Return of the Muffin Saga, Part XVI

I have often written of the wonder walks that Muffin and I took. In this part of The Muffin Saga I  go beyond writing about the walks Muffin and I shared over the years to showing you one.

Unfortunately, the young couple that I took into my home a couple of years ago walked off not only with some of my CDs, DVDs, money, and silverware (to name a few items) but also with the two photograph albums that contained almost all of my photos of Muffin, including those of our walks. So what I decided to do is to take you on a tour of the favorite spot where Muffin and I walked, Brown Park. I also decided that I would make this a video walk and, with Tasha’s assistance, that is how I spent several hours of my July 4^th holiday.

The video below is the result. It is far from professional quality. Still, I hope that it gives you an idea of where and how Muffin and I spent many enjoyable hours.

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The Return of The Muffin Saga, Part XIII

There were excellent parking spots at the end of my apartment, between the buildings and the creek. When available, that’s always where I parked. As I walked the few yards from my car to the apartment, I saw Muffin through the sliding glass doors that were between my kitchen and patio. Muffin, of course, also saw me and stood smiling with her tail wagging fast. By the time I entered the hallway and opened the door to my apartment, Muffin had left the kitchen and was waiting for me in the entrance way. She stood on her hind legs and I bent down so I could pet the mop that was her hair and she could lick my face. 

That had become our routine most days of the week. It was an adjustment for both of us. In southern Indiana my study had been in the parsonage where we lived. Here in Louisville my study was at the church. In southern Indiana Muffin and I had spent quite a bit of time together. Now I was gone much of the day. My homecoming had become a special ritual for both of us.

I walked through the living room and hallway into the kitchen with Muffin beside me. I glanced at Muffin’s food and water dishes, noting that she’d eaten well. When I reached the sliding glass door, I took the leash off the hook beside it, and said “Outside.” Muffin’s response was to leap up and down, making it difficult to attach the leash to her collar. That was O.K.—we had been doing this so often that she knew when to hold still so that I could fasten the leash.

As soon as the door opened, Muff sprinted out and turned left. I allowed her as much play as possible on the retractable leash and we jogged toward the grassy area between the apartment buildings and the concrete wall that separated us from the Henry Watterson Expressway.

In the grassy area, Muffin sniffed, squatted to urinate, sniffed some more, squatted to defecate, jumped forward, wiped her paws on the grass, and looked up at me quizzically as if to ask, “Where do we explore now?”

Our walks in the apartment complex took different routes each day. Today we followed the wall separating us from the expressway to the opposite end of our building and I sat down in the pagoda that was behind the complex’s office. Muffin jumped up beside me on the bench and I petted her for a while until she was ready for a more vigorous adventure.

We continued walking along the wall until we reached the creek—Bent Creek—that was the southern and eastern boundary of the apartment complex. Before the fence was installed to keep undesirables out of the complex, Muffin and I could go down the hill to the edge of the creek and follow it back toward our apartment. In Spring and Summer there were mallards in the creek and we both enjoyed watching them in the water and on the bank. In late Spring there were always hatchlings swimming with there mamas in the creek. Of course, with Muffin and I on the bank, they stayed in the water and didn’t climb out—normally.

As we climbed back up the hill from the bank so we could go around the bridge that led into the complex, two large drakes ran up behind us and took flight when they were within five feet of Muffin and me. I ducked. Muffin leaped. After that experience, Muffin decided that we should watch the mallards only from a safe distance, like on top of the hill above the creek bank. I agreed.

The Muffin Saga Continues next Sunday.

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Did the critter see his shadow today?

The Return of The Muffin Saga, Part XII

As I am writing The Muffin Saga, I am realizing how much my life was intertwined with Muffin's. I really miss my friend.

Muffin stayed at a doggie hotel while I was on my road trip to Tucson for the first part of the certification course for intentional interim ministry. She evidently enjoyed the stay: she had other doggies for company and a very large fenced area to play with her new friends. Of course, I couldn't leave her at my mother’s house. Mom couldn't have taken care of her and Muffin may have repeated the whining, crying, and howling behavior she did while I was hospitalized.

The course in Tucson was a week long, Monday through Friday. Since I had decided to drive to Tucson and make a detour on the way back, I arranged a two week stay for Muffin at the doggie hotel. With my car packed for the trip, I dropped Muffin off at her temporary home on Thursday morning and began following the southern route (Kentucky—Tennessee—Arkansas—Texas—New Mexico—Arizona) to Tucson, a drive of about 1800 miles.

