Adventures of Parker the Pup I: Origins

I, like many folks during the pandemic, adopted a dog from the shelter.

It was a bit on a whim, I do admit. I couldn’t have dreamed of how much of a difference it has made for me though.

It was November 27, 2020 and I was laying in bed during Thanksgiving Week. My trip to visit family in San Diego had been quashed when I found out two relatives had been traveling all over the West and meeting people and were planning on coming to my parent’s house for Thanksgiving without quarantining for 2 weeks beforehand. My generation of the family canceled their plans to converge on San Diego in protest (and to protect our elderly grandparents), but I decided to still take the time off of work and hang around town. The last time I had done anything like that was when I was still in school and there was some break or another. I opened up the Humboldt County Animal Shelter website for some reason and started scrolling when I came across a cute tan and white pup with floppy ears. Parker. He was 7 years old, so the post said, and he was good on a leash. I checked the hours for the animal shelter, hauled myself out of bed and drove the half hour up to McKinleyville to meet him.

However, I didn’t get to meet him that day, I needed to fill out an application, they needed to call my landlord, and they said they’d get back to me in a day or two. I stopped at a feed store on the way home and picked up a leash and collar. Sitting in my truck looking at the blue and reflective silver leash and collar, I knew I had made my decision to adopt Parker before I even saw him.

The call came later that evening, and I asked to see him the next day. The secretary said that someone else was planning on seeing him first thing, but that I could get on the schedule to come in afterwards if they didn’t adopt him. They also told me his adoption fee- he would qualify for the senior rate and it would be $35 to adopt him. That’s it??

The next day, when getting dressed, I felt like it was a special occasion and dresssed up a bit- if nice jeans and a shirt from my sister could count as dressing up, which in the time of COVID it was. Walking through the house on my way out, I worried a bit about getting a dog with a tail as I had grown up with various herding dogs that didn’t have tails.

I showed up early at the shelter. I hadn’t gotten any calls to cancel my visit with Parker, so I figured the other folks had passed. Poor pup. I wondered how many other had passed him up. I wondered if he could hop in my truck or if I would need to carry him in?

I got into the playpen to meet Parker and he came barreling in from the kennels. Getting him to jump in the car would probably not be a problem. He was 7? His teeth looked nicer than most people’s teeth.

Turns out that he was probably more like 3 or so. A ball of energy who was distracted easily, could jump incredibly high and, surprisingly, didn’t have a tail. His owner had been arrested for something so Parker (formerly Carter) was dropped off at the shelter with two smaller dogs. He was a bit overweight, but other than that, he was a healthy dog, weighing in at about 57 pounds.

After I asked a whole gambit of questions, the volunteer at the shelter asked me if I wanted to adopt him. By then I was sitting on the ground scritching Parker’s belly while he was flopped over in my lap. It was a definite yes.

Some paperwork and about a half hour later, I had Parker in the truck and ready to go home. I hadn’t told anyone else (except my landlord) that I was getting a dog, and the thought of surprising my friends and family made me excited for this new chapter.

I didn’t realize it then, but getting a dog would be a big deal for me. I grew up with dogs, however they were just always around the house, we didn’t take them out much but they had ample room in and around the house to roam around and occasionally came camping with us. Parker was a whole other ball game. He likes to get out and go for a drive in the car, explore new parks (and ones he’s been to many times), and loves meeting people. He can be a bit wiley sometimes if he doesn’t have an outlet for his energy, but when he does, he’ll nap next to you on the couch for a few hours then be ready to go out and do it again. He very much is like a 3 year old in his mannerisms, in the same way as sometimes 3 year olds can be grumpy old men or absolute hellions depending on the day.

