Bi-Coastal Pooch

I love cats but while I love cats I have also loved two dogs in my life. My first dog was a solid black, Cocker Spaniel that my parents bought for me as a companion dog when I was between the ages of four to five years old.

In my family I was an only child with two grown up brothers; both were students in high school when I was born. I also had an older sister who was eighteen years old when I came along in the family, and she was living in Nova Scotia, Canada.
I was an only child with three grown up siblings.

This was why my father felt that I needed to have a companion to keep me company, and he chose a friendly, black, male puppy, a Cocker Spaniel as my dog that I named Black Pal, and alternatively I called my dog Little Pal.
My older brother Bobby (Robert Steven) had a beautiful white, Spitz, purebred dog he called ‘White Pal’ so you get the idea of where I got my dog’s name!

When I was eight years old my father bought the family a home that was located on the outskirts of the City of Lynn, Massachusetts where Lynn bordered with the Town of Saugus. Early one morning, shortly after we moved to our home, my father went out on an errand to the local hardware store that was just over the boarder in the small Town of Saugus.
He saw Little Pal following him but he didn’t think that anything would go wrong.

When my father reached the end of our street he crossed the major thoroughfare, which is called Boston Street. Black Pal followed, and was struck by a car. My little friend was gone, and my father felt terrible that it happened because my dog followed him that morning.

My father told my mother to make sure that she took me to a pet store to pick out another dog. I chose an orange colored, male, Wire Haired Terrier that I named Sandy McTavish MacGregor Garnier. Sandy McTavish MacGregor Garnier is the doggie, who later became my bi-coastal pooch.

Wire Haired Terriers were originally bred as ‘ratters’. They are aggressive enough to go after rats and kill them, thus this breed of dog protects food crops when in storage from infestations of rats, among other rodents. Terriers in general are good protection dogs for children, and they are loyal to their human companions. Sandy was sometimes difficult when he insisted that he wanted to accompany me to school. I had to sneak out of the house every morning, and the first thing I would do when I returned from my school day was I would take my Sandy out for a walk. During the day my mother would often tether sandy on a very long chain in our back yard so he could have some sunshine, and be able to relieve himself. I had the chore of cleaning up after the little guy, and I didn’t mind because he was such a friendly, special dog.

After my father passed away in March of 1959 my mother and I moved to Poughkeepsie, New York, with both of my brothers. After living in the city of Poughkeepsie for a couple of months we moved to our new home in the Town Of Poughkeepsie that was called Red Oaks Mill.
Sandy moved along with the family to both locations in New York.
I remember the warm summer night when someone entered our open garage, and crept down our basement stairs hiding in our dark basement much like a rat would hide and wait for their chance to do damage.

My mother was in the habit of watching late night TV in our split-level family room, which was adjacent to the garage, and above the basement. There was a locked door between the garage, and the family room. My mother watched Johnny Carson, and before Johnny was host of the Tonight Show my mother watched Jack Parr. Sometimes I would stay up late and watch TV with her, especially in the warm summer months.

We kept a large cage with birds in our family room, a pair of parakeets I named Sam and Abie. My Sandy McTavish MacGregor stayed in this large family room at night. Sandy was tethered on a long leash yet he could reach to the door that was between the garage and the family room. From this vantage point he could also reach to the first two carpeted stairs that led upstairs to the third level of this split level home.

I remember that night; my younger, older brother Bob first came to the room my mother and I occupied, and he woke us up.
He told us that he heard Sandy growling!
The door to the downstairs family room was closed, yet my brother could hear my dog growling.

We all got up, and made a lot of noise to try to scare off any intruder(s), while one of my brothers called the police. Back then all phones were in-house phones; we didn’t have cell phones back in the summer of 1961.

I remember how afraid I was as I stood in back of my brother Bob as he opened the door to the family room. Bob had a baseball bat in his hands in case he had to use it. He flicked on the lights, the light switchs were located both at the top of the stairs, and at the bottom of the stairs. We couldn't see anyone in the family room but we could see that our back door was wide open. And when we checked the 'locked' door between the garage and the family room we found that the locked door was open; it looked like the lock had been jimmied.
On the railing leading up the stairs from the family room to the kitchen there was a burn, a large burn like that from a cigar, not a cigarette. Cigar smoke was in the air. The rug was also burned below the railing, and there was ash on the rug. There was some blood splattered on the linoleum leading to the open back door.
Sandy was unhurt!

