Category: dogs

Posted on

The Death of New York City Cat Girl

I think we “animal people” grieve so much when a beloved pet dies because a part of us dies with them. At least that’s how it’s always been for me. The part of me that died with my dear Katusha, who passed away a month ago from cancer at only eight years old, is the New York City cat girl. So I’m still grieving for the loss of my kitty, as well as the loss (at least for the time being) of that part of myself.

I adopted Katusha seven and a half years ago from the Los Angeles County shelter when I lived in West Hollywood, years after I’d moved out of New York. I’d wanted a friend for my cat, Rhea (whom I did adopt in NY, and who passed away two years ago, also from cancer). So I never actually lived in NY with Katusha.

Even so, after she died, I realized how much she actually was the quintessential New York cat. She was perfectly content to stay inside, never tempted to venture out, unlike Rhea and Najma, who were my NYC kitties at various stages of my life there. She would have been perfectly happy to sit in the bay window, looking out at the birds and the people, the way she did at the patio window looking out over our West Hollywood deck, to cuddle in my lap while I read on the couch, and to snuggle up with me in bed.

I keep thinking how different our lives would have been if we (she, Rhea, and Sofia, the chihuahua mix we adopted in LA) had moved back to NY after leaving California, instead of Arizona. I grew up in Phoenix but hadn’t lived there since graduating college.

I’d left New York in 2011 after having lived there for nearly two decades following grad school. I didn’t intend to leave forever, but just to take a break. I was sick of all the noise, sick of tourists who’d largely taken over Manhattan, sick of the lack of space and the increasingly unaffordable rents. Also, I’d written a dance blog, and I’d self-published my first novel. The blog became rather popular among the dance crowd, and the novel did reasonably well for a self-published book in 2009. New York being the epicenter of traditional publishing, and still in the midst of the 2008 recession, the increasing popularity of eBooks and the advent of online journalism, the city just seemed to be seething with very angry displaced publishing execs and writers. As basically an indie journalist and author, I really felt a lot of their venom directed at me. I just needed a break from the hostility. Los Angeles was a big city where I could still find the legal work I’d been supporting myself on while writing. San Francisco culture would probably have been more akin to New York, but I couldn’t afford that city. So I chose LA.

I loved West Holllywood but hated LA. West Hollywood, being smack in the middle of Los Angeles, meant I couldn’t venture out of my little cocoon without some degree of stress. And I had to venture out often, for things like work and friends who wanted to go to the beach, and shopping, etc. We had a nice big apartment between the Sunset Strip and the gay bars of Santa Monica Boulevard. It was a crazy fun place. I adopted Katusha as a friend for Rhea, and then, seeing all my neighbors with dogs and missing my little childhood terrier mix, I decided to adopt Sofia, a chihuahua mix.

Five years later I was really sick of all traffic, the lack of public transportation, lack of parking spaces, lack of culture, and lack of affordable property to buy (in my income bracket anyway). I’d thought of returning to New York at that time, and, being honest with myself, I’m not completely sure why I didn’t. I think I just wasn’t ready yet. I remembered the lack of space in New York and I now had three animals, including a barky dog. I wanted to try home ownership. I wanted a back yard. There definitely wasn’t as much traffic in Phoenix as in LA, and there was even more space. Plus, an aunt in Arizona was sick and had no one to care for her. So I packed up the fur kids and moved one state over, back “home,” instead of back across the country.

We rented a condo until I had enough work experience in Arizona to qualify for a mortgage. And then we found my dream home. It was a little out of the city, close to the open desert and south of Phoenix, en route to Tucson, the city where I’d gone to undergrad and which held very good memories. Funny but what I really loved about the house was the parts of it that resembled my last apartment in New York, on the Upper West Side. Part of the house was two stories, so we had a cathedral ceiling on one side, perfect for my little art collection. But the builders had left one of the upstairs rooms open-walled, so our living room was basically two stories, giving us a balcony that I knew Rhea would love, as she had our NYC loft balcony. And I was right. That little gymnast cat loved to run up the stairs and hop through the balcony bars onto the top of the bookcase.

