Annie

So as I said before, Annie went elsewhere when Rick had to adopt her out.  When we couldn't take her, she went to (I think) a friend of Rick's assistant's family.   It was never intended to be permanent, but she was there quite awhile.  A couple of years later or so, my secretary's dog ate some human medication and got very ill.  My secretary's little daughter was a little blind girl.   I told the story to Rick and his assistant, and the assistant was so moved by the story she phoned my secretary and offered Annie to her. 

It turned out that the sick dog pulled through, but my secretary had been planning on getting a second dog anyway, so she took Annie.  So now Annie was in home number 3, not counting the home she was born into.  Another couple of years went by, and my secretary was dealing with some issues in her life and realized that having two dogs was more than she could properly handle.   She searched and searched for a home for her, but couldn't find one.  Finally, our local Humane Society agreed to take her in to their no-kill shelter.

In October, 2007, Syd and I went to a fund raiser at the Humane Society.   We saw Annie there, and of course knew her.   Syd went kind of crazy, seeing Annie in the cage.   She even crawled in the cage with her and petted her.   After that, she browbeat and armtwisted everyone she could think of trying to find Annie a home.   Finally, one night I woke up in the middle of the night to find Syd up and pacing around.  I asked her what was the matter and she said, "I just couldn't sleep thinking of Annie up there in that cage."  I said, "For God's sake, let's just adopt her!"  Syd said that since we already had three dogs, she didn't want our dogs to "do without" because we had too many dogs.   I just laughed and asked if she could think of when our dogs ever went without anything.

We had a vacation planned for Thanksgiving that year (we spent Tgiving week on the beach in Oregon) but when we got back, I phoned the shelter and told them we'd take Annie.  But now, it seems that they'd discovered she had an injury, and Annie was scheduled for ACL surgery in a week.   So we took her home for that week, in mid-December, 2007.   She was then able to come back to our house, and was used to the house and our other dogs, after her surgery.   She had to recuperate for 3 months.  During that time she had to either be crated or on a leash.   She couldn't go outside unless someone was with her and she was on a leash.  Guess who was elected.   We had a wonderful three month long bonding period and we're now very good buddies.     Sadly, in March after we got her, Gracie passed away.

So that's our little family now.    Our longest resident pet is our crazy bird Ollie.  He's a blue crown conure, and talks up a storm.   He's very silly.   He's been with us since October, 1998 when he was about a year old.   Next is Ernie.  He came to live with us in 2001, and is an quite elderly 14.   Daisy is also 14, but came to live with us in 2002.   Annie, as I said is the newest addition.  If it was up to me, I'd have two or three more dogs, but Syd would probably evict me and keep the dogs.

Daisy

About a year after we got Ernie, I was getting a haircut, and was about half done, when my haircutter stopped suddenly and said "Oh, I almost forgot!"  She ran out of the shop and came back in a couple of minutes with another lady.  She introduced this woman to me and they told me the woman was moving to Nevada the next day.  She had a little dog she'd had for 6 years, since she was a pup, and couldn't take her along.  Her new home didn't allow pets.  She said she'd tried everything she could think of to find her dog a home, to no avail.

I went next door to the office where the woman worked and saw this little white and gray/black dog with a black mask kind of cowering under a desk.   I, and the woman, coaxed her out and I petted her a little, but she was obviously nervous.   She was so cute though (the dog, not the woman) that I couldn't just leave her to go to the pound.  I said I'd take her and find her a good home.

Oh, I found her a good home all right.  She stole my heart like a thief in the night.   After about, oh, no time at all, I wanted to keep her.  Gracie and Ernie loved her.   They acted like, "Oh, look what he brought home.  Can we keep her?"

I took her in to our vet Rick, to get her shots and an exam, and to arrange to have her spayed.   When Rick came in the room, his face fell, and he said, "Oh, no, is this your dog?"  I said we'd just adopted her, wondering why he was visibly upset.

When we moved into our house the year before, we had a big housewarming party.   Rick and his family were among the guests.   His young daughters spent the whole time playing with Gracie, dressing her in blankets, etc. and just loved her.   Rick decided to find a dog like Gracie and in January 2002, found a litter of Aussie/Border Collies in Libby and adopted a female.   Later that year, in August, he had her at a Humane Society fundraiser and introduced us to Annie, who we agreed was a lot like Gracie.

This day, the reason Rick was upset was that it turned out his daughters were allergic to Annie and he was hoping we'd take her.  Of course, we would have, but we'd just adopted Daisy, and couldn't take two new dogs at the same time.   So Annie went elsewhere.

Daisy turned out to be a stressed out little dog.  Once she was attached to us, she developed a pretty severe separation anxiety, and we had a pretty long stretch of her piddling on the carpet.   She also didn't ever want to leave the house.  When we'd take her somewhere, she didn't want to walk, so we'd have to carry her.   While she's short, she's really not a small dog, weighing around 40 pounds.  We didn't know it at the time, but I"ve come to believe that she is all or mostly Havanese, and is at the extreme outside of their weight range and size range according to the AKC standard.

As she's matured, she became the household manager.  She, more than any other dog, is microscopically aware of every nuance of routine, and gets quite upset and very vocal when we depart even the smallest bit from routine.  She'll come and bark at me to let me know that Ernie needs to go out, when she doesn't have to at all.  She's really sweet, but assertive.   She has a loud sharp bark that can pierce right through you.  But I'm just complete mush around her.

We bought a motorhome in 2007, 5 years after we got her.  To our surprise, she loves the motorhome.   She's happy just to go out and sit in it.  She's ecstatic when we travel in it.   Thanksgiving 2007 we took the motorhome to the Oregon beach for a week.  This little dog who HATED to go out in the yard for the first few years we had her, suddenly LOVED walking in the sand on the beach.  She's become our most adventurous dog, always up for traveling somewhere new.

She has pink skin under her white fur, and loves to play a game where I grab at her muzzle and she makes this sort of snorting sound.  We call her the "piggy dog."

She doesn't seem like it, but she's about 13 now, same age as Ernie, who also doesn't seem that old.  Thankfully, Havanese tend to live fairly long lives, and Ernie seems to not have the early aging tendency of his Lab side.   We hope they'll both be around for quite a while more, as we love them both dearly.

Gracie and Ernie

I told the story in the last post about Gracie, and how she came to live with us. There are so many stories that can be told about her, it's hard to know where to start.

Not long after we got Gracie, Syd was a candidate for city council. While she was going door to door campaigning, I'd go along and take the dogs on leash. This was just a week or so after she came to live with us. At one house, a little girl answered the door, and when she opened it, her big nasty Rottweiler came rushing out, snarling and running straight at George. Gracie squared off right in front of him and did that junkyard dog snarl again, and the Rotty screeched to a halt, turned around and ran straight back into the house.

In the fall of 98, about a year after we got Gracie, Syd and I traveled to Germany to visit our friends Peter and Elsbeth. While we were there, we bought some of those ornaments made from decorated ginger cookies and coated with shellac. Handmade German cookie ornaments. We got one for each grandkid and some extras, I think about a dozen total. We had them, along with our other Germany purchases on our dining room table. We left for a while, and when we returned, we found that Gracie had snitched all the cookies and ate them (likely with George's help.)

Gracie would climb up on the cupboards and steal food with abandon. We had to carefully put food out of her reach. George was too lame to be able to do it, so we knew it was Grace. But here's the odd thing: after George died, Gracie stopped stealing food. Completely. Could George have been putting her up to it? Stranger things have happened.

