Amelia Dogheart: Chapters from an Autobiography

It might be something of a blasphemy to read John Berger’s seminal essay “Why Look at Animals?” first published in 1977 and find it not entirely to the point. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s philosophical approach—becoming-animal—gets closer but that’s exactly it. Closer. I can look at what critics, theorists, philosophers say about loosening the boundaries that separate and isolate humans and non-humans or ignore the idea completely. And Berger’s sense that it was the lack of language, silence, that separated animal from human—certainly one of the things that did, he argued—is not applicable here.

I can move away, long distances away, from the designation of anthropomorphism, even allowing that initially it grew out of proximity and close contact and was therefore a generous response and later, as we experienced animals less in our dailiness, became a hierarchical dismissal of the animal and its qualities. All of this I call “outsider” stuff. Even rethinking long-held readings and applying the designation of “postmodern” to animal as more inclusive and open to possibilities and variations shows a failure to really understand and does maintain the distance, the fact of separation between human and animal. All the analytical pondering is done from outside. Like Berger, who maintained that only the “middle and small peasant” had a true understanding of the real relationships—animal to human, a lovely romance solely available as an assessment from the distance of critic and writer, however much he toiled on his own plot.

I like Deleuze and Guattari’s becoming-animal with its genuine willingness, even limited as it is, to erase the subject, to not see or read animals as metaphor or instructive, cozy allegory. Becoming-animal, they proposed, is a state and that isolated suspension is a worthwhile pursuit and if you want to read “Leopards in the Temple” in Steve Baker’s The Postmodern Animal (Reaktion Books, 2000), there it is, their saying, “This is the point to clarify: that a becoming lacks a subject distinct from itself.” Their poststructural decentring of the subject may be fine but as illustrated in the material that follows—we were our own centre and that may be subject enough.

CHAPTER 1

We come trailing other worlds, don’t we? I mean it didn’t begin with just the eight of us, me and the rest of my whelp. We go back, and my backtracking was noted (in the sense of it all having been recorded) notable, all of it deliberate and carefully planned. Odd, how in dogs a purity of line is approved and sought after. I never thought of it but listen often enough to conversations going on at home and you can’t not be aware of positions on racist practice and with my living in a Jewish home and being part of what you’d maybe call an intellectual circle, the Holocaust and notions of evil did come up in conversation, and racism. I remained pretty quiet on the subject of my background. It wasn’t to be disparaged, I am who I am (interesting how Old Testament style creeps in in common speech, isn’t it) and if I’m loved and admired—and fairly accomplished—all of that history is surely responsible for some of it, but, between us, you don’t give utterance to everything on your mind. You hold your tongue. And on this topic, tongues that is—apparently mine was a very long one. Not that I noticed; I had no difficulty keeping it out of sight, neatly resting inside the cradle of my teeth when my mouth was shut but only a fool doesn’t know that dogs perspire through their tongues—not only of course—but it’s a handy exit for heat and often the weather was warmer than I enjoyed. I’m not originally from here, you know. But I digress. On the tongue—mine is a very attractive pink, not the florid red of real mouth breathers—and quite fine, not fleshy like the brisket you see hanging from some mouths I’ve passed on the boulevard, looking and smelling like pickled meat. No, the very sensitive peripheries of my tongue are as delicate as, well, not to sound silly on this, but Clare, the woman I lived with (what a meagre and paltry thing thoughts are that can’t articulate more fully what we were for each other), Clare told me the edges of my tongue were like the cup of a rose petal where it meets the stem. But I’ve come a long way from where I started on this notion of holding my tongue because I did it as a discretion, but she, Clare did it as a passion—hold my tongue, that is. I’ve only always lived with one person and there was mainly just the two of us so I don’t have a lot of what would be called anecdotal evidence and certainly nothing hard and scientific but I’d bet that a person snapping at a dog’s tongue, out of the blue, and holding the tip or an edge between thumb and forefinger is not that common. Maybe it is, I don’t know, but you make your way on instinct, by and large, and my bet is that this was her particular thing. She never hurt me; it was just a surprise and it was invasive. Odd, you know, I was a pup when we moved in together, and she was an adult and even with the accelerated development and aging that dogs experience, she was older than me for a long time, but I always felt like the adult, in a caring way, I mean. Clare needed caring for; I sensed that right away. So the odd invasive thing, I put up with. She was always loving about it, it was her way to be close in everything physical. And my tongue was lovely.