It wasn’t hard to figure out what had happened. My brother Michael remembered that he had the garage open earlier that evening, while he was working on the front lawn. Someone entered our garage unseen, and crept down the stairs to the lowest level in our house, and hid in our basement. Sandy saved all of our lives that night.
We all believed this to be the case!
So when my brother Michael, my mother and I moved across the country to California in November 1962 we took our Sandy McTavish MacGregor Garnier with us. Sandy earned his keep that night back in the summer of 1961 when he saved his family from the intruder, whom I have since thought of as being like a rat, hiding in the dark basement waiting until he could come out of hiding, and do his harm.

My Sandy became a true bi-coastal pooch when he moved out to California with his family!

It was during the winter of 1964-65 when one night I returned home from a date, and I opened my front door; Sandy ran past me out into the night, and down Blossom Hill Road, which is where we were living then. The night was dark, and I was young so I didn't try to follow him. In the morning I went out in my car, and looked for him. I looked and looked, and called his name but I never found my Sandy.

My mother told me that when dogs get old, and they know that their ‘time’ is coming that sometimes they will leave the family they love, and search for a place to rest in peace, away from their family. I don’t know where my mother got this idea that old dogs go away from their homes to die, but it helped me in some way to endure the pain of losing my brave little terrier, Sandy McTavish MacGregor Garnier; my Bi-Coastal Pooch.

This has been a true life story from my life; Carol Garnier Dutra.

Copyright © 2010 by Carol Garnier Dutra
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Singing In The Rain

Back when I worked in a company where the first floor lobby was closed down to visitors as well as other employee, I occasionally would take a short ‘day trip’ in the elevator that fronted on the closed first floor lobby.
I did this at times when I was feeling particularly stressed out.

This sounds a bit strange, doesn’t it? There was a ‘reason’ behind my madness.
I knew that the elevator in this particular building would open to an empty lobby.
No other employees would be mulling around in the lobby. Ditto for visitors; not a soul would be around to hear me, as I would burst into song in the elevator as it traveled from the second floor to the first floor.
Not a single soul would hear me, as I exercised my vocal cords.
La, la, la,

I'm singing in the rain
Just singing in the rain
What a glorious feelin'
I'm happy again

Singing In The Rain’ was one of my favorite songs to sing in that elevator as it gently cruised down to my destination; which was the first floor.

I'm laughing at clouds
So dark up above
The sun's in my heart
And I'm ready for love

I’m singing in the rain, singing in the rain, what a GLORIOUS day, singing in the rain. The elevator door would open on the first floor; I would look around…
Good, not a soul in sight; no one heard me!
Now push that button and back upstairs I go…

Let the stormy clouds chase
Everyone from the place
Come on with the rain
I've a smile on my face
I walk down the lane
With a happy refrain
Just singin’ singin’ in the rain,

la la la, I’m HAPPY again!

By the time I got back to the second floor and the elevator door would open, all my feelings of pent up stress would be gone!

I really was ‘HAPPY’ again.

Singing in the elevator was ‘my key’ so I could return to my desk and my job, and have a productive workday.

Today I sing in the shower when I am feeling a level of stress. Singing in the shower works just as well as singing in an empty elevator that opens onto an empty lobby.

Singing in the rain, what a GLORIOUS feeling!

While you sing along with me just imagine Gene Kelly doing his tap, tap, tappity tap dance as you sing…

Carol Garnier Dutra

I'm just having a silly memory day; singing, singing in the rain.

Events in this short story came from my life.
Copyright © 2010 by Carol Garnier Dutra



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Big, Bad Leroy Brown Dutra...

Fifteen years ago this summer, my husband, our son and I adopted a beautiful ginger colored kitten, a male, whom I named, “Big, Bad Leroy Brown Dutra”. I gave the little guy that name because he was anything but big or bad. In truth Leroy was a ‘pussycat’ in the full sense of what that word implies. He was gentle, and grew to be a medium sized, kind, ‘knowing’ cat. The years passed in peace with Leroy , and all was well in our little kingdom. We moved in 2004 to Paradise, here just outside of Hollister, California.

