Thinner Ice

I don't think I am such a bad sort. I enjoy being the way I am. But today I got in trouble for it.

Me and my alleged Person were going to Red Dog Heaven, my own special dog park for one (though sometimes that Wild Whirl of Fur Tasha goes there too). To get to my special Finny Fiefdom you have go to the river and you go down the Stone Steps, and there are 100 of them (my Person counted them for me). And then if you are a good dog you wait half way down while your Person trots ahead of you down the final 50 or so steps. And when she gives you the high sign you tear down the slope, neatly avoiding the steps, and barrel off into the woods barking your fool head off. It is great fun.

But today there was another dog there already! Can you believe it?

And I sort of was unable to wait for my Person's high sign and I disobeyed and ran down the slope and after the other dog before my Person was even down the steps herself. And I almost got into a fight with the other dog because turned out that up close he was way bigger than he looked from 100 steps up a steep slope. Then my Person came after me and picked me up! I was so embarrassed. And she carried me halfway up the steps and she sputtered some terrible things including "You are a bad dog!" And then I had to behave myself for hours it felt like.

Things have been dicey for me down at the river lately. My Person says I am skating on thin ice. But I don't think she is really talking about that shiny slippery cold stuff.

A couple of weeks ago I was innocently chasing eagles and I ran out on the thin ice after a pair of them and I guess that wasn't one of my smarter moves. I didn't fall in but my Person sure screamed a lot from the shore. And last week we saw a poor dog who HAD fallen in and couldn't make it back up on the ice and by the time we got to the spot to try to help him there was no dog any more - just a hole in the ice. He skated on ice that was indeed too thin.

There has been a man living in my special park, all alone and with just a pile of blankets to keep him from freezing at night. My Person tried to find some help for him but his life seems to be on thin ice. Maybe we all are on thin ice whether we know it or not, and I don't mean the shiny slippery cold stuff either!

Anyway, I am in the dog house. Maybe tomorrow I will remember to be good and stay of the ice, thin or not.

Roll over

I don't roll over. I am too dignified.

But people think that time rolls over. They divide time into chunks and subdivide them and then they number the chucks and subchunks keep track of them and set all kind of expectations based on the chunks.

I am well aware of the cyclical nature of life - sleeping follows hunting and chasing Ollie and various meals and treats, time after time after time. Night follows day. Cooler follows hotter. But I am not so interested in larger concepts like calendars and dreaming about the past, hoping for the future. I like to be Now.

I AM now. I make my Person's life more now than she and all her yoga classes could ever hope to manage. She can stand on one leg or upside down but she has trouble being now. And so it seems to be with people. They are always elsewhere. And I am always here.

So here I am now, on a hike, seeing swans and mergansers and ducks and a muskrat who is also unaware of the calendar but just knows that now it is warm and sunny and the ice is open and there are reeds to chew. I am looking ahead, not to an ideal of how I will be if I try harder next year, but to what is hiding in those bushes over there. Some other creature very much now. After all, we really only have right now.

On thin ice

All you dogs out there who got winter coats for a holiday gift - green, plaid, hooded or otherwise - can throw them away. And be glad.

A streak of mildness has thinned the ice, greened the grass in protected places and made it possible to lounge outside in the sun if you have a built-in fur coat. Mine is getting thick and plushy and I am hoping a little Alaska salmon oil will make my fur shiny too.

Salmon, you ask? You may think that this little Red Dog feasts entirely on roasted turkey for holidays but this year I suffered both disappointment and joy, as life so often presents as close companions.

Once again I experienced the thrill of driving south in my Person's cramped car, my usual shotgun position taken by my Best Friend while I was told to remain in the back seat. Why doesn't my Best Friend ride in the back seat so I can be in front? As my Person points out, you can see just as well as from there. And his front half wouldn't drift forward between the seats like mine unaccountably does.

Anyway, I could tell by my internal GPS that we were nearing the house containing the Turkey Room. What excitement! We drove fast, I rested my outstretched chin on the stick shift, got yelled at, hung onto the back of the passenger seat breathing hard into my Best Friend's ear and tangling myself in his shoulder strap, and got yelled at some more. Finally we were There.

