Tag: Anne Schroeder

Marbles, Part Three

Concluding the wonderful story written by Anne Schroeder.

Part One of MY SEASON FOR MARBLES was posted last Monday.

Part Two was yesterday and finished, thus:

Buck’s tendency to work the neighborhood was his ultimate undoing. Eventually the druggie roommate of a neighbor poisoned him for repeated raids on his dog’s feeding dish. By then he was scarred, limping from a difference of opinion with a moving car, had his ear chewed from a fight. He was a seasoned scrapper with a heart of gold. Of all the dogs we owned, he lived life on his own terms.

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MY SEASON FOR MARBLES

Part Three

One day my son and his dad brought home a new pup–a nine-week old, female Boxer that we named Marbles for her brindle coloring.  She had a perfect circle of white around one eye and an ear that perked up when she was surprised.  Steve wanted to name her Stymie.

Something I never expected happened. I experienced a resurgence of mother love. I found myself sitting in the sunshine, playing toss-the-stick. I held Marbles while I watched TV.  I loved the feel of her sleek hair, the way she formed a question in her eyes. I was patient with her, like I am with a child. I gave her credit for her embarrassment when she piddled on the kitchen tile when we were gone too many hours. I watched her dig in the creek bank and was sure she would never try digging in the yard.  She never did. She was surprisingly mellow for a Boxer. She never barked, never whined, never jumped on furniture or tore up pillows when we were gone.

Marbles accompanied us to the mailbox, to the creek, to the canyons. The flurry of a quail made her stop and listen, one ear cocked. Everything was a first for her, and our walks took the meandering pace of a walk with an eighteen-month-old. She was curious about dandelions. On our walks I rejoiced for the way she refocused my appreciation of life.

Marbles was only with us for six years before she died of a malignant tumor that Boxers are infamous for having. I helped Steve bury her on a ridge above our house, in the canyon she loved to walk.

*****

I ask myself what changed with Marbles? Was it me, or something broader? I think it’s a question of timing. For some reason, men bring home puppies while women are busy with babies. Maybe it’s an attempt to capture the bond that mother and baby share. Maybe the man feels left out.  Whatever the reason, a puppy has to be raised, trained, groomed and cleaned up after.  So does a child.  For most women, a puppy is like having twins, or another pregnancy too soon after the first.

Getting labeled as a dog hater is a double-edged sword. Life becomes an “oops, don’t let Mom find out” thing that undermines everyone. When something happens, warnings about pet responsibility come out sounding like a “gottcha.” I grew up with unquestioned values that a dog was a farm animal with responsibilities. A dog earned its keep in the same way a child did. No one questioned that a child could gather eggs, but, suddenly I’m a meany for suggesting that a dog be useful? I’m too old and too stubborn to make the change, and I find myself filled with resentment that society requires it of me.

But I learned to keep my head low and duck the bullets. I don’t offer my opinion around friends, every one of whom seems to have at least one dog. One friend has fourteen dogs and cats. We meet at cafes or on the porch. They try to forgive me my stance on buying a purebred puppy as opposed to adopting from the shelter. We have agreed to disagree, like conflicting religious views.  But I know I’m in the minority. In my defense I should mention that cats crawl onto my lap. I like to pet them. They like me. But that doesn’t get me any dog points.

So now it’s time to look for a new puppy. Steve’s getting antsy, I can read the signs. He’s happier with a dog at his side and I like him to be happy. I try not to think about the stress I feel every time we check out a new puppy litter—three in the past two months. I try not to feel relief when we leave without making a selection. He’s not in a hurry; he wants a love connection, and he’ll know her when he sees her.

At long last I am trying to discard my self-image of a dog meany. I even question the term “pet owner.” Who can own another creature’s heart? This time around I am going to earn a dog’s devotion. Like a first-time mother, self-conscious and unskilled, I secretly practiced with Marbles, and she seemed to think I did all right. This time we will all share in the job of puppy parenthood. It’s not fair for me to have to clean dog snot off the French doors while someone else is tossing the Frisbee. But I’ll still take my walks alone. I tried it both ways, and I realized that my quiet time was not negotiable—mornings belonged to me. In the evenings, I share my walk with the family—and that includes the dog.

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What a fabulous ending to a really charming story!

unnamedI have no doubt that many of you would like more information about Anne.

So do drop into Anne Schroeder’s Author Blog or visit her website here.

Marbles, Part Two

Continuing the wonderful story written by Anne Schroeder.