The other worlds I spoke about, well, I’m a Scottish Deerhound and we do come from Scotland, which is why I prefer cool weather. We were used for hunting, pairs of us, to run down deer and elk. Run we can. Give us firm footing and we’re a sight. I used to love that, running full out on the packed sand at the edge of the lake, early in the morning, no mingy little kids raised to be afraid of dogs, no surveillance from town officials, no boaters, bathers, dippers, just me and often one of my sisters and we’d go. I have good nails and a nice span between my toes, a good elastic web and I’d get traction like no one. The damp grab of the sand, the odd lick of a little wave rolling in, that grand, free air, gulls lifting off, sounding their alarm, and me back again turning and wheeling on a hind quarter. I could do a one-leg pivot before the eye could register it and I was formidable when I hunkered down for compression. When you’re good you know to wind the energy like a spring and then let it uncoil in a shot. Clare was there too.

So, while I wasn’t born in Scotland, family was, and the air and salt, whatever grew underfoot, the briskness of what was expected—pride, a certain hardiness, rigour really—all of this is in the bone, an understood document you carry with you. That’s breeding, don’t call it otherwise and we won’t speak about it. I trailed that and then, more recently, as recently as my parents, I was out in the country—through them, I mean. A place by the river, big trees, a huge run, fenced now, no more elk to run down, although I understand there were deer in the woods, and these fine elms inside the run. It was apparently quite a picture for visitors—to drive the winding, narrow, gravelly road to where the woman who raised the hounds once lived, to drive the turns and bends and come upon this big fenced run, and see, behind the mesh, six or so dark grey forms, with the characteristic humped quarters, threading their way, bounding and bobbing among the trees to inspect whomever had pulled up. I can see it.

We’re learners, we gather information throughout our lives. In another time we’d have been scholars and much of what we know we gather through watching, looking. We’re called gaze hounds, hunting by sight, not scent. Preferable I’d think. My theory is that this contributes to our dignity. I mean, there we are, heads up, looking out and when a Deerhound does heads up that’s something to see. We are a size. Not to diminish domestic work, I always think that my fellows who go by scent look like they’re pushing the nozzle of a vacuum cleaner. Well maybe that’s not fair of me but it’s an observation I make and another one that goes unuttered. However, I value candour and that’s what I’m after with this book. The truth of my life.

CHAPTER 3

When the woman who was our breeder called Clare to come see us, she came with reluctance. I sensed her lack of interest when she walked in. She’d had one of my breeder’s Irish Wolfhounds (I should add here that for a time our breeder raised both Deerhounds and Wolfhounds, the latter being more obviously appealing to the general eye) and that dog, at more than 10 years of age, had died, four months earlier. A good age, mind you. Clare had a hole in her heart where the Wolfhound had been—a hole big enough that you could see through to the other side of her. There were other things in her life too. Grief has a heavy scent and you don’t need to be a hound to pick it up. No, she didn’t want a Deerhound, she wanted another one like she had before. (My guess was that she wanted to be happy like she may have been before.) I remember our breeder saying, “Look, they’re not ready to go yet. They need three more weeks with their mother. Think about it and trust me when I tell you that however wonderful the Wolfhound was, and I knew her well, she was one of mine too, you know—once you’ve lived with a Deerhound there won’t be anything else for you. You’ll see. Come back again.”

We were the last litter my mother would have. She was too old to breed again. I heard this said and it wasn’t an observation I’d have made on my own because for me, she was without fault. I’m fortunate to have inherited her coat, which was long and thick but without odour. No, that’s not right either. There was an odour; it’s mine too so I know it well and probably Clare should describe it because I can’t remember a time when she wasn’t sniffing at me. Talk about turnabout. Let’s see—there’s a hint of pine resin but not bitter, there’s a bit of the pale yellow of butter but never rancid, there’s the non-specific, cool flowery scent of a flower shop and these combined were my mother’s smell, and later, mine. As a new pup I was given to disappear into that abundant coat, to weave myself into its length so that the world around me was muffled and distant. Saint that she must have been, she tolerated my rooting and attachment. None of us was denied. I don’t know what became of her after we all left; she must have gone with our breeder when she left the city but then what? These leavings, unspoken departures. We’re not supposed to be concerned about such things; we’re to cleave to the new life, to the present only, and I try—each day for its own sake, always the present. My heart breaks. Ours do. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

Clare did come back and I left with her. She was comfortable with animals, I was comfortable with her. “You’re a delicious rat,” she’d tell me, picking me up like a baby, my long forelegs and hinds wrapping around her, my sleek head over her shoulder. Monkey-style, baby-like she’d hold me and our hearts would touch. She did this for one month and then she couldn’t lift me; I had long since ceased to be a delicious rat and forgave her the insult.