I ran inside! Waiting hands petted the rushing air wake as I raced by! I knew my target!

It was empty.

I ran into the kichen. There were people there, in festive garb. I had the date right.

I ran back into the Turkey Room.

Slowly the truth dawned as I sniffed the air. There was no turkey. Maybe I should have stayed home.

But no, there was a visiting sheltie at home, my erstwhile cousin, pointed head stuffed with as much fur inside as it was covered with outside, given to howling and barking. "Better off here," I thought and gamely started begging for whatever there was to be had.

And in truth, there was plenty to satisfy even one so disappointed as I. I got brunch bake morsels, bits of dropped monkey bread, kringle crumbs. I even ate some melon and blueberries.

Then we went for a hike and I nearly saved the day by flushing a turkey! I was so close and it was nearly as big as I, but it flew off before my Person could wring its neck. Not that she would have. She isn't much of a hunter.

Then I trotted on a lake. The ice was beginning to rot, just like in the spring, and the muskrat houses were softening. Maybe we could have roasted muskrat instead of turkey? I started digging. My Person, ever the kill-joy, stopped me.

Back to the house with the Turkeyless Room we went. Still no turkey. But a new wonderment was revealed. Smoked salmon, from Wasilla, Alaska. Can you even imagine such a thing? Two kinds! Salmon sticks! And a huge salmon side, all smoked and delicious. I had pieces from everyone in the room.

This was just an appetizer for the next meal. "These people are like me," I thought. "They eat to prepare to eat." So onward to mashed potatoes with cheese and bacon and tender cooked ribs. Salad for me? No way!

I went home a rounder and more experienced Little Red Dog. And I learned that there is more to holidays than turkey. There is companionship and fun, getting your ears scratched and sitting on your Best Friend's brother's shoulder so you can see out the window better to look for turkeys. And now I know there is salmon from Alaska!

Differences

I saw something unusual today.

First I walked by a pug. It was wearing a bright green winter coat. Then I walked by a St. Bernard. It had its own fur coat on but it was wearing a sloppy but friendly sort of smile. My Person, always quick on the draw, said "How different dogs are from each other Finnegan." I stared at her, not wanting to encourage idle chatter. I was, in fact, hunting at the time.

But I started to think. Why would she expect dogs to be like each other? I am about as different as one can get, origins swirled in misty obscurity, unknown and unknowable. And then I thought "Eureka!" Clearly My Person was thinking about breeds of dogs and how alike they are to each other and how different they are from other dog breeds.

But does she think all dogs of a certain breed are alike? If you lined up 100 pugs, and they all looked very puggy and all wore green winter coats, they would still all be distinct individuals, with different histories and personalities. And so too with all animals. We are all different, wild and tame and domesticated and whatever category my stupid cat brothers fall into.

Some wild animals look more uniform than dogs, like squirrels for example. One gray squirrel in your yard looks much like any gray squirrel in my yard. But they are not the same squirrel - they have different pasts, different families, different personalities. And now and then one will even look alarmingly different. And as if my thoughts required an living example, a black squirrel appeared in the trees ahead of us.

People often prize things for looking like a type - a pug looking like a pug, plus or minus the embarrassing clothes. But sometimes something looks quite different from the expected and it has a special beauty because of this. Like the little black squirrel.

But two roses do not really look alike, and two branches each have their own curves and bends. It is worth paying attention and seeing things for what they are and perhaps you will end up surprised by what you see.

Cold

My feet are cold.

The gentle glide from one season to the next went into some sort of icy skid this week and suddenly the ground is hard and the cold is so intense that the thin snow sounds like styrofoam when you walk on it. And sometimes you can only use three of your available feet because one has frozen up a bit. If that happens to my Person she's in big trouble, being somewhat more limited in the number of feet department.

