23 October 2014
If my parents were still alive, my father would be 110 this year. If I remember correctly, my father's birthday was October 30, my mother's birthday was October 18, and my wife's birthday is October 31. Whether I can hold on to that knowledge for another eight days is a really curious test of my faculties or faculty. There must have been some really cold winters back in the day.
Well, I am experimenting with my weblog, or "blog" as the culture insists on saying now. So, to the dogs! When I finish my daily container of Yoplait raspberry yogurt each morning, I give it to one of the dogs to lick. They cluster around my feet, looking hopeful; but one container, one dog. If Simon isn't there when I start eating, when he hears me scraping the bottom of the container, he hurries to get there, for he knows he is the favorite and that he will get the container. He hears me scraping the bottom!
The interesting aspect of that behavior is how it reveals the dog's mental processes. He interprets the signs in his environment just as we do, even though he is not capable of explaining them, since he has no words, so to speak. Usually the "signs" are blatant, the mail truck stops in front of the house; "Oh," thinks Dexter the beagle, "I never saw that before; I had better let the good folks know." So, woof woof it is, though with Dexter, it is usually a long and sustained howl or bellow. Before you can roll up a newspaper, the other three are howling or barking too. Woof woof!
We do not take them for walks everyday, though we know we should, yet they all know the day we are going to go, seemingly before we ourselves know. At which point pandemonium ensues. Dexter barks incessantly, the other three bark incessantly, and tear around the house and up and down the stairs. Their enthusiasm is apparently boundless. Schuey grabs a toy tiger, Simon barks and runs a little, but he always checks with me to make sure I am going too. When we return, Simon won't go from the garage to the house until he sees me moving that way too. The "sign" that tips them off, I think, is me changing into my walking clothes in the late afternoon.
If I am simply changing to leave for a movie, leaving them behind, they know the difference. Since we have large dog pillows in the master bedroom where the dogs usually sleep too, Frollie is almost always there late afternoon, napping, but I see her watching me intently. She/they almost always get it right from the beginning, and Simon simply stays under his blanket on the sofa, Schuster stays perched on top of the love seat, and Dexter, Dexter stays sleeping on whatever large piece of furniture he has appropriated for the time.
The final sign--we carry Schuster's crate (cage, actually) into the front room where Dexter and Simon are, open the door, and he hops down from the top of the love seat and walks right in. That is precious. He walks in as if that were the only place in the world where he wanted to be. And, we always make sure he has at least two toy tigers to sleep on, for when we come home and open the crate door, he runs out, then runs back in, grabs a tiger and brings it to us. "Goodness! You came back! I wasn't sure, but here you are! I am so happy!" That they are all happy, at least, of that I am certain. Well, they may not have been fed yet either, and Dexter always checks our breaths as we climb the stairs to see what we ate while we were away.
Once Simon finishes the Yoplait yogurt container, he takes the bottom off to retrieve the goodies around the edge. All of them have learned that if they take the bottom off, there are untold raspberry yogurt treasures to be had. How they figured out how to get it off is another matter. The curious thing is to see how many container pieces they need in order to tear the bottom away from the sides. I have seen Simon do it in two. I watched him do it the other day and I have never seen a dog work so intently, determinedly, and viciously on anything. He held it down with his paws and ripped a piece off, checked to see how he was doing, bit and ripped another piece off so that he could lick the bottom, then get hold of the bottom and pull it away from the container. Wow! I have seen as few as two pieces of plastic on the rug; this morning there were five.
Though it was good to be "on vacation" from this responsibility, it is very good to be able to write about my favorite "friends" and constant companions again. Thanks for reading.