I haven’t mentioned my name, which springs from two sources. Clare, as a young woman, was lonely, or assumed that state, and was in love with Dylan Thomas, who was, by the time she discovered him, dead some number of years. His voice, his readings and talks had been recorded and these Clare owned and had committed to memory. I know these things because Clare told me so that I would know her, and where my name had come from. On one of the recordings Thomas had quoted from a Thomas Hardy poem that he liked especially. It went something like this. “Melia my dear this does everything crown, who would have thought I would see you in town …” or at least that was what Clare remembered of it and she found the “Melia” to be rhythmic and it stayed with her. Then there was the courage of Amelia Earhart, that elegant and slender young woman from the era of white flannel trousers and gramophones, a period Clare found sympathetically romantic, the time when her parents were young and some long time before they’d become her parents. Amelia Earhart who dreamt and dared and disappeared with her legend full and round like globed fruit. And dog heart, my own, beating quick and strong and, as it turned out, very, very strong. So for all this I was to be Amelia Dogheart in full, or Melia, in a hurry.

CHAPTER 4

What are the incidents in a dog’s life? In the city, for a dog who is treated well it’s a life marked by few notable events. Is that a limitation? I don’t know. Later, Clare would say, “Melia could have been anything, anything at all. She had the intelligence to have been trained to do anything.” She meant that. Then she’d add, as a joke, “She could have studied. She could have taken law or history maybe, linguistics, anything. I should have encouraged or insisted and sent her away to study.” By then our skins were permeable, hers and mine. We would slip in and out and my guess was that she was forgetting whether she was me or herself. I can’t say that regret was one of my sentiments. It was actively hers but then her background hadn’t been anywhere near as stable or comfortable as mine, for which I have to thank our breeder, my dear mother, and Clare.

To the events in a dog’s life, in a dog’s day: I liked well enough the house to which Clare initially brought me. It was very grand, was the house of an unhappy and failed marriage and was therefore For Sale. “Don’t get too attached,” she told me. I think I let her know, “Who cares?” I certainly didn’t. It was actually bigger than we needed it to be and because we were moving and showing it and people were coming and going and because it sat inside a huge grey, almost invisible dome of grief like a giant malevolent soap bubble that I was surprised Clare couldn’t see, I never really settled in and only felt I’d come home when she bought her own modest house, which was our house. In doing this we completed one circle, you know. The house Clare bought was also on McMillan, different side of the street, and more elegant in its modest way than the McMillan Street house where I had been born and further down the block, but there I was—back where I’d begun. By this time our breeder had moved out of the city; the small wire dog run at the back of the house had been replaced by a gravelled spot for a car and no dog traces remained.

I don’t think I’m unique in saying that houses don’t really mean that much. One familiar spot, maybe two but we establish ritual with relative ease. I do, and for me it’s ritual that counts for a lot. You know, it’s not because dogs are limited in imagination or less intelligent that we tolerate repetition. It’s a higher sense of the place order holds, of the necessity for form as a sustaining structure that allows us enthusiasm for the same game of catch or the same simple instructions or even the same meal served unvaryingly. These mantras lift us above the mundane and people who think they’re putting one over on dogs by having them pleased with little are themselves diminished. I know that if my response to the familiar varied at all Clare was disappointed. I wasn’t always on but I was mindful of my responsibility and I performed as expected. Passivity didn’t always suit me either, but I had to think—what was it Clare wanted here. I accommodated, I lived a life inside my head and for all that, while all my desires weren’t met, I was happy. I had a task, a responsibility—I was to be with Clare. For her part, I was Clare’s opportunity. Here I was, as fine a dog as breeding, nature, calculation and chance could produce and Clare’s opportunity was to deal me splendidly. I mean—in this singular situation she could be as good with me, as good to me, as she was capable of being. I was given to her, I was whole and blameless, my articulated needs were within fulfillment and she could succeed or fail with herself as the only arbiter. No one but she would judge how she’d met her contract. Simple, you think? Ever lived with a Deerhound? We train our eyes and we see everything. A conscience in fur, a silent monitor, the noncommital adjudicator in grey. An opportunity.

CHAPTER 8

I’d mentioned my second season and my sexual encounter but my first season marked a change beyond the coming of puberty. Clare and I had been together for more than a year. We were happily settled in our house, we’d explored our neighbourhood and found it decent, almost proud, modest but varied, individual and with the eccentricities of a place where people really do live. Like the man one street over, old, quite deaf but an avid and remarkable gardener who had clipped and shaped a rose bush into a topiary lady with parasol. Every morning he and Clare would shout greetings at each other, he’d comment on my size and then he’d make his way two streets down to the bakery on the corner, where he ate his breakfast.