The river has skinned over with ice, some shark skin looking sections, some sections like glass that mirror the walls of the sandstone gorge, and some sections like ragged doilies wheeling out from the shore. The sections run into each other and under each other, raising ridges and creating icy fissures as the hard surface strains against the flowing water that is just below. The river groans in the cold conflict between motion and stillness, sometimes sounding like a Greek hero brought down in battle, his bronze armor rent. Other times it sounds like an animal beginning to huff and howl and then cut short. Today I thought I was being followed, a wolf perhaps out on the ice, and at every groan I would stare and tremble and then I would bark.

My Person giggled and I decided to go back to hunting for squirrels.

Back home my Person doled out safflower and suet and thistle and peanuts to the cold-fluffed birds who eat from dawn until the yard grows dark. These tiny food-stoked sparks of life battle the night's cold with nary a warm couch or bed to rest on. If they ate as little as I am given they would fall, frozen, from their perches before the sun sank below the horizon. So it is just as well I will spend the evening half-buried in the afghan, under the cheery lamps, the radiator ticking and my Person reading the Iliad beside me while the sounds of the river groaning become the sounds of battles fought and heroes lost so many eons ago.

Thanksgiving

The weather is shifting around a bit lately. One day there is a snowbound rabbit in the yard, wriggling his nose at the howling wind. A few days later people are wandering around in their shorts, kicking their toes into the still-green grass.

Today was a shorts day I guess, even though the bird bath water was pretty stiff this morning. Or maybe everyone ate so much food recently that they are burning up extra calories, producing so much body heat they don't need winter coats.

I wouldn't know. I never get enough to eat. No matter what my Person says as she parsimoniously ladles out my meager Super Supper.

Though last Thursday was a day to be thankful for. I visited my Best Friend's family, having received a Personal Invitation to come dine. Once I knew where my Person's car was heading I could hardly stay in the back seat. In fact, my front end kept finding itself in the front seat even though I was obediently being a Backseat Dog. But I knew where I was going and could hardly contain myself: I was going to the house with the Turkey Room!

It is so wonderful I can hardly believe it exists most of the time. Imagine this: a nice place, with windows and doors and sofas and beds and water dishes and people and all the other nice things about a home. Plus a special small room, adjacent to the kitchen, completely dedicated to the resting and carving of freshly roasted turkey! Maybe there are other purposes for the room, but none that interest me. I am only interested in its Turkey duties. What a room! It is a small bit of Red Dog Heaven.

Every time I go to this house I run inside and right on by the row of hands waiting to pet me. I head straight for the Turkey Room and survey its contents. If there is a turkey in there, waiting to be carved, my joy is unbounded. My tail will wag for hours on end for I know that these particular people, at this particular house, love to share their turkey with me.

During dinner I sidle around the table, moving from person to person, neatly avoiding a certain Person who does not approve. Bit by bit, mouthful by mouthful, I have the best meal of the year.

But I am an excellent guest. And this year I helped by cleaning up the turkey board after the meal was done.

I am not really sure why this wonderful dinner happens every fall. And I am not sure why my Person doesn't make a Turkey Room in our own house. I do know that it makes me count my blessings and remember that sometimes the cold wind blows an invitation to a fine feast my way. And for that I am very Thankful!

Transformation

At dawn a pale sun wanly lit the morning world. I watched the morning unfold through the bedroom window, lying on plumped up pillows. Outside, the riotous birds began to breakfast, boisterous and contentious as birds, and people, only be can be. There is not much "sweet" in the bird world. Life is serious business, with the added glory and fun of being able to fly.

The morning crept on. The cats went from morning slumber to morning nap time. I looked out of the window and watched the day grow grim. It got darker instead of lighter. The wind came up but the trees did not throw their limbs about in wild autumnal abondon. Instead, they stood stiff and cold and they shivered from the base of their limbs to their outermost twigs.

And then the sleet began, small round balls of snow and ice packed together. And then flakes began to fall and the leaf piles swiftly disappeared into a bumpy white landscape. Evergreens grew a frosting of white and the leafless deciduous trees held crusty white ridges along the lengths of their slender branches.

The yard rabbit showed up in a great rush and found a new hiding spot under snow-bent branches. He snugged inside and is waiting out the winter's first gentle storm, peering out at a world that in one short day is completely transformed.