We were happy until late June 2009 when my husband and I discovered that something was wrong with Leroy Brown’s mouth. Leroy was drooling excessively. We tried to get an appointment with his vet, Dr. Mel White, the same Dr. White who travels around Hollister and Salinas in his big, white custom mobile animal clinic, that has all the beautiful cat and dog paintings on the exterior..

Dr. White was ill the summer of 2009, and could not attend to Leroy so my husband and I chose another vet to take our ‘cat son’, Leroy Brown Dutra to see, and have an evaluation of what was causing his excessive drooling.

We took Leroy to the Hollister Animal Clinic, and under the care of Dr. Jerry Leroux, Leroy ended up having two (2) surgeries to remove a salivary gland cancer that was growing under his tongue. In between the two (2) cancer removal surgeries Leroy underwent a cryosurgery procedure to remove cancerous tissue that was trying to regrow under his tongue where the first cancer was removed. Dr. Leroux was confident that Leroy had a chance to live a longer life because Dr. Leroux had been successful with this type of cancer surgery in the past; mainly on dogs with salivary gland cancer.

After Leroy’s second cancer surgery, while he was still in the care of Dr. Leroux at the Hollister Veterinary Clinic, the door to Leroy’s recovery cage was opened, and he was allowed to jump from the cage. The woman caring for Leroy chased him around the tiny clinic. When she caught Leroy his heart was beating wildly because he was only two (2) hours away from the surgery he had undergone that morning. Leroy Brown Dutra was fourteen (14) years old when he passed away that day, September 18, 2009 in the Hollister Veterinary Clinic.

When my husband and I traveled to the clinic we were greeted with seeing our Leroy, our ‘cat son’, lying dead on a white shroud in the doctor’s shabby, back room where he operates on animals. We were NOT told first that our dear Leroy Brown was dead before we saw him lying there. You can read our story in our 'Inquiry Blog' at, http://leroybrowninquiry.blogspot.com/.
After you finish reading this Blog entry you can click on the title; you will be taken to Leroy Brown's 'Inquiry' Blog.

As a result of what was done to our Leroy, and what was done to my husband and I we are committed to undertake a task to make it mandatory in the State of California that all persons who attend animals in a clinical setting MUST be certified by the State of California.

If you had a child in the hospital wouldn’t you want all of the nurses caring for that child to be 'registered nurses' meaning that each nurse had passed his or her state certification test BEFORE each nurse was working in the hospital caring for your child?
Well, many of us feel that our companion animals are much like our 'adopted' children, and these companion animals we share our lives with, deserve the same consideration in an animal hospital setting as our human children deserve in a human hospital. Both deserve to be cared for by people who are state certified to do this care, and these people should know what they are doing!

The women who worked for Dr. Leroux at the time our Leroy was killed in the Hollister Animal Clinic was NOT state certified. None of the women we saw that morning when we brought Leroy into the clinic, were state certified to care for companion animals. The woman who caused Leroy's death didn’t know that she had done something wrong when she chased him around the clinic two (2) hours after his surgery.
This happened to our cat, he was terrorized in that clinic and killed that day, because the woman taking care of him was NOT certified by the State of California.

We have been in touch with San Benito County's State Senator Jeff Denham’s office. One of the senator's aids has been in touch with us, and he told us that it is too late in the senator's term to do anything about mandating state certification for animal clinic workers. Senator Denham has ‘termed’ out because he has served eight years in the senate.
My husband and I will be working on this issue in the coming year with the incoming senator for San Benito County. I will post our progress on this issue, as it happens.

Thanks for reading,

Carol Garnier Dutra
Copyright © 2010 by Carol Garnier Dutra

P.S. Please go to...
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/increase-californias-animal-cruelty-laws

PLEASE sign the petition to Increase California Animal Cruelty Laws to protect all dogs and cats wither they be in a private home or in an animal clinic...they need to be protected with stronger laws in the State of California.



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Food For Thought

Food is nourishment; food for thought is knowledge. Knowledge nourishes the brain much like a taco nourishes your being. Back when I was a child knowledge was learned from reading books; books with paper pages and covers telling what was inside the book conveyed by either a picture or a descriptive phrase. Today many of us get our food for thought via the Internet on either our computers or our savvy phones. But for the life of me I don’t understand how you can get much nourishment for your brain from reading what is printed out on the screen of a tiny cell phone.