I loved the whole house but especially the upstairs room I used for my writing loft, the sun room with floor to ceiling windows facing the back, and the side patio where I could see both the front and back of the house simultaneously. Rhea loved the balcony, Sofia loved the fig tree out back, under which all kinds of creatures would shade themselves, and Katusha loved the big walk-in closet in the master bedroom where she could cocoon herself among the footwear (her foster mom had named her Cinderella because of her fondness for fitting herself into various shoes!).

Rhea died of cancer about two years after we moved in. It was horrible, as death of a beloved pet always is, but I think hers was made worse because of what she meant to me. With my New York companion now gone, part of my New York self was gone as well. I put her ashes on the top of the bookcase near the balcony.

I began volunteering at the local SPCA and decided to adopt another dog. We had a big backyard now and a large house, so we could have a large dog. I’d never had a big dog but my mom took care of several labs and I became very fond of one of them on my visits to her. Anyway, long story short, I ended up not with a lab but with a German shepherd Belgian malinois mix. I’ve grown to love Irina fiercely, but our lives together have not been without lots of drama, mainly due to the fact that I am not an experienced dog handler and she is a dog who needs just that. Anyway, love is love. It took some time for the other animals to get along with her, but due largely to the pandemic when I worked remotely from home and spent a lot of time acclimating them, we eventually became one big happy family. And then Katusha got sick.

The pandemic (by which I mean not worrying about getting sick but being home all the time and thinking about my life ad nauseam) followed by Katusha’s illness really made me question what I was doing in Arizona and whether we wouldn’t have been better off in New York. That saying “you can’t go home again” – it’s real. First, would the cats have both gotten cancer? Were their cancers caused by the Arizona sun or air or water? The vets assured me they were not. Second, Arizona not being as big of a legal market as New York and LA, there’s not as much paying work here, which can be unsettling to say the least. And of course there’s nowhere near the culture available in New York.

I miss my life as a dance blogger. I miss the ballet, the theatre (Broadway, off-Broadway, and off-off-Broadway), the wine bar around the corner from my apartment (can’t remember the name but can remember right where I always used to sit), Fiorellos after the ballet, watching Yankees games at The Emerald Inn, the cafe on the Hudson River, Brighton Beach boardwalk, Lincoln Center, Strawberry Fields, 57th Street, Dance Times Square, the Algonquin lounge, the New York City Bar Association (yes, I have fond memories of that as well, perhaps ridiculously), the Center for Fiction, the Strand and St. Marks Bookshop. I miss my friends. For weeks after Katusha’s death all I could think about was what if I’d moved back and lived there with her, writing at my desk with our view of Columbus Avenue out the bay window, her wrapped around my feet, cuddling on the futon with her while I read. Would I have been happier?

(Above: Rhea in the bay window of our old apartment, 71st Street and Columbus right after I adopted her in 2011; below, Lincoln Center, 9/11 memorial dance performance, 9/11/2011).

Of course, if we’d have moved back to NY instead of Phoenix after leaving California, we never would have lived in this house I so love and that Rhea and Katusha so loved and that Sofia so loves, and that is now so full of memories – most wonderful, some painful.

And we would never have adopted the crazy, playful, always-excited, always getting into something, often barking to let me know the neighbor is in his back yard, always pulling on her leash, but always available for cuddles whenever I need her to be, our sweet, kind of scary-coyote-looking but always lovable “desert dog”.

A few nights ago I had a dream that really made me think all over again about my life and helped me put things into perspective.

When I first moved to New York in the early nineties (I feel so old!) I had a friend whose father was a doorman in a nice Upper West-Side apartment building. (I don’t have a picture of him, but the below picture is of me with the doorman in the building I lived in at the time, 1993.)

One day the friend and I were out and about in the city and we had to visit her dad so she could get something (keys I think). Anyway, while we were in his building, a very elegantly-dressed elderly woman emerged from the elevator and walked through the lobby, full of energy and spark. My friend’s dad greeted her, wished her a happy birthday, and helped her into the cab he’d hailed for her. She was very sweet and thanked him profusely. After she took off, he told us she’d just turned 97. I remember thinking how wonderful that you could live to be such an age in such a big city and do so with such vigor and glamour. This was back when New York was expensive but not exorbitant like it is today, and you didn’t have to be an investment banker to afford a small place.

