Dog Stuff

                                   Hard-Wired

Consider dogs:

When she was alive I ran my fox terrier

almost every day at the dog exercise park,

where, of course,

other dogs also run free,

and I could appreciate the beauty of dog behaviour.

The pure-breds are the most hard-wired,

determined by their DNA.

Fox terriers have to react to everything and to chase anything

with unbridled enthusiasm

and never back down.

Miniature schnauzers have to make friends with everybody.

Retrievers have to jump into the river and galumph when they’re on land.

And so on.

Of course, mixed-breed dogs have greater flexibility,

although they might inherit a tendency to dig or to jump up,

but all dogs, of all breeds and crosses, and on every continent

love funky stuff,

and are either a leader or a member of a pack, however small –

there’s not a democrat in the species; dogs don’t share –

and they know how to greet each other.

If people only greeted people

the way that dogs greet dogs, well,

all human interactions would be remarkably different.

Dogs dig it funky.

The behaviour for which all humans are hard-wired,

by the way,

no matter what our location, ethnicity, culture,

gender, status, or family background,

is bullshit.

It must be in our DNA.

Neuroscientists point their fingers at the amygdala.

It’s what sets us apart from other species.

Without bullshit life would be at least as different

as it would be if we sniffed

each other’s nether regions

when we met.

         Dog Shit

Dog shit is funky.

No surprise and no argument, aye?

It is, however,

also problematic –

at least in the city.

The law’s clear on the topic:

those of us in control of dogs in public

have to pick up their shit –

preferably in a plastic bag –

and dispose of it in a bin,

if anybody who looks as if

they might complain

is watching.

No complaint, no offense.

Some brainbox in Christchurch

came up with the idea of DNA testing,

but get real –

who’d want a job testing dog shit all day long?

The tricky part,

in which finer distinctions prevail,

is what to do when nobody’s watching.

One bloke I knew at Day’s Park

never picked his dog’s up.

He said that it’s unfair to pick on dogs.

“Everything shits,” he said,

“and nobody has to pick up duck shit.”

I take a more nuanced position.

I picked it up even when nobody was looking

if my late dog squeezed out her nuggets

on nice stretches of lawn

where people might enjoy a bit

of relaxation or play,

and when she did it at the edge

of the riverbank’s precipice

I bat it down toward the river

with a stick,

always throwing the stick down after it.

It’s the responsible thing to do.

                   Rhonda and Ducks

The first time that Rhonda, my late fox terrier,

then just a wee puppy,

chased a flock of ducks

was at Lake Rotoroa,

Hamilton’s town lake.

She froze in obvious amazement and stared

when they took off in a flash

and flew into the water

with much noisy flapping and quacking.

It was clearly the most magnificent something

that she’d ever witnessed at that time.

In the subsequent 11 years or so,

whilst chasing ducks in Hamilton’s parks,

she got the drop on one of ’em

two times that I can recall when she was younger,

and three times after she turned eleven.

When she was younger

she made flying leaps

and sailed over the sluggish poultry,

dashing on to chase others.

The last two times she just ran right by them,

woofing.

For her it was chasing and excitement that matter;

catching wasn’t on her dog-brain agenda.

               The Art of Dog Piss

People who know dogs

recognise them for being

sensitive, perceptive, soulful, and,

above all, playful personalities.

Since play and creativity go together,

it seems reasonable, then,

that dogs can be artists.

Of course, they aren’t built

to hold paintbrushes or play musical instruments,

their voices don’t lend themselves to tunefulness,

and their communication skills don’t run to words,

but that doesn’t matter, anyway,

because the sense that’s most acute

for most of ’em

is, of course, smell.

It seems to me that the reason most dogs

enjoy sniffing around

a considerable while before pissing –

unless it’s urgent –

is that they’re looking for just the right spot

to put down a harmony.

  

                      Molly

The Vege King in the Fairfield shops

is almost always busy,

but during the week before xmas

the foot traffic

on the barrow-covered footpath out front

is particularly thick.

I saw her wandering, clearly lost,

beneath that moving forest of legs –

a miniature long-haired Jack Russell,

looking-looking-looking,

apparently without success,

small and lost in a big, frightening world.

I crouched and extended a hand.

She approached me and I picked her up.

Her ID tag said “Molly”

and had a mobile number

too long for me to be confident

about memorising quickly and accurately.

I put Molly down and got out my phone,

but when I bent over to pick her up

so that I could see the number on her tag

she ran away.

Since I never saw another sign of her

dead or alive

I have to suppose that she found

the person for whom she’d been searching

and regained the comforts

of being at home in her own small, safe world.

          A Lesson In Her Eyes

It had to end, of course –

everyone’s does:

rapid and severe weight loss,

problems with balance,

incontinence,

sudden debilitating physical weakness …

plus insufficient funds for treatment

that would be unlikely

to restore quality of life,

anyway.

As the vet prepared

the euthanasia,

I fed her treats

that the vet had provided.

She couldn’t catch them

when I tossed them to her

as she’d always enjoyed doing before,

but she still enjoyed

lapping them off the floor,

and her eyes

when she looked up for more

shone with pleasure

and expectation.

She was still

enjoying each moment

to the best of her ability

to do just that,

without any idea

of how few moments

she had left.

That dog taught me something

there in the examining room

whilst waiting to die

that I hope I learnt.

                     Canine Spookage?

Starting a week or so before I began composing this,

on quiet mornings I’d sometimes hear my dog

breathing in that loud way of hers

– sighing, snorting, grunting –

but when, embarrassed, I turned around to look,

and then searched the entire upstairs for any dog at all,

I of course found nothing.

I also felt her rest her neck on my foot repeatedly,

but when I looked under the desk I of course saw no dog.

No surprise in either case,

as she’d been dead for almost a year.

What surprises me still, however,

is that my mind would create such illusory manifestations.

Although I appreciated the responsibilities

with which she presented me,

and the chance to play stick,

and she clearly expected and enjoyed

the care I provided her,

and playing stick,

we were, shockingly, never particularly close

emotionally.

           The Way of the World

My new dog

is a fluffy little fella,

about maxed out on the cuteness scale,

alert, intelligent, adventurous,

and about as friendly as it’s possible to be.

At the park he tries almost obsessively

to make friends with every dog he sees,

even those who snarl at him

with aggressive hostility.

It doen’t matter, he still considers everybody,

canine and human, to be his friend,

if they let him,

and he’s never aggressive back

if they snap instead.

About the only thing he seems to enjoy

more than making friends

is gnawing on the bones

of slaughtered livestock.

{As Performed Live by the New Millennium Beatniks}