These little signs of times gone by, suddenly gone by, serve as reminders of many things. They show that my sons are growing, succeeding, transforming into the wise, whacky and wonderful young men they were destined to be. They rudely point out the inexorable transition of mommy-hood from headline star to supporting role. But perhaps most jarring is the notion that the joyful, bounding, four-legged members of our crew now sitting beside me will be our last true family dogs.

Not that all dogs aren’t family dogs – they are, regardless of what constitutes a family. They share our existence, our thoughts, our food, our beds, our celebrations, our sorrows. But there is only a generation or two of dog who share our parenting with us, share in our children’s very foundations and beginnings.

There is a photo album in every parent’s mind (as at least this parent has only boxes of someday-to-be-organized pictures and digital files, but no real photo albums to peruse). In that album are images clear and blurry, crisp or vaguely formed of all the snapshots that make up the past years of Life with Kids. Onesies and stuffed bears, rocking chairs and holiday decorations, birthday parties and barbecues and quiet moments captured by chance. In all of those snapshots the family dog keeps vigil. There she sits, guardian of the memories, watching over the children, the beach blankets, the carelessly placed turkey sandwiches, forever in the fabric of all that has come before.

My first family dog was Emma, a white ball of energy and spirit. She was raised by a cat, Special Ed, who had his own way of doing things, and so Emma went through life as the world’s most earnest dog, trying to incorporate all that was dog with occasional cat things like sleeping on the back of the couch or windowsill. This never worked out well for Emma, whose slightly round, 35 pound body just didn’t stay on elevated, balance-y places very well, often resulting in a crashing fall or failed leap up toward counters or chairs. Yet she persevered, determined to get along and be with her family in every way, and this was never more clear than when the kids came along.

Emma was nine when I brought my sons home, two strangers to her fold, one nine months and one thirteen months old, just starting to crawl. While Special Ed looked on, interested but slightly dismayed at this turn of events, Emma took on the job of mother’s helper. Where the boys went she went. She walked beside the stroller, licking sticky hands poking out from the side, happy to share the neighborhood with her new companions. There she’d be in the playroom, lying in the middle of all the ringing, stacking, crashing, brightly colored plastic things, or perhaps precariously perched on the window seat with Special Ed surveying the scene, but never far from her charges if she could help it. She would wait patiently while these bipeds learned to stand and walk, using her back as a portable railing, clutching her fur as they took their first free steps. She’d walk slowly beside them, pausing as they thumped down onto diapered behinds until they’d pulled themselves up again and were ready for the next few tries. Mid-afternoon, Emma would come back downstairs with me, having tucked the boys in, and we’d curl together, perhaps taking our own nap, until one of us heard their waking noises. Then we’d rally, get them up and start all over again for the afternoon’s toddler madness.

As the boys became more independent, the dog would show them the backyard, all the hidden places where Good Stuff might be, and the three of them would emerge from a bush dirty and involved in whatever project that was underway. We might sit on the front porch, the boys scooting their wheeled things or, in one memory, sweeping the sidewalk industriously with their half-sized brooms as Emma, white tail curled over her back, dark eyes shining, mouth open in a smile, deftly stayed out of the way while still keeping all the players well back from the road.

Emma was thirteen when she died, the same year as the divorce, the same year that the boys started pre-K. Her kidneys had failed and she and I both knew, there in that exam room, that it was time to let her go. The vet asked if I wanted a few extra minutes alone with her but I declined. What more was there to say to my dog who had welcomed my children, loved them, helped care for them, seen me through a marriage and those first isolated, exhausted years of motherhood, often teaching me what to do by her patience and her willingness? All that remained was Thank You, holding the familiar, soft inner curve of her paw and stroking the favorite spot on her forehead as she left, and the ride home with an empty collar that still held her warmth and scent. These new roads ahead, full of change and uncertainty, would have to be without her.

As much as I’d understood Emma’s importance, I had not fully appreciated her contributions until those first few days with her gone. Suddenly, I found I had to clean up after meal time, after snack time, after every spilled drip of juice from a sippy cup. My children, it turns out, were not nearly as tidy, nor eating as much as I’d boasted. My remarkably clean floors had given no hint of just how much mac & cheese, broccoli, scrambled eggs, apple sauce, crackers and Cheerios the boys had been throwing overboard from their chairs and as they ambled through the house. Emma had taken care of it, just as she had taken care of me for all those years.

While it could be argued that I have very few real reasons to be depressed – good life, great kids, still working in a recession – I also have ample reasons to be depressed if you just look at it the right way.

