Tag: Dog Page 8 of 10

I think geriatric dogs are sages. They know what’s up with almost everything and if you tap into their body rhythms, a.k.a. their outdoor bidness, you may just be able to predict when the stock market will crash again; or at least if it’s gonna be a good day or not.
Based on what just happened, I believe the market could be jittery tomorrow. The dog went out for her late night attempt at bidness. While she made many laps clockwise and counter-clockwise around the yard, there was not even the slightest indication of a squat, a start and fit, a fit and start, a fart, or just…anything. Sometimes she’ll lift her tail and hold it like a pointer for a short amount of time. That is usually an indicator of doody to come. You better get her outside and ready for the doggie sit down when she’s exhibiting this behavior.
Sometimes she’s just a little gassy when she does that. While she was not doing this tonight before the wife and I retired (the dog admirably performed both numbers one and two at 8 p.m., retiring proudly herself thereafter), I thought about how taking care of “Big Dawg” (one of my many nicknames for her) is not possible without the tag team efforts of my wife and I. Part of our system of care for Big Dawg is for me to take her out at 11:15 or so–her last time out before Rhonda gets her out for her morning run at 4:30 or so.
Tonight, on the 11:15 outing, she just looked at me as if to say, “Why did you set your alarm clock to wake yourself up out of a sound sleep so you could engage in this exercise of bowel-moving futility? I’m not ready and won’t be for awhile now.”
Good.
So what to do? The light went on. While there are certainly other things to write about here that people want to read, the rhythm of life that is building one’s daily routines around a beloved old animal’s needs, is a story many of us can relate to.
So, if Big Dawg’s bidness doings are not precursors of stock market performance, then maybe they serve some other, more nobler purpose. We don’t need another talking head economist, anyway, even if it’s a real dog, telling us where or how to invest our money or predicting the Superbowl winner. But by taking care of the dog, it sets up how our own days may take place, possibly enabling us to make better decisions and use of our time. The dog knows, boys and girls, the dog knows.

Thinking some hours down the road from now, I have a dentist appointment first thing at 8:15. I am planning on not drinking any coffee so that I might relax enough that I’ll snooze while having a cracked filling replaced. Some may think this is Zen of me, but it’s not so much Zen as it is attempting to stockpile sleep. Since my sleep is disjointed because of Big Dawg, I like to close my eyes when I can and get mini-naps in.
The last time I was at the dentist for some work, I was getting a crown that had slipped off re-cemented back on. I was worried I might have to get a new crown, but she was able to salvage the old one and conveyed that I had been snoring while she glued that puppy (Big Dawg influence) back on. I thanked her, telling her it was a compliment to her overall gentle, family dentistry practice whenever I can catch a few winks in the chair. She smiled wryly in agreement.
Speaking of smiling wryly, Big Dawg does that a lot. One of the mystifying things she does is sometimes after coming back in from not doing bidness, she will find a corner, or get behind a door and just stare. This is wry, Zen and oracle-like all rolled up into one, to me. I let her be like that for awhile.

It’s as if by just wedging herself between the door and the wall, snoot in the corner, standing on all fours, she is keeping interest rates low, quantitative easing churning, and the stock market steadily ascending.

This is a huge responsibility for Big Dawg, and one she does not take lightly. Sometimes she is so in the zone in the corner, I have to interrupt her so she doesn’t collapse under the economic strain of it all.
Image via CrunchBase
Strain is a good word. It’s kind of associated with words like stress. We stress and we strain. We strain and we stress. We hem and we haw, we haw and we hem. We do crazy shite like try Google Dogs, I mean, Docs, for the first time. It’s the Big Dawg’s influence again there, ladies and gentlemen. She absorbs the arrows and slings that are old age living with nary a voice of dissent.
She is Big Dawg. She wants us to be brave. She wants us to not stress or strain, too. But most of all, she wants you to have a good day. Even when she has an accident, her wisdom is readily abundant. She knows the wife and I take pride on telling one another what particular bowel movements she has during the course of any particular day. We try to make sure she gets out on time, but sometimes we lose the gamble as Big Dawg knows we have to live our lives as best we can. Big Dawg also knows that our trying to be there for her is a lot like those in pursuit of love or those who have at least tried: “To take your old dog outside to do her business is human. To forgive her after she pees or poops in the house a few hours later because she didn’t go when you woke yourself up to take her out earlier, is divine.”