10 January 2011

January 04

As I explained in the last post, this year I'm reporting on my fortunes following the week to which they're supposed to apply. So this is actually the fortune I got last Tuesday, January 04.

It's remarkably similar to my New Year's Day fortune, so much so that I sort of felt like I'd been short changed. Also, I really couldn't think of anything different I might be doing over the weekend.

Then Friday came.

Anyone who knows me knows that I'm a dog person. In a big way. And one of my great passions is dog rescue. I volunteer with the wonderful A Leg Up Rescue, a local group that takes dogs whose time has run out at shelters and finds homes for them. ALUR has a network of foster families who provide temporary homes for the dogs until permanent homes are found. It's a great system that allows us to save a lot of dogs who otherwise would be euthanized simply because their time ran out.

I started volunteering with ALUR after we adopted our little tripaw, Lillie, through them. Then our first two fosters, Possum and Greta, never left, as I just couldn't imagine them living anywhere else. So I was fairly certain that I'd failed as a foster dad, as clearly I could never let the dogs go.

Because we now have 7 dogs, I told myself that the only sensible thing to do was admit that I was powerless over the canine spell and reluctantly stop fostering. It seemed the reasonable thing to do, right?

Except that passions aren't reasonable. So when I got a call asking if I would go pick up a dog from a shelter, I said yes. To be honest, I did it because it seemed fool-proof. Someone else with ALUR had seen the dog and wanted to foster her. I was just being asked to pick her up. She would be at our house for a couple of hours max, after which she would be safe and sound but not with us.

One of the things you learn very quickly when you become involved in dog rescue is that it's unpredictable. Shelters can be chaotic, information isn't always accurate or current, and in general things just don't often go according to plan. So when I arrived at the shelter and asked for the dog I was supposed to be picking up, I wasn't surprised to find that she'd been adopted only a few hours earlier.

That was good news. The people who adopted her really wanted her, driving several hours to pick her up after seeing her picture on a rescue site. Not only did she now have a good home, it meant there was now space for another foster dog in the ALUR family. I'd been given the identification number of a second dog to check on, and as she was still at the shelter I decided to take her.

While I was waiting for this dog to be brought out I started talking to another person from a dog rescue group. (There tend to be a lot of us crowding the waiting areas of shelters, and you can always identify us because we're the ones letting giant pit bulls lick our faces and eyeing with suspicion anyone who walks in with a dog on a leash or an animal in a carrier looking as if they might be surrendering a pet.) Both I and this woman had the shelter's list of dogs who were "due out" (shelter slang for "to be killed") in the next day or so. Depending on space, shelters usually evaluate dogs twice a week to determine if the chances of the dog being adopted are high enough to warrant giving the animal another week to live. The longer a dog has been in the shelter, the less likely it is that he'll be granted an extension.

Fortunately, the due out list was fairly short, meaning that there were maybe a dozen dogs on it. The other rescuer was taking half of them. Of the others, several were too large for ALUR (we specialize in smaller dogs) and several had extreme medical or behavioral problems that made them ineligible for adoption. But there were two candidates that seemed good -- both male Chihuahuas.

This wasn't surprising. Northern California is drowning in Chihuahuas and Chi mixes, to the point where we're actually shipping hundreds of them to parts of the country where small dogs are a rarity. I have four Chihuahua/Chihuahua-esque beasts of my own, so I'm partial to these little ones and seeing them in shelters is particularly upsetting because I always imagine my dogs in there (as they all once were) and what would have happened if some other rescue volunteer hadn't pulled them.

The two boys at this shelter could have been twins. Both were light brown. Both had white stripes down the centers of their faces. Both were friendly and happy boys. And both were going to be killed if someone didn't help them.

I knew I couldn't take both. This is the dog rescuer's Sophie's Choice, and no one wants to make it. You want to take every dog. But there's only so much room, and so you make tough choices. Who is most likely to be adopted? Do you take that one or do you take the one you know probably won't be adopted?

I decided to check with the staff and gauge the likelihood of either dog being granted a stay of execution. That would give them another week. If they were still there, then maybe we would have room in a foster home for them. The staff member I spoke to looked them up and reassured me that both were likely to have more time.

Relieved, I picked up the little dachshund girl I'd pulled and started to leave. Just as I was pushing open the door the shelter director walked out of her office. When she saw me she stopped and asked who I was picking up and how everything was going with ALUR. I told her who I was pulling and mentioned the two Chihuahua boys and how I was really hoping both would be adopted soon.

That's when she took the list from my hand, looked at the dogs whose ID numbers I'd circled, and said, "Well, this one will get at least another week, but this one has been here a long time and we need the room. He'll be put down tomorrow."

This is why she's good at her job. An hour later I got home with the two dogs. As I said, I knew the dachshund would be going elsewhere in a couple of hours. But the little Chi boy didn't have anywhere to go. And he couldn't stay here. There was just no way I could have 8 dogs, not with two books due in a couple of weeks. Once you have 7 dogs it might seem as if you wouldn't even notice one more. But you do.

