Working with dogs
SOMEONE ASKED me a few months ago, “Do you ever get a day off?” I may have rolled my eyes, but it was an honest question. I said sure. But what I should have said is I haven’t flown off to southern Italy in the last four years and I haven’t made my way back to Baja. But I have, day after day, often taken breaks, thanks to my dogs. Dogs will make you take a rest, a breather, a roll in the sun, a sniff in the leaves, a left turn down an alley lane. 2018, Since a few late months after I began as executive director at TCA, I have brought my dogs to work almost every day. They are not purebred. They are not puppies. They were then 10 and 5. They are shelter dogs. At the office, they have been underfoot. They have barked like crazy at most people who come to the door, slept better than any of us. During this time, they have lost their hearing and some of their teeth. They have made us laugh often and stop what we’re doing. Having them with me every day hasn’t made it hard to do my job. There was that one episode with the postal carrier, but we got an orange mailbox and now we’re all friends again. No, having the dogs with me has made my job possible. It’s been a way to connect to those around me that I know or don’t, to understand my surroundings, downtown Taos, to meet the same neighbors every day, to learn the streets, the park, and know where some people are buried.
The schedule. It’s 7:45 a.m. and the dogs run to the office door. who’s here already, they want to know. They’re disappointed; it’s just us. They settle in. At about 11 a.m., they start staring at me. Standing behind my chair, lurking on my Zoom calls. They want to go out. We go out. We return. We eat lunch (they wait to see if there’s anything they want). They sleep. We keep working. Somewhere around 4:30 p.m., they begin to stare at me again. This time, it’s a request to go home, to be fed, to sleep in their own bed.
What has this meant for my work life here in Taos and TCA?
It’s become my routine to walk the perimeter of TCA’s property many days, to circle the few remaining lilacs, watch the garden that Los Jardineros lovingly tends change in the seasons, walk around the theater and sometimes go in (could there be popcorn somewhere, the dogs ask?). It has meant we have walked the same streets day after day, past town buildings, the fire station, down Bent Street, into the plaza.
It’s meant learning where TCA lives in relation to the rest of the bustle, how it’s right in the middle of downtown and in the middle of some things happening that matter: road work, the economy in the thoroughfare, independent businesses, and visitors who breeze through Taos with eyes of those who don’t live here. It’s also meant the cemetery, passing Manby on the outskirts and others inside the gates. It’s afforded me the time to ask about our town. Who doesn’t have housing at the moment? Who considers the park her home? Who are my neighbors today and why? Because of my dogs, I have met people whose names I will never know.
But I have also met the most memorable creatures (and their companions) over the past few years: Marco, Wally, Yukon, Dave, Madhu, Lamar, Mischa, and Tomba. Also all the dogs I saw at the drive-ins coming to the movies with their people.
Emily Dickinson had a dog named Carlo. And in her letters to her correspondent after Carlo died, she ended a letter: Carlo died—E. DickinsonWould you instruct me now?*
What I love about Dickinson’s simple note (which accompanied one of her poems) is the acknowledgement that our dogs are always our teachers. It’s the dogs who have helped me work, moved me forward to learn. Taking me down an alley, into the field, through the snow or the hollyhocks.
* Emily Dickinson; Selected Letters. Ed. by Thomas H. Johnson, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1958. From a letter dated late January 1866 from Emily Dickinson to T.W. Higginson.