Losing Maya

 

*Spoiler Alert!* I found her again. But not without significant emotional trauma….

Just over a week ago, I took my darling girl, Miss Maya Angelou Murphy, pictured above, on a hike in the Cienega Canyon Preserve. It’s a wild area out in the hills southwest of where we live, and I’ve hiked there often with her. We both love it. She gets to sniff wild creatures on the wind and in the brush, and I get to watch for hawks, deer, coyotes, and other wild creatures.

On this particular morning, we’d gone less than a mile before looking up to see a very young bobcat playing in the trail about forty yards ahead of us. At the sound of my laugh, the big kitten bounded off into the sage and sunflowers, and a moment later we crept past that spot, Maya with her nostrils flaring, me with my phone out, camera app on, hoping to see it again. No such luck. We walked on.

"Mom! What was that big kitty thing?!?"

The morning was bright and already heating up at 8:00, and the trail we had traveled in the past had become extremely overgrown, so I was just making up my mind to turn around and head home when Maya began limping. She’d picked up a sticker in her left front paw.

This presented a problem. While it is no longer much of a struggle for me to touch her feet (to check them after a hike or to clip her nails) when she’s in her crate, she is still too wary to let me touch her paws or legs while we are out hiking. We obviously couldn’t go on, though, so I made her sit, and when she was calm, I reached down to check her paw. She panicked, jumped backward, and slipped right out of her collar. Then I panicked, telling her “Maya! Wait!” a bit too sharply. But she stopped. (Good girl!) Hands shaking, I grabbed her scruff, holding it tightly with one hand as I slid the collar back on with the other. I walked her forward, and in the tussle, the sticker had apparently been dislodged, as she was walking without limping. Whew. Safe. Or so I thought.

We turned to go home.

On a previous visit to the preserve, I had dropped Maya’s leash when we were about a half mile from the trailhead, and she had done beautifully, trotting ahead at times, but always stopping when I gave her the “wait” command. On this day, when we were still three quarters of a mile out, I decided to try that training again, but instead of dropping the leash in the dirt, I unhooked it. She trotted along beside me in the trail, never going ahead, just being with me. It was glorious. Until it wasn’t.

Because we’d seen the bobcat, and because the day was warm, my gaze alternated constantly between the trail up ahead (for coyotes or critters), the trail beneath our feet (in case of rattlesnakes), and checking to make sure Maya was beside me. We’d gone a quarter mile when I looked out, looked down, looked to my side—and she was gone.

I stopped and turned. She’d taken a side path, a single-track coyote trail that led toward a steep ridge, and those crazy long legs of hers were trotting as fast as she could stride. She was already thirty yards ahead of me. Panicking again, I called her loudly: “Maya! WAIT!” To no avail.

Here’s the thing about feral dogs: You can’t chase them. In Maya’s first life, the one she spent in two successive, awful rescues, they handled her by chasing her—out of her kennel, then back in. When she sees anyone behind her on our walks, she immediately becomes anxious and strains on the leash, trying to run.

In this situation, I had to pursue her, but I knew I couldn’t run. I walked as fast as I could, repeatedly calling her. She ran up a hill so steep, I questioned whether I could get up it—but I did. I had to. As I topped the ridge, I saw her, now fifty yards ahead, still trotting. She disappeared down a slope, and all I could do was follow, hoping she didn’t leave the trail.

She didn’t. As I reached the bottom of the downhill slope, I could see her topping the next hill. On we went in that fashion, with me losing, then gaining sight of her, willing myself to breathe deep, save my oxygen and strength.

I topped a hill, and there she was, exhausted, lying in the shade under some brush.

“Maya! Wait!” I snapped. And she was off and running again.

I slowed my walk, thinking, as the sun rose higher and I realized I’d brought no water with me, I might have to follow her all the way to the far end of the preserve, which was three miles along the ridgeline—and a block from Interstate 10.

“Breathe, Kay,” I told myself. “What would Cesar Millan do?”

Well, he would adjust his energy, stay calm, and not utter a word.

I did these things, as best I could, topped another ridge—and there she was again, lying in the dirt, panting. I stood in the trail, breathing and sweating and hoping, not saying a word. Slowly she rose to her feet. I didn’t move. She walked toward me. Quietly, calmly, I said, “Maya, come,” and I turned toward home. She followed, right at my heels. After a moment, she moved beside me on the trail. Ever so slowly and gently, I reached out a hand and took her collar, stopped, and snapped on the leash.

