In the air

When I sit down to write these days, it is to write about my dog. Emails, blog entries, personal journals, he is in all of them. It isn’t that I find him to be of inexhaustible interest, but his constant puppy presence completely overtakes my thoughts, whether I am reading, writing, brushing my hair, or trying to sleep. He demands persistent sensory stimulation, and I am the only one who belongs to him enough to provide this service. The sense he most enjoys exercising is that of taste, so I am always on edge, waiting to hear the crunch of his teeth on my mother’s plants, kindling, or Christmas ornaments so I can spring into defensive action. But I do think that if I could capture his idiosyncrasies, they would be worth writing about in earnest. It is delightful to watch him prancing through the room with some new object in his mouth. When he has kidnapped a sock from the laundry pile, or a slipper from under the bed, he walks quietly with his head down, because these favourites he knows are forbidden to him, and his moments with them are borrowed time. This private joy lasts only until he is noticed and chased to justice. However, when he has some new object in his mouth, something he has never found before, he can’t know for sure that it is forbidden. He trots around with the object like a flag, testing the waters. He is bluffing, hoping the confidence with which he carries himself will trick us into letting him have that banana, or the fridge magnet. What could you humans possibly want with this CD, he says with his sparkling eyes. Just let me take care of it.