I love you. Yup, still do.It is now three months, twenty-eight days and twenty-three hours since you died. I barely ever cry for you any more these days, although occasionally some compulsive memory or some piece of music comes up and hits an emotional chord and blindsides me with pain. Just a couple of days ago I heard Peter Gabriel's I Grieve, the simplest possible poetry with long-spaced words set in melody like jewels forever separated by the impassable gulfs of absence:I grieve for you You leave _me_and suddenly it was as if nothing had really sunk in and losing you was as incomprehensible and raw as ever. Losing someone isn't a hurt that heals, it just gets covered over with ever thicker scar tissue until you can't quite find it any more. The well of tears does not run dry; with time you are just less drawn to the water's edge.They say the pain will give way to gratitude, but that's not really true either. The gratitude hasn't grown; it was there from the beginning, and never stronger than when I sobbed over your lifeless body, but every fibre and nuance of it remains inextricably convolved with the bitter icy electric-shock pain of your loss. Nothing hurts more than remembering how thankful I am that you were my dog, because nothing more searingly illuminates the starkness of how you are, with such implacable finality, gone.But I'm okay. Really I am. Almost every day, and almost every hour of the rest. It's just once in a while that your shade walks beside me, gentle and vivid and unnaturally calm.There is a thing which I thought, in time, might eclipse you in my heart, might lay the memories of you to rest like the lowest stratum of old sepia photos in a long-forgotten drawer. That in itself is a terrible thing: to lose not only you, but to lose the loss of you, to forget why I loved you, to forget how unique and irreplaceable you were, to quench the ember of you that lives on as a part of me.But in fact it doesn't have to be that way. Thank god. The love of another, it turns out, is unfathomably different from the love of you; it is orthogonal, different in every possible way, an absolutely distinct quale; no interaction between the two, no interference, no intersection. The one is not dishonoured or diminished by the other, its light is not dimmed, and you will always be to me everything you ever were.And there is a time to rise from your grave and start to walk on.I love you, my much-loved and gentle dog. I love you very much, and I miss you and always will and there really is no end to these tears.If you're out there, if you can, if you will, wait for me: there's a far dark river and I'll see you on its shore. But I may be a little while, for I have things to do, and there is another who needs my care and my love as you did too.I think you'll like her. Wait for us and you'll see.All my love, now and always,me—This post was made on dreamwidth.org, here. If you can, please comment there (it's simple with OpenID), because LJ's bugs make it gratuitously hard for me to answer your comments on LJ.

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Beloved Mischa	[May. 14th, 2016\|11:15 pm]Footpad
[Tags\|bereavement, dear mischa, farewell, loss, love, mischa]Dear Mischa,You knew that I loved you. Even so I wish I could have been there when you died, so I could have told you one last time.I told you afterwards. I told you when I hold your body, I told you so many times, over and over again. Clutching you, crying helplessly, unable to say anything but, "I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you..."Once upon a time I was afraid that I might not grieve for you when you died. Now I know that that doubt meant just one thing: I couldn't imagine a world without you. And here I am, living it, each day, day by day.A dozen times a day I reach for you in my mind, feeling for those places and routines and emotions where you used to be, and each time it's a shock that you're not there.I told you I'd see you again. That was just shorthand, of course. I don't know if that's how the universe works. But I know with every sinew in my body that wherever you have gone, I follow: to oblivion, to limbo, to Elysium. I could want no part of anywhere after this that didn't have a place for you.We had you cremated. We didn't want to bury you here, where we'll so soon be leaving; we couldn't bear the thought of leaving you alone among strangers. I would rather have dug a place for you, there to lay your body down in the good earth and cover you over forever, but instead we sent your silent still body to the flames. We'll take your ashes with us and when we're settled, when we have a place forever, we'll place you to rest there and plant a tree over you, our Mischa, our beloved and infinitely missed malamute dog.God knows how much I miss you.There you lay in that little room at the crematorium. The people there were kind: they covered the brutal surgical wound in your abdomen, they laid a rose beside you and placed a candle to either side of you. Your fur smelled both of you, that lovely clean aroma that I breathed so many times over the years and which never lost its charm; and it also smelled of death. You were in rigor mortis, your frame cold and hard in a way that conveyed your death even more concretely than your utter motionlessness did. Your eyes were dark and quiet, almost closed, still holding a gentle gleam. Your tongue-tip was peeking out in that goofy adorable way it so often did when you slept.So much of you was still there. The lay of your fur, the cant of your ears, the patterning on your muzzle: all so utterly familiar, all as beautiful to me as they ever were. Surely I knew these things better than I know my own body, so many times did I marvel over them in the nine years we were together. Yet these things were nothing compared to what was lost: your warmth, your supple vitality, your silliness and quirks, your gentleness of heart and your stubborn shining individuality. Even when you were alive I could not know all there was to know of you; how could I fix you in my memory now, now matter how hard I tried? Only one thing in the universe could hold a candle to you, my Mischa, and that was you in the fullness and warmth of the life that you've left behind you.I stroked your face, your cheek, your muzzle, and your eyes narrowed as they had when I stroked you while you drowsed. I kissed your snout as I had so many thousand times. I told you I loved you. I told you I'd never forget you. I told you thank you, thank you, thank you for the joy and the privilege of being your human. I told you you were a good dog. I told you you were my dog, I told you I loved you, and I cried and cried and cried and cried and cried.Then I rose from that place, and turned and looked back at you lying there so still. It was too soon to leave you. It will always be too soon.You were my dog, and I loved you more than I know how to say. Be at rest now. I love you and I always will.—This post was made on dreamwidth.org, here. If you can, please comment there (it's simple with OpenID), because LJ's bugs make it gratuitously hard for me to answer your comments on LJ.
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Beloved Mischa

