We have an older dog named Copper who turned 15 several months ago. She's a sweet old dog, and having spent a few days here at home over the holidays, I've seen a lot of Copper. The poor thing does the best she can -- she is blind and for the most part deaf, so she navigates around the house by bumping into things and taking alternate paths in territory that is still, even in a limited way, familiar to her. It's sad to see this, but actually, Copper doesn't seem to mind in the least. And when it's dinner time, she still jumps around as best she can to show that she's still very much in the game.
But lately, I've been wondering what's going through her mind. After all, dogs do dream -- we know that because we see them kicking, barking and running in their sleep, chasing after something which only they can see. Yesterday, I watched Copper as she lowered herself gently to the floor to take what must have been her seventeenth nap of the day, and it almost looked to me that she was thinking of something, trying to elicit a memory.
Concurrent with this, my wife has embarked on a massive scrapbooking project, trying to catch up with our lives for the last twenty years, and in some of the pictures, I see a younger, more mischievous Copper. As I watched Copper yesterday, I wondered if she might be thinking of any of the moments in time captured in the old photographs -- hanging with her old canine buddy Cody, long since departed, or Tonto, her feline partner in crime all those years ago. I can't help but think that in Copper's little mind, some of those scenes are still vivid, and that she calls them back on demand at times, just as we recall the pleasant, and sometimes unpleasant, memories of our own lives. I wonder.
Of course, the sad thing about this, depending on your point of view, is that every year of a dog's life is worth seven of ours. We dote on our pets these days, buying them all kinds of crazy toys, special diets, and even college team sweaters, but in the end, we can't extend their lives to match ours, though often we wish we could. So as this new year starts, I think I'm going to add to my list of resolutions a reminder to put myself in my pets' place from time to time, to try to see the world from their eyes. After all, to our pets, we are the world.
Happy New Year, everyone.
Showing posts with label Pets. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pets. Show all posts
Friday, January 1, 2010
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Lord of the Flies
I often have thought that the life of a dog would not really be so bad, except for the fact that you are highly dependent on your caregiver for food, shelter, medical care, and release to the great outdoors when the need arises. However, a situation occurred last week which has forced me to rethink this position.
Our small dog Payday, a Boston Terrier-Dachshund mix, spotted two large flies in a downstairs room of our house. These were no ordinary flies -- owing partly to the hot, humid summer we've been having, these were veritable beasts, each about 3/4 inch in length. Each fly was in and of itself large enough to occupy a seat on a commuter train. It is rare that we have even one fly in the house, so the appearance of two soon garnered Payday's full attention.
Payday typically looks at you dead on; that is, he rarely looks up or down, but instead prefers to look straight ahead -- in fact, he exhibits remarkably good posture for a small dog and, had he been born human, most likely could have been accepted to flight school owing to his steady gaze. But in this case, the flies soon caused Payday to begin wandering from room to room, peering up at the ceiling for hours on end. Both flies were sent to the great Entomological Beyond in short order, but not before one of them temporarily disappeared into a small hole in the ceiling of our finished basement. This untoward event caused the dog to go insane. He began barking hysterically, running around the basement, and generally exhausting himself.
The next day, it was more of the same. Payday walked from room to room, staring obsessively at the ceiling to see if he could spot more flies. He would sit on the floor, and as you spoke to him, he would first look at you, and then uncontrollably, without a second thought, he would begin to scan the ceiling looking for more flies. This continued for three straight days, until finally, probably in need of a chiropractor or a behavioral therapist, his gaze once again returned to normal, just in time for us to adopt a new cat. You can only imagine what then ensued.
And here is where I believe it does not pay to be a dog. In this situation, Payday had no idea that he was exhibiting marked obsessive-compulsive behavioral symptoms, nor could he communicate this to anyone. He was in need of help but unable to express the severity of his condition. Then, to top it off, a new creature, not of his own choosing, was introduced into his environment, a stimulus which almost without exception upsets the apple cart of canine life.
Poor dog. At least he no longer cranes his neck incessantly upwards. But given his limited ascension of the phylogenetic scale, he is perhaps unable to differentiate the cat from a very large fly. It's fortunate that the cat stays on the ground...most of the time.
Our small dog Payday, a Boston Terrier-Dachshund mix, spotted two large flies in a downstairs room of our house. These were no ordinary flies -- owing partly to the hot, humid summer we've been having, these were veritable beasts, each about 3/4 inch in length. Each fly was in and of itself large enough to occupy a seat on a commuter train. It is rare that we have even one fly in the house, so the appearance of two soon garnered Payday's full attention.
Payday typically looks at you dead on; that is, he rarely looks up or down, but instead prefers to look straight ahead -- in fact, he exhibits remarkably good posture for a small dog and, had he been born human, most likely could have been accepted to flight school owing to his steady gaze. But in this case, the flies soon caused Payday to begin wandering from room to room, peering up at the ceiling for hours on end. Both flies were sent to the great Entomological Beyond in short order, but not before one of them temporarily disappeared into a small hole in the ceiling of our finished basement. This untoward event caused the dog to go insane. He began barking hysterically, running around the basement, and generally exhausting himself.
The next day, it was more of the same. Payday walked from room to room, staring obsessively at the ceiling to see if he could spot more flies. He would sit on the floor, and as you spoke to him, he would first look at you, and then uncontrollably, without a second thought, he would begin to scan the ceiling looking for more flies. This continued for three straight days, until finally, probably in need of a chiropractor or a behavioral therapist, his gaze once again returned to normal, just in time for us to adopt a new cat. You can only imagine what then ensued.
And here is where I believe it does not pay to be a dog. In this situation, Payday had no idea that he was exhibiting marked obsessive-compulsive behavioral symptoms, nor could he communicate this to anyone. He was in need of help but unable to express the severity of his condition. Then, to top it off, a new creature, not of his own choosing, was introduced into his environment, a stimulus which almost without exception upsets the apple cart of canine life.
Poor dog. At least he no longer cranes his neck incessantly upwards. But given his limited ascension of the phylogenetic scale, he is perhaps unable to differentiate the cat from a very large fly. It's fortunate that the cat stays on the ground...most of the time.
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