Facing my Mortality with a Little Dog Therapy!

Rosie and I have been busy. We’ve been working on our certification for the St. John’s Ambulance Therapy Dog Program. For a puppy that was stubborn, free willed and not interested in pleasing anyone, Rosie has come a long way.

Friends and family snickered when they heard I was testing Rosie to be a therapy dog, “Rosie, really?” As a puppy she was so difficult to train that I actually contemplated, out loud, the possibility of giving her back to the breeder. Feisty and smart with a ‘I don’t give a dam attitude’, she’s a three and half year old Golden Labrador bitch who I believe has great potential for service.

After an extensive application and phone interview, (Rosie was very quiet during the phone interview), orientations, references and criminal record checks, it was time to test Rosie. I was so nervous. Together we were evaluated for ninety minutes on a series of social interaction tests, obstacles, and simulations all observed very seriously by the St. John’s Ambulance adjudicator. Volunteers dressed in masks and robes approached her, she navigated through a simulated busy hospital lobby, she met people in wheelchairs and had metal trays and cymbals crashing in her ears. To my delight she kept her focus and composure. I was one proud Mum when she received her official St. John’s Ambulance bandana.

We are now a month into our service at a 130 bed extended care facility operated by Providence Heath Care in Vancouver’s south side. Eighty percent of the residents have some level of dementia and most are in wheelchairs. Twenty percent are confined to their beds with no understanding of the world around them. It’s hard to look at. Hard to see how the invisible people in our community are spending their final days. It’s not pretty, but it’s human and touching and as rewarding as it is disturbing.

“Why are you doing this?”, a friend asks in disbelief. I just have to look around me, a relative has just been diagnosed with alzheimer’s, a second cousin had a stroke, my girlfriend has breast cancer and I’m getting older. I am conscious to eat well, stay active, wear sunscreen, and reduce my stress, after all there’s heart disease in the family, and I’m in my mid 50’s. Life is moving faster, and we are all moving towards the end of life, facing that reality with my dog Rosie is another step along the journey.

Rosie is just one of 450 therapy dogs in the province of British Columbia. They are all working, either in hospitals helping children and seniors, aiding patients with brain injuries, soothing trauma victims and autistic children. Love and affection from a dog is therapy worth giving and receiving.

I am impressed how quickly Rosie has come to understand when to stop and be patted, give someone a wet kiss, walk away, wait patiently for wheelchairs to pass, spit out a pill or position her back in just the right spot to be scratched. Most importantly she remembers the best spots to find breakfast crumbs.

Coming up in my next blog I’ll share some of our tender moments with the residents, but for now I’ll say good night to Rosie on the eve of our weekly visits to the hospital. I’ll tell her she’ll be doing her service tomorrow, and she’ll look up at me from her bed with those big brown eyes, smile and wag her tail. I’ll pat her on the head and remind her what a good girl she is.

Breaking the Rules

I break the rules, not everyday, but almost everyday. Just little rules, tiny rules, so they don’t really count, right?

I trespass walking my dog through a local farmers field, but word is the owner doesn’t mind as long as we cleanup after our four legged friends while we trespass. Clearly others are breaking the rules too as I pick up soggy clumps of dog poop ignored by rule breaking pet owners.

I speed, yes I like to go zoom zoom. I am careful to watch the needle on the speedometer so it just grazes 20 kilometers above the posted speed limit, then if I get caught I won’t have my car impounded. I speed because I’m late, because I like to drive fast and because I’m impatient. I jaywalk. If I choose not to walk the extra distance to the crosswalk I will dash between cars when the timing is right. I am careful to make sure it’s safe, and there are no police officers watching me while I take a short cut.

Curious I surveyed family and friends to see how they break the rules. Their answers either came fast and furious or painfully slow, “Hum I can’t think of anything right now, no I don’t think I ever break the rules”. When I relayed my own personal infractions suddenly everyone I asked had a mischievous grin and a twinkle in their eye, and a confession. I discovered someone in my family doesn’t always add green waste to the green can, slipping the odd organic matter into the regular garbage. Shocking!

