a gentle place

Posted By Harry on May 17, 2011

The recent activity on this blog – well, lack of such – might have given you the impression that life at Avondale had stopped for a while. Not so. A combination of growing mental and emotional exhaustion from almost 3 years of simultaneously doing 2 near-full-time jobs (bound to ever-remarkable android and iPad technology insidiously driving that exhaustion) and the loss of my best pal Plato who was by my side for almost all agp’s posts, led to a temporary and unintended shutdown of the web side of a gentle place. It would be easy to blame it all on work but my actions have always been driven more by my heart than by my head: I miss my pal and wish we could have walked more together, played more together, lain in the sun more together … while Avondale’s rescued chooks dust-bathed around us. And late at night, the flames from the open gas log fire projecting a flickering larger-than-life Plato-shadow onto the full-length curtains, I wish we could have written more together.

But in the words of Jack Johnson, “I’ve got to get home, there’s a garden to tend”. And Plato, buried in that garden next to the river, will still write with me.

Looking down at Avondale

There’s a little boy in South Korea, now 10 months old, who will soon be joining Avondale’s family. Are the feathered, furry and hairy as excited as the humans? I can’t help but feel they are. Feel that perhaps they too would like to be able to count the remaining sleeps. But we don’t know when we’ll get the call, the Notice To Travel. We know only that we will get it. And pregnancies are, after all, usually 9 months; this pregnancy’s only 4 months in.

There’s Abbey, just over a year old but more puppy now than she was at 7 months, exiting her fear-built, self-preserving shell far more rapidly than any Avondalian thought she would. Although still wary of humans she now waits at the gate for us to get home and, on sighting the car heading towards it, breaks into excited laps around the garden, tail high in the hair, dripping tongue flapping out the corner of her mouth. A somewhat happier dog than the one that caused us to lift a shed floor to retrieve her fear-frozen being, and bottom-prune dense bushes by torchlight in search of her. While it’s taking her longer to drop her fear of those humans who carry a Y chromosome, she now even showers Sue with puppy kisses every night come bedtime.

And there’s ‘my little girl’ Chelsea, my shadow more than Plato ever was, but all too often in his. Like a hard-working senior board member stepping into the role of Chairman after years of wondering if it would ever happen, Chelsea’s jumped – with all 4, oft-muddy, ballerina-like paws – into the vacated role of elder statesman. And she’s loving every minute of it. Whereas Plato, particularly in his senior years, would often bear the brunt of night-time “Chelsea moods”, Abbey seems unable to generate even a sideways glance from Chelsea, let alone a snap. But then I guess she chose Abbey; while I wisely exited myself from the decision-making and went walking through Brightside, and Sue spent time in the numerous pens with so many other rescued dogs wishing for permanent homes, Chelsea went to lie with Abbey who was curled tight into a ball pushed against the fence, seemingly determined to make herself small enough for the world not to find her. When Sue looked around wondering why Chelsea had left her side (Imagine you’re a dog placed in a pen with about 15 other dogs of all shapes and sizes that you’d never met before. Wouldn’t you stay with the person you knew?) she found Chelsea pressed up against Abbey as tight as Abbey was pressed up against the fence. Abbey needs us. Abbey needs Avondale. Chelsea’s message was as clear as if she’d broadcast it on YouTube.

So a non-human is yet again showing us the way. Chelsea chose Abbey and Chelsea’s healing her, teaching her, loving her. Like Annie and Sally healed and loved Baldrick through his recovery. What comes from Sue and I is plainly supplementary.

Yet yesterday I caught the end of an ABC radio interview with a furrier justifying his trade and the mass slaughter of innocent, sentient beings. He could not understand why some purchasers of his cruel wares got upset when they discovered the items were made from dog-fur. “People have to understand these aren’t domestic dogs. They’re not pets.” As if somehow the blood that stains his garments flows differently through a “non-domestic” dog. Non-domestic dog, pet dog, pig or cow – is their blood not still warm, red … and pumped by a heart?

Categories: Animals & us
Tags: Dogs, Fur