A Good Talk

Eva and I were were out on the back porch talking about it - the day.  Of course, her vocalizations were limited to an occasional yip, bark or sympathetic whine.  Perhaps that’s what mine sound like to her.  I’ve learned that she is a terrific listener.  Not wanting to dominate the conversation though, I listen as she moves her head, looks me in the eye and cocks her head in the exact tilt to let me know that she is considering the point I just made.

Tonight the talk covered lots of subjects but mostly it was an off loading of my odd frustrations that weighed heavier than their substance should allow.  At one particularly salient point a small flock of geese flew low over the pond and then rose quickly in their perfect vee formation out of sight over the bluff to the northeast.  She turned and looked at me as though she wanted to comment on how silly all of the geese behind the point of the vee were.  If that lead goose flew into a brick wall, they all would fall like so many giant raindrops hitting a window pane.

We moved on.  I started talking again amid imagining that I was channeling Hemingway.  This feeling was not a belief that his literary talent was planting the seeds of perfect sentences in my mind.  No.  The glass of Dewars an arms length away was having the effect of adding subtle meaning to everything I saw.  Perhaps the Key West cigar I was puffing accentuated the flights of mind where thoughts are freed from petty peeves that consumed too much energy through the day.  

A Blue Heron flying solo landed on a shore stone and preened a bit before he struck a pose with his hooked neck curving perfectly into his upturned beak - one more event of preening and arrogance seemed like an exclamation point to a day filled with comparable behaviors.  But he stood alone and looked as if he were lonely.  He did not stand for long but took flight and Eva looked at me as if she wondered if he knew where he was going.  We knew that being together was better than being alone.

We dropped the talk for a while and I tossed the frisbee so she could give chase and delight in bringing her captured prey back to my feet.  This disk could fly even though its edges were serrated by her teeth marks planted in every inch of its circumference.  These were her marks in her frisbee.  One trip out after catching it she got distracted by a diving starling.  Soon she returned to my side and I reminded her that she had forgotten her frisbee.  Up she leapt and bounded out to find the wayward disk and brought it back to keep it close while she took a rest.

When we started our little talk the sun was shining and the breeze was calm - perfect conditions for controlling a frisbee’s flight.  But as the day began to give way to dusk, some distant rumbling thunder began to suggest that our tete-a-tete would soon have to move indoors.  She knew it too because after only a rumble or two, she picked up the frisbee and headed to the door.  

Eva’s day had been spent at Pete and Mac’s for doggy day care.  It’s a place where she always seems happy to arrive.  However, her report usually says she spends most of her day with the caretaker rather than with her canine companions.  While it’s hard to know the why of such choices, it is possible that she gets frustrated by some of the behavior she sees.  It’s also possible that she is a bit aloof and not as social as others.  Introspection doesn’t appear to be a skill possessed by dogs - perhaps they just use their instincts and mostly wag their tails.  After all, she knows that when afternoon comes, I’ll be there to pick her up and we’ll head home for our evening talk.

Every good friend knows there is a time to listen and a time to play a game.  There is a time to defy the thunder and a time to get out of the rain.  There is a time to do daily tasks and a time to put them away where they can’t infect a good conversation.  Some time each day must be given to being intense but at least as much time should be reserved for tail wagging.  We had a really nice talk this evening.  She taught me many things.

Best of all, when we went inside we were greeted with a comforting hug and a good scratch behind the ears.  

--td