the wilderness

 It’s that time of year… the doldrums. Each day melds into the next with nary a game of golf or swim in the pool to distract. My motivation is at an all time low so we aren’t doing anything energetic. We need to get involved in a project or activity to get us through the worst of this winter. Tomorrow’s project will be shovelling a sh?& ton of snow that is bearing down on us!

We did have a bit of excitement on Friday… there was a 6 month old little dog for sale that had us wondering. We set up a meeting at PetSmart (a fine neutral venue) where we met the little creature. She was totally adorable but good sense prevailed as it was clear that she was too tiny and too fragile for a home with a whirling dervish… errrr… Rhodesian Ridgeback! But! We’ve started the process and will keep in mind the multiple ‘wants’ and ‘must haves’. I think I’m going to have to prioritise as I’m not seeing a breed that fits the bill. I need to do some GMOing on dog genes.

Sunday we had Jo Ellen and Don over for a mid-day dinner of pasta with homemade tomato sauce and meatballs. It was good (no, it was imperative) to have company today. We hadn't seen them since before Spike left us… Jo Ellen was one of his favourite people, perhaps remembering the sunspot in her office during his working days. Miraculously I didn’t cry although I was pretty close a few times.

J&D had their little poodle, Romy, with them so Adia got to practice some time in her crate while we ate, and then we did some proximity training. Romy doesn’t like other dogs but was starting to relax - it wasn’t time to let them get together, but I think it won’t be long before they can ignore each other. Adia surprised me with her focus and self control. She’s really grown since the pandemic started!

After they left we watched ‘Riverdance’, the animated one that just came out on Netflix. It was fun with tons of Irish step dancing. I love step dancing and follow two of the members of the live version (the Gardiner brothers) for a fix every now and again. I was proud of my little brother Olaf who got billing as Director of Photography for layout.

Awesome!

“walking into PetSmart for the first time in 2 years.”

“bright sun on a freezing day”

“good weather and roads for our trip to see the puppy”

“Adia walking past Romy without straining to see her”

“But I want to extol not the sweetness nor the placidity of the dog, but the wilderness out of which he cannot step entirely, and from which we benefit. For wilderness is our first home too, and in our wild ride into modernity with all its concerns and problems we need also all the good attachments to that origin that we can keep or restore. Dog is one of the messengers of that rich and still magical first world. The dog would remind us of the pleasures of the body with its graceful physicality, and the acuity and rapture of the senses, and the beauty of forest and ocean and rain and our own breath. There is not a dog that romps and runs but we learn from him.

The other dog—the one that all its life walks leashed and obedient down the sidewalk—is what a chair is to a tree. It is a possession only, the ornament of a human life. Such dogs can remind us of nothing large or noble or mysterious or lost. They cannot make us sweeter or more kind.

Only unleashed dogs can do that. They are a kind of poetry themselves when they are devoted not only to us but to the wet night, to the moon and the rabbit-smell in the grass and their own bodies leaping forward.”

― Mary Oliver, Dog Songs

I always get the thrill of the wild when the dogs are racing around or tracking some wild thing. There is nothing as joyful as a dog running.