Chapter 2: A Polish Year (continued from Part One: Car Ride) PART TWO: Szczesliwego Nowego Roku Arrived at the pension, we unloaded the car and Magda made arrangements with the owners to throw in a load of vomit covered laundry. We then took the dogs for a quick walk before heading upstairs to our rooms…
A New Year (part one)
Chapter 2: A Polish Year (continued from First Snow) PART ONE: Car Ride The first snow also meant that New Year’s eve would soon arrive. In Poland, this holiday is named after St. Sylvester because it is also his “name day,” and Sylwester is as much or even more of an “event” as it is here…
First Snow
Chapter 2: A Polish Year (continued from A First in My Life) It was the first week in December when the Baltic rains were transformed into the first snow. Ben always became a bit crazy in the rain, just like he did coming out of the bath. But the first snow of Ben’s life was…
A First in My Life
Chapter 2: A Polish Year (continued from The Bonds that Chain) There are so many firsts, so many moments, so many milestones that we accumulate in our relationships, especially those first relationships. I had had pets or, more accurately, had lived with pets, for most of my life and certainly all of my formative years…
The Bonds that Chain
Chapter 2: A Polish Year (continued from “You Really Love Him”) It was to the outside world an improbable event when I let down my guard, put aside my rational being, and let my heart act with the impulsivity of a man who had bonded deeply with his dog. It was perhaps all the more…
“You Really Love Him”
Chapter 2: A Polish Year (continued from The Ball Warrior) It wasn’t long into Ben’s life with us that we began our search for a Polish vet – one who could speak English. It had been a long day of teaching for me and for Ben a longer day of not getting any attention. With…
The Ball Warrior
Chapter 2: A Polish Year (continued from Tooth-Fairy) The dark boughs of the chestnut trees were almost empty. The desiccated and thorny outer shells of the fruit lay decomposing everywhere and their large leaves littered the large park where Ben and I played a few times a day. By the middle of the month, the…
Tooth-Fairy
Chapter 2: A Polish Year (continued from Ben the Foody) By November, Ben had settled into our expanded life that now included him. Routines were being rewritten … and so were my values. For the first time in my life, I now had to think of “someone” else’s needs – another living creature was now…
Ben the Foody
(Benjamin: continued from What’s in a Name) In 1996, the world was only seven years removed from the Berlin wall coming down and the country was still navigating its dynamic and very rapid transition from a “socialist” post-Soviet bloc nation into whatever it imagined it wanted to become. As such, the pet food industry was non-existent in Poland,…
What’s in a Name?
(Benjamin: continued from Ben Trains Us) What’s in a name? What do you name a creature that comes crashing into your life and bites you within an hour of knowing you? What to name a dog that quickly evidences himself a supremely smart little dog? (I hadn’t finished my first 12 hours with him before…