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| Kitty in Colorado in 2011 |
The house is busy with people again — two sons, one new daughter-in-law and a soon-to-be daughter-in-law. My younger son is getting married. So I hope you will forgive me for slipping my EGD duty and sharing something from our mutual past. This is when our dog Kitty — now a spry 14 — was new to the household, which back then was always abuzz. Though reading it now, it occurs to me that one sad day I will no doubt do exactly what the last sentence suggests.
Routine is wonderful — I am of an age when I savor the small quotidian consistencies of life, perhaps too much, simply because they’re so expected, so manageable.Every morning, I’m the first one awake. If I were to open my eyes and hear someone downstairs, I’d be alarmed — I’d think, "intruders!" — because no one in my family ever gets up until long after I do.
I throw on some clothes, go downstairs, put on the coffee, go out and fetch the papers, read them a bit, maybe do a little work, maybe eat some breakfast. Frankly, I enjoy having the house to myself before the commotion starts. It’s like I own the place.
At some point, it occurs to me that we have a dog. Maybe I’ll hear the softest yelp — she sleeps in the younger boy’s room. So I pad upstairs and peek in on her. Sometimes the pup is a flattened blonde mop of dozing canine cuteness. Sometimes she is up, in her little crate where we keep her at night to prevent her from getting into trouble. She looks at me, her bright little shoe button black eyes aglitter, her entire mien expectant, tail awag, all dressed up and ready to go out.
I suppose a harder man than myself would shake my son’s shoulder and growl, "Up on yer feet yah worthless sack of supine laziness and walk yer galdurn mutt." But I don’t even think that (well, except occasionally, and even then it’s more of a weary "And why am I doing this?"). What I typically think is: Sleep is good. I wish I were asleep. But I’m not so I might as well walk the dog.
And frankly, having been up for a while, the thought of walking the dog in the great outdoors seems pleasant, another manageable routine task that I can accomplish without screwing up.
Usually.
So I go downstairs, toss on a jacket, gloves, a wool cap, grab the leash, a plastic newspaper bag, a couple of dog treats.
On this particular day, having gathered those necessities, I plunged briskly out the front door, leash in hand, and into the frosty morn and was bounding down the snow-covered front steps when I stopped, laughed, looked around, then said aloud, to no one in particular, pronouncing each word slowly and clearly:
"The dog."
Then I spun around and went back inside to bring her along too, thinking: This is why airplanes crash. This is why surgeons leave scalpels in patients. This is why skydivers leap from planes without their parachutes. Because if you do the same thing every single day, day in and day out, eventually you’re going to forget the most important part. If you do it enough times, then one fine day you’ll find yourself trying to walk the dog without a dog.
— Originally published in the Sun-Times, Jan. 19, 2011
Congrats to your son. Too funny about the dog.
ReplyDeleteYesterday I went to the kitchen to remove some ribs from the oven that I had seasoned, wrapped in foil, and placed in a pan 3 hours earlier only to find them sitting on the counter, uncooked.
ReplyDeleteon my way to your blog this morning I hoped for anything but politics. thanks for this
ReplyDeleteRecently I was finished putting milk on my cereal and attempted to put it in the cabinet where we keep the cereal bowls. I thought "that doesn't go there" and put it in the fridge. Didn't phase me. Just part of being 72.
ReplyDeleteOne word (though won’t really apply to dog walkers, but will for pilots, surgeons and skydivers) - - Checklist!
ReplyDeleteWe once drove the 30 minutes between our house and our camp (it's a U.P. Michigan thing), remarking, as we often did, about what a good traveler our dog is. Got to camp, opened the back door. No dog. She'd apparently jumped out of an open window while we were packing up. Fortunately she hung around and a neighbor called us and sat with her till we returned.
ReplyDeleteThat's exactly why planes crash, Mr. S.. It isn't just weather or mechanical malfunctions. It's labeled as "pilot error"...you see that a lot on a show I've been addicted to for years. It's mostly found on the Smithsonian Channel..."Mayday: Air Disaster." It's produced in Canada, and they do a bang-up job (sorry) of re-creating plane crashes.
ReplyDeleteA blinking warning light...from a short or a false alarm...distracts the crew. They fly into the ground. Items on procedural checklists are skipped...or even the whole list is never done. Sometimes the most basic tasks, like setting the flaps, are neglected, and the plane crashes on take-off.
Or the pilot is trying to avoid a smaller plane, doesn't remember to retract the spoilers, and the aircraft plunges into a residential neighborhood...which is exactly what happened near Midway in the early 70s. Routine things are overlooked or forgotten, leading to a fatal disaster. Checklists don't work if they are ignored.
Your dog reminds me of one I had in the 70s, Mr. S. Barny was a Maltese, who was found on a highway out West. He had apparently jumped or fallen out of a moving vehicle. We never found his people. He liked horses and horse barns---hence the name. Barny was feisty and full of life and would engage in wrestling matches with our big Persian tabby. Hours of endless amusement.
That sad day will eventually arrive. You will get ready to walk the dog, and there will no longer be a dog to walk. We know we are going to outlive them, but we adopt our animal companions anyway. Major design flaw. And for a while, you will still be seeing them, in all the old familiar places. Happens to both of us, whenever we say good-bye to a kitty.
You "see" them on a patch of floor they liked, or on a bed, or where the food dish used to be. Thought that was a trick my mind played on only me, but I think it's very common. And even though it's happened too many times, it's still not an easy thing to deal with. So here's a "zei gesunt" to your dog, Mr. S...may she continue to live and be well.
As a child I spent my Summers on a farm in Missouri where my uncle kept cattle and hogs chickens and dogs. The dogs never came inside. They were animals like livestock. That's a hobby farm and I've come to understand not to grow attached to the animals and recently my ex-wife came and took our dogs. It's just been a couple of weeks course. They were inside and I love them and they're not dead and I miss them. They're not people and I have two sets of emotions. The one I use with pets is more akin to the one I use with livestock. The one I use with people is much more important
DeleteThe worse case I've heard of walking the dog without the dog, is the sad tale of an eighty-year-old man who pulled over on the highway to check on some engine noise and automatically locked the door on his way out of the car. He froze to death.
ReplyDeleteMy car won't let me do that and in view of the likelihood of my leaving the house early in the morning without my house keys, I've planted a couple sets of keys outside.
However, I expect that one day, I will be halfway on my jaunt to buy the paper before I realize I have my slippers on instead of sneakers.
john
A good way to check that you're wearing pants when you leave the house, is to check your pockets for your house keys. No pockets = no pants, and probably no keys.
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