Nashville Dogs

Tomorrow we'll be here four weeks. We are up and running at home, with much of our stuff still packed up and stored in the third bedroom of our apartment here in Bellevue, an area in the southwest reaches of Nashville. We have closed on the sale of our house in Pennsylvania, made strides toward buying a condo in a nearby geezer community, gotten our Tennessee tag for the car, and tried three nearby Mexican restaurants, all very good. And I've even worked a day as an extra on the ABC TV show "Nashville." We love it here.

Through it all, at least two or three times a day, you guessed it, walking with Grace. The apartment complex is very pet friendly. One of the office guys lives one corridor over with a big golden dog named Harvey. He's not playful, but he's friendly. Many other dogs are walked around the grassy areas between buildings and surrounding the whole property. We rarely go out without encountering at least one or two dogs. Rabbits are also plentiful. Grace has caught two already. Squirrels, chipmunks and moles round out the mammals, and cicadas and lizards add to the fun. And that's just around here.

A five minute drive away is Edwin Warner Park, a 625 acre chunk of land with a maze of paved and unpaved nature trails, a Nature Center, an amphitheater, benches, trash cans and best of all, a huge fenced in dog park, where there are always dogs to play with, and a dog-height water fountain. Pretty much every day we get Grace dressed in her collar and harness and take her for an hour walk on the trails or romp in the dog park. We do it early in the morning before the day gets too hot, and more importantly, before the dreaded Nashville rush hour traffic builds. Then we come home to air conditioning and Grace's king size Sleep Number bed. She somehow manages to take up the whole thing, and sleeps until the afternoon walk.

She doesn't have a best friend here yet. But then, neither do I.

Parting

July 1. In just two weeks I pick up a 26 foot Penske truck and bring it home for loading. On the 17th, I drive it to Nashville, Tennessee, where Carmen will be the next minister to serve the Greater Nashville Unitarian Universalist Congregation. It's a happy happy thing - except for the folks we leave behind. The Meadville UU congregation will miss her terribly. Everyone else will miss Grace, the friendliest, sweetest, happiest dog on the planet.

Before October 11th, 2012, I knew maybe ten or so neighbors, all of whom were visible from my front yard.  Since then, that dog and I have met many dozens of people and the dogs with whom they share their lives - not to mention cats, squirrels, chipmunks, rabbits, birds and moles.

Among the humans and dogs, several are standouts. There is a little girl up Morgan Street who drops whatever she is doing and runs to embrace, pet and be licked by Grace. I don't know her name and she doesn't know mine, but she knows Grace, and we know her dog Harry. Around the corner from her on Charlton is a tall man whose name I do not know, with a beagle named Steve, an older, friendly but not playful boy. Around the corner from them on Pine Street is Maddy, an old lady mutt who is walked by Sue, a professional painter whom I knew as a customer when I worked for Sherwin Williams, but whose home location I did not know until the morning Grace pooped in her front yard and, as I was cleaning it up, I heard a voice say "Jim?" Back on Chestnut there is Mrs. Crawford, with her two dogs corralled by Invisible Fence; Marge walking her two old shelties; and Melissa, a friend of the UU church with an old boy dog named Vic. Not one of those dogs wants to play with my girl.

Then we come to Walnut Street. Go west on Walnut from Morgan, and at the next to last house on the right before the blocks-long wilderness break, where the road is too close to the ravine to put a house, live an old designer hybrid dog named Dulie (sp?) and a German shepherd named Wolfie. Wolfie loves loves loves to play, is very big and very rambunctious. Wolfie was often tied out front while Dulie was tethered only by her territorial imperative. When we approached, Dulie would start barking and Wolfie would dance at the end of his tether. Then he and Grace would wrestle and romp and chase and roll around until the two leashes were tangled into a daunting snarl. I met Wolfie's mom when she came out in robe and slippers to help calm Wolfie and untangle the leashes. A couple of times, we encountered that bunch at Shadybrook Park, where I could turn Grace loose to run and play unfettered, stuck like glue to Wolfie, who was kept in control by  Dulie. It was two years later that I learned Kelly's name. A couple blocks farther west, on the other side of Walnut, is where Mocha lives with Kevin and Gloria and their son Jonah. Mocha and Grace are best friends. Grace leads me to Mocha's house at least two or three mornings a week, plus any other time we happen to be in the neighborhood. Mocha watches out the window, waiting for Grace to appear. They always have a joyful reunion, and even when they are not in the mood to play, they like to just hang out together while the humans talk.

It's hard to think of taking Grace away from all of her friends, human and canine. It's hard to think of taking Grace away from her beloved lake effect snow. But her humans aren't getting any younger, and the snow in Nashville is probably not so hard on the primary shoveler. Plus, I can work in show biz again! And if I know nothing else about our new life in Tennessee, I know that Grace will make many new friends there. She's the friendliest, sweetest, happiest dog on the planet.

Snapper Stopper

When I was a kid, I wanted to be a herpetologist. Reptiles fascinated me more than anything else. In Boy Scouts, the only merit badge I strove for was Reptile Study. I brought home snakes. I collected turtles every summer, then let them all go when school started. I know from reptiles.

Walking with Grace has brought me close to more fauna than I've seen since high school in Vero Beach, Florida. We've come within catching range of a half dozen snakes, four or five turtles and even a couple of lizards. So I'm always on the lookout. So is Grace.

