Tag Archive for 'dogs'

Chasing the wind

Published
by
cdeagle
on August 30, 2008
in Life and Writing
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I’ve recently realized that I love the smell of dogs.  Not the musty, stale and dirty pet smell, but the real smell.  There’s a difference in odors, and I think it’s based on lifestyle.  Your grandmothers Pomeranian has a specific smell that it developed as a result of hours indoors.  A lifetime spent sleeping under the dining room table and being stroked by old, leathery hands is bound to engender a certain scent.  This is certainly not pleasant, and not what I’m talking about.

To smell like a dog the animal has to have a little freedom.  They have to be allowed to roll in dirt, run through sprinklers, and chase the wind.  They have to be allowed to eat sticks, and wrestle, and dig in mud.  When this dog comes to you, not because he knows he’ll get a treat from you, but because he wants to teach you something about wildness, he is not, in any way, unpleasant.  Though he may muddy your tile, may shed dust on the floor next to your bed, may even, in his exuberance, plant filthy paws on your chest, there’s nothing unclean about this animal.  When you bury your face in his coat you’ll smell three things; the warm scent of a living thing, the green vividness of the world outside your door, and the soft, cool smell of contentment.  Of these things, which can you object to, or what’s not to love?

I suspect that this difference in smell is as much about the healthiness of the animals spirit as it is about their specific living conditions.  How can you flourish when you are not whole?  How can you be whole when a part of your nature is denied?  I’m not advocating complete freedom, or a life without rules by any means.  But dogs, like boys, have a wildness in them which must be encouraged.  To deny it in either species (and I don’t think any of you will disagree that a human boy is its own unique and challenging species) is to deny an essential part of them.

It’s due

Published
by
cdeagle
on June 8, 2008
in Writing
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I have to sort of think of this like homework.  What I want to avoid right now is using a “journaling” voice; that’s not my goal here.  Anyway, I used my notebook last night and I feel like I should go for 20 minutes if I’m doing longhand because I write so slowly.  What about tonight?

I don’t like literature.  I love good writing, and I love good stories, but I hate writing that feels like it’s trying really hard, and I hate stories that seem to exist for no greater reason than to exist.  Ayn Rand, in her manual on art, said that a story must include a theme.  She described theme as “an idea about human existence”.  Some stories (I’ll cite “The Catcher in the Rye” here) seem to be very weak on Theme.  Sure, there’s a plot, events happen that correlate to one another, but they express no overarching idea about human existence.  They leave me with the sense that I’ve just read something very self serving and ultimately meaningless.  I shouldn’t be offended; isn’t all art, by its very nature, self serving?  It exists only to please the artist, after all.  Or, it should exist only to please the artist.

In any event, those sorts of novels, which are often described as “literature” and which can leave the reader with a vast sense of hopelessness do nothing for me.  I know it’s incredibly pretentious to call great works crap, so I won’t, but I wouldn’t read them.  Really.  Who would want to?

Here’s the rub…I have to overcome a great deal of psychological resistance to want to write what I want to write.  I need to stop taking myself so seriously.  And the other rub is, what I want to write, I have no ideas about.  What I don’t care to write, I can easily think of several plots for.  Should theme develop out of plot, or vice versa?  I need t read more.  Enough!  Should I doodle?  I need to do something “fictitious” to make his time spent worthwhile, and believe me, it took 20 minutes of procrastinating to get this 10 minutes of writing to happen.  Alright, Lets talk dogs.

When I open the garage door the first thing I see are their crates, because that’s what I’m looking for, I guess.  I slide my toe to the edge of the first step, the lip is made of wood, in contrast to the rest of the kitchen floor which is tile.  The second before I put my weight on that piece of wood, I always imagine it snapping off, sending me sprawling into the garage, accompanied by the sound of my body slamming into concrete, the baying of dogs, and, undoubtedly, a fair amount of cursing.  But when I get my weight onto this wooden flange I’m instantly reminded of how sturdy it is.  It doesn’t even tremble, not just a little.  Impressive craftsmanship.  Reaching the floor of the garage I always take a minute to survey the situation.  Both of their food bowls are empty, Noah is low on water.  To my left, the door between them and sweet freedom stands, secured by a metal slide bar no thicker than a pencil.  I unlatch it and open it, because what follows is barely controlled chaos.

Noah is always first, because if I let Macy out first she will crawl into his crate to attack him.  I don’t know what pleasure she can get out of this, but she relishes it so much that sometimes I consider leting her do it simply for her own gratification.  Once he’s out of his crate he stretches, first front, extending his front paws and lowering his chest to the floor, then back, moving his body forward to rest over the front, lengthening the rear legs.  After this, it’s quick-as-you-like through the door, to turn around and bark (at me, I suppose).  By this time Macy is grumbling, and putting a paw on the door to her crate, as if to remind me that she needs to go as well, as if I could forget.  And this now, is the time for bracing breaths.  This would be the time for a dram of dutch courage.  The time that makes grown men tremble.  You see, a 70 pound, one year old german shepherd’s exuberence is often only matched by the physical power and athleticism of same.  To say that she jumps for joy would be an understatement.  She leaps.  She flings her soul into the air, and her body follows.  There are moments, at the top of her arc, when she is looking down at me and time stops.  I can see her trying to decide which of my softest and least protected bodyparts she should drag a paw across.  Arm?  Chest?  Cheek?  It’s not deliberate, but she is so excited, so happy to see me, to be free, to…well, who knows.  Sniff.  Stretch.  In any event, she must do one full circle around me, and at least two jumps, before she’ll go outside.  Once she’s done that she’s pretty manageable, but those few moments…they’re something.

