jumpingfish

1. Some Facts

From the day we adopted him, Charlie has been afraid of riding in the car. Horribly afraid. Whereas Izzy lives for jumping into the car, as did Mr. Guinness, when we go somewhere with Charlie, his face is grim and he begins to shake. And we discovered today that the same applies to thunderstorms.

Now, Charlie isn’t the first dog to dislike thunder. Indeed, Mr. Guinness was the template from which canine dislike of storms is derived, although now that I stop to think about it, his reaction was one of challenge rather than fear. Charlie, on the other hand, seems to be terribly afraid of thunder.

In spite of the fact that thunder brings cool air blowing in the front door and refreshing rain for the tomatoes, at the slightest hint of a storm (black skies in the west and a distant rumbling), we discovered today that Charlie comes up to us for protection, plainly asking for help from the approaching danger, shaking just as he does when we go out in the car.

2. A Theory

Charlie, you should know, is ten years old. We intentionally adopted a senior dog because they are hard to adopt out and … because honestly, we didn’t want a puppy. As we were talking to another senior rescue dog who was wigglingly happy, wagging her tail and giving us many kisses, Charlie sat regally in the lap of his foster mother gazing into the distance, periodically blinking his eyes. He had a meditative look to him. I was hooked.

But why would a gentle, laid-back, ten year old dog need to be adopted? What circumstances led him to be out in the wild, emaciated and alone? What happened to this wonderful zen-dog that he needed to be rescued?

My theory is this.

Once upon a time, Charlie must have been in a wonderful home. He lived with people he loved and who loved him back. They treated him well, because there is no sign of the kind of fretful timidness in him that you can see in dogs that have been abused. He had a happy life and lived many years in that happy home.

But something happened. I don’t know what it was, but my guess is that it ended with a long car drive out into the countryside, with the opening of the car door, and with the car racing off, leaving Charlie standing on the side of the road wondering what just happened, with a fear of cars newly burned into his psyche forever.

And so there he was, far from home, alone, in the countryside. And my guess is that he was alone that way for a very long time. There must have