Somewhere, My Dog is Dancing With the Zebra

It has been a hard summer. Not just because of yesterday, but we'll get there. 

The past several months have taxed me with a growing stress of trying to do and be too much. While some of this stress was self-inflicted, others of it was caused by forces outside my control. The worst part was that, as this stress multiplied like cancerous cells, I didn't let myself slow down. How could I? There was too much to do. Too much to be. 

With a relentless adherence to my routine, I ignored the friction between my heart and mind. At some point, my heart gave up. I became a person that I myself hated spending time with, anxious, sleep-deprived, and irritable. 

Three Mondays ago, I came home from work to my brother, who was visiting me. 

"Hi, I loaded and started the dishwasher," he greeted. 

"WHAT. Why? It wasn't even full," I snapped. He was silent as I stormed to the spotless kitchen and stared at the dishwasher whose silent chug, to a sane person, is serene. My confused brother retired to the living room while I remained in the kitchen to make my dinner. What is wrong with you? He was helping you. 

The episode was like an earthquake. I was a human earthquake, coming out of nowhere and shaking his world in the worst way imaginable. I had let everything build up for too long. Luckily, I went on vacation just days after. It rejuvenated me, but I shouldn't have let my stresses mount to this magnitude in the first place. 

The day before my personal one, San Francisco had a real earthquake. The largest since 1989. One that jolted most of us awake into a shaking world, wondering what was going on. It had been a while since we'd thought about earthquakes, let alone done one of those elementary school duck-and-cover drills. 

That's the thing about earthquakes -- both personal and terrestrial. They are so few and far between that they seem to come out of nowhere. The build-up is not perceptible. When they occur, when we finally notice them, they are a big, scary jolt. 

Yesterday, my dog Pepper died. She was old, so logically, her death was not a surprise. Still, it was unexpected on this day. It shook my world. In this case, the jolt signified not the start, but the end of an earthquake.

From the day Pepper officially joined our family on December 1, 1999, she shook up our lives, in the best way possible, every single day. Unlike mounting stress or fault lines, she never, not for a second, let us forget she was there. She was a perpetual earthquake.

In the early days, it meant frequent puppy crazies and chewing on everything. As she grew older, it came in the form of barks at human and squirrel passer-bys; a heavy head on your thigh under the dinner table; and a paw grabbing your hand down for a scratch. It came in the form of pillows on the floor and eyes of denial when we'd ask, "Did you sit on the sofa?" And when she was older still, it came with insisting that you present her with meals in the most ceremonious way possible -- just dumping food in her bowl would never do. 

Perhaps this was the only way she could get noticed, being a dog amongst humans. In the opening of The Art of Racing in the Rain, Garth Stein's canine protagonist Enzo describes it best by stating, "Gestures are all that I have; sometimes they must be grand in nature. And while I occasionally step over the line and into the world of the melodramatic, it is what I must do in order to communicate clearly and effectively."

While I can't speak for fault lines, us humans can learn a lot from dogs. Dogs know how to listen to their own bodies and those of others. They know what they are feeling when they are feeling it. They act accordingly, immediately. There is no build-up.

They minimize the friction between heart and mind.

Pepper was, among many other things, my secret Richter Scale. She listened patiently as I slowly unloaded my stresses, then, with those knowing eyes, gauged how to respond -- sometimes with a lick and sometimes by taking me for a spastic run around the house. She shielded the rest of the world from many of my personal earthquakes. 

Pepper made a permanent mark on my heart. I cherished every opportunity to duck-and-smother her with love. What I would give for just one tiny aftershock!

Though I am sure it will get easier, this moment right now, is just so, undesirably still.

If you knew Pepper and have any fun memories with her, please share them in the Comments section below!