The Ancestry Dot Dog
can we cure ancient scars?
I grew up with old parents and had a quiet, vague history of 1900s lineage. I don’t have cousins or anyone before me to tell stories of where we came from. There’s a great great grandma from Norway. There were some hushed stories about dad before he joined the military and some black and white pics from Minnesota people that I don’t know. Typical habits of parents who grew up during the Depression. (Paper towels? What are you a Trust Fund Baby?)
I comb through and try to recognize features. I’m not pear shaped like grandma, nor do I have the pointed chins of great aunts. I hear someone came over from Russia on dad’s side. I see that in my face.
A lot of tales of “died during childbirth” and “lived in an orphanage” for 6 years followed my dad around. We weren’t allowed to talk about it. Over the decades I’ve pieced some stuff together from census reports and photographs. Also a knowledgeable genealogist on Ancestry Dot com shared what she knew from some distant second cousin’s search. Wait, there’s cousins?
They didn’t care as much about me, it turned out. How could they not? I don’t force myself on people if they’re ambivalent about me but somewhere in Phoenix there’s a second cousin who flies for FedEx in his 60s.
What I found to be fascinating transgenerational history was likely hush hush back in the 1920s. Illegitimate children, Catholic nun nurse maids, tuberculosis prematorium turned baby adoption center farm, lots of gray secrets out of that milky faced St. Paul, Minnesota. Likely a lot of shame. I don’t really care (and never trusted) the DNA swabs of 23 and me and for good reason it turns out. I know we’re all a mixed bag of a lot. I’m more interested in the psychology of what happened to these people. Epigenetics will figure the rest out. Why anyone would want to give themselves a self fulfilling prophecy of, Welp, Grandpa Delbert had it so I will too is beyond me. Don’t come for me. Do your research. But shell shocked war torn survivor guilt fox hole orphans? That’ll show up for sure in your DNA and you’ll never know why you feel so out of sorts your whole life until you peel back a few layers.
I dive into all this because I want to end the sadness and guilt that ran through my family for generations. Even though no one is living any longer, I don’t want it settling in my tissues more than it has already. Despite being “upstanding” citizens, there’s a heavy dark thread running through everyone in my family. All of us in the world, it would seem, have similar issues. With current affairs on loop repeat, it looks like it has come home to roost. A few, let’s say 1%, are shameless but the trope keeps playing to the rest of us. How else could they get everyone to work like mules and hand over most of their money for someone else to use to blow up other nations? Like an abusive pimp the overlords are.
I chose not to have kids but I’m aware that I’m the conduit to process ancestral trauma. There’s always one in the family. It’s not always the last born black sheep starseed surprise baby, but kinda. You must Be the Hollow Bone is what one elder native American taught me. Pull the big energy and let the sticky parts run through you. Reiki classes teach the same. It’s easier said than done. It’s Alchemy if you’re fancy, but mostly I feel like a Composter or one of those Rock Tumblers. Put in some crap and after banging around in my body for days it comes out polished agate and I reboot. I don’t like it. But here we are.
*(Wait, I thought this blog was about street dogs! Who is this nutjob? Yes, I know. I have the audacity to have a rich and varied past before I landed here to start pulling plastic bags out of dog rectums and I’m too lazy to start another other other blog)
I see similar history in the faces of dogs. Dusty is a sensitive soul and looks Bien Bravo as they say here but he’s not. He barks at creeps but I know he sleeps a lot, has a wonky tooth, cries when he gets his always infected ear cleaned and is afraid of the rake. Despite Dusty’s pointy ears and regal stance, he’s no killer. Good with kids and cats, he’s actually more welcoming than me. I can see the ancient Xolo lines in him, there is a coated version of the Aztec hairless. He has the aura of a Princely fellow, even though this place has beat him down like it tries to do with all of us. I don’t know anything about him and despite his age 6? 8? 10? No one else does either but this town is full of many, many Fibber McLopez. No one is talking. About anything.
No one knows much about Dusty, or any of the older dogs, really. The pups found inside tires and trash cans had minimal but still valid trauma for their young lives. It took Suzy a full year or more to stop scarfing food, or to walk through a doorway, she had the imprint of starvation, rejection, no nursing (they poison females here in their barbaric animal control method) so her skin was a mess. My job is to help these dogs leap over their lousy starts in life. Show me the childhood/puppy trauma and I’ll show you the grown up. My goal is to break the chain.
People have tried to adopt Dusty because he looks mean and they want him to “protect the rancho” but in Mexico that means being left on the roof or being tied to a fencepost to bark in front of the chicken coop. I found him in the Suicide Nap position (what I call street dogs who can’t do it anymore, they lay where the truck tires will kill them because it’s better than slow death from starving and dehydration) and I took a wire embedded in his neck and gave him a hot dog. I got someone to help me carry him home and I began his rehab. He’s come a long way, but I can see his wounded pup in there. I want him to have a home that respects his honor, not one that just abuses his appearance. He feels unappreciated and shamed too. Because I want to preserve his honor that means he’s one of 12. I have carved the rock of responsibility that I am trapped beneath. But I’m breaking the chain. I want him to have a noble life going forward. Anyone interested?
Suzy is a square bodied Lab and sorta needy, but with bone broth and Omega 3 oils her skin healed despite having a sluggish immune response as a pup, a slow bowl slows down her eating and tons of returned affection from the pack and me has developed her empathy into a blossoming comfort dog who would be excellent at medical alerting for someone. Yes, she likes water more than your average non Labrador. I let her be a Labrador. But I won’t let her go through life being afraid of doors or wondering where he next meal is.
As I learn to take the good parts of my ancestry (and theirs!) and rock tumble the petrified poo into a gemstone, I have hope that if we start with ourselves, we may heal the world. It sounds like a lot of heavy lifting but mostly it starts with acceptance.
to be continued…