When I knew I had her, I sank to my knees in the trail and sobbed. If she’d been lost in those hills, she would not have survived. The coyotes would have made a quick meal of her.

How I found her--without the leash, of course.

The long walk back in the hot sun, descending those steep hills on shaky legs, took an agonizingly long time. Maya was overheated and kept trying to lie down in every little bit of shade she found. I would have carried her—all thirty pounds—but on those treacherous descents, it would have been too dangerous. If I’d sprained or broken an ankle, our day would have gone from bad to really quite awfully terrible.

Friends, I believe I have learned more from the mistakes I’ve made with my dogs than all the YouTube videos and episodes of The Dog Whisperer (or Cesar’s other many shows) I’ve ever watched. How did I fail Maya? By not realizing that, while I had quickly moved on after the sticker-in-the-paw episode, she had not yet shaken it off—how I’d grabbed her, speaking sharply and holding the back of her neck. The trust of a feral dog is always tenuous. With Thomas, it still is, even after nearly ten years. Yes, we have our sweet moments when I brush him or clip his nails or simply sit and rub his belly, and he is blissfully happy. But then I might do something he sees as threatening—slap a mosquito or pick up my guitar or print out a document—and suddenly he is terrified, running through the house and seeking safety somewhere away from me.

That’s what Maya was doing, seeking a safe place to hide. Eventually, she came to see that she could run forever—or she could choose to trust me again. Boy howdy, did I get lucky this time.

Training feral dogs is not for the faint of heart or for those with little patience. The journey is often two steps forward, five steps back. The Universe gave Maya back to me. I will be much, much more careful with her in the future.

Contemplating the long walk back to the car.

A Cascade of Nostalgia

 

Forest Falls, named in part for a very tall, very beautiful cascading waterfall (called "Big Falls") at the east end of town, is a small village in the foothills below Mt. San Gorgonio in Southern California. I made my first sojourn there when I was in high school when a group of “Jesus freak” young people like myself car caravanned there from Riverside. I still have photos and many fond memories from that day.

A half dozen years after that first trip, I returned to Forest Falls to attend my very first writers conference at Forest Home, the beautiful conference center there. At the age of 21, I had entered a national writing contest, won third place, and the person who called to make that announcement told me, “I see that you live in Southern California. In addition to everything else you’ve won [publication in a national magazine with a readership of six million, plus books on writing AND the entire Chronicles of Narnia series, just for fun], we’d like to send you to a writers conference.”

Did those lovely folks have any idea how attending that conference would catapult me into my dream of writing and publishing? I don’t know, but it sure did.

When my children were old enough, we returned for a day of hiking, picnicking, blackberry picking—and, at the end of it, a trip to the ER for stitches after my eldest son stepped on a piece of broken glass while wading barefoot in the stream.

I can assure you, when I returned many years later with three young grandkids in tow, I made sure all of us kept our shoes on.

At some point in my adult life, I picked up a friend who was trying to decide whether or not to leave her abusive husband. I took her up to Forest Falls in my beloved VW bug. While we rock-hopped over rough terrain to get to the falls, we also attempted to navigate the equally challenging topics of “commitment” and “self-esteem.” Good talk. Good walk. But when we returned to the car—the only one at the trailhead on a weekday—we discovered it had a flat tire. In the hours previous, I had been trying to convince my friend that she was stronger than she realized. When she saw the flat, she began to wring her hands and cry. (Mind you, this was decades before the convenience of cell phones.) She was not reassured when I told her not to worry, we would, together, fix the flat ourselves. But we did, handily. At some point, a young man with a six-pack of beer pulled into the parking area on a motorcycle. He took a seat under a tree and watched us do the work—and I was grateful that he never offered to help, just sat and downed his beer, one after another. Because when we triumphantly finished and climbed into the car to leave, my friend told me how empowered she felt. Booyah.

In the past, the trip to Forest Falls required some planning, as it was some distance from where I lived. Moving to Calimesa, however, put me much closer, so that now I can get up there in just over half an hour, traffic permitting.

So of course, I had to take Maya. Here’s what happened when I did:

As soon as we left the car and hit the trail, we saw the giant sign erected by the Forest Service: The area around the waterfall was “closed,” for all intents and purposes. Why? Because in order to get to the falls, you have to cross Mill Creek, and (as mentioned in my previous post), the water in the creek is running so high and so fast, it’s treacherous. Plus someone dies every year by trying to climb the falls, and I think USFS is simply tired of calling Search and Rescue to pack out another dead body. Seriously.

