The other side of Cho, Spanish Galgo, and former street dog of Cadiz, Spain. It takes a lot of restorative yoga to be able to sustain cross-country gallops when you are 17-years old.
Today I am off to Boston to teach my workshop, Cookbook for the Bonehouse. It is exciting to me to return to Boston to teach. Many years ago, Pam and I were among the founders of Green Street Studios, which has become a vibrant center for dance and performance in Cambridge. I developed my chops as a choreographer in Boston, and made many dances with many fine, generous dancers. Tomorrow’s workshop is at the sister studio, The Dance Complex, another hive of creative energy for movement and dance. So I am going home.
And not. I feel a profound difference now which has to do with my long absence from the conventional concert dance scene and from Boston in particular. I am older, and I have spent the past 13 years in two different kinds of studios. The one with the wooden floor where I move and stretch like a dancer, and the other – the arena, the field, the paddock, the stall, the saddle, with my partners, the horses. I feel a little like the wild dog coming home after a big tear across the fields. But there is a cosiness there too – a desire to settle and nestle into the moment.
Dogs in Spain do not enjoy the same pampered lives that many dogs here do. We first became aware of the Galgo issue through Greyhound Friends in Hopkinton, MA. The director, Louise Coleman had just founded the American European Greyhound Alliance with a special focus on the dogs of Spain and Ireland. She had begun to bring some dogs out of those two countries.
At the time, we had just lost our beautiful greyhound, Luna, and we wanted to adopt an older dog. That is how we came across Gordita (above), who was ten-years old and had just delivered another litter in Spain. Gordie lived to be 17-years old, and was the most endearing and maddening dog ever. She had a bark that could cut glass. Literally make you jump out of your skin. She had this wonderful, galumphing, paddling run that she kept up until about a week before she died.
Because of Gordie, I learned more than I wanted to about the sadistic treatment of these beautiful, sensitive dogs. They are used for hunting by the gypsies, and cruelly disposed of if they do not perform or if they are too old or ill.
Many people think we should not try to save dogs or cats or children outside our own borders. I find that argument specious. Compassion and love are not contained by the borders of a country. We should help wherever we can, and wherever we are drawn to help. Over the years, I have rescued cats from Russia and Mexico, dogs from Spain. I remember being in Tijuana and seeing a skeletal, mangy, white dog near the place where the ugly fence that divides Mexico and the US runs into the sea. We could not catch him. I can still see him. I had to let him go.
I learned something there about the limits of power. About accepting that I personally cannot save everything. That rankles, at the same time I know it is reasonable. But I will always try.
Bimala with a pack from the past: Luna, Tashi, Liam (under and still here), Esme, Dae
I don’t usually write about the dogs. I am not sure why. They feel more intimate somehow than the horses, even though they are not.
For the past twenty years, we have adopted “retired” racing greyhounds. Retired is a euphemism for “done.” Some are injured, like Tashi, who broke his leg, and was never treated. Some never made it as racers, like our bright Esme, who just wouldn’t race, despite a brilliant lineage. It was not her thing, though you wouldn’t know it to see her on the beach. Others, like Luna, Dae, Jules and Guinnie, have long careers and do actually retire. The retirement is a tricky thing. It is about the luck of the draw. Some dogs get on the rescue vans, and find their way to shelters or greyhound halfway homes where they await adoption. Others are not so lucky. Our particular rescuing angel is Louise Coleman, the founder of Greyhound Friends in Hopkinton, MA.
Our greyhound saga began like this. We were on a cross-country ski weekend in New Hampshire at an inn owned by a British couple. At tea time on the first day, the guests watched in fascination as the owners’ very tall and very elegant greyhound, Finbar, walked into the room. He proceeded over to the table where the cookies and crackers were arranged, and reached his long thin nose forward to select a single cracker, not touching anything else, and carried it back out of the room where he presumably enjoyed it.
Pam and I were done. We found out where Finbar had come from and made a call the next week. Two weeks later, we brought home our first greys, Misha and Zoe. That was twenty years ago, and in that time we have had ten greys, including Gordita and Cho, two Galgos Espanols from Andalucia, where they are used as hunting dogs by the gypsies and cruelly discarded or killed after they have lost their edge.
I love greyhounds in part because they are athletes – racers, like horses. To see a greyhound run at full tilt is a miracle of nature. I have never been to a racetrack. But I have seen them open up on Lucy Vincent Beach on Martha’s Vineyard, or in our back meadow. Racing greyhounds run in powerful muscular surges. Galgos are more like watching skimming, airborne water – they are fence climbers, shape shifters. Greys are beautiful, even formidable. They are often shy and delicate, with an almost feline quality about them, and, I like to think, a bit of unicorn mixed in. Mostly I love them because of their sweetness, and because they seem to understand and appreciate the gift of home and family that they have been given after a far less auspicious start in the kennels of the racetrack.
Capturing video of a dog that goes from 0 to 40 can be tricky. Have a look.
Yesterday morning at breakfast, our Spanish Galgo, Cho, barked loudly right behind me. I yelled, “Cho!” and then laughed because I sounded just like him. Barking woman.
Which brings me to the topic of reactivity. Knee jerk reactions.
Many years ago, during a creative residency, composer Pauline Oliveros taught me several of her Deep Listening strategies. One she called the instantaneous strategy. It works like this: when you hear a sound, you respond with a sound immediately. Or you move as fast as you can when you see or sense a movement. Being good at this strategy demands that the response bypasses conscious thought, which tends to slow things down.
Practicing the instantaneous strategy is different from a knee jerk reaction, in that it is intentional. I have discovered that practicing the instantaneous strategy can tune you up for those moments when you may need to respond instinctively very, very fast. Like when a cup slips out of your hand. Or when a child or an animal is in danger.
Here’s is today’s recipe: find a moment to practice being instantaneous. Tell me about it.