Gracie loved attention. She'd always climb up in anybody's lap if she got the chance. Little kids could "dress her up" with blankets, etc. and she'd leave them on, loving the attention. She acted reallly lovey toward everyone, but I don't think she was actually very affectionate, except to Syd and me. But she was really affectionate toward us.

We moved to our "new" house just a couple of months after we lost George. When George first died, Gracie was quite happy due to the added attention she got from us. First, she was suddenly the only dog, and second, we fell into that part of grieving where we showered attention and affection on Gracie to assuage our grief from losing George. She loved it. But by September or so, she started showing signs of anxiety from being alone too much of the day. So Syd and I started thinking about adopting another dog.

We found a website that featured senior dogs up for adoption locally. There was a dog featured that was a male Aussie/Lab cross. We loved the Aussie part of Gracie, and thought he might be a good match for her. We contacted the website, and arranged to meet him one evening at the Creston school. He was a big old calm, friendly guy, black and gray merle, with a big head and feet, and a short stubby tail that, when he wagged it (often), looked like a propeller. His coat was long and unkempt. I took him for a short walk on leash, and he was very attentive to find out what I wanted from him. He and Gracie seemed to get along fine, but with unremarkable interaction. His name was Bandit, which is exactly the kind of name Syd and I do not like. We like our dogs to have people names.

Bandit's owner adopted him as a puppy, along with his sister/littermate from a person in Walmart's parking lot. Bandit was five years old. His sister died some time before when she was hit by a car. They'd always been allowed to run free. The owner had to move to Tennessee and couldn't take his dog. He asked for references, so we gave Rick Myers, our vet. Rick's assistant Judy said she talked to him when he called. He had numerous questions and kept her on the phone for quite a while. Finally Judy got impatient and said, "Look, I wish to God they'd adopt me!" So we passed, and arrangements were made for the guy to bring Bandit to our house.

Gracie had always done this thing where she'd try to play with other dogs, and sometimes people, by turning sideways and bumping against them. I called it "butt bumping." Other dogs would just look at her like she was nuts. But when Bandit came in and she tried it with him, he immediately jumped back and turned and bumped her. She was visibly delighted, and you could see them bond instantly. Bandit's owner was delighted.

So we had a new family member. Before he arrived, we'd decided on a new name. At first, I had the idea that we should call him "Bert" but that wasn't quite right. Syd and I talked about it and agreed, but couldn't decide why that wasn't right for name (we liked it ok.) The next day it hit me. His name should be Ernie, which was why Bert was close, but not right. Bert and Ernie of course are the names of the two famous Sesame Street characters, but more importantly, was the name of the cop and the taxi driver in "It's a Wonderful Life."

Not more than a week or so after we got him, we spent a long weekend at Rye Creek Lodge near Darby, Montana. Rye Creek is this wonderful place with modern log cabins located on the property in such as way as to be very private and distanced from each other. Each cabin is fully furnised and has a private hot tub. Best of all, you can take your pets. When we first inquired about taking Gracie, they replied by email, "Of course Gracie is welcome, and you and your wife can come too."

The cabins are surrounded by mountains and there is plentiful wild game always around. Shortly after we got there, I was unpacking the car. I guess Syd accidentally left the door open, because suddenly Ernie burst out of the door and took off running lickety split up the mountain toward a herd of deer halfway or more up the mountainside. I started screaming at him to come back, knowing that if he went over the top of the mountain after the deer, I'd likely never see him again. I was terrified. He ran after the deer, oblivious to my calling him. I kept calling, whistling, but in the mountain air, my voice was swallowed up and seemed ineffective.

Suddenly, probably at least 200 yards up the side of the mountain from me, Ernie stopped like someone put on the brakes. He whirled around, looked right at me, pinned his ears down alongside his head and came running at full speed straight toward me. When he stopped, he almost ran into me, and I praised him and petted him and knew at that moment that we had bonded and he was my dog.

We still have Ernie, and while he's aging, he still has his silly moments, and he's still my very good dog.

George: the best dog

In an earlier post here, I mentioned being seriously injured in a motor vehicle collision in 1993. The accident was February 18, and after having surgery, I embarked on an almost year long healing process. After they flew me home, I spent several weeks confined to a hospital bed in my home, followed by getting around via a walker, crutches, and a wheelchair. As I improved, I gradually went to two crutches, then one, and then a cane. By the fall of 93, I was trying to learn to walk without a cane.

It was a painful process, and combined with having no work during the slack season, I was sinking into a depression. My wife Syd was working as a bookkeeper at a trucking company whose offices and garages were west of town on highway 2. One night in October, Syd came home from work and said, "There's a dog that showed up stray at work. He's been there for a couple of weeks, and I think we should go out and you should take a look at him."

I was dumbstruck. This is the same wife who didn't want any more dogs. I honestly hadn't thought much about dogs since losing Rufus, but now six years had passed, and I was no longer grieving as much. I said, "Sure," and we went out to look at the dog.

We pulled up into the parking lot. I was so excited I left the car door open when I got out. The dog was kenneled to protect him from running in the highway traffic. He was a lab, and a beautiful fox red. I went over to him and opened the kennel, and kneeled down. He came to me with no hesitation and laid his head on my shoulder. I petted him and talked to him for a minute, then invited him out of the cage. I said, "Do you want to come home with me?" He immediately turned and walked to the car and climbed in.

We took him home, gave him a little bath (he had perfect manners and stood calmly while we washed him) and fed him. We were in the kitchen with him just after he finished eating. I said, "What do you suppose his name is?" Syd said, "Maybe it's George," and in that instant he turned quickly to look at her. So we decided his name must have been George.

The next day we got him groomed, took him to the vet for a checkup, and bought him a collar and leash. We were finally getting the idea how to take care of dogs. The vet thought he was pretty old, but I thought that even if he was old, he deserved a good comfortable home. Some time later, I figured out that he was only about four when he came to live with us. George had a bad right rear hip. When the vet examined him, we learned that he had an old severe injury that was mended by a metal rod and wires. The vet told us that the metal was typically removed after healing, but that people commonly left the apparatus in place to avoid paying their vet bill. Nice.

We still didn't have a fenced yard, so I had to take George out for walks frequently. This was very good for me, as it forced me to exercise my hip. George and I would walk down the sidewalk, he with his bad right leg, me with my bad left hip, banging into each other as we walked. George was great company. I wasn't working, and stayed home all day reading mostly. George was happy just to lay there beside me, taking the occasional walk with me, watching squirrels in the yard, and once or twice a day having a good game of fetch the tennis ball. We had a wonderful time, in fact it became one of the best times of my life. My depression disappeared, and George and I became the very best of friends.

Every dog person loves all of his/her dogs, but knows that there is that one dog . . . the one that's the most special. This was George to me. He was a wonder. His manners were impeccable. He would heel indefinitely off leash with a one word command. While heeling, he could constantly turn his head to look at my knee to make sure his head was lined up correctly. He would stay and not break the stay until told. We allowed him his run of the house, and did not restrict him at all. He restricted himself. He would not get up on most pieces of furniture unless we invited him, then was clearly uncomfortable.

He loved stuffed animals. His favorite game was "Get that guy" in which he'd run to catch the toy, then play tug of war with it until I got it from him and threw it again. He'd also grab the toy and shake it back and forth energetically. Not surprisingly, these toys didn't last long. I began to visit the Salvation Army Thrift Store frequently to buy grocery bags full of 50 cent stuffed animals. Syd taught him a trick. When we'd say "dead dog" he'd fall down instantly and lay still. He was really proud of that one, because it made us laugh.