[May. 14th, 2016|11:15 pm]Footpad

[**Tags**|bereavement, dear mischa, farewell, loss, love, mischa]Dear Mischa,You knew that I loved you. Even so I wish I could have been there when you died, so I could have told you one last time.I told you afterwards. I told you when I hold your body, I told you so many times, over and over again. Clutching you, crying helplessly, unable to say anything but, "I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you..."Once upon a time I was afraid that I might not grieve for you when you died. Now I know that that doubt meant just one thing: I couldn't imagine a world without you. And here I am, living it, each day, day by day.A dozen times a day I reach for you in my mind, feeling for those places and routines and emotions where you used to be, and each time it's a shock that you're not there.I told you I'd see you again. That was just shorthand, of course. I don't know if that's how the universe works. But I know with every sinew in my body that wherever you have gone, I follow: to oblivion, to limbo, to Elysium. I could want no part of anywhere after this that didn't have a place for you.We had you cremated. We didn't want to bury you here, where we'll so soon be leaving; we couldn't bear the thought of leaving you alone among strangers. I would rather have dug a place for you, there to lay your body down in the good earth and cover you over forever, but instead we sent your silent still body to the flames. We'll take your ashes with us and when we're settled, when we have a place forever, we'll place you to rest there and plant a tree over you, our Mischa, our beloved and infinitely missed malamute dog.God knows how much I miss you.There you lay in that little room at the crematorium. The people there were kind: they covered the brutal surgical wound in your abdomen, they laid a rose beside you and placed a candle to either side of you. Your fur smelled both of you, that lovely clean aroma that I breathed so many times over the years and which never lost its charm; and it also smelled of death. You were in rigor mortis, your frame cold and hard in a way that conveyed your death even more concretely than your utter motionlessness did. Your eyes were dark and quiet, almost closed, still holding a gentle gleam. Your tongue-tip was peeking out in that goofy adorable way it so often did when you slept.So much of you was still there. The lay of your fur, the cant of your ears, the patterning on your muzzle: all so utterly familiar, all as beautiful to me as they ever were. Surely I knew these things better than I know my own body, so many times did I marvel over them in the nine years we were together. Yet these things were nothing compared to what was lost: your warmth, your supple vitality, your silliness and quirks, your gentleness of heart and your stubborn shining individuality. Even when you were alive I could not know all there was to know of you; how could I fix you in my memory now, now matter how hard I tried? Only one thing in the universe could hold a candle to you, my Mischa, and that was you in the fullness and warmth of the life that you've left behind you.I stroked your face, your cheek, your muzzle, and your eyes narrowed as they had when I stroked you while you drowsed. I kissed your snout as I had so many thousand times. I told you I loved you. I told you I'd never forget you. I told you thank you, thank you, thank you for the joy and the privilege of being your human. I told you you were a good dog. I told you you were my dog, I told you I loved you, and I cried and cried and cried and cried and cried.Then I rose from that place, and turned and looked back at you lying there so still. It was too soon to leave you. It will always be too soon.You were my dog, and I loved you more than I know how to say. Be at rest now. I love you and I always will.—This post was made on dreamwidth.org, here. If you can, please comment there (it's simple with OpenID), because LJ's bugs make it gratuitously hard for me to answer your comments on LJ.

