Those
readers who look carefully at the fine print may have noticed some recent unexplained
changes in my profile. (And if you’re
not one of those nitpicky readers, don’t worry about it. Neither am I.)
In the short
profile that appears below my blog on a couple of websites is a phrase “lives
on the west side of Petaluma with his wife and x dogs”, where x keeps
changing. When I began this blog, x was
four. Awhile later, it became three, and
then two. A few weeks ago, it bounced back
to three.
Lest you think that my wife and I
are running an illegal kennel, let me explain.
My wife loves dogs. Her preference
is rescue dogs, particularly older rescue dogs.
Not necessarily geriatric dogs, but dogs in the later years of their
lives, who have too much spunk and character to spend their final years in a shelter. During our marriage, we’ve adopted about a
dozen dogs with an average age of perhaps eight.
But there’s an unfortunate aspect
to taking on older dogs. They tend to
pass away after only a few years. We barely
become enamored by their quirky personalities before their time is over. In the past couple of years, we lost a
thirteen-year-old Black Lab and a ten-year-old Borzoi. Hence the decline in the dog tally from four
to two.
In the past, my wife usually filled
vacancies quickly. But this time she
hesitated, slowed by a family health issue.
But she knew the time would come for another dog.
The time arrived a few weeks
back. And it came in a different form
than she had expected.
She became aware of a young female
dog that had been a stray on the streets of a Northern California city. The girl had been underfed for awhile and was
badly underweight. She may have been physically
abused. And most noticeably, she had an
advanced case of mange. She was missing
much of her coat and had open sores where she’d rubbed her skin raw by
scratching.
(My wife and I quickly learned a little
veterinary background. Mange is
typically a disease of puppyhood. The
immune system of a mature dog will prevent mange. But a puppy born into poor circumstances and
without appropriate medical care can quickly develop a bad case. Also, this particular kind of mange isn’t
infectious to people or to other dogs.)
The diagnosis was that a full
recovery for the pup was likely, assuming long-term and intensive medical
care. My wife decided that she’d be the
one to provide that care.
On the Friday before Christmas,
we made a 200-mile roundtrip to collect our new ward. She was in even worse condition than we’d been
told. Her ribs showed in sharp relief
against her damaged coat. Many of her
sores were open and bleeding. When she
brushed against a pant leg, she left trails of blood and dead skin. After she shook, the room looked like the set
of “C.S.I.”.
My wife wasn’t deterred. She named the pup after my late father’s favorite
English village and we brought Henley home, bumping the dog tally back up to
three.
One could ask why we would adopt
a pup in need of long-term medical care only a few days before Christmas,
especially when we’d have family staying with us for the holiday and when we’d
be hosting a large Christmas Eve party.
In response, my wife would note
that, failing an adoption, the pup was scheduled to be euthanized on Christmas
Eve. And even more fundamentally, as she
said to a shelter manager, “Because someone has to do it.”
And that’s where we connect back
to urbanism. I’m not trained in urban
planning or public policy. Although my career
had, and continues to have, urban projects, I’ve also spent a lot of time
studying water projects and working on sites far from urban cores. My writing style is competent, but not
elegant.
By any reasonable measure, I’m
not the person who should be writing about urbanism several times a week. Others are likely better skilled to educate
readers about urbanism and about the environmental and financial need to
encourage more urbanist development.
But “Someone has to do it” and I
stepped into that breach.
However, I can’t do it
alone. Turning the default path of land
development toward urbanism takes more than a blog. It takes a lot of people making their wishes
known to key decision-makers. It takes a
lot of people stepping forward because “Someone has to do it.”
And so, on Epiphany, the closing
day of the Christmas season, let that be your epiphany. To look in the mirror and decide that 2014
will be the year you make the extra effort on behalf of urbanism because
“Someone has to do it.”
So, how is
young Henley doing? Just fine. She still has months of medical care in front
of her. And even longer to regain a full
coat. But the sores are healing. She’s gaining weight and vitality on almost a
daily basis. She’s playing with the
other dogs. And she’s finding
opportunities to be mischievous. She’ll
be just fine, with a long and rambunctious life ahead of her. I hope we can someday say the same for our
cities.
As always,
your questions or comments will be appreciated.
Please comment below or email me.
And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)
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