Rivenrock Gardens Cactus Blog… go to www.rivenrock.com for edible cactus

Tao 16
Empty the self completely; Embrace perfect peace.
Realize that all beings alike go through their processes of activity and life,
and then they return to the original source.
Returning to the source brings peacefulness and stillness.
This stillness is the flow of nature,
and signifies that the beings have lived their allotted span of life.
Accepting this brings
enlightenment and tranquility,
ignoring this brings confusion and sorrow

If one can accept this flow of nature; one can cherish all things.

 

 

Life is not fair…. one can be born into any amount of physical/mental infirmities, or have them thrust upon oneself in life. As humans we can recognize the issues, this will often lead one to lead a less-full life due to caution or mental anguish. But animals don’t seem to have the same concepts.  I’ve seen animals that had been grievously injured and recovered, and seemed to go about their life as well they can with their disability.

Four years ago, almost to the day, Vickie found a small chihuahua that seemed to be lost following  a man walking along the road in Nipomo near the highway. The man told Vickie the dog had been following people that came by, and had just started shadowing him.  The small dog was very young and appeared to be near starvation. Vickie picked her up and brought her home where we adopted her. We don’t know where she came from, or how long she had been walking around trying to find someone to feed her, but her ribs were showing, and she had a terrible case of worms and a heart murmur. The vet said she had the second-worse heart murmur he’d ever heard. When I listened through the stethoscope it sounded like a giant machine from a science fiction film. It was more of an echoing boom that settled to a murmur then came with a  resounding crash again. Even I with no medical training could tell (as you could when you held her) that her heart was always fragile. But she did not ‘think’ about her heart… when Vickie brought her home, she ran around the living room over and over, stopping on each high spot she could reach and looked about as if in rapture of having found a ‘home’.  For hours and hours this little bundle of energy ran around in an apparent rapture of happiness. It made my heart sing just seeing how happy she was. And as the coming weeks passed, her worms were conquered. She soon started filling out and we named her ‘Chica’… but the heart murmur never went away.

 

We already had two dogs…. one was our 7 year old Chihuahua Whitey, and the aged Chihuahua of unknown age named ‘Little Dude’ who’d been unable to be placed after nearly three years at a rescue shelter… she took to both of these dogs quite well, although they being older solitary neutered males did not ‘cotton to her’ too quickly. It could be her frenetic agility and activity upset these rather quirky older dogs also. And she eventually took to badgering old Little Dude, constantly teasing him by sliding up alongside him ‘presenting’ to the old fellow. She really made his life difficult as he could not sleep in the grassy sunny spot outside that he liked to lay in without her coming along to lay beside him and nip at him.

 

After we’d had her for a year or so, our son found some kittens in the bushes near his apartment in Oceano. Their mother had been killed, and all of the litter were dead except for two little kittens that were still alive although their bodies were cold to the touch, and they appeared nearly catatonic. He gave them to us, and Vickie brought them home placing them in a box on the floor of the car so the heater would blow warmth upon them for the drive home.  One of them quickly warmed and tried to move around, but the other was so dehydrated that his eyes had shrunk back into his head and were merely small shining objects behind the scruffy fur. We warmed them by holding them to our bodies under our shirts, and we fed them ‘kitten milk re-placer’ through a tiny bottle. But Vickie said we’d have to rub their bellies with a cloth so they would defecate, and it could then be wiped away… this is something the mother cat does. While we were feeding the kittens, Chica was watching intently. After seeing her curiosity we set the kittens at her feet and she immediately laid down, opening her belly to them as if offering to nurse. This was truly amazing to us, as we’d seen her as a harasser of cats and Little dude. The kittens immediately plowed into her soft short fur and the massive heat coming from her belly, and she licked their tummies and cleaned them as they defecated. This was a boon to us as we’d have much less work to do if this worked out. So for the next few months Chica the Chihuahua became the surrogate caretaker of the two orphaned kittens. She was a doting, and affectionate mother to them, and she became nicer to Little Dude and quickly lost the reputation of being ‘The Puppy From Hell’. And as they grew they would play together in the living room. Eventually the cats grew much larger than her, but still the games would continue, with Chica running speedily around the house, the cats in their cat-like ways would lay crouched  and hidden somewhere, and they’d pounce on her as she ran by. It was amusing, and gave us hours of fun watching their cute frolicking. It was strange to me that this little dog would seem to be fulfilled in life by raising some kittens, but indeed her whole attitude seemed to have changed. And it seemed an inspiration to me that with this heart murmur, she could still be so energetic, running and frolicking all about, taking walks with us, and she was so affectionate to Vickie and me.

