PhotoBlog
Jimmy & Friends
Jimmy perches on his favorite spot, at the top of the couch where he can keep an eye on what’s happening in the kitchen yet stay safely out of reach of babies and toddlers. His “chicken wing” leg is easy to rest on. A veterinarian said his right leg probably broke in utero and reformed itself this way. All the parts are there, just in the wrong places. I suspect his leg broke because of overcrowding: his mom was a chihuahua, his dad a dachsund.
After Jimmy lost his eye from a snakebite, we took him back to the dog park, aka University of New Mexico golf course, where dogs are allowed to run freely at sunset. He was immediately ready to run again with Arrow, but it took him a while to get used to playing with other dogs. Most of the dogs on the golf course are much bigger than Jimmy and they should intimidate any little dog, much less one-eyed three-legged ones. But Jimmy learned to quickly flip around and face a dog with his good eye so he could see what was going on. He’s never been afraid, even as a curious German Shepherd or huge sheepdog nosed him. But he does choose to hang around with dogs his own size. The little dogs gravitate to each other — they seem to recognize some commonality. Cesar Millan, the dog whisperer, says that when he would run with a pack of dogs, after a couple of hours the breeds would find each other and hang out with their own. How do they know?
Arrow rounds a bend up in the Sandia Mountains, east of Albuquerque (aka the canyon). On the first day Steve and I brought puppy Arrow home from the pound, we took him to a park and sat about 15 feet apart. We called him and cheered him on as he ran back and forth between us. Once he got the hang of this game, he loved it and running became his greatest joy. And he intuitively understood the idea of a game. Hide and seek (which we played at the golf course and at UNM on days when all the students were gone) was his favorite. He would search behind trees or any barrier to find us, wagging furiously when he succeeded.
Arrow was the fastest dog at the dog park (golf course). We clocked him once at 30 m.p.h. And he became really alive when he was chasing rabbits outside the fence lines at the golf course. We called it Rabbit Town and dogs loved to hunt there. The rabbits seemed to welcome the hunt. There was never a chance one of the dogs could catch a rabbit. They could disappear in the chamisa, dive down the many holes they had dug, and weren’t stopped by the goatheads that would get caught in the dogs’ paws. Arrow lived to chase rabbits at Rabbit Town. He took that passion with him when Steve took him on walks in the Sandias.
We regularly took Arrow and Jimmy up to an apple orchard in Velarde, NM. We worked outside all day there, pruning trees, dragging wood, building dams to slow the Rio Grande so it wouldn’t eat away the bank. Jimmy participated in all of it, in the heat of the summer or the icy days of winter. Despite his looks (and despite his “day off” picture at the top of the page) he’s rugged.
And, like all dogs, Jimmy enjoys a soak in the sunshine with his friend at his side. Here it’s Gus.
That’s Linnea, aka Girlfriend, with me in our living room. Linnea’s younger sister Rosie and cousin Maisie hang out most weekdays at our house during the pandemic. Gus and Jimmy can’t wait for them to get there in the morning. Once they’re here, they follow them around. Ouside? Dogs push their way out the dog door to accompany them. Inside? Dogs feel the need to be close. “I love you, Jimmy,” said Maisie the other day. He wagged his tail excitedly, knowing she was talking about him.
With his two good eyes, Jimmy looks out on the patio and considers his good fortune to be alive on this summer day and to belong to the pack of dogs and people that make up his family.