This morning's walk took us straight up the western face of the steep grassy earthen dam at Shadybrook Park and down the other side to Rainbow Lake (the locals call it Rat Lake.) Beyond Rat Lake is a huge grassy, often soggy field where Grace loves to ramble. We go there a lot. Sometimes the grass is feet high, but this summer it has been mowed pretty regularly. This morning, as we walked and stopped and sniffed and chewed grass and such, I noticed a dark shape just about in the middle of the field. I couldn't remember ever seeing it before, so I spent my part of the time staring at this thing. At first it looked like a big snapping turtle, something you rarely see this far from water. Probably a stick with a broken off branch, looking like a shell with a head sticking out. We circled on around, and I fully expected the shape to change with our shift in perspective. But try as we might to discern what it really was, it still insisted on looking like a big snapping turtle. Finally, Grace saw it too, and we crossed the field for a closer look. It turned out to be a big snapping turtle, about twelve inches from the front to the back of her shell. She was this far away from the lake because she was laying eggs. The rear portion was deep into the soil, and she wasn't coming out. I remembered a snapper I had in my collection back in the sixties who laid her eggs in my mother's garden.

Grace, of course, wanted to make it run so she could give chase. That's what fauna are for, after all. She strained against the leash to go up to it and nudge it. She doesn't know what I know - that this snapper's neck is also a foot long, and her jaws can bite a chunk out of you in the blink of an eye. I wasn't going to let that happen, and I also did not wish to disturb this lady in her egg laying endeavor. I dragged Grace away and led her reluctantly home.

Take Me Out

The baseball season, or more accurately, the post-season, is barreling along to its climactic conclusion. Grace was swept up in the frenzy of it last evening. She found an abandoned baseball in the weeds, lay down in the grass and proceeded to gnaw the skin right off of it in about twelve minutes. Then she buried the skin by a tree at the VFW, and on we went. On the way home, she picked up the skint carcass and brought it home. The Great American Pastime lives in the heart of that hound.

Memory

You all will remember the post from a year and a half ago, in which Grace dragged me over to her friend Mocha's house to play. That was an early indicator of her amazing memory. During our many hundreds of walks together, she has shown me dozens of times that her memory is far superior to mine.

• We are walking along North Street when suddenly and urgently she indicates that she wants to cross to the other side. I look for the usual reasons - dog, cat, squirrel, human  - and see nothing. We cross over safely, and I am reminded that the last time we were here, there was bread thrown out into the yard for the birds. It is there again, and I drag her away. She leads me down an alley and runs up onto the porch of a house where the resident gave her a treat once. She digs up a bone she buried months ago. And the opossum tail. << shudder>>

My favorite example happened a few weeks ago on a Sunday morning. On Sunday mornings, my priority is to get the business done and get home, so I can shower and dress for church. This Sunday she took us a whole different way from the usual - not to the park, the VFW or even Mocha's house. West on Chestnut Street, south across Elizabeth Park and Orthopaedic Associates, and straight to Burns Avenue. We never go this way. As we began walking south on Burns I saw what she remembered. The night before, on our late walk, we came down Burns from the other end and passed a party in a driveway, complete with a whole roasted pig. It was all I could do to keep her out of the driveway, especially since a couple of the revelers wanted to pet her and make the usual fuss over her. She knew from the time we stepped out the door, that she wanted to return to the scene and check for scraps. By the time I realized what she was doing, she had already dashed up the driveway and snagged a chunk of pig. 

I wish my memory was half as good as hers.

An Epic Tail

One morning back in December, during a circuit through Shadybrook Park, west on North Street and back home across the footbridge, we were both inclined to avoid the twitching near-dead opossum about ten feet off the path approaching the footbridge on the far side of the ravine. We cross that bridge fairly often, so the ensuing months saw the carcass covered with snow, uncovered by thaws and rains and covered again many times. Each round saw more and more decay, and it was harder and harder to keep Grace from inspecting the remains. Eventually, it disappeared, having been dispersed by various forces. I forgot about it.

A couple of months ago, we were walking the same circuit. On this end of the bridge Grace suddenly pulled off into the weeds and pulled out a stick. This was usual behavior, but the stick was not a usual stick. It was curved, and tapered on one end. I tried to look at it, but this sparked a game of keep-away, and I was trying to speed us home, so the efficient thing to do was to let her trot proudly home with it. When she tried to bring it in the house, however, game over. I pried her jaws open and retrieved a well-seasoned opossum tail. I flung it into the back yard, and we got on with our day. I looked for it later, but did not find it. I forgot about it.

Then came yesterday, Sunday afternoon. Carmen was walking Grace through the back yard. Grace pulled off into the bushes and pulled out a strange curved stick that tapered on one end. Carmen pried Grace's jaws open and grabbed the"stick "What the hell is this?" she asked. "Oh," I said, "It's a tail from a 'possom that died last December." Of course. Duh.
It now resides in the landfill, at least until the next time it rears its ugly head - or tail.

Nothin' But

Yesterday we were walking in Shadybrook Park on a fairly routine path, when Grace suddenly pulled me up a weed - covered hillside. I was perplexed at first, but then she poked that busy nose of hers into a hole in the ground. Three fist-sized rabbits came running out. I tried to hold her back, but she was able to chase one down and grab it. I pried her jaws open and dragged her away from it.

She ain't nothin' but a hound dog, but she finally caught a rabbit.