I just came across this draft of a blog entry that I started while we were in Paris, but never finished.  Am posting it now because I fear that the blog has become too “doggy” for some.

Whenever we travel in European cities, I take away with me an overall impression of the people. In Rome, the people are beautiful and stylish in a very bold way.  In London, people, in general won’t stare or look at you on the street because it’s considered rude.  In Paris, people of the opposite sex will stare at you on the street because it’s sexy. The Italians love children, the Dutch tolerate them (and most other things) very well, and the British would rather you left them at home. But in general, Europeans are thin, quiet and dignified compared to Americans and every time I return to America after a trip abroad, I vow to behave in a more European manner, meaning that I will walk with poise and address strangers in a polite, formal manner and use my inside voice, even when I’m outside.  When engaging with others, I will give them the coldfish eye, and not try to ingratiate myself with everyone all the time with my panting, grinning, drooling affability.

My new European self usually lasts about six hours.

You can learn a lot about a culture in the way that it takes care of its children.  On the day that we took a tour with our Franco-American guide, we wandered past an ecole Maternelle – a public preschool – and through the windows I saw that several rows of low tables had been set with place settings of china plates and mugs.  There were baskets of bread on the tables.  It looked like a quaint restaurant for children.  Our guide showed us the menu that was posted on the outside of the school doors so that the parents could see what their kids would be eating for lunch.  I took a photo, but it’s very hard to read.  Sorry.

Anyway, each day, the children are cooked a 2-course meal by a chef in the school.   There is soup or a salad to begin, a meat dish, sometimes pasta, sauteed vegetables, fresh fruit and yogurt.  All the fruits and vegetables are organic!  So is the meat!   The children apparently sit politely and dine on food that has been prepared for them with great care.  They don’t eat off of plastic trays or out of paper bags.  This was not a private school, but a city public school.

For the dog and horse people, a few photos I took in the Louvre:

And finally, baby.  I must confess that the name Delilah is just not sticking.  We NEVER call her that, or Lilah.  Just “baby” of “puppy”  Thinking we need a new name, but we all keep arguing about what it should be.  Well, here’s little baby napping:

She’s delightful:

She’s delicious:

She’s Delilah:

Devin and I visited Charlotte yesterday to check on the puppies.  They’ve really grown in the past week and it’s clear that their father(s) outsized their dear little mother, Peanut.  They’re almost half her size already and they’re only four weeks old.

The puppies need names.  I’ll introduce you to each and we can help Charlotte think of appropriate names.  Also, all five four puppies are still available for adoption.  Charlotte will only consider very good homes. She’s asking for a $50 adoption fee which she will then turn around and use to pay the adoption fee at the kill shelter where she finds dogs to rehome.  So, for each of Peanut’s puppies that finds a new home, an older, perhaps needier dog will be rescued.

Now,  let’s meet the puppies.  First, Male Number One:

Male 1

This bold fellow has a lovely white bib and likes to greet new friends with a gregarious “high-five.”  He thinks it’s cool.  We won’t tell him how dated it is (plus, puppies can’t make a fist for the fist bump). His coat is black now, but it has brown highlights and will probably lighten up a little as he matures.

And this is his only brother, Male Number Two:

Male 2

This wrinkly-nosed snuggler seems to have a bit of hound in him.  He will likely be short-coated, and, like the others, on the small size.  It’s impossible to hold him without smiling, as Devin is demonstrating.

Now allow me to introduce the girls:

Female 1

Yes, she’s a blonde bombshell and the eye-catcher of the crew.  This chubby love-bug might have to watch her figure as she matures.  She loves her meals.  Charlotte thinks she’s the smartest of the litter, so take that blonde-mockers.

Her sister, Female Number Two, has a pretty white bib and two little mittens, and a white beauty spot under her chin. Like her sisters, she shows signs of having a whiskery terrier face and coat:

Female 2

And finally, my personal favorite, darling little Female Number Three:

Female 3

Devin and I fell for her.  Hard.  Can’t really explain why.

The other day, I visited my friend Charlotte. Why?  Because Charlotte  rescues dogs from a kill shelter and one of her recent rescues just had a litter of puppies.