The drive was OK and I arrived in Tucson late Sunday night. The next morning I found the retreat center, which was located in the desert overlooking the city. Recently I located some of the photographs of the center and folks with whom I shared the week:

My small group at Interim Ministry Network certidication course

Meditation trail at retreat center

The chapel at the retreat center

Early morning coffee

View of Tucson from above the retreat center

The return trip to Louisville was longer (2,350 miles) than the trip to Tucson. I drove west to Phoenix to visit a friend, then north to the Grand Canyon National Park where I visited with an Internet friend, then to Bryce Canyon National Park where I visited my son, Rob, and his wife who were working at the lodge, and finally back to Louisville.

I arrived at my mother’s house at about 4:00 a.m. to find the security bolt on the front door. Thus, I entered the back door, setting off the burglar alarm and, I think, awakening folks a block in each direction.

After a good bit of sleep—I had driven straight through from the Kansas border to Louisville without sleeping (about 950 miles)—I went to the doggie hotel where I retrieved a very excited Muffin. When the attendant brought her to me, she pulled so hard on her leash that she almost got away from the young woman. Of course, she wasn't trying to escape; she was heading for me and when I bent down to her I received as much of a wet tongue licking as I had when I returned from the hospital.

Muffin was so excited that we had to take a Muffin walk around the parking lot before getting into the car. She pulled me up to the fence around the outside play area were some of her doggie chums were and said good-bye to them before we left. I felt that I was taking her away from something special: her new friends, human and doggies, and a play area where she could run without a leash. There were so many transitions going on in both out lives that I may have been projecting my own feelings onto Muffin.

However, we were soon off on another adventure—moving from my mother’s basement into an apartment of our own—and neither Muffin nor I had time to reflect on the past.

I shall publish part XIII of The Muffin Saga next Sunday.


To all of my Down Under friends:

Please

The Muffin Saga: Part XI

Becoming adjusted to living in Louisville was fun for both Muffin and me. Muffin met a new friend, the Australian Sheepdog of Marc, another U.C.C. pastor, who had served churches in Australia for several years before returning to the U.S. When he began serving a congregation in Louisville, he brought two beloved things with him: a Range Rover and his dog.

Marc showed Muffin and me some neat places, including an area in a city park where dogs were allowed to run free of leashes. Muffin enjoyed being free of a leash. Unfortunately there were no garbage cans in the park to explore. She did frolic on a hillside meadow and roll around in the grass. As Spring came, Muffin met other dogs and had the joy of sticking her nose around their butts. Such is a doggie’s life and joys.

Muffin also met Caryl, who became her veterinarian long before she became Alex’s vet. There were two animal clinics close to where my mother lived. One was a huge, hospital like building with a half dozen vets on duty at any time. It was open twenty-four hours a day, every day. The other was a smaller place that had two vets, only one of which was ever on duty. It was much more like the practice that Muffin’s vet in southern Indiana had: fewer animals in the waiting room and a vet who knew Muffin personally.

The second is the one we, Muffin and I, chose. On our first visit Muffin had a physical, her doggie shots updated, and we purchased the dog license the county required. Caryl and Muffin got on well, which was good because they would see each other frequently over the coming years.

As I recovered from the bout of pneumonia and the time approached for me to leave for Tucson, I began looking for a permanent home for us. I’ll admit that my primary concern was finding a place that was doggie friendly. After several days of looking, I found what I thought a good place. However, before I signed the rental contract, I took Muffin for a visit.

It was a large, multiple building apartment complex. Running along one side was a creek, which was unique since the complex was in the city. Throughout the complex were grassy areas perfect for doggie walks. The day I took Muffin for the visit, we explore everywhere. Muffin even made the acquaintance of two other doggies who lived there. And I learned what my sons meant when they said that Muffin was a “babe magnet.”

Part XII of The Muffin Saga will be published next Sunday.

No Muffin Saga Today

I am sorry, but there will be no episode of The Muffin Saga posted today. I am much too ill and weak.

The Muffin Saga, Part X

How to make God laugh: Tell him your future plans. ~ Woody Allen

Eight days hospitalized can blow anyone’s plans and it certainly blew mine. There was no possible way for me to attend the Interim Ministry Network’s certification course in Oklahoma City in mid-January. So I contacted the Network’s national office and rescheduled for the course taking place in Tucson, Arizona, in March.

