Dog and I (10 page)

The learning curve here at the lake is so different, in fact, from the world she lives in the rest of the time that I have taken the liberty of assigning a few marks and comments:

BUGS: D–

It is not possible, no matter how many diplomas or degrees this dog ultimately ends up with, to leap into the air and snap every single mosquito and blackfly and deer fly to death. On the other hand, this may be the first time in history that a dog has been exercised daily by a swarm of insects. It can't be long before the pet super-store starts selling portable “bug rooms” to keep city dogs as sharp and active as dogs at the lake.

RESPECT FOR THE DEAD: F

In the city, this mostly white-furred creature loves nothing better than to roll about in clean snow or a freshly cut lawn. Here, she has so far rolled on a dead squirrel, a crushed shrew, and some fish guts illegally and ignorantly left near the government landing by some intruder. An F also goes to the human who forgot to bring the ridiculous crate she sleeps in at home, which means that her now-rancid coat has left its delightful scent all over the bed.

NATURE STUDIES: D+

The dogwood is in full bloom and glorious. She has not even noticed. She has discovered, on the other hand, that rotten wood chews more easily than green hardwood and that there is nothing quite so cool, after some hot running, as lying down in the mud by the little creek.

FAUNA RECOGNITION: F–

On the drive in, we passed two small moose standing by the side of the road and one otter that ran across directly in front of the vehicle. She noticed nothing. Let a squirrel even tick a tiny paw nail while creeping about the property, however, and she is off like a heat-seeking missile. She has no sense, obviously, that they are the ones in charge of this endless game.

FETCHING: A+

We spent much of Saturday down by the landing, me tossing sticks in and imploring her to act like a proper dog. She watched several fly out and splash, and then she went off in search of more fish guts to roll in. Finally, she returned, calmly swam out to where one stick was still floating, brought it in, and dropped it by my feet. I, of course, threw it again. She, sensibly, shook off the ice-cold water—once is enough!—and darted off in search of something less predictable than a human.

BARK! BARK!

(Bark! Bark!)

“Come back here!”

(“Come back here!”)

It occurs to me, in moments like this, that there may be more difference between the city dog and the country dog than we realize. Especially when we are speaking of what we take to be the same dog, merely in different locales. I used to think the lake was a place where we went to escape the real world. But now I realize that it might well be another world. Or more accurately, a parallel universe, a never-discovered dimension, an alternative reality where nothing is as it was in the world just fled.

The dog at home is pure routine: she sleeps in a crate and is wagging her tail before seven, when the first one up comes downstairs. She scoops up a dirty sock or old sneaker, wiggles wildly, races up the stairs, and jumps, paws first, onto the head of the one still sleeping. She then goes outside, briefly, always tied to a line, and returns instantly upon completion of the tasks at paw. She curls up on a mat and sleeps most of the morning, moving only to bark at the mail dropping into the outside box. At noon she places a heavy head on my knee and stares. It is time for the walk. The long walk completed, she goes back to sleep, usually upside down with all four paws in the air. At 3:45 sharp, she comes back into the office with a lacrosse ball in mouth and makes enough of a nuisance repeatedly dropping it on the hardwood floor that I get up and take her to the field for a half hour of fetch. She goes back to bed. She gets out again late and then goes, usually on her own, off to her crate for the night. (We live in Ottawa. So you're welcome to think of this little dog, Willow, as the animal version of a civil servant.)

For a long time I believed it was this dog we were taking to the lake. Same colour, same size, answers— sometimes—to the same name. But I now see that it is another dog entirely.

The dog that is at the lake has no routine. She begins to dance the moment the packing begins. The instant the vehicle turns onto the first back road, she transforms into a furry creature that makes the Energizer bunny seem like a stuffed animal. By the time the tires hit gravel, she is virtually steering.

The dog that sleeps all day at home hardly sleeps at all at the lake. From dawn to midnight, she chases squirrels, sniffs through the woods, and pounds the outside of the screen door with sticks, dropping them only if someone is foolish enough to answer. She then backs off, crouching low in the hopes that the person will take pity on her and try—I dare you!—to throw the stick of the moment where it cannot be retrieved.

At home she is so clean the kids will often bury their faces in her fur; at the cottage that fur often needs burying itself. At home, she sleeps in her crate; at the cottage she lies where she wishes. At home, she takes a back seat; at the cottage, she moves instantly to the front of the boat, hanging off the bow like Kate Winslet in
Titanic
.

I suppose, however, that this parallel universe for pets really should come as no great surprise. After all, when you think about it, it applies to us as well. The difference is, when I sleep through the winter, I don't dream of chasing squirrels at the lake. And I don't stick my legs straight up in the air, churning madly. At least no one has ever mentioned it.

In the Now of Mid-life

“What,” the question goes, “does a man do standing up that a woman does sitting down that a dog does on three legs?”

“Shake hands.”

That was my first off-colour joke, told to me at age six or seven. Since those long-ago days I have grown up—if only somewhat—but I still puzzle over the many differences and similarities between humans and their pets. In some ways it all depends on perspective: as the old saying goes, they drink out of our toilet, we pee in their water bowl. But still, there is one pressing matter that has one telling answer.

Question: “What do most men go through that no dog ever does?”

Answer: “A mid-life crisis.”

Man in mid-life—or so I hear—is often at his worst: insecure, unhappy, confused, uncertain, desperate to be anything but what he is at this precise moment. A dog in mid-life, on the other hand, lives in the moment— and could not possibly be happier.

