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.