EcoHearth: Come Home to the Earth

As a foster-dog parent, I’m often asked if I love all my fosters equally? The correct answer is yes. The real answer...Of course, not.

I respect all my fosters equally; give food, walks, love and treats equally; but my heart fuses with only a few. Just as in person-to-person love, interspecies love is an alchemy that has no recipe. There’s no common physical trait, age, breed, size or issue that seems to bind me to a certain dog. It’s often not an ‘instant’ love, either.

Take Buddy, who came to me as a third-strike guy. He’d been adopted and returned to the shelter—twice. (This after being given up initially by his first human.) Because the Santa Fe Shelter is wonderfully funded and staffed, Buddy was in no danger of being euthanized, but he was in danger of spending his entire life in a small, cramped space going nuts.

His issues were ‘marking’ (pissing everywhere), ‘humping’ and ‘energy level.’ Not to mention he has only half a nose and half a mouth. A sort of severe cleft-palate issue. Plus an odd tooth growing out of his nasal cavity.

I was warned that “Buddy doesn’t get along with other dogs,” but soon found out he was fine with other dogs. Just a bit too fine. Buddy liked to hump. I mean really liked to hump. Hours upon hours upon hours of uninterrupted, serious humping—rugs, chairs, balustrades, dogs, legs—whatever—followed by a bit of sleep and then more humping—hips doing the nasty almost before he was even awake. Unlike most humping dogs, Buddy didn’t need the dominance, he needed the actual contact. The energy release.
As a neutered male it took him a very long time to climax. But it was okay with him—he’d hump for weeks if need be.

He humped so hard for the first few weeks that his willie was red and raw, then alarmingly purple and raw, then just mottled, scary and raw. He humped through dinner parties, long French movies, waking hours, sleeping hours, farming hours (humping an ice-coated bale of hay could go on for frickin’ ever—until there was no ice left), eating hours, etc. (Yes, he would hump the air even while he ate.) His behavior was unattractive. It was uncouth. It made me a little sick. It scandalized my very Catholic neighbors. It flummoxed my vet, until she said, “The only thing I can diagnose is a screw loose.”

Still, I decided I wasn’t going to send him back to a small enclosure, no matter what. I was a ‘rescue,’ and the hard stuff was what I did.  If Buddy had to hump, I’d just have to apply salve when needed, give him extra vitamin C, and part ways with my neighbors. I’d separate him from the other dogs so he wouldn’t traumatize them. It was just this separation that worked.

Buddy and I went on long solitary walks together—after the other dogs and I had walked. The longer Buddy’s walk, the newer and more novel the place we visited, the less he humped back home. After a month of different places, it got to the point that Buddy wasn’t humping, marking or howling at all. As long as he smelled new scents, saw new sights, ran at least five miles a day in new surroundings, he was calm. A perfect gentleman with the other dogs. He even stopped humping couch legs and hay bales. And my legs.

I’d had no desire to become a runner, but because of Buddy I did so. I became reluctantly healthier, too.

So now, I have daily dog walks and ‘Buddy runs.” Buddy has become my best friend—my canine soul mate—a force in my life I can’t imagine living without.

Buddy is now the ambassador of the Rancho de Chihuahua. He needs to go somewhere new every day and drags me along. I am happier for it and my Catholic neighbors can visit once again.

Buddy and I will soon need a new planet to explore.

But at least I’m not worried about salves for the moment. Salves are actually kind of gross and hard to make—not to mention in Buddy’s case weird to use. But that’s another story.

Updated 6/19/10; originally posted 5/5/09.

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