The dog does not pine for those days when it got in trouble for piddling on the floor, or for that day when it went off in the car to that awful place with the cold steel tabletops and came out a couple of days later without its reproductive organs. Nor is the dog filled with regret for paths not taken—largely because it took them all. It does not lament dead gophers not rolled in or bums not sniffed. It does not mourn for those missed golden opportunities when the collar suddenly snapped off and, for a moment, the entire world was calling out to have its territory marked off.

At night, dogs don't stare at their reflections in the sliding doors and wonder if their fur is thinning. They don't nervously pop little breath mints—though it
would
be nice. Most of them—especially yellow Labs—seem to take enormous pride in their love handles. And the very notion of their ever needing a special pill to hop the leg of the first stranger coming in through the front door is simply preposterous.

Dogs in mid-life are in their prime. They are healthy, wise, content, and the greatest companion possible. They are, simply, what we see when we think of dogs. Puppies can capture your heart; old dogs will break your heart; but it is the mid-life dog that owns your heart.

It's something about dependability, I guess. The best dog name I ever came across is in Wayland Drew's poetic
Halfway Man,
a novel about Native and white values colliding north of Lake Superior. Travis Niskigwun has the greatest dog imaginable: a big middle-aged mutt who is always by his side, always ready to do his slightest bidding.

The dog's name? “Guaranteed.”

Not all of my dogs reached middle age. The first, as I have mentioned before, was only a puppy when hit by a garbage truck; the most recent is still a young adult. But Cindy, Bumps, and Bandit all had glorious and healthy years when they were simply “the dog,” by far the most dependable, and likely the most universally beloved, member of the entire family.

Guaranteed.

Something eventually happens to a dog as he or she grows into middle age. One day the leash, which you had previously needed to hang on to as you would a rope tow at a ski hill, suddenly goes slack, a welcome and telling bow between the human hand that holds it and the collar where it is attached. In some cases the leash is no longer even necessary, but is needed, curiously, by dog as much as by owner—almost as if it is walking you, not the other way around.

Bandit, curiously, was comfortable during walks only if she held a part of the leash in her mouth, just to be sure the human was coming along at Bandit's chosen pace. After I put the leash on I had to fold it back and allow her to chomp down on the hand loop, and then off we'd go, the walker hopping along beside her on a very short leash indeed.

One day, somewhat beyond the second year, it becomes possible to let the dog out the back door and it does not run away but sits, patiently, waiting for you to put on your boots and perhaps even your jacket, hat, and gloves and come and enjoy the fresh air. One day, for no apparent reason, the grown dog can take or leave a thrown ball. One day, for no reason at all, it stops racing along the paths with a massive stick in the mouth, clipping the shins and calves of every human foolish enough to think the traffic will show courtesy. One day there is no longer a dirty sock or an old shoe in the mouth.

And so begins the very best time of your relationship, that long stretch when, if I may be permitted a little human vanity here, owner and pet are equals, the relationship symbiotic—they need us to feed them; we need them to greet us—and as comfortable and, truly, as rich as or richer than any other friendship you will ever make.

I may not know art, but I know what I like—and I love what the eccentric Vincent Van Gogh once had to say about the art of owning a canine pet: “If you don't have a dog—at least one—there is not necessarily anything wrong with you, but there may be something wrong with your life.” Again, guaranteed.

Each mature dog is, of course, different. When Cindy was middle-aged and I was a teenager we lived in a small town in Central Ontario, and the best parts were the long hikes up through the woods behind Reservoir Hill and chasing sticks out well past the big floating dock at my grandparents' log home in Algonquin Park. When Bumps was middle-aged and I was in my twenties and thirties, there were still small children for her to spend hours rounding up and making sure they didn't wander off. She was child, sibling, and even parent to all six of us humans in the various houses in which we lived as we moved about the province. When Bandit was middleaged and I was well into my forties and early fifties, the kids began moving out to go away to school and she was the constant comfort that made their leaving somewhat acceptable and, more importantly, made their returns home moments of great barking and wiggling joy.

Willow is the first dog I have beaten to middle age. It is both an amusing and an alarming thought. I never expected to grow up so quickly. Yet now I am wanting Willow to grow up too quickly, it seems, just so that she can become that remarkable, constant sidekick that a middle-aged dog becomes, a presence so natural and easy that it is remarked upon only when it is gone.

Journalists don't have mid-life crises. We have mid-year, mid-month, mid-week, and even mid-day crises. (There, I just had one mid-sentence!) I am not as comfortable in my own skin as any dog I have had is, but I expect that is merely a human condition. Dogs know exactly who they are and haven't the slightest interest in the question; humans waste a good portion of their lives on questions that have no answers.

What dogs do—particularly a middle-aged, confident, contented dog—is offer perspective. They can cause you to look at something from another angle, to realize, in an instant, how lucky you are and how foolish you've been. Kids do much the same, especially when they are very young and don't know what it is you do for a living, let alone care about your work and the enormous weight you allow it to place on your shoulders. Travel gives a different and equally welcome perspective, distance and time away making those things you take for granted— from your own backyard to your own country—suddenly seem special, as if you'd somehow failed to take proper notice and appreciate.

Travel, however, far too quickly recedes. Kids change, as they should, from treating you as the centre of their lives to wanting you at the furthest fringes of their lives to, eventually, accepting and even embracing you as a significant part of their lives. The dog, on the other hand, never seems to change, not even when the end is near. Your coming through that front door remains, right to final tail wag, the single most significant event in the history of that moment—for the moment is all that they live for. And living for the moment is the secret that they give to us.