I am fearless. I am Danny the Dog and (to be redundant) I fear nothing. I chase squirrels chickens, raccoons, ducks and of course, cats. However, there is one thing that kind of gets to me, and that is thunder. I don’t know why that is. My human, whose name is Andrew, told me I should go to a doggie psychiatrist and have a past life regression. He said maybe in a past life I had a run in with Thor, the god of thunder. Did I ever tell you that Andrew is an idiot?
Usually I have very little to do with Andrew. I take him for a walk a couple of times a day. I allow him to feed me and give me treats, but for the most part he goes his way and I go mine. But when it thunders, I want to be as close to him as possible. He’s always on the computer. He went nuts a few years ago and threw the television out the window and he hasn’t replaced it yet. So there he sits, staring at the computer screen day after day. He tells me he’s trying to write, but I know better. Anyway, back to me.
So when it thunders I crawl up on his lap and come between him and his precious computer. But I have to hand it to the old reprobate, he stops what he’s doing, puts his arm around me and tells me not to worry.
As soon as the storm passes, I jump down and go back to ignoring him and he goes back to whatever it was he was doing. He was probably on a dating site begging some poor female to go out with him.
The above picture was taken during the height of a thunderstorm. I want you all to know that I usually don’t look so forlorn. Now if you will excuse me, there’s a mother duck and her babies swimming by our boat (do ducks swim?), and I must bark at them. After all, this is my turf and I must defend it to the last bark because I am fearless.
Hi, it’s me again, Danny the Dog. Today, I want to go into more detail about my friend Cinnamon. She lives down the street and we visit most mornings. But she has this thing for cats. I don’t mean as a normal dog would have a thing for cats, like you and me. She likes them! I know, I didn’t believe it either until I beheld a mind-boggling incident with my own eyes.
I must admit there was a time, in my younger days, that I hung around with cats. Well, they were actually kittens. My human, whose name is Andrew, brought home a kitten one day and before you knew it, the damn thing was grown and had a litter of six, and shortly after they were weaned she disappeared. And guess who took over looking after the little monsters? I got no peace during the day because they would follow me around everywhere I went in the yard or inside the house. In those days, we lived in a house with a dog door, so I could come and go as I pleased. At night, the kittens would crowd me. One of them, Blackie, slept on my neck every night! But eventually they grew up and started doing whatever it is that cats do and I went back to being a dog, not a surrogate mother.
Now, what I am about to tell you is true, I swear it on Lassie’s grave. I was over at Cinnamon’s house and we were in the yard sniffing around, at least I was. Cinnamon had her nose in the air and it was twitching a mile a minute. I gave a sniff or two, but didn’t detect anything of interest, so I went back to a fascinating scent over by the corner of the house.
When I next looked up, Cinnamon was gone. The yard is fenced in, so I thought maybe she went into the house. But it was funny that I didn’t hear her human come and get her. I must have been engrossed more than I thought with the scent I was following. I think it was a raccoon. My human was in the house also, but I have him trained well enough by now that he lets me pursue my delights without too much interference from him.
So I’m scampering around the yard, running hither and yond. Sniffing this and that when who do I see outside the fence, but Cinnamon! She trotted over to the far corner, got down on her belly and squeeze under the fence. I didn’t even see that escape route. If I had, I’d be long gone. But then again, I wasn’t thinking of running away because Cinnamon came up to me, and she had a kitten in her mouth. At first, I thought the kitten was dead, but Cinnamon was holding her gingerly and the kitten didn’t seem to mind. Then Cinnamon did an extraordinary thing. She gently put the feline on the grass and put her big paw on it, to hold it in place.
I was thinking, “How nice, a present for me.” But she readily disabused me of that notion by licking the damn little thing. She was cleaning it! Just then, Andrew and Cinnamon’s human (her name is Maggie) came out of the house. They had been in there doing what humans do when there is one female and one male involved and they are alone. I don’t even like to think about it.