 

But then, on Nov 18 2011 she got sick. She stopped eating food. We thought she’d get over it soon, because other than a cough, she had energy, and seemed the same happy dog as she’d been since the kittens changed her life. Then by Sunday we realized she should see the vet… she still had not eaten, and was breathing heavily… when we got to our vet appointment the vet seemed to me to think the case was grim, but if we wished to try, we could give a medicine that would dry her lungs so she could breath better, and an anti-biotic that might fight the infection that might be in her body. But it was no use, during Thanksgiving Day her conditioned worsened further, her little heart had given out, and it could no longer pump blood through her body well, it could no longer pick up oxygen from her lungs to power her. And the entire week without eating anything had taken its toll on her tiny body.

I sit here now, ad 4AM writing this, she is near me, and while she is still wagging her tail when she moves about from place to place, her body is cold to the touch, even her breath is cold on my cheeks. She’s laying now in her dog-bed, and I have a space heater facing her to give her more comfort.  Both of the cats have come up to her and laid with her for a time, and Whitey seems to understand as he has gone to her to sniff her, and he runs to me to comfort me.  We have an appointment at the vet’s office today that was scheduled earlier this week. It is to find the vet’s prognosis for her condition. I am going to call them as soon as they open, and ask to be allowed to come earlier, to take this little dog in, so she can be released from her pain and suffering. But I suspect she’ll not make it to opening time… but she’s been an amazing little girl, and she was trying so hard to live until now, the last half hour in which she has finally laid down, still recognizing us, but her breathing is now very shallow.. it is almost time…. as I wrote this, at 04:20 hrs she gasped her last.

 

So many animals have inspired me, the alligator-lizard with no front feet I found three spring-times in a row in our compost pile,  and the three-legged coyote we named ‘Tripod’ I used to see… but now, this little tiny bundle of energy that has sprung is going at the top of the list.

Life is odd and strange, and you never know what’s going to come of any action you take. There are plenty of things I can say I could have handled better in life, and in managing the illness this little dog succumbed to… but bringing her into our lives was a good thing, and she was an experience, a force that we’ll never forget, and we’ll always be grateful for the lessons of life that she taught us in these short four years.

 

Tao Chapter 50
Being born, we come into life, one day we must enter into death.
Out of ten people, three celebrate and are filled with life,
Three hasten their demise through excess,
And three pass through life without realizing it,
Why is this?
They try too hard to protect and preserve this life; thereby they never learn to live.
But it is said that one in ten knows how to preserve his life
by emptying himself to the world and the Way.
Such a one can go into the
wilds unmolested by wild beasts;
the tigers claws and rhinoceros horns will find no place to catch him.
And he may enter battle unarmored; sharp points will find no place to pierce him.
Why is this?
Because there is no place for death in them.

   I have no proof… other than something I ‘think’ I ‘saw’ once, something of a ‘near death experience’ I had once when someone else died…. but I saw ‘something’ that makes me think there really is something ‘beyond’ this life. In fact, it seems to me that passing is just the beginning… just the beginning.

