ch.11, v.12-26 (nadja)

Yea, I look with my eye upon this rich offering of the relics of cheese
And find it also with the multitudinous receptors of my nose.
And, behold, this offering is offered by the hand of human to me alone.

But what shall it profit a dog to gain all of the cheese rinds
If she lose the canine companion of her begging hours?



Yea, and my aged legs that have known many years of perambulation
Carry me among this surfeit of nests for my tired bones.
See how they gather in layers of softness--
The duplex of beds, the club sandwich of beds--
To nestle this houndly hide of mine.

But what shall it profit a dog to have only to herself
All of the dog beds of the denning place
If she lose the curly coated companion of her napping hours?



I shall take from your hand, my companion, this offering of cheese rinds,
And I shall rest my hide upon this tower of beds.
Shall that console us for the absence we cannot fill?

ch.2, v.43-51 (fears)

The clangorousness of a thousand cataclysms does clangor upon the edge of our territory
And also assails with terrible vibrations the delicate tissues of the ossicles of my head.

Who are these clamoring hordes? Whence this host of machine-wielders,
Who press the earth beneath their frightful mechanisms?



The bedrock of the earth they crack asunder with the blows of awful hammers
And the bodies of trees they slice and sliver with the sharpness of their knives.



O my companion we must away from this cacophony that cracks and slivers upon my head.
Give me this humble corner for the hiding of my beleaguered hide.
Force not upon me the audition of this concert of destruction.



Exegesis and commentary
Actually, it was construction, on an old house across the street that has been renovated to become two or three condos. But the noise was pretty awful, at least for a few weeks, while they used modified scoops to break up the bedrock behind the house, but for Frida even those sounds that were less painful for us (random hammering and sawing, as well as the constant beeping of trucks as they backed up) were pure torture. Not only is she sensitive to those kinds of noises, but they can really trigger her anxiety. She let me know how much the noise was bothering her by resisting the move to the living room pretty dramatically each time I would leave; that had never been a problem before, and she always gets a special treat when I go (see "kong" in icon's left hand).


So the ongoing construction led me to try an experiment that was, briefly, a success: I allowed her to have access to the rest of the house during the day while I was gone. As some of you know, b/c of her anxiety Frida has had to be restricted everywhere I've lived to one or two carefully "dog-proofed" rooms. Otherwise, she would work out her stress on whatever interesting object came to hand (as it were) and eat herself sick.

I was thrilled when this worked. I could come home after eight hours away, and aside from a few tissues selected from a trash can, everything was fine. Amazing. Worlds away from the dog who ate parts of my clothes, chewed up pens, spilled olive oil all over the living room floor, destroyed a variety of Sarah Klein's tresors, etc. I thought we had entered into a new phase in Frida's life. She could choose a nice den to retreat to during the day, and the cat could enjoy socializing with her canine siblings.

But, apparently, after a few weeks, the charm wore off. A trash can knocked over here, a food container disemboweled there, and bit by bit she was getting more bold in her explorations again. So she's back to being confined to the living room, which she's not crazy about (she resists a bit), but at least the construction is done.

ch. 3, v.1-19 (journey to mansfield)

In the exhaustion days of summer
we walk our fields and nap in our den
but we are pressed down by sadness
for Karen Who Is Tall is distant from us
now as many weeks as a dog has toes.
(She searches out the egging places of unmeaty frogs
and asks questions of their egg-encased puppies
that rest upon leaves.)

Huzzah a day comes
and she returns unto us.
We dance about her in ecstatic circles.
In celebration we carry in our mouths
small and furry objects plump with stuffing.

But, woe, with a day and another day, she departs again.
In anguish we rend our small and furry objects,
we scatter their stuffing about.
Leavings for leavings.






What happens now, my companion?
She harvests a bounty of fine provisions
and the good man Len comes to us
with his strong and capacious carriage.
We too depart from our den.

Exegesis and commentary
Frida's unusual sense of time is especially apparent in this verse of the book--her sense of how long Karen has been gone, how "now" is a constant. I'm not sure how those two things work together, but for her they seem too. Life has a past, of course, and a future--although she may normally experience that as anxiety ("what will happen to me if you leave" kind of thing), but everything is a day. (Okay, I cheated a little with the weeks as dog toes--it may actually have been more like "days in as many cycles as a dog has toes"--a more complex equation than it is expedient to express in our understanding.)

I also thought I might have been stretching it with the idea that Frida could understand what Karen is doing when she is away in the field, but here's the strange insight of the summer's events: just days before Karen's return, Nadja had her annual day at the salon in Brookline and came home with this bandana on:



Karen's frogs. So maybe the dogs do know.

ch. 2, v.1-15 (fears)

Lo, tho' I walk through the hall of the house of alone-ness
I shall not panic.
I shall neither raid the storehouses of kibble nor
pull down the vaults of my companion's sustenance.
Tho' I may scatter the treasures and linens of my companion
I shall chew the recesses of her raiment only a little bit.

I find my comfort in the treasures and linens of my companion
and eat just this one pocket and a few tissues.
My companion returns, calling to me with words of praise
"Good dog" and rewards me for the many adornments unchewed
and storehouses unmolested.

Yay, tho' the fear of abandonment rises about me
like unto concrete walls and chainlink fences,
tho' it gape before me an abyss as dark as an empty stomach,
I shall know that I am in the denning place of my pack and fear not.

Exegesis and Commentary
Although these verses articulate, for the first time here, the tremendous separation anxiety that has attended Frida all through these nine years, they actually testify to her growing ability to face down that fear. Even just a few years ago, as she suggests here, being alone in the house with access to all its rooms would have led to considerable destruction: food bins overturned, evidence of panic overeating (a hugely bloated stomach and food regurgitated), human food spread all about (including, more than once, a bottle of olive oil carried into the living room and allowed to pour out all over the floor), private parts of my clothing consumed, and many different kinds of objects chewed.



That history has led to a variety of stratagems for giving Frida less space to worry about in my absence: she was initially crate trained and now is kept in the living room when alone. She also gets her frozen kong, filled with carrots, cream cheese, and peanut butter, whenever I leave, a ritual that occupies her attention and seems to comfort her.

So the miraculous thing, a few weeks ago, was that I forgot to secure the living room door, and Frida had access to the kitchen, the bathroom, the bedroom, several trash cans and several laundry baskets, and she ate only one pocket out of one pair of shorts. Even tho' she carried other items of clothing into the living room, she didn't actually chew them. Is it a miracle if the saint changes her own behavior?



(Note the dog food bins, trash cans, completely untouched. This is beyond my ability to fathom. I can comprehend it only through an effort of faith.)

The realistic question, tho', is what is it that actually changed in Frida's life? I can identify a few key things (poodle company, getting older, etc.), but I think the most important thing is that she has been weaned off of the potassium bromide, an anti-seizure medication she's been on for over eight years. I had never been fond of it--it barely controlled her seizures and had nasty side effects--but the vets eight years ago seemed to love it (no danger of liver damage, which is the risk with the barbituate). So b/c apparently her body was no longer absorbing it well, and it was making her sick, a good neurologist at Angell suggested taking her off of it (veeeerrrry gradually), and not only did it solve the problems we had begun to notice (wobbly legs, accidents in the house, etc.), but it has generally made her more confident: more playful with other dogs again, less destructive when left alone in the house, less barky, so on. It's been great. I wish it had happened years ago. (Don't worry--she still has many of the neurotic, woebegone, and generally long-suffering behaviors that make her our saint.)


(No, we don't make Frida lie in this seemingly sterile and uncomfortable spot. She frequently chooses to lie here; she would actually get in the tub if she could.)