As many of you know, Denis has put a freeze on the acquistion of new dogs in the Leary household.  The kids and I are always whining about getting a new dog, but Denis always brings us around to his sensible viewpoint, which is that we have a very amiable pack at present, never a growl or raised hackle between them.  They’re all trained and relatively well-behaved and there is almost enough room in the bed for Denis and me to stretch out between them at night.

So I didn’t tell him I was going to look at the puppies.

I just went for a little look.

Well, I needed to see that Charlotte had everything well in hand!

When I got our of my car, I was greeted by Charlotte’s pack of small rescue dogs and in their midst was a wonderful female version of our former Pongo – a scrappy terrier mutt.

“Oh my God, I love her,” I said, pointing to the terrier, and Charlotte said, “She’s the puppies’ mom, Peanut!”

So into the house we went to look at the puppies.  Peanut trotted ahead of us and turned her head around every few seconds to bark and yap at me.  Her barks weren’t aggressive, nor were they entirely friendly.  She was stating, in no uncertain terms, that she had her eye on me; that if I thought she was going to let me anywhere near her puppies, I had another think coming; that I’d better just watch myself; that she knew a puppy stealer when she saw one; that she didn’t want my germs on her puppies, etc.  We proceeded through the house listening to Peanut’s list of things I could and could not do, and finally arrived in the bathroom where the puppies’ whelping box is kept. There we saw that one of the puppies’ elderly foster uncles (a portly and grizzled chihuahua mix) had stepped into the box to have a sniff. Peanut leapt into the box and sent him on his way with a long, low admonishing growl, then she frantically sniffed and checked all her pups, looking up at us every few seconds as if to say, “Did you see that?  That disgusting ….male …was in the box with my babies.  Did you see? Did you see that?”

After she gave her babies a snack and licked them all clean, she was much more relaxed and allowed me to hold them.  I want to go back and take some better photos and maybe we can help Charlotte place these gorgeous pups in wonderful homes.

Charlotte is very special.  She takes in dogs that are on death row at a Waterbury, CT shelter, and she has had great success placing them.  She ends up keeping some of the very old dogs that she can’t place.  She had found a home for Peanut soon after she rescued her, but when the prospective adopters learned she was pregnant they changed their minds.

After learning about the pregnancy, Charlotte decided to keep Peanut and the puppies until the puppies are weaned. On October 1st, Peanut climbed into her whelping box and began delivering her puppies, while Charlotte and the other dogs quietly watched.  She is a very dedicated and fastidious mother, dear Peanut, and has wonderful manners in the house.  I told Charlotte that if she doesn’t become too attached to Peanut, and still wants to place her after the puppies find homes, well…..

I showed Denis the photos last night.

“NO PUPPIES,”  he said.

Then he said, “The mom is cute.”  He asked me to hand over the computer so he could have a better look.

“She’s a Pongo, alright,” he said, smiling.

Awwwwwwww!

We’re having our bathroom done. First, the shower needed to be fixed, and then we determined that the shower needed to be replaced and now the entire bathroom is being gutted and rebuilt. It’s the bathroom next to our bedroom. I really hate the term “master” bath, I always have, since I was a child, but it’s the bathroom attached to our bedroom.

I’m sharing this because they just started the demolition of the former bathroom yesterday. I left in the morning, to work elsewhere, and when I arrived home, the dogs met me at the door, just freaking out. They were explaining to me, with their contortions and whining and carrying on, that they had allowed strange men into the house having no idea that their intention was to attack my bathroom with jackhammers. Daphne and Lulu really seemed to feel reponsible for the whole thing. The noise was incredible. There were two jackhammers going in my bathroom.

As the workers finished for the day, I looked at the gaping holes where our shower and tub used to be and asked if any of the holes led outside. “We’ve had problems with bats,” I explained.

The nice jackhammer guy (let’s call him Jack) said, “No, don’t worry, those holes just lead into your attic.”

“Oh my God,” I screamed, ducking and running from the bathroom, “our attic is FILLED with bats.”

“Um…You live in a house with an attic filled with bats?”

“Yes,” I said. Then, seeing his perplexed look, I quickly explained that we didn’t stock the attic with bats. If it was our choice they’d live elsewhere.

