Tonights walk

Walking with and watching the dog learn and behave in a calm submissive way makes for happy companionship on a walk around the block. It's not a good neighborhood I live in, and as I turned down a street I'm unfamiliar with and began to make my way in a direction I knew to be toward home, I found myself on a quiet undesirable back street. The dog begins to be more aggressive in her role, walking ahead, nose down and unnaturally interested in every smell along the side of the walk, pulling forward, falling behind. Her attention is on anything besides me. Now I'm aware of a car parked along the curb that I am fast approaching, 2 young men inside. My attention now is on anything besides her, and I pull out every trick in the book about looking and seeming unlike a target. My posture is now more assertive, shoulders back, eyes ahead and looking towards and at the car to let them know I see them. Like I will do when I pass an aggressive dog, Caesar tells us to just keep walking, don't stop, don't even hesitate, eyes ahead just continue doing what you're doing. Nothing happens. Past the scene, the dog goes back to just walking, I go back to just walking. It makes me wonder who set off who, the dog preparing me, me preparing the dog, or just mutual respect to watch out for each other because of our happy companionship.

Sid's Angel

Some 20 years ago, a family went to the pound to decide on a dog. There he was in his anonymous splendor, defying identification of his breed. So home he went and the first order of business was to get him checked out at the vet. The diagnosis was sound health, needs his nails trimmed and his, well, you know what dog-hood disarmed. The vet went on to say what a good looking dog this is, is he a Catahoula Leopard Dog? Who knows, this was in a day and age before PetCo Dog DNA tests, which as we know now would have better identified him as a wire-haired-Plott-hound-Brussels Griffon then anything else in their limited baselines. But that’s another story. So we take our new “Cat” home and look him up in the dog breed books and sure enough he very well could be one and it’s a fun story to tell when showing him off to friends and family. That is, a fun story to try to tell but to do so required using a mouthful of long words, and even longer explanation of this non-AKC recognized herding dog from the Louisiana Bayou back country. So we eventually stop making reference to his breed and just go on to know him as “Sid”. Skip ahead 15 years, after a life well lived and a friendship borne of constant companionship, it’s now time to make the hardest decision ever known to mankind, at least to those who have been touched by the truest friendship and purest emotion only a pet can elicit. The loss it will create is what is so hard about the decision, it is actually an easy non-decision because of the trust he has put in me and the dignity and respect I will bestow on him not to suffer or be less of the dog he always strived to be. There is the doubt that you will know the exact moment when to say when, but when that time actually does come, you just know. Skip ahead to that day. I go to my regular vet where we’ve come for the past few years and we know them and they know us, but yet the man that appears in the little room is a stranger to me. He’s large but gentle. He’s competent but kind. He’s thorough in his descriptions and preparations so there would be no misunderstanding during the sequence of events but somehow in his demeanor he has made me feel comfortable. But the coolest part of all was that before he proceeds, he takes a few minutes to talk to me, ask about Sid, ask about our lives together, Sid and I. And then, as if he accidentally revealed himself to me for the angel that he truly was, there to help both me and Sid know that this was the right day, the right decision, he said, “now that’s a good looking dog. What is he, a Catahoula Leopard Dog?” This time I just said yes. And then we said goodbye.