Amusing to Profound
My Conversations with Animals
by SUZANNE WARD
© 2011 (all rights reserved)
An article from the JULY 2011 issue of THE STAR BEACON.
From
the chapter titled “Fruity” ... Suzanne Ward developed the ability to
“mind-talk” with animals. Her remarkable conversations include the following
excerpts from this amusing chapter in her book.
Long after other
responsibilities had limited my involvement with our local shelter to only
fund-raising activities, it had expanded to accommodate a few dogs. Early in
September 2007, one of the volunteer veterinarians told me about the black and
white Lhasa apso, the worst case of neglect the staff had ever seen, whom they
called Marty and estimated to be about thirteen. He had been receiving medical
care ever since he had been found wandering around in the street two months
before, and he needed still more minor surgeries. However, nothing could restore
his vision or hearing, and those handicaps plus his chronic skin condition and
the expensive eye drops he needed twice daily for the rest of his life made him
the worst possible candidate for adoption they could imagine.
Nine days later Marty was
well enough for me to bring him and his eight medications home. I am not waving
some do-gooder banner here—I was unabashedly self-serving. Having Marty to take
care of was like more time with Lucky, the tiny black and white fellow who
walked into my life September 11, 1998, the day that would have been my son
Matthew’s thirty-sixth birthday. I was driving along a stretch of nearly
deserted pasture land, taking two of our dogs for dental appointments, and
suddenly a little fur ball walked into the middle of the road. I braked, jumped
out, scooped him up and waved a thank-you to the approaching driver who had
screeched to a halt.
I left my new passenger
and his unholy odor at the hospital to be examined and bathed. When I returned,
I learned that he had been matted to the skin, where a colony of fleas were
thriving; he was probably ten to twelve years old; was blind in one eye and had
severely distorted vision in his deformed eye; and his ears were infected. As I
paid the unexpectedly high bill, the office manager said, “He’s sure one lucky
dog that you found him,” and I came home with two dogs whose teeth were sparkly
and a little guy whose hair was gone but so were the fleas, and several bottles
of meds for him.
Our six dogs kept us very
busy, and I had given Bob my word that I would not add to our family. So when I
walked in cradling that squirming little body, who could blame my husband for
saying this isn’t fair, I had promised him I never would do this again. This is
different, I told him—this is Lucky, Matthew’s birthday gift to me for being his
mother. It took Bob perhaps as long as half an hour to feel as grateful as I
that this dear little dog had come into our lives.
Lucky was shy and sweet,
the quietest dog imaginable, and totally content to lie in a lap or find his own
spot, and we adored him for the two-and-a-half years left of his life. He was by
far the smallest dog I had ever had, and I thought of him as a baby who needed a
mother’s care. He never was sick, so it was a shock when he died an hour after
Bob and I returned from an evening class. I wasn’t ready for Lucky to leave, and
when I met Marty nine years after that morning when a miniature version of
himself walked into the road in front of my car, I felt thankful for more time
with dear little soul Lucky.
That really warped
thinking blew right out of my head about a nanosecond after Marty came home with
me. Our fur family seemed puzzled when I put him on the floor, as if he were
some alien life form whose little black and white rear didn’t merit the usual
check-me-out routine. They just stood there, towering over him, as Marty
confidently walked under Brillo and kept on going. I steered him into the
guestroom, hugged him and told him to stay there, I would be right back. I spoke
aloud to the other dogs, but it seemed more natural to think-talk with a nearly
deaf little fellow and usually that’s what I did.
I took him his quota of
pills for that time of day, each disguised in a little bite of his special
canned food, and put the dish right under his nose. “Marty, here are some
special treats for you.” “Where?” He couldn’t smell either. After he ate, he
said, “Marty isn’t my real name and I don’t like it.”
“Oh, OK. What is your
real name?”
"Billy. I don’t like
it either.”
“What name would you
like?”
"Fruity. I like the ooooo
sound in my head.”
His chronic skin
condition required a bath with medicated soap twice a week. Our oversized
kitchen sink and flexible spray faucet would be ideal, and after collecting a
wash cloth, towels and his shampoo, I gathered up Fruity and told him what was
in store for him. "Am I stinky? I don’t like to be stinky,” and while I was
bathing him: “I love this. I love my bath. I love warm water.”
