LOANER DOG

Hoover and I...the good ol' days.

It’s been a dozen years since I’ve had a dog. I was a miniature schnauzer guy as that was the family pet growing up and I got two more as an adult. But the truth is, as much as I loved having a dog, I was completely shattered when they died. I don’t just mean heartbroken. It was far worse. After the last one died unexpectedly at the relatively young age of eleven, I rapidly swirled downward into a massive depression and ended up in the psych ward. Yes, there were other factors, but I felt I’d been holding on just because I had a dog to live for, another being that depended on me. Truth is, I’m not sure I can risk going through that kind of crisis again.

 

Since Hoover died, I’ve dog-sat several dogs for as long as five weeks at a time. A couple of them have been a handful. One had intense anxiety and I was only one of a few people she liked enough not to bite. My sister’s dog which I’m dog-sitting now has been deaf since birth and has some challenging quirks. It’s awfully hard to correct a deaf dog when she’s not looking your way. There’s the automatic habit of stating a simple command but it has no effect. 

 

When dog-sitting, it’s easy to shrug off “problem” behaviours. I didn’t raise and train the dog. She comes as is. My relationship with the dog is unique and there are certainly opportunities for positive behavioural change but the limited times means I look for small victories instead of a major transformation.

 

This is my second time dog-sitting Billie. The first time, back in December 2024, came with dread. It was during a ten-month period of time when Evan and I had broken up and we’d had zero contact. The problem, as I saw it, was that both my sister and Evan lived in the Denver area. It felt like it would be just my bad luck to run into Evan at a grocery store or to see each other at a traffic light. As long as he was out of sight, I could do my best to keep him out of mind, but just the possibility of having our paths cross meant that both Evan and all the unanswered questions I had about our demise put him front and centre in my brain again. 

 

What I dreaded turned into a good thing. Not wanting to brace every time I saw a white car—I know vehicles based only on colour; makes and models mean nothing to me—I messaged Evan to say I’d be in the area if he wanted to grab a coffee. I fully expected no response or an emphatic, “Hell, no.” That dog-sitting experience and the proactive message I sent brought Evan and me back together. It hadn’t been a goal. I never hoped for or even contemplated that sort of result. And now, almost two years later, we’re still together, going strong. 

 

So this round of dog-sitting is going to be partly a two-person endeavour. It may bring to the present a future issue that we both dance around. 

 

But first, let me give a Billie update on Day 5 of the two-week dog-sitting gig. Everything went well on the first two days. Billie and I saw my sister and brother-in-law off at Denver International Airport and settled into a decent day of keeping things low key at home. The plan was to drive three hours to Evan’s new residence in the Aspen area where we three would spend most of the fortnight together. But taking Billie away from her home the next morning felt too rushed. While she remembered me, I wanted us to adjust a little more first. I wanted to re-establish some boundaries I’d managed to introduce two years ago. Evan’s home is precious to him (he’s an architect and interior designer so every single item he owns comes with a story that doesn’t include a mention of IKEA or Target); I didn’t want Billie charging in and running to her kennel with a vintage leather belt or peeing out of stress on one of his prized area rugs. For reasons that shall become apparent, I really wanted Billie to make a good impression. 

 

Instead, Billie and I went on a scenic two-hour hike only six minutes from my sister’s home. We were both getting our exercise and I got to practice avoiding hostile barking episodes as we encountered mountain bikers and other dogs. (I also got to fondly appreciate what a good dog Hoover had been.)

 

That second night, I was awakened at 2 a.m. by Billie standing on the bed making gagging noises. My previous schnauzer, Lincoln, spent the last several years of his life throwing up around 4 o’clock every night so I immediately fell back on the old routine of getting the dog off the bed and rushing to unslide the deck door. I was only partly successful this time. For the next four and a half hours, Billie vomited ten times, leaving me with carpets, flooring and deck space to clean in the morning. 

 

We would not be driving to Evan’s. Not that day, as Billie threw up all her breakfast and then upchucked a few more times into the afternoon, and not the next. I needed to be sure her stomach had settled and to stay in the area in case I needed to take her to my sister’s vet of choice. 

 

Billie got better thanks to time and a couple of meals of plain scrambled eggs. (Evan’s suggestion which I confirmed through Google as being a viable option.)