However—we could still walk along the creek, which we did. (Click here to see a bit of that.) Until she saw people. Too many people. There may have been a total of five or six at various points along the stream. But for her, one human (besides me) is too many. So she panicked. Where to escape?? Into the water. She headed straight into the stream and would have paddled to the far side had I not reeled her back in. (When we hike, she’s on a fifteen-foot lead, so she really did get pretty far before I wrangled her closer to shore.)

 

When I wouldn’t let her retreat, she did what I have taught her to do when she’s fearful, which is to sit down and take a breath. (Okay, I know you can’t really teach a dog to take a nice deep breath, but she sits, and I do the deep breathing.) Yep, she sat her little bottom right down in that ice-cold water. Silly dog.

 

We didn’t stay much longer; I had things to do at home. But I did stop to take pictures, and realized (shout out to all my Baldy friends!) from a certain point, you can see all the way from Forest Falls to Mt. Baldy. And yes, of course I waved when I realized that. You never know who might be waving back.

 

Another Day....

 

Despite the heat, skies have been beautiful here lately, and I owed Maya (and myself) a long walk out in the hills to clear the cobwebs and to be reminded that Nature is still magnificent (even if what we see on TV isn't), so Saturday morning we left the house early for one of our favorite spots in the rolling hills just south of town. I also wanted to see how Maya would do on the fifteen-foot leash I bought for our hikes.

We hadn't gone a hundred yards when we saw this:

I think I know my sister well enough to know that if she's reading this, she's making an "Are you kidding me?!?" face if not saying that out loud. Yep. Sad. Someone had no use for Grandma's little white spinet piano, so they drove it out to the hills and pushed it out the back of a truck onto the ground. I've seen a lot of things out in these hills, but this just broke my heart. I thought of three different places it would have fit in my little house. Damn, people. You didn't have to toss it out like some kind of garbage.

Speaking of such: As I said, I've seen a lot of things out there. Our next discovery, about a half mile past the piano, was this guy:

Sad, huh? When we came upon him, his tie was askew, so I fixed it. Then, because Maya was just happy to be out in the hills, and she was willing to wait patiently, I sat him up so that instead of staring at the sky all day, he could see some sky and hills, birds and coyotes, maybe some dirt bike or mountain bike riders (I imagine the latter stopping to chuckle and take a photo), and possibly some more miscreants offloading junk they can't be bothered to drive to the dump.

Isn't he handsome? I love bears. People think I love giraffes--and I do, don't get me wrong--but my first love will always be bears. Stuffed ones, live ones. Doesn't matter. I have bears all over my house, in one form or another (mostly stuffed). And in my car. (Ask my sister, who sometimes rides shotgun. Raggedy Bear travels with me wherever I go.) I can't imagine what prompted someone to toss this dude out, especially when he was dressed so nicely.

But then, people aren't always thinking clearly when they drive out to the hills. See this big, beautiful oak, and that small yellow something at the base of its trunk?

If the device you're using to read this has the capacity to zoom in, you'll discover, as I did, that it's an empty Pacifico box. Niiiice. (For the uninitiated, that's beer.) I mean, if you're going to drive way out in the hills, sit under an oak and experience Nature, that just might be the perfect beverage to consume. From the Pacifico website:

"Pacifico is a pilsner-style lager with a crisp, refreshing flavor and a touch of grass-citrus and ocean mists."

Seriously. I want one now, and I don't even drink beer. (Well, hardly ever.) But the ad copy had me at "ocean mists."

I guess I'm glad the drinker(s) left all the empties in the box. I mean, they could have smashed them against the tree, creating a dangerous hazard for wildlife. Just to note, that box has been there a long time. Maya and I have passed it often. No, I haven't picked it up to carry it out. It's a mile in on the trail, and I have both hands full handling Maya on the way back to the car. And my phone, if I have to take a picture. Case in point, this lovely gourd and blossom:

After we saw that, we saw this. If I didn't know better, I'd say it was a bear print, but there are no bears out there. Just, apparently, tremendously huge dogs. I held my hand over it so you can see how big it really was.

It was a great walk, and Maya enjoyed having the freedom to wander a bit on her new leash. But all good things do come to an end, so we trotted back to the car for the short drive home. Just another day in paradise.