I wrapped him in towels,
carried him to our bathroom and turned on the hair dryer. "I love the whizzer
best of all.” I put him down and steered him out of the bathroom into our room,
then turned him toward the hallway. “Am I going back to my room now?” His room?
Well, now it seemed practical to feed him there. “I love my dinner. It’s
delicious.” Afterwards he sat perfectly still while I put drops in his eyes, and
he said “Thank you” when I gave him a little biscuit for dessert.
I had been holding up my
end of our brief conversations and my words hadn’t posed any problem. “Fruity,
do you have to go outside now?”
“Why?”
“Do you need to go out to
… um … do your business, go to the toilet?”
“What?”
“Um … oh, do you have to
do potty?”
“Oh. You mean one poo and
two poo.”
That taken care of, I got
the big lightweight neon orange blanket I had bought for him and folded it until
it became a mattress for the large soft baby basket I felt so fortunate to find
on sale at an antique shop. I put Fruity on top and told him this was the bed
especially for him. He turned around a few times, then jumped out. After the
third time, I doubled the blanket, spread it on the carpet at the foot of the
bed and put him on it. He saw me as a big blob, but somehow he could detect what
was beneath him: “Thank you for my beautiful blanket.” He curled up and went to
sleep.
An hour later when I
passed the guestroom, he was sitting up and looking out into the hall. I didn’t
want him to feel abandoned, so I steered him out of his room, around the corner
and down the hallway into the master bedroom, which is large enough for a
leisure area with a bookshelf, two comfortable chairs, small tables and a large
old wooden chest that holds our television. I placed Fruity in Bob’s lap, where
he stayed for the rest of the evening and watched the TV screen change from
light to dark. When he fell asleep, I took him back to his room, and he spent
his first night there on his beautiful blanket. At 7:30 a.m., he barked for the
first time. If his body were commensurate with his vocal volume, he could be an
elephant.
His first bath deluded me
into thinking they always would be gleeful times. However, a professional
grooming came soon after that, and his second bath at home was a litany of
complaints: The water’s too warm, now it’s too cold, I got his face wet, the
water’s too high, I’m taking too long, when will I finish, I got his face wet
again, that’s enough. The whizzer he loves best didn’t fare any better—I put it
too close, it touched him, he’s tired of standing still, when will this stop, it
touched him again, he’s dry enough, he wants all his baths at the other place.
Well, if I can’t take him there every time, I need to get a big box that has a
whizzer outside so he can move around or sleep while he gets dry.
One day he didn’t stop at
griping. He kept turning around in the sink, climbed up on the counter and
soaked the towel there, then shook before I could get my hands on the second
one. In the bathroom, he was a tiny edition of a bull in a china shop. He
thrashed around until he managed to get out of my hands and knock both porcelain
soap dishes —they were safely out of his normal reach—and an electric toothbrush
on the floor. The toothbrush survived and I caught the thrasher just before he
landed. “Fruity, why have you been so awful today?” “It comes naturally.”
Eventually I figured out
that keeping a conversation going throughout bath time reduced his complaints
and scrambling around. It was a gloomy all-day drizzle, and when he came inside
after strolling around on the deck doing both poos, I plunked him in the sink of
warm water and asked if he had gotten wet outside. “No, I am wet because you are
washing me.”
Another day I told him
having a bath was like being in a very little swimming pool. “What is that?”
I
told him a pool has a lot of water, like a pond, but not as much water as a
river or a lake, and I asked if he knows what those are.
“No, I don’t get involved
in those.”
“Oh, OK.”
“What is swimming?”
“It’s playing in a lot of
water. Lots of dogs like to swim.”
“I’m not one of them.”
...............
Fruity told me he would
need a coat when it got cold. I got him a darling red, white and blue turtleneck
sweater that goes over his head and his little legs fit through the sleeves.
Each day when I was dressing him to go out, he chattered about loving his
beautiful coat and going out to roam until the afternoon I was hurrying and
stuffed his head into a sleeve. “Get me out of this now!”
“This is your beautiful
coat, Fruity.”
“No it’s not. It’s a
bitch.”
