Simply Simon

I know it’s been 7 months since I posted. I feel like I’m creeping up out of the mulch. The landscape is different. Or at least I see it that way.

Last fall was one of the busiest most exasperating periods of my entire life. I felt burdened. Time was leaching away from me. My days had spiralled into a routine of over-thought chaos. So being my typical impractical self, I got a dog.

I’m convinced that some dogs are meant to be with certain people, and vice versa, and that the universe has a twisted way of making sure they find one another. I picked up Simon literally on the side of a busy road north of Toronto. It felt a bit like a covert operation – driving up to a tattered trailer home on a muddy lot amidst the sprawl of industry, sitting out front of the house because a sign reads “do not get out of your car until the owner comes out of the house”, watching a truck pull in and sit idly in the lot too, and then seeing a large man in a sweat suit with a long white beard emerge out of the front door. He was receiving the other dog. I was there to pick up Simon. And the truck belonged to the woman who was responsible for rescuing these two dogs from the Welland Humane Society before they were put down even though both dogs were only a year and a half in age and non-aggressive. She opened the back of her truck and Simon flew out. As I held his leash firmly, she ran through food, his background, her experience with him, what to do and not to do, all in less than five minutes. I brought Simon over to the car, obviously nervous about jumping in with a stranger, he required some coaxing, but then he got in and sat in the back seat looking out the window. Whimpering. Simon’s soft whine is a song I’ve come to know well although it’s abated as his confidence continues to grow.

The first month was probably one of the most hellish of my life. I have two cats. I live in an apartment. Fostering a rescue dog means these dogs are typically in dire circumstances and time is running out. Puppies you can mould and train to become the perfect family pet, these dogs are not. They require patience, discipline, unconditional love, and more of the same, until you think you don’t have an inch of patience left in your body, then they require love, and then when you try to discipline, they will test your patience all over again.

It became clear to me immediately that Simon had a few issues. He was afraid of Asians, in general. I live a block from Korea town. And so began our long walks along Bloor Street. As a person with various anxieties, I knew you had to face down your fears or they would grow and manifest into larger problems. He chased cars. While on a leash. Which meant his 60 lb. body flew up into the air and lunged towards moving vehicles, bicycles, motorcycles, buses, trucks, etc. He was frightened of children – they are often screaming and they run like prey. Umbrellas, homeless people, joggers, skateboarders, shrouded shrubs, neighbourhood cats, Falun Gong participants in white gloves, Rottweilers – Simon didn’t really like any of them. He’d circle, growl, and even attempt to bite.

The past 5 months, Simon and I walked through various snowstorms at 6 a.m., at midnight, after long gruelling days at the office… rain, snow, sleet, hail, -40 degree weather, we were out in it, 3-4 hours a day. During those initial walks I wouldn’t have dared let him off leash. He was a thrashing, yanking, hyperactive, skittish, unpredictable, stubborn mutt with the habits of a 60-pound squirrel. We would try to run together. Inevitably, he would run too quickly or in movement catch sight of something and pull in the opposite direction. And I’d get pulled down, or pulled up, muddy hillsides after my head had hit the frozen ground with all of the earth’s gravitational force. I fell a total of 4 body crunching times. There was the running away at the Kortright Centre, the running across an ice covered pond and falling in while in pursuit of geese (who were FLYING), the chasing of deer up into the backyards of estate homes near the Old Mill where owners, all female, all royally pissed off, came out to investigate this wild, drooling, wolf-like beast who was tearing up their back gardens chasing 5 deer and whose owner, that’d be me, stood there in an army-green rubber rain suit trying to call a dog who can go wilfully deaf. Not one of our better moments. There have been run-ins with pit bulls, encounters with policemen on horse, and too many discarded chicken bones pulled from his jaws. But there have also been moments of immense joy and fulfillment. He is a different dog now then when we first met. He's tamped down his neuroses, shed his anxieties, plays well with other dogs, mostly comes when called, is patient with me when I'm slowly waking up in the morning. When we're in the woods clawing through the thaw of 3 feet of melting snow or walking together through the thick of a busy urban sidewalk and he’s trotting along with his tail held proudly in the air and one eye cast in my direction there’s something very sweet that exists between us; like my neighbour said to me the other week, I see you two heading out into the day and you just look like you belong together. My thoughts exactly.

More food entries to follow. And a review of The Patisseries of Paris published by The Little Bookroom up next!

Comments

[Sheryl]

What an awesome story. Simon looks like a sweetheart. Congratulations on finding one another.

[Mats Flemstrom]

Welcome back!!!
Mats