 

We arrived yesterday. Evan had met Billie back in 2024 since she had more problematic behaviours at the time and I couldn’t leave her at home for more than an hour. Still, this was a reintroduction. Evan was Evan; Billie was Billie. Things went as well as could be expected. Billie, who is used to sleeping on the bed with humans, cozied up to Evan’s legs all night. I tried not to take it personally that Billie chose Evan over me even though I’m the one wholly responsible for feeding her, walking her and cleaning up her vomit. Humph.

 

Still, I took this as a very good thing. Let there be bonding between Billie and Evan. After all, there is a bigger issue which I’ve been putting off mentioning. Back in 2022, as Evan and I walked from a Vancouver urgent care clinic where he was diagnosed with COVID, he casually dropped a bomb that was exponentially bigger than his medical news: “I don’t ever want another dog.”

 

This came as a total surprise because he’d talked positively about the five different miniature schnauzers his parents had had over the years. (Same as my favoured breed…what a coincidence!) He had spoken fondly about a little dog he and an ex had shared while living in Miami. He’d prefaced the bombshell announcement with, “I love dogs. Nobody loves animals more than me.” That seemed totally irrelevant. The bottom line was that, if we stayed together, I would never have another dog. In effect, he’d closed the conversation before it even began. Where was the fairness in that? 

 

But would a conversation have done anything other than to aggravate me more? His statement had come across as emphatic. 

 

In that moment, I stopped on the sidewalk. After several months together, he’d just blurted a deal-breaker. We were incompatible. As much as I hadn’t been able to get another dog after Hoover’s death, I didn’t want someone else precluding any possibility of raising a dog again. In my dogless years, I’d upped my travel adventures. So much easier and somewhat more economical without having to arrange for dog care while I explored Sweden, Iceland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Estonia and other countries. Travel farther afield enriched my life in ways I hadn’t realized when I went on extended North American road trips with my dogs. Freedom was nice and it came guilt-free and worry-free over what a pooch back home was thinking regarding possible abandonment and a sudden halt to frequent tummy rubs. 

 

In that moment at a standstill on the sidewalk, I saw our whole relationship falling apart. Everything had been amazing but was I willing to give up any and all possibility of a dog? A hypothetical dog might just end it all.

 

I made it clear that I still wanted the option of having another dog somewhere down the line…when the desire to travel waned, when a yearning to care for a furry animal—poop bags, vomit and all—became greater. For the past four years, we’ve danced around this subject. Is it an inevitable relationship killer, like when one partner says they don’t want to have children? I don’t know. I hope not. But it’s not like these dog-sitting gigs are a replacement for having a dog of my own—of our own. For now, the urge to travel remains great.

 

But there still seems to be a lot riding on Billie making a good impression on Evan and that means Billie, a challenging dog to be sure, needs to be well-behaved. 

 

Last night, Evan grossed out when Billie dragged her butt along one of his vintage rugs. “I will be having that rug cleaned,” he said, not with a glare but with a smile. This morning, as he got ready for work and Billie jumped up on the just-made bed, snuggling into one of Evan’s leather pillows, Evan said, “She’s kinda sweet, isn’t she?”

 

Yes, indeed. Ain’t she sweet! Work your charms, Billie. Maybe your challenges—er, quirks—will come off as endearing. Maybe the possibility of a future dog is still in the cards.

 

          

A CANADIAN CONUNDRUM

Yesterday was Canadian Thanksgiving, one of many I’ve spent outside the country. A couple of times, I’ve been in Sweden. More often, like this year, I’ve been in the U.S. It’s not hard to be away…I love to travel and it boosts my mental health. But it is difficult under the circumstances this year, not just being in the U.S. for Canadian Thanksgiving but to be in the United States at all. 

 

It's all because of Trump.