Unexpected things

 

 

Last Sunday, I needed to get out, to get away from everything demanding my attention at the house (except the furries; they never demand, they ask nicely and wait patiently), so of course, I took to the hills just west of me (and just south of Calimesa, if you live here and wonder where I roam). Since Maya has decided that the best thing about coming to this new, strange home (besides the good food, the treats, the peaceful quiet, and the opportunity to go outside to relieve herself more than once a day) is hiking, of course I took her. She is great company on a hike because she is as curious and excited about everything around her as I am.

This time, we took a side road Maya has always wanted to wander down, which brought us up to a ridge, which then took us down a slope and along a little used, mostly overgrown path. From far off, I could see a giant oak. It wasn't until we got close--until I'd decided to try and get a picture with my phone that would show how massive and old and beautiful the tree is--that I saw the mattress lying beneath it.

My first thought, of course, was "Stupid jerk." Since there are ways to access the hills if you have a 4WD vehicle and a little gumption, certain types of people will drive to some far corner out there and drop loads of crap--after a remodel, say, or after cleaning the junker car parts out of Grandpa's shed. And yeah, the occasional discarded mattress shows up. But... not usually so strategically placed. I mean, if you're just dropping it, why not push it out of the bed of the truck next to the road? Why drag the unwieldy thing all the way over to the tree? Unless....

For a moment, let your imagination run wild. (Okay, not too wild; this blog is approved for all family members.) I want to think--I choose to think--that our culprit here is a hopeless romantic who loves the outdoors, maybe hikes out into these hills frequently and sometimes packs in a sleeping bag... and/or a date. ("It's okay. I brought a blanket and bug repellent.") Maybe I think this because, once upon a time, long, long ago, these were the sorts of Romeos who would occasionally come courting around my door. There is something to be said for being out under the moon and stars with someone whose company you enjoy. Anyway, enough of that (again, family blog).

I took the picture (Maya sitting patiently and waiting on the other end of the leash, as she has been trained to do), and we walked on--but stopped in our tracks about twenty yards past the tree. Because I happened to glance to the side and see a nice, big, fluffy coyote standing in the grass, watching us walk past. You won't be able to see her in this photo:

Unless you have the means to zoom in. But she's the brown dot in the center of the green swath. Trust me, she looked very big as she stood there and stared at us. Maya did not react, other than to look, and she sat down to wait patiently again when I pulled my phone out to try to get a picture. Ms. Coyote (Wiley's wife?) didn't move a muscle until I said, "It's okay, 'yote, we won't hurt you," at which point she spun around and trotted away (which is when it became possible to detect her gender). I love seeing wild creatures looking healthy in their own habitat. It gives me hope for the world.

We walked on. (But yeah, you can bet that, since Maya is half the size of that coyote, I looked back over my shoulder a dozen times or so until we were a half mile away.)

We were headed for the trail that would lead us home when we saw a flash of white, so we stopped once more, and, oh look! A balloon!

Actually, the first photo I took was from much farther away, when the balloon was just a white dot, and I could only tell what it was by the way it bobbed in the breeze. Here's the thing about balloons way out there, though: They can be dangerous to wildlife. String or ribbon of any kind is bad as it can get wrapped around critters, and if birds use it for nesting material, the chicks can get tangled in it and, helpless to free themselves, it can lead to their death. So in most cases, I snatch the balloon (if I can reach it), pop it, put it in my backpack and carry it out to throw away. In this case, snagging the thing would prove a bit tricky.

While it was low enough to grab, the area around the tree was riddled with ground squirrel holes, which meant snakes were a possibility. Of course I had on high-top hiking boots and long pants (always!), but I also had my little terrier-wolf mix in tow, and she hikes naked. (Well, she does!) So I thought about this a while before venturing in. But given the time of year (end of January) and the weather (in the low 60's), I thought we'd be relatively safe (since rattlers are still in a state of brumation). Just as I reached it, the balloon turned in the breeze, and I could see that it had writing on it.

Ah. Someone's uncle had passed away, and at the memorial service, loved ones wrote on balloons and then released them. As much as I love the image of this--all those white balloons being released into the sky simultaneously and gracefully floating toward our perceived notion of heaven--I hate when people do it. Directly east of my little 55+ community--conveniently located--is a cemetery. So my balloon discoveries are frequent, sad to say. Which means lots of trailing ribbon that doesn't bio-degrade for a long, long time. And I can't always be out there, cleaning up the woods.

In this case, though, I made the decision to leave the balloon. The truth is, it wasn't practical; I didn't have my backpack with me this time (because I had Maya), which meant I also didn't have a knife to cut the ribbon, nor did I want to terrify my little dog by popping a balloon. And besides, the family was hoping that "Uncle" would read their message. It seemed as though it had been recently released. Maybe Uncle hadn't finished reading all the messages yet. Who am I to say?