So my dream was weird, as dreams always are. In it I was somehow that woman. Obviously I was much later in my life than I am now. But it was me. And I was living with a cat and a small dog. They weren’t exactly Katusha and Sofia, but they inhabited their essences, you know what I mean? In the dream I knew it was them, basically. I was happy looking out my window over Lincoln Center (which was based on the apartment of another friend I met later), waiting to go somewhere.

But then in the dream for some reason I started to remember the big “desert dog” I’d had long, long ago, whom I couldn’t bring with me here. I saw her always-happy face. And remembered her silliness and constant excitement over her ball and her tug toy. And her barking. And her leash pulling. And her antics. And my always unsuccessful attempts to control her.

And I missed her so badly it hurt. I missed her and our lives back in the desert house with the back yard so very much.

I woke up in a sweat. And I realized I was happy here. Even though I loved my life in New York as the cat lady, the dance blogger, the girl always about town, I really loved big crazy dog and our lives in the desert. And I wasn’t ready to leave it yet.

(Above: with Najma, my first NYC kitty, in my Upper West-Side studio loft, around 2004.)

After I woke I started to think about the things I love here: the Desert Botanical Gardens (specifically, seeing Ballet Arizona perform there, and bring-your-dog days), the Heard Museum (of Native American art), the Poisoned Pen and Changing Hands bookstores, the galleries of Old Scottsdale and Roosevelt Row in downtown Phoenix, the Musical Instrument Museum, moonlight walks and wild yoga at The Southwest Wildlife Conservation Center, all of the wonderful animal sanctuaries, Saguaro National Park, trips to Sedona and Verde Valley wine country, the DeGrazia Studio in Tucson, the Tucson Festival of Books, walks with the dogs around the lakes in my neighborhood, plays at Tempe Performing Arts Center, dining on the canal at Olive and Ivy in Scottsdale, road trips back to LA to see friends, hanging out with friends here, particularly all those I’ve made volunteering with animals and in my romance and crime writer groups.

Maybe someday I will go back to New York. Maybe someday I’ll be that elegant old lady with the sweet petite fur babies in her one room apartment excitedly sprinting through a lobby on her way to her cab (or self-driving Uber, or Jetson air mobile?) ready to be whisked off to the ballet or a play or reading or restaurant for birthday dinner. But for now I’m happy in my desert house with my desert life as a “desert dog mom.”

Sorry, this was navel-gazing to the max! But writing often helps to me figure things out. So if you got this far, thank you for indulging me 🙂

Posted on

Sweet Katusha: Thank You For Being So Good to Me

It’s been about a month now that my dear Katusha passed away and I’m still mourning her, as I always will in some form. She had an aggressive form of abdominal cancer and I didn’t even know she was sick until she suddenly stopped eating and drinking. It was too late to do much.

She was a few weeks short of eight years old, so very young for a cat. My other cat, Rhea, passed away only a little over two years earlier, also of cancer. She was only ten, and hers was a sarcoma on her head. I asked the vet if it was something in my house, in Arizona, in the air or water. But she said no; these are two very common forms of cancer in cats. Most likely something in their genetic codes.

I adopted Katusha seven and a half years ago when I lived in West Hollywood, CA. My job at the time had crazy hours and I felt badly because Rhea, whom I’d adopted in New York a couple years earlier before moving to CA, was alone for hours on end. I thought she needed a companion.

I saw a post on Facebook. It was kitten season and a woman fostering a litter found motherless on the street was required to return them to the high-kill LA County shelter she volunteered for since they were now old enough. She was worried and needed adopters. I spotted a cute-looking boy cat in the litter and called the foster. It turned out the boy cat had already been adopted and they only had a girl available. I was dubious about adopting a female because I worried two girl cats wouldn’t get along. But I picked this little one up – her name was Cinderella at the time because of her fondness for making a little bed for herself out of her foster mom’s shoes – and she immediately purred and let me cuddle her as much as I wanted. She was perfect for me. I called my vet and she told me that as long as everyone was spayed gender wouldn’t be an issue. So she was ours!