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As time goes by	[Oct. 26th, 2013\|11:58 pm]Footpad
[Tags\|dear mischa, mischa, the days of our lives, time] [Current Music	Brenda Lee, _Always on my Mind_] [Current Mood	gentle]Dear Mischa,You know that I love you. Today is a day when we remember that I've loved you for many years.Today is your ninth birthday. You are a dog and, nine years ago today, you slipped, no doubt with an appropriately squishy sound, from the rearward environs of another dog. I wish I could have been there. I wish I could have watched you be licked from your caul, and make your first epic tiny squirming journey to the nearest teat to begin growing into the big strong dog you are today. I wish I could have been there to see your eyes open, to watch you grow, to play your first tug-of-war games. I wish...No point in wishing. When you came to us, you were grown, and I like to think you came to a better place. Your previous people unquestionably loved you, but not wisely. You were out of condition, wormy, smelly, weak-muscled, and traumatised and scarred by your treatment by too many other dogs confined in too small a space. Over the following months we endured your wrenching homesickness for that place. You cried and cried for a solid week, you once tried to throw yourself out of a second-storey window, and it was months before you once wagged your tail. But then you got clean, and muscled up with regular exercise, and learned to be happy in your new home, and I think it's fair to say that since then you've never looked back.Now you're nine years old and, very gradually, your age is starting to catch up with you. Your back pains you sometimes; we take you on shorter walks because you're liable to hobble a little after long ones. We've even started buying you "senior" dog food, since your appetite isn't what it was. But you're just as lovely and sweet as the day you came to us, and today we lay on the lawn with my arm around you, and I buried my nose in your fur and breathed your scent and felt that everything was dreamily okay.Mischa, our beloved dog: you may not recognise anything special in a birthday, but, to your akeela and I, it's a time to recall and celebrate what a joy and a blessing it is to share our lives together.Many happy returns, because we love you.Love,us.
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Dog pain	[Jul. 6th, 2013\|01:39 pm]Footpad
[Tags\|backache, dear mischa, helplessness, mischa, pain, vet] [Current Mood	grieved]Dear Mischa,You know that I love you. And now you're in pain, and it's awful for us to behold.On Wednesday afternoon while I was at work in Zürich, I got a call from an audibly distressed akeela, saying that you were in trouble, lying on the floor yelping and unable to rise, and Aki was taking you to the animal hospital in Aachen. My colleagues—my wonderful colleagues—told me that I should get back to Germany to be with you, but before I could get on the train Aki came back with more news: the crisis had passed, the vet had declared that you were not suffering from any life-threatening acute illness, and I could stay at work until the end of the week.But then twice last night, and then again this morning, you've suddenly given outbursts of piteous, agonised yelps and cries. I've never heard you make such a heartbreaking sound. And there's nothing we can do to help you.I believe I know what you're feeling: the signs are identical, in every respect, to the crippling back pain I suffered for some days earlier in the year. I feel I recognise your slowness and geriatric stiffness of gait, your depression and reluctance to move, and those awful, unpredictable, racking outbursts of pain.We've got you on a mixture of drugs. Metamizole for the acute pain, anti-inflammatories to try to keep the symptoms down, vitamin supplements just in case. Very gentle walks and a minimum of vigorous movement. And tomorrow we should be able to get you to that hospital for—ah, hahah—a CAT scan.I love you. I wish there were some way to make that pain go away. I'd take it upon myself if I could. But there's nothing we can offer you but painkillers and gentleness, and of course love.May they be enough.Love,me.
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Dog pain