We got in the habit of having him groomed often, so he always was clean and smelled and felt good. The groomer we took him to was very busy. When I'd call for an appointment, I'd say that I'd like to get my dog in for a bath. They'd say, "We're really busy . . . I don't know . . . what kind of dog?" "Well, it's George." "Oh, George! Oh, sure, we can work George in, just bring him down anytime." They would set up a special portable fenced area for him right in the middle of the work area to accomodate his bad leg, and I suspect to spend more time with him.

In 1994, after having all of my legal difficulties getting compensation for the accident, I decided to pursue going to law school. In February, I took the LSAT test. When the results came back good, I applied to law school. When I was accepted, I applied for financial aid. When that came through, I looked for an apartment. In horror I learned that I wasn't going to be able to rent an apartment that would allow me to have George with me while I was in Missoula in school. So I had to go by myself, and leave George home with Syd.

That summer, before school started, we took a vacation trip for a few days. We went to the Big Hole Battlefield, Bannack, and other places. George loved to travel, and he really loved Bannack. He'd go to each building excitedly, go inside and smell every corner of the building, then leave and want to rush to the next one. He went swimming in the Big Hole River and in Georgetown Lake. One of George's favorite foods was a baked potato. I'd microwave one for him every night. When we traveled, I'd ask the waitress to box up a plain baked potato before we ordered, so that it would be cool when we got back to George. Restaurant staff would always be charmed by the potato eating dog.

I wasn't able to get home every weekend, and I was pretty miserable those times when I had to stay in Missoula by myself. Fortunately, Syd was able to come to Missoula most of those weekends I had to stay there. We just kept George there and to hell with the landlord.

That Thanksgiving, just before I came home for the holiday, Syd called and told me that George was favoring his bad leg, and in obvious pain. She took him to the vet, who said that a piece of arthritic calcium had come loose and was caught in his knee joint. We had to take him in for surgery the day before Thanksgiving. Since he wasn't neutered, we had that done at the same time. George had to wear one of those "Elizabethan collars" so he wouldn't worry his stitches, so I stayed up all night with him, and spent Thanksgiving with him as well. Syd went to my sister's for dinner, and brought a plate home for me. I thought it was the least I could do, and frankly, I enjoyed my time with George more than I would have enjoyed the holiday dinner.

George loved to come to Missoula. Syd says that when she'd get near the freeway exit she took to my apartment, George would jump up and get all excited. He enjoyed hanging out in my apartment, and really loved our walks in Greenough Park, which was only about a block away. The three of us had some wonderful weekends, and I miss those days a lot.

I graduated in 1997, and took the bar exam that summer. Then I moved home, to wait for seven weeks for the results of the exam. George was right there with me the day the mailman brought the results, and shared my happiness. I was sworn in on October 6, and was in my new office interviewing potential clients on October 7. Once I got started working, and Syd continued to be busy in her bookkeeping business, it became obvious that George was pretty lonely during the days. We decided to look for a companion for him.

One Saturday that October, we saw an ad for a neutered black cocker spaniel at the county animal shelter. We went to take a look for it, and learned that he/she was already adopted. We decided to look through the kennels and were somewhat disappointed to see that there were few dogs that would be suitable for us. For one thing, we wanted a female, as we were told that females and males tended to get along better than pairs of the same sex.

In one cage, there was a multi-colored black white and brown medium size dog. She looked filthy and bedraggled. She had orange paint ball marks on her side. Her fur was dirty and matted. But she looked at us with sparkling eyes and wagged her entire body from the neck back. We were smitten. We talked briefly, then went out to the counter to inquire about her. It turned out that another couple were looking at her. The wife wanted to take her, but the husband didn't. They kept going outside and talking intensely, then they'd come back in and look at the dog, then repeating the cycle. Finally the husband said something tersely with a frown, the wife burst into tears, and they drove away. We swooped in.

We got George out of the car and went to the "get acquainted" area. Of course, George immediately tried to mount her. She turned on him with a junkyard snarl, he backed off, and that was the end of that. Other than that, they got along famously. So we adopted her and took her home. Her name was Honey.

We hated the name. We stopped by my sister Linda's house to show her. She said that if she had another female dog, she'd name her Gracie. Then it hit me. George and Gracie. OK, for you young folks, there was a great husband and wife comedian couple named George Burns and Gracie Allen.

George loved Gracie with all his heart. Gracie liked him well enough, but was just not that attached to him herself. In his last year, when he was stiff with painful arthritis, if she moved to another room, George would painfully get up and follow her. On the other hand, she would never move to be near him. Still, they got along very well, and the four of us had a great time together. I loved having two dogs.

On Mother's Day, 1999, we had family over and were celebrating. We put the dogs out in the yard, as the house was full of people. At some point, one of the kids called me and said that there was something wrong with George. I went outside. It was raining lightly, and George was standing in the middle of the yard gasping for breath. He was really laboring to breathe. I called our vet, Rick Myers, and he said he'd meet me at his clinic. I took George up there, Rick sedated him and examined him. He said he thought George had a partial paralysis of his tracheal area. There are two flaps which open from the middle when the dog breathes, but stay closed when they are eating or drinking. Rick believed that if the flaps were paralyzed, he couldn't get a gap between them large enough to breathe normally. No local vet had the proper scope for diagnosis. Rick gave George some prednisone to ease the symptoms, and recommended that I take him to the veterinary hospital at Washington State University in Pullman, Washington.

I asked if this was a viable thing to do, in that George was likely about 10 years old at that time, and labs usually do not live as long as smaller dog breeds. Rick said that George's heart and lungs were healthy, that he was generally strong and was therefore a good candidate. So I decided to do it. I made an appointment as soon as possible, and George and I took a road trip to Pullman.

The plan was to go there, have his diagnostic appointment the next day, and go home that day. Assuming he was a candidate for the surgery, Rick would do it at home. They examined George and confirmed Rick's diagnosis, but told me George was in distress and needed the surgery right away. They didn't recommend me taking him home in the hot weather. Rick conferred with the university hospital staff, then with me, and I decided to go ahead with the surgery. They scheduled it for the next morning.

George and I went back to the motel, and he was having a very hard time. He was having a hard time eating, because of his trouble breathing. He loved fresh vegetables, so I ordered out for a pizza for myself, and asked if they had any fresh vegetables I could buy. I explained that I wanted them for my dog, and they said they'd do what they could. When the delivery person brought the food, there was a big plastic tray filled with a variety of carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, and other veggies. They told me there was no charge, and wished George a speedy recovery. He ate a little, but his breathing was labored, he was panicky, and I stayed up with him all night petting and comforting him.

The surgery the next day went well, but George had to stay in intensive care, and they wouldn't let me visit him because they didn't want him to get agitated. I intended to be away from home only one night, and didn't bring enough clothes or medication for a longer stay. I went to Shopko and bought a few items of clothing, and asked the pharmacy about getting a few of the pills I had to take to tide me over. They gave me the pills at no charge, and offered their wishes for George to recover well. When I asked for the location of a laundromat, the motel told me I could launder my clothes in their laundry facility after they were done doing the towels and sheets. Later, a maid came and asked for my clothes, insisting on laundering them herself, and again, the motel staff offered their best wishes for George.

I was there three nights, and then picked George up late the next day. They wanted me to travel at night due to the heat. So George and I drove home, arriving about 1:00 in the morning. I basically had to shut my practice down for almost a week, spent however much on travel costs, and about $800 for the hospital. A bargain at twice the price.