Jack asked why we didn’t have the bats removed and I told him about the bat/wildlife removal expert (we call him Batman) we called in last spring to help us with the bat problem. First, Batman wanted to get rid of the bats in the early spring, by sealing their tiny entrances and egresses, before they had their babies. The bats would be having babies in a few weeks, Batman explained, and if he sealed them from the house after the babies were born, the mothers wouldn’t be able to return to them and the babies would die. He started to explain what a stinky situation that would be, but he had already lost me with the words,”mothers” and “dead babies.”

“Are the mothers pregnant now?” I asked Batman.

“Yes, he said, “so you really need to get them out before they have the babies.”

“But where will they go? What if they can’t find another unoccupied attic in time?” I said. Somehow, even pig-faced, flying rodents become somewhat precious to me when I am forced to consider their babies. My attic was, in fact, a bat nursery, and I had to think of the mothers, all plump and expectant, all warm and safe, hanging by their toes from the ceiling.

I determined that that the bats must be allowed to remain in the attic until after the babies were born and able to fly, and then Batman could seal off the house.

Well, the spring came and went and Batman became very busy, but we decided there was no rush. The bats were not coming into the part of the house where we live. They live in a crawl-space part of the attic where nobody goes. So, we passed the summer watching the bats soaring and dipping over the fields each evening, and I felt a sense of proud ownership toward them, I have to admit. These bats had been born and bred in my own house and they were a fine-looking bunch. These Leary bats are special, I told myself, then I screamed and shuddered and ran into the barn when one swooped a little too close to my head.

Several weeks ago, we got another call from Batman. If we wanted the bats out by winter, now was the time. They would be hibernating soon.  I had thought bats were migratory for some reason and when I heard that they hibernate, visions of sleeping bear cubs came to my mind. Visions of warm, cuddly, sleeping mammals.

“Where will they go?”

“Someplace else,” Batman cried. The man’s job is to get rid of bats and he was losing his patience with me. I was having a hard time letting go. They weren’t just any bats, now. They were our bats.

So I think you know how the story ends. I imagined my bat families flying from house to house, knocking on eaves and loose clapboards, only to be driven off by the territorial winged residents already there (and bats hate those bat houses, we have them all over our property – it’s the one place where bats won’t roost). I imagined them huddled in a tree, the mother’s frozen wing wrapped around her young, the father wringing his disgusting claws in despair, and the little ones asking, “Why can’t we go back in the warm house?”

“Because the selfish witch lady wants the whole place to herself, dear one.”

I explained all this to Jack and I saw him catch the eye of another guy in his crew a couple of times. He wasn’t exactly backing away, as I told him the story of the bats in the attic. He was leaning away. Just leaning.
There was no way for him to cover up all the holes to the attic, last night, so he shut the bathroom door, and sealed the bottom with duct tape, just to keep anybody from crawling over and offering their rabid thanks.
Today, when Jack returns and unseals the bathroom, I’ll take a picture of the mess for you all.

Remember Oliver? I last photographed him when he was two days old:
Well, his mother, Jen, sent me some new photos of four-month old Oliver the other day. I hasten to inform you that I’m not one of those people who calls the owners of dogs, cats or horses, “moms” or “dads.” Oliver really thinks Jen is his mother. This is why:
(It’s a sad story, sorry, but there’s a happy ending)

Oliver’s birth mother was Mimi, a beautiful chestnut Thoroughbred mare, whom Jenny had owned and loved for years. During Oliver’s birth, unfortunately, Mimi suffered a ruptured uterine artery, which is an unpreventable, unforeseeable birth complication and poor Mimi didn’t survive the birth. Jen is an equine veterinarian and did all she could to help her, but she lost the mare.

Fortunately, Oliver survivied. So Jen bottle fed him and comforted him until she was able to find, through some kind of veterinary network, a mare who had foaled, but who had lost the foal. Jen had the mare brought to her farm the very next day, but by this time, little Oliver had already imprinted on Jen. He believed that Jen was his mother, and when the sweet foster mare arrived, she became his milk wagon, but in Oliver’s mind, Jen was his real mommy.

Once, I was visiting and we were playing with Oliver in his stall. Jen left the stall and as soon as she was out of view, Oliver hastened to the stall door, his ears pricked, listening for Jen. When she said something, he tilted his head, just like a dog, trying to locate her by the sound of her voice. I know that most of you aren’t horse people, but this is very untypical foal behavior. Usually foals are seen peering out from behind the flank of the mother. They follow the mother mare all over the field and will approach humans if the mother does. Oliver roams around their field very boldly on his own, only returning to the foster mare’s side for refreshments. He also will race over to the fence (like my Mark) whenever he sees any human and engage in adorably naughty behavior, like pulling on our clothes and trying to otherwise get attention any way possible. I personally think Artful Dodger might have been a more appropriate name for him.