[Jul. 6th, 2013|01:39 pm]Footpad

[Tags**|backache, dear mischa, helplessness, mischa, pain, vet] [Current Mood**

grieved]Dear Mischa,You know that I love you. And now you're in pain, and it's awful for us to behold.On Wednesday afternoon while I was at work in Zürich, I got a call from an audibly distressed

akeela, saying that you were in trouble, lying on the floor yelping and unable to rise, and Aki was taking you to the animal hospital in Aachen. My colleagues—my wonderful colleagues—told me that I should get back to Germany to be with you, but before I could get on the train Aki came back with more news: the crisis had passed, the vet had declared that you were not suffering from any life-threatening acute illness, and I could stay at work until the end of the week.But then twice last night, and then again this morning, you've suddenly given outbursts of piteous, agonised yelps and cries. I've never heard you make such a heartbreaking sound. And there's nothing we can do to help you.I believe I know what you're feeling: the signs are identical, in every respect, to the crippling back pain I suffered for some days earlier in the year. I feel I recognise your slowness and geriatric stiffness of gait, your depression and reluctance to move, and those awful, unpredictable, racking outbursts of pain.We've got you on a mixture of drugs. Metamizole for the acute pain, anti-inflammatories to try to keep the symptoms down, vitamin supplements just in case. Very gentle walks and a minimum of vigorous movement. And tomorrow we should be able to get you to that hospital for—ah, hahah—a CAT scan.I love you. I wish there were some way to make that pain go away. I'd take it upon myself if I could. But there's nothing we can offer you but painkillers and gentleness, and of course love.May they be enough.Love,me.

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Dear Mischa.	[Jun. 28th, 2013\|12:23 am]Footpad
[Tags\|beauty, dear mischa, love, mischa] [Current Mood	wistful]Dear Mischa,You know that I love you.Usually when I write that, it's followed by an ghostly evanescent but, after which I go on to describe some strange facet of your behaviour and then digress into a philosophical rumination on your malamute-nature and its ambiguous, tenuous relationship with consensus reality.Tonight I dispense with that. All I have to say to you tonight is that I love you.On Sunday I looked at you as you were snoozing on the cool stones of the terrace. You were lying on your side with your eyes closed and your tail laid down behind you. Your tail's bushy but rather short, you know; did I even mention that before? It's the shedding season: you were in need of a grooming and your coat was looking a bit tufty and unkempt. Since you were lying down, the tuck-up of your belly wasn't particularly in evidence and you had a cylindrical look to you, like the body profile of a slightly overweight Labrador.I tend to think of you, and favour the pictures that portray you, as a lean and lithe and elegant beast, full of majesty and grace, a creature above and removed from the grubby yapping masses of the common Unterhundsch. But in that moment I looked at you and thought, "Dozy, rotund, scruffy... Why, you look just like an ordinary dog. And... I still find you beautiful, and I still love you."I love you for a hundred reasons. Among them, I love you because you're beautiful. But if you weren't beautiful, I'd still love you exactly as much as I do, and that's because I'll always find you beautiful anyway.Love,me.
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Dear Mischa.

[Jun. 28th, 2013|12:23 am]Footpad

[Tags**|beauty, dear mischa, love, mischa] [Current Mood**

wistful]Dear Mischa,You know that I love you.Usually when I write that, it's followed by an ghostly evanescent but, after which I go on to describe some strange facet of your behaviour and then digress into a philosophical rumination on your malamute-nature and its ambiguous, tenuous relationship with consensus reality.Tonight I dispense with that. All I have to say to you tonight is that I love you.On Sunday I looked at you as you were snoozing on the cool stones of the terrace. You were lying on your side with your eyes closed and your tail laid down behind you. Your tail's bushy but rather short, you know; did I even mention that before? It's the shedding season: you were in need of a grooming and your coat was looking a bit tufty and unkempt. Since you were lying down, the tuck-up of your belly wasn't particularly in evidence and you had a cylindrical look to you, like the body profile of a slightly overweight Labrador.I tend to think of you, and favour the pictures that portray you, as a lean and lithe and elegant beast, full of majesty and grace, a creature above and removed from the grubby yapping masses of the common Unterhundsch. But in that moment I looked at you and thought, "Dozy, rotund, scruffy... Why, you look just like an ordinary dog. And... I still find you beautiful, and I still love you."I love you for a hundred reasons. Among them, I love you because you're beautiful. But if you weren't beautiful, I'd still love you exactly as much as I do, and that's because I'll always find you beautiful anyway.Love,me.