After George's surgery, he could no longer eat like he always had. If he tried, he would aspirate the food, because they stitched up one of the "flaps" which could no longer close to prevent the aspiration. He couldn't eat dry dog food, and worse, no more baked potatoes. We struggled trying to find a satisfactory way for him to eat, and finally settled on me feeding him premium canned dog food with a big plastic (like a wooden) spoon. The deal was, Gracie got to lick the spoon when he was done. Every day, twice a day, I'd get the can and the spoon and sit down, and George would hunker down in front of me and I'd spoon feed him. It was wonderful, and as if George and I weren't bonded enough, this just cemented it. I'll never forget the pleasure I got just feeding him every day. When they were at our house at meal time, the grandkids would fight over getting to feed George. The grandkids would say that Gracie is a good dog, Rosie is a good dog, Reggie is a good dog, etc., "but George is the best dog."

By 2001, George was failing fast. He'd had two good years after his surgery, and we'd kept the arthritis at bay with new effective drugs such as Rimadyl and others. It was expensive taking care of him. I estimate that during the years I had George, I spent way more than ten thousand dollars on him. Once I was talking to my mother, who had just told me my brother had recently bought a new power boat. Then we were talking about George, and she asked if it wasn't really expensive to take care of him. When I told her how much it cost, she said that she thought that was a lot of money to spend on a dog. I said, "Well, Mom, some people buy boats."

George just got worse. We were buying a new house that year, and I was a little worried that George would have a hard time getting in and out of the new house. One day we came home and found that Gracie had stolen a glass butter dish off the counter, and the dish was broken. When we cleaned it up, not all the glass was there, and we noticed some cuts around George's mouth. I took him to Rick and the xray showed he'd eaten some of the dish. He had to stay at Rick's for two or three days for observation until the glass passed. Then he started eating gravel from the back yard. He developed diarrhea and we had to keep him outside. He was miserable, and so was I.

Finally, a friend of ours, Chris Riebe, who for years was a veterinary assistant, told us that large breed dogs often begin eating odd things when they are ready to die. She encouraged me to think about George and his comfort, and not so much the pain I was feeling. Finally I knew what had to be done. But I just couldn't take him myself. Chris, bless her heart, offered to take George to Rick. I feel terrible that I didn't take George there to say goodbye, but I simply could not.

Rick's office arranged for George to be cremated. I had his remains placed in a beautiful handmade redwood urn. George sits on my dresser, by recommendation of my granddaughter Sadie, and I say good morning to him every day. My wife has strict instructions that when I die, George goes in the box with me.

There is a brass placque on the redwood urn that says, "George, ca. 1987 to 2001, the best dog."

TO BE CONTINUED . . . Next: From Gracie to Annie and Reggie, too.

The Story of Rufus

After we had to give Whitey away, and after the winter weather turned cold, we learned that our new landlord misrepresented the heating costs for the house. We ended up paying almost all of our money all winter to keep the house mostly warm. I was steamed. When spring came, I wanted to move. The landlord asked us to stay, and in order to keep us there, he offered to insulate the attic, and to replace the furnace in the summer.

I pretty much felt that he owed us big time for our trouble. We were taking the kids to a woman who lived out in the Evergreen area of Kalispell for daycare. She always had a lot of dogs hanging around her house, for some reason. I noticed a young dog hanging around who had a kind of unique look to him. He was mostly a sort of liver color and white, but had a black ring around his tail. He was clearly part lab, but I didn't know what else. Later I learned that his mother was Brittany.

I called him over to me, and he came halfway across the yard, then laid down to rest for a minute before coming the rest of the way over to me. I thought, "What a great, laid back dog." He had a wound on his paw that might have been a bite puncture, but looked to the babysitter's husband and me like a .22 bullet wound. There was plenty of evidence in the way he interacted with men that he'd been beaten. He was very thin and bony.

I went home and told my wife, who said, "No way. No dog." I bought a big bag of dog food and took it to the babysitter's who agreed to feed him every day. He was running loose, but spent most of his time at the babysitters. I told my wife I wanted to bring him home, but she of course mentioned the landlord's prohibition of pets. My attitude was, "Screw him." He lied to us about the heating bills, and as far as I was concerned, he didn't have anything to complain about.

Finally, after a couple of weeks of lobbying her, my wife went to work one morning and left me a note. "Go get your damned dog." I went and got him, and named him Rufus.

Rufus became a real member of the family. He almost always slept in Molly's room. He was very close and affectionate with Andy and played with him energetically. He loved Syd, my wife, and you could see that devotion in his eyes when he looked at her. But he was mostly my buddy. For a long time, I took him everywhere with me. I was teaching guitar lessons at a local music store, and he'd go with me and wait patiently through all the lessons. I went to the community college for a while and took him to class with me. Later, when I went on the road with a band, I was gone a lot and couldn't spend as much time with him, but we were very closely bonded.

Rufus was really smart. He had an old wiffle ball that he loved to play with. He'd take it in his mouth and throw it across a room, then chase it and catch it and do it again. Once when he was doing this, and I was sitting on the couch reading, he lost the ball under the couch. He came to me and cried, so I got up and took a stick or tree branch or some such thing that Andy had brought in, and batted it out from under the couch. Rufus continued his game, but soon lost the ball under the couch again. Back he came to me, and I retrieved it again. Finally, the third or fourth time this happened, I said, "Nope, that's it. I'm not getting it again." Rufus walked back and forth a few times, then reached down, picked up the stick, pushed it under the couch, and tried to get the ball himself! That's the only time I've ever seen a dog try to use a tool.

In our ignorance, and because we did not have a fenced yard, Rufus spent a lot of days on a chain attached to the garage out back. Kids from the high school would come by and let him loose, so we eventually had to put padlocks on both the collar end and the garage end of the chain. Sometimes when he'd get loose, if his chain came off at the collar, he'd be scared to death, and cower in the yard until someone came home. But if it came off at the garage, he'd run happily all over town dragging that chain behind him. I guess his chain gave him some sense of security.

At one point, a long haired white split eye cat decided he was going to live with us. We really didn't have anything to say about it. We named him Jack, and he hung around for a couple of years or so before he decided to go live somewhere else. Rufus adored him. Jack liked to rub against oil pans, and get filthy dirty. Rufus would sit out in the backyard with Jack and groom him for hours, cleaning off the oil and dirt. On cold days, Rufus would curl up and Jack would lay on top of him to keep warm.

Once again, though we were very ignorant about caring for dogs. We didn't have a vet, and we didn't act all that responsibly. I read about a free clinic where people could get shots for free for their pets, so I took Rufus, as he hadn't had his boosters for years. When he got the shots, the vet gave him a cursory exam, and pointed out a tumor that had grown at the base of Rufus's tail. We didn't have money to get it checked, so just hoped he'd be OK.

One night, not too long after that, Andy brought Rufus in for dinner, and said, "There's something wrong with Rufus." He was stumbling around and seemed afraid to move. It didn't take long to realize he'd gone blind sometime during the day. We made him as comfortable as possible for the night.

The next day, I took him to the first vet I could find who'd see him right away. They examined him and told me that he had cancer through and through. Cancer in his spleen caused pressure that caused the tiniest blood vessels in his body to burst, including those in his eyes. His eyes filled up with blood and blinded him. He was anemic, and could never survive surgery, even if it was an option and we could afford it. Having no other choice, I told them to put him down.

It was the first time I ever had to do that. I wasn't sure I'd survive it. I made it out to my car, and drove out on the highway, but I hadn't driven but a few feet on the highway when I had to pull over and just sob. I broke down numerous times over the next few days, and as I'm typing this, I'm having to wipe my eyes.

I loved Rufus with all my heart, and felt guilty for not having taken better care of him. He was a wonderful dog, and when he was gone, I had no desire to get another dog. My wife said that since both kids would soon be grown, she'd like to have a kid-free, dog-free house in her future. I didn't argue, just continued to grieve. Six years went by.