I find myself preferring to do research on my computer as long as I am able to find reliable, trustworthy sites with bona fide information that is not provided solely for the purpose of selling widgets or wazzy-wids at an online retail store. Good research information sites are available, and it helps to know how to search web site addresses for clues as to where sites originate. I learned the hard way that you need to know from where a web site is coming in.

I know that I have taken to spending many more hours reading research material on the Internet rather than going to the local library checking out armloads of books like I used to do. It is less strenuous to ‘search’ online than it is to lug home armloads of library books. Yet still I pray that ‘books’, those with paper pages and covers either soft or hard covers, are never fazed out of existence like books were, in Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451".
There are still times when I take one of my books from a shelf in my library, and open the cover just to read a story; not to do research.
Books are still for reading stories.

You might call my first computer a Frankstein because it was composed of many pieces that were joined together for the first time in one machine! I loved that computer, and used it as my highway to the ‘library’ of the Internet world up to sometime in June 2004.

In June 2004 I was shopping on EBay, and I strayed from the ‘safe and familiar’ pages venturing instead to their ‘China’ pages. I saw a deep green, jade pendant that was particularly appealing to me so I sent an inquiry to the seller asking how much it would cost me to have the jade pendant, the one I liked, shipped to my address in California.

I committed a cardinal sin when I made the mistake of setting up my account on EBay so my email that was sent to my mail box on EBay, would be forwarded to my ‘personal’ email account at my I.S.P., which at that time was a small, private operation located in San Jose, California.

My Frankstein, bits and pieces computer was old as computers go. Frankie was seven when the dreaded Chinese code, that was sent all the way from China, into my mailbox, ended its existence.

I spoke in person with the man who headed my I.S.P., and he told me that when I opened my mailbox, on that day, he saw immediately a copious amount of traffic travel from my computer, and pass through his server.
To where it went he did not know.

I told him that what he saw pass through his server was more than just traffic; what he saw pass through his server 'was'
MY COMPUTER!

Everything was taken!
My programs, all of my artwork, all of my compositions, and even my email contacts were taken by the code that was sent to my computer that was sent all the way from China. The loss was devastating to me! Who would do this to me? All I did was ask the price of shipping a deep green, jade pendant from a Chinese ‘seller’ on EBay, to me in California.

In time I learned that a ‘mass surveillance’ computer program similar to NarusInsight was in use by the Chinese government. The purpose of this program was to capture information on the Internet via emails on Chinese dissidents, who were sending information back and forth between them selves trying to set up a revolution against the Chinese government! At least this is what the news article I read said was going on.

So were Chinese dissidents working on EBay posing as ‘sellers’ of deep green, jade pendants that would be wanted by me in California?

Did the Chinese government’s agents think my asking how much it would cost to ship that beautiful, deep green, jade pendent to California was somehow a code for “how many Chinese dissidents does it take, working on EBay, selling deep green, jade pendants, to overthrow the Chinese government?”
Is this what they thought?

I couldn’t salvage anything from Frankie; nothing was left; the rogue code broke through my ‘fire wall,’ and completely wiped my computer out. Because the code broke through my security, and collapsed my ‘fire wall’ I know that code, because it was that powerful, had to be sent by a government agency...an agency in the Chinese government...who else would destroy my computer when I asked how much it would cost to send that deep green, jade pendent to my address in California?

I complained to EBay about what happened to my computer, it was completely gone, and my complaint letters were met with silence on the receiving end.
I did receive one return correspondence from EBay stating that I should have let the email go into the EBay mailbox, and not have had it forwarded to my personal mailbox.
Since they felt this way why did EBay have the option open to forward all email to my own personal mailbox?

I find myself still preferring to do 'research' on my computer as long as I find trustworthy, reliable sites, and when I want to read a book I prefer the kind of book that is made out of paper; printed with ink.
As for shopping I am much more careful these days. No more shopping for me on web sites originating from China on EBay or on any other web site, that sell deep green, jade pendants.

Carol Garnier Dutra

Events in this short story came from my life.
Copyright © 2010 by Carol Garnier Dutra

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There’s No Place Like Home; Home Sweet Home...

I was thinking the other day about how when my husband and I were very young; our son was a baby, and we yearned for a place to live where the landlord wouldn’t raise our rent every year. I remembered how we dreamed of reaching that land over the rainbow, that place in life, where skies are blue, and the dreams that we were dreaming would really come true.

