The short dogs and the gimp

I have been sitting here for a couple of hours, listening to little guinea pig noises coming from the bedroom, with snoring dogs at my feet, thinking. Sleep deprivation, and emotional roller coaster riding the past week has me thinking about "stuff." So this is your first warning that this post may get a bit 'thick" but I am going to just keep typing without thinking about it too much. It is all stuff that is in my heart; that wants out. (Yeah, that is your second warning; you might want to quietly head out the door if you are looking for lightness and humor.)

All of my life I have felt the need to be different. Perhaps it was the birth order thing. perhaps it was that I was the third child with two older sibs that were brilliant scholastically and I was always compared to them in school. Perhaps it was the constant battles with the younger brother who was "special."  It is hard to say. I do know that I adored my sister. She was into horses and was an artist. (Well, perhaps I should say "is.") She collected the Breyer horses long before they were Breyer horses and were just know as plastic horses. She had shelves of them. In order to follow in her shadow, in an admiration kind of way, I collected dog figures. I read dog books. I studied all things dog. She dreamed of someday having horses. I soon was dreaming of the perfect dog breed.

It was assumed that college would immediately follow high school, and off I went with music scholarship (yeah, MY version of artist) in tow. I soon found that a music degree was not as much to my liking as science, and to be different veered my training to Animal Science and Livestock. Following a series of weird accidents and poor healing (wow, even in the 70s the future was smacking me around) I nabbed a Vet Tech degree and took off with the teacher. Oy, my poor parents....sorry, Mom and Dad.

To say it was a tumultuous marriage would be a huge understatement, but I have three wonderful children and four perfect grand daughters, so those twenty eight years would never be exchanged for anything different. Now. However, the stress and trauma also led me down a path of darkness that even blows me away to this day.

I learned to fight stress by being physical. I ran. I chopped wood.  I skied. I hiked. Anything that pushed my body, and took me out of my reality. That would eventually lead to me being as close to the edge of life that a person can get, and still write about it.

In 1984 I was upset and was out chopping wood. I was exhausted. I had three kids, one an infant, and was delivering newspapers seven days a week. The baby was napping and I had an altercation with my husband and just needed to be physical, and warm. I really don't know exactly what happened, and can only speculate, but the end result was a  mostly severed achilles tendon. I felt something hit me, I assume it was the axe behind me as I was using the splitting maul at the time. I stepped down and the tendon snapped and balled up in my calf. I crawled down the hill and into the basement of the house and we headed for the Emergency Room. Lack of insurance, or perhaps not wanting huge medical bills, we chose to skip surgery and go into a series of casts in hopes that the tendon would grow together. There was about 5% still attached. The beginning of the end to my left leg, and I would never again walk on it. January 28, 1988 it was amputated 7" below my knee. During those three and a half years I was in and out of hospitals; and my baby boy was growing from an infant to a preschooler. His norm became visiting Mom  in the hospital. He will never know me healthy and active as a child. It makes me sad.

My kids did have animals growing up. I needed that. I needed them to learn to care for things. I needed them to understand the importance of life, and the importance of caring for something. We had dogs, cats, ducks, rabbits, geese, donkeys, and goats. They saw birth and they saw death. Sometimes glorious, but also very sad at times. They learned the cycle of life as only a city farm kid could. They also saw abuse, and confusion.

Following my amputation I was able to get back into being physical. I joined a soccer team. We played on crutches. I felt more complete than I had in four years. And I met people that will remain in my heart the rest of my life. Family. My gimp family. It was where the term "gimp" became a badge of honor. One that I still wear today with great pride. An injury playing soccer led to eleven years of medical battles that eventually led to a diagnosis; and almost took two more limbs and, several times, my life. Would it have been easier for me to just let myself go to that light? Hell yes!! But I had my kids at home. I could not leave them with their father. And I had my dogs. I feared for both.

Most of that time is still too difficult to look at too deeply. Sometimes bits and pieces come up and I am shaken to the core. Then I get up and go for a long walk, or run. I snuggle up with my dogs. The only constant since childhood. As I snuggle with Nugget, and tears fall, I become an innocent child again. It is a good place, but not a real place. Still a nice place to sometimes go.

During my final hospitalizations (well perhaps final is a bit presumptive, but I like to think of it that way) my husband began divorce proceedings. I am ever so grateful, although at the time it was pretty rough. I doubt I could have done it myself, and it was so much needed. After much nastiness and legalities I found myself in a strange place, living alone for the first time in my life; at 48 years old. Broken, battered. But I had my dogs. Two scotties and a rottie. And I began to dream. I began to heal. Both physically and emotionally. I began to build a bucket list.

Included in that bucket list was showing dogs. You see my big sister was showing horses, and had been since moving out of the parents' house following college and her first teaching job. That kid in me wanted to be her shadow still. But with dogs.  My scotties and rotties were gone now, and I had a poorly bred Pembroke Corgi and had seen the Cardigan Corgis and found them quite intriguing...

Enter Kate. I found my breed. I entered the show ring. I had fun with it. We always won our class. (I entered American bred, just so we could go in the ring twice.) I helped others win their majors by entering her in shows where asked. Enter Kimmie. A relapse of my disease was but a hiccough. I just didn't have time for it. Enter Nugget. Yes, it all happened about that fast, it seemed. My heart is so full that it often spills over. I have always had a couple of very close friends; but none that had access fully to my life. None but my beloved dogs. (OK, the mini horse, too, but she thinks she is a corgi, and I treat her as one of the pack.) In the past year I have learned about friendships. I am not big on cultivating friendship. I don't have a lot of time for the bullsh*t. If there is one thing that I have learned over the last 27 years it is that I don't want to take the time to deal with a lot of drama. I want to go out of this life happy and feeling complete. Odd? Perhaps for a gimp to say. But I am so much more complete than I ever was before I had my "robot leg." All the little happiness things in my life far exceed the bummer things. And those bummer things have brought me the happy things. Cool, isn't it? So, I am a gazillion times more emotional than I was, but it is because I feel so darn blessed to be here amongst my friends and my family. I will restate that. I am so darn blessed to be here amongst my families.  Somehow I have been given a chance to rear awesome children. And I have been given a chance to hang with the best people in the dog show world. With the best, or most suiting, breed of dog that I new very little about four short years ago. What is it about these short in stature, long in tail dogs?

It is hard to say what brought me to them, but I am grateful to all that have come into my life along with them. So I am going to just publish this quietly, as it needs to be said. If I re-read it, it may get deleted. I feel open and raw right now.

But there are puppies calling.

Thank you all for being a part of my life. Thanks for sharing the small victories with me. Thanks for worming your way into my heart and my life. Most of all, just thanks for all the help and support. I love you guys. You have given me life. You have helped a lifelong dream come to reality. It is as good as I had hoped.