At first I thought, Wow. Look at this! I’m being greeted by two, clearly excited to see me, plucked from central casting turkeys clucking at my passenger door.
“Hey, guys!” I said, grabbing my purse and a gift bag holding a bottle of nice chardonnay. I got out of my car at Dedham Plaza and walked smiling toward my feathered friends. “What are you doing in a parking lot? You’ll get yourselves killed. You need to be careful.”
Read MoreIt's a clear case of anthropomorphism, a mouthful of a word that I had to look up in the dictionary, a word that is far, far longer than the miniature frogs I have anthropomorphized, meaning that I have credited them with having human needs and feelings.
Read MoreWhen I was looking for a dog a few years ago, I came across the Metro South Adoption Center, the satellite shelter for the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
A friend suggested the place, which is located on a rural street in Brockton. I took my grandson, Adam. He was 2 at the time.
I expected a few dogs and cats, not rooms full of animals waiting to be adopted. But there they were, a Disney-esque lineup: rabbits, hamsters, guinea pigs, birds, mice, dogs, cats, even a rat.
Read MoreThey ate my Jack and the Beanstalk tree. From stem to leafy stem they felled it, devoured it, and made it disappear. Rabbits, I fumed. Bandits and thieves. And other names I cannot repeat. It wasn't, for the record, a real Jack and the Beanstalk tree. It didn't grow from magic beans overnight and disappear above the clouds into a land of giants. It wasn't even a tree, just a leggy, flowering plant. But it was taller than I am by at least a foot, and to the 3- and 4-year-olds who called it their Jack and the Beanstalk tree, it seemed to reach the sky…
Read MoreMy husband said I should put the bird out of its misery. "It will never fly again. Why are you doing this?" The sparrow, small and frail and biblical, got its neck stuck in the crook of a wrought-iron arm that holds a bird feeder, which I bought last week in a small store in New Hampshire. The feeder, the holder, the bag of special seed were purchased from an old New Englander who's been selling bird food and feeders his whole life. My other feeders are markdowns and seconds. But this was the real thing, "Droll Yankees The World's Best Bird Feeders," a Lexus in my world of Fords. Even the seed was a special blend.
Read MoreI used to have a pet rabbit. I had more than one, actually, though not at the same time. The first was named - no surprise here - Thumper, and lived in a hutch my brand new husband built in our backyard. I used to walk Thumper up and down the street on a short leash meant for a poodle. He was our first official now-we-are-a-couple pet (unless you count Irving, the bird) and when I discovered him dead in his cage one afternoon, I screamed so loud my mother-in-law, who lived next door, came running. A few months later, we got Ovaltine. We found him…
Read MoreBefore, my daughter was the one begging. "Please, please, can I get a dog?" I was the one saying: "A dog is a big responsibility. You have to walk him and train him and be around every day to let him in and out. And dogs shed and get ticks and dig holes in the backyard, and when it rains they smell. You really don't want a dog." But she said: "Yes, I do, Mom. I need a dog. Please, please, talk Dad into it." And so I did.
Read MoreShe never bought me a gift. She never sent me a card. She never gave me a thing that I can touch and say, "See how she loved me." And yet I know that she did. I loved her and she loved me, and it was a love affair. The house is silent without her. How can silence roar? How can emptiness feel so huge?
Read More"Lab Pups - 6 wks old, jet black, classic English features, champ lines. Father has misplaced his papers. Our loss, your gain. $ 150 with shots. Hurry, only 3 left." We hurried, my two daughters and I. We got in the car and drove to Marshfield "just to look," we told my husband. But he knew. Molly was the puppy that hid in the corner, the roly-poly one, shy, soft and sweeter than we dreamed…
Read MoreHer paws are more white than black these days, and her muzzle is white and the place on her belly where she loves to be scratched is all white, too. My dog is old.
She sleeps most of the day, waking only to bark at the mailman, to wag and woof at anyone who comes to the door, and to indulge in her favorite pastime, which is, of course, eating. Molly loves food - all food. When I open the refrigerator, no matter if she is half a house away and in a dead sleep, she comes running. At least she tries to run…
Read MoreShe walks more slowly these days. She doesn't bound to the door, she ambles. She doesn't rush at visitors. She saunters. Her bark is as strong as it has always been and her tail remains in overdrive, but her legs buck and stall, old legs suddenly, though Molly's heart is still young. She has such skinny legs for a big dog, legs like a horse, legs that she could always depend on. How many mornings did she lunge up the stairs, hurl herself onto our bed, dance and bark and groan and nudge us awake…
Read MoreI had no intention of walking her Tuesday. It was cold. It was snowing. And I hadn't walked her for months. My fault for not making time for her. "Not now, Molly. Not now," I said so often that Molly the Lab gave up on me. We walked every day at noon for so many years that I thought we would always walk. The clock in the front hall would chime and Molly would…
Read MoreAnd I thought he didn't love her. He never said this, but it's how he acts sometimes. "She's a dog. She'll be OK," is as close as he ever gets to affection, when I moan about having to leave her again, or if it suddenly rains and she's outside. My husband never wanted a dog. He said dogs are too much work. That a dog on our street…
Read MoreI should have taken her to the vet weeks ago. She's been dragging around for at least that long, her gait a little slower these days, her eyes a little less bright. I notice these things, but I ignore them. I sit on the floor and scratch her ears and pat her head and say, "How's my puppy?" And she sighs and wags her tail, the way she has always done. I see that the hair under her chin is more white than black and that there are tufts of white under her belly and that…
Read MoreHere's what happens when I don't pay attention to my dog, Molly. She crawls under the kitchen table and eats paper. Constant attention is what she needs and constant attention is what she demands and since I am only human, I falter sometimes. And she makes me pay for it. Just now, for example, I was at the table reading the paper and thereby ignoring her. So she…
Read Moret's official. She suffers from separation anxiety, which is why she eats socks and scarves and those cloth-covered scrunchies you put in your hair. She loves us and can't stand to be separated from us and by devouring what is ours she is, in a very real way, keeping us with her always. Welcome to Doggy Psychology 101. Or man's relentless effort to find a rational explanation for irrational behavior…
Read MoreIt's noon and it's raining and the dog wants to go for a walk, but I do not.
I tell her I'm not going. "No walk today, girl. It's too awful outside."
But she will have none of this. She's pacing and prancing and moaning and groaning and all but pointing to the ticking clock in the front hall. It has just chimed, one, two, all the way to 12 and Molly, who doesn't know what "Get off the couch this instant" means and who can't even process the one-syllable word down, knows exactly what time it is.
Read MoreDear Bill,
So you went and got yourself a puppy. Oh, I know he is beautiful and loving and adorable and he smells so sweet and his fur is soft and when he looks up at you with those big copper eyes, you know there isn't anything in the world you wouldn't do for him. A ball of fur that sheds and drools and whimpers in the night, and you're totally hooked. Go figure. But, hey, I understand. I've been there, right there, in your shoes.
Read MoreThe first time we went walking, Al took us. It was spring and the earth was soft, the trees new green and the path that leads from the street to the football field was a straight, clean line. Al's been walking his dog Dante for years, twice a day, no matter what the weather. I've watched him from my office window. A man and his dog. I envied them…
Read MoreShe didn't get top billing. Actually she didn't get any billing at all. In theater terms, I suppose you'd say she has a bit part. The press release gushes about Bambi and Tootsie and Nicki and Todd. But there's not a single word about Molly. Still, you know the old saying: There are no small parts, only small players. And Molly, when she's on camera…
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