    It’s said mankind has been living with their animals for some ten thousand years….    I’ve heard ‘civilisation began when people started hurling words instead of stones’….    Maybe also it can be said civilization started when someone picked up an orphaned baby animal and raised it up… finally figuring out how this could improve the lives of people… the dog was perhaps the first domesticated animal… the social needs of dogs is similar to humans.. so we naturally get along well as a family unit. The keen noses of dogs would alert of intruders.. etc. Dogs are a good animal to have on a homestead. We also like our cats as they eat the gophers that plague our cactus. Actually, I need to talk to our tax man and see if we can expense the cats on our taxes for the rodent control they do… maybe the dogs too since they bark at the deer and alert me to run them off if they try to get in our seven foot high fence.
  Nah.. better not try that. 

  Here’s a photo of our Chihuahua Chica and the two kittens she raised up.
   I imagine heaven is a bit like this… animals that would be naturally antagonistic brought together in love through the Grace of God.
Chica raised these two orphaned kitties for us… giving them the warmth they needed while we fed them kitten milk replacer from eyedroppers. It is so heartwarming and precious to see the way they’ll come in from their nocturnal hunts and lay down next to their momma the dog.  They chase each other around the house in their little play times. Dang… we’ve got it good here…. we were without a TV for years… but the animals always kept us entertained. Between the sheep that acted like goats (Barbados), the goats that looked like sheep (angoras), the domestic and wild Russian boars we’ve had…. rabbits, fowls… etc.

   Here’s Whitey and Little-Dude…. both are shelter-dog rescues. Both were abused in their lives…
   Trauma can do so much harm to a mind and spirit….
   Whitey was found by us before he was mature… after some six months with us he jumped onto my lap for the first time. We had Little-Dude for almost three years… in that time he only jumped up on me a few times in the last weeks before he died.  I always had the worry it would be when he’s old and sick before he loses the edge of fear that kept him from me.  Even then he was wary… eying me suspiciously when I stroked his fur.  No one knows the trauma he went through… he had broken ribs and a tail with several breaks in it. He would cling near to Vickie and stay between her and me as if to protect her… whenever I approached her he would get scared and bite me.. but he was so old.. his teeth worn down to little dull nubs.
   Little Dude had a little spot on the grasses near the garden in which he liked to sit in the sun… we’d laugh and call him ‘Viejo’ which means ‘old-man’…. he so reminded me of some of the southern villages in Europe… where you used to see the old men sitting on benches alongside their houses…. their dark clothes in many layers… a beret-type cap on their head… smoking smelly cigarettes… how the mind works, that a little old chihuahua can remind me of my childhood in Europe.
  Little Dude passed on about a month ago on April 13 … he’d come in from his little warm-spot in the sun, and collapsed by the refrigerator…. he went through some spasms for a time, shuddered and stretched, and stopped breathing.  We buried him at the little spot he liked to sit in the sun…. it was touching because both Whitie and Chica sat on that spot in the sun for the next few days, and would nap on the little blanket he always liked to lay on. Some folks say animals don’t realize death…. but I know they do. When you’re working slaughtering animal after animal as I’ve done in the past… you soon realize the first couple trust you… proceeding along the line willingly… until the smell of death starts to get to them.. then they start to realize something is amiss…. they start to protest and panic… yes, animals in slaughterhouses do get scared… and it makes a difference in the taste of the meat.
   Most cultures have a way of assuaging the guilt of the people when they kill an animal…. they pray that the animal uinderstands the need to take their life and eat them… they pray for forgiveness, and that the animal will understand…. we don’t have that in this modern time when you have others do the killing for you…. if you’re gonna eat animals… I think it is best to kill them yourself… it seems more honest somehow.

   As for Little Dude…. I wish we could have gotten into his mind to see what happened to him….
   At least we gave him a secure home, with good animal friends he could try to be close to. I think he had as good a time for that few years as he possibly could given the internal torment he had.

   R.I.P Little Dude… see you at the Rainbow Bridge one day.