Washington and Idaho ...

Ain't No Mountain High Enough ... Oregon

Over hill, over dale, today Izzy and I hit the trail. It's back to Montana to provide support while my sister undergoes surgery for breast cancer. Nicholai stayed home, though he didn't want to. I thought he could use a rest from travel and hiking at altitude.

I missed my Mr. Pickle on the trip. Izzy is fun, but she's a bit attention-deficit and a bling-wearing, girls-just-want-to-have-fun kind of dog. Nicholai makes a good travel partner. Not at all my fur-kid, he's my buddy. When I pull up to an out-of-the-way rest stop with him, I am not a woman alone, I'm a woman with a dark and handsome - and slightly dangerous - canine guy.

In spite of the fact that the trip was one I wouldn't choose, the day was lovely with the glory of nature shining everywhere, so beautiful, I couldn't help but crank up the Dixie Chicks and just be happy.

Kookoolan Farm

Since reading Jonathan Safran Foer's book Eating Animals this March, I have been itching to find and visit a farm that raises animals in a humane and respectful way. I gotta be done, done, done with supporting factory farming – even if that support is unwitting. I can be happy eating a vegetarian diet, but I have three big dogs to feed and no reason to believe that a vegetarian diet is best for them, so it's off to search out sources of meat that I can truly believe in.

Kookoolan Farm (www.kookoolanfarms.com) is a small, family owned farm in Yamhill, Oregon. A pleasant one-hour drive from northeast Portland in the middle of the day, I enjoyed winding through Gaston and Yamhill before turning into Kookoolan's drive. I was met by Chrissie, who waved to me with muddy hands from a veggie patch, rain running off her bright yellow slicker.

"You must be my two o'clock!" she hollered and smiled. "Sorry about this," she said with a glance at her hands. What else would I expect from someone working in a garden under steady rain? "No problem." I answered.

After slipping out of her mud-covered boots and washing up, Chrissie gave me a tour of the self-service store. Complete with freezers and fridges, I can buy fresh, raw, unpasteurized milk and yogurt, home-brewed kombucha tea (good for what ails ya), complete cheese making supplies, and fresh eggs. Whole chickens and ducks (feet and all) were available in the freezer yesterday – and she assured me that until you make chicken soup using the feet you haven't really had chicken soup at all. The chicken is a heritage breed – Le Poulet, though some Cornish Cross (the ubiquitous grocery store breed) was also available. Twice per month during the summer and early fall, the Heritage chickens will be available fresh on the day of slaughter.

Kookoolan raises their animals on pasture under fresh air and sunshine. Their chickens, cows, lambs, and this year pigs, are provided with adequate light, room to roam, the food nature intended them to have (not corn and soy and god-knows what else), and appropriate social groups. They raise all their chicks – boys and girls, so no chicks are gassed – to maturity before they are killed. They have on-sight chicken processing, so the chickens never have to be rounded up and carted off to slaughter under unknown or questionable circumstances. Raising a small number of mammals for food – the cows, lambs, and pigs – Chrissie says that she is present for every single death, to make sure it's done with sensitivity rather than callousness. That's commitment and responsibility, that's the way it needs to go down.

When we eat animals, we are responsible for taking their lives. For me, it has become critical to know that the lives they lived were lives of beauty; not lives of desperation, fear, loneliness, and agony.
Their end should come swiftly, without terror and undue suffering. Chrissie tells me that meat from animals killed without panic, who are not filled with adrenaline and lactic acid, is sweet and tender. I think that's great, but there is a reason more important than taste for me to drive an hour from home to buy meat and milk from a farmer I can meet and shake hands with.

For me, it's all about soul. If I buy and eat food from animals who lived and died tortured lives – even if I don't directly know it – my purchase fuels that cruelty. I have to wonder if aside from pesticides and herbicides, antibiotics and hormones, unnatural fatty acid balances, and inferior nutrient quality, does agony and despair come right up the food chain? I think it does.

I was happy just being at Kookoolan, seeing the laying hens putzing about in the rain, scratching and pecking to their delight; watching Chrissie and a couple of helpers work the garden carefully by hand, and seeing the dry barns and the sizeable rolling green pastures.

A glass of milk or a dish of whole milk yogurt can be a delight – passed from animal to human with a touch of grace. I came home with glass containers of raw milk and yogurt, two chickens (with feet), beef heart, livers, and bones for the dogs, and kombucha tea. I'll be driving out to Yamhill several times this spring and summer, and I look forward to it; maybe you'll join me.