Katusha continued to love shoes, by the way. I changed her name from Cinderella because there was a Russian ballroom dancer I adored and I loved her name. Katusha seemed perfect for a cat 🙂

At first Rhea was pretty mad at me. Actually I think she kind of remained mad at me. She had the run of our fairly large apartment all to herself and now she had to share space with a little kitten who constantly wanted to play. But she soon learned to tolerate her new sister. And the vet was right – there were no fighting issues.

Katusha’s coat was the most amazing pattern! She was so playful as a small kitten, as I guess most small kittens are.

She and Rhea really loved that WeHo apartment with its big patio door and floor-to-ceiling windows that were perfect for bird-watching!

Unlike Rhea, who wasn’t very cuddly, Katusha loved to snuggle in my lap as I read. This is one of the things I miss most about her.

I volunteered at Best Friends Animal Sanctuary. In Dogtown. And realized I really missed my dog from childhood, named very imaginatively by my five-year-old self, Fluffy. I lived in a pretty big apartment in LA and everyone in my building seemed to have a dog, and I knew there was room for a small one. One of my friends who volunteered with LA County posted a video on Facebook of a dog for adoption who looked ideal. She described her as shy. I went to West LA Shelter and met her. And we bonded on the spot. Sofia was perfect.

But not to the cats! I brought her home and she immediately chased them. Katusha was the most scared, and she nearly opened the locked window in her attempt to escape. Poor kitty. It took the better part of a year to get her to calm down and accept Sofia. Rhea was easier. You can read Sofia’s take on the whole thing if you like here.

But Katusha was good to me and she loved me. And for my sake, I believe, she eventually managed to get along with Sofia. I made her and Rhea a cat tree and she played in it, even with the crazy dog present down below. She eventually even shared the couch with the dog.

I grew weary of LA traffic and I really wanted to buy a house, which I knew I couldn’t afford in LA, so I decided to move back to Arizona, where I’m from. I thought of moving back to New York but … I’m actually not sure why I didn’t, to be honest. I missed my friends there, I missed the ballet, the culture. I missed my life there. But I think I just wasn’t ready. I wasn’t ready to return to all the noise and the lack of space and the ten plus hour work days. I’d done somewhat well self-publishing my novels and I’d remembered how angry people in traditional publishing were about the success of indie authors and Amazon and all and I didn’t really want to return to that negativity. Plus, I wanted to buy a house with a yard, see what that kind of life was like. My aunt was also ill at the time and she had no one to care for her. As you can see, I’m still trying to figure out why I didn’t return to New York…

Anyway, we moved back to Arizona. We rented a condo for a few months until I could get enough local work experience to qualify for a mortgage. Six months later, we moved into our first house.

Rhea loved the house. It had a bi-level living room, which I found so charming and full of character. And a balcony, which she couldn’t get enough of. It reminded me of the balcony of the loft in our New York apartment, which she loved to sit on and peer down. She loved to jump off the balcony onto the bookcase, little gymnast!

But I’m not sure how much Katusha liked the new house. She pretty much hung out in the walk-in closet in the master bedroom, which of course contained all my footwear. She still loved to cocoon herself in my shoes, or between the shoe boxes in the corner. She liked to hide. Perhaps it was because she had longer hair than Rhea and southern Arizona is warm and dry. She’d come out to the kitchen to eat, and use the guest bathroom, where I kept one of the litter boxes. But, unlike Rhea, who loved to climb the stairs, she never ventured up to the second floor to use the other bathroom’s litter box.

A year and a half after we moved in Rhea was diagnosed with a sarcoma on her head. She went through grueling stereotactic radiosurgery, which left her with large radiation burns that eventually became infected. Poor Rhea. I think it must have been traumatic for Katusha to see her sister so sick. I don’t really know how animals handle those kind of things.

A few months later Rhea passed away. Katusha came out of the closet a little more often but not much. She’d sit at the big patio window and look out back a little, but not much. Sitting at the window had always been more Rhea’s thing than Katusha’s, although Katusha seemed to like looking out the window in West Hollywood.