I wrote to some of the folks with ALUR and asked if anyone could take the little guy, who of course I'd already named, thus breaking Rule 2 of the rescuer's code. I was calling him Jasper. Also, I was falling in love with him. So was Greta. He was exactly her size, and the two of them were tearing around like mad things and having a great time. Greta doesn't get much of that with her brothers and sisters, most of whom are not the playing types.

It would be nice for her to have a playmate, I thought. And it's not like he takes up that much room.

It was happening again. I didn't want to let him go.

And then someone offered to take him. I had two days with Jasper and then his new foster parents arrived to take him home. Fortunately, they are seasoned foster parents and know all too well how hard it is to say goodbye. They kept the transfer brief, and before I could throw myself on Jasper and start wailing, they were gone.

Ten minutes later it hit me -- I wasn't sad. Well, I was sad, but I was happy too. Jasper was still with people who would love him. And soon, hopefully, he would be in a permanent home. We had saved him. And if I could do it once I could do it again. I didn't have to stop fostering. It was possible to let go, and every time I did it would make room for another dog.

People often ask me how I can be involved in dog rescue and not get depressed. "There are so many," they say. "You can't save them all."

No, I can't. But I can save one, and then another, and then another. And those will be two, three, sixty, a hundred dogs who won't be scared anymore, who will know what it's like to have their unconditional love returned, who won't be among the millions of dogs euthanized each year. If my heart has to break a little every time I say goodbye to one of them, it's more than made up for by knowing there's another dog waiting to be given a chance and that I can give it to her.

So my fortune was right. I did do something different this weekend. Did I enjoy it? Not at the time. But now, yes. I made a difference in the life of one little dog, but he made an even bigger difference in mine.

Lucky Numbers: 2 9 12 19 30 43

03 January 2011

January 01

As you may remember, last year I thought it would be fun to keep track of the fortunes and lucky numbers I received during my weekly dinner at my favorite Chinese restaurant, Xiao Loong. And it was a fun idea. Except that a few months after I started, my schedule changed and I never quite caught up.

But it was a popular undertaking, so I'm giving it another try.

This first fortune is technically for the entire year. Normally we go to Xiao Loong on Tuesdays or Wednesdays, but I thought it would be fun to go on New Year's Day and so we made a Saturday visit. I decided that whatever fortune I got would set the general tone for 2011.

Apparently I will be having a lot of fun on the weekends.

Despite the casual tone, this is actually a fortune worth paying attention to. I tend to procrastinate on my book projects, putting them off until the last minute and then having to work 16-hour days to get them done. All last year I told myself I would treat my days as if I were going to the office, writing for 7 or 8 hours and not getting distracted by, well, everything else that seems more fun than writing. That way I would get what I needed to done and have the weekends for not being stressed out.

It didn't quite work out that way, which is why I now have two big projects to do and not enough time to do them. And this means I keep saying no to friends who want to do things I would enjoy, like seeing movies, walking the dogs, or going diving (which I haven't done in more than a year!).

So my goal for 2011 is to work during the week and then not work on weekends. Thank you, fortune cookie, for reminding me.

As for this first weekend of 2011, we went to see Black Swan. I'd been wanting to see it since first hearing about it almost a year ago. The Swan Lake story is a good one, and one of my favorite theater experiences of all time was Matthew Bourne's all-male take on the ballet. I was curious to see what Darren Aronofsky had done to it. His Requiem for a Dream was both mesmerizing and utterly devastating, and I was hoping he would bring that kind of intensity to this film.

Well, it was entertaining, but not the brilliant spectacle I'd been hoping for. As I said to a friend later, the performances were all fantastic, the way the story mirrors that of Swan Lake is a great device, and overall it's beautifully shot, but it's one of those instances where the whole is not as great as the sum of its parts.

Still, it was relaxing. I haven't seen a film in a theater in a looooooong time. It's easier to watch them at home, especially when you tend to want to set on fire people who talk, text, slurp, and/or chew loudly while you're trying to watch the movie. But sometimes forcing yourself to go at a certain time and commit to just sitting there watching a movie is exactly what you need. And I did.

Did it help me get more work done during the following week? Well, no. But really it was only two days, not a full week, so it's not a fair test. It might help if I make a habit of it.

By the by, I'm doing things a little differently this year. Each week I'll be writing about the previous week's fortune. That makes more sense than writing about it when I get them and then waiting to see what happens.

This is true for the Lucky Numbers as well. I had big plans for this week's numbers, as the Mega Millions game was up to more than $300,000,000. What a way that would be to start off 2011. In fact, I wouldn't have to do anything for the rest of they year. Or ever, come to think of it.

But I didn't win. I didn't match even a single number. Clearly, the gods of fortune are just waiting until an even larger pot is up for grabs. They're thoughtful like that.

Lucky Numbers: 3  9  19  22  30  45