Tai Chi dog adventure from out, a weblog by George Girton

Tai Chi dog adventure . . . . . nov 9 2003 — o34.dat

On a long walk with the dog, another more energetic dog tagged along with us. A couple of miles into our hike we came across a silver-haired woman working in her garden, removing, as it turned out, iris plants in favor of the desert succulents that do better in the Los Angeles climate.

She spotted the stray dog before she saw us, and hobbled slowly out of her garden to deal with the challenge. Having lost her own dog just a week before, she was concerned, and determined to solve the problem. An extended encounter ensued, in which she pulled a phone out of her hip holster and called the animal control center, got the telephone number and address of the dog's owner, as well as the name of the dog ("Chili"). When there was no answer, I volunteered to return the dog to its owner, a mere two miles away. Fortunately, it was in the direction we were walking.

During our conversation, it had developed that the stray dog's benefactor had studied tai chi with my tai chi teacher's teacher. There are only two countries where something like this could happen: Los Angeles is one, and of course the other is China. Then it turned out that she had visited China in the year 2000 when her teeacher went on tour there. She said it was exhausting; she was the oldest person on the tour, and to make matters worse had a bad knee that eventually prevented her from engaging in tai chi practice. She ended up being carried up about 5000 of 6000 steps on a sedan chair to a well-known mountain in the district she was visiting.

Eventually it was time for me to escort the dogs in a homeward direction. I carried a leash to use on ChiliDog if necessary, and a bag of iris bulbs, possibly both blue and bearded, destined for replanting in a new garden.

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