Before I forget: instead of taking only Simon for a walk today, I spent a significant portion of the afternoon chasing squirrels around the yard with them. All I have to do is pick up the BB gun and let the BBs roll down the barrel, and the dogs are at the door, dancing and barking to get out and at them. I can see the feeder from my seat at the table and there is a squirrel out there now!
Well, three showed up, ardent in their eagerness, Simon, Frollie, and Schuster. Dexter hasn't been joining them this afternoon, which is unusual. He doesn't seem to be ill, but how can one tell? Out of the last six runs, he has joined us only once. We did a two mile hike yesterday, but he managed that well, I thought, and he is not limping. Just now, Mary let Frollie and Schuster back in, though Simon is still tearing around the yard, looking up trees and barking from time to time, which leads me to the reason for this entry. Sunlight and what a marvelous phenomenon it is, in its many manifestations.
First, the primary reason for the most pathetic BB gun ever is to keep the dogs interested in chase. The squirrels mock me when I shoot up a tree, for the BB never gets close. Today, however, as I was scouting the yard, I happened to look up at one of the white pines that grows to the south and west of our house. It so happened that the sun was precisely behind the trunk of the pine tree, about 35-40 degrees high. Instead of simply lighting the branches, the sun from behind the tree made a kind of spider web of light through the branches. The pattern was a circular ring of light that was absolutely brilliant. I called Mary who had just returned from somewhere with a large bag of kettle corn, and she saw it too: the descending, sinking sun and a brilliant spider web of light.
When I came out of the house the last time, I was immediately hit by a beam of sunlight from a snowflake ornament hanging on our deck from a crab apple tree branch. I think the "snowflake" is plastic with about a two inch center to which the spikes are attached. This time the light hit the center of the ornament directly so that it shot the single beam of sunlight right at me. Gift after gift on a sunlit December afternoon.
Thinking about gifts and such, I was feeling slightly guilty about not taking Simon for his walk around the neighborhood streets. I considered for a moment the consequences of taking him and leaving the other three. I have done that often and their disappointment is profound. We can hear them barking as we leave. Simon simply ignores them and pees his way down the steep driveway and on to the street. But what, I thought, if I had taken Frollie or Schuster instead of Simon. Would Simon have been "hurt"? Would he have experienced that exchange as a betrayal? How close emotionally is a dog's mind to ours in such matters? Simon would have to stand at the big front window and watch me disappear down the street with one of his mates. I decided that that was an emotion in him I was not willing to risk. I get glimpses of it from time to time in the evening when Frollie climbs into my chair with me when Simon is on the sofa. All I have to do is bring food, and Simon is on the floor in front of me, waiting for me to put Frollie down so he can resume his "rightful" place. Hmmm. I usually point out to Frollie a dog on TV (or something creaturely) whereupon Frollie jumps down to bark at it and Simon jumps up. Of course there is guilt there too as I have just betrayed Frollie to let Simon get up on the chair even though Simon had been asleep under covers on the sofa until the food came out.
While I do not pretend to understand dog psychology, or human, for that matter, there is more going on in their minds than we usually give them credit for, and I could describe instances of those complexities had time not just run out for today.