11/3/2022: A Dog Day Afternoon (literally!)

Dogs, dogs and more dogs. Oh. And dogs!

Photo by Toshi on Unsplash

Hey people. How’s your life going? Today—Thursday, November 3rd, 2022—I spent most of my day walking with and/or hanging out with dogs. Dog-walking is new for me. In my twenties I worked all types of jobs, from clearing trails in the mountains of Ojai, in Southern California, where I grew up, to working for a moving company in San Diego, to several jobs at various grocery stores, to being behind the counter at many retail jobs (usually clothing stores; once a surf shop), to book editing and freelance writing (still current) to…dog-walking.

It’s funny, really. I grew up with dogs: My parents always had chocolate labs, and often cats. (I remember my mom’s 20-year-old longhair cat named Moose. And I found a cat and we kept it, naming her Woogie. Don’t ask.) Then starting in the late 90s my mom became obsessed with pugs. (I mean OBSESSED.) My mother is a writer herself, hence where this damned creative drive comes from, and, believe it or not, she began writing for a national magazine dedicated to pugs. You heard me right, sir. (Or ma’am.)

Yet, growing up wealthy and privileged but in an emotionally unstable household (that’s putting it mildly), I always felt cool towards my parents’ dogs. Looking back, I think they were symbols to me as a kid. They represented what I felt my parents desired, respected and trusted—perhaps loved—more than me. This wasn’t the objective truth…but it’s largely how I felt. I was always kind to the animals, but I didn’t engage much. (Except for Woogie, my cat. That was different. She was mine. I’d discovered her.)

Everything changed for me in 2021 when I left New York City in early summer, not then knowing I’d never return. It was June then, hot and blasphemously humid in the city. I flew out of JFK to LAX. I stayed with my folks who’d left Ojai in 2020 (they’d been there since 1991, when I was eight) and moved to Santa Barbara mid-Pandemic lockdowns. I’d been living in a rough, violent section of East Harlem. Struggling with depression, self-doubt, anger, fear, like so many of us around the globe at that time.

My dad, of course, only weeks after I arrived, was diagnosed with Stage Four Melanoma. Boom, right? Such is the gritty nature of existence. One minute you’re doing online dating in Manhattan, feeling hopeful and eager and alive (yet also depressed and angry and afraid) and the next minute blam, Your dad is gonna die. So I stayed. I never returned to NYC. My friends over there shipped my stuff. I became, along with my mother, my father’s caretaker.

My folks have two dogs: A 75-pound German Shepard/Husky mix, and a 90-pound yellow Lab. Both are nine years old. For the first time, I started walking them. Slowly at first, and then regularly each week. Strangely (to myself) they gave me great comfort. I’ve always been a big walker. It started in my early twenties, when living in suburban San Diego. Post-punk-hipster adjacent-wannabe-intellectual Wildman that I then was, I still couldn’t help walking around my safe, quiet neighborhood at night, gazing at the gorgeous houses, feeling so utterly alone and far away from that reality, desiring in some deep core place inside to one day have my own house (I do now, in the Bay Area). But it didn’t have to be night walks gaping at homes. I’d loved to walk all my life. Hike. Walk. Run. You name it. In 2016 I walked unexpectedly 450 miles across northern Spain doing El Camino de Santiago. (Read my piece about this journey on my other Substack, “Sincere American Writing.” CLICK HERE.)

Anyway, here I am. It’s finally fall, early November. I’m living in quaint, small, beautiful coastal Santa Barbara. The temperature is at last beginning to drop. (Thank the Lord. I’m so sick of summer weather.) I’ve been walking dogs for about three months. I’m on a few apps and also partially rely on word of mouth. I do walking, sitting, visits, etc.

Today I got up, did my routine. For some horrid reason I woke bolt upright at the ungodly hour of 4am. (I don’t know, man. Don’t ask.) I read more of the Andrew Jackson biography (“American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House” by Jon Meacham), and glugged my Irish Breakfast tea. I diddled around on Substack. Checked my emails. Looked at all my dumb apps and social media. (Ugh.) Then I walked Barkley, a 140-pound Mastiff-St. Bernard mix. He lives up the street at the top of a hill called Morada. He’s massive. And bursting with raging energy. He’s less than two years old. I walk him for half an hour, up a very steep road, then a break, then back. Done. During all this I listen to political podcasts.

I returned and diddled some more on Substack. Commented on one fellow writer’s 27-minute-long diatribe (a well-written one) about Nazi Germany in the thirties and the similarities (he felt) between then and the Trump Era. His essay was fascinating—wonderfully-written, nuanced, with a deep educated historical background. I of course read the whole thing and couldn’t help myself from writing a long, long, LONG response. (What can I say?)

After this—by now it was early afternoon—I walked the dog literally three houses down the block. The owners were gone all day so I was supposed to do a one-hour walk and then two spread-out visits. I did the walk and one visit, and will do the final one (dinner) after writing this piece. Between all this my mom drove over (they live ten minutes away) and I walked their two dogs with her in my neighborhood. (They do not pay me, haha!)

Which brought me to this very moment here and now. My day started at 4am. It’s now 5:34pm. I got in 5.6 miles today from dogging. Not bad right?

I’m craving international travel. A deep, juicy, raw lust for it is inside me. My last trip was Mexico City in November, 2018. (That was a whole other wild story, a love story in fact, and somewhat of a mini-tragedy. For another time.) I only have one friend here in SB. But I have a girlfriend 45 minutes away who I’m devastatingly in love with. And I have friends all over other parts of California, New York City, the Bay Area, etc. I’m good. I’m fine.

I’m 39 for another two months. My father has stage four cancer. My mom and I love each other wildly and also struggle with one another. Always have. Probably always will.

Hey. This is life. Is it not?

Michael Mohr