The Return of Dog Stuff

     At the Park on a Rainy Morning

My dog may have enjoyed a few things more

than drinking fresh puddle water,

but after the drought in 2010

it became more of a rare pleasure for her

than chasing sticks in the shade,

sleeping in the sun,

or chewing on bones, I think.

                 Practical Intelligence

My bedroom has a glass-wall ranch slider

leading onto a narrow balcony

facing east.

My fox terrier likes to lie there

in the glass-amplified sun

on winter mornings.

As I’m composing this

on a winter morning,

she’s sleeping by the heater

in my west-facing home office.

I think she knows

that the sky to the east

must look like a fast-moving,

grey watercolour video

with no direct sunlight

because of the occasional sound

of rain on the roof.

    Another Transition

My dog,

at age twelve,

no longer wanted

to be on my lap,

preferring to take her ease

on the floor.

I supposed the floor

didn’t keep recrossing

its legs.

About six months later

she fell sick and died.

                          The End of Stick

On the last day of 2009,

when I was taking Rhonda, my fox terrier,

on her afternoon walk around the neighbourhood on her lead

we were cruising along Sale Street in Fairfield

when three other fox terriers

zoomed off a house’s front porch barking wildly

and attacked her, one with its teeth.

In less than a minute the father of the dogs’ owner

came running out and forced them to retreat.

The owner of the dogs did the right thing

and reimbursed me for the emergency New-Year’s-Eve treatment,

but Rhonda was forbidden to run

for the next six weeks,

until they took the stitches out.

Before that incident,

I’d been throwing sticks for her to chase and return

for a half an hour every morning at the park.

After it, and the long hiatus,

she started giving up after only short games of stick,

rarely being up to it for as long as ten minutes,

and within a year rarely as long as five.

Then three minutes became a long game.

By the second anniversary of the attack

it had become more a matter of just two or three throws.

One morning in mid-January she chased the first throw

but didn’t bring the stick back.

Then, after a two-day layoff I tried again,

but she didn’t even chase the first stick.

Playing stick or ball had been a joyful part of my daily life

for about twelve years,

generally the only one.

The end of stick was a sad day indeed for me.

My newly adopted dog doesn’t chase sticks at all.

               Death and the Dog

Other than some sensory pleasures,

my entire life has been crap –

hardly worth the time it’s taken up,

for me at least.

Every day now when I wake up

I wish that I hadn’t,

and start counting the hours

until I can drink myself to sleep.

Every day when I finish work

I suffer from an inner conflict

between my body and my mind –

my body craving survival and food,

and my tortured mind craving

ascetic self-destruction

through self-induced anorexia.

It’s nip and tuck.

My dog knew nothing of this,

only that she depended on me completely

for all facets of her life.

I worried about

what would become of her

if my mind triumphed.

After she died

and I had no responsibility

for a helpless other

justifying ongoing, daily

psychological, emotional, and spiritual suffering,

I wondered why I spent time

thinking about boiling pasta.

Adopting a senior dog three years later

did little to change this.

                       Dogs In Bondage

They’re not up there with taggers and tailgaters,

but people who bring their dogs to the dog exercise park

and keep them on a lead

get right up my nose.

Okay, maybe they have valid reasons

for keeping those poor pooches in bondage,

but they should do it somewhere else.

It’s just plain cruel

to restrain their movements

when they can see heaps of other dogs

running and playing and swimming

and chasing balls and sticks and birds and each other

and engaging in natural canine social interactions,

all of which their masters deny them,

and cruelty to animals – especially to people’s own companions –

is simply wrong.

          Tandem Observations

One conclusion that’s become inescapable

after a lifetime of observing both

is that dogs are better at dog stuff

than people are at people stuff.

     The Desirable and The Desired

The cruelty that factory farming inflicts

on sensitive, intelligent individuals

tramples on my deeply held values

about the ugliness of indifference to terror

and therefore about what behaviours are desirable

for those engaged in food production.

When I saw that ham bone

in the meat-scraps fridge at the supermarket, though,

I bought it for my dog

without remorse.

I wanted it.

I craved the flavour and texture

of the bigger chunks of ham

still attached to it,

and I craved the vicarious pleasure

of watching my dog enjoy the hell out of it for weeks.

The Devil made me buy it, I suppose,

if that’s what the Devil is.

           Guapito

He’s such a prettyboy.

People notice

and comment

every day

about his looks.

Oh, he’s more than just cute –

he’s a real, catch-your-eye

prettyboy.

But when I look into his eyes

I can see a hint

of the depths through which

he experiences his world,

as himself,

distinct from being a schnauzer,

even distinct from his enormous talent

for just being a dog.

I mean, he’s an expert

who’s mastered most of the skills

involved in dog stuff.

I don’t think he knows

that he’s a prettyboy, though,

just that random strangers walking by

often stop to make nice to him

and coo.

He likes that.

I can tell.

                   Seasoning For The Season

Winter is what it is,

and the morning was wintry;

a nasty cold and wet southerly breeze

accompanied my adopted old dog and me

as we made our way around the park

for the first time that day.

It made me feel chuffed about myself –

I felt righteous;

I felt noble;

I felt heroic;

I felt, uncharacteristically,

almost worthwhile even –

for taking the Little Fella into my home, at his age,

and walking him twice a day,

whatever the weather,

even when none of the park’s other dog-walkers

were braving the inhospitably windy iciness.

I comforted myself with thoughts of hot soup

and maybe some slightly warmed wine

for when we returned home

but when, after completing the circuit,

I had divested myself of my top two layers,

doled out a packaged dog treat,

and gone snuffling around in the kitchen,

I decided instead on a summery cold seafood salad

and a fridge-cool tropical rum punch.

The inside of my house is, after all, warm and dry

without the atmospherics of a wood fire.

It was a good call.

                     Reality And The World

The world is what our nervous systems tell us it is.

Reality, unlike the world, is reality,

no matter what we sense and feel.

My dog and I occupy the same reality,

but we live in radically different worlds.

I’m unable to imagine what it would be like

to have a sense of smell a thousand times more sensitive

than the one I have now

– and I have a fearsome imagination –

and conceptualising a world dominated by odours,

in which I’d identify and remember people and places

more by their distinctive, individual scents

than by the configuration of their faces and landmarks,

is well beyond my mental capabilities.

Eagles, earthworms, dolphins, bats, bees, trout …

so many discrete, finite worlds we ourselves can’t know

in the reality of just this infinitesimal but ordinary

corner of the cosmos –

it’s all so incomprehensible that it’s no wonder

that people invent so much intricate codswallop

to convince themselves

that they understand what’s going on

and have actually made sense

of it all.

Uh-huh.