Well, he’s a lucky (and very happy) little orphan, young Oliver:

(Photo by Katie Hylen)
Isn’t he gorgeous?

(Photo by Kate Hylen)
“Wh-e-e-e-ere is love?”

Photo by Katie Hylen)
“I’ve taken to you so strong, it’s clear …we’re… going to get along!”

I don’t think that Britain asked to be involved in our national debate over healthcare reform, but recent comments from certain members of congress, such as Republican Paul Broun of Georgia who claims that the UK and Canada “don’t have the appreciation of life as we do in our society, evidently,” have put some Brits on the defensive about their National Health Service. In fact, a recent “trending topic” on Twitter (I know, I promised to stop hanging out there) was “We love the NHS”. Thousands of British citizens felt compelled to defend their health service, on, Twitter, from the likes of Representative Broun and Sarah Palin. I don’t know what personal experience Congressman Broun has with Britain’s NHS, but I’d like to share ours.

(If you’ve read my book, An Innocent, A Broad, feel free to skip this post and perhaps browse through the “Horses, dogs, cats” category.)

In March of 1990, my family became uninvited guests of the NHS. It wasn’t our plan. Denis and I were young, broke and I was 6 months pregnant. We had been flown to London by the BBC because Denis, then an unknown comic, had been hired to appear on a television variety show called London Underground. We were supposed to stay for two nights but – and I wish there was a daintier way to say this – my water broke as we strolled down Oxford Street, the day after we arrived.

Denis and I took a taxi to University College Hospital in central London and were immediately seen by an obstetrician and admitted. I was given an ultrasound and an amniocentesis test and it was confirmed that I was pregnant with a 26-week-old fetus. The doctor informed us that our baby’s chances of survival were less than 50%, if he were to be born during the next few days. I would like Sarah Palin to rest assured that there was no “death panel” to determine whether or not our son was worth saving. On the contrary, I was placed in the maternity ward and received outstanding medical care from UCH’s highly qualified and compassionate medical staff. I was given a series of injections of a steroid that had not yet been approved in the United States, but that helped my baby’s lungs produce surfactant – a substance that normally doesn’t develop in human lungs until 32 weeks gestation. Because of these injections, my son, who was born at 28 weeks gestation, breathed on his own from birth, and was never placed on a ventilator.

As non-citizens, we were not entitled to receive free services from the NHS, but nobody delayed our admission or emergency medical care to ask how we intended to pay. We had health insurance, but the doctors and nurses actually seemed slightly embarrassed when we brought this up and it was several weeks into my stay at the hospital before an administrator approached me to inquire about the insurance. He assured me that I would receive the same standard of care whether I was insured or not, but if I had insurance, they would like to be reimbursed, if that was possible. Of course we were happy to supply our insurance information and our carrier was more than happy to pay up (you’ll see why in a minute).

I was in the hospital for two weeks before delivering, had multiple ultrasounds, the amniocentesis, blood tests, medications and ultimately a caesarian delivery. Our son was in the neonatal intensive care unit for two months, the first weeks in a level one unit where he had 24-hour, one-on-one nursing care. After I recovered from my surgery, I was provided a room in the University College’s student dormitory for a very minimal fee. I was given a hospital breast pump and was encouraged, daily, by the midwives and nurses, to keep my milk supply up. After our son’s discharge from the hospital, he still wasn’t healthy enough to travel by plane so we had a health professional come to our temporary home – as they do to every home in Britain after a baby is born – to see how we were doing. The “health visitor” taught me an infant message technique that she had learned at a seminar in Sweden that was known to improve the muscle development of preterm babies. She taught me how to hold our tiny baby in a way that soothed his colicky belly. She answered my frantic, new-mother questions. She hugged me, because I was a little teary, and so far from home. She gave me her card and told me to call her anytime. She told me where to take our baby for his first vaccinations. Later, she called me to check that our son had received them.