I am old. 50 is old, and anyone who says it’s not is either older than me or in complete denial. Or both. Just because you’re in your early sixties, and 80 is really old, doesn’t make 50 “not old.” Snap out of it.

The fact that the spell checker wants me to write, “50 are old” brings up another point. I have gained so much weight in the last few years that I am now a plural to my computer. I had imagined spending my birthday being feted by admiring crowds, gaily swirling in my designer skirt as my champagne glass bubbled away. This dream was interrupted by the snoring of spouse and dogs, and so instead of fete-ing I schlepped downstairs to load and run the dishwasher, plough through work e-mail, pack school lunches and feel sorry for myself in my big, not-baggy-anymore sweats. It seemed at the time that I should get at least as many Weight Watchers “points” as I had years, but instead I miserably measured the milk in my coffee and raised my fist to the Gods, swearing revenge should I ever actually remember to take revenge. Things tend to slip through the cracks these days if I don’t write them down.

I blame all this “positive training” stuff for my sorry state.

In the old days of dog training, no one ever gained a pound nibbling on choke collars as they trained their dogs. A person could spend hours perfecting a straight heel or recall or retrieve, and not once find themselves with the sudden realization that they’d just consumed 1500 calories worth of metal link.

But the same people who faked the moon landing also conspired to bring positive training to the forefront just as my metabolism headed for early retirement. Had cookie-based methods been the vogue in the 1970s when I first started dog training I would have been prepared, perhaps warned by some lumpy, middle-aged mentor to beware the pitfalls of edible reinforcements, her telltale lack of osteoporosis a clear sign of her cheese-induced downfall.

Instead, I innocently made my way into the world of clicks and smiles, cheddar and tortellini, blind to the impending peril it implied.

“My, what good eye contact you have grandma!”

“Yes indeed. My secret is keeping the cheese up near or even in my mouth, bringing the dog’s eyes right to mine!” And grandma swallows yet another piece of full-fat dairy, completely unaware of what ominous morsel has just made its way down the hatch.

Now more than half way through my 50th year, the promised wisdom that comes with maturity has finally shown itself and I have realized that none of this is my fault. I don’t need to change what I’m doing, I need to blame someone.

I’ll start with Karen Pryor, without whose influence the storing of actually yummy food on one’s person would undoubtedly not have become so socially acceptable. Had she stuck to the damn dolphins I might well have been living in Europe right now, benignly sitting by some doting, elderly prince’s throne and looking fabulous in my black dress and pearls. My perfectly trained though slightly cowering Salukis would drape gracefully by my side, diamond encrusted choke chains hanging from their necks.

Ian Dunbar, the bastard, also deserves some blame. If not for his charisma and the popularity of his training methods and videos, no one would know to ask for the good stuff, and we’d all feel delightfully guilt-free as we shoved canine rumps to the floor, then offering a few measly pieces of dog chow, dug out of the pockets of our size 4 jeans. “Yes, yes!” we’d exclaim expertly, “this kibble shows how much we care without allowing the dog to be dominant by exercising free will.”

The list of those responsible goes on (see www.dogwise.com), and frankly The Machine, as I’m now seeing this movement to be, is more powerful than I’d ever imagined. I eye my dogs. I want them to know that I’m on to them, that I now understand the conspiracy at hand. They want me nibbling away, mindlessly sharing goodies with them and then rewarding again, unaware that I’ve already done so. They want me to be old and slow, both mentally and physically. Man’s best friend indeed.

And what about me? What is a trainer to do, slouching toward her 51st birthday, battling years and gravity and habit and brainless middle age? Will I learn? Can I change this wretched state? Is it possible to teach an old dog new tricks?

Well yes, of course, if you use the right cookies.

I say “flaw” because, when preparing large quantities of vegetables and meats, knife skills are key to things like speed of preparation, evenness of pieces, the effect of specific texture, flavor and balance in a dish, not to mention the absence of blood tingeing the flesh of the pale shoots and tubers lying on the cutting board.

My dogs, however, have a wholly different take on the situation. To them Nora is, finally, someone who knows how to cook around a dog. She does not rush thoughtlessly through the process of preparing foods. She studies and examines each ingredient and object, washing and inspecting it tantalizingly as the remaining droplets of water drip seductively down into the sink. She’s new here in the house, and so she leaves the fridge open longer than it usually stays open as she looks for what she needs, like a 50-cent peep show window stuck open for an extra minute. She leaves things on the edge of the counter, just peeking over and whispering, “wait ’til they look away!” as their stalks and leaves and butcher paper wrappings beckon. And most importantly, she drops things.

