Grass And Hair

I often have fantasies of a peaceful life spent doing some simple, repetitive task--darning socks, say, or making baskets, or saying rosaries for the souls in Purgatory.  I don't know what prompts these dreams, because in reality I have less tolerance for repetition than just about anybody.

Take this morning, part of which I spent weeding the cracks between the stones of our patio, pulling up plants who think there is no better place in the whole green earth to call home than the gap between two pieces of slate.  These gaps are so narrow that I can't get my weeding tool into them, and am reduced to yanking out the weeds with my fingernails.  This works o.k. with things like clover and mint, which are easy to uproot after a rain, when the ground is wet and soft.  But dandelions and crabgrass happily surrender their leaves, secure in the knowledge that this will strengthen their root systems and allow them to put out even more luxuriant growth.

Time and time again, between June and September, I weed the patio.  And time and time again I rue the day when I decided to build a patio outside the back door, instead of a deck.  I went with the patio option because around these parts slate practically grows on trees, and it would have been a crime against nature to use any other material.  Yet every time I weed I think how a deck would have saved me this endless, boring, finger-hurting task. 

And then I wonder why I cannot simply accept this weeding, be one with the crabgrass and the dandelions, and give thanks that I can still squat for hours.  And I do, for a minute or two, but before I know it, I'm deep in technicolor fantasies about a deck.

Spent the rest of the morning brushing dogs--mostly Wolfie. If you have never brushed a German Shepherd, you have no idea what I'm talking about.  Among their many distinctions, Shepherds are the all-breed champion growers and shedders of hair.  They have top coats and under coats, long hairs and short hairs, stiff hairs and soft-as-dandelion-fluff-stick-to-your-lips hairs.  They are generous with their hair, letting you have it by the pound--on your rugs, your clothes, your air--because there's always more where it came from, in all seasons. 

Again, I ask myself, why can't I just be present with the brush, and the dog panting in my face, and the sun beating down on us all?  Why can't I be grateful, etc. etc.?  And why, why, having over the years brushed several cubic tons of hair off Lexi did I have to go and get another Shepherd?

I lucked out with Bisou, though.  Her coat is long and fine, and knots just slide off.  It doesn't take long to get her looking like a Breck Shampoo Girl, and at the end of the session all I have to show for it is barely a handful of red and gold strands. 

So now the dogs are brushed and the patio's weeded.  But even as I reward myself by writing here, I can hear the faint sounds of weeds and hair pushing up through earth and skin.

Dog Salon

This morning, while a blizzard raged outside, I held one of my periodic dog salons. The beauty, not the intellectual kind.

Grooming is not my favorite dog-related activity. I get bored and impatient, and so do the dogs. But grooming has to be done, especially if you have German Shepherds and don't want your house ankle-deep in dog hair.

Reminding myself that this was a sacred task to which I should give all my attention, I spread a sheet on the bedroom floor and got out the box of treats. I always do Wolfie first, to get in the mood. Good soul that he is, he lay on his back and let me go to work, his paw limp in my hand, all the while doing a charming low-register yodeling that I interpret as, “I think perhaps you are going to kill me. Yes, I think that is what you have in mind. Can it be that you are killing me? Oh well, if you really want to, go ahead. But try to be gentle.”

The minute she heard the yodeling and the opening of the treat box, Lexi decided that she was not too old/arthritic/tired to climb the stairs and join us, even if it meant getting her nails clipped. I had to keep her from trampling Wolfie to get to the treats. She retired to the edge of the sheet, looking hungry (she'd had breakfast half an hour earlier) and waiting for her turn.

I released Wolfie and called Lexi. She came and rolled over on her back while keeping her eyes firmly locked on the treats. Doing Lexi's nails is a tedious task, for she hates the clippers and I have to file the nails with sandpaper, which takes a long time. But I tried to attend to what I was doing instead of thinking about what I was going to make for supper, and eventually it was over.

As long as I was covered in nail dust I figured I might as well give both dogs a brushing, especially as I've been noticing major dust bunnies in every corner of the house. My preferred venue for brushing is outdoors, where the wind carries away the hair and the birds can use it for their nests. That means that the dogs don't get brushed much in winter. Mercifully, that is the one season when they don't shed.

As soon as I put the brush on Lexi, however, I realized that she has started her spring shedding, big-time. I brushed her back (got handfuls of long stiff black guard hairs), the back of her hind legs (lovely fine white hairs), the side of her thighs (velvety short tan hairs), her shoulders (ditto), her tail....Do not think for a moment that when I say I brushed her back or her thighs I actually ran out of hair to pull out. It simply means that my arm got tired of brushing in that position, or Lexi got fidgety and I had to brush a different spot. In ten years of brushing Lexi, I have never once run out of loose hair. Sometimes it seems as if she is producing new hair even as I brush, like some torture out of Greek mythology.

Eventually I gave up and released her, then called Wolfie. I got long stiff black guard hairs from his back, quantities of shorter black hairs with fuzzy dark gray undercoat from his hips, short reddish-tan hair from his legs. I brushed and brushed, and the hair kept coming. I tried my best to stay in the moment. This is the point at which I always ask myself, as my forearms begin to cramp, what on earth possessed me to get a second German Shepherd? Why not a labradoodle or a pugle or a shitzypoo—a dog whose hairs will stick to its skin as opposed to its entire environment? I brushed some more. Wolfie's coat is shorter than Lexi's, but amazingly there seems to be just as much of it. I estimate I'd gotten about a third of his loose hair by the time I let him go.

Although I'd been doing my best to catch the hair and throw it into a trash can as I brushed, the sheet was covered with hair, and soft woolly strands were wafting in the air currents above the heater. I looked down at my body and saw that, superficially at least, I had been transformed into a German Shepherd. I wondered if that is how the werewolf legends got started.

I opened the back door and shook the sheet out into the blizzard, which predictably blew the hair and nail clippings back onto me. Working hard to stay in the present I got the sticky roller brush and used up four sticky sheets to metamorphose back to human form.

Nails clipped and coat somewhat in order, the dogs collapsed on the rug and rested while their bodies got to work metabolizing all those treats into more toenails, and a fresh crop of hair.