The Shopping Cart Constellation

I have to get up early for work, and in the Fall and Winter months it's usually still dark. I like getting up in the dark because while I walk the dog around I get a few minutes of stargazing before it begins to get too light. One sight had me taking out my binoculars and I was pleasantly surprised by what I viewed. At first I saw what appeared to be a very small, tight constellation. It looked like a miniature Big Dipper, but it really reminded me of a shopping cart. So I called it "The Shopping Cart" constellation until I was able to find out its true name. I saw these stars every morning and so I decided it was time to take a better look and brought out the binoculars. Through the eyepieces the stars went from faint to brilliant! Bright, white and luminescent. But even more than that the whole field of vision was filled with stars. A whole cluster! I was soon to find out from my guidebook that it is the Pleiades, or Seven Sisters. I put the binoculars down and there were no stars visible around the now faint "Shopping Cart" constellation. I again looked through the binoculars and saw the circle filled with stars set off by the brilliance of the Pleiades. Work was a let-down after that beautiful discovery.

Maxie 1998-2010

I open the back door and Maxie runs out and down the steps. I see him pause to sniff the air and stare towards the back of the apartment complex beyond the yard. Nobody is there, but if anyone shows up he’ll be ready to bark and bark until well after they’ve gone out of sight. He’ll be ready to let everyone know this is his domain. His empire.

He then trots across the yard to the back fence where he’ll slowly make his way sniffing, very thoroughly, every inch along the bottom of the chain link. Several of the apartment people own dogs and walk them along the grass near the fence so I know Maxie has a lot of catching up to do when it comes to checking who’s been there recently.

Maxie works his way along the fence until he disappears from view into the next yard. Nobody there ever seems to care if he trespasses since they never use the yard themselves anyway. Although I can no longer see him, I can picture him stopping every so often to check if anyone has appeared outside the apartments, and I can imagine his nose twitching while he checks the air for interesting scents. Nobody is there yet, so with his nose back to the bottom of the fence he presses on.

I know he will be pushing through the weeds, that have grown taller than him, until he reaches the far corner of the fence and he can briefly survey those back yards while thoroughly exploring around the jungle of tangled grass and saplings. His little black, furry body partially concealed by the neglected growth, his little bobbed tail sticking up like a flagpole.

Once finished he’ll turn back and emerge from the tiny jungle, the fence now forgotten, and trot down through the neighbor’s yard and straight to the back door. I’ll see him suddenly reappear from around the shed that separates our two properties. If I’m not there at that moment I know he’ll stand there and wait, staring at the open door until I return, and once back inside the people from the apartments will be able to come and go in peace.

He has done this several times a day for the past several years and so I can see it clearly in my mind, but only in my mind, because once the horrible kidney disease took hold, those days became fewer and far between. He stopped barking. He stopped going to the fence. He stopped being able to go on walks. One by one we saw him lose the things that made life enjoyable for him.

Yesterday he gave up on eating and drinking. He couldn’t stand anymore and he couldn’t rest comfortably. He twitched and gasped and there was no life left in his eyes, and so I had to make the decision I’ve been dreading, and give him his peace. We stayed with him until the last breath and the vet carried him away, still in his bed.

Goodbye my friend. You were deeply loved and you will be greatly missed. Goodbye.

Walking Journal

Just about a year ago I decided to take up walking. I started in the summer by walking the high school track everyday. I was pretty dedicated to to the task and made sure I walked nearly every day of the summer. I kept a little log book of how many miles I walked per day and in August I logged about 58 miles. When Autumn came, and the days got shorter, I was no longer able to use the track since there were football games and then it got dark much earlier. I began making up the best routes around my neighborhood and by the time winter was winding down I found that I'd become very familiar with the details of each route. In short, I was seeing things I hadn't noticed from just driving by everything all the time. I took in details on the houses, the architecture of buildings, saw Christmas lights up close, rustic porches, the flowers that began to bloom in the spring and even paintings on mailboxes. I came to appreciate our historic district and all its beauty and even found a walking trail that ran through some fallow corn fields beyond main Street.

I at first thought getting in a decent walk in the winter months would be difficult, but it proved to be a worthy experience. I'm ready to get back on the track but I enjoyed my time traveling the local roads and streets, even in the cold of January, because there's nothing like watching those deep orange winter sunsets. How many people actually watch sunsets when it's 20 degrees out? Call me crazy, but the experience was worth the misery. And there's nothing like getting back into a warm house after freezing out on the streets! Kind of like getting into the air conditioning after sweltering out on the track in July.

Man's Best Friend

Maxie’s best days are behind him now. He’s getting old (pushing 12) and has kidney disease so he’s slowed down quite a bit over the past year. He can’t do walks anymore, and he doesn’t stay out in the back yard much these days either, so one way to get him out and about is to take him to the pet supply store.

When I first got Maxie from the shelter I started looking for dog friendly places to walk him. We branched out from our neighborhood streets to quiet roads in the farm areas in town, to the woodlands and on to the beaches. Maxie has been to Canada, the White Mountains, Maine, and Vermont and just all over. We’ve covered countless walking miles on roads and trails over the years. Maxie was my best traveling buddy and he rode shotgun with gusto. Shake the keys and he would head straight for the door and stand there staring forward until I opened it and set him free (he still does that sometimes but he has to be “airlifted” out). Mention the word “park” and he would dance in circles and run wild through the house. His ears still perk up, but his racing and dancing days are over. I would actually have to avoid driving past the park if I didn’t intend to stop because if he caught sight of it through the window he’d get all crazy right in the car.

Maxie was hard on the neighbors, too. He would patrol the back fence that separates my yard from the condos behind us and many of those people walk their own dogs in the back lot. Maxie would hang out back watching and as soon as there was a hint of movement he was on them yapping and racing along the fence until they finally disappeared beyond the buildings. Maxie was no more forgiving of my other neighbors and they would be victimized in their own yards. Maxie owned everything and everywhere we went became his territory. Sadly, he doesn’t bark anymore either now that he’s in his sunset years. We still go to the park where he meanders quietly sniffing trees until he gets tired, but everyone gets by him with just a look and a slight perking of the ears. The neighbors don’t get stalked anymore and the days of hiking together in the woods are done. Anyone who's had a dog knows how sad it is to have to start leaving them behind and going off on your own. It’s like, well, losing your best friend.