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.

On this day

On this day the wind and the squirrels conspire
To knock over the bird feeder
The dog and sparrows eat together, nosing though the leaves.

On this day the wind pushes leaves back up from the ground
They land on branches
Like birds that forgot it was passed time to fly away south.

On this day a small red dog runs up the bottom of a rocky gorge
A small red fox awakens
Steals over the gorge top and disappears among umbered leaves.

On this day the last mulberry leaves have fallen
Leaving only buckthorn trees
Green against the soft fawn of oak and maple and cottonwood.

On this day the sun paints the other side of the river in ochre light
Snow dances in the air but does not fall
The red dog runs through leaves that whisper of his passing.

On this day the robin's knocking call announces evening
Crows argue with their kin
A hawk takes the day's last sail over the thick pulse of the gray river.

A break

If you are lucky enough to have a Person, you might be extra lucky enough to have one who will drive many miles in a cramped but fuel-efficient car to take you somewhere interesting for a walk. And she might take the money she saved on gas and buy you a nice item off the dollar menu at MacDonalds for your super supper. And she might rent you a little cabin to sleep in over night that has a little porch and yard and in the morning you can sniff the scent of red squirrel feet or gray fox feet or wolf feet or bear feet or even moose feet while the sun rises up over Lake Superior and ravens call gruffly as they fly over your little red head. And she might take you to Grand Marais and share a cinnamon-sprinkled donut with you while people admire your size and shape and brown eyes and ask about your origins. And she might take you hiking in a ferny grotto and clamber up the sides of a rocky outcropping with you and sit on the top of a bluff looking out over at the Poplar River and share an apple with you. And she might make you wait in the car while she eats with your Best Friend but she might bring you a piece of fresh bluefin herring to eat for a snack.

I am an extra lucky Red Dog and that is what I did this weekend for fun!

What are you looking for?

Let me tell you, chances are you will find something different.

I was just out on a little jaunt with my Person leashed up behind me and we were both looking for foxes. Or maybe baby racoons up in the tree branches. Or an eagle.

But instead we found a Lost Dog.

We were tromping through our favorite oak savanna, and we passed a group of leaf watchers. There was a dog with them. But when we passed them the dog followed us. "Is this your dog?" my Person bellowed. "No," they bellowed back.

My Person looked at the dog and said, "I hope you are not a Lost Dog."

The dog followed us a bit and then it ran ahead. "Aha!" my Person said. She thought the Lost Dog's Person was up ahead and the Lost Dog was not lost after all. But there was no Person up ahead. We stopped and the Lost Dog stopped too. Then it ran toward us and kept going back where we had first met it.

"Aha!" my Person said again, thinking the Lost Dog's Person was really behind us, not ahead of us. So we turned and followed the Lost Dog. But it turned too and ran back to us and then a little ahead. It really was a Lost Dog. So my Person called it, trying all sorts of names like "pup" and "dog" and "hey you." Finally she clapped her hands and yelled "Come!" and the Lost Dog ran right up and sat down and waited for one of my treats.

It was an old dog, brown and short and grizzled and pleasant. It had a collar but it didn't have any tags that said what its name was or its Person's phone number was or anything useful. (Now I remember why I have to wear those jangly things, since I was once a Lost Dog.) It also did not have a leash. And I needed to use mine to keep the number of Lost Dogs in this story to one.

Now my leash attaches to my sporty harness and my collar is mainly a holder for my tags. Every now and again my Person does something handy and on this occasion she fashioned a short little leash by slipping my collar though the Lost Dog's collar.

Off we went, my Person bent sideways to hang onto the short leash of the Lost Dog and I sped along on her other side stopping to sniff and snort and entertain myself. "Stop that," My Person growled.

We traveled along like this until we got to the main road and my Person found another Person to help us. She had a cell phone, being a better prepared sort of Person than my Person. And she called Animal Control, which does not help lost animals on Sunday nights. They suggested letting the Lost Dog go loose again!!