TO BE CONTINUED . . . Next: George

My life with dogs

It occurs to me that the posts on this blog are pretty serious. So let's talk about something more fun. Dogs have always been a big part of my life. At this point, I enjoy my time with my dogs probably more than I do with most people. I won't go into why. If you're a dog person, you know, and if you're not, you'll never know, so what's the point?

I don't actually remember my first dog. My mother tells me that a mongrel stray came around when I was a baby and attached himself to me for awhile. He'd guard my baby carriage, and when the old ladies tried to pinch my cheeks or chuckle my chin, he'd pull back his teeth in a junkyard dog snarl. Mom says he didn't hang around for long. They didn't even name him, but called him Dawg.

When I was about 4 or 5, I had a cocker spaniel named Ginger. I named her after a story book I had, and loved her to distraction. She disappeared one day, and Mom told me that Dad and her gave her to a farmer, as she wasn't happy living with us in town. I thought she seemed happy enough, and I was very sad, but what could I do but accept it? It wasn't until I was in my 30s that Mom finally told me that they just took Ginger out on a country road and dumped her. What a terrible thing.

We had one other dog for a while, but it was a dog my folks were fostering for some people while they were away for some reason. I didn't understand why Sally had to leave, but leave she did, and I didn't have another dog for some time.

The summer I was 7, my folks invited my Dad's Aunt and Uncle Marshall and Marie Kimes for dinner. While we were eating, they asked me some polite questions as adults are prone to do. One of them asked what grade I was in, did I like school, and then, "Do you have a dog?" When I said no, Marshall told my dad he should be ashamed of himself. "A boy needs a dog." Dad said he didn't want a dog around.

One week later, I was at the neighborhood store with my mom when the neighbor kids came running up to me all excited saying, "Terry, Terry, some people came to your house and brought you a dog!" I went running home and found that the Kimes had brought me a cocker/pekingese cross puppy. They just insisted that Dad let me have him. I named him Pal Hunter.

That was the start of years of one of the most unique dogs you ever saw. He was incredibly smart, and living in a time when people just let their dogs run free, he was pretty much unmanageable. But he was still a great dog. He was affectionate toward all members of our fairly large extended family, but most attached to me and my grandpa. Grandpa called him "Pie" because he said, when kids would call him, "Here Pal, here Pal," repeatedly, it would deteriorate into "Hep Pie, hep Pie." Pal used to go up the street about four blocks just before the time when Grandpa came home from work, and wait for him. In just a few minutes, here would come Grandpa's red Jeep pickup, and he'd pull over, let Pal in, and drive him the rest of the way home. He never went there on Grandpa's days off, and even when Grandpa tried to fool him, he didn't fall for it.

A favorite game was when we were playing any kind of ball game, Pal would wait for his chance and steal the ball. Then the game was really on. We'd all chase Pal and try to catch him to get the ball back. He'd tease us and play with us and keep the ball sometimes for hours until we were all exhausted. We never caught him. We got the ball back when he tired of the chase, and not a moment before.


He followed me to the movies and snuck in. He followed me to the city swimming pool and snuck in. When my sister Linda started first grade (no kindergarten in those days) he followed her, went in her classroom and sniffed all around it, then never went back. Until . . . about 8 years later, when my brother Doug started first grade, he did the same thing.

Pal loved to chase cars. When he died, at about age 14, he was found in a ditch beside the road without a mark on him. We always chose to believe he died chasing a car, in his glory. Pal died about a month before my daughter was born, when I was 20. Grandpa buried him beneath a cherry tree in his garden. The people who live there now removed the marker, but Pal's still there next to my mom's house, and I always say a silent hello to him when I visit.


I had pretty much the opposite feeling about dogs from my dad. It wasn't until I was around 30 that I learned the sad story of why Dad didn't like to get close to dogs. It seems that when he was a boy, he found a stray dog, took him home and sneaked food and water to him When the inevitable happened and his father caught him, Grandpa Hill told Dad to take the dog to the woods and shoot it. So poor Dad, certainly under threat of a beating, took a gun and tied a rope to the dog and led him to the woods, where he shot him. A while later, they heard a noise at the back door, and it was the puppy, only wounded, outside crying for Dad. The old man then made Dad take the dog BACK to the woods and finish the job. For the rest of his life, although we saw evidence from time to time that Dad actually liked dogs, Dad kept his emotional distance. You certainly couldn't blame him.


But rather than not wanting my kids to have a dog, I thought kids SHOULD have a dog. When my daughter Molly was about 2, one of my employees told me her daughter's dog had puppies. I brought home this little tiny chihuahua cross. We didn't have her too long, and never got past calling her Puppy, but she was a great little dog. We were pitifully ignorant about caring for dogs, and let her run loose. She, in concert with another dog, started running the neighbors' chickens, so we had to give her away.


Next, foolishly, while on vacation here in Montana (we lived in southern Idaho at the time, and were about to move to California) we took home a springer/beagle cross puppy. This was when Molly was 3. The dog was cute as hell. Molly wanted to name her Cruella DeVille, but we explained that was an inappropriate name for a dog, so instead, Molly chose a name from her Yogi Bear book and named the dog Booboo. Never was a dog named so aptly.


She was overly frisky, and didn't mind us at all, in any way. She'd barely come when called. We of course had no idea how to train a dog. We housetrained her, but that was a miracle. We hadn't had her more than a few months when one of my employees brought me a dog he'd rescued from drowning in a river. His father wouldn't let him keep her, so he brought him to me. Somehow we decided to keep her. She was a Samoyed, so of course Molly named her Whitey.



Whitey was a very good dog, whose only failing was that she hated male dogs and wanted to kill them all. Booboo, on the other hand, continued her evil ways. She would not be contained in any yard. She could jump any fence, regardless of height, and she was a short dog. She could leap up in the air, do a little pirouette, and divest our fig tree of all its fruit. On one of her adventures, she got pregnant, so we had a litter of puppies. Whitey killed one of the males.

Finally, in desperation after my wife discovered she was pregnant with our son, we gave Booboo away to a farmer in the area who wanted Booboo and all her puppies.


When our son Andy was born, Whitey adopted him. I've never seen any dog so affectionate toward a human child. She followed him around, and when he'd stick a finger in her eye, or something similar, she'd just sit there patiently. When he could talk, he called her "My Babe." When we moved back to Montana from California, we drove a large Uhaul truck. We drove cross country with me driving, Andy next to me, my mother-in-law next to him. Syd sitting on the outside passenger side with Molly in her lap and a parakeet in a cage in a box between her feet. We towed our car behind, which was completely full, and Whitey rode on the floor of the passenger side of the towed car. Just like a bunch of Okies.


Our first home back in Montana was out by the river backwash, near the woods. Whitey loved it. She'd take off first thing in the morning and be gone most of the day, coming home for dinner. Of course she got sprayed by a skunk, and we had to pull porcupine quills from her muzzle, but she loved it. Unfortunately, a year and half later we had to move and found a house in town where the landlord wouldn't allow dogs. We tried to come up with an alternate plan, but in the end had to give Whitey to a Bigfork family.

By this point, I was finally learning that we were not being good dog owners, yet I wanted very much to do it right. I loved all my dogs (except for maybe Booboo), and it crushed me to have to give them away. I didn't want to do that anymore.

TO BE CONTINUED . . . Next: The story of Rufus

Political noise in August

Lately it's impossible to ignore the din coming from every media source. Purportedly, the noise is related to the health care reform debate, but that's not entirely accurate. What we're hearing is a lot of breathless reporting of the protests at the so-called town meetings. Not only reporting of the protests, but also reporting of the objections to and defenses of the protests. And protests they are.