Using the Safeway self serve check-out a friend presses the ‘non organic’ button to weigh and pay for their ‘organic’ carrots. Friends are guilty of drinking wine and beer at the beach, despite knowing they were breaking a by-law by having a cold one in public. One family member goes without a bike helmut. The dumbest of rules to break. A friend confided in me that when there are no cars around he will drive through a red light, usually on his early morning trips to work. His wife listening nearby was horrified to hear this confession. Teenagers told me they share festival entrance wrist bands, and sometimes don’t confess when they get extra change back from a cashier.

However some rules are made for breaking. Early last month a West Virginia 911 dispatcher saved 17 month old Aden Walker by breaking the rules. Aden stopped breathing and his Grandmother was on the end of the telephone pleading for help as the toddler turned blue. The dispatchers regulations prevented him from giving medical advise over the phone. Protocol required she wait for the paramedics to arrive, a 20 minute drive from her home, but Tim Webb broke the rules and guided Aden’s Grandmother on how to give CPR saving the boys life. Tim broke the rules, but he is a hero to the Walker family.

Some people make up their own rules, like my Irish Grandmother who had one rule she was adamant I follow. “Always wear clean underwear”. Her reasoning, “You never know when you will be hit by a bus, always have fresh panties, that way when they cut your clothes off in the hospital emergency room the first thing they will notice is that your knickers are clean”. Daily clean underwear, that’s a rule I never break. Thanks Granny.

Civilized healthy societies are structured around rules. They keep us safe, they provide order and protect us from ourselves and others. They allow us to live in harmony. Everyday we choose to walk within the lines, to conform to the laws, but occasionally it feels ok to break the rules as long as no one gets hurt. It’s important to ask ourselves what rules we break, why and how we justify them, a healthy exercise in understanding human nature. Mischievous, rebellious, cynical, non conformist or lazy we rule breakers have our justifications, for better or worse.

Next time when I walk past the do not trespass sign I’ll smile and give a little wink. I’m breaking the rules but I’ve got it under control and hey if I see a little pile of poop that doesn’t belong to my dog I’ll pick it up and remember what goes around comes around.

Sandwiches at Christmas

I won’t be eating sandwiches on Christmas Day. I’ll be hosting 12 for turkey dinner after a month of birthdays, anniversary’s, shopping, decorating, baking and cleaning. I’ll feel like the filling stuffed between 2 big pieces of heavy bread, because I am, ‘the sandwich generation’.

Combined, my partner and I have 5 children between the ages of 23 and 30, 5 parents between 75 and 83, 2 dogs, siblings, cousins, and in-laws! While the Shnauzer and the Labrador get along famously, the humans don’t always see eye to eye. That means it’s the sandwich generation’s job to do the juggling, and the stakes are never higher than at Christmas time.

My calendar is my constant companion as we approach December, this may be also due to the fact that 6 people in the family have December birthdays, including myself. Juggling family members who can’t be at the same table, lumping some parts of the family with others, I juggle and switch and maneuver to please those we love the dearest. I am the conductor, designer of the Christmas schedule.

Every year I plan to rise above Christmas expectations that bombard us from November to January. From television commercials, to the cooking channel, to store flyers, images of the ‘perfect’ Christmas surround us. I struggle with wanting to create a idyllic Norman Rockwell Christmas and at the same time understanding that it’s an illusion created to keep us consuming and digesting ‘stuff’. Despite my practical side I fall back on old sentimental customs and repeat the patterns of tradition while vowing to do something different ‘next year’.

Getting that Christmas feeling is harder these days as my children grow into adulthood and my parents grow more fragile. The magic of Christmas is constantly being redefined as the years passed. From the childhood Christmas’s I remember with bulging packages arriving from overseas and the families that welcomed us into their homes since our family was so far away. To romantic Christmas’s newly married, decorating our first tree and learning to cook a turkey. Then the arrival of two babies and the joy of seeing the wonder of Christmas morning through my children’s eyes. Sadly after my husband’s passing Christmas became a burden for my children and I. The presence of his absence was like the bright Northern star on top of the tree, yet I couldn’t ignore the celebration that surrounded us. So like other families who have great loss we did the best we could.