 

I lived in the U.S. for sixteen years, from 13 to 30, but I made the conscious decision to return to the country where I was born. It wasn’t due to politics. The move came in 1994 when Bill Clinton, a Democrat, was president and I was living in Santa Monica, a Democrat-leaning city in a Democrat-leaning state…although Pete Wilson, a Republican, was governor. (As blue as we think California as being now, it’s the state where Republicans Ronald Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger were also elected governor, the latter’s term ending only fifteen years ago.) During my time living in the U.S., Reagan and George H.W. Bush also served terms as U.S. president. I didn’t like their politics, particularly regarding AIDS, but it didn’t seem like a Republican presidency was a reason to move. I may have only been a permanent resident who didn’t pursue citizenship (and thus didn’t have the right to vote), but I knew there was always a shifting pendulum in America’s two-party political system. Voters would go for a conservative and then they’d want a liberal. There were enough moderates and independents who would change their minds when things seemed to swing too far in one direction or the other. Things had a way of balancing out in what was often proudly regarded as the world’s most influential democracy. 

 

But the system has felt alarmingly out of whack ever since Trump began his first campaign to be president. Objections to the agenda of an opposing political party turned from strong disagreements to intolerance and hate. I’d first seen hate stoked in political ads for George H.W. Bush when his campaign used convicted murderer Willie Horton as a way to malign Michael Dukakis, but Donald Trump was relentlessly nasty, not only to Hillary Clinton but to other Republican challengers during the 2016 primary/caucus season, including Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz. 

 

During the first term, the world saw Trump turn hate on other countries as well, especially China and Mexico. Many world leaders danced lightly around the president, although sometimes they got caught mocking him, as was the case in 2019 when a hot mic captured Canada’s Justin Trudeau joking with France’s Emmanuel Macron and Britain’s Boris Johnson about Trump’s lengthy press conferences. Trump called Trudeau “two-faced” and appeared to shrug things off but, as we all know, Trump shrugs nothing off. He holds grudges until and unless the offender kisses up to him. (See Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz, above.)

 

In my mind, Trump never forgave Trudeau or, by extension, Canada. On his first day in office during his second term, Trump specifically raised the issue of tariffs against three countries: China and the U.S.’s two neighbours, Mexico and Canada. This was preceded in December 2025 by Trump, as president-elect, calling for Canada to become the 51^st state of the United States, considered by Canadians as an outlandish, belittling dig against national sovereignty.

 

Since early 2025, many Canadians have refused to travel to the U.S. and have made efforts to buy Canadian products while avoiding American items. The current trade war has renewed Canadians' conviction. I’ve been as offended as any Canadian by Trump’s derisive remarks about Canada and his tariff campaign. I’m on board in terms of making conscious choices about what I buy but travel has been a dicier issue. To what extent do I want an American president to govern deeply personal decisions regarding my life?

 

Santa Monica, as pictured during
my last visit in 2024.

I typically visit California, where I lived for five years, at least once a year. Two of my best friends live there and these friendships have spanned more than four decades. Still, I have not visited since February 2024 and have no plans to return during the next two years while Trump remains in office. My message to my American friends: come visit me in any part of Canada. As yet, none has taken me up on that proposition. 

 

Whistler is worth a visit
any time of year.

In some ways, decisions about visiting Washington and Oregon are even harder. Seattle, Portland and the Oregon Coast are beloved destinations, an easy day’s drive away from my home in Vancouver. I typically go several times a year because each of these places has a way of restoring or boosting my mental health which I regularly struggle with. I haven’t completely ruled these places out but these south-of-the-border jaunts don’t seem like the habit they have been. Am I hurting myself by staying away? I still go frequently to Whistler in my home province for the same purpose and I remind myself that Victoria, Tofino and Nelson are other good-for-me places in British Columbia but it’s hard to restrict travel options, especially since the time of COVID lockdowns (and its related travel restrictions) wasn’t that long ago. I miss Washington and Oregon but I continue to tell myself that staying away is the right thing to do for now. 

 

Still, there are a couple of cross-border relationships I have that cannot be compromised on account of Trump and his Republican yes-men. (Being anti-Canadian almost feels like it’s become an unofficial part of the Republican platform. At one point this summer, Republican senators were disparaging Canada for its forest fires despite the fact these politicians had fires in their own or neighbouring states. Pointing fingers elsewhere is a weak distraction tactic that I witnessed a lot of when I was a student in high school and university in Texas and, later, in California.) 

