This is a photo my mother had sent me nine or ten years ago (I think? It’s not dated) of Piggy and Trubb. Piggy, obviously, is a pig and Trubb was a Staffordshire Bull Terrier. Trubb was my brother’s dog; he died a few years back of old age. Piggy is still going strong but my mother lost her farm recently and is trying to find him a new home. I’ve been getting in touch with folks who do farm animal rescue all over Ontario and scanned this picture for someone who thinks they might have a lead on a home for him. I thought it would be neat to share it here.

In my current unsettled mood, going through all these old pictures has been kind of hard. I’ve never met Piggy, never met Trubb, or any of my mother’s other current pets. I never visited the farm she lived on when this picture was taken, or the one she moved to a few years back (and was just forced to sell). Actually it has been 16 years since I’ve been back to Canada. My mother and aunt came to see us back in 2001 or 2002 when we were living in Tucson, but I haven’t seen my sister, brother, and cousin in years… I’ve got two nieces I’ve never seen… maybe once things settle down a bit somehow we’ll find a way to get up there for a visit.

I woke up in a bit of a funk today, after a strange and disturbing dream… besides the fact that it had a recurring theme of garbage trucks and piles of garbage, in it we had apparently gotten another dog, a Bull Terrier puppy about 4 months old or so. I don’t remember much about him except that he was beautiful — mostly dark brindle with white socks, chest, and a small blaze, he was happy-go-lucky and had that old fashioned look — longer legs, longer, plainer head and set-high ears — I like. In the dream we were standing atop a small hill somewhere (a park? a quiet neighborhood?) with some other people, watching all our dogs play, and our pup had wandered down to the bottom of the hill near a family that I think was picnicking or something. I was trying to call him back, jumping up and down making it sound cheerful and enthusiastic so he’d come bounding back, and then I sort of became aware that everyone around me had gotten quiet and were looking uncomfortable. And I realized that I was calling the puppy "Mojo" instead of his own name, and I felt all at once embarrassed and sad and awkward… thankfully the alarm went off somewhere around that time.

I don’t know if there was supposed to be some sort of significance or meaning to the dream but it left me feeling disturbed and unsettled and gloomy… I decided that this would be a good day to spend under a blanket on the couch, buried under a mass of cats (and one sore Chihuahua) and reading the book of Alice Walker’s essays I’ve been meaning to finish for months instead of trying to cram yet another textbook into my head. In retrospect I maybe should have picked something a little lighter, for now my black cloud includes not only obsessing over my personal flaws and failures but also all the death and destruction we’ve perpetrated on the planet as a species.

Sheesh… hope everyone else is having a better weekend.