Christmas 2014 and I am living the next chapter of my life, a new love and an aging family brings renewed responsibilities. I am embracing and adapting to a different family dynamic with it’s own Christmas traditions and needs. My new and old family is like the Christmas sugar cookie dough I blend, kneed and try to shape into something healthy and beautiful.

I may feel like a sandwich between the ends of two different generations but I’ll do my best to bring them together in the best way I can, and it’s a responsibility I cherish despite it’s challenges. Before I know it I’ll be on the bottom half of that sandwich wishing I was still in the middle where the juicy filling lies.

I’ll look for that magical feeling early Christmas Day surrounded by the stillness of the morning. I’ll think of the people I love who are missing but never far away. See the loved ones beside me and feel blessed with the promise of a wonderful day ahead and hope my sandwich’s turn out just the way I planned.

The best thing about living in Tsawwassen is Ladner

Moving to my new home in Beach Grove meant a daily commute to my job in Ladner. Nothing to complain about since my partner Mark travels to Vancouver every day. You would think after 15 years of catching ferries on the Sunshine Coast I would be punctual. Not me, being on time is something I’ve had trouble with all my life, moving to Tsawwassen hadn’t changed things. Coffee in hand, and sometimes a bowl of cereal in my lap, I was always racing against the clock. I calculated on a good day I could make it from my front door to Ladner Truck Road and 53rd Street, (if the traffic lights were in my favor), in 7 minutes. I may have only achieved this once when the stars were in perfect alignment.

After too many early morning frantic trips on Highway 17 I decided Arthur Drive would provide me with just the right zen approach to work I needed. So I left a little earlier and discovered the first gift of Ladner, birds on a wire. As I swung around the corner onto 28th Avenue I saw hundreds of starlings lining the electrical wires that crisscross the ever changing blueberry fields. Landing, lifting and fluttering away in a seamless dance I knew I’d found my new route.

I followed the birds until I drove up over the railway tracks onto Arthur Drive, there I got the first glimpse of the farmers fields, rewarding me with an ever changing color palette found only in nature. In Summer the fields are covered in dark green thick layers of leaves. In the Fall rotting dark violet cabbages decompose in the muddy earth. Winter and the fields turned to brown puddles. Spring came and I was seduced by the pale green promise of new growth.

Passing by ex BC Premier Bill Vander Zalm’s tudor style estate I am always impressed with the green lollipop trees that line his long driveway. More JR Ewing than gardener I know Lillian is living at the end of the road and I wonder, does she still wear headbands?

My favorite building on Arthur Drive is the white farm house across from Sacred Heart Parish. It’s always worth a generous look, as the landscape changes around it according to the seasons. Sometimes if I’m lucky the stable horse will be checking out the action on the Drive and I’ll catch a glimpse of his regal brown head peering gracefully over the barn door.

Driving past Kirkland House I am reminded of the history of the land, as the giant Harris Barn, restored to it’s new beauty, sits majestically in the background. Dotted along the drive are the reliable golden weeping willow trees gracing the banks of the slough until Arthur Drive ends at the quaint All Saints Anglican Church with it’s colorful corner garden.

If you continue into the village you will eventually find the best hardware store in western Canada, which served as the set for the soon to be released movie Fifty Shades of Grey. I am a fan of small independent shops and with a little investigation I soon discovered the interesting gems of Ladner. Now I make special trips for my dog bones, homemade chocolates, fresh fruits & veggies, kitchen supplies, seeds and unique gifts for my friends. I love the fresh fish I can buy, delicious baked goods, and the best sushi in Delta. In summer it’s Ladner that has the lower mainlands favorite weekend Market, along with an abundance of festivals, and events for every taste.