So the helpful and prepared Person called her husband and he came to meet us and he brought a real leash. I got my collar back and the Lost Dog trailed home after them to spend the night in a more comfortable place than an oak savanna. He is there now with a dish of water and a bowl of food and a blanket to sleep on. And in the morning those nice people will find that Lost Dog's real home and he won't be Lost anymore.

And my Person and I will go back to looking for foxes and not adventures.

Follow me where I go

Sometimes my Person lets me run free, like a wild thing. And I am a wild thing when I run free. I tear through ravines, across sandy beaches, into the woods. I have even run right up a tree trunk that was reclining a bit.

My nose is even faster than my legs and I sniff and snort as I run, skimming over fallen logs, diving into bushes, tongue and ears flapping, hot on the shifting trails of creatures with stinky feet. When I catch the scent of something I might like to hunt I bark and yelp as loudly as I can. I create quite a commotion.

But most of the time when we set off on an adventure, my Person hooks herself up to me with a leash. One end attaches to my handsome red collar and the other is clutched in her hand. And I lead her about. I think she is prone to getting lost and needs me to find the way for her. She certainly lacks my discerning nose and couldn't sniff her way home if her life depended on it. So she must follow me, attached one to another like mittens to an idiot string. She calls this "Taking the dog for a walk," but we all know what the real story is.

I might have more fun on my walks if I weren't lumbered with a great clumsy and slow Person. But sometimes it is nice to have someone along to share interesting experiences. Today, for instance, I discovered a red fox curled in a neat circle on a pile of fallen yellow leaves, dozing in the late afternoon sunlight that peaked through the trees. And I was happy to have my Person along to share this with. Of course I would have been happier if she had unhooked the leash so I could chase the fox around. But instead we watched a bit and I whined my regrets and we left the fox in peace.

And perhaps because I didn't chase the fox it won't be scared of fierce Red Dogs and the next time I take my Person on a walk we might have a fox sighting to share again.

More goodbyes

I might as well give in to my Person's lachrymose mood about the seasonal change and say farewell to another summer companion.

I am a pretty swell creature, but even I realize how phenomenal is this little bird. It is so petite and so full of bravado, so hungry and so speedy. Wait, am I talking about myself again? No, I am talking about ruby throat hummingbirds, our tiny summer-long visitors, who sup nectar from my Person's flowers that she buys just for them, and who bring their young ones to my yard as they grow into tiresome teens and who fuss and bother and zoom about the yard with their buzzing wings and sonic chitters.

They are endlessly fascinating to watch, sitting on the clothes line, and sticking out their tongues to catch passing gnats and scratching their tiny chins with one little foot. From their looping pendulum courting dances to their mad aerial bombing routines, they are proof that there is always something interesting to watch if you go outside and sit quietly. Maybe it will be a spider that creeps out or a shy sort of bird or a cloud that looks like a white version of a Red Dog. Maybe it will be a squirrel that is all red or maybe, if you are lucky and have lots of red flowers, it will be a hummer!

going, going, not gone yet

My Person is so very sentimental and is practically going around the backyard saying goodbye to the flowers. It seems that it is officially autumn and the flowers are past peaky and getting in short supply.

Some of my back yard companions are getting scarce too. This cute little fellow was a regular for a while this summer even though my yard was chock full of men with power tools for months and months, or at least weeks and weeks, sending up great choking clouds of sawdust, leaving the gate open and interfering with my job, which is to be in the yard doing what I want whenever I want. (But I got a porch out of it so I won't complain too loudly.)

Anyway, the little Red Squirrel packed it in after a while and moved down the road a bit. I am left with the much more common and imperturbable gray squirrels and they will be around all winter too. But it was fun having this guy's almost constant presence and a new sound in the back yard as he chipped his bossy warning cries from the treetop and went about his business gathering food. And napping.