I’m fairly certain that that was OK with Muffin. She had evidently been traumatized by both my illness and my absence. When I returned to my temporary abode in my mother’s basement, she greeted me by jumping as high as she could and licking my face over and over. She was reluctant to let me out of her sight. She even followed me to the bathroom door and scratched at it while it was closed. That was new behavior for Muffin.

Meanwhile I was so weak that I couldn’t go anywhere so Muffin’s fear of my leaving again wasn’t to be realized for a while. I was much too frail to go out for any length of time. I needed to rest and recover.

The only real recovery problem that I had was that when I left the hospital after eight days of being treated for pneumonia, along with other medications, I was prescribed a bunch of steroids supposedly to wean me off the steroids I had been receiving intravenously while hospitalized. The instructions were to take four pills for three days, then three pills for three days, and so forth.

I had never heard of roid rage until I experienced it, which I did on the third or fourth day of the weaning routine. I was irrationally angry, yelling at my mother and Muffin, even feeling like kicking Muffin, which, thank God, I did not do. At some point I left the house, got into my car, put it in reverse, and stomped on the accelerator. I had to slam on the breaks to prevent ending up in the yard across the street. I sat in the car and took deep breaths to regain some sanity. Then I slowly drove back up the driveway and went in the house, where Muffin greeted me as she had when I returned from the hospital.

I did not know what was happening with me, except that I wasn’t OK. I petted Muffin and began to feel some calmness returning. Then I telephoned the physician who treated me for pneumonia while I was hospitalized. As luck—good luck—would have it, he was out of town, so I made a long-distance call to Indiana and the physician who had been my doctor for the past eleven years. This was the excellent, because he was an acknowledged expert in sports medicine.

After I explained what was going on and told him the medications I was prescribed at the hospital, he informed me that I was suffering from steroid rage, which he said affects some folks. He recommended that I flush all the pills except three down the toilet and take those, one per day, for the next three days. I followed his advice and quickly returned to normal.

Again, Muffin had saved me. She was a calming presence when my body felt anything but calm.

With almost two month before I had to leave for Tucson, Muffin and I began to explore Louisville, where I had not lived for more than twenty years. Unfortunately, my mother’s house didn’t have a fenced yard and the county had a leash law. Muffin couldn't go exploring on her own.

Thus Muffin and I began taking long walks with her on her leash. We explored the subdivision where I had lived from the age of ten to eighteen. Muffin, who was so often led by her nose and stomach, really wanted to raid garbage cans, which wasn’t on my agenda. I spent an abnormal amount of our walking time tugging on her leash to keep her away from cans that, according to her nose, contained food scraps.

We needed another place to walk—a non-residential area where Muffin wasn’t tempted by garbage. I had already made contact with fellow clergypersons in Louisville and so asked their advice. Several spots, almost all of them parks, were recommended, so Muffin and I began daily drives (Muffin loved riding in the car) to explore these parks. And we walked—we walked a lot. And I loved it and Muffin loved it.

Part XI of The Muffin Saga will be published next Sunday.

The Muffin Saga, Part IX

Muffin was standing on the futon beside me, licking the perspiration from my face, each time I surfaced into consciousness. I was terribly thirsty. Somehow, with Muffin beside me, I rose from the bed and climbed the steps from my mother’s basement to the kitchen where I drank water—lots of water. Then I staggered down the stairs, climbed back onto the futon, replaced the CPAP mask, and again fell asleep. The process was repeated I don’t know how many times over two and a half days. Each time I returned to consciousness, Muffin was beside me.

It had begun the day after New Year 1998. Since I’d returned to Louisville I had assumed from my Uncle John the responsibility for the care of my 89-year-old Aunt Lill. She had been in and out of nursing homes during the years I had been living in Missouri and Indiana. Uncle John, her youngest and only surviving brother, had arranged for 24/7 care takers in her home from an ever changing group he found through newspaper ads.

I would visit Aunt Lill a couple of times a week, doing her grocery shopping, arranging visits to her doctors, doing her banking, and being with her at times when her caretaker took time off. My relatives, including my mother, also visited her.