I began volunteering at my local SPCA. I felt Sofia, who’d become best friends with Rhea, missed her sister. She and Katusha got along but they weren’t besties the way she and Rhea were.

I did a couple of short-term fosters with some small dogs at the shelter and Katusha seemed to get along with them. I was amazed. She seemed to now be a dog-friendly cat.

Six months later, I decided to adopt another dog to befriend Sofia and hopefully Katusha as well. I went to the shelter to adopt a dog about Sofia’s size that I’d walked and read to and liked but that dog had gotten adopted by the time I got to the shelter. The adoption counselors encouraged me to look at other dogs since I was there with Sofia, so I did. I hesitantly brought home a dog for what’s called a slumber party to see if she’d get along with everyone in our household. They tested her with cats and found she wasn’t predatory and she and Sofia got along, so even though she was larger than the other dog I was thinking of, I decided to try it. We now had a big backyard, suitable for a larger dog.

When I introduced her to Katusha, Kat was immediately scared of her. No wonder. Irina was much bigger than Sofia. She was a German shepherd / Belgian malinois mix and kind of resembled a coyote with her coloring. Katusha hissed and swatted at her. Irina cried and ran off. I felt that was a good reaction. Irina was giving Katusha her boundaries and hopefully Katusha would soon come around.

But soon took much, much longer than I’d expected. I hired a total of three private trainers and took three group classes. I worked hard on getting both of them to like each other, for many, many months to no avail. I moved Katusha’s litter box and food into the master bedroom and kept her shut in there and away from Irina, which was fine with, really, her since that’s where she always hung out anyway.

It wasn’t until the pandemic when I began to work from home that they finally became friends. And it was mainly Irina’s doing. I opened the door to “Katusha’s room” and let Irina go in with me. She kept trying and trying to break the ice with Katusha, just by touching noses. With Irina in the room whenever I was, Katusha eventually realized that I wasn’t going to let Irina hurt her. Irina didn’t want to anyway. She was just big and scary-looking.

I was so happy when Katusha finally let Irina get close to her.

Katusha slowly began not to be scared. She’d walk around the house and climb into her cat tree even when Irina tried to climb in after her. I’d originally kept Irina crated at night and spend the night with Katusha alone. But when I was home all the time I began to let Irina sleep with us as well. At first Katusha would sleep in the cupboard in the bathroom. But soon she began to come out and sleep with us at night, cuddling with me, while I read to her, even while Irina slept feet away, at the foot of the bed.

The thing was, I think Katusha was feeling sick for a while and it just wasn’t noticeable to me. I think she wanted and needed my attention and she realized the only way she would be able to get it was to befriend the coyote-looking dog. It was literally only days after the above picture was taken that she stopped eating and drinking and I rushed her to the vet. I was so happy they were all getting along and we were all happy and at peace with each other. I do think it was genuine, I just think I forced the peace-making on Katusha and she may not have been truly comfortable for a large part of that time.

When I found out about her cancer it was already advanced. The vet said we could still try chemotherapy. I was hesitant after Rhea’s horrible experience with radiation, and her cancer wasn’t nearly as advanced as Katusha’s. So we tried palliative care. The steroids initially worked wonders and I began to seriously consider chemo. But those wonders were sadly short-lived. After one week she wasn’t eating and drinking again. The vet told me to increase her steroids and pain-killers but Katusha hated me giving her medication and she fought me every time. She started trying to hide from us. She began hissing at Irina and Sofia again when they tried to play with her, which I understood of course since she was feeling so horribly. But it still totally broke my heart.

I separated her from the dogs again and crated them at night, sleeping alone with her. But she often stayed in the cupboard and I had to reach inside and pull her out at night to put her on the bed with me. She purred a little, but it became less and less. I kept increasing the meds until all she did was sleep. The night I had her euthanized at the ER she was so out of it I honestly thought she was going to die of an overdose anyway. Keeping her alive just so I could feel her soft fur against my skin, so I could hold her and make myself believe the steroids would work again, and try hard as I could to wish the pre-sick Katusha back, just became so obviously wrong.

