Leaving Farmer

It’s only for a weekend. And he’s only a dog. But.

It’s not like Farmer is a new baby. Not like we’re leaving him for the first time. Nothing like that.

He’s an old dog. And of course we’ve left him with pet sitters before. But not so much recently. Most of our travel these days is to Delaware to see my Dad and sister, where Farmer’s cousins Shortie and Lucy await his arrival with varying degrees of enthusiasm. (Lucy is a mini Australian shepherd so she is enthusiastic about virtually everything.)

We have to lift Farmer’s hind quarters up to boost him into the back seat of the car, but after that he’s an excellent traveler. This is one dog who is focused entirely on two things: being with his pack (my husband and me) and eating. Sleeping and sniffing are bonus perks.

For his part, Farmer likes visiting the Delaware relatives because food bowls are often left unattended at opportune times. Shortie (an extraordinarily short and weirdly hot-dog shaped poodle who my mother bought from a dubious breeder over the Internet not too long before she died), would be complete toast if left to fend for himself in the wild. If you hand him a treat, first he sniffs it, then he takes the treat and drops it on the ground. He approaches dinnertime with the same wariness, circling his bowl and poking at the hamburger and rice my father dutifully makes for him. Farmer waits patiently in the background for Shortie to lose interest and then sidles over to help himself. By the time anyone notices what has happened, Farmer has a “who, me?” look that cannot definitively be considered guilty.

But we are not going to Delaware. We are going to Portland, Maine. Only for two nights. To celebrate my husband’s birthday with some good food, starting at his favorite restaurant, Central Provisions. And to see good friends. And stay in a nice hotel.

We have found a friend willing to pet- and house-sit for us over the weekend. So everything should be fine.

Except that I am still anxious about leaving Farmer these days.

He is rickety, with a muscle condition that was tentatively diagnosed as degenerative myelopathy (not a good thing) more than a year ago, but might be something else (we hope).

We’ve borrowed a baby gate so he and the pet sitter can stay on the first floor of the house for the weekend. That will help with the occasional malfunction of the back legs (Farmer’s, not the pet sitter’s), which tends to happen when he reaches the last few steps coming down the (carpeted) stairs.

He has his glow-in-the-dark collar and there will be leash instructions. While we are somewhat surrounded by woods and often go out with Farmer unleashed, lately he has taken to spur-of-the-moment walkabouts, where he disappears in a matter of minutes. Fortunately, we know where he goes and can track him down. Often he is on his way back to us when we get to him.

I’m pretty sure I know why he does this. He’s stubborn and it kills him that he can’t go for long walks anymore, so in defiance he will take himself in the same direction we go (on our people walks) every day, as if to say, “Why don’t you take me with you anymore?” But I worry about the day he turns the corner into dementia, wanders off, and doesn’t remember what he is doing, where he is going, how to get back. (Hence the glowy collar for night.)

I remember an all-Island hunt for a lost black Lab many years ago in the winter. So many people looked for that dog, a beloved pet, but it was never found. My friend, the town animal control officer, said that on the Island in winter, sometimes dogs wander into the woods and find themselves on thin ice-covered ponds. Of course the ice breaks, hypothermia sets in, and that’s that. Ugh, I’ve got to stop reminding myself of these stories.

What is it about Farmer that makes me cling to him so relentlessly?

He was wandering the mean streets of Mashpee, Massachusetts (Cape Cod summer resort town, if you must know) when the local dog catchers picked him up in 2011. Held by the town for a week and then taken to the Barnstable MSPCA when no one claimed him, he was given the name “Andy” at intake, since the alphabetical naming of incoming dogs (and there were many) had returned to the letter “A” that day.

He hadn’t been there more than a week when I happened to stop in (with my then partner), returning from an off-Island errand in Hyannis. “Happened to stop in” is the oldest excuse in the book, eh? Those who can visit animal shelters and leave empty handed have my respect. (I wound up with two cats in Manhattan after a visit to the 92^nd Street ASPCA decades ago.)

