A Different Perspective

I smoked for 40 years, give or take time off for good behavior. During that time I thought it made perfect sense to carry around a pack of little tubes of tobacco and lighters and books of matches. I didn't find it at all odd to light the end of the little tube and suck the resulting fumes into my lungs. I accepted the yellowish lump on the left side of my right middle finger as no big deal. Since I finally quit smoking five years ago, all of those things seem crazy. Sometimes, stopped momentarily at a traffic light, I'll see a woman smoking in the car next to me and wonder, "what the heck is that?"

It's the same with dogs. When I owned a dog I thought it was perfectly reasonable to walk him several times a day, watching him pee on other people's flowers, all the while carrying around a plastic bag with which to pick up his feces which I then deposited back home in the trash. I never questioned the hauling of huge bags of kibble from the grocery store, or the barking at midnight at a passing squirrel, or the begging at the table or the scaring of little children or the fighting with the other dogs in the neighborhood, all of whom run free because after all this is Maine, the way life should be, even for its animals.

But now my dog is dead and I watch all these dog shenanigans and wonder, "what the heck is that?" My friend Polly, who lives across the street, got a new puppy a few months ago. Since then her life has revolved around him, what with the training and the walking and the playing and the neutering and the invisible fence with the shock collar...good thing she's retired because raising Bailey is a full-time job. And for what? Remind me.

This morning two neighborhood dogs, big black labs that are usually innocuous, raised a violent ruckus on my back deck because my cat, an elderly gentleman who can barely walk, happened to be lying in the morning sun, as is certainly his right. I arrived in time to save Gizmo from two sets of jaws and certain death, or at least major discomfort for him and a huge vet bill for me. I told those mean old black dogs to go home, although in much stronger language. And I wondered what those dogs are for, anyway.