 

My parents live in East Texas and have made the decision not to fly anymore. My mother just turned 87 and my father will be 90 in December. Airports have become too chaotic for them, the days too long, the crowds too large, the distance between gates and baggage claim too great. For now, they are still making an annual fall trip to Alabama’s Gulf Coast but trips to the family cottage in Ontario and to see me in Vancouver are over. If I want to see them, it has to happen on American soil. I aim for twice a year, with Texas being the logical option although I keep Alabama as a place to consider as well. Both places are deep red states and I feel Trumpers all around me. To be fair, I’ve never been harassed as a Canadian. Southerners pride themselves for their hospitality and I know not to wade into any conversation that involves politics and/or religion. This opinionated Canadian isn’t going to change any equally opinionated American. The bottom line is I am fortunate to still have parents, both of them in good health. I will not let the next two years pass by with only texting and the occasional phone call, even though my parents voted for Trump. We have never agreed politically but we’ve found common ground in other areas.

 

A quick road stop with Evan
this weekend near Aspen.

Here’s a startling fact I’m pulling out late in this blog post: I’ve spent four months in the United States this year. Yes, I feel the guilt and dismay from my Canadian comrades, even though I know they would never shame me. Nonetheless, I am compelled to explain my significant presence in a country that has been hostile to Canada. My parents will account for about ten days in the U.S. in 2026. The rest of my time, however, is on account of my four-year long-distance relationship with my partner, Evan, who moved from Seattle to Colorado (first, Denver, then, Aspen) in 2024. Do I dump Evan because Trump is president? Heck, no. Evan and I navigated the late stages of COVID restrictions and now we’ve got a president neither of us wants as an unwelcome exterior force. 

 

As I spend my days writing, I can do that anywhere. For both immigration purposes and health insurance coverage, I need to spend at least a day over six months in Canada but, otherwise, I’m the one with the flexible schedule. This current visit to Colorado which has me missing Canadian Thanksgiving along with the opportunity to vote in both a municipal and provincial election is for the entire month of October. (My sister also happens to live in Colorado so I’ve accepted dog-sitting duties as well while she and my brother-in-law travel abroad.) 

 

Ideally, I’d love my relationship with Evan to progress so that we live together with our home being in Canada. Realistically, however, I don’t see that happening. Evan is four years younger than me and, while I’m on long-term disability which won’t change until retirement, he still has many more working years ahead of him. He’s told me several times he expects to continue working into his seventies. While he has applied to architect and interior design positions in Canada, there has not been a single bite despite his incredible talents. The process for hiring a foreigner is just too cumbersome when there are many people working in the same field already living in B.C. and flirting with the idea of job change.  

 

Better late than never...
I'll make pumpkin pie
when I return to Vancouver.

So here I am again, in a country where I so often feel I shouldn’t be, no pumpkin pie on the dessert menu since Evan is not a pumpkin fan and a whole pie sitting within reach is a temptation I’m telling myself I must resist. Love is greater than politics. My identity as being someone’s partner even exceeds my choice to repatriate as a proud Canadian. I will enjoy my time in Colorado’s Roaring Fork Valley because it is where Evan is. Without a vote in the United States, I can only hope the pendulum shifts again in American politics and civility is soon restored in negotiating with foreign neighbours as well as in agreeing to disagree with issues on a personal level. 

 

I guess I continue to want it all. Hope feels healthier than complacency or acceptance of an era of hostility. I hope my fellow Canadians enjoyed Thanksgiving. I look forward to being back in my home country for Remembrance Day in November.

 

 

 

  

   

TIME WARP, INDEED

On Sunday night, Evan and I saw a documentary as part of the Aspen Film Festival. It was an encore showing of a movie shown earlier in the week, this time in Evan’s new town of residence, Carbondale (population 6,762), forty minutes down the road from Aspen, Colorado. The film was called Time Warp, which focused on efforts to bring the movie Rocky Horror Picture Show to the town of Rock Springs, Wyoming (population 22,936). Showing over two nights in 2022, the movie would also feature a shadow cast that would lip-synch and reenact the film on a stage in front of the screen.