I don’t want to live in Ladner, I love Tsawwassen and I wouldn’t choose to live any where else, but the drive to Ladner and the villages close proximity is one of the reasons to love Beach Grove. So take a leisurely drive along Arthur Drive and pay attention, as Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Life is a journey not a destination”.

Comfortable in our homes we still share the human experience of those who suffer…it’s our responsibility

Growing up I was surrounded by radio and television news. My Father was a broadcaster and we were always plugged in. I watched tragedies, man made and natural, unfold before me whether it was starving children in Biafra, bodies blow apart by bombs or civil wars in far off lands. Most of the conflicts I observed took place in third world countries.

In my youthful ignorance I believed that life was valued differently in non westernized countries, that it was cheap and fleeting. Life was shorter, dying young was inevitable and common. Mothers wailing into the camera grieving for their sons or daughters on the streets of the Middle East or Asia seemed far removed from the private way North Americans expressed their grief. I presumed that they were prepared, and accepted burying their dead was the price they payed for battles over religion or land. They had lost a loved one, but I felt detached from their experience, presuming they processed grief differently.

That all changed when I began traveling in my 20’s. Immersed in new cultures and meeting people in third world countries I realized just how wrong I was to make presumptions about peoples levels of suffering from my comfortable middle class WASP vantage point.

Traveling helped me understand we all share the human experience of grief and loss no matter the color of our skin, our religious beliefs or what we own. Life is never cheap, anywhere. Every life is sacred and mourned by someone. Our regard for human life is what binds us, keeps us empathetic and compassionate.

This week I watched footage of charred bodies lying in a field in Eastern Ukraine and dead children arriving at a Gaza Hospital. I read about the promising and accomplished lives of those who perished on flight MH17 and about their families shattered to the core.

Last month it was RCMP officers killed by gunfire in a New Brunswick town that moved me to tears. Three promising University students stabbed to death at a party is still surreal, and an Alberta family is somewhere waiting to be brought home.

As the internet provides us with increasingly graphic details of the most personal and allows us in to some of the most intimate of places, how do we make sense it all? I can’t solve the conflict in Israel, or apprehend a mentally ill person before he commits a terrible crime. I have no control over the inevitable.

Thankfully it is the private empathetic experience that we can lean on when these distant tragedies unfold before us. Being awake and present to the suffering of others, even though it is not our fight, provides comfort for me and helps me process unexplainable tragedy.

Observer is the only role I play in the misfortune of others unfolding in far flung parts of the world and Canada, but it is relevant nonetheless. Turning away because it is uncomfortable does nothing to nurture our responsibility to connect with others, nor does it foster an awareness which we can draw from in our everyday lives.

Today we are lucky to be sitting comfortably in our homes, yet we understand everything can change in a heartbeat. Feeling empathy and compassion for those who suffer grounds us and prepares us for the unexpected. It is our responsibility to witness and understand the worlds suffering, keep watching, you will be better for it.

It’s A Dog’s Life…

Shortly after I moved to Tsawwassen I starting dreaming of getting a dog. My 4 year old Golden Retriever Finnigan had died a year earlier of an enlarged liver, and I felt the void. It was impractical, emotional and a life saver.

On assignment at Southpointe Academy for Delta TV I met an art teacher who’s 2 handsome well trained golden labs came to school with her every day. They sat quietly on a dog blanket and helped calm children with learning problems. She put me in touch with her breeder in Hatzic Lake and I made plans for a visit. “We’ll just look”, I told my partner.

6 weeks later our blond fluffy Rosie was curled up on my lap for the long drive home. Little did I know that hiding beneath that cute soft cuddly puppy face was a hellion. Stubborn and immune to discipline, she ate the furniture, nipped at our hands, ignored commands, and was completely uninterested in pleasing us. Amber Cottle’s puppy class gave us some hope, but she was boss and she knew it.

Given other pressures in my life I questioned whether I’d made a grave mistake. Juggling work, a new home and relationship, demanding children and parents, she tied me to the home. Scheduling work and social commitments all centered around the dog. “What about the dog”, became the preface to every discussion. Disciplining, walking, training, it was all consuming and tiring, and it wasn’t working. Rosie was some bad ass puppy. What had I done?

