Percival led me to the bedroom, where he danced back and forth in front of the upholstered chest at the foot of our bed. He looked from me to the bed and back again, licking his lips with anxiety.
When it became obvious that most of the dogs’ fights occurred on the bed in the middle of the night—not to mention how the two dogs’ presence cut into our human cuddle time—Chris devised a method for keeping them off the bed. We allowed them on the bed when lights were on and we were reading or watching television. But when it was “lights out” time, I would take them downstairs for a snack while Chris propped open the lid to the chest. Although both dogs were surely capable of jumping up onto the bed from the side, neither had done so. They had always used the extra step up by leaping first onto the cushioned chest and then the bed. When the lid was up, they couldn’t, or didn’t, get up onto the bed. Now, though, Percival thought it was time for the lid to come down. He was tired of waiting.
“Are you awake yet?”
“I am,” Chris said.
“Are you ready for the Power Paws massage? Because he’s dying to get up there.”
Chris sat up, covered himself with blankets, and put both hands up in front of his face, like a catcher behind home base. “Okay. Lower the drawbridge.”
I barely had the lid down before Percival bounced onto it and sprung onto the bed. In two bounces he was on Chris like he’d just been rescued from a deserted island and Chris was the clean water supply. And he licked him like that was the case as well.
“This is a mffphffff mmmmhhhfffpppphhhh,” Chris said.
“Not sure I know what you’re saying. There seems to be a beagle glued to your mouth.”
He moved Percival to the side, turned him on his back, and rubbed his belly. “This is a fine way to wake up.”
“Sorry. He desperately needed to be with you. He came in to get me to lower the drawbridge twice.”
“Well, what Percival wants…”
“Exactly.”
I had to admit, I was a little jealous. Chris had frequently commented that Daphne—the world’s easiest dog with her calm sweetness and love of cuddles—had, against odds and certainly against type, seemed to prefer me, the less calm and sweet human in the house. And no matter what Chris did, or how many times he pointed out to her that he was the one who first wanted to adopt her, Daphne was a mama’s girl. She loved Chris and certainly cuddled with him too, but her preference was obvious. It was not, however, as obvious as Percival’s preference. In a mere matter of months, I had gone from the one fighting to keep him and loving him unconditionally to a mere means to an end. And that end was Chris. Chris was the beginning and end of Percival’s world. He worshipped him, plain and simple.
When I got out of the shower, I heard Chris singing to Percival and I laughed. Percival had his first theme song.
Seamus had many nicknames and theme songs.
And Daphne had early on picked up an appropriate, classic theme song sung to New York, New York, which was simply:
Doo-Doo-Doodlebutt,
Doo-Doo-Doodlebutt,
Start spreading the news…
This beagle’s in town…
Mostly we just petted her cute face while singing “Doo-Doo-Doodlebutt, Doo-Doo-Doodlebutt” and she would reward us with thumps from Thunder Tail. Eventually her looks of love were rewarded with a second theme song, this one sung to the tune of the Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang song:
Oh. You. Pretty, pretty Daphne,
Pretty, pretty Daphne,
We love you.
But now Chris had Percival on his back, squeezed between Chris’s knees, while he was singing, to the tune of La Cucaracha:
Percival Taco!
Percival Taco!
Silly beagle in the bed!
Percival seemed to enjoy it and was gleefully submitting.
“That fits. A dog with this much exuberance needs a quick and bizarre theme song,” I said.
“He does.” Chris grabbed two of the Power Paws and began a little air dance with them. “Percival Taco! Percival Taco! Crazy, weird, my little dog!”
Yeah. Percival was staying. We all had our idiosyncrasies—dogs and humans alike—but we seemed to be meshing them just fine. We seemed to be completing our family.
It would be really nice if we also found out I wasn’t dying.
• • •
My headaches, restless brain, and insomnia had stopped, but my brain MRI was scheduled. Even the insurance company thought I needed peace of mind. I considered canceling. I’d been taking the magnesium, vitamins B and D, and even the ginseng, gingko biloba, and valerian extracts my dad had sent. I’d also given myself a break from the intense reading I’d been doing, since I now felt I’d resolved my cognitive dissonance. And the dogs were getting along. So maybe it had been stress all along. Maybe I was fine. Who needed to drive all the way into Los Angeles for an expensive test when a few bottles of supplements and two cute dogs could do the trick?