Don’t get me wrong, I drop things too. My usual level of rushed, distracted multi-tasking and crowded kitchen work surface (used for homework, message center, food prep and family loading dock) makes for frequent mayhem and gravitational inevitabilities, both edible and otherwise. This has caused my two dogs to learn very different things.

Betty, my wiser, calmer, older dog, has learned to lie down on the less busy side of the island and survey the situation before making any decisions. It is only after she’s checked that the fallen object is some kind of food and not a school form, now three months late and covered in coffee rings, that she’ll even consider leaving her position. Then she needs to be sure that the relevant human will allow canine clean up of the morsel, and most importantly, that it’s worth getting up for. A piece of citrus? Forget it. Melon? Are you kidding? Why bother? Cuke? Well, maybe if I can stretch my neck far enough I’ll go for it. Meat, cheese, apples, crackers? You bet, I’m there! And so the sequence is clear: see or hear object fall, look, assess, get up if and only if it’s worth it and Addie hasn’t gotten there first. No need to panic, there will always be more dropped things. Betty is a very sage and beatific creature, and she knows above all that more good things will always come her way.

Addie sees things differently. Addie’s personality is best described as a combination of Tweek, the over-caffeinated, jumpy, wide-eyed kid on South Park, and George of the Jungle, a well-intentioned, over-exuberant, crashing, hurling, awkwardly socializing, lovable butthead. You can tell when Addie’s in the kitchen because you suddenly notice you’re reaching farther and farther for the cutting board, look down and see cinnamon dots and big brown eyes staring up at you, somehow positioned between you and the counter without having been noticed. There is a reason, it turns out, for dogs’ heads to be wedge shaped.

Addie’s take on an object dropping from the counter is to assume it’s edible and likely to escape if she doesn’t get to it within one second. This has been confirmed by the cabinet bottoms, which have cut-outs into which perfectly good food has been known to roll. (It has also been confirmed that if the food does roll into them, it is impossible to chew all the way through the cabinet bottom without the humans in the room getting completely bent out of shape, though they will then reliably fish out the desired, now fur-encrusted object and toss it disgustedly toward a dog that happens to be waiting there, splinters barely showing between her teeth.)

Now, I have no issue with Nora’s newness to the ways of things bladed, and I enjoy our time together in the kitchen. I’m in no hurry, we’re under no restaurant deadline of 70 covers walking in the door in moments, and it’s fun to ponder and discuss ingredients in ways I haven’t really done since my days as a professional chef many years ago. Clearly fans of the new cooking ritual are my dogs, who lie quietly on the kitchen floor in unabashed hope and anticipation, spellbound by Nora’s every move.

“Yes!” they telepathically communicate to anyone on the room that might hear, “yes, pick up the bacon! Turkey, it’s really time to trim the turkey! I believe there are some carrots you’ve forgotten, rolled behind that olive oil on the counter. Shouldn’t you cut them up too? Have you thought about meatballs? I hear they’re … made out of meat. And that they roll…”

And so I’ve discovered that the benefits of knife skills are really just a matter of opinion. Let Tom Colicchio test the Top Chef contestants on their ability to quickly assemble their mis en places – that august judging panel lacks the understanding that dogs would bring. True gourmands lie on tile and wood, happily anticipating each morsel that might come their way, less interested in the provenance of the ingredients so much as the ability of said ingredient to fall.

Nora will be coming back tomorrow for some more cooking, talking and exploring of food. Skill is very different than artistry. If I could let them know, my dogs would undoubtedly sleep by the front door, waiting to welcome another virtuoso weekend performance piece of culinary promise and delights.

It’s a “good” cancer, Mast cell, and this can frequently be managed by removal of the lumps, and sometimes some additional chemo and/or radiation therapy. She has not yet been biopsied, and so we don’t know if it’s low or high grade, and much will be determined by the outcome of the labs. But it’s still cancer, nonetheless, and it still leaves a wide, dark threshold for us to cross.

Well, actually, for *me* to cross. Addie, my dog, is lying contentedly in the front hall, having just splashed and gulped her way through a big bowl of ice water on this hot summer day after a few pieces of cheese stick for a few minutes of training tricks.