Back when we were dreaming our dream one of our favorite pastimes on the weekend was to gather up our son, who was still in diapers, and the three of us would pile into our Austin Healy Sprite, and go out for the day with a picnic lunch packed in the tiny trunk of our sports car. Down the freeway we would travel to neighborhoods in distant towns so we could look at and wish on stars that we possessed a home such as those we were looking at. We dreamed, we dared to dream, that some day we would live in such a place, which was just over the rainbow for us, at that place in our time.

Our dream had to be put on hold while we went about living very mundane, every day lives working at jobs that didn’t pay nearly what we were worth, and in my husband’s case going to school at night after working all day then working on homework assignments on the weekend. At least I had finished business school before I married, and started dreaming of rainbows and blue skies.

We settled for a small home built in the city, one that my husband built for us. It was not nearly as grand in style or size as those we gawked at on our weekend motoring trips but it was home sweet home for us for a very long time.

We continued to take weekend trips to the beach, motoring over the Santa Cruz Mountains to reach the beach of the tiny coastal town of the same name. When snow was flying on the wind in Lake Tahoe we would pack our suitcases into our tiny black Sprite, and follow the wind to the snow. To get over the icy mountain roads, silver colored, steel chains had to be applied to our tiny car’s wheels for traction, much like we applied long, smooth, wax covered skies to our own feet so we could traverse the packed snow.

We both continued to be frugal, which is a nice word for expressing that we were ‘cheap’ taking lunches to work, not going on expensive holidays every year. I sewed most of my clothes the first ten years we were married. I wished on many first evening stars during those years we lived in the city.

In time our small city nest that my husband built for us, appreciated in value as sometimes happens with small city nests located in small cities that grow up to be big cities.

When the grown up city became too noisy and too dirty for us we decided to follow those blue birds we often heard about in song that fly over rainbows. That’s what we did, we flew the coop just like those blue birds do, and we went right over that rainbow landing in Hollister, California where our dream that we dreamed as youngsters has come true.

There is no place like home; home sweet home.

Carol Garnier Dutra

Events in this short story come from our lives, Richard Dutra and Carol Garnier Dutra.
Copyright © 2010 by Carol Garnier Dutra
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Lulubel...What's In a Name?

Lulubel…I saw this license plate today in Hollister on a new mid sized sedan, a really good-looking car in a medium charcoal gray color. I thought to myself, “Charcoal gray is a masculine color for a car yet this car sports on it’s license plate a feminine name, lulubel. I assumed that lulubel was the name of the car, and not the owner. For some reason I can’t fully explain, I thought of Shakespeare’s quote:

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.”

Shakespeare lived in a ‘simple’ world where the ‘action’ was always between human personalities. There was no TV, no radio or computers to give information, and confuse issues. Star Trek’s aliens and “Scotty Beam Me Up” were not even remote thoughts in the mind’s of the people who inhabited Shakespeare’s world and his mind, yet he or the group of men who penned with the name Shakespeare, all knew human nature, and human nature doesn’t change, ever!

What is in a name? Advertising people will tell you that a ‘name’ can make or break the sale of a product. If you see a beautiful girl in a movie, and you scan the credits for ‘her name’, and she has a name that doesn’t suit her appearance you will not make a connection between her beauty and or the talent of the girl, and her name. She will not be memorable! That's why so many actors change their names when they join SAG.
A 'name' can make or break an actor's or a singer's fame today.

It’s the same with a product…a product has to have a name that links it to the product in the consumer’s mind. Safeway sells a ‘store brand’ water they call ‘refreshe’. Water called refreshe makes a ton of sense because the name links the product in the consumer’s mind with the product. You are refreshed with water. Water is ‘life’;(another possible name) ‘purified water’ refreshes you. Do you ‘see’ the cycle that is started in your mind by such a simple choice of a ‘name’ for a ‘simple’ product?

Lulubel is an unusual choice of a name for lulubel the charcoal sedan, but since she is named lulubel, she is a lulubel, forever.

Carol Garnier Dutra

Lulubel is real, she is a new, medium charcoal, gray sedan; Lulubel drives around Hollister, California with her owner.
Copyright © 2010 by Carol Garnier Dutra