Month: February 2013

Neko got to have the rare treat of getting to romp outside and off leash with her greyhound pal, Onyx, this week. Onyx is my mom and stepmom’s dog, a retired racing greyhound that is, interestingly enough, only a few months younger than Neko. In part of the contract that they signed when they adopted Onyx, they agreed to never let her off leash in an unenclosed area. From what I understand, it’s a pretty standard condition for rescue greyhounds, and not an unreasonable one: if the dog gets spooked and takes off, they can do so at up to 45 mph. And, as calm and loving as they open up to be, rescue greyhounds have more tics than the average pooch. But I’ll get to ceiling fans later. The orchard, a short walk from my mom’s up the steep, winding Poop Hill Road, is an enclosed space acres and acres across, and makes an ideal place for Onyx to be able to romp and play.

Onyx came on the scene about six months after Neko lost her leg. When she first came home, she was still fairly nervous, withdrawn and in need of a lot of emotional support. So much so, in fact, that she wasn’t going to stand for sleeping in a room by herself. This was further complicated by the fact that she hadn’t quite figured out stairs yet. They don’t really come up for racing dogs. She had gotten some lessons and guided practice at Fast Friends, the rescue outfit where my mom adopted her, but she wasn’t confident enough to walk up the two small flights at the house. So, my mom was sleeping downstairs on the couch, with the dog. This was not a sustainable plan.

My mom called to ask if Neko could come over to give Onyx some stair climbing lessons. She’d heard that one of the best strategies for getting over this particular hurdle was to have it modeled by another dog, and Neko didn’t miss a beat climbing stairs after her amputation. So, Neko and I came over. I ran up and down the stairs with Neko a few times and Onyx watched. We stood at the top of the stairs and called both dogs with treats. Eventually, Onyx went up the stairs and back down and, for the first night since Onyx had arrived, nobody had to sleep on the couch.

Onyx has opened up so much more since then, even if she still has an intense distrust of all ceiling fans, whether or not they’re on (which is a problem when she comes over, since of the five rooms in my apartment, only two – a bedroom and the bathroom – lack ceiling fans), but the orchard was a huge breakthrough. Out of her harness and leash, Onyx started making play invitations and bouncing in a crazyfooted way. It’s always a treat to see Neko and Onyx, the tripawd and the rescue grey, romping and playing together, stopping to sniff the trees, downed apples and possible bear poop, and, generally, demonstrating what it means to be dog.

When little kids ask why my dog has three legs, I often reply, “Shh! Don’t tell her, she doesn’t know!”

Sometimes, I have a sneaking suspicion that it might be true, though, even after three years on three legs. Even though Neko didn’t miss a beat after her amputation, hopping right up the stairs to our second floor apartment immediately after returning from her surgery, she has a few habits that simply shouldn’t work with a leg missing. And yet…

Neko has always had an odd, occasional habit when squatting to pee: she would squat, then pick up one of her hind legs, so that she was balanced on three legs. I used to call it the “yoga squat” (you can learn a lot about yoga from a dog – I don’t know that you can do Downward Dog properly until you’ve seen it done by an actual dog). She didn’t do it every time she had a pee, but with fair regularity. I would say that this was an oddly prescient way of practicing for her future life on three legs except that the leg she used to pick up, invariably, is the hind leg she got to keep.

Shortly after her amputation, I witnessed her pull this move again, picking up that same leg after squatting, leaving her balanced totally on her two front legs. And it worked, possibly because it didn’t occur to her that it wouldn’t. It looks like an interesting variation on Crow pose, a yoga pose which involves balancing your whole, crouched body on your arms. I can’t say Neko pulls this move as frequently as she used to, but it’s a surprise every time.

She still scratches with her missing leg as well. The stump starts drawing tiny, purposeful circles in the air; Neko leans her head out to the side for a better scratching angle behind the ear, making the tightened up scratching face. I have no way of knowing if she gets a certain amount of satisfaction just going through the process or if she does it because it still, in a roundabout way, works. Whenever I see her pull that, I give her a scratch where she’s aiming. The leg keeps going even when it’s me doing the scratching.

Perhaps the presence or absence of the leg is simply immaterial. She’s never really seemed puzzled by its absence, but still has habits that include the fourth leg in her residual self-image. She definitely dreams with four legs; the stump twitches purposefully with all the other legs when she runs in her sleep. I imagine a dog’s number system as comprising only yes and no (for advanced situations, it may also include more). It covers most of their purposes. This doesn’t leave a whole lot of room to be concerned with the difference between 3 and 4, and really just comes down to what works and what doesn’t. Sometimes, what works is improbable and surprising, and takes someone who doesn’t suspect it won’t to prove otherwise.