I've made my opinion clear in the last post. I absolutely support universal health care, and in fact, I believe it is a moral imperative in this, the richest most powerful nation in history. I also think we are about 100 years late in providing it to our citizens. Even so, I can hardly complain about those who are protesting the legislation. What difference is there between these protests and the protests of the anti-war movement in the Viet Nam era (in which I took part enthusiastically.) In this country, we have a right to protest the actions of our government. In fact, if we believe our government is doing wrong, we have an OBLIGATION to protest those actions.

The interesting thing is how conservatives angrily denounced our anti-war demonstrations 40 years ago as unAmerican, and how liberal/progressives are now denouncing the anti-health care reform people as unAmerican when they appear and shout down the speakers at the meetings. http://thinkprogress.org/2009/08/10/boehner-vietnam-unamerican/

A real problem has been uncovered by some media, particularly MSNBC, namely that certain paid political lobbyists employed by the high profit health insurance industry have been creating "straw man" organizations that purport to be grassroots organizations with legitimate concerns about the health care initiatives. Even this wouldn't be so bad, but in so doing they are publishing statements and allegations they offer as fact, but which are actually completely untrue. Other high profile politicians, most notably Sarah Palin, have been doing this as well. The most egregious example is the allegations that the legislation would require "death panels" to encourage or mandate euthanasia. THIS IS PATENTLY ABSURD. If any reasonable person thinks about this for even a nanosecond, he/she would realize that first, anyone proposing or voting for such a measure would be bounced out of office at the first opportunity; second, such a provision would be completely unconstitutional by anyone's measure. The Supreme Court would invalidate such a provision immediately. Frankly, without meaning to call anyone names, the allegation is just idiotic. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32412764/ns/politics-the_new_york_times/

But our world contains many ignorant, idiotic people. Sad but true. They are the kind of people who paid no attention to their high school civics or government class, and never read anything that does not agree with their preconceived ideas based upon a kind of loose general distrust of government. They parrot what they are told by professional fearmongers without question.

What these political hacks are doing by putting forth these statements is propagating fear. It's just that simple. They seek to defeat the proposed legislation not by offering reasoned arguments, but by garnering popular support by scaring people half to death with these lies. When challenged to point to specific passages in the bill to support their allegations, they quote passages completely out of context. In the case of Sarah Palin, she (incredibly) quoted passages from the bill which actually said something entirely different from what she claimed was said. All this proved is that I was correct in my suspicion that Ms. Palin is only marginally literate. I am baffled though, by her handlers' failure to minimize her failings.

I guess one of the things that has always disturbed me about extreme conservative politics is that their basic philosophy is fear. Fear of change, fear of progress, fear of trying to improve our lot for fear that we might fail. Any student of American History, even a casual student, knows that while we almost immediately sort of gravitated toward a two party system, the parties have changed a number of times. Even if you try to trace the sources of our modern parties to those of the past, it is easy to see that the parties have traded positions frequently and often mixed positions, at least based upon our current understanding of the two basic political philosophies.

In Lincoln's time, when the Republican party was born, the Republicans were the more progressive. The Democrats, while espousing an egalitarian system, torpedoed their own image by opposing emancipation of the slaves. The conservative Whigs, after the election of 1856, became pretty much irrelevant. The more centrist Whigs united with centrist Democrats (both of whom were at least open to emancipation if not clearly anti-slavery) and formed the Republican party. At the turn of the 20th century, the progressive Theodore Roosevelt was the standard-bearer of the Republicans. It was not until midcentury that Republicans morphed into complete conservatism. It's too early to tell, but it's at least possible that we're on the verge of something similar happening now. The more centrist Republicans are being vilified by the likes of Limbaugh, Cheney, Palin, and Gingrich. The "blue dog" Democrats are finding it hard to agree with their more liberal colleagues. The tattered remnants of the extreme right wing and the neocons have been pretty much hamstrung. Change may be in the wind.

But whichever party has carried the conservative banner, the basic nature of conservatism is timidity. I don't really have that much of a problem with that. I disagree, but completely understand that well-read, reasoned people may disagree with me. My problem is with those who are NOT well-read, reasoned, or rational. The opinion page of my hometown newspaper today illustrates perfectly the source of my frustration. There are at least two letters to the editor in the August 14, 2009 edition of the Daily Inter Lake from Kalispell, Montana, which argue forcefully against the health care reform effort. Both these letters state "facts" which are completely untrue, and/or quote passages from the proposed bill which the letter writer does not understand. One of the letters cites specific examples from the House version of the bill, and completely misstates language the writer quotes in his own letter. I know that the statements are untrue, and I know what the bill actually says and what the language means because I have taken the time and effort to educate myself.

It's sad. I am a lawyer and have to deal with the arcane, murky language of statutory law all the time. It's easy to understand how hard it is to understand the language of the bill. But that's no excuse for making (and publishing) such strong statements without a clear understanding of what one is talking about. Then some other like-minded person reads the letter, accepts, and passes on the misinformation to others. And so it goes.

Another gripe I have is the knee-jerk statements that health care reform is "socialism." Well, one act or bill does not make socialism. Socialism is a theory of economic organization. A entire theory, not just one program. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism

However, I agree that universal health care might be, in whole or in part, a socialistic program. So is EVERY government program. I have to laugh when I see Medicare recipients on TV railing that they do not want socialized medicine, when to a large extent that is what Medicare is. Every government program is at least in part, socialized. Think about it. The armed forces, the highway system, public education, police and fire protection, the post office, and on and on. Most of these programs, at least in part, have a private sector component, that is private firms contracting with the government to provide services and materials, but they are organized and regulated by the government. PEOPLE, THIS IS NOT A BAD THING.

How much would you have to pay if you had to pay for all of these socialized programs and systems on your own? How would you even go about hiring soldiers to defend your portion of our country? I have long maintained, and I will argue this point with anyone, that we get more value for our tax dollars than any other money we spend.

So here's my suggestion. Think about how much profit the health insurance companies are taking out of our health care system. Think about those people, like me, who desperately need health care but who cannot buy any health insurance because the insurers wouldn't make enough profit from me. Read this link. http://www.photius.com/rankings/healthranks.html Think about how we do not have health care as good as we deserve and about how we pay more for less than any other country. When you hear someone say that the Canadian or English systems are "bad" don't just accept that statement, look it up. (See the "We Love the NHS" movement at various sites posted by British subjects who object to American criticism of their system.)

Above all, when you hear a ridiculous claim (that the health care bill would require doctors to advocate killing old sick people, or that the law would mandate "death panels" -- and that is truly, stupidly ridiculous) you should remember what Ronald Reagan famously said, many times over: "Trust, but verify." Actually, it's pretty funny that Reagan got "trust but verify" from an old Russian proverb, but there you go.

Just get 'er done.

Pretty much every day, I watch the blathering talking heads on TV, grind my teeth and want to throw a shoe at the set. I've been following this health insurance or health care reform legislative effort, and get so frustrated I could scream. The politcians argue a lot of theoretical and ideological mumbo jumbo, but if they were going through what I'm going through, they'd put aside the political crap and just get the job done.

We were headed home after a pretty slow night just before midnight February 18, 1993. My partner Stinko and I had a duo called the Bookhouse Boys, and had a full season, 5 nights a week gig at Moose's on Big Mountain near Whitefish, Montana. We played a lot of 60s rock and roll, blues, country, folk, originals, pretty much a wide mix of stuff. Stinko is a guitar whiz and harmonica wizard. I played rhythm guitar and sang lead. We used a drum machine that had a programmable bass line in it. We'd done a full season the year before, and this was our second season.