He’s gotten me out of the house and out in nature, which was something I had been sorely missing since getting out of school, having most friends move away after graduating, and after I had been switching jobs and moving around. Parker became my hiking buddy, I didn’t need to schedule in a walk or text multiple people finding someone who was available and interested, all I have to do was go stand by the door and pick up his harness and he is ready to go, even if he was dead asleep a few minutes earlier. It kept me from feeling like I was a sad person with no friends to hang out with, which would lead to me binge watching something on Netflix til the day had passed right along. I found that having Parker also helped me strengthen friendships I already had, either with people who had dogs or people who liked going on hikes but I hadn’t thought of going hiking with. His routine of getting out and about quickly became my routine- it’s really hard to ignore a critter that whines at you in the morning and looks so excited to be outside and checking things out.

As a person who has had depression and anxiety (and is getting help with it) for almost 4 years, getting a dog was probably as big if not a bigger breakthrough than getting on medication and finding a good therapist was in helping me to get better (100% not suggesting you ditch therapy and medication btw, I’m still using both). My number of difficult days tanked, it became easier to establish healthy routines including eating regularly and healthily (it’s hard to keep up with Parker and hike 5 miles on an empty stomach after all). He’s not a “certified” comfort dog or anything like that, as many of those programs are a bit bogus and no one really takes them seriously anymore, but he is every bit a part of my process in working though my anxiety and depression. Part of me is bummed that I waited this long, but if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have gotten Parker. Things happen when they are supposed to.

Some other day, I’ll share the story of Parker’s history before I showed up, but for now, that’s all I’ll share. It’s way past my bedtime, it’s almost 10 pm!

Hello!

My name is Katie Buesch. I grew up in Southern California and moved up to Northern California in 2014 to go to college. I got lucky and found a job here (then a different job which is where I’m at now) so I’ve been here ever since.

My mom taught my sister and I how to quilt when we were pretty young- I remember my first quilt was made on an old Singer (perhaps the coveted featherweight?) in a class that I attended with my mom and sister. I dabbled in it every once in a while for the next 10 years or so growing up but it was always something my mom did on weekends, usually while watching reruns of Monk, Criminal Minds, CSI, or more recently M*A*S*H.

My mom had given me one of her sewing machines my second year of college- a bulk of a metal White brand sewing machine. I think it’s from the 1980s or early 1990’s. It’s no sleek beauty but it works and works and works. It hung out in my closet for a while until my last semester of college, when I, along with my college roommate, went to a fabric store and I threw down for fabric to make a split rail fence quilt- a redo of the first quilt I ever made. My goal was to make it all on my own, reading a pattern and without help from my mom besides maybe calling with questions every now and again.

I cut some strips. It sat for a few months. I cut some more strips, maybe sewed them together. It sat for a few more months. I moved to live at a State Park for a seasonal job. I began cutting the 90 some squares I needed to make the quilt while hanging out with someone else who lived at the park and when I went to piece them together- they didn’t fit. I had cut every block 1 inch too short due to measuring with my cutting mat and starting at 1 rather than 0. The blocks sat for a few more months. My Mom came up to visit and rescued it from quilting purgatory, offering to cut the squares to make them work. That particular trip, she also taught me how to embroider using iron on patterns and tea towels.

From there, I went on to producing many many many snarky cross stitches, frequently alongside my friend Jenn who had learned cross stitching from a relative, sold some stitches in a local shop and to some friends, then messed up my arms from stitching and archery- so I flipped over to quilting. And I moved once, then again.

I became more interested in quilting while working on making a quilting exhibit for the museum I worked at, and working on a grant to better document the many quilts housed at the museum, which was how the pretty active local quilters guild.

People have frequently referred to me as an old soul. As someone in my 20s who has lived enough to see that most of my acquaintances are decades older than me, I pretty much tend to agree with them. I don’t know why I’m this way, but it’s ok, because these crowds tend to have the best pot luck gatherings.

Nowadays, I sew on my mom’s trusty old hunk-of-metal White sewing machine or my 1952 Featherweight (an elegant hunk of metal). They’re trustworthy companions and I feel very cool when I can disassemble them to oil and clean them.

So here we go, on a blogging adventure. I don’t really have any idea where this will take me, but I paid for the name and went through the trouble of making a site so, might as well use it.