Apparently I did.
The other fallout to having mindlessly posted on Facebook that I was being referred for a brain MRI was that my friends and family, and even some strangers, couldn’t forget that I’d been referred for a brain MRI. Seemed everyone took this rather seriously and kept waiting to hear results.
The last time I spent a half hour or so holding still in an MRI tube was the day after I’d been diagnosed with cancer. I’d entertained myself that time by planning out the blog that Chris had suggested and figuring out how to explain to my friends and family that I’d been told two weeks earlier that I had a breast lump that was “highly suspicious of malignancy” (that much I had not put on Facebook). This time, I was determined not to think about the very things that had driven me to brain spasms…or, er…cognitive dissonance. That is, it wouldn’t do to think about the cruel treatment of animals that had become the norm in our society and that I had unwittingly contributed to. That would make me cry, and it’s hard to hold one’s head (let alone brain) still when crying.
I thought instead about what I’d learned about cognitive dissonance and the ways in which people rationalize eating animals. I thought maybe I’d see the other side of the argument. The lawyer in me, heck, the human in me, knew there were two sides, minimum, to every story. So what was the other side of the compassionate, vegan lifestyle? What was the argument? Was there a rationalization for killing and eating animals that made sense? Was there a right way to do it, as Leela suggested? I’d even picked up a book (of course I did!) specifically to see things from “the other side”—the side of the family farmer (there was no way the factory farm could ever be rationalized, and my days of reading about that had ended). I’d picked up Folks, This Ain’t Normal by Joel Salatin, the family farmer featured in the documentary Food, Inc. and the book Omnivore’s Dilemma.
Farmer Salatin makes a persuasive and careful argument for the family farm. And he even made me realize there are still some family farms. Food production hasn’t all been turned over to agribusiness that treats animals like mere parts in a compassionless production line where only profit matters, not health, not humanity, not even common decency. Heck, he even makes me think that if I knew my eggs, or chicken, or bacon was coming from his farm, I’d eat it. But just as quickly I see (in my tube-encased mind) the face of a chicken and a very adorable pig. So, uh, no, I wouldn’t eat them. Maybe the egg…if I knew that the chicken, like the chickens my mom had in her backyard, had lived a “normal” life with her beak and feet intact, able to spread her wings, socialize with other chickens, scratch, peck, and do what chickens do, then maybe I’d eat the egg that she laid without a human prompting her to do so, and without hormones or massive dosages of antibiotics. Maybe that egg I could eat. Maybe. And, I was pleased to note, Farmer Salatin railed against the machine that is agribusiness too.
His book made me want to raise chickens. Which I’m sure my hom
eowner’s association would love—as though my insistence on having beagles was not enough to permanently alienate my neighbors.
Maybe I’d find my tribe with him. With the family farmer. I had cheered (in my head) and answered, “Me too! I do!” out loud when I read his statements, like:
Whatever happened to the scientific precautionary principle? Apparently as a culture we quit paying attention to that principle long ago. We wade into this world of unpronounceable food additives like a bunch of swashbuckling pirates, looking for profits and stuffing our treasure chests with swelling medical and pharmaceutical millions to keep us alive while we destroy ourselves with concocted chemicals. Does anybody besides me think this is crazy?
But he started to lose me as a potential member of his tribe when he seemed to mock vegans and referred to them, to us, as animal haters, when nothing could be further from the truth. And he really lost me, an estate planning attorney, when he inaccurately explained our estate tax system—leaving out salient facts—in order to make a point. That, of course, caused me to wonder what other facts he might have been seeing through a different-colored lens than I would use. What other facts had been stretched to make a point or serve a purpose? He’d gotten me thinking, though, I’d give him that.