The bar manager was oddly disturbed by us using digital drums and bass, so for the second year, she demanded that we add a drummer. This was pretty difficult, as she wouldn't pay us enough to add a bass player as a fourth member. We hired Mondo, a friend of ours who was such a good drummer that he was actually able to play in synch with a programmed bass line. Incredible.

On Feb. 18, I think Mondo was probably playing with us, but he went home on his own. Stinko and I took turns driving to the gig, Wednesday through Sunday nights. I didn't drink while playing, and Stinko did, so regardless of who drove TO the gig, I always drove home. On this night, we'd taken Stinky's Isuzu Trooper. We'd just bought some new sound gear, and our friend Craig Wolf, a sound technician, came with us to help "tweak" the new stuff.

We left the bar just before midnight and headed down the mountain, me driving, Stinko in the passenger seat, and Craig in the back seat. We reached the bottom of the hill, and turned left onto Edgewood Drive from Big Mountain Road. We'd gotten only about 1/4 mile further when I noticed a pair of headlights coming at us at a pretty fast speed. The oncoming car was coming around the north end of the "Dos Amigos curve" (a long extended curve on Edgewood.)

Of course, all of this took seconds, it takes much longer to tell. The headlights appeared to be coming right at us. My first thought was that they'd correct their course. Instantly, it was clear that they wouldn't. Not even having enough time to say anything to Stinko or Craig, I remember touching the brake, steering to the right, and saying, "Oh, shit." I don't remember anything else until I woke up.

When I came to, apparently not much time had passed. I was still in the driver's seat, but the Trooper was crumpled around me. I wasn't wearing a seatbelt, and had been thrown forward and to the left of the wheel. If I'd worn the belt, I probably would have been crushed by the wheel. I was pinned in the narrow place between the collapsed door, the steering wheel, and the seat. My left foot was turned at an odd angle and stuck between the bottom of the seat and the floor. I was bleeding from the face and had an obvious injury to my left arm, but that trapped foot and the angle of my leg was causing me intense and immediate pain.

I woke up to Craig talking to me from outside the left side of the car. He said he was OK, and I asked about Stinky, who called to me from outside the right side of the car and said he was OK. I later learned that Stinky had cuts and bruises, and that he bruised his kidney, but he was largely all right. Craig wasn't injured at all. I asked after the people in the other car, but they didn't answer me, and I didn't learn that they were slightly injured but all right until the next day. I told Craig he had to help me get my foot out from under the seat. He didn't want to do it, but I insisted, and told him that I was pretty damned self aware, and knew that he wouldn't do any further damage by releasing my foot, so he did. Once that horrible pressure/pain was relieved, I began to fade in and out of semi-consciousness.

It seems that the other car, a Chevy Blazer driven by Jamee Lu Cole along with her passenger Doug Lockhart, hit us head on at the left/front side of our vehicle at a pretty fair rate of speed. Jamee and Doug had been drinking and dancing at the Blue Moon near Columbia Falls the whole evening, then got in their Blazer and headed back toward Jamee's home at the base of Big Mountain Road. They stopped once in Whitefish to pick up some contraceptives, then headed on their way. Doug later testified in court that he'd been mostly passed out, and as they were rounding the big curve, came out of his drunken stupor, saw only trees and telephone poles out the windshield, and thought they were going off the road. Continuing this breathtakingly stupid line of logic, he reached up and grabbed the steering wheel and pushed it to the left. Jamee, being too drunk to fend him off quickly, lost control of the car, it went into a skid, and they slammed into us. We had nowhere to go, because there was a large snow berm on our right.

Emergency crews came quickly, they sawed me out of the car, and transported us to North Valley Hospital. Once there, they realized that they couldn't really do anything for me, so they sent me on to Kalispell Regional Hospital. My wife had gone to bed and had the upstairs phone turned off. Stinky's wife was notified, but had been drinking after work, and didn't feel that she could drive to Whitefish. She tried to call my wife, but no one could reach her because she couldn't hear the phone. Finally, Stinky's wife called my daughter, who went to our house, used her key and went up to wake my wife. I guess my wife had the crap scared out of her to wake up with someone standing at the foot of her bed! Anyway, she came to Whitefish, and rode in the ambulance with me to Kalispell.

It seems that I had a posterior dislocation of my left hip. That means that the leg bone was violently shoved out the back of the hip joint, shattering the top part of the acetabulum. My left shoulder was dislocated. I had a large facial cut, and my nose remained attached by only one small piece of cartilage. I was spurting blood from my nose with every beat of my heart.

By the time they put me on the ambulance to Kalispell, I was pretty much conscious, and quite aware of the massive pain. I wanted them to give me a shot, but they said they had to determine whether I had any internal injuries first. I KNEW I didn't have internal injuries (I could FEEL my injuries) but they wouldn't take my word. It turns out I was right. I yelled at them all the way to Kalispell, utilizing all of my scatological vocabulary and probably making up some more. Finally, when I arrived, they took me to surgery, made the necessary scans or whatever, and put me under. They did closed reductions of the dislocations, and an ear, nose and throat doctor sewed up my face.

I woke up in intensive care later that morning. I was doped up pretty well by then. There was no surgeon in Kalispell who had adequate expertise to work on my hip, so they decided to leave both dislocations alone and they had to figure out who could do the work, and accordingly, where they would have to transport me. So I stayed in Kalispell most of that day. In intensive care, you're supposed to have minimal visitors, but because of my somewhat unique circumstances, I had people coming in and out all day, and phone call after phone call. I'm blessed with a lot of good friends and family, and I heard from a lot of people that day. Finally, around 5 PM, they loaded me on a medical flight and flew me to Spokane, Washington, to Sacred Heart Medical Center.

There's a lot more to the story that I'll leave for another time, but here's how it all ended up. The doctors advised me to have the hip repaired, rather than replaced. Total Hip Replacements (THP) were pretty common in 1993, but they were expected to last only about 20 years, and at that time there were serious issues with redoing hip replacements: it wasn't always possible. I was 46 at the time, s in order to avoid having me hopelessly crippled and in a wheelchair in my 60s, they recommended mending, not replacing the hip. They replaced the shattered acetabulum with a strip of metal secured by nine screws.

I was in the Spokane hospital for 12 days, then I was flown home and spend the next couple of months in a hospital bed in my living room having home therapy. Following that, I was on crutches for about 3 months and continued outpatient therapy, and then on one crutch, then later a cane. It was almost a year after the accident before I could walk without a cane and/or a severe limp.

But I did recover. Jamee Lu was originally convicted of negligent vehicular assault, but later the conviction was thrown out and she pled to DUI. I don't think she served more than one night in jail. Lockhart was never charged with anything. Jamee Lu had minimum liability insurance, and I was able to get her pitiful policy limits as well as the fairly small policy limits of the underinsured coverage I had. I sued Lockhart, but despite his testimony that he'd grabbed the steering wheel thus causing the collision, his insurance company denied liability for almost 1 1/2 years, only coughing up the policy limits the day before the trial. Later I sued his insurance company for bad faith claims dealing and after a 6 year battle, got a few thousand from them. At the time, no one including the opposing insurance companies denied that I had about a half million in injuries. The total I recovered from both Cole and Lockhart's policies, the underinsured coverage, and the bad faith suit was $132,500. After paying my lawyers, costs of suit, and medical bills, I had about enough to buy a nice guitar.

For the next 14 or so years, I experienced daily pain and lost a fair amount of sleep because I couldn't lie down for more than about 6 hours without waking. I had to take anti-inflammatories in pretty big doses every day. But I was able to walk without a limp most of the time, and generally thought I'd gotten off fairly easily considering the magnitude of my injuries. My legal experiences led me to go to law school in 1994, and in 1997 at the age of 50 I graduated from law school, was admitted to the bar, and opened my law practice.