It was the night of a perfectly lovely and unremarkable day in late spring. I was asleep on my bed in the kitchen. Clare had a fine soft mat large enough for me to curl up or stretch out on and in the morning she folded it away in the back hall. We liked our privacy, I liked the kitchen, my water and kibble were close by, and by bedtime the kitchen held the barest comforting traces of a meal cooked or the smell of jam cooling in jars on the counter or cookies just baked. Clare is a good cook and prepares virtually everything we eat. It’s a question of health and pride in accomplishment and this commitment of hers pulled me through a perilous period in my later life.

We’d been asleep on our respective beds for several hours and then an odd foreboding woke me. I felt a brief but searing anxiety and remember nothing more before coming to consciousness weak, confused and sore in my limbs as if I’d been beaten.

Clare had been asleep upstairs and had been wakened by a thumping and banging in the kitchen. She told me she raced downstairs, opened the door to the kitchen, put on the light and found me thrashing on the floor, my limbs in a futile gallop, my eyes wild and mouth locked in a grimace. A thick saliva issued from my mouth and made the floor greasy under my head. Clare believed she was witnessing my death and somehow in her panic, found the vet’s listing, telephoned and made herself understood. As I quieted, the vet explained that probably what we’d just experienced was a seizure, most likely epileptic, that unless it happened again that night we should wait until morning before coming in and that there was nothing to be done other than rest, for now.

I remember trying to find my feet and sliding on the slick I’d made with my mouth. Clare was keening my name over and over, I must have bitten my tongue or my lip because the saliva was tinted pink and there was all the blood from my season, increased from the straining. My heart was racing, my tongue felt yards long. Clare slipped on the floor and came to me on her knees, lifting my head to her lap and I could feel her heart quick as mine when she folded herself over me. I knew she was frightened. I certainly was and I know she held me to bring me back and to comfort me for the strangeness of my recent flight but I had to find if I could stand, had to anchor myself four-footed, to firm ground, had to shake off the foreign place I’d been and I remember struggling to remove myself from her.

“Okay,” Clare said. “Okay, we’re okay, you’re up,” and she guided me, unsteady, onto the dining room rug and further, to the living room and I grew steady. I felt the confusion and bewilderment of being unable to name familiar things and the residual apprehension that I’d wakened with. Clare cleaned the kitchen floor and brought a warm washcloth for my face, which was matted and stiff with the foreign issue from my mouth. I drank and found myself sloppy and Clare helped me to my bed.

The next morning we spent with our vet and that evening he phoned with blood results and his diagnosis. “Everything is fine. I’d say she had a seizure. It may never happen again. If it does, if these come in a cluster, then this will mark the onset of epilepsy. We can control it with medication. She could be all right with it or maybe not. We’ll have to see. Don’t worry.”

Clare told me all this. Of course we’ll have to wait, I thought. What else do dogs do, what else can Clare and I do? “You’re still perfect,” she told me. “Don’t think otherwise, because it just isn’t so.”

Clare told me about shamen who fly, about the magic and gift of transport and how in other cultures this would mean I had been picked out as special. Actually, I thought about it less than Clare and trusted she would do what was necessary. There were other seizures, no less disturbing for our understanding what they were. I began taking medication, Phenobarbital, a sedative, and the standard treatment. I noticed no ill effects, didn’t feel sleepy, but the seizures continued, each one preceded by that awful anxiety, bitter as bile and chilling like the sweat of a fever.

Clare insisted on answers, persisted with the vet. He told us the Phenobarbital could cause liver damage. “No,” Clare told him. He balanced the Phenobarb with Levothyroxine because my thyroid function was affected. More blood tests—for liver enzymes and to determine the lowest possible dosage to get the results we needed. I had fewer seizures, always more at the onset of my season. Clare worried about the stairs. “Stay away from the stairs when you’re home alone,” she’d tell me. Fine, I thought. I’ll fly from the first floor to the second.

I did have seizures when she was at work and she’d see evidence when she’d return. The rug in the den where I slept during the day would be twisted and the underpad shredded from my nails; the pillows on my loveseat would have slipped to the floor, the carpet in Clare’s bedroom would bear traces of saliva dried to the silver tracks snails leave in the night. She’d wash my mouth, the short white fur under my chin, she’d kiss my muzzle, my nose, the space between my eyes, she’d run her thumbs the length of my ears, she’d say, “Sorry I wasn’t here.” We’d go for our before supper walk. I was happy. ❚