There had always conflict between Aunt Lill and the caretakers. Finally I decided that a job description needed to be developed for the caretaker to define duties and expectations on the part of both my aunt and her employee. So on January 2^nd I informed her current caretaker that we would negotiate a job description after I returned from making a trip to the grocery. When I returned to Aunt Lill’s house, I found the woman had packed her car with her belonging and was sitting in it in the driveway. As I got out of my car, she yelled, “Your uncle said I’d be paid under the table. I’m not staying.” She drove away.

I was in a conundrum! I had no caretaker for Aunt Lill. So I began calling agencies listed in the Yellow Pages until I found one who said they could supply a caretaker immediately. The owner, who was also the intake worker, came to my aunt’s house and we signed a contract. I was told that the caretaker would arrive in a few hours. She didn’t.

Through whatever mess up the agency had, over the next three days no caretaker arrived, although I was promised time and time again that one was on the way. Meanwhile, I couldn’t leave my aunt alone, nor could I provide her with adequate care. For example, she would not allow me, whose diaper she had changed fifty or so years before, to change her diaper.

I could find no relatives to help with her care. And, without the CPAP, I wasn’t able to sleep. By the third day I was ill—seriously ill. My mother reluctantly agreed to exchange places with me. When I returned to my apartment in Mom’s basement, Muffin greeted me with obvious joy. Exhausted, I collapsed on the futon.

I have no idea how long I slept, but when I awoke I was shaking and covered in perspiration. Muffin was beside me, licking the perspiration from my face. Muffin stayed at my side. She was always there when I awoke, nursing me with all of the doggy skills she possessed. But my mind wasn’t working. I knew I was ill, but I didn’t know what to do about it. With Muffin at my side, I managed to make it up the stairs, drink water, take Tylenol, and use the bathroom. Muffin never left me.

At some point I located a thermometer in my mother’s medicine cabinet. My temperature was 104 (F). I was getting sicker each day.

By the third day I knew I had to do something. So I staggered to my car and somehow (the medical folks were amazed) drove the four or five miles to a 24-hour emergency medical center. At the center I sat in the waiting room for about an hour and a half before being seen. Of course, I was unconscious during most of the wait.

Within minutes of entering the examining room, I was hooked up to oxygen and an ambulance was called to transport me to hospital. I had an acute case of double pneumonia and was hospitalized for eight days, a remarkably long period I am told.

Meanwhile the care providers finally located someone to stay with Aunt Lill and my mother returned home. Muffin, however, was beside her doggy self. She refused to climb the stairs from my mom’s basement, she refused to go outside, she refused to eat. What she did do was whimper and howl continually. Evidently Muffin, my caretaker, was concerned about me. My mother finally telephoned my wife, who came to her house and calmed and fed Muffin.

When I returned from hospital Muffin greeted me as I imagine the Father greeted his Prodigal Son. And I greeted her as I imagine the Man Who Was Robbed greeted the Good Samaritan.

The Muffin Saga will continue. There are still quite a few Muffin stories to share.

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The Muffin Saga, Part VIII

The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men,
Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!

~ Robert Burns

When my wife made the decision to move to Louisville to attend school full time, I promised to join her within the next year. By mid-summer I had made arrangements to switch from “settled” pastoral ministry to “intentional” interim ministry, which meant taking additional courses for certification. The plan was simple:

• Resign as pastor of St. John and move to Louisville at the end of November
• Put household goods in storage and stay in the apartment in my mother’s basement until after the first certification class
• Attend initial certification class in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, in early January

From the moment I began the implementation of the plan, the lives of Muffin and me changed. I had less time to take Muffin walks. Muffin was confused about all of the activities in the parsonage: packing stuff, going through property belonging to my wife and two sons; making arrangements for auctioning off items I decided not to move. More than once Muffin intercepted me in the hallway and barked that I really ought to sit down, relax, and pet her. She was right.

In late August or early September my wife visited to help me decide on how to dispose of some of the stuff. It was then that she informed me that she wanted to be married “only a little bit” and as of that moment considered us formally separated.

I felt as if I had been kicked in the head by a mule! If we were separated, then why was I making this move from a church I had pastored for over ten years to Louisville and interim ministry?

Muffin ministered to me. When I would sit in a chair staring at nothing, she would sit beside me, usually licking my hand or face until I was willing to get up and on with life. One evening a parishioner came by the parsonage on her way to watch her son play basketball at the city gym which was behind the church. We sat in the living room rather than then my study. Of course, Muffin sat beside me.