Maybe if food, including animal products, was produced in the manner Farmer Salatin did on his Polyface Farm, I’d be okay with that. His view was much the same as Leela had explained hers. For me, I doubted I’d ever eat animals again, but maybe I’d be more comfortable that others did eat animals. At least I’d be more comfortable if there was less torture of animals in the world. And maybe I’d wince less every time I looked at a menu that lured people in and fooled them with non-meaningful hyperbole like “grain-fed” or “free-range” labels that meant nothing and were in no way monitored, but allowed people to thoughtlessly eat the remains of tortured, mass-produced, drugged-up animals without guilt. (Or, um, I’m sorry—allowed them to rationalize and settle their cognitive dissonance.) But that just wasn’t happening. The vast majority of our food was still borne of torture. So while I liked his ideal, I was not joining his tribe.
He did give me one idea, though.
Once again I plotted from inside an MRI tube. This time it wasn’t a blog I was planning. No, this time, I was going to visit a farm. In Los Angeles.
Chapter 25
Sanctuary
Planning my farm visit was preferable to thinking about my MRI results. I’d get those results when I got them, and I just couldn’t bring myself to worry about it. I was feeling confident that I had my restless brain settled down. I’d confined my reading to books that gave me constructive suggestions, like Living Cruelty Free: Live a More Compassionate Lifestyle and Sara Gilbert’s The Imperfect Environmentalist. (Yes, vegans care about the environment too. We and the animals live in it after all; oh, and yes, that Sara Gilbert, the one from Roseanne and The Big Bang Theory, and, you know, earth.) Most importantly, Farm Sanctuary by Gene Baur. Turned out there was a Farm Sanctuary right outside Los Angeles, and not far from The Gentle Barn, which I’d learned about from my vegan Facebook and Twitter friends who, apparently, all learned about it from Ellen DeGeneres. So I’d be going to not just one but two farms outside L.A., but obviously not too outside L.A.
I found The Gentle Barn’s website and read that they did private tours for four hundred dollars, which I figured wasn’t bad if I could get nine other people to join me. Forty dollars per person seemed reasonable. The private tour appealed to me because while I love animals, I abhor humans acting like animals…which they tend to do in crowds.
While the public group tours of The Gentle Barn and the Farm Sanctuary were not likely to involve drinking or revelry or any of those things that make me uncomfortable in large groups, it was likely to involve crowds, since they were open to the public only on Sundays. It was also likely to involve children—what with its emphasis on interaction with animals as a way of teaching children. And truth be told, if I could avoid children that weren’t related to me, I’d prefer to—especially when I wanted to learn from and talk to the people who worked at The Gentle Barn. No way were they going to prefer talking to me over some impressionable, wide-eyed, chubby-cheeked vegan in the making.
Alas, I could not find nine other people willing to drive seventy miles and spend forty dollars getting a tour they could get for ten dollars if we just put up with really short, cute people. Dang these vegans and their compassion for all creatures.
Leela once again agreed to journey on the adventure with me, game to meet the animals herself. Another Beaglefester and vegan, Karal, also met us at The Gentle Barn. And Michelle, an animal-loving, vegan-curious friend from Riverside, agreed to drive out with me. Michelle’s sister and, ironically, her two children, also joined us.
The day was filled with nostalgia for me. First, because The Gentle Barn is in Santa Clarita, formerly known to me as “the place out by Magic Mountain.” As a kid I lived, for a time, in Sylmar, not too far from Magic Mountain…I mean, Santa Clarita. We lived off a dirt road, rode our horses through pomegranate fields, and had an acre of olive trees where the dogs (and the kids) could run about. When we lived in Sylmar we had horses, dogs, cats, hamsters, and a parrot.
And I hated it.
I believed my preteen self to be a sophisticated city girl, and I’d been dragged out of North Hollywood under protest. North Hollywood was neither sophisticated nor a city (a suburb, sure), but try telling that to a precocious eight-year-old who preferred dresses, libraries, and shopping to…well, to Sylmar. I hated getting dirty (though had no trouble leaving my room a mess) and spent most of my time either earning every possible Girl Scout badge or huddled in the library waiting to be old enough to leave cowboy town for the more glamorous life I knew must exist somewhere. That escape occurred only a few years later when we moved to La Habra Heights and traded olive trees for avocado trees, a dirt road for a paved, winding hilltop road, and a rural lifestyle for a middle-class suburban one. The horses, dogs, cats, hamster, and parrot came with us.
