Dogs Relieve Quarantine Blues

Covid-19 has completely upended our lives.  The virus has killed over 149,000 people; it looks like we will be well over a quarter of a million deaths from the disease in the not too distant future.  To get a sense of the scale here, there were 16,204 homicides and 48,344 suicides in the US in 2018. We have lost the equivalent of 3 years of suicides in the 5 months of the novel coronavirus pandemic! The virus can be avoided by staying away from people so I am staying away from people.  Since I am over 65 years old, I am in one of the higher risk groups.  I also live with two adult kids with health issues; I don't want to bring the bug into their lives.

As I sit in quarantine day after day after day, I find myself doing surprisingly well most of the time.  This is probably due to the critter pictured above - Tai, my 12-pound, one-eyed shelter dog.  I brought the little pooch into the household back in early 2013. My family was in total crisis at that time; I was at the front-end of a long and contentious divorce process, one of my kids had just attempted suicide and another kid was suffering from debilitating panic attacks.  It was a 4-star shit show, but Tai was pretty chill about it all.  Life is much less chaotic now.

Just like toilet paper and hand sanitizer, there has been a run on shelter dogs during the pandemic.  This makes sense, I guess - people are stuck at home, starving for companionship/distraction and a dog (or even a cat!) can provide both of those things.  For me, Tai has eased my anxiousness during this very unusual disaster.   He has a quirky personality and is damned smart (compared to most dogs I know).  So here are 10 things about Tai that have relieved my quarantine blues:

1. Tai is always up for a walk:  Tai is getting older so he is no longer fond of 4-mile hikes in the summer heat, but he is happy to wander for 20 minutes or so, 5 times a day. This gets me out in a safe way; no one is in my 6-foot bubble.
2. Tai knows how to pay attention:  This little one-eyed mutt is always alert.  Even when he is asleep, he notices and reacts to any noise or significant environmental change.  He may be small, but he is a terrific alarm system!  I think he has scared away prowlers on more than one occassion.
3. Tai thinks he is a very large dog:   If a pit bull or doberman crosses his path, Tai is not afraid.  He is happy to live and let live, but if a big dog gives him shit, he will go into attack mode in a heartbeat.  I keep him on leash all the time so he won't get eaten by one of his humungous cousins.
4. Tai is a nervous eater:  Most of the dogs in my life have been highly food-motivated; Tai is not.  He will let the fancy dry dog food sit in his bowl all day until he gets super hungry, or when some exciting event triggers his appetite.  Is there a noise outdside that makes Tai bark and freak out?  He hits the food bowl.  Are we heading out for a walk?  He hits the food bowl.  And so on.  It's weird, but I kinda like it.
5. Tai must have been a circus dog in a previous life:  He is a 12-pound king of agility, able to walk for long distances on his hind legs, can hold the sit-up position indefinitely, can leap about 3 times his body length.  
6. Tai is all about his ball:  He would rather fetch his ball than eat.  Whenever I do certain things (like get on the floor to do my crunches or sit on the couch in the living room), Tai shows up with his ball and requests that I throw it.  I have never known a dog that has this type of fixation.
7. Tai howls when I play the harmonica:  While this can be annoying, it is also interesting. Tai is incredibly vocal when I start blowing my harmonicas.  He has quite a vocabulary of howls, and he is extremely loud for such a small animal.  He only howls when I play the harp; if I record myself and play back the recording, he does not howl.  It is a mystery.
8. Tai has the spooky one-eyed stare:  When I first saw Tai at the Anti-Cruelty Society on LaSalle Street in Chicago, he was in a tiny cage and his recent eye surgery was in the process of healing.  I don't know what happened to his left eye.  You can see in the photo above that the vet sewed his eylid over the socket.  I guessed that he picked a fight with a bigger dog, but it could have been some other injury or infection.  It gives Tai just a touch of spookiness.  He will sit and fix me with a one-eyed stare.  I will often feel like I am being watched in my apartment; I turn and there is Tai, shooting the Evil Eye at me.  Its kinda cool.
9. Tai sleeps tight against me:  At the end of the day, I say to my dog "let's go to bed."  He absolutely understands this phrase and runs into the bedroom and jumps up on my bed, tail wagging and tongue out.   I lay down on my stomach (my preferred sleeping position) and Tai snuggles between my legs.  He doesn't budge all night.  It is odd, but I find this to be very comforting and endearing.
10. Tai is still a hunter:  We have an epidemic of bunnies and squirrels in my neighborhood.  While Tai hates both of these species, he knows he can't catch a squirrel (although he will joyfully chase them up trees).  Bunnies are a different story - if I let him off leash, he will take off like a bullet from a gun, chasing rabbits.  He could catch one, but they are as big as he is.  Tai always slows down so they can get away.

