Nothingness

There's a reason dogs are made without pockets:  owning nothing gives you nothing to carry, and having nothing to carry gives you less to worry about. 

People are peculiar.  They will sacrifice their health to make money, only to turn around and spend all that money trying to get themselves healthy.  They stress about the future so much they sacrifice enjoying the present, the end result being they live in neither the future or the present.  They live like they are never going to die, and then die never having really lived.  


She is a worrier; if worrying paid well, it might have some benefit.  But I don't see it.  I know I don't have much control over anything, and, to be honest, it's a relief to let someone else carry the ball.  Or the bone.  


When I stand at the door of the office for the umpteenth time during the day, staring back at her, does she really think I have to pee?  





 

The Art of Happiness (The Dog's Eye View)

Can life possibly get any better?

Studies show that the Danish are the happiest people.  I've met a couple of Great Danes in my life, but they never seemed happier than any other dog.  


Happiness, like sadness, like a full stomach and a game of fetch, is an ephemeral state.  It's like the weather, I believe:  wait five minutes and something is bound to change.


I watch her struggle for constancy even while she knows how fluid everything is.  If she would pay a little more attention to ME, maybe she'd notice I'm a good model for adapting to the flow.  One can find happiness in just about anything, like discovering cookie crumbs in the bottom of a jacket pocket.  The gift of something sweet comes most often when completely unexpected.  


A sunny day, some attention, a few tosses of the ball and I'm a happy guy.  And, as far as I know, I have not got a Danish gene in me.  So there you go.

Pee Mail

"Do you want to go for a walk?" she asks.

What?  I'm going to say "no?"

Exercise is great, but for me, it's all about the journey.  In the four miles down the road to the beach, I pick up and return all my messages.  

Stop.  Sniff.  Pee.  Stop again.  Sniff again.  Pee again.  Sometimes claw up the ground as a kind of punctuation mark.

Sniff:  who was here?  how tall?  how big?  hostile or friendly?  male or female? 

Pee-over:  hi!  just passing by.  or (if it's close to my home) a polite "thanks for stopping by but don't come in."  

I'm not an aggressive type.  Some (who?) might say I'm a little wimpy.  The Jack Russell is the bossy one.  I'm all about friendly and playful.   


Does she know I know almost every dog on the road by smell? 

Not A Dumb Blonde

Early in the morning, I crawl into bed very close to her.  

She probably thinks I want my morning cookie, or that my bladder is about to burst.  

Not true.

It's the contact.  We both need it.  

People have rules about PDA.  Dogs have our own rituals (the proverbial butt sniff being one of many), but, unless someone has damaged us deeply (and maybe not even then), we are PDA hogs.  

We know you love it.  You love making our back leg wave like a turkey leg at Thanksgiving when you rub our bellies in that "spot."  You laugh, we don't mind the attention, so we both get nothing but good from it.  

She will kiss me on my pink nose but she hates it when her mother tries to mouth kiss her.  She conveniently forgets all the places that nose has been that day.  Hey -- she's yet to come down with a dog-related disease, so?

My point:  I could be spending my time chasing squirrels, eating out of the garbage bin next door and vomiting on the Oriental, but here I am with her in bed, with my head in her lap (does she ever NOT have a camera handy? sheesh).  

I hope I will be enough when I am the only one left.  I hope I will be enough while she loses her mother to dementia.  

I would walk through fire for her.  

In Gus We Trust

Admittedly, I just don't have a bad angle when it comes to photo shoots. 

But, here I am, already off-topic. 

Walter Anderson, a wise person, once said: "“We're never so vulnerable than when we trust someone; but, paradoxically, if we cannot trust, neither can we find love or joy."


I know she has lost a lot of faith in her own kind.  The Jack Russell and I, by our natures, are incapable of letting her down in the trust department.  We are constant, and, in our constancy, she finds much of the love and joy she depends upon to remain in the living world.  No matter what kind of day she's had, or her mood, or her level of despair, she counts on us (as she did the ones before and the ones who will follow). 


But it's not all a one-way boulevard.  [And I'm not just talking about the dinners, the cookies the ball-throwing and the belly rubs here, although there might be some dissent among the ranks were those to be in any way disrupted.... ]  It's as basic to our animal existence to be counted upon as it is to count on our pack leader.  Without that, you see some pretty disturbed dogs out there. 


You see, I've come to understand that to be trusted and to trust cannot be separate actions if you want the whole Happy Meal.  It's less of a struggle for me than it is for her.  Vulnerability is as much a part of being a healthy dog as drooling. 

We keep her from being lonely.  We keep her from boredom and isolation.  We keep her heart pumping out love.  

But I wonder sometimes if we keep her from reaching out toward those of her kind.  

Because Even The Dalai Lama Laughs

PLAY.EAT.PLAY.EAT.PLAY.

And then play some more.  

Because the spirit must be nourished like the body. 

 

One Is The Loneliest Number

She installed The Great Wall last weekend. 

The Great Wall is a large mesh screen that makes it impossible for me to be in the passenger seat next to her in our car.  Patently unfair.  Doesn't she get that I need to be as close to her as possible (in her lap would be my preference)? 

And why does the Jack Russell get special treatment?  Why does she get the heated front leather seat? 

Love is a strange thing.  Someone hasn't read the manual.  And it isn't me. 

Nirvana = The Cessation Of Craving

Unfortunately for me, my upright companion is a practicing Buddhist, the precepts of which neither one of us practice particularly well.

People often say about dogs that "there is a Buddha at the end of every leash," but that really only demonstrates how much humans project themselves onto us and how little they understand of our nature.  What we do against that nature, people, we do to to please you.  If we like to play or eat, it's in our best interest to learn that game.  So, most of us do.  Except several terriers I've known.  Maybe that's why everyone says they are so smart:  they aren't out there seeking perfection.  Just a nice rodent to kill.

That is me up there, CRAVING THE BALL, but obeying the command to "WAIT."  I'm sorry, wait for what?  Let's just cut to the chase, grab the ball and play.  Please notice my intense focus.  Please notice the little line of drool dribbling from the corner of my cheeks.  Please notice that I've WAITED long enough for her to grab her camera, scramble to the floor and shoot, oh I don't know, a billion pictures of me staring at THE BALL. 

Because I am a glutton, I am made to wait.  I wait.  But waiting when told will not eradicate the craving for THE BALL or my dinner or her shoe.  I'm a good dog, but I'm a dog.  If I could speak, I might mention to her that acceptance is also a Buddhist precept. 

I might also mention the possibility of a correlation between the adherence to the pursuit of Nirvana and the fact that the Jack Russell and I are the only ones who share her bed.