I still feel badly that I didn’t try the chemo even though the ER vet told me her cancer was advanced and it likely wouldn’t keep her alive for long. Cats don’t know they’re being kept alive for so and so much time; they just know they feel unwell and they’re unhappy. I know I did the right thing but I still wonder what if I’d done the chemo. She’d probably still be here. Even after my experience with Rhea, I’m not sure I’m the kind of person who can’t do everything I possibly can to save an animal.

Looking back, I think Katusha made herself get along with the dogs for my sake. First Sofia in LA then Irina in Arizona. She wanted me to be happy and she knew I would be if only they would all get along. I will forever cherish her for doing that for me.

And I’m not so sure she’s really gone. I feel her spirit around the house the same way I still feel Rhea’s. I know the dogs do as well.

Here she is in her cat tree looking outside at us in the backyard. When we’re out back, I often still feel her inside looking out at us.

A month after her death and Irina still sniffs and looks intently at the cupboard, waiting for her to come out.

I’ve been working on a new cozy mystery series, set in a cat cafe and adjoining dog bar with animal sleuths and ghosts. Rhea is the basis for the character of the main ghost, and the cat character who heads the cafe is based on my dear Najma, the cat I had back in New York. Katusha passed away after I finished the penultimate draft but I managed to write in a recurring role for her. So my beloved animals never really die. They live on in my writing and in the spirit energy with which they continue to fill our lives.

 

Posted on

Irina the Belgian Marshmallow

This post is cross-posted at MyCatJeoffryBooks and is about the rescue dog I adopted last year. Since there are so many dog and cat lovers out there – and since my next series will be set in a cat cafe and dog bar 🙂 I thought readers here may be interested.

2019 ended up being crazy busy but hugely productive for me. After Rhea passed away at the end of 2018 I fell into a bad depression. She’d been with me for so much of my adult life, from New York to California to Arizona, and losing her hit me hard. I think because of that, I threw myself into volunteer work with the Arizona Animal Welfare League and SPCA, which drew me into volunteer work as a District Leader with the Humane Society of the United States. I also volunteered with the therapy dog program at the Phoenix Public Library. I absolutely love all of my volunteer roles. I also finished and published my next romance novel in the Infectious Rhythm series, Tremor. And I worked hard on getting my business plan together for opening the bookstore. So, throwing myself into my work has been a good thing. Hopefully I will accomplish as much in 2020, and hopefully that will include getting this bookstore off the ground!

But the biggest part of my year was taken up with a new dog I adopted.

Photo above taken by Dogtopia, South Chandler.

After Rhea passed, I felt like Sofia, my chihuahua mix, who’d been Rhea’s bestie, took it hard too. For months afterward, she’d look around for her. I used to always ask her to find Rhea since Rhea was fond of hiding in cupboards, behind shoeboxes in the closet, or behind or underneath furniture, etc. And Sofia with her superb sniffer was always able to find her. Sofia knew she was gone but still sniffed around anyway. After Rhea’s scent had finally disappeared for good, Sofia would sit at the side porch window, where Rhea always tried to get out.

Katusha, our other cat, took it hard too. She didn’t eat a thing for two weeks, and began nearly living in the closet, clearly depressed.

I couldn’t really bear the thought of getting another cat. I felt like it might confuse and upset Katusha, and Sofia, being a terrier, is so hard to train to get along with cats. So I started keeping an eye out at the shelter for a dog that I thought would get along with Sofia and Katusha and would fit well into our family.

One day this rat terrier / chihuahua mix, Lucy, came in. She looked exactly like Sofia but was brown and was the same age and playfulness level of Sofia. And I knew she got along with cats. I called and told the shelter I was coming with my dog so they could have a meet and greet. My drive was only about 45 minutes but by the time I got there, Lucy had already been adopted. I knew that was likely to happen since Lucy was so cute, and I had other dogs in mind in case it did – all of them small since that was the kind of dog I was used to and the kind I felt would get along best with Kat and Sof.

Unbelievably, every single dog in that row failed their cat test with flying colors! I was so annoyed. “You people practically are cats!” I called down the row, throwing up my arms.