Part One of MY SEASON FOR MARBLES was posted last Monday.

It ended, “Eventually, dogs and fear became synonymous.”

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MY SEASON FOR MARBLES

Part Two

My husband’s experiences were quite the opposite. He sees dogs as best friends, deserving of carpet privileges and store-bought dog food. He communicates on a level that I can’t begin to fathom. He is a petter of strays while I hunker behind him, phobic and repelled.

The first time he introduced me to his beloved Pug, Rastus, it greeted me with a doleful glare, lifted its leg and sent a yellow stream down my bare leg and into my new penny loafers. I was holding Steve’s hand that day and Rastus knew he was about to be replaced. I’m afraid I took it personally. Rastus was never my best friend—although I barely had a chance to know him. He died of a heart attack three months after we married—victim of an innocuous medical term that I am convinced meant a broken heart. For years I carried a secret suspicion that I had killed Rastus by diverting his master’s attention. For every morning and evening of Rastus’s life, Steve had walked him, tossed balls, showered him with attention and love.

Then we married and moved into a student duplex that didn’t allow pets, and Rastus stayed behind. Newlywed bliss was too great a temptation; like Puff the Magic Dragon, Jackie Paper came no more.

Steve’s inconsolable grief didn’t ease my conscience. We lived dog-less for the next five years. Coincidentally or not, this period was filled with more travel, adventure and spontaneity than the sum of the years that followed. Finally, we bought our first home and Steve began planning for another dog. Soon after I became pregnant we drove to a kennel to pick out a light-colored, female Golden Retriever puppy.

Saree arrived at the onset of my morning sickness. Through the winter she slept in a little wooden kennel box in the kitchen. Because Steve was working a nighttime shift that put him in bed at 3:00 a.m., it became my job to clean the dog mess, to feed and water and exercise her in the mornings before I got myself and my daughter off to school and work. The memory of those months remains: bracing myself for assorted puppy odors in the closed kitchen while munching on a saltine cracker. Some mornings the cracker wasn’t enough.

I will forever associate the smell of dog with nausea; aversion therapy gone haywire. Some women never eat bananas again after morning sickness. Some never touch liver or bacon—but I could live without these. For some reason, with me it’s not puppy smell, it’s grownup doggie body odor. Go figure!

It’s not like I’m a Dog Nazi. I babysit my kids’ dogs when they take vacations. I’m not an ogre—I try not to make dogs my “issue.” I even smile and buy dog toys to have on hand for visitors.

Saree was Steve’s dog, a replacement for Rastus, a buddy to keep him company during a hectic period of our lives when we worked crossover schedules and didn’t see much of each other. I raised our daughters, Steve raised Saree. Sometimes I wanted to scream at him for his priorities. If memory serves, sometimes I did.

Saree lived for fourteen years and accompanied us on three moves. As she became older she became prone to diabetic seizures. In the era before serious pet pharmaceuticals, doggie chiropractic and plastic surgery, the vet’s best advice was to add a bit of sugar in her drinking water. Our four-year-old son used to follow his daddy around and try to copy everything Daddy did. One evening, while his dad was at work he noticed Saree trembling. Half an hour later I found the empty sugar bag and Saree limp and trembling on the patio.

An emergency call to the vet, a bottle of Ipecac, frantic calls to Steve at work—all in vain. In the end, Saree waited for Steve to return from work to die with her head in his lap.

Steve mourned while I carried Saree’s body to the SPCA for cremation, provided comfort, assuaged our son’s guilt, cleaned remnants of an aging, house-bound dog from my home—and felt a secret elation at Steve’s decision not to replace Saree right away.

Buck came to us three months later, the victim of a friend’s divorce. The friend was moving from a ranch into an apartment and Buck would be miserable. Steve and he had become great friends because Steve drove by the ranch everyday and would stop and pet him. He claimed he was invested in Buck, but the truth was, he was head over heels in love—enough even to excuse Buck for being a male, after he had vowed never to have anything that peed on a tire. But fate had chosen them for each other.

Buck was a ten-month-old, a chewer of Olympic talent with a rare eye for beauty. My prized, white-wool throw rug was his first trophy. What he didn’t manage to chew up he destroyed with his thick, wagging tail. (To say he was a happy dog was to underestimate his enthusiasm.) My personality was not as playful. He was thrust on me while our house was listed for sale and I found myself picking up after a four-year-old and his canine equivalent. Every time the phone rang and a realtor wanted to bring clients by, I would go into meltdown.

