A dog’s day in Topanga Canyon

COMMENTARY /// Canine capers



PUPPY LOVE—Dog-lover, actress and poet Jane Marla Robbins with Dancer. Courtesy photo

PUPPY LOVE—Dog-lover, actress and poet Jane Marla Robbins with Dancer. Courtesy photo

Jane Marla Robbins settles on my couch, her knees tucked comfortably beneath her and her floppy hat on the table beside us. Close by, Dancer is exploring my living room.

Robbins is an actress, coach and poet. Her newest book of verses sits on my table, “Dogs in Topanga 2000-2018.” It is the starting point for a larger discussion on dogs, Topanga Canyon and life among the rural wildlife areas that permeate the consciousness and landscape of Los Angeles and Ventura County residents.

Robbins, 75, appears ageless. She has lived in Topanga Canyon for 26 years, watched it grow and, most recently, watched as Topanga has begun, in its own way, to gentrify. Dogs are her medium, like an artist chooses oil or acrylic paints.

Arranged in a chronological fashion, the early poems feature dogs that wander into her house. There is Pele, the neighbor’s 165-pound dog that “adopts” her; Sierra, who taught her how to “jump for joy”; and the White Poodle who came only for an hour.

Maturity in life brings her first dog, Camella, who is injured. The vet’s prognosis is that she would never walk again. With help from Topanga’s local healer, Camella recovers, and this becomes a recurring theme.

One of her poems reads: “She taught me how to love, and after seven months—SHE WALKED! / And now she rolls on the grass, and runs/ and jumps and leaps—just like before/ And that is what Topanga does/ it helps us take our half-dead selves/ and bring them back to life.”

Time changes even Topanga. In the early days, she said, “you could see into everybody’s backyard. You could see the green hillsides. Now you can see the big walls.”

She describes her two neighbors as multimillionaires who have built swimming pools and tennis courts.

“Dogs don’t wander as freely as they used to.”

The actress Lynn Redgrave had been a close friend and neighbor of Robbins’. In the poem “Lynn Redgrave 1943-2010,” Robbins recalls when Redgrave, who was recovering from cancer treatments, and her dog Viola returned to Topanga for a visit with Robbins: “Lynn could not control her shock/ outrage and disgust at the signs in Topanga State Park reading No Dogs Allowed/ Not even on a leash. She took her dog there anyway/ she and Viola running free and joyful.”

The poem ends: “Dogs, sacred and special, have to run free.”

Dancer, Robbins’ current dog, entered her life bleeding, hairless and starving. It’s hard to imagine as I look at his confident little face as he jumps up on my daybed and closes his eyes.

Dogs simply don’t feel sorry for themselves. They enjoy life, Robbins said. And she circles back to the most important theme of this uplifting anthology.

“One of my favorite poems is about my neighbor’s dog, a black Lab who hurt his right paw. Animals can walk on three legs and they don’t think about it. They carry on. It is a spirit that chooses life.”

“Can’t we learn anything/ From dogs -/ Are we that stupid’/ We can put men into space/ Fly an airplane through one of the/ Tallest buildings in the world/ And we can’t learn to wag our tails/ Like a dog?”

“Dogs in Topanga 2000-2018” is available on Amazon and at janemarlarobbins.com.