I know a lot about Addie. I know that she loves to train, loves to walk, huge smile and tongue sticking out rakishly as she heels beside me. I know she likes finding metal scent articles but not leather ones, that she thinks toys are useless and cheese is fabulous. I know that she doesn’t like ring gates or sitting in a row right next to other dogs, but that she’ll happily tolerate training centers if it means she gets to play with me, running and dropping and staying and zooming up in a slightly crooked front, barely able to wait for me to tell her to finish so she can loop to the side, sit beside me and look up proudly, sure she’s done a good job.

l know Addie fancies herself an oft-thwarted huntress who, but for an annoyingly strict human, would easily catch her dinner each night. This was proven one afternoon when she actually caught a squirrel. Hunted it, chased it, shook it, sent it to squirrel Valhalla, and then bumped it with her nose a few times politely to see if it would please get up and join in the fun again. I did not tell her that the squirrel, a weak, tiny, almost hairless, clearly ailing thing that had been lying on the ground when Addie had first seen it, was anything but a mighty buffalo that only a skilled predator could have bagged. The euphoric, slightly glazed look of thrill and joy in her eyes said it all: “Man, I haven’t had that much fun since I caught the back end of a hawk who had landed in the yard to eat a snack.” The pissed off hawk had screeched down at her for quite some time that day, furious at its missing feathers now lying on the ground and protruding from my dog’s mouth. The G-rated nature channel, as seen through my kitchen window.

I know that above all Addie loves her humans, perhaps especially her now teenaged boys. We have never been able to convince her that she’s not one of them, and the frustrated “Wooo” she mutters when locked out of a room or kept from a party speaks volumes. How unfair! All is quickly forgiven, though, and so each morning she makes her Chewbacca noise of another excellent day greeted. She then runs into each boy’s room, doorknobs being no challenge for such a clever girl, jumps on their beds and makes sure they’re really up and getting ready for school. It’s her job, and she takes great delight in it.

I know that she has what might be a partial seizure disorder, and suffers from compulsive licking of her front legs and any surface between them when she’s lying down. I know this has cost me endless, completely worth it hours and dollars and sleepless nights trying to find a comfortable, good-enough way to live with this for both of us. I know she is extremely sensitive to drugs, does not respond to them normally or as expected, and is therefore very hard to medicate or anesthetize without great risk, which makes treatment for cancer a more daunting and dubious prospect. More, I know that it takes her three weeks or more to recover from every bout of anesthesia while her unusual and complicated brain sorts itself out. So she sees things and is afraid and ducks and cuddles for comfort, and barks and startles and hides in dark rooms as she slowly comes back to her level of understanding. And I know that every time this has happened we’ve lost a little piece of her that couldn’t make the return trip home with her from the vet’s.

And so I’m staring into a crystal ball, looking for clues, wondering and worrying about what will happen next. In my mind I see all that can go wrong, all that she’ll have to endure in the best and worst case scenarios. I see my dog, sick and sore and then, inevitably, slipping away, and all the decision I’ll have to make about when that will be. Maybe a few months, maybe a few years but inevitable nonetheless.

Addie sees none of this. As she sleeps she enjoys the feel of the cool tile on her side. If I move she lifts her head; could I be on my way to the kitchen? How about going out somewhere that dogs can come too? How boring if I come back with a glass of water, how hopeful if I’ve got a plate with something on it!

Tomorrow morning she’ll Baroo! her way into the day, greet the possibilities that lie ahead, help me in the kitchen by closing all the fridge and cabinet doors as I make breakfast, and stare expectantly at her leash, wondering if it makes more sense to wait for it or go back to bed for a while. She doesn’t think about possibilities beyond a dropped piece of toast, perhaps, or the chance of a good run, and if she had a crystal ball she’d see through it, to the other side, to the colorful prism that could be anything.

She has a lot left to teach me, this wonderful, complex and heartbreaking dog. She has taught me so much already in our life together. It is uniquely human to dread, and gloriously canine to live in the here and now. And so perhaps the most important lessons are yet to come as I try and learn, with Addie as my guide, how to look into a crystal ball and see the light that shines through.

Marjie

Several years ago I became interested in a breed of dog known as Greater Swiss Mountain Dogs. They are bred for pulling, carting and plowing, and I knew that a little extra effort would be needed to train loose leash walking. From the very first day I had them I worked on that slack leash, spending countless hours standing still, backing up, talking about whatever came to mind as I kept their attention despite the sideways looks of my neighbors and passing cats, dogs, skateboarders, trucks, overhead passenger jets and other city marvels. I took them to classes, got private training for us, practiced with friends’ dogs and took them everywhere I could to reinforce all that good loose leash action I was seeing.

Now, admittedly I had one small issue with the fact that my live-in, a very nice but relaxed man named Andy, really didn’t want “the girls,” Betty and Addie, to be stressed in any way, for instance by asking them not to pull. Or to go home when walking. Or even to walk in a certain direction. (In later years, I would discover how lucky I was to have chosen Swissies rather than, say, German Shepherds, as had I chosen the latter Andy would have gone out for his first walk and never come home.) At one point it became Andy’s job to walk the dogs each morning as I was overwhelmed by parenting duties (my sole domain in our household) and he was willing.

