Barbara Brookes
There seem to be more dogs getting walked these days – or are we just doing it all at the same time? Dog walking, I would argue, is important for both physical and mental health. We have been committed dog walkers from graduate school days when we dog-sat a Newfoundland and a Labrador. Our first dog, Taffy, a Welsh terrier, was a present to my Dad on his seventieth birthday in the hope that he would take more walks to help his heart condition. When my Dad’s heart gave out two years later, we took over the naughty and ill-trained dog from my unable-to-cope mother. Taffy returned to my mother five years later – a bit calmer – when we went overseas on study leave. When we came back, we saw how that naughty dog had enhanced my mother’s life. Those walks around her neighbourhood kept her fit and brought her new friends. At home he was great company. There was no way Taffy was coming back to us.
Our next dog was acquired when our young sons convinced a babysitter that a trip to the SPCA pound would be a good diversion. Heart-rending tales of the cutest dog in the world came home and soon Scruffles was saved from death row. The boys’ enthusiasm for walks diminished quite quickly but I found those walks gave me essential thinking time. When it rained, I donned my father’s rain pants and my father-in-law’s LL Bean Jacket, wrapping myself in my forebears as I braved inclement weather. Problems that seemed insoluble, writing tasks that were blocked, difficult interpersonal relations – all became easier when pondered in the fresh air. After fourteen years Scruff passed on and we acquired our first puppy, Scout. Nearly six, he remains full of beans and addicted to chasing a ball. I have regular dog-walk dates.
At a time when we are all isolated in our homes, teddy-bear-in- the-window hunts might keep exercising children amused in the street. Dunedin people are getting into the spirit. Our household currently lacks a teddy bear but we’ve put our wooden duck in the window as a tiny effort to relieve tedium. All round us people are engaging in acts of kindness: a wave from the window, a phone call or email to a distant friend, and then the essential workers – particularly those in the health system, providing treatment and care for on-going needs. In the face of relentless bad news, these acts keep us grounded and sane. And some people are truly inventive.
Remember MRS GREN, the mnemonic for the biological features necessary for organic life? Movement, Respiration, Sensation, Growth, Reproduction, Excretion, Nutrition. The great shared factor – the one that is present in them all – is movement, which occurs at some level, micro or macro, during every one of these functions. This intimate association between life and movement is reflected in human languages, which are laden with movement-related metaphors, imagery and symbolism. In English, for example, we speak of life cycles and seasonal cycles, of money or kindness making the world go round, of giving the nod or of shaking things off. We advise ‘going forward’ and ‘moving on’. We run ideas past other people; we are caught on the hop; we leap to conclusions; we take it step by step. Life, we say, is a journey. Sometimes we see the path clearly and lope along. Sometimes, however, we can’t see the woods for the trees, or our plans are stalled, or the wheels fall off, and everything comes to a grinding halt.
As a child, you always see your parents as these invincible super-humans. After all, they did put up with my psychologically traumatic teenage hormones at their peak. Parents want to protect you, they put on a brave face, they try to shelter you from what is dark in life. But sometimes they can’t, and sometimes, it’s important for them not to. When someone you see as so incredibly strong is forcibly made weak by disease, it’s an adjustment, to say the least. Before he got cancer, I had only seen my father fighting for me, and in that battle he was undefeated.
Months after a serious accident, despite doing all the prescribed exercises, my right shoulder was getting worse. Simple movements caused sharp pain. Physios continued to hold out the hope of healing for this ‘small’ tear of my rotator cuff. I doubted that it would repair and said I wanted surgery. The path seemed to be blocked.