“WHAT?! Why did you say
that?”
“That is what you say
when you don’t like something.”
So his beautiful coat
lost favor, but I ignored his protests that he didn’t want it ever again, and
when he darted out of my knee-hold, I chased him down to finish dressing him.
All the aggravation evaporated in his enjoyment of walking wherever he wanted to
without a rope until the first day it snowed. There was only an inch or two when
I took him out to the yard. He did one poo right where I set him down, walked
around for a few seconds to find the right place for his two poo, then walked up
the step. “Don’t you like the snow?” “Sometimes, but not today.” “Well, the
other dogs always like it.” “Maybe they don’t know any better.”
Recently I went into his room with his sweater in hand and touched his head to
let him know I was there. He told me, “This is quiet hour. You never should
interrupt quiet hour.” I apologized and made a quick exit. It was a few days
later when I told him, “You’re a beautiful little soul,” and he replied,
“Big
Dog said you are too and I have to respect you.” That caught me off guard, and I
didn’t think until that evening to ask him what respect means to him. “It means
being nice and polite.”
When I told him, today is
Christmas, he asked, “What is a Christmas?”
“It’s a very special day
for God.”
“Then Big Dog must know
about it. He always follows God’s instructions.”
“What kind of
instructions?”
“Big Dog tells us what is
important to God so we know what to do.”
“But Big Dog didn’t tell
you that Christmas is important to God?”
“I must have missed that
lesson. But now I know. Dogs keep on learning like people do.”
A few days later while he
was getting a dose of the whizzer, he asked, “Is today a Christmas?”
“No. There’s only one
Christmas each year.”
“What is a year?”
“It’s a long time—many,
many days.”
“Oh. Dogs know what a day
is. We don’t need to learn about a year.”
The other day the new
veterinarian at Monica’s hospital said that Fruity’s skin condition may be
exacerbated by food allergies and suggested that we try a diet of unsalted
chicken and rice. That night I added little bites of simmered skinless chicken
breasts and some broth to cooked rice and gave it to Fruity. “This is delicious
and it comes with soup! I love this dinner!”
When I told him he can
have it every night, he asked, “Did you buy a lot of chicken?” and I told him
yes.
“Will the other dogs get
some?”
“No, it’s all for you.”
“That’s not fair. Give
them some too.”
One afternoon when Fruity
was lying on the bed in his room, I asked if he wanted to roam. “No, I am busy.
I am making pictures of bottles dancing.” “How interesting!” “They are very
pretty bottles. My inside eyes can see their colors.” “Are you making music for
them to dance to?” “No, I can’t make music. They make their own music and it is
beautiful. It goes chingy, chingy, clinkle, clinkle.”
When Betsy came recently,
her younger daughter was on vacation from her first year of medical school, and
she came too. I told Fruity that the real name of this Big Girl is Raquel.
“Are you sure that is a
real name?”
“Oh, yes, definitely
Raquel is a real name.”
“Well, it isn’t a pretty
name. She should change it to Ann.”
“Fruity dear, she can’t
change her name.”
“I changed mine.”
“I know you did, but
people don’t change their names.”
When I took Fruity’s
dinner to him a little later, he said, “Did she change her name to Ann yet?”
“No, and she’s not going to.” “Then tell her to change it to Princess.”
Fruity’s skin condition
requires keeping his hair short, so there are frequent trips to the groomer. The
most recent was last week, and his first bath since then was three days later.
While I was drying him, I said “The whizzer works better since you had your hair
cut.” And he said, “The whizzer works the same. My haircut is what is better.”
The other evening when I
gave him his dinner, a bigger than usual serving of chicken and rice, he left
about two tablespoons of broth. When I picked up his dish, he said, “You gave me
too much soup. I couldn’t eat it all.”
“That’s OK. I know I gave
you a lot.”
Later, when I took in his
biscuits, he asked, “Did you save the soup I couldn’t eat?”
“No, each of the big dogs
had a bite. I’ll cook more for you.”
“You never bite soup. You
sip soup. I always sip soup.”
Life with The Little King
is a continuous roll of learning, loving and laughing.
Order Amusing to
Profound, My Conversations With Animals, at www.matthewbooks.com.
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