 

While the movie premiered to little fanfare in 1975, it has become a cult favourite, especially during midnight showings. Its popularity arises from the audience participation element that developed over time. When I first saw the film at the age of fifteen in 1980 in Longview, Texas, I knew the content was definitely “out there,” with Tim Curry stealing the show as Dr. Frank-N-Furter, a transvestite alien scientist who creates his own Frankenstein incarnation in the form of a studly muscle man named Rocky Horror who wears skimpy gold shorts. Rocky is supposed to be Frank-N-Furter’s ideal man, his own plaything. There are a lot of sexual shenanigans, with Frank disguising himself to have sex in his castle separately with stranded couple Brad and Janet and Janet then fooling around with Frank’s beloved Rocky. I’ve never thought about it, but the film was probably my first exposure to anything on the queer spectrum. At the time, it didn’t have much influence because it was so campy and because my neighbour with whom I saw the movie and I kept laughing and trying to make sense of the audience participation. (“What did they say?!”) It barely represented a movie much less life. To me, it had its own category: a spectacle. And, yes, it seemed very risqué to play in my steadfastly conservative East Texas town (population then about 50,000).

 

Sadly, I suspect not much has changed in Longview, Texas in the past forty-six years although it’s grown in size to 83,000 people. I haven’t been back in more than thirty years, but my parents live less than an hour down the road in Tyler (115,000), a city of Trumpers, pickup trucks and many, many Southern Baptist churches.

 

The fact that Rocky Horror would play with a shadow cast in an even smaller town and even more red-entrenched state (Trump won Wyoming by the largest margin of any state in 2016, 2020 and 2024) makes for a compelling documentary. Imagine not just a viewing of the film but the fact that a guy in Rock Springs would play the live-action version of Dr. Frank-N-Furter, dressed in a black corset, fishnet stockings and heels. 

 

The director and star of the shadow cast is Kenny Starling who leads a shadow cast through two months of rehearsals and frequently referred to the production as an ode to queer joy. Its viability is challenged at a packed city council meeting, one in which the main challenger contends the production is intended to recruit children based on the tired, ignorant go-to conservative depiction of queers as pedophiles. 

 

SPOILER ALERT: The production does go forward and is a success. In the process, we see townspeople in the shadow cast who identify as gay, lesbian, bi and trans gain confidence and find camaraderie in a town where residents are described as friendly but also homophobic. 

 

It’s an uplifting documentary that features compelling storylines for the young, dynamic force that is Kenny Starling but also for many others who are tentatively finding comfort in their own identities. The whole time I was watching the movie, I felt a sense of hope. 

 

Wow…if it can happen in a place like Rock Springs…

 

As Evan and I walked home after the movie, we were abuzz with positive impressions of the documentary and the follow-up question-and-answer session with director Allison Berg. 

 

But in the middle of the night, my regular time for a stint of insomnia, I kept thinking about a young, apparently gay man (he never officially comes out) and the other queer members of the shadow cast. They dealt with regular harassment in school and faced rejection, ridicule and silence by family members. I realized that part of why Evan and I each connected with it so much is that Rock Springs, Wyoming in 2022 mirrored the environments where we grew up as teens. Evan fled Fort Collins, Colorado for Denver and then New York City while I left Longview, Texas for Fort Worth and then Los Angeles. 

 

Basically, the current Rock Springs is stuck in its own time warp, still in the awkward stages of resistance and discomfort that we experienced forty years ago. We were cheering a sort of progress that also felt very much behind the times. How much “progress” is it when it remains in such a time lag? My sense of celebration became laced with sadness. While openness and acceptance are greater in many places, that is still not the case in smaller communities. I want to say “especially in red states” but I think things are just as backward or entrenched in many smaller towns and rural areas in blue states as well. Young people may find connection and information about their identities online but they continue to live their days in hostile and/or ignorant environments. The struggles remain. As noted in the film, Wyoming has a high suicide rate. In fact, it places as third highest in the U.S. after Alaska and Montana. 

 

I got to thinking about the annual Pride celebrations all over the United States, Canada and the rest of the world. So many people who identify as LGBTQIA+ travel to places like NYC, London and Toronto to have their spirits lifted by all the enthusiasm that stems from huge crowds gathered for parades and parties. Yes, I see value in that. But, more than that, it seems we should be putting our support and numbers behind the smaller Pride events in places like Longview, Texas and Rock Spring, Wyoming. Shouldn’t we consider a day trip to a town farther afield, in places that couldn’t even consider residents performing in a Rocky Horror shadow cast? In the current political climate, the “little” things seem truly bigger. Higher stakes, yes, and also higher impacts on helping small-town and rural queers feel affirmed and connected. Pint-sized Pride events deserve our support.