Ah, languid days...I think there are still some to come and there are still sights to see in the yard.

Transitions

I am feeling a bit moody. I am not very good with transitions. And it is a transitional time of year, the hot and steamy summer suddenly giving way to a chilly world. Leaves are turning colors, birds are flocking. Geese are practicing their great aerial V's. My hiding place on the deck is not so sunny and cheerful as it was just a short time ago.

I think enduring transitions easily requires perspective. And that just isn't my strong suit. I am a here and now kind of dog. If I thought about it, I would know that sunny days follows gray days, just as gray days follow sunny ones. And that chasing a squirrel will be just as fun tomorrow as it was yesterday, even if I don't see one today at all. Or that if stealing crackers two weeks ago was bad then stealing them last week was bad too and so will stealing them next week. But I just don't think that way. My Person says I don't think much at all, most of the time.

And generally that is true. I just am.

But today I am thinking, mainly because the rain is keeping me from the active life. And this is what I think: I want it to be sunny now, and for a squirrel to run by. I want crackers to slip off the counter when I walk into the kitchen. And mostly I want us all to be forever young.

Doga

I try to stay current. Sometimes I am so current I am ahead of myself. And I am always curious how a country-dog-at-heart like me matches up against dogs in faster sorts of cities. Like in Hong Kong or Boca Raton, for example, life-in-the-fast-lane places.

Well, someone emailed my Person a link to a story (I don't really know what any of that means, I am just repeating what I heard her say) about the latest thing, called Doga. It is yoga classes for people and their dogs. And there are classes like that in Hong Kong and Boca Raton and maybe even in your town!

Excuse me while I snort.

Since when does a dog need a yoga class? I am demonstrating right now how dogs like me, athletic ones anyway, can wiggle and bend and stretch in all sorts of directions all at once! Now my Person attends a yoga class every few days and she sometimes performs her asanas at home. She even does one called Downward Facing Dog! Let me tell you, a dog in that pose is irresistibly cute. A person in that pose is both resistible and very awkward looking. And fairly red in the face.

I admit that dogs are naturally designed for something like yoga. The idea that we have to go to a class to learn this is ridiculous. People should just do as we dogs do instead. First, give up the whimsical notion of arms and grow four legs instead. Much better for speed and balance. Next, roll around on the ground and wiggle every part of your body. Don't chant or hum or breathe through one nostril. Instead, snort and sneeze while you are rolling. Then stand up and shake all those parts until you feel excellent all over. Then wag your tail and you are set.

All I can say to those dogs in Boca, with their yoga mats slung in the back of their Person's sports car, is I am sorry for them. And now I am going to roll in the grass a bit more. And I am not even going to use a mat!

Roadtrip

There are many ways to make a living. One is to have a Person to provide for you and take you on road trips to Wisconsin. Another is to be furry and smallish and like to swim and eat leaves and have an independent riparian life with no Person at all to talk to or put your meal in a dish or provide furniture and a porch for you.

I personally think it is a toss-up.

I did go on a road trip this weekend, to visit my human grandparents. On the way we stopped along the Fox River, what a nice name that is, and this odd fellow swam out of the river right in front of me and started eating cottonwood leaves! He is a muskrat. And he came closer and closer and he didn't care at all that someone as ferocious as I am was standing so close, held back by the slimmest of leashes. I will tell you what DID scare him. A huge sturgeon bumped into him from behind and the muskrat swam off and I jumped a bit too! I have never seen such a large fish.

We also saw two foxes that weren't rivers but were running jumping animals, a coyote and many sandhill cranes. But none of them got this close to me so maybe they all were shyer or slyer than the little muskrat.

All of this is what is great about road trips. No matter what you start out with as a plan, and that is probably just a destination, other interesting things appear along the way. And those interesting things you didn't plan give you something to think about when you are back at home, lying on your porch.

Dog porch

I thought you'd like to see my new porch. I am probably going to be spending a lot of time out here, so it is a good thing I like it.