Things went pretty well until early in 2008. I began to experience frequent and intensifying pain in the hip. Over that year, the pain gradually increased until I finally sought advice from an orthopedic doctor in October, 2008. He told me that I needed a THP. The repair worked as long as it did, but now my hip is just bone on bone and there is no cure and little relief any other way. THP costs around $50,000, and of course there are related costs such as therapy, etc.

In the early 90s, my wife, who had worked for First Interstate Bank for 13 years, was "downsized." She held a couple of other jobs, but eventually started her own bookkeeping business because there were few jobs available to her. She was in the unfortunate position of having been promoted to supervisory positions in the bank but not having a college degree, so other banks considered her either over or under qualified depending on the positions they had available. We'd always been insured through her work, but that came to an end.

I graduated with two undergraduate degrees in 1990 and held a part time temporary teaching job in 1991-92, but was never able to get a full time teaching job without moving to some distant city, away from my wife's business, our home, and our family. So in 1992 we found ourselves without health insurance.

After I got out of law school, I investigated the situation. At the time, I was 50, my wife was47, and we were fairly healthy. I had slightly elevated blood pressure, but it wasn't a real problem. My wife had no health problems at that time. Still, in order to get private health insurance, we would have had to pay (at that time) about $8000 per year in premiums for a policy with a $5000 deductible and an 80/20 copay. Since we were both just getting started in our businesses, we decided that we could not afford that cost.

It turned out we were right. My wife had a bout with diverticulitis. She had to undergo several weeks of tests and procedures which cost a total of $8000. If we had bought health insurance only one year earlier, we would have paid $8000 in premiums and the first $5000 of her actual bills, as well as 20% of the remaining $3000 assuming the insurer agreed with the amounts we were billed. Clearly, we were money ahead paying for it ourselves.

So for the next number of years, we just paid our medical bills and prescription costs as they came along. Then we were hit with my hip problem. No insurance, and no way to pay for the surgery up front (which is required as the condition, although crippling, is considered elective surgery.) Once again I looked into the possibility of getting health coverage, knowing that I would have to pay the premiums and wait at least a year for "pre-existing condition" exclusion to expire, assuming it would expire at all --- there's some doubt about that. Today -- if we could get coverage -- it would cost $12,000 per year in premiums for $10,000 deductible coverage, with pre-existing conditions excluded.

The only other health problem I had was that I was diagnosed with Type II diabetes in 2005, but I took it seriously and carefully managed it with diet and exercise keeping my blood sugar and A1c down to excellent levels. However, with the increased hip pain came decreased activity, so my blood sugar began to rise. Then, last fall, I had my annual physical and learned that my PSA prostate test had jumped up above normal levels. Since I have a family history of prostate cancer, my MD advised a visit to the urologist. The urologist advised a biopsy, and in early January I learned I had prostate cancer.

In May I completed the last of 47 radiation treatments and the prognosis is very good. But I now owe $115,000 in medical bills. My hip has gotten MUCH worse, to the point that I am effectively a cripple. I can barely walk at all. I'm on high doses of narcotic pain medication daily. I can't really do anything that doesn't involve sitting. Fortunately, my law practice allows for that. But here's the deal: I can't buy ANY health insurance. No one will cover me. Because of the hip? No. They'd just exclude that as pre-existing. Because of the cancer? No. That treatment's done and the prognosis is very good. It's because of the diabetes. So I have to pay all my own medical costs, and guess what? I can't. I don't have enough money. I have to order my Celebrex for inflammation of the hip from Canada. It costs $226 for the same prescription that would cost $750 in the good old USA.

My only opportunity to have the THP surgery is 1) to get a job that comes with a health insurance benefit (damned unlikely under the circumstances), 2) wait until November of 2011 when I turn 65 and can get on Medicare, or 3) the damned politicians get off their asses and pass a health care reform bill.

Being an old liberal from way back, believing that Ronald Reagan was an evil cretin, and knowing beyond a doubt that government is not only NOT the enemy but plays a vital and important role in all our lives; AND understanding that when you add it up, our tax dollars provide the most bang for the buck of any money we spend; I favor a single payer system. I'm also realistic, though and know that greed centered America with its huge population of willfully ignorant people who will deny anything that doesn't fit within their preconceived beliefs will never agree to a single payer system no matter how logical. So all I'm asking is for a federal law that REQUIRES insurance companies to insure anybody who applies. To prohibit insurers from excluding pre-existing conditions. And last, to regulate premiums, deductibles and copays in the same way that we regulate utility rates -- guaranteeing a fair profit to the company while maintaining the lowest possible rate to the consumer. That's all I ask, folks.

We're the richest country in the world. We believe that we have the best medical system in the world but WE DO NOT. The last time the World Health Organization determined rankings, in 2000, we ranked 37th, behind Costa Rica. We ranked 24th in healthy life expectancy, 72nd in overall health care performance, yet we rank number ONE in per capita health care expenditures. If it ain't broke, don't fix it --- BUT IT"S BROKE.

I get riled up about a lot of political issues, but this time it's personal. I'm 62 years old, and every day that I have to sit still in pain, required to have someone else do almost every daily task for me, being unable to sleep in my bed and only able to sleep in a recliner chair, and not having any semblance of a normal life is one less day that I have to live. So when I hear Republicans with their empty false arguments, or see the talking heads looking into the camera and flat lying to the public, or hear the whining complaints of the health insurance and pharmaceutical companies (check out their profit statements over the past couple of years), or listen to the ignorant fear coming from the poor deluded people who vote against their own interest because they have been so effectively taught to fear the only mechanisms that can actually help them---- I get pissed off. Can you blame me?

From out of the blue

Well, after I wrote the first two posts, as luck would have it I lost my username/password and couldn't figure out how to get back in and write more unforgettable prose. Huge loss to the world, I know, but I guess my techno-ignorance was showing.

Last week, I had a surprise from out of the blue which made me see the actual value of these postings, or at least potential value. I got a call from a young woman in California who happened across this blog because she was Googling Larry Engebretson, my childhood friend who was killed in Viet Nam in 1970. It seems that a friend of their family served with Larry, and that Larry volunteered to go out on patrol in this fellow's place the night he was killed. When they got the news that the patrol suffered casualties, this man was the one who found Larry's body. He's had to live with that horrific story for 39 years. He asked this young woman and her mother to help him locate Larry's family, as he wanted to contact them.

As it happens, Larry was not close to his extended family. His father died when we were in high school, and his mother died in the 1980s. I honestly think that I'm the closest living "survivor" that these folks could find. Anyway, from the blog, they found my website and phoned me last week. I spoke with the woman and got emails from her and her mother and told them I'd be glad to talk with their friend. He called me last Saturday.

We had a fairly brief and somewhat awkward, but generally good conversation. He gave me more details about Larry's death, and we agreed that if he ever gets to come here, I'll help him visit Larry's grave and spend some time with him. It might help us both.

Coincidentally, I wrote a song about Larry's death not more than two or three months ago, called "Fly Away." Over the weekend, I found some old photos of Larry, and converted some old 8mm home movies to digital video. I think I'll make a DVD of the photos, do a demo recording of the song, and use it as a soundtrack. Who knows? Bottom line, all of this made me think about my old friend a lot over the past few days. Actually, there are few days that I don't think of him at least in passing, but I've done a lot of reminiscing lately.

Top photo: Larry's high school graduation photo, 1964

Bottom photo: Larry and me in Glacier Nat'l Park, 1968

R.I.P. Larry Douglas Engebretson

August 9, 1946 - July 13, 1970