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The capacity for love	[Mar. 31st, 2013\|12:41 am]Footpad
[Tags\|dear mischa, dog, love, mischa, snuggles] [Current Mood	affectionate]Dear Mischa,You know that I love you. Come to think of it, quite a lot of people love you, which is probably why you, just now, you were lying on the plush living-room carpet with people all around you petting and stroking and massaging and grooming you, while you sprawled out with several hands on your body. But presently, without much in the way of prior warning, you scrambled to your feet and padded over to disappear under the table that shelters your dog-bed. That's defined as your private space, where humans aren't allowed to pester you, so going there was a pretty good statement that you'd had enough petting and didn't want any more.The way we see it, you have a finite capacity for affection. We call it your Kraultank or your _Liebestank_—a notional container that periodically needs refuelling with love, but which has clearly-defined limits. When those limits are reached, then it's time for you to reassert your primal malamute Würde.In a way, it would be nice if you were like a Golden Retriever: a dog with an absolute, unquestioning, boundless capacity for affection, which we humans could indulge at our will. But you're not. You have your own agenda, your own self-possession, your own needs and your own space. You both accept and give affection on your own terms. You are our dog, but in a fundamental sense you are your own person, and I find that a wonderful and dignified thing.Much love,me.
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The capacity for love

[Mar. 31st, 2013|12:41 am]Footpad

[Tags**|dear mischa, dog, love, mischa, snuggles] [Current Mood**

affectionate]Dear Mischa,You know that I love you. Come to think of it, quite a lot of people love you, which is probably why you, just now, you were lying on the plush living-room carpet with people all around you petting and stroking and massaging and grooming you, while you sprawled out with several hands on your body. But presently, without much in the way of prior warning, you scrambled to your feet and padded over to disappear under the table that shelters your dog-bed. That's defined as your private space, where humans aren't allowed to pester you, so going there was a pretty good statement that you'd had enough petting and didn't want any more.The way we see it, you have a finite capacity for affection. We call it your Kraultank or your _Liebestank_—a notional container that periodically needs refuelling with love, but which has clearly-defined limits. When those limits are reached, then it's time for you to reassert your primal malamute Würde.In a way, it would be nice if you were like a Golden Retriever: a dog with an absolute, unquestioning, boundless capacity for affection, which we humans could indulge at our will. But you're not. You have your own agenda, your own self-possession, your own needs and your own space. You both accept and give affection on your own terms. You are our dog, but in a fundamental sense you are your own person, and I find that a wonderful and dignified thing.Much love,me.

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The music of love in dog flat minor	[Feb. 14th, 2013\|10:02 am]Footpad
[Tags\|dear mischa, malamute noises, mischa, valentine's day] [Current Mood	perky]Dear Mischa,You know that I love you, and today is a special day when humans alternately charm and infuriate one another with mawkish protestations of undying affection, so I thought I'd discuss the prospects with you.Will you be my Valentine? No, of course not, it's a daft idea. For one thing, Valentine's Day is at least peripherally associated with fucking, and we don't fuck. (I'm unable to think of any logical reason why not—you're clearly the perfect lover, and our liaison would scorch the pages of mammalian sexual history—but, you know, we just ended up Platonic, or at least snuggle-and-walks-and-bacon-treat-oriented. Funny how things go.) So, tempting as it is, I'm not going to ask you to be my Valentine.I was thinking of asking you to be my 'squeeze', which seems to carry the right connotations of physical affection and intimacy and profound mutual comfort. But that also seems to be a sexual-pairing thing, and besides, when I squeeze you, you tend just to make odd breathy harmonic noises in peculiar minor keys. Also, sexually or not, I'll admit that I do occasionally finger your buttons (just too fuzzy and irresistible). So it's obvious really.Mischa, I love you. Please be my accordion.Love,me.
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The music of love in dog flat minor

[Feb. 14th, 2013|10:02 am]Footpad

[Tags**|dear mischa, malamute noises, mischa, valentine's day] [Current Mood**

perky]Dear Mischa,You know that I love you, and today is a special day when humans alternately charm and infuriate one another with mawkish protestations of undying affection, so I thought I'd discuss the prospects with you.Will you be my Valentine? No, of course not, it's a daft idea. For one thing, Valentine's Day is at least peripherally associated with fucking, and we don't fuck. (I'm unable to think of any logical reason why not—you're clearly the perfect lover, and our liaison would scorch the pages of mammalian sexual history—but, you know, we just ended up Platonic, or at least snuggle-and-walks-and-bacon-treat-oriented. Funny how things go.) So, tempting as it is, I'm not going to ask you to be my Valentine.I was thinking of asking you to be my 'squeeze', which seems to carry the right connotations of physical affection and intimacy and profound mutual comfort. But that also seems to be a sexual-pairing thing, and besides, when I squeeze you, you tend just to make odd breathy harmonic noises in peculiar minor keys. Also, sexually or not, I'll admit that I do occasionally finger your buttons (just too fuzzy and irresistible). So it's obvious really.Mischa, I love you. Please be my accordion.Love,me.