The adoption counselor suggested I leave Sofia in her room and walk around to see if there was anyone I might like to try from one of the larger dog rooms, since I was already there. I knew there were two labs in the back and I had some experience with labs and thought they might be good fit for us, so decided to give it a try. There was one yellow lab, five years old (can’t remember his name) sitting in a large kennel with this one-year-old Shepherd-looking person. The lab was lying down and looked up at me with tired eyes, while the Shepherd bounced all around pawing at the gate as if asking me to give her a walk. They were both brand new to the shelter and I hadn’t handled either of them yet. I thought I’d give the lab a try, but I distinctly remember looking at the Shepherd, named Irii, and thinking, “Sorry but no way; you’re way too high-energy for me!” Yeah, famous last words…

I returned to the counselor and gave her my sheet with the name of the labs. She looked at my application and said both were way too active for my lifestyle. She said I needed a dog the behaviorists had labelled “weekend athlete,” since that’s the time I’d mainly be giving the dog to exercise since I worked long hours during the week.

She looked at her list of “weekend athletes.” She found two, both cattle dogs: Jerry, and Irii. I recognized the latter name and thought she must be mistaken.

“Are you sure the cards aren’t mixed up and it’s the five-year-old lab who’s the more mellow one?” I asked. She shook her head. “Nope, Irii is the weekend athlete.”

First we tried Jerry but he growled at Sofia, which didn’t sit well with me. Sofia does tend to be possessive with me, so I knew I needed a dog who would just let her be the princess chi she was used to being and not demand my attention too much. So we decided to try Irii.

I laughed when they brought her into the yard, because, sure enough, it was the one I thought – the crazy bouncing Shepherd mix, which a behaviorist had labeled mellow enough to be content with few walks during the week. Unbelievably, she calmed down once in the big, open yard. She ran around a bit, sniffed Sofia, made easy friends with her, then sniffed me. When Sofia made it clear I was her mommy and she was number one, Irii backed right off. She was scared when going into the cattery so we didn’t get a good take on whether she would get along with cats. But she didn’t seem to NOT like them. The counselor told me she was a transfer from a rural shelter in Northern Arizona, and had likely been a stray, likely in the Navajo Nation. So she might be shy around me and other humans but would appreciate a dog friend.

So I decided to give it a try and do a weekend “slumber party.” The counselors put her in a dog carrier in the back of my Prius. I kept seeing her head bouncing all around with her curious eyes looking this way and that in the in the rear view mirror the whole ride home. I kept thinking, “Who is this German Shepherd you have in your car?” Cattle dog, Shepherd – made no difference to me – I had no experience with dogs like this. “What are you doing?” I wondered.

Once at home, she sniffed all around the living room, then found a corner and curled up. She spent most of the weekend there. She wasn’t very scared of me, but seemed overall not very confident in her surroundings. Which made perfect sense since she just got there. I led her into my bedroom, where I was keeping Katusha. When I carefully introduced them, Katusha got scared and hissed at her, and she whimpered and ran away, which I was told was a good response for a dog: meant she didn’t have a crazy prey drive and would respect boundaries.

I took a bunch of photos of her and posted them on Facebook and Instagram and everyone of course said she was beautiful and hoped I’d keep her. When I went back to the shelter to formalize the adoption I was still a little unsure. We hadn’t really bonded yet and I still didn’t know much about large breeds other than labs. But somehow I just felt right about it, like it would work out and would be an experience to boot. The behaviorist gave me the numbers of a couple of trainers to call and invited me to sign up for group classes at the shelter. I did both right away. I named her Irina, only slightly changing the name the shelter gave her but to something I connected with. (Dance background, Russian ballet and ballroom dancers and all 🙂 )

I adopted Irina on March 15, so it’s been nearly a year. And it’s been a very a wild ride. The behaviorists were right in that she definitely is mellow, especially given her age and breed. (I later found out through Wisdom Panel that she is a mix but mostly Belgian Malinois and German Shepherd.) I can take her for a short walk and let her run around the backyard a few times and she will be quiet the rest of the day. If she goes to daycare during the day while I’m at work, she’ll sleep in the car on the ride home, then all night in her kennel. She’s very easygoing with children and has never exhibited any aggression whatsoever to anyone. At every daycare she’s gone to, the employees all tell me she’s very mellow, often lounges around all day, and is extremely gentle with the other dogs and with all the humans.

