Took R to his first basketball practice last night. Young people–even at his advanced age–are so painfully cute sometimes. Watching them stumble over each other, miss baskets, lope down the court only to get to the end and look around with a lost, “what now?” expression…it dazzled me. There were a couple kids there who knew how to play, and a couple kids with energy, and one boy who just fit inside his body really well so that every move was graceful, but the majority of them were adorably bad.

I talked with a mom, randomly, she was simply the one who had thought to bring a book and I commented on it, and she was a foster mom for a while. Her son (the graceful one) is adopted. I’ve thought about becoming a foster parent for such a long time, but it scares me. The coincidence, though, made me wonder whether I should view it as a message from the universe, answering my question of yesterday.

The basketball game with the dog isn’t working out quite as well as it did the first few days, because Zelda has decided that she likes to swim. She won’t even wait for us to get to the ball anymore: if it’s in the water, she hurls herself in after it. Once she reaches it, she drags it to the stairs and then waits. If we don’t throw it, the current created by the pump will slowly drag it away from the steps and into deeper water. She lets it get a foot or two away, and then her muscles start to bunch and her legs tremble and then…Splash! She’s back in the water. She spent more time in the pool today than I did.

The new water game uses the basketball. People get points every time we successfully throw the ball out of the pool and manage to get it to roll under the patio table. The dog tries to block it, of course. We lose points every time Zelda jumps into the water to retrieve the ball because we haven’t passed it back out to her quickly enough.

While at Costco yesterday, I spotted a present for the dog and without even looking at the price threw it into my cart. ($19.99, as it turned out.)

Now usually when I get home, the dog and I have a certain routine. I walk in the door and she goes insane, mostly trying to jump into my arms so she can get to my face. I wave her off to the bedroom, saying “Bed, Zelda, bed.” She races in, bounces onto the bed, and I come close enough that she can put her paws on my chest and nuzzle my face. She hasn’t fully greeted me until she’s had her chance to bump her head under my chin. If I’m loaded down with stuff, as sometimes happens, I go into the kitchen and unload while she weaves her way around my feet, shaking with excitement, and then we do the bed routine.

So imagine my surprise yesterday when I come in, unload, and then look around for the dog. She was nowhere to be seen. She’d gone out to the garage and was trying to get into the trunk of the car. Okay, I had brought steak home–but the steak was in the kitchen already. So what did she want in the trunk?

There wasn’t much left in there. Hmm, but there was her present–boxed, I might add. I pulled it out and she went crazy, jumping up, trying to get it, licking it. She did not even care that I was there. She whimpered with excitement.

I could understand this if the present was a dog treat. If it had smelled like beef jerky. If there was something about it that said dog. But this was none of the above. So I’ve decided that the dog is psychic.

At least she is when it comes to a new BASKETBALL! I took it out of its box, took it outside, and oh, she was happy, happy, happy. And after several silent weeks in the backyard, where she never really barked at all, she’s back to making furious amounts of noise as she tries to get the ball wherever it is she thinks it belongs.

Zelda-Sept2008, originally uploaded by wendy4767.

I thought when she finally popped the basketball and it lost all its air that she would abandon it as a toy. Nope, it’s still her favorite and now she can actually get her teeth into it!

I’m aware, with the bird, that she is a wild animal. That she doesn’t think like I think, that her perception of the world is quite different, that her priorities aren’t mine and that her feelings are probably not like mine either. She appreciates me as a cushion, she understands me as a living creature separate from herself (I believe) and distinct from the other living creatures (aka the boy and the dog) but I honestly don’t know what more she’s capable of. Lately I’ve been trying to train her not to chew on power cords and she sort of seems to be getting it, but she looks at me with a posture that says she’s trying to decide if what I’m saying or doing is meaningful to her, rather than any evidence that she actually understands what I’m saying.

With the dog, everything I do has meaning. (She definitely doesn’t understand everything I say, but I think that’s lack of interest.) But every movement I make, every shift of position, every tone that comes out of my mouth, she’s attuned to it all. It makes it remarkably hard to go out for lunch and leave her behind. This dog has me wrapped around…her perfect black ears.

Choosing Surgery

I’ve spent the day on the verge of tears. We–I–decided last week to get the beloved puppy spayed. Honestly, I didn’t want to. But it’s the law in Santa Cruz, and I felt surprisingly uncomfortable about knowingly violating the law. (Back before I knew it was the law, I didn’t care at all.)

It wasn’t that I truly believed we’d want Zelda to have puppies. Even though she’s an incredibly perfect dog who should certainly be passing her genes along…well, there are plenty of dogs in the world. I do resent the law, though: it seems like such a Republican effort, to make puppies either criminal or for profit, with nothing in between.

But more than that, it’s major surgery. We have to keep her quiet for two weeks. WEEKS! Zelda! Quiet!! No jumping, no running. These phrases are oxymorons–things that simply do not belong together. As I told the vet last year when we cancelled our first appointment to get her spayed, asking this dog not to jump would be like asking her not to breathe. It’s not an option.

But I did it anyway. I took her in this morning and left her at the vet’s. It’s the safer choice, it’s the legal choice, the world doesn’t need more puppies. But I just want to cry.