So (borrowing a bit from Frost), I left the balloon for another day. Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back.

Just kidding. I'll be back over there hiking in a few days. I'll snag it then and carry it out. 

UPDATE: I did return the following weekend to remove the balloon, but some other hiker had apparently gotten there first and taken it down. Good on them; it had served its purpose.

E Ticket Ride

Bunny Tibbs--before her bath

In the first 20 years or so after Disneyland opened in Anaheim, park guests purchased a ticket book if they intended to go on any of the rides. Attractions were rated A-E, with the A venues being of a milder sort, such as visiting with Mr. Lincoln, while the E tickets were reserved for the wildest of rides, such as the bobsleds (also known as the Matterhorn).

I have been riding, in this past week, that well known roller coaster of emotions, ranging anywhere from pure joy to very intense anger, and everything in between. Thanks to a couple of truly great friends who have listened carefully while I vented about the anger parts and validated those feelings ("It sounds like you were really angry..."), I've moved past all that.  So, on to the highlights!

1.  I finished reading Brian Doyle's soon to be released novel, The Plover, this week. I spent two weeks savoring his words and the love with which he imbues them. It is a novel about the sea as much as Moby Dick is about a whale, and that is to say that, while he sets his protagonist squarely on a boat in the ocean, the tale is as much about the human condition as it is anything else. It is beautifully rendered. For those of you who love literary novels and stories of people who are broken yet still able to love and love lavishly, buy it. Well, pre-order it if you're reading this prior to April 8, 2014. Just click on the highlighted title in this paragraph.

2.  Bunny Tibbs reappeared. (To find out who Bunny Tibbs is, read the blog post which precedes this one.) I came home from work to find Bunny lying face down on Thom's comforter in the garage. Apparently he'd been doing a lot of excavating that day. Or maybe he missed her and needed to spend time with her. I have to confess, that after promising him I would no longer touch his toys, I did pick her filthy self up off the blanket and toss her in with a load of rags. She was spotless and ready for bed that night, and he seemed surprised to see her in her beautified condition. Twenty-four hours later, she'd been buried again, but this time somewhat half-heartedly, as one ear remained above ground. Since then he's brought her out of his own accord, and she hasn't gone underground again. Waiting to see how much my dog now trusts me.

3.  Thomas went for his first real hike in the mountains today. In the first weeks after he came home, he wasn't able to travel far due to getting car sick, a result of his extreme anxiety. (Cleaning huge gobs of dog barf from the floor of the extra cab made me glad I opted to buy the Ranger Edge--with rubber floor mats.  Easy-peesy!) I've been taking him on car rides a couple times a week since then, going just a little farther each time. Last weekend we went to the far side of Upland. Today we went to the foot of Mt. Baldy. And oh, what a great time we had. For him, being able to hike along a forest path without cars whizzing by or particularly boisterous bully breeds barking at him from behind fences gave him the opportunity to act like a dog, sniffing the air and the ground and peeing on stuff. Atta boy, Thomas!

Bonus points to #3: Thom went everywhere with me on the lead--over rocks, under tree trunks that were fallen across the trail and, most importantly, into the stream, actually placing his dainty 'My toes shouldn't touch moisture' feet in the water.  Good boy!

And: On the way back, we encountered two lovely young women who had brought their three dogs out to enjoy the gorgeous spring-like conditions. One of the girls was a former student of mine, and the other is a volunteer at the Upland shelter, so as we approached and I called out, "Hi ladies! Are your dogs friendly?" I heard in stereo, "Is that Ms. Murphy?!?" "Is that Sgt. Tibbs?!?" (My dog is no doubt a greater celebrity than I am.) While I reminisced with my former student, she walked right up to Thomas to pet him and, amazingly, he didn't pull away, just stood calmly as she held out her hand, then patted his head. He's never let any stranger approach him like that before. Guess the hike was good for him. In addition, their dogs surrounded him and invited him to be part of their pack in a wonderfully diplomatic way. Thom stood his ground; like me, he's not much of a joiner. But again, he didn't pull away, just let them sniff and wag to their hearts content.

4. Finally, on Friday I read Yeats' poem, "The StolenChild," to my freshman Honors classes, and I showed them this video. These are the moments in teaching that I love the most. Taking them, hand in hand, into the land of the imagination, is like Thomas into the forest. They could go their entire lives without it, as could he, but how much more their lives are enriched by these experiences.