Marsha knew—the whole congregation knew—what was going on between my wife and me. A couple of the elderly women had even told me a year before when my wife moved into the dormitory in Louisville that I had better follow her fast or our marriage was over.

As we sat in the living room, Marsha said, “You know, Nick, when I was going through my horrible divorce a few years ago a very wise man told me that the pain wouldn’t last for ever. It just seemed like it would. Then he gave me a hug. And he was right. The healing came. That wise man was you and I hope you can listen to your own wisdom and know that there are many of us in this community reaching out to you as you reached out to us.”

Then she gave me a hug and, of course, Muffin, who never wanted to be left out of hugs, joined in.

The week before the move four of the widows in the congregation, a couple of the men, and a teenage girl who wasn’t part of the congregation but who I had counseled for a couple of years all came to the parsonage to help with the final packing. Muffin alternated between trying to help and territorially barking, “Don’t touch that!”

On the day of the move the same folks were there, plus two more parishioners and their friends to load and go with me to unload my stuff in Louisville. The teenager had permission from her family to go along and she rode with me in the big rental truck, holding Muffin in her lap. Muffin was, of course, excited about going for a ride and had no idea that out lives were changing forever.

Part IX of The Muffin Saga will be posted next Sunday.

Please?

The Muffin Saga, Part VI

A time came when Muffin and I were the only members of the family left living in the parsonage. My oldest son was in California making big bucks via e-commerce. My youngest son was in Texas not making big bucks but I believe having a good time working at Big Bend National Park. My wife moved into a college dorm 85 miles away in Louisville to complete the hours needed for her B.A. That was the beginning of the end of our marriage, although I didn’t realize it then.

So Muffin and I lived together in the parsonage with much more room than we needed. Through the years Muffin had become my good buddy, generally hanging out and keeping her eye on me whenever I was at home. And I was “at home” quite a bit since my study was in the parsonage.

During those years I had a private counseling practice and generally met with clients in my study. Muffin was usually there, too, generally reclining in a corner (and keeping an eye on me). She was OK with strangers and visitors. And she was sometimes helpful with clients, some of whom I saw on a contract basis with the Indiana Department of Family Services. (I think that’s what they were called back then).

The clients referred by Family Services were either victims of abuse or parents who had been adjudicated guilty of abuse or neglect. And Muffin was sometimes quite helpful in my working with them. For example, there was a 14-year-old boy who I judged had had his childhood stolen from him. He had been involved in a three year sexual relationship with an adult woman that had begun when he was 10 years old. The boy was distrustful and really didn’t know how to be a kid. Yet, after he and Muffin became friends, he would call her and she would jump up on the chair beside him where he’d pet her mop-like coat and she would smile with her tongue hanging out. Any success I had with that young man I owed to Muffin.

Of course, Muffin and I continued our walks around town that we had begun the first summer she joined our family. Have I mentioned that there was quite a lot of alcoholism, drug abuse, and domestic violence in the community? For a while I would walk around town wearing my clerical collar, hoping just to meet and talk to people, especially adolescents. At the Ohio River end of town were quite a few bars—about one bar for every 125 residents in town. One of the largest bars not only sold beer and hard liquor inside, but also through a window located on the side of a building beside which was an alley.

The owner of the bar was a man I came to know well during the hours we spent together sitting on benches on the river side of the flood wall and quietly talking. He told me many times that he did not sell alcohol to people under the legal drinking age and did not allow them in his bar or on his property. I told him I knew that; I also told him that the kids gathered in the alley, which was not on his property, and the booze they consumed was purchased for them by men and women of legal drinking age from the window on the side of his bar.

Had it not been for Muffin, I would never have known about that or have been able to talk with the kids drinking in the alley. During my pre-Muffin walks the kids, when they saw me approaching, would turn their backs to me and walk down the alley. I later learned that that was the same thing they did when one of the town’s two and a half policemen (a chief, a sergeant, and a half-time patrolman) drove by.

Muffin broke the ice between the kids and me. After two or three nights of our strolling by, the girls and then the boys came up to us, cooed over Muffin, and eventually talked with me. It took a few weeks of Muffin and I dropping by, but eventually the kids developed some trust and began to share their stories. So I conducted a weird type of group sessions standing with these adolescents who usually had a plastic cup in their hand while I had the leash of a smiling Muffin in my hand.

The Muffin Saga will continue with part VII next Sunday.

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