Poured On

Wonderful walk at the Columbia River with Nicholai; got poured on.

Walked a dog for a friend who has multiple myeloma; got poured on.

Drove an hour from Portland to visit a humane farm where the animals are all pastured; got POURED on.

Gotta love the rainy northwest – and I do.

 

Dark and Stormy

It was a dark and stormy day …

Many of our walks begin this way. Dark gray clouds suspended low over the horizon and precipitation in one form or another haunting the twilight space between night and day. I love the shawl of a storm wrapped around the morning's excursion.

Today, as I trekked along the beach, I watched a storm approach over the wide opening of the Willamette's mouth into the Columbia River. Rain hung in a thick curtain from sky to earth and as the wind pushed it toward us, wafts of warning breeze lifted my hair off my face and ruffled Nicholai's thick fur. Soon the clouds burst overhead and rain pelted down on us so we took cover on the southeast side of a hulking cottonwood tree. Partially protected from the downpour, I enjoyed the pattering of raindrops on leaves and the smell of wet grass and musty scent of moist dirt. Nicholai wondered why we were standing still and whined to get us on our way. He has never been one for quietly accepting my standing around chatting. "Let's get this show on the road," he always seems to cry, if and when I stop for any reason. He and I seem cut from the same cloth in that way, we like to go, which is one of many reasons we have long forsaken small fenced dog parks in search of satisfying longer journeys.

Normally, I am well decked-out for a squall; today I had opted for a light tan windbreaker – apparently in complete denial of Oregon's fickle spring weather – so I wanted to let the heaviest of the torrent pass us by. After a couple of minutes with no appreciable let up in the deluge, I flipped the hood of my nearly useless jacket up, and struck out from the shelter of the old tree. By the time we had rounded the point, cut back through the trees and dashed across the open meadow, we were drenched.

No complaints about the rain. A stormy day is an appropriate pacific northwest kind of day, and I cherish the moisture that feeds the rivers and the ground and provides for lush vegetation in our region. I treasure too, the quieting of city sounds and the calming of my busy city mind imposed by nature's outburst. Sunshine will always be a welcome sight, but a good rain makes for wonderful walking meditation.

Spring Romp

Nicholai and Izzy exhibited vim and vigor in the dappled sunshine breaking through gray clouds this morning. Spring was strutting its stuff. Walking briskly, we quickly covered the territory between parking and river. Greeted by the honks of geese and the inviting warm breath of spring,both dogs jumped into the water, startling the natives.

Cruising along the high water line, I swear both dogs laughed - at the complaining geese, the feel of cool water, the simple glee of another day filled with strength, breath, light, and fun.

On we go with the next hundred days. I'll try to stop obsessing about counting; instead I'll laugh at spring sun sneaking through clouds and geese worrying a loud blue streak about wolves passing by their nesting area.

One Hundred Days

May 1, 2010.

This is my one hundredth post on Dead Dog Walking. One hundred days of sitting down in front of the computer to tell Nicholai's story of survival. One hundred days of home-made food, vitamins, herbs, and supplements. One hundred days of walks in snow, rain, mist, and sun. One hundred days of waxing and waning lymph nodes, telling me cancer is still here. One hundred days past one hundred days, past one hundred days, past the first hundred days I thought he wouldn't make it.

One hundred days.

Not counting the days I don't quite get to the page, and leave writing a post for another day. Not counting the days I'm just too busy to sit down for thirty minutes and pull thoughts into coherent sentences. Not counting days spent on the road, or whirling with unexpected news, days I'm not willing to commit ideas to words on a page.

And obviously, I'm counting. Today, Nicholai is the dog of 500 unexpected days.

This morning we walked in quiet under heavy gray clouds along the Sandy River. I ran hard a few times, like in the old days, and it felt good. I love the muscle straining, heart pounding, lungs expanding feeling I get with running, but I don't run much anymore due to a foot injury and other niggling musculoskeletal problems associated with the number of miles on this frame. But Nicholai lives on and on with lymphoma – energetic and in good humor – and I decided to borrow a page from his book on living with gusto in the moment.

When I began this blog in January, I thought (feared?) I wouldn't be writing long. Now it seems that Mr. Pickle will challenge the blogger in me more than I ever expected; to pay meticulous attention to what matters, to keep showing up at the page, to keep telling the story.

However many more – or how few – days are left.