Our bill? 10,000 British pounds. At some point we compared medical bills with an American couple that had had a 28-week preemie at around the same time. Their bill was in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
But more to the point than the cost of the care, was the value that was placed on our tiny son’s life from the moment we walked, dazed and panic-stricken through the doors of University College Hospital. The goal of every person who attended to us, every moment that we were there, was to save this baby and offer him the best medicine had to offer. In some cases, such as with the steroid injections, this was better medicine than would have been available to us in the United States.

I spent many weeks in the neonatal unit and saw many sad cases. Babies with severe birth defects. Babies who were born at 24 weeks gestatation, or even earlier. Some of these babies had been in the NICU for months and months. There was no “death panel” deciding the fate of these most vulnerable lives. No life was considered unworthy of the outstanding care that was being provided. I learned, during our time in the UK, that the British are very proud of the NHS and for good reason. How embarrassing, now, to have to watch our provincial leaders, in the government and the media, try to frighten American voters by making uninformed, extremely negative references to a healthcare system, that, in my experience, far outshines our own.

In my book, An Innocent, A Broad, I wrote about a our experience having our first baby, in London, by accident. In one of the chapters, I discussed the fact that in 1990, there were only 4 channels available to most British viewers: BBC1, BBC2, ITV and Channel 4. It didn’t matter to me that there were not hundreds of satellite channels available then because a) I was nursing an infant every two hours and would have watched programs about paint drying if that’s all they had and b) British television is, and always has been, far superior to what America has to offer, in my opinion. Here’s a little excerpt from my book in which I discuss some of my favorite shows from that long hot summer.

It was almost impossible to turn on the TV that summer and not see a program about small woodland creatures on one of those four channels. Unlike American nature programs, which typically featured sleek tigers and voracious lions, these British documentaries usually centered on voles, weasels and the ever-popular badger. Badger shows ran constantly. In the morning I would nurse Jack while watching badgers mate. Later, Denis would tune into another channel to find a feature about the nesting habits of badgers. Badgers eating, sleeping, yawning – apparently there was no end to the British appetite for information about these creatures. Although I never saw it, Denis claimed that in the early morning hours, when most programming was over, one channel showed oddly engrossing footage of wild badgers with pop music playing in the background.

By far our favorite program was “One Man and His Dog“. This was a televised sporting event shot in the bucolic British countryside and shown once a week to millions of viewers. Each competitor – always a tweedy old farmer – and his very enthusiastic dog would approach a small flock of sheep that were grazing in a meadow. The man would stare at the sheep. The dog, poised for action, would stare at the sheep, then the man, then the sheep, then the man, the sheep, the man until finally, the man nodded and grunted and the dog would be off like a low-flying missile headed straight for the sheep. The man would whistle and the dog would drop to the ground. Another whistle and the dog would crawl along to the left of the sheep or to the right. The dog did all the work, the man stood in one place and whistled orders and the announcer, in hushed tones, would say things like, “Let’s see if Jip can steer them ’round that gate ….oh no! She’s lost one! Horrigan must be terribly disappointed with that. She’s been a rather unreliable bitch throughout her career, really.”

Today, somebody emailed me this YouTube video about some very creative shepherds – both human and canine.

Enjoy!

Here’s a link. On my computer the video is not full-size:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qniwI2hNhDs

His name is Oliver.

He’s two days old today.

He belongs to my friend Jen Carolan who breeds sport horses.

He’s a very friendly little fellow:

I’m afraid you’re going to be seeing a lot of him around here, I could watch this little guy all day:

The other day, my friend Helena sent me a poem called A Summer Day, by Mary Oliver. The poem ends with these lines:

Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

I’ve only had a few hours sleep, so I’m a little ragged and these words are bringing tears to my eyes, right now, as I think back on this year.

What else should I have done? Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?

I’m very, very emotional today. I overcame that hurdle in my novel and have been writing almost day and night. The year has come to an end, a wild and precious year and I pray for another and another and another, for all of us. I remember, one New Year’s Eve, kissing my husband at midnight and praying/wishing at that moment for a baby in the New Year – a daughter. And she was celebrating with us the following year! So all things are possible. I have a prayer/wish for this year too.

We’re having a snowstorm, a big warm, woolly white one, where there’s no biting wind, just fluffy gentle flakes.

Okay, I know I promised less dogs, but please:

Happy New Year!