The Counselors Are In

Found an interesting post over at Divine Caroline's blog about Rolling Dog Ranch, a great animal sanctuary we've mentioned on here before. But for those who haven't read about them, it's a great little refresher piece. Check out "Counselors Help Families Care for Their Disabled Pets." I think you'll dig it!

Happy Birthday, Super Man.

Christopher Reeve, Actor and Activist, 1952-2004

Today would have been Christopher Reeve's 57th birthday. Though I enjoyed the first Superman movie and his time-travel romance, "Somewhere In Time" (best part: the soundtrack), I can't say I was a huge fan of his film work.

Oh, he was a good enough actor. But it was what he chose to do after he became paralyzed by a fall from a horse that I consider his most important life's work. At a time when many would have simply given up and given in, Mr. Reeve became his strongest, most passionate self. Instead of feeling sorry for himself, he and his wife (who, tragically, followed him in death not long after he died in 2004) created the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation.

One part of that foundation is its Paralysis Resource Center (PRC). This is a collection of publications, films and other informational items from which people can learn about paralysis is all its forms. Through these resources, families touched by this physical challenge can learn that they're not so all alone, and can make informed decisions about how they will handle their situations.

My publishing company, Word Forge Books, is very proud that our latest title, Almost Perfect, is one of the many books in the loan library of the PRC. We're honored that the Foundation found our little book worthy of inclusion in such a significant collection. We're in quite distinguished company there, among some of the most important books ever written on the subject.

And all because one man refused to allow the loss of movement in most of his body to stop him from contributing something of real value to his world. Amazing what you can do when you put your mind to it, isn't it? His is the human version of so many stories we know about disabled animals who wouldn't even imagine allowing their disabilities to define their lives. Bless this incredible man for making the spreading of this message the most important story he ever told...and this time, he wasn't acting.

So, happy birthday, Chris. You were—truly—a SUPER man.

P.S. Thanks to our ever-alert Roberta for bringing this to my attention.

A Dragon Lives Forever...But Not So, Little Girls

Mary Travers, 1936-2009

Late last night, just before shutting down my computer, I learned I had lost someone who was very important in my early life.

Mary Travers, one-third of the trio "Peter, Paul and Mary," left us yesterday. She had battled leukemia for years, and I'm glad she's no longer suffering. But oh, how I will miss her, and them together.

PP&M's music is THE soundtrack to my childhood, and their songs were especially comforting during times of family upheaval. When things got loud and scary, my little sister would bring her albums into my room and we'd put them on my portable "close-and-play" style record player. We'd shut the door, crank up the volume, and for the length of an album side, we would feel safe and less stressed while we listened to their beautiful harmonies and uplifting songs.

Particularly -- and why I'm posting here -- we loved "Puff, The Magic Dragon." It was the song that introduced me to the concept that an animal's love could, indeed, make life wondrous and rewarding. It taught the lesson not to take for granted those whom you love, and who love you. And I will always be grateful for this ever-present spot of gentleness in a world that often feels like the tumble cycle in a dryer full of rocks.

I read a beautiful tribute to her this morning, and it moved me to want to post something of my own.

Thanks, Mary, for all the peace, love and awareness you brought into my life. May you now soar free and sing for eternity, perched on the gigantic tail of an emerald-scaled Puff; for a song once told me, "A dragon lives forever...in a land called Honah Lee."

And so I will leave you with this video of the young trio singing "Puff." The sound quality's not as good as later versions, but this is the one I fell in love and grew up with. They're all in great voice, with full octave ranges before they were ravaged by time and other influences. And don't we all want to be remembered as our best selves?

Of Great Redeeming Value

After the wrenching story of Edwina and my subsequent rant, I want to share with you something my dear friend Sandy sent me. Somehow my friends always know when to show up in my life, and I am so incredibly thankful. Please enjoy the healing of this video -- I hope it has a similar effect on you. :)

Okay, I just can't even stand this...

WARNING: ANGRY FEMINIST RANT. Today's is not a happy post. You may wanna skip this one.

--

My new cyber-friend, Dusty Rainbolt (yes, it's her real name - wish mine was something interesting like that!), sent me a FaceBook invitation to join her "Helping Edwina" cause. I checked it out and it made me absolutely, physically ill late last night.

It's another example of a sick, twisted human willfully creating a disabled animal. It is so far beyond anything I can comprehend that my mind just can't wrap around the horror and senselessness of it. But Edwina still needs help, so if posting her story here can be part of bringing both her particular story and this general problem to light, I must do it.

I continue to imagine what it is that must drive these twisted individuals to hurt animals. And I can't help but see that cats tend to get tortured more than dogs, at least in these really sick ways. It occurs to me that our society tends to vilify cats for some reason, while it tends to sanctify dogs. And this issue vexes me, because I think everyone tiptoes around the root of it.

