Day: November 13, 2011

I guess it’s been almost five years since Gretchen Pinkel entered my life and changed it. At the time, I was mostly alone at the farm, and I was in trouble in many different ways. And emerging from an especially lonely and confusing  – and very dark – winter. I saw a pamphlet for Kee-Pin Labs up at nearby Gardenworks and I often go and visit breeders and shelters and talk to the people I meet about dogs and the people who get them. I called Gretchen up and told her I wasn’t looking for a dog at the moment, but might be interested in a Yellow Lab at some point and Gretchen, who loves to know the people who are getting her dogs  invited me over for some cider and corn muffins. She has just had a litter and Gretchen, who is relentlessly low-key and gentle, does not try and push puppies on people, nor does she need to.

We sat outside, and I talked about my life with dogs, and my life, and she talked about her extremely arduous and conscientious breeding program – mentors, seminars, intricate knowledge of breeding, genetics and temperament, showing and competitions, not to mention the grueling process of birth, medical issues and acclamation. At one point, she brought out a black Lab puppy and I held the dog, and she came up and put her head on my shoulder, licked me on the chin, and went to sleep. I said thanks and left, and I thought if I ever want another dog, I’ll call Gretchen, because you can’t do better than that. Two days later I called her back and asked if that puppy was still around, and in those days, her puppies were sometimes available, at least for a week or so.

Two weeks later, I brought Lenore home. I always keep my dogs in crates when they first arrive, but Lenore made it up to bed on awfully cold and snowy winter night. I was desolate that night, and I remember Lenore coming to the foot of the bed as if she were born there, and before she fell asleep, I shocked myself by singing a Willie Nelson song about loneliness and love while the snow pelted against the windows and I wept.

I called her the Love Dog that night, and I wish I had words to tell you what that creature meant for me. She kept love and the idea of love alive for me, dark night after dark night, into the awful black hole that I fell. She made me smile every time I looked at her, and every time since, and she lifted my heart out of its cold space and filled it with light and warmth. I did not imagine that she would be the subject of one book, “Izzy and Lenore,” and then my first children’s book, “Meet The Dogs Of Bedlam Farm.” She is an ambassador of love and good will, spewing smiles and laughter wherever it is needed. I believe she began opening up the channel that ultimately led to my being able to find and love Maria. I know this process began with Lenore, who is a large dog now, and who hogs the food of the bed, but Maria and I both understand that whatever happens, she will never lose her place there. The Love Dog. So Gretchen also has a special place in my heart, because I’ve seen the kind of work – often unheralded – it takes to bring a dog like Lenore into the world. And into my life.

So thanks again, Gretchen.  You and John do good.

People sometimes tell me it is wrong to buy a dog from a breeder when there are so many in need of rescue, and while I understand the impulse I do not share it. I have two rescue dogs and two from breeders and both have been wonderful experiences for me. I believe people should get the right dog for them,  and in the right way, wherever it comes from. And to me, it is inappropriate to tell anybody else how to get a dog. It’s an individual decision.

Dogs like Lenore or Rose have wonderful traits that good breeders helped instill and preserve by difficult and expensive work and experience over years. Gretchen Pinkel is such a breeder, and it is a pleasure to see her line evolve into beautiful, healthy dogs with amazing temperament.

To know her is to see firsthand how hard that is to do, and I am so grateful to her for matching me up with Lenore, who has brightened my life and so many others, adults and children. Thanks Gretchen.

Gretchen Pinkel, Lenore’s Breeder, and the best breeder I have known, has seven new pups from her latest litter, and she invited Maria and I over to help socialize them. Tough work, but somebody’s got to do it. Maria was beaming from ear to ear, and Gretchen’s pups don’t really need a lot of socializing, any more than Lenore does.  I believe they are all spoken for, but you can see more of them at Gretchen’s website, www.kee-pinlabs.com. Gretchen is extraordinarily conscientious with her breeding program, and I learn a lot about being with dogs just by watching her and her husband John. If she twists our arm, we’ll go back and help some more. More photos later.

In America, we have made a national ideal out of minimal involvement in the growing, preparation and cooking of food. Our economists and politicians have greedily and shortsightedly embraced the centralization of our economy, the corporatizing of business, the globalization of trade and the gathering of productive, political, medical, media, cultural and economic power in fewer and fewer hands – always in the name of efficiency while garnering more and more profit.

You do not have to be an economist or a politician to see that this has resulted in the destruction – everywhere – of local traditions, economies and institutions, from farms to small businesses to community medical practitioners to work and the law and  affordable home ownership, freedom of choice in life,   affordable retirement, and most dramatically, to the notion that politicians represent people, and not entities. Sometimes I wonder just how much we are willing to give up to support the corporate economy. It seems pointless to me to Occupy Wall Street when our own communities, schools, libraries are emptying out because all of our money seems to have gone elsewhere.

It is not surprising that we turn to animals for community, or that we grieve so much for them when they die. For they are doing the work – dogs, cats, horses, donkeys – of community. They connect us to one another, give us support, provide enduring and unconditional love and stand by our sides in times of trouble, challenge and loneliness. Just consider that thousands of Americans compulsively, even obsessively, who rescue animals, even to the point of traveling to other parts of the country and world in order to have something to rescue, while politicians dine with lobbyists,  children go without health care and nutritious meals and the elderly retreat into living rooms to live for want of heating oil.

By watching how important animals have become in our loves, we reveal what it is that people and community are no longer providing. If we ever can rescue ourselves and the communities we live in, and the notion that the national ideal ought to be that food, work and life ought to be available,  satisfying and secure, perhaps animals will return to their glorious role of accompanying us through life, rather than defining what we wish it to be.

We are seeing what animals are for.  What are people for?