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Your life, my life, dog's life	[Jan. 4th, 2013\|06:40 pm]Footpad
[Tags\|dear mischa, love, mischa, war] [Current Mood	tenderness for a loved one]Dear Mischa,You know that I love you. The human-dog bond is its own very special thing (even if I am, just perhaps, very slightly more canine than the average human), but there are aspects of our relationship which parallel various human-to-human relationships. I take pleasure your quiet company as I would that of a close friend of many years; I cuddle with you and kiss you on the ears and face much as I might a lover. Finally, I care for your well-being as if you were a child.And you need me to. Though you may be splendid in your predatory instincts, you wouldn't last a day in this modern environment with its trains and cars and dog-proof doors. Sometimes I think of how you might fare if you had to fare for yourself alone, and the thought brings me a chill of horror. If our house burned down, I wouldn't be more than mightily annoyed, but if it burned down with you in it then I'd be tortured by the thought of your last moments. If pandemic flu strikes, then I can take my precautions and my chances, but I blench at the prospect of you left alone in an empty house with no Humans to care for you.I was recently listening to an episode of the beautiful radio show, This American Life, which described the fate of some of the tens of thousands of American household pets that were volunteered by their owners to serve the US Army in the Pacific in World War Two. The favoured breeds included (German) Shepherds, Doberpeople, Huskies and... and Malamutes, and the mention of your breed gave me a sudden pang of realisation that you could have been sent to war—you, my lovely, gentle, peaceful, equable sled-dog, with no more experience of violence than beating up that vile little Labrador who lives down the road. Then the narrator described finding photographs of dogs who'd been trained to wear explosive backpacks and run into enemy bunkers...I console myself with the thought that you'd make a simply appalling kamikaze dog. Your food drive isn't strong enough, your ambling desultory gait would be too easy for people to shoot at, and you'd probably decide you simply weren't interested in going into that smelly little hovel full of things going bang. You're also so handsome and sweet that not even an Army bureaucrat could condone blowing you up.No, probably what would have happened, is, you'd have been sent to Alaska to pull sleds, your handlers would have fallen as much in love with you as I am, you'd have discovered the joys of doing what you were bred for, and you'd hear the Call of the Wild, find your John Thornton, and accompany him to a placid retirement in the wilds.But here we are, in the next millennium, on the outskirts of a small town in Germany. You're eight years old now, a strong healthy happy dog in his serene middle years. I know you can't live forever, or even for especially long. I'm used to that idea. But I really—with all my heart—I want you to live pleasurably, to age contentedly, and to die in peace at what, for you, will be a ripe count of years.I can't promise you that for certain. For all we know, there's an asteroid out there with our ecosystem written on it. There may be upheavals, there may be economic collapse, there may be chaos and terror and starvation. It's entirely conceivable that there'll come a time when there's no food for you, or we can't afford your medical care. But one way or another, through trial or tribulation, I trust we can arrange things so that, in years to come, we can look back and say: yours was anything but a dog's life.Love,me.
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Your life, my life, dog's life