Well, I'm tired of this behavior, because I believe it is part of an almost unwitting conspiracy of silence that allows it to continue. So I'm gonna venture my opinion, since this is my blog and I can. I'm aware that I'm probably going to make myself a pariah to some people...and frankly, I don't care. SOMEONE has to speak up about this.

I think it started WAAAAY back when the species lived pretty much separately and didn't have much to do with each other. But at some point, dogs became domesticated and for the most part, fairly obedient, subservient and dependent. This sat well with the Rulers of All Things at the time: men. Because men like to think they're always running the show, even when they're not -- which is more often than they'd ever believe. (Guys, if this is a revelation to you, get over it. If it's not, then you've obviously got a few years on you and know it's the truth.)

I believe this whole attitude has always been the case, but that it became ensconced in cultural law in the Christian Bible. Right there in Genesis, where God says "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth."

My first thought is, What's with this "we" business? I thought God was supposed to have done this whole creation thing alone? And I am SO glad we don't have to still deal with the stilted "creepeth" kind of language anymore. But I digress.

The problem was that all the young dudes got it wrong when parsing out what this actually meant for them. They somehow mistook "dominion" for "domination," which effectively removed the latter side of the "power = responsibility" equation. And it's been an ugly scene for the critters -- and women, and pretty much anyone else who was under their power -- ever since.

But it's been particularly ugly for cats. And in my mind, the connection is much the same.

All those years of the Christian religion trying to eradicate the influence of the nature-based pagan spiritualities have taken their toll. It makes sense to me that the big boys of the Christian church would single out cats -- because they're solitary, independent and uncontrollable, everything that's anathema to this religion and especially to its men -- as being "Satan's familiars," and somehow attached to black witchcraft.

As Dana Carvey's Church Lady would say, "How conVEEEEEENient!" How utterly nice for them that they could culturally and legally subdue ALL that they couldn't control in one fell swoop... and all with the imprimature of the Holy Church. Every time I think of it, I just seethe.

All through the shameful Burning Times during our country's early settlement, cats were tortured and killed alongside any woman who dared live her life similarly solitary, independent and uncontrollable.

And apparently, that attitude has never left us. The endless stories of abused, battered and dead women is mind-numbing, and shows no sign of becoming any shorter. And I bet at least once a month I hear some guy make a remark about how much he hates cats. And cats pay for this all-too-ubiquitous hatred every day with their lives and their well-being.

I'll bet I'm not alone in conjecturing that more than one cat has endured such pain because it happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and ended up standing in as a surrogate for the woman that guy REALLY wanted to hurt. But he knew no one would say too much if he just took it out on a cat. And it just makes me freakin' sick.

I apologize if I have offended any of my Christian readers, but I believe what I say is the truth. And I don't believe ANY religion has the right to use its holy writs as justification to harm any other living thing. And I don't believe that EVERY man hates cats -- I know better, and am thankful.

But am I saying that I'm certain that all these kinds of animal torture are inflicted by men? Certain -- no. I can't factually prove it. But my life experience tells me that I'm 99.9% sure that women -- at least those in their right minds -- just don't do stuff like this to animals.

Yes, they occasionally drown their kids, even dismember them and throw them in swampy areas to dispose of the bodies, and I don't take this horror lightly. I believe this behavior is driven by something related to what motivates men to torture and disfigure animals -- but in an absolutely opposite manifestation. And this is not the place to discuss that. Neither is right, but they're not the same. And I just don't think many women do this to animals.

Okay, end of rant. I don't hate guys. But I do hate a lot of what they do.

If you have the stomach for it, please read Edwina's story and do what you can to help. If you can't help, bless you for sending healing energy to this stray who didn't deserve what was done to her.

TRIUMPH! A Tale of Many Cities

Thanks for all the feedback on my Aug. 31st post about Molly and all the sweet critters that have been helped with their own set of wheels. I got a great suggestion from Khyra the Siberian Husky (and sometimes her mom) not to forget about Triumph, another husky who has absolutely earned her name by coming through the most amazing of difficult circumstances with flying colors. So I want to share her story here:

Triumph's story began in Turkey where she was found on the roadside, bleeding. Her rear legs had been severed. She was taken to a shelter, where the first of many miracles began. They treated her wounds and kept her alive, instead of euthanizing her as many would have.

Her story was put in the local paper (above), and for the next two months, they tried to find her a forever home. Unfortunately, no one came forward. However, two volunteers who worked with the shelter took a liking to Triumph and began the huge effort of trying to find that forever person.

