sunshine

Without question, May sunshine is superior. Balanced between summer warmth and spring unpredictability, it offers near perfect days, where you can slowly unwrap yourself from layers of clothing and soak in the great outdoors without reservation. Today is such a day. Oh, those green plant colors! Oh, the birdsong! The Millie song!

 

(Millie only sings in the mornings)

 

 

 

Because it is a cool morning, wise people would eat their breakfast indoors. But the allure of a sunny porch with flowers blooming is just too strong. I take everything out to the porch.

The meal itself is far from grand. Millie is with me, my book has one more fabulous dog essay for me to read -- the whole set up is really great. But it is at exactly this time that the construction workers decided to move the dirt off of the empty lot immediately to the east of me. Horrible noises, disturbing me, disturbing Millie too. We lasted for the duration of breakfast itself, then went back inside, shutting out the noise and retreating to the couch.

Eat, play, walk, rest, walk, comb, rest. It never varies. If dogs like schedules and routines, then I really am giving Millie the best life!

At noon I take her to doggie daycare. And at four, the kids and I pick her up and the four of us head out to meet Ed at our local farmers market. The Thursday afternoon one, that's both intimate and very familiar. And of course there are cheese curds. And treats.

It's a first for Millie. (This one, unlike the downtown one, does not ban dogs.) All those people! What's a friendly puppy to do?!

(meeting Luna, the bernedoodle that hangs out with the bike repair guy)

At home, we still have a little time to read and play, and then, too quickly, it's the evening. I'm thinking about the book I just finished -- essays on dogs ("The Best Dog in the World"). Not all the essays were great (and some were more than great!), but uniformly, the authors wrote about their strong and unique attachment to their pup. Surely that bond is not new to this century. Dogs have been our domesticated companions for some 40,000 years. But dogs as pets were treated differently, even when I was growing up: they, like children, were part of the background in a household. You did not entertain them (nor did you especially entertain children). You did not try to understand them (ditto children). You took care of them, maybe showed them some affection, and that's about it. That seemed to be the working paradigm. 

My relationship to my dogs this winter followed a different path. I thought it may have been because I moved and for the first time in a long time I was living alone, but now I think that had little to do with it. Somewhere over the last decade or two or maybe three, our eyes were opened to the fact that these living canines are not just pets for our amusement. For me, they formed the core of my everyday, and this continues now with Millie as I work hard to understand her gestures, her moments of complete mischief, her attitude toward food, toys, people, me. 

One of the essayists wrote that over time, he came to even know what a particular movement of his dog's tail signified. Millie's tail is conspicuously long and yes, I'm beginning to recognize the variations! And of course, some of her behavior is easy to interpret. Her boisterous morning song. Or, try saying "let's go for a car ride" and watch her fly under the couch. Her tail is still wagging a bit, so maybe she's not totally scared, but I cannot coax her out. She wants to be dragged out and carried.

Do I notice such details in my grandkids? Of course I do! But that is a given! No one would be surprised, no eyes would be rolled. But devoting my free hours (and not so free hours) to learning about Millie -- that's new for me. When I decided to get a dog, I did not think about how important these guys would be to me. How much emotion would go into the whole deal. How brutal the loss is. How radiantly beautiful the bond.

with so much love...