Tag Archives: dogs

Apr3

guinevere

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This is Guinevere.  Guinnie is an off-the-track greyhound that we adopted from Greyhound Friends in Hopkinton, MA. She is bringing me back her favorite toy for another toss.  Look at those eyes.

Most greyhounds do not fetch.  They often do not sit because of their big haunch muscles, and many of them have no idea how to climb stairs when they first come into a home.  They will either not try at all, or try to do the whole flight at once.

Every May and October Greyhound Friends has a big greyhound reunion.  Doting owners arrive with their dogs – often multiples since it is hard to have just one greyhound.  It is an amazing sight – a huge field with hundreds of beautiful dogs.  To me, it looks like a gathering of gorgeous fairy dogs and their human attendants.

Sometime in the afternoon there is a competition.  Longest tail.  Softest coat.  Baldest butt.  Oldest.  Youngest.  Best look alikes.  And the grand finale:  best trick.  The running joke is, “And it isn’t much.”  Greyhounds do not do tricks  – or at least none that I have met.  The best trick that I have seen in twenty years of greyhounds is a prolonged sit, followed by a high five, first with the right paw and then the left.  That got a lot of applause.

We took home a lot of ribbons last fall:  Guinnie won baldest butt.  Cho won oldest.  And Guinnie came in second for best look alike.  I thought Cho should have won it with his twin – a winsome Saluki mix, but the judges gave it Guinnie and her twin.  But anyone who has a greyhound will tell you that they feel like a winner. No ribbons needed.

Mar25

the wild dog

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The other side of Cho, Spanish Galgo, and former street dog of Cadiz, Spain.  It takes a lot of restorative yoga to be able to sustain cross-country gallops when you are 17-years old.

Today I am off to Boston to teach my workshop, Cookbook for the Bonehouse.  It is exciting to me to return to Boston to teach.  Many years ago, Pam and I were among the founders of Green Street Studios, which has become a vibrant center for dance and performance in Cambridge.  I developed my chops as a choreographer in Boston, and made many dances with many fine, generous dancers.  Tomorrow’s workshop is at the sister studio, The Dance Complex, another hive of creative energy for movement and dance.  So I am going home.

And not.  I feel a profound difference now which has to do with my long absence from the conventional concert dance scene and from Boston in particular.  I am older, and I have spent the past 13 years in two different kinds of studios.  The one with the wooden floor where I move and stretch like a dancer, and the other – the arena, the field, the paddock, the stall, the saddle, with my partners, the horses.  I feel a little like the wild dog coming home after a big tear across the fields.  But there is a cosiness there too – a desire to settle and nestle into the moment.

Mar23

the limits

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Dogs in Spain do not enjoy the same pampered lives that many dogs here do.  We first became aware of the Galgo issue through Greyhound Friends in Hopkinton, MA.  The director, Louise Coleman had just founded the American European Greyhound Alliance with a special focus on the dogs of Spain and Ireland.  She had begun to bring some dogs out of those two countries.

At the time, we had just lost our beautiful greyhound, Luna, and we wanted to adopt an older dog.  That is how we came across Gordita (above), who was ten-years old and had just delivered another litter in Spain.  Gordie lived to be 17-years old, and was the most endearing and maddening dog ever.  She had a bark that could cut glass.  Literally make you jump out of your skin. She had this wonderful, galumphing, paddling run that she kept up until about a week before she died.

Because of Gordie, I learned more than I wanted to about the sadistic treatment of these beautiful, sensitive dogs.  They are used for hunting by the gypsies, and cruelly disposed of if they do not perform or if they are too old or ill.

Many people think we should not try to save dogs or cats or children outside our own borders.  I find that argument specious.  Compassion and love are not contained by the borders of a country.  We should help wherever we can, and wherever we are drawn to help. Over the years, I have rescued cats from Russia and Mexico, dogs from Spain. I remember being in Tijuana and seeing a skeletal, mangy, white dog near the place where the ugly fence that divides Mexico and the US runs into the sea. We could not catch him.  I can still see him.  I had to let him go.

I learned something there about the limits of power.  About accepting that I personally cannot save everything.  That rankles, at the same time I know it is reasonable.   But I will always try.

Mar14

cho

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This is Cho, our Spanish Galgo.  The Galgo is a sight hound from the Andalucian region of Spain, used by the gypsies for hunting.   What I just learned from Wikipedia is that the name comes from the Gauls, a tribe of Celts who inhabited the Iberian peninsula  from 400-600 BC.  I am told that they have some Saluki in their background as well.

They look like greyhounds, but really that is just a ruse.  They are  a different kind of dog entirely.  We have had eight greyhounds over the years, and two Galgos.  The Galgo is built for distance running, which we found out when we first brought our  ten-year old Galga, Gordita, to Lucy Vincent Beach on Martha’s Vineyard.  We thought the cliffs would keep her on the beach, and watched in alarm as she scaled the cliffs as if they were flat.

Actually, it was Maria Wulf who inspired this post with her blog about watching her dog Frieda run free, and how she became this wild being.  (Read it, it’s a wonderful piece.)  As I read it I thought, “Ah, yes, I know that.”

Cho is a fence climber.  I took this picture because this is how Cho looks just before he goes over the fence.  He scrambles over it and is off.  Once over, he is truly gone.  Cho is now  17-years old, but to see him run is a miracle.  He is a blond ribbon of speed flying across our meadows, across the street, and up into the farm across the way.  He does not hear us, he does not see us.  He is hunting.  Unfortunately, he is sometimes hunting Mamacita, with whom he is obsessed, and at other times a skunk that lives under the barn. Mamacita has marked up his nose several times, which he does not find discouraging. And the skunk – well never mind.

One night last spring, Cho went over and out.  He tore across the road and into the farm.  We called and called.  We could hear him, feel that he was very close, but it was as if he had become the ghost dog, the mad dog.  Finally, after about an hour, he came in and threw up a clump of grass the size of a large raccoon.

We got Cho when he was 9-years old.  He had been returned to Greyhound Friends by someone who had adopted him and then not been able to manage him.  He is indeed a piece of work.  We think that this is because he spent the first 8 years of his life as a street dog, or a gypsy dog, which is pretty much the same thing.

This morning at 6 am he went over and stood in the middle of the field barking loudly at something very specific and very invisible, even to my binoculars.  Then he came in and jumped on the bed for a snooze. So there you have it:  the wild and the tame in no particular order.