Going to the dogs

Lots of lightning and thunder last night. That makes SiSi nervous, so I did some paw holding until things quieted down. According to her paper work, SiSi is eleven years old this month and has been living in her forever home with us for the past ten years. Now that we’re “empty nesters” with children turned into grownups, it’s nice to be needed again when the thunder booms. It would be even nicer if the storms only made noise before eight or nine in the evening so we didn’t end up slightly sleep deprived the next day.

If I’m estimating correctly, in the time SiSi has lived with us she’s shed enough to make at least three or four more of her, or stuff a dozen or so pillows. Didn’t there used to be horsehair pillows? Do you suppose there’s a market for dog hair pillows? Our dogs could be profit centers!

SiSi, April 2013

Photo by J. Harrington

I’m grateful she’s rescued us, helps keep us honest and active, and gives us reason to get outside into the real world several times a day. There are few that I know of that write about dogs as well as the late Gene Hill. SiSi and I are each old enough that we’ve shared few days afield, but other than that, Mr. Hill captures us rather nicely (thunder and lightning are clearly demons that wait in the dark)

“I cannot imagine living in a house without a couple of dogs,” he once wrote. Without them, “my nights would be more restless and the demons that wait in the dark for me would be less easily fended.” He reckoned that nothing “brings me closer to tears than when my old dog—completely exhausted after a hard day in the field—limps away from her nice spot in front of the fire and comes over to where I’m sitting, puts her head in my lap, a paw over my knee, closes her eyes, and goes back to sleep. I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve that kind of friend.” No doubt experiences of that sort explain why Hill believed “we never really own a dog as much as he owns us.”

Other than getting a gender wrong in SiSi's case, he captures most of the past ten years and all those before that I’ve been lucky enough to be owned by a dog:

“He is my other eyes that can see above the clouds; my other ears that hear above the winds. He is the part of me that can reach out into the sea. He has told me a thousand times over that I am his reason for being; by the way he rests against my leg; by the way he thumps his tail at my smallest smile; by the way he shows his hurt when I leave without taking him. (I think it makes him sick with worry when he is not along to care for me.) When I am wrong, he is delighted to forgive. When I am angry, he clowns to make me smile. When I am happy, he is joy unbounded. When I am a fool, he ignores it. When I succeed, he brags. Without him, I am only another man. With him, I am all-powerful. He is loyalty itself. He has taught me the meaning of devotion. With him, I know a secret comfort and a private peace. He has brought me understanding where before I was ignorant. His head on my knee can heal my human hurts. His presence by my side is protection against my fears of dark and unknown things. He has promised to wait for me... whenever... wherever - in case I need him. And I expect I will - as I always have. He is just my dog.”

I’m often grateful to be sharing days with SiSi and, not quite as often, grateful to Gene Hill for helping me find words to understand what living with dogs, rescue or other, are all about.

If Feeling Isn't In It

By John Brehm

You can take it away, as far as I'm concerned—I'd rather spend the afternoon with a nice dog. I'm not kidding. Dogs have what a lot of poems lack: excitements and responses, a sense of play the ability to impart warmth, elation . . . .  
                                                                                   Howard Moss

Dogs will also lick your face if you let them.

Their bodies will shiver with happiness.

A simple walk in the park is just about

the height of contentment for them, followed

by a bowl of food, a bowl of water,

a place to curl up and sleep. Someone

to scratch them where they can't reach

and smooth their foreheads and talk to them.

Dogs also have a natural dislike of mailmen

and other bringers of bad news and will

bite them on your behalf. Dogs can smell

fear and also love with perfect accuracy.

There is no use pretending with them.

Nor do they pretend. If a dog is happy

or sad or nervous or bored or ashamed

or sunk in contemplation, everybody knows it.

They make no secret of themselves.

You can even tell what they're dreaming about

by the way their legs jerk and try to run

on the slippery ground of sleep.

Nor are they given to pretentious self-importance.

They don't try to impress you with how serious

or sensitive they are. They just feel everything

full blast. Everything is off the charts

with them. More than once I've seen a dog

waiting for its owner outside a café

practically implode with worry. “Oh, God,

what if she doesn't come back this time?

What will I do? Who will take care of me?

I loved her so much and now she's gone

and I'm tied to a post surrounded by people

who don't look or smell or sound like her at all.”

And when she does come, what a flurry

of commotion, what a chorus of yelping

and cooing and leaps straight up into the air!

It's almost unbearable, this sudden

fullness after such total loss, to see

the world made whole again by a hand

on the shoulder and a voice like no other.

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