Maggie walked up to Cinnamon and said, “Oh no, not again!” Then she turned to Andrew and continued talking, “She did this a few months ago, she has this thing for kittens. She wants to adopt them. The cat you saw in the house, Roscoe, she brought home. I had to walk the neighborhood trying to find where he belonged, but I never did find out. So Cinnamon and I acquired a new member to our family.”
The upshot of the whole story is that Maggie never did find out where Cinnamon snatched the latest kitten from, whose name is now Fuzzy. Sometimes Andrew and I go over there and spend the night. These are the sleeping arrangements: Cinnamon sleeps curled up around Fuzzy and Roscoe, Andrew and Maggie sleep together, and me, the intrepid watchdog stays in the backyard and watches for marauding raccoons.
I've just been reading a little Billy Shakespeare and listening to Kris Kristofferson. Genius will tell out. What got to me this day was how they both spoke to having nothing. Billy said, "Having nothing, nothing can he lose." and Kris wrote, "Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose. Nothin' ain't worth nothin' but it's free."
In dog years I'm an old man, or an old dog if you will; and with age comes experience and with experience comes wisdom. And with wisdom comes the realization that we need nothing to be, nothing to exist. We accumulate so much crap and it never makes us happy. Here in America we have storage facilities on every friggin' corner We have so much crap we have to pay someone to hold it for us.
Over one hundred years ago Henry David Thoreau told his neighbors that they saved things and put them in their attics and there the stuff stayed until they died. Then their heirs sold the stuff and people bought it and put it in their attics until they died. Ecetra ... ecetra ... ecetra.
Wait a minute ... it's hard to write and listen to Kris ... "Feelin good was easy Lord when Bobby sang the blues. Buddy that was good enough for me ... good enough for me and Bobby McGee ..." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-J7mLyD3yc
Wow ... that song does something to me ... okay where was I?
I reckon what I want to say today is that all we need, dogs, humans and anyone else, is love. There is only love. There is fear of course, the fear of not having enough, the fear of not being loved enough. But love will always triumph fear. So my non-dog friends, love. I'm a dog and I love my human unconditionally. Love those around you, never trade your love, never ask for something in return because then it is not love.
"I'd trade all my tomorrows for a single yesterday ..."
Hey guys ... it's me Danny your favourite dog. I'm hangin' out just listenin' to Willie sing a little Kris. My human, Andrew, doesn't get it, he doesn't know that Kris and Willie are speaking for God. Have you ever listened to "Sunday Morning Comin' Down?"
Andrew is off the boat ... gettin' in trouble no doubt. Me, I'm listenin' to Willie.
I love to ride in cars, don't you? Sticking my head out the window, barking at any dogs I see along the way ... I can even put up with Andrew when I'm riding in a car.
So this is what I wanted to tell ya. Two days ago Andrew took me out to his car and opened the door and told me to get inside. Normally I wouldn't do what he wanted. But a ride in the car ... so I jumped in. I didn't know where we were going, but as long as I could stick my head out the window I didn't care.
It was a Sunday morning, the roads were empty, and it was a good thing because Andrew was a little worse for the wear. He had had a rough Saturday night and he was still a little tipsy. And just like in the song, he stopped by a church and we listened to the choir. It was then that I knew what Kris meant when he wrote, "There's something in a Sunday that makes a body feel alone." Because I saw it in Andrew's eyes that Sunday morning. It was indeed a Sunday morning coming down.
He turned to me and said, "I need a beer."
I thought, "You need more than a beer pal, you need help."
We were still by the church and a lonely bell was ringing ... and Andrew was wishing he was stoned. just like in the song. Friggin' humans!
I knew that the only thing Andrew cared more about than getting high was me. So before he could start the car and go looking for booze on that Sunday morning, I jumped out the window and took off, knowing that he would chase after me. As long as he was focused on me he'd not dwell on ... his Sunday Morning coming down.
I'm sorry to say he caught up with me right away and then we went and bought a six-pack.
It was indeed a Sunday Morning coming down, and it came smack down, right on the head of my human.