Dog of the Week photo, from Dogtopia, South Chandler.

BUT. Having said all that… it wasn’t easy on me at the beginning. Initially, Irina suffered separation anxiety, which I now know is a common young Shepherd trait. When I left her at home for only minutes, she knocked down the gate I’d set up and tore apart the bedroom, tearing up books, the blinds, the door, everything she could find. I tried to keep her in a large kennel, but she escaped by tearing apart the latch. The trainer directed me to buy locks to latch her in more securely. That worked. But it didn’t make her separation anxiety better. She kept me up all night barking and crying in her kennel. I couldn’t let her sleep with us because she wasn’t getting along with Katusha. So I went out and slept on the couch, for months. After she was here a few weeks and became more comfortable, she started acting out toward the cat. Katusha was scared of her and continued to hiss, but Irina started barking back. I’ve gone through three at home trainers trying to get her to get along with Katusha.

Irina’s gotten out of her harness in the car and unlatched seat belts. Basically, high intelligence and emotion are a difficult mix, and I know now it takes an experienced handler to deal with them. One of my friends who used to run a white Shepherd rescue has helped a lot. But at first she begged me to take Irina back to the shelter because she thought I was simply in way over my head with such a dog. Two of the three professional trainers I hired told me the same. For some reason, I just wasn’t going to give up, even though, with all the trainers and daily daycare, I was spending thousands of dollars I really didn’t have. It’s taken me the better part of a year to really figure out how to handle her and and I’m still learning. Everyday.

I love this dog dearly and I’m so thankful she came into my life. She’s made a wonderful companion for Sofia and I’ve learned so much about dogs, and about myself. I’ve become a lot more social and made other dog guardian friends I otherwise never would have. We are still learning to live together though. She and Katusha are not entirely friends yet, and I can’t walk Irina and Sofia together because Irina gets too crazy when she’s with her sister – it becomes a competition of who can go faster or something and my shoulders nearly get ripped out of their sockets. I’m still learning to keep her from door dashing and bashing down the patio door. And I’m trying to alternate days between leaving her at home – her separation anxiety is almost gone – and going to daycare since I can’t afford daycare every single day. We still have a ways to go, but not anywhere near as long as the distance we’ve come. And I know now that I can do it.

This ended up being a far longer post than I meant! I meant only to explain why I’ve been absent for nearly a year from this blog. I guess what I really wanted to say is that, as I said, I’ve been doing a lot of shelter volunteer work and I hear shelter people all the time expressing so much anger at people who return their dogs. And I know how stressful it is to have another animal dropped off that you have to care for and find a home for. And I definitely have absolutely NO patience or respect for the person who dumps his dog because he’s a long distance runner and the dog is too old to keep up with him, so he wants to exchange this dog for a younger one. Believe me, we would NEVER adopt to that degree of loser. But there is a big difference between that kind of person and a person who tries very, very, very hard and simply doesn’t have what it takes to continue on with the dog they adopted. I could never have brought Irina back like some of my trainers suggested. She’s brought so much joy and experience to my life and and I’ve grown immensely because of her. And I’m pretty sure she’s happy here with her two sisters (even though one is still hissing at her – but what is life without a challenge?!), and her two-story house with the fun stairs and the big backyard. She is one of my three dearest friends and I love her beyond words. But, that doesn’t mean that every dog is for every person. There is absolutely nothing wrong with re-homing an animal if it’s going to be better for everyone involved, including that animal.

My two cents. Anyway, I’ve gone on long enough. I will be posting more of my own animals’ updates, and definitely more books that I’ve read. In the top photo, Irina is posing with a picture of a book I just finished reading by Debbie Burns, who is now one of my favorite romance authors. Her first series is called Rescue Me, and all the books involve dogs who bring their humans together. Sweetness! Okay, more to come! I promise!