Over time, Andy came to really treasure his walks with the girls, spending long, wandering hours out, frequently sitting under a tree until Betty had decided it was appropriate to move on. It worked out pretty well for all of them as Andy would get his time with his beloved girls, Betty could wander where she would, and Addie got to practice her snarking-jumping-barking-at-other-dogs behavior uninterrupted by a pesky mom.

Anyway, I know I’ve wandered off topic a bit, but here’s the story. Family politics being what they are, I knew that I had to pick battles carefully and frequently in order to mitigate and support those things needing attention. Poor behavior notwithstanding, the one thing I couldn’t tolerate was both dogs pulling at once, as I knew that someday somebody was going to be pulled into an icy winter street and get clocked. So I begged and pleaded and cajoled and talked and threatened, and over time Andy came to understand the importance of not pulling, and agreed to carry treats, use a no-pull harness and avoid other dogs when possible, sometimes even by changing directions without Betty’s approval!

The one big hurdle to my loose leash walking dream was the crossing guard. While there are other routes off my street, the early morning traffic of trucks, school buses and cars is so unpleasant that the only real options are out and to the right, taking us directly to the busiest street, or to the left, past the crossing guard. Over the years, he and Andy have trained an admirable pull as the crossing guard waves his dog biscuits at the girls, wandering across the street (screeching brakes not finding his aging ears) as Andy does his best to hang on and prevent the girls from meeting the guy half way into the road. Once united, the dogs jump up and down as the crossing guard waves his cookies around in the air, giving dog training advice on how to get them to stop jumping, and how to get them to follow us when he leaves (”Here. Take another cookie or they’ll come with me instead of you.”)

Now, I’m a reasonable woman. I’ve gone and talked to the crossing guard, telling him how I’m trying to get my dogs not to pull and asking if he’d mind skipping the cookies. I’ve suggested to Andy that he perhaps go the other way regardless of the unpleasant traffic, but that’s not always advice that’s followed. Which makes the crossing guard an intermittently reinforced enjoyment, kinda like hitting 3 cherries at a Vegas slot machine after 400 tries. I’ve asked that the girls be required to sit before receiving the cookies, but apparently “sit” is a relative term, something of which I was previously unaware. I’ve even taken each dog individually to the crossing guard in hopes of training better behavior, but the man is just not willing to cooperate and simply gave the one dog more cookies without allowing calm behavior, or even me getting closer than 50 or 60 feet before waving those cookies in the air, across the road.

So I started planning his doom. I looked for easy openings. Maybe purple fingers or a florid, capillary-streaked nose that might indicate congestive heart failure, or at least angina. Could I be convicted for shouting “BOO” suddenly out of nowhere? Though I heard no obvious wheezing, I hired delivery trucks to sit and and idle by his post, anticipating that the exhaust fumes would do the job for me. I offered him candy, thinking that any man with these impulse control issues would surely accept, regardless of blood sugar levels. When he took the sweets I saw no telltale pinpricks in his fingertips. I bought him a pack of cigarettes, but he doesn’t smoke. I suggested it would be calming given the stress of his job, but left head hanging and pack in hand. I thought about throwing a bucket of cold water on him some frigid, February morning, but realized that it might look suspicious if I ran away carrying an empty bucket, and that someone might dry him off rather than letting him freeze, stuck to the stop sign as I’d designed.

Today I got a really good chance as, while I was walking Betty, cheese to her nose and cursing the man’s unwillingness to leave his post even 45 minutes after school was in session, I shouted “STOP” and he did, right in the middle of the street. The SUV driver was apparently involved in a very important phone call, and it was some wretched instinct in me that then shouted “Move!”, prompting the crossing guard to lurch toward me, cookies waving, vacating the very spot where two tons of American pride came barreling by a split second later. I grabbed Betty’s collar, told her to sit, at which point the guy came up, waved his cookie over her unseated head, and said “Oh, she knows me, I’ve been giving her cookies for years. Here, take another one or she won’t go with you ’cause she’ll want to stay with me. She sure likes to pull!”

So you see, Your Honor, that I felt I had no other choice. I am on my way to the store to buy a crossing guard outfit for my friends and relatives to wear. I believe I will be able to practice crossing guard greetings during my work release off-hours, and once I am on parole. I hope Your Honor will grant me some leniency as I did, after all, save the man today rather than watching the dream I’d so hoped for come to fruition in front of my very eyes.

Sincerely,

Marjie Alonso