The other reason my day at the farms was nostalgic was that once I arrived at The Gentle Barn, much to my surprise the younger sister of one of my (now long-lost) best friends from junior high also joined us (she had seen my post on Facebook, of course!). Shelley had been the “kid sister” who tagged along or played with us at pool parties, Girl Scout events, or other sixth-grade and junior high outings, when we were so much cooler than anyone an entire eighteen months younger. And, ironically, I would always remember her dad as the chef whose poolside barbecues first made me enjoy steak in a way I never had before (or, now, ever would again). Just one of those random childhood memories I had after all these years, and then up walks Shelley, ready to meet cows with me.
We’d arrived early—very unusual for me—but such was my excitement. Scores of volunteers were also arriving, in their green Gentle Barn–logo’d T-shirt and hoodies. I was impressed with how many there were, but in thinking about it—what a wonderful way to spend a day. I could handle volunteer work that involved petting, talking to, and acting as bouncer and bodyguard to farm animals. I assumed the visitors would be respectful, curious folks who would have the best interests of the animals at heart. Otherwise, why be here? There was a sign out front (and I’d seen the same message on their website) asking that guests not bring any meat, poultry, dairy, or fish onto the premises out of respect for the animals. It was probably too much to ask that guests not wear leather either, but I’d worn my vegan boots and was carrying a vegan purse as well. (Sounds so much better than “faux leather” doesn’t it? Right. But it’s the same thing. And no, you can’t tell.)
They opened the gates promptly at ten and we streamed in with the growing crowd of visitors. Luckily for me (and the animals) The Gentle Barn is on six acres and visitors can disperse to the horse corrals, the cow barn, or the goat paddock before gathering again up a hill to a shaded seating area to meet and hear f
rom the founder, Ellie Laks.
We headed to the cows first.
The volunteer at the gate to the cow area lets in a few people at a time to visit with and pet the four or five cows present. A volunteer stands with each cow to explain their story and, I’m sure, to assure that the visitors are respectful in their approach to the animals. Some of the cows are quite friendly. A large black-and-white cow was lying down, enjoying the sun. She willingly allowed us to stroke her face and her ample body, and she certainly seemed to enjoy a scratch behind the ears. Her caretaker told us her name was Crystal. She’d been taken from her mom and shoved in a veal crate, destined for slaughter at eight weeks old. When The Gentle Barn rescued her she was so weak and sick she could not stand. And now here she was, content in the sun, enjoying human companionship. Again I was struck by the capacity of animals for forgiveness. Just as Percival seems to have left behind his days in a cage, subjected to violent, painful procedures, and now enjoys fresh air, toys, sunshine, and time with his humans (Chris! Mostly Chris!), this cow had recovered enough to trust random strangers who approached her. I took a photo with her.
Another cow—a big, blond female named Buttercup—was not only comfortable letting us pet her, she began to lick our arms and even Karal’s face. Cow kisses are to be cherished, and we’d like to flatter ourselves, but it became obvious Buttercup was a fan of the coconut oil we all used as moisturizer (a vegan favorite, so no doubt Buttercup had become accustomed to seeking out the coconut-y vegan visitors). Buttercup had been rescued from a backyard butcher. She was pregnant at the time, but because she’d had so little care, her calf did not survive. However, with time and loving care, Buttercup had become, the volunteer told us, the foster mom to the rescued calves brought to The Gentle Barn.
Staying removed from the groups of humans and even the other cows, but looking a bit curious, was a red-and-white cow named Aretha. I approached her quietly and listened as the volunteer told me about Aretha. She was one of the newer rescues, and her spirit was still broken, though healing. She did not yet trust humans to be kind to her, so I did not reach out my hand to pet her. I just stood near and wished her well, looking in her big, beautiful sad eyes, with maybe just the smallest glimmer of hope.
Dogs Were Rescued (And So Was I) Page 24