I remember going to the movies about this time and glaring at the screen while my husband screamed with laughter. I sat through “Turner and Hootch” with arms folded, while my blood pressure threatened to blow out my eardrums. I didn’t know it was a comedy until I saw it on TV last year. Bad period in my life.

In Buck’s defense, either his chewing subsided as he matured or he had already destroyed everything I loved. But it was hard not to view him as a spoiler. I argued that he needed to be neutered, but Steve valued his spirit. He reminded me that it was his dog. He lived with us for ten years, uncomplaining, unfailingly happy to see us, matured by an unrequited love for the Golden Retriever who came into heat every six months in an unassailable enclosure up the road.

Buck’s tendency to work the neighborhood was his ultimate undoing. Eventually the druggie roommate of a neighbor poisoned him for repeated raids on his dog’s feeding dish. By then he was scarred, limping from a difference of opinion with a moving car, had his ear chewed from a fight. He was a seasoned scrapper with a heart of gold. Of all the dogs we owned, he lived life on his own terms.

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The third and final installment will be tomorrow.

Marbles, by Anne Schroeder

Introducing Anne Schroeder – a local Oregon author.

This week presents a number of interesting challenges.

The first is that while I am getting along reasonably well with the draft of my second book, Four Dogs On My Bed, I am still about 3,000 words (as of yesterday) behind where I wanted to be on November 7th. (There’s NaNoWriMo pressing in against me!)

The second challenge is that tomorrow is a special day. No, I’m not referring to the circus that has come to town, to everybody’s towns, but to my birthday. It is my birthday on the 8th and I’m trying hard to stay away from my computer.

The third and final challenge is that there are too many things going on for the balance of the week, even without me needing to keep my writing nose to the grindstone, for me to properly put together the blog posts otherwise required.

anne-croppedBut then along comes Anne Schroeder. I met Anne when I joined our local authors group, AIM, and, like all the other members of AIM, Anne was supportive and helpful towards me.

A week ago, Anne emailed me a short story that was perfect for all you dear readers.

That story is in three parts and I shall be continuing with Part Two and Part Three on Wednesday and Thursday. (I have something else for the 8th!)

Before the story, here is an introduction to Anne.

mariainesfrontAnne Schroeder writes memoir and historical fiction set in the West. She has won awards for her short stories published in print and on-line markets. She was 2015 President of Women Writing the West and lives with her husband and new Lab puppy in Southern Oregon where they explore old ruins and out-of-the-way places. Her new release, Maria Ines, is a novel about an Indian girl who grows up under Padre Junipero’s cross and endures life under the Spanish, Mexican and Yanqui conquest of California. http://www.anneschroederauthor.com

Here, then, is Part One of Anne’s tale.

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MY SEASON FOR MARBLES

I have a confession: Dogs and I have never gotten along. Well, okay, there was Happy, our black, floppy-eared Cocker Spaniel who died in front of me, under the wheel of my father’s truck when I was seven. After that, it seemed easier not to get attached.

On our sheep farm, dogs ate table scraps and slept under the tank house. We had a pair of Australian Shepherds, trained by Basque herders in their native language that guarded the flock at night against coyotes and neighbors pets. We weren’t allowed to distract the Aussies from their work.

My attitude regarding dogs could be described as cautious regard. I carry memories of being chased onto a John Deere tractor by a snarling stray. I have vivid memories of my uncle’s Doberman sinking its fangs into my calf because I was swinging hands with my cousin, a six-year-old like myself, as we walked up her driveway after school. I can still see that dog, loping toward us in slow-motion, slobber spraying off his jowls, his eyes keenly fixed on the enemy—which was me. All I could do was drop my little cousin’s hand, stand still, and hope that the dog would be merciful. No such luck.

I learned later that he was a watchdog, trained to protect his family. My aunt and uncle worked at a mental hospital and had received death threats from patients who escaped on a fairly regular basis.

Even when it was not my fault, I managed to annoy dogs. When I was seven my grandmother’s hound nipped me in the fleshy part of my palm as I dumped dinner into his bowl. My scream of pain was mostly indignant fury, but the memory scarred my soul. Another time a cousin’s cattle dog crawled out from under the porch where her new litter was sleeping. No bite this time; she just snarled with bared teeth until I hopped back on my bicycle and rode home. It was probably a bluff on her part, but I didn’t wait around to find out.

Eventually, dogs and fear became synonymous.

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Whoa! Where does it go from here? I do hope that you will return on Wednesday to find out! (That’s assuming that we all survive tomorrow’s circus!)