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 off 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.