Last night my Person was out doing some errands, none of which benefited me, so I thought I would make my own luck. I went hunting. Indoors. And I found, carelessly lying about on top of a counter I am not supposed to be able to reach, in a grocery bag I am not supposed to bother with, a bag of ginger snaps.

Now I am kind of a ginger snap as well so I helped myself.

There were way too many cookies for me to eat right then and there so I decided to stash some for later, in a better hiding place than where I originally found them. I tried to hide them under the pillows in the bed, but then I remembered my Person always sleeps there at night and she might just find my prize. So then I hid them under the afghan that adorns the couch. I carefully balled the afghan up over the cookie package in a casual-looking manner, so as to not draw any attention, and then I waited for my Person to come home. As soon as I heard the back door open I dashed out into the yard to hide, just in case I miscalculated and my Person had been dreaming of munching ginger snaps the entire time she was out on her errand.

Unfortunately, my dashing out the door somehow signals to my Person that I feel guilty about something. (I don't understand how she gleans these insights into my cunning mind.) Also, I accidentally knocked some other stuff out of the grocery bag when I was grabbing the cookies and she cleverly read that as a clue that I had done Something Bad.

Soon enough she found my cookies. And she didn't believe that I had set a trap for chipmunks and therefore was being helpful. She just made me sit on the porch and think about what I had done. What I really thought about was how I could talk my Best Friend into sneaking the cookie bag out of the garbage and into my toy box. My Person NEVER looks in there.

Anyway, if we had a dog house I would be in it now. But we don't. We just have a dog porch. And here I sit.

A slipping-away summer

How the time flies, even when you are NOT having fun. Though right now I am.

I am high above the Mississippi, pretending the world is mine, even the eagle that just flew below me holding a big fat fish in his talons. It reminds me of the snack I will get when I am home again, not nearly so large, but not wriggling either.

I have been in a bit of a hiatus from my creative life. Sometimes you have to attend to other things and my job as a guard dog has grown almost burdensome. For several months now, my Person and Best Friend have undertaken to expand my little house into a bigger sort of house. Day after day, crews of workers have needed to be barked at, safety-sniffed and supervised.

First the roof was torn right off of my home and one day I ran up the steps and into the open-air platform with carpenters chasing me. Many a day a carpenter would let me right out of my little yard but I stayed close by and didn't run off as I would have in my less serious days.

Now the house is mostly finished and the cats have the run of the new space but I will admit only to you I am a bit afraid of going to the new upstairs. But my solace is my new back porch and from this secret and shady place I can watch the birds alight, the chipmunks sneak and the squirrels dash over the fence. Sometimes I spring out from under the porch chair and roar at them. I even lurk here in the dark of the evening, guarding against raccoons and evil-doers.

I also have a new duty: scaring away the Cooper's hawk who is new to the world this summer and has taken up target practice in my back yard. The only good news is that his aim is bad. The bad news is he is relentless. Unless I am around.

And so my summer has gone, constantly at work and adjusting to new circumstances, taking on responsibilities. I fear I am no longer the pup I used to be.

I will ponder that more. Later. Right now I am going to chase a squirrel.

What has he been up too?

Or so my Best Friend inquires, about me.

Hiding for one thing! This has been a snowy winter and the snow banks have been hiding me and most other walking dogs from view. My Auntie VeeCee says that it looks like people are out walking leashes everyday.

Also I was hiding up north in the BWCA for a brief time and ran around on the frozen lake as wild and free as any wolf would dare. Except I got treats when I came into the cabin.

Now I have an extra reason to hide. My friend and nemesis Tasha of the Furious Fur has come to stay for a few weeks. She is inside right now while I am master of everything else and King of the Snows. Tasha seems to like the snow too and she seems to think she has as much right to the yard as I do. So I had better go enjoy this for a bit longer before I busted down to the short-haired half of a barking twosome again.