[Jan. 4th, 2013|06:40 pm]Footpad

[Tags**|dear mischa, love, mischa, war] [Current Mood**

tenderness for a loved one]Dear Mischa,You know that I love you. The human-dog bond is its own very special thing (even if I am, just perhaps, very slightly more canine than the average human), but there are aspects of our relationship which parallel various human-to-human relationships. I take pleasure your quiet company as I would that of a close friend of many years; I cuddle with you and kiss you on the ears and face much as I might a lover. Finally, I care for your well-being as if you were a child.And you need me to. Though you may be splendid in your predatory instincts, you wouldn't last a day in this modern environment with its trains and cars and dog-proof doors. Sometimes I think of how you might fare if you had to fare for yourself alone, and the thought brings me a chill of horror. If our house burned down, I wouldn't be more than mightily annoyed, but if it burned down with you in it then I'd be tortured by the thought of your last moments. If pandemic flu strikes, then I can take my precautions and my chances, but I blench at the prospect of you left alone in an empty house with no Humans to care for you.I was recently listening to an episode of the beautiful radio show, This American Life, which described the fate of some of the tens of thousands of American household pets that were volunteered by their owners to serve the US Army in the Pacific in World War Two. The favoured breeds included (German) Shepherds, Doberpeople, Huskies and... and Malamutes, and the mention of your breed gave me a sudden pang of realisation that you could have been sent to war—you, my lovely, gentle, peaceful, equable sled-dog, with no more experience of violence than beating up that vile little Labrador who lives down the road. Then the narrator described finding photographs of dogs who'd been trained to wear explosive backpacks and run into enemy bunkers...I console myself with the thought that you'd make a simply appalling kamikaze dog. Your food drive isn't strong enough, your ambling desultory gait would be too easy for people to shoot at, and you'd probably decide you simply weren't interested in going into that smelly little hovel full of things going bang. You're also so handsome and sweet that not even an Army bureaucrat could condone blowing you up.No, probably what would have happened, is, you'd have been sent to Alaska to pull sleds, your handlers would have fallen as much in love with you as I am, you'd have discovered the joys of doing what you were bred for, and you'd hear the Call of the Wild, find your John Thornton, and accompany him to a placid retirement in the wilds.But here we are, in the next millennium, on the outskirts of a small town in Germany. You're eight years old now, a strong healthy happy dog in his serene middle years. I know you can't live forever, or even for especially long. I'm used to that idea. But I really—with all my heart—I want you to live pleasurably, to age contentedly, and to die in peace at what, for you, will be a ripe count of years.I can't promise you that for certain. For all we know, there's an asteroid out there with our ecosystem written on it. There may be upheavals, there may be economic collapse, there may be chaos and terror and starvation. It's entirely conceivable that there'll come a time when there's no food for you, or we can't afford your medical care. But one way or another, through trial or tribulation, I trust we can arrange things so that, in years to come, we can look back and say: yours was anything but a dog's life.Love,me.

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Congruence	[Dec. 25th, 2012\|01:21 pm]Footpad
[Tags\|dear mischa, evolutionary biology, mischa, rumination] [Current Mood	gentle]Dear Mischa,You know that I love you. That love is something best taken at face value: it just is, and that's enough.Sometimes, though, I wonder why I love you. I am (nominally) a human; you are a dog, and a fairly primitive breed of dog at that. How can two so very different species have evolved to live in such close communion, and with such a strong and mutually satisfying emotional bond?Yes, yesyesyes, there are any number of theories about how your wolf ancestors came to forage at my human ancestors' detritus, and your greatgreatgreat_n_ grandparent and my great_n_ grandparent ended up becoming hunting partners, and from eventually we ended up selectively breeding you and, in doing so, evolved ourselves in small ways to be more compatible with you... but still, I find myself marvelling.When we're cuddling on the carpet, though, with my arm around you and my nose in the fur on the back of your neck, that marvel just becomes part of the love that is. Dun't really matter so much. I just love you.Love,me.
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Congruence

[Dec. 25th, 2012|01:21 pm]Footpad

[Tags**|dear mischa, evolutionary biology, mischa, rumination] [Current Mood**

gentle]Dear Mischa,You know that I love you. That love is something best taken at face value: it just is, and that's enough.Sometimes, though, I wonder why I love you. I am (nominally) a human; you are a dog, and a fairly primitive breed of dog at that. How can two so very different species have evolved to live in such close communion, and with such a strong and mutually satisfying emotional bond?Yes, yesyesyes, there are any number of theories about how your wolf ancestors came to forage at my human ancestors' detritus, and your greatgreatgreat_n_ grandparent and my great_n_ grandparent ended up becoming hunting partners, and from eventually we ended up selectively breeding you and, in doing so, evolved ourselves in small ways to be more compatible with you... but still, I find myself marvelling.When we're cuddling on the carpet, though, with my arm around you and my nose in the fur on the back of your neck, that marvel just becomes part of the love that is. Dun't really matter so much. I just love you.Love,me.

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