I walked up and down the rows. So. Many. Dogs. Sigh. There was no way in the world all those dogs were going to get adopted. There was a lot of barking, too, and it was hard to tell which dogs were just anxious and which were serious barkers. But I came around the corner and at the end of the row was a quiet, skinny black Lab-ish (emphasis on the -ish) young thing. I stopped and crouched down to say hello. He shifted closer to me, rolled on to his back, and stuck one of his front paws through the bars on his gate so that I could touch it. I looked into a pair of soulful brown eyes and that was pretty much it. We went for a little walk behind the shelter to get to know each other, and I sat down to sign the paperwork and hand over a check for the shots and neutering.

I asked the woman on the other side of the desk how old “Andy” was, and she said as far as the vets could tell, about seven or eight months. He had a distinct scar across his left muzzle where an injury had obviously occurred and healed over oddly, leaving his face lopsided. And we were told he had a problem with his teeth that would probably always plague him (he does in fact, have terrible teeth to this day), and that possibly he’d been on antibiotics at some point.

It later became clear that he was scared to death of very large, heavy-set men with beards and of loud banging noises, so I can piece together a not very pleasant story that ended with this sweet dog being abandoned in Mashpee. We were told that sometimes summer visitors to the Cape bring a new puppy with them and decide they don’t want it when it gets bigger and leave it behind when the summer is over. But it’s doubtful this was the case with “Andy.” I think he had one owner who perhaps thought he was getting a tough guy, a fighter. And like Ferdinand the Bull, this dog was not cut out for that. Perhaps he actually ran away to get out of a bad situation.

Fortunately, Farmer, as I decided to call him since he was coming home to live on a farm on Martha’s Vineyard, has gotten over his fear of most men. And fortunately my husband isn’t heavyset, because, well —  those two! Let me tell you, they are buddies. They have developed quite the bond, fueled in some part by a certain habit my husband has of sharing food with Farmer. But oddly, Farmer’s latest thing is that he doesn’t like to go out first thing in the morning or last thing at night unless my husband goes with him. It’s a boy thing.

Farmer also gets upset at night if we aren’t all in the same place together. (He has a bed in our office, which is sadly usually where we are.) If my husband goes to bed before I do, Farmer comes over to my desk, touches his nose to my knee, and gives me the stare. “It’s time to go to bed, Mommy. Stop working.”  

When I met my husband for the first time, over coffee six years ago this February, I had Farmer in the back seat of the car. After our informal date, we walked out to my car, and this man I was about to fall in love with made immediate overtures to befriend my dog. Smart man! Little did he know…

But three years before that, Farmer had seen me through a bad breakup (from a bad relationship). Together he and I moved out of the farmhouse we had been living in, to a small apartment down the road, and started figuring out our next steps. In that apartment, the bed was close to the floor and Farmer made it his perch during the day, because he could look out the windows to see if I was coming down the driveway. At night he slept next to me.

Hearing his gentle snoring and reaching over occasionally to pet him, his big awkward built-by-committee frame sprawled all over the place, was so comforting. I created a new market garden in this new place, fenced it in, and Farmer joined me in the garden while I worked, lying in the sunshine and hay mulch, happy to be in proximity. His company was everything to me in those days.

When Farmer and I moved into my (now) husband’s house, Farmer was immediately gifted his own perch on an old (bachelor’s best) red velour couch (in the living room – yikes). It has been his throne ever since, though he has beds in every room. I’m worried that pretty soon he won’t be able to get up on the couch on his own. He long ago gave up trying to get on beds.

At night he sleeps in the middle of our bedroom floor. He has a bed but sometimes he gets up, moves, and positions himself at the edge of the rug, right next to my husband’s side of the bed. So essentially, my husband has had to train himself to think “DOG” the minute he wakes up and before he swings his legs out of the bed. Otherwise he’d trip spectacularly.

Before the lights go out every night, I usually get down on the floor next to Farmer and stroke his velvety ears and tell him I love him. He gives me that, “Oh, Mommy, honestly!” look and grunts. I tell him I’m sorry, he just has to put up with me. This love and gratitude I have for him is beyond anything I could ever explain. But love is like that I guess.

By the time you read this we will be on our way home from Portland and on our way back to Farmer. I will be relieved to get home. That’s a pretty crazy way to start a trip!

🐶