My little buddy is getting grey in the muzzle, just like me.  He is somewhere between 9 and 14 years old; I think he is probably around 11 or 12.  Little dogs can live for 16- 20 years so I am told.  I hope Tai sets a new dog longevity record...he is absolutely my most treasured companion.  He fills an emptiness that I didn't know that I had until he came into my life

"Welcome to my world."

Here is a true story that opened my eyes to a rather basic fact.

From 2003 until 2010, I fronted a blues band.  When you are a harmonica player, the only way to play in a band is to be the front guy - singing, playing harp, getting the gigs, hiring the musicians, etc.  It is hard to have any success as a harmonica sideman.  Most bands, even blues bands, see harp guys as unnecessary.  Since I wanted to play, I started my own band.  It was Mr. G and the Mystery Band.  I played 2-4 times each month in relatively small and obscure venues.  It was a good blues band, but there were a ton of good blues bands in Chicago.  It was a competitive scene.  I expect the post Covid-19 scene will be even more cut-throat, since some venues won't survive the shut down.  Desparate musicans might kill each other for the few remaining gigs.

When I was fronting the band, I always guaranteed the musicians a fair wage, paid in cash, at the end of the night.  I often came out of pocket to keep that promise since the club owners generally gave us a percentage of the door or the bar sales during our sets and the pay was skimpy on a slow night at the club.   Since I was a reliable paymaster, I was able to attract some amazing blues musicians to the Mystery Band.  One of the great musicians was an African American guitarist in his mid-fifties who I will call Bill (not his real name).  Bill grew up on the West Side of Chicago. Otis Rush was a West Side guy; so was Magic Sam, Mighty Joe Young and a host of other terrific artists.  Bill was cut from that cloth, and he had his own sound - a sizzling rock-ish tone with a broad vocabulary of licks and creative musical ideas.

One of the obscure places we played on a semi-regular basis was C.J.Arthurs, a restaurant and bar in the leafy suburb of Wilmette IL.  If you have never been to Chicago, you might not know about Wilmette.  It is the second suburb north of the big city and it is quite a bit different from the West Side of Chicago.  Wilmette is a wealthy town, but still much less wealthy than its neighbors to the north, Kennilworth and Winnetka.  There are almost no Black people in Wilmette.  Most Black people didn't have the dough to buy houses there, and those that did have the dough didn't want to be the conspicuous Black person in a sea of White faces.  The White folks of Wilmette would claim to be "not racist."  Anyone could move in if they had the money.

The Mystery Band consisted of an aging White harp player (me) and seriously great Black blues musicians (including Bill).  The C. J. Arthur's owners and staff were very nice to us, as were the patrons.  We got good food and a decent number of adult beverages when we played at C. J's.  The pay varied from generous to almost nothing depending on how much product was being sold by the club.

One Friday night, the Mystery Band finished its gig at CJ's at midnight.  We got paid, packed up our gear and headed south to hit the sack.  Bill was my neighbor, so I would give him a lift to and from the gigs.  We were driving south in the left lane of Green Bay Road around 1 AM Saturday morning and a Wilmette cop car pulled along side of me in the right lane.  I noticed, but didn't think much about it - I was being careful to obey the traffic laws because the Wilmette cops were happy to issue speeding tickets.  The cop dropped back, shifted behind me in the left lane and turned on his lights and siren.

I was startled, but pulled over immediately.  The officer walked up to my car with his big-ass flashlight in hand.  I rolled down the window and said "Good evening, officer - did I do something wrong?"  He shined the light in my eyes and made a soft grunting sound.  He pointed the flashlight at Bill.  Then he said "we had a robbery called in and your car matched the description of the car driven by the perp."  He looked at me again.  Took my license and ran it through his system.  He came back and said "OK, you can go.  But your license plate light is out - fix it or you will get a ticket the next time I see you." He pointed his flashlight at Bill again.

The cop took off and I started to drive again.  "What the hell was that?" I asked Bill.

He smiled and said "Welcome to my world."

So, yeah, cops target Black people. Duh.  Bill said, "Since you were driving, he backed off.  If you had been Black we would be in the shit right now."

I have thought a lot about that night in recent months.

Sonny Rollins is Still Here

Sonny Rollins