Reintroducting

Published
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cdeagle
on June 6, 2008
in Writing
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It’s a process, to change the way they perceive, and behave, in a place.  To break the habits.  First, you remove them from the place.  This takes time, in days, or weeks, or in months.  However long it takes, is how long it takes.  Once they’ve been thoroughly removed you can begin to reintroduce them, in the way that you want them to be introduced.  Know that everything you do at this stage will shape how they behave in the future.  Your challenge is to mould their behavior without breaking them.

You must exert your will enough to get the proper response, and not so much that they become nervous, or fearful.  This is made more challenging if they are nervous to begin with, or if you are.  A bad experience at this point and you have to start over, so work slowly.  Take small steps, and set them up to succeed.  Don’t become overconfident, and don’t overreact, ever.

Things are usually only a big deal if you make them into a big deal.  Compelling them to behave the way you want is not a matter of emotion, it is a matter of course.  You are not asking them to submit to you, but to an immutable law of nature.  If you hold this truth in your mind, if you make yourself law, they will follow.

The point is this: when you introduce someone to a new way of being, you must show them slowly.  If you correct them for behaving in a way that you have allowed them to behave for months or years, they will be understandably upset.  Model the behavior that you desire…teach them the expectation.  Then show them when they make a mistake.  But correct them when they choose to do wrong.

Evening

Published
by
cdeagle
on May 8, 2008
in Writing
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It’s five o’clock, I’m laying in bed with my eyes closed.  Just got out of my work clothes.  Next to me, on the floor, Macy is making short work of an empty waterbottle. Chew chew, pant pant, chew chew.  Outside, three boys are playing basketball on a worn out hoop, and in the kitchen I can hear Kim preparing hamburgers for the grill.

God knows, I’m a lucky man.

I’ll be with you till the day I die

Published
by
cdeagle
on April 17, 2008
in Life and Writing
. Closed

I saw him again this morning, dressed all in black, walking along the roadside with a clarinet (of all things!) slung ’round his neck. 

And at his side came his companion, charging through dew laden grass in endless exploration.  His companion, this animal, must have been tethered to him by invisible bonds of fealty, because it never strayed far.  All the world to see and smell, and this dog was content with a man, whose appearance and bearing were inglorious as any.

There’s a myth, thought to have originated in Romania. 

It seems that Saint Peter was taking a stroll in heaven with God when a dog came up. “What’s that?” said Saint Peter. God told him it was a dog, adding, “Do you want to know why I made him?” Naturally Peter was interested. “Well, you know how much trouble my brother, the Devil, has caused me . . . how he made me drive Adam and Eve out of Paradise. The poor things nearly starved, so I gave them sheep for meat and warm wool to clothe them. And now that fellow is making a wolf to harass and destroy the sheep! So I have made a dog. He knows how to drive the wolf away. He will guard the flocks. He will guard the possessions of man.”

It’s a great story, but I would suggest a better creation myth for dogs, based on what I know of their nature, and what I saw this morning, on the roadside.  God created Eve to complete Adam, and in her God nurtured all of the attributes that, in Adam, were weakest.  In this way, the characteristics which Adam lacked were gifted to him.  Eve was a help, that which Adam was not, she was. 

After she was created, Adam rejoiced.  But, in that dawn of the earths creation, when the world was still fresh, all things were new and alive with the power that had formed them, I think Adam came back to God.  I imagine he said, blundering as he was, that Eve was wonderful and all, but Lord, she is so strong willed, and I can hardly get a word in.  In the strengths that a woman has, innate and opposite, a man may feel diminished.  And, the Lord saw this, and knowing that it would cause strife, He sought a way to perfect the opposite strengths in Adam.  Not to counteract, but to balance those which Eve possessed.

With this goal, He created the dog, which may be loved by a woman, but which can only belong to the heart of a man.  And the next morning, when he rose, Eve asked him where they would go, and what they would eat, and how he felt about an orange orchard…and Dog followed him, spoke little, and trusted much.  In the evenings, I imagine that they walked together, this first man and dog, creating a relationship that all of their descendants would, ever after, long for.  Walked, and said naught.  In the wilderness, this first dog died, defending the man Adam, and as it did, its heart broke that it wouldn’t be beside the man anymore.  That it couldn’t teach him to lead fearlessly by showing him reckless trust, that it wouldn’t sit by his side in the murky dusk and keep watch, that it couldn’t, just once more, sacrifice itself to protect him. 

And we have inherited this relationship.  Men mostly have, and are hardly embarassed to admit having, a deep and abiding affection for dogs.  There is a kind of familiarity in a mans relationship with a dog.  It needs no explanation, it is a thing understood.  Instinctual.  As welcome and comfortable as an old pair of shoes, or a favorite seat (here, C.S. Lewis would say, “at the pub”, and I will say…) at that coffee shop, just down the street. 

My inglorious traveler on the roadside, who may go home to a life of little wonderment, is invested in a relationship as old as time.  What use can there be for a leash, when a man and a dog have found their places in eachothers lives?