My bedside reading now included two Cesar Millan training books and Inside of a Dog, by Alexandra Horowitz . As Cesar Millan tells us, the dog owner is the problem, not the dog. Dogs are hungry, bored and lonely, they require love, praise and our affection. The dog whisperer encouraged me to practice positive reinforcement so I could have a balanced dog. The breeder said she would take the dog back no questions asked, anytime. I contemplated failure. I had puppy burnout!

But I needed Rosie.  Like she needed me for food and shelter. She put me in balance with nature and the rhythms of the seasons. I listened to the bird song, noticed which trees the eagles and the heron nest. Followed the obstacle route the squirrels take to collect nuts from our hazelnut tree. Noticed how rain water pools in the cracks of the road and why the crow flies. I watched the shifting sand change the beach front and recorded what days the muddy flats of the bay provide the best food for the migrant birds. I walked the farmers fields and saw the grass bend in the wind and the fertile soil yield to the winter rains.

Forced outside my comfortable home, in the best and worst of weather, I met the people who live in the houses I silently drive by. Rosie forced me to explain myself to those who had lived nearby for years. “What house do you live in”? I told my story, sometimes wishing I hadn’t revealed so much, and other times wishing I had shared more.

 

Two years later Rosie has friends named Jenny, Fixer, Molly, Elton and Gracie, Carlo and Dale. I have new friends too and last month my kitchen was filled with all the interesting and diverse women Rosie has introduced me too. We exchanged stories about our dogs and made excuses for their idiosyncrasies, we laughed.

Some days I’m not so sure who’s pulling the leash, myself or Rosie, but our relationship is solid and I adore her. I am thank-full for all that she has taught me about myself and the world around me. I am in balance with a dog in my life and I am always surprised at the abundance we have to give love and receive it.  Rosie knows what she can get from me and I know what I need from her. “Sit Rosie sit”.

 

Sharing Grief on the Information Highway…

Last Saturday I sat down in front of my apple desktop with my morning coffee in my cozy top floor office to check the weather, my email, and scroll through my facebook. It’s a ritual I find comforting. I love reading about the thoughts and activities of friends and family who live in different time zones while I sleep.

The first post I saw was from a dear friend of almost 30 years. He had been reluctant to fully participate in facebook but a new happiness made him go public. Working on a project in Asia he and his partner were excited to share they were pregnant with twins. He was the father of 2 young adult sons; she was going to be a first time Mum. I felt his excitement and the joy of being a parent once again later in life. I watched as the birth date got closer. He posted videos on bathing a baby, swaddling an infant, and the latest fad for toddlers, rubber stress boobies!

His twins arrived and his 98 facebook friends got to see intimate pictures of the delivery day. Healthy newborn twins, puffy eyed, downy white with droopy heads wrapped in yellow hospital blankets flanked by their proud parents. I ‘liked’ the photos, and wrote a congratulatory comment along with many of his other facebook friends. We were part of the journey, carried along for the ride. Every few weeks I would see the babies growing and changing and when professional photos were posted I cooed at my screen as they celebrated all their happiness and hope for the future. They took a trip, we saw them on the plane, by the pool, we were watching.

 

Saturday morning the post was different. “Our beautiful 4 month old baby daughter passed away suddenly on Friday at 2 am.” Grief poured out of my friends extended post, followed by assurances that the other twin was healthy. I wept in disbelief as I scrolled through photos of the baby with her twin, kissed by her Father, smiling at her Mother. I felt the gravity of tragedy striking when we least expect it.

All day I couldn’t shake the news that this sweet baby was taken so suddenly from her family. But I was also impacted by the way I received the news. The medium is the message, according to Canadian philosopher Marshal McLuhan, because it dictates, “The scale and form of human association and action”. Coined in 1964 his media theory was never more relevant than last Saturday when I sat before my computer in shock reading about my friends agonizing intimate loss. I felt the power of the medium I use everyday. The power it has to communicate in good times and in bad. The message was immediate, shocking and delivered by the capacity of the facebook medium.

 

My facebook feeds are full of important milestones, rights of passages, and hard won accomplishments. I know when some friends are having a nap or whether they like bran over blueberry. This is the deal we make with facebook to love you for the mundane and the extraordinary? We can choose to go public or private in times of tragedy, that is the beauty of the medium.

In 2005 when my husband became ill we spent 2 years struggling to keep his pancreatic cancer at bay, facebook wasn’t an option. While we were very open with his illness I couldn’t imagine posting about the rollercoaster ride we lived everyday, but I will always wonder.

I hope the messages of love and support comfort my friend and his partner, so far away from home and family, and with a long road of grief ahead of them, facebook keeps them connected. No one questions their motives, because there is only love and compassion among friends.

The medium may be the message, but this message is much too personal to let the medium get in the way!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How do we define Home?

To say that I have moved a lot would be an understatement. Nine different schools in thirteen years of public school and since then I have packed up my belongings too many times to remember. I moved to Beach Grove in Tsawwassen almost three years ago. The trajectory is both tragic and happy, somewhat of a rebirth.

My husband died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 50 after a two year brave struggle against the kind of cancer you never want to battle. Our children were 16 and 14. It was heartbreaking and life changing, but we survived and that was credit to my husbands strength of character under the most grave of circumstances.

After 4 years of picking up the pieces of my altered life I was blessed to meet the next love of my life. “I live in Beach Grove in Tsawwassen”, he said. Despite growing up in Vancouver I wasn’t familiar. “Oh I know it, that’s a traffic light you drive through on your way to the ferry terminal, I think you turn left”. I may have turned off Highway 17 once on my way to Point Robert’s in the fuzzy days of my partying youth, but Beach Grove, I’d never heard of it!

I remember following his directions to his Beach Grove Road home, turn left at the Shell station and can you pick me up some milk from the 7Eleven?” Forced to drive down 16th Avenue at 30K I had time to notice the beautiful golf course and follow the little streets with their majestic trees and assorted beach cottages and character homes. I could see the beach strand in the distance, what was this place? I discovered it was a little piece of paradise.

We had a long distance relationship, bookmarked by ferry terminals, I was living in Gibsons, he was in Tsawwassen. My job as host and producer at Coast TV was a dream position, but when a similar job opened up at Delta TV I jumped at the opportunity. It took a 5 ton truck and 3 weary men to bring my belongings across the water to a red wooden house across the street from Beach Grove Lagoon.

Building a new home in your 50’s with a new partner is not easy. It’s been a lesson in humility, generosity, and letting go. Not everyone understood that this was our new happiness.

My job at Delta TV demanded an immediate immersing in all things Delta. A geography that doesn’t make sense, it’s a community laid out by the political grid of practicality. From Burns Bog, to Boundary Bay, and Westham Island we covered it all in community TV and I soon became a fan. I noticed a familiar sense of pride in the community despite its busy border, ports, and terminals. Linked by farmland and lengthy highways Delta’s demographics, nationality and incomes include a spectrum of modern Canada, but there’s a fluidity that keeps it cohesive in its celebrations and festivals, sports, schools and politicians. Ah yes Politicians! I interviewed a few, current and past, and I was delighted that the majority of them revealed a sincerity and candor not often found in public office. But that’s another post.

Now as a freelancer and writer for hire I spend more time at home. But home is always where the heart is. Home is connecting to the natural beauty of your surrounding landscape, it’s your neighbors, your community. South Delta has all the natural ingredients. It’s also a fly way for beautiful North American birds. But unlike my feathered friends I won’t be migrating anytime soon, I plan to stay landed. I’m building a garden so I can feed the bees!

Ingrid Abbott is a freelance writer & broadcaster living in Tsawwassen, British Columbia

              Farmers organic potato fields, South Delta, & Beach Grove Lagoon, winter sunset