Renin -- one of those volunteers -- and her mother, Armagon, contacted a friend in Philadelphia. That friend, Coral, put the story up on the Web, with the same picture in the news clipping above. The look on Triumph's face was hard to ignore for those visiting the Siberian rescue sites, where it caught the interest of Belinda in Baltimore.

She posted it somewhere and it was sent via email to a woman in Nashville, who has worked for years with the most severely abused dogs, damaged either physically or emotionally. "Moe" (as she is called), would be the first to tell you that when she did the first reading of the story and got to the part that said the dog was in Turkey, she just didn't see what she could do, and deleted the story.

But fate was at work. That same day, another person sent her the same photo with the same plea: "Can you please help this animal?" At that point, it was obvious to Moe that she was supposed to do something about this dog. So she began gathering information and after 6 weeks of effort, Belinda, Coral and Moe were finally able to get a plane reservation to Turkey.

Read more to learn the whole, happy ending... Thanks, Khyra, for the great story tip!

Wheels Are Wonderful!

The Mollinator in healthier times

This post is in memory of Molly, our next-door neighbor, who lost her struggle with old age and a host of worsening ailments last Thursday. She was a beautiful soul and a Lab from nose to tail. I adored her.

We moved into our current home more than ten years ago, and Molly came to our neighbors not long before. So when she had to leave it was strange, because she had been in our lives as long as we had been here. She was as much a part of our lives here as her parents, her Weimie brother Clyde, or any of our other neighbors. She frequently came over to visit us as long as she was able.

Then, when her back end failed last year, her dad, Alan, built her a cart out of PVC pipe and painted it bright, fire engine red. He made little pockets hooked to bungie cords to suspend her feet so they wouldn't drag on the ground and get hurt, because she couldn't feel them anymore. What a beautiful sight she was with that flash of red against her smooth, golden coat. How she whizzed along again in that lovingly built set of wheels!

And what dear parents hers are, who arranged the last few years completely around the schedule they needed to properly care for her. They even did "the wheelbarrow," holding ol' Moll's useless back legs while she would motor along on her still-able front paws down the steep slope to our place, which her cart couldn't negotiate...powered, always, by her still-willing heart. God, that dog had heart. Even though the back legs no longer moved, the tail beat back and forth with as much enthusiasm as ever, and Molly never ceased to bring joy anywhere she went.

Bless your hearts, Al and Jeanette, for sharing your girl with us, and for giving her the love and care and dignity she so richly deserved until her very last moment. You are special, special people we'll always be proud to call friends.

And Molly, you will always be my big, yella dawg. I'll miss you forever.

~~~

Rollin' With Soul

One of the best things I ever did as a publisher was choose the photo of irrepressible Ruby for the front of our book, Almost Perfect. Every one of the critters profiled in the essays inside is worthy of recognition for his or her own specialness. But that image of Vicki Tiernan's Ruby cruising happily along in her cart with that impossibly large "stick" (okay, BRANCH is more like it) in her mouth just has that certain, unnameable something that embodies the inspiring, uplifting spirit we tried to capture in our stories.

And so I chose that shot, careful to make sure our great cover designer, Laura Pritchard, ran the length of that stick around the spine and onto the back cover as a visual metaphor for these creatures' outsized hearts and spirits. And it wasn't lost on most folks. I've received many comments, even emails about that image. So, from a publishing perspective, it does all the things an ideal cover is supposed to do...especially making people reach out to pick up the book.

But it also does something else.

That picture of Ruby brings to the fore the thought that dog carts/squealy-wheels/rump skates or whatever else you want to call them are not an object of pity, but a symbol of new-found freedom for previously trapped creatures who needed only a little help in becoming mobile to regain the joy in their lives. And this is something very, very cool.

Frankie knows wheels are kewl. (Frankie the Walk 'n Roll Dog)

Why?

• Because--like removing the stigma of wheelchairs for people--this attitudinal shift allows people to get past the wheels and see them as just another facet of the wonderful, vital pet rolling along on them.
  
• Because it reinforces the idea that, with just a little imagination and some money, we can restore to a previously active pet that which brings them the most happiness: freedom.
  
• Because it helps make people aware that pets who have lost some natural mobility can still enjoy a full, happy life alongside those who love them.
  
• And mostly, because it highlights the inventiveness shown by the companies who now manufacture these mobility devices for our sweet, furry and feathered friends. What heroes they are to these animals and to the people who love them!

Wheels: They're not just for dogs any more. (Lemon the Duck)

So, it is in this vein that I share with you a slightly dated but still interesting and relevant article from the Orange County Register from last March. I hope you enjoy it, and that you'll check out some of the wheel makers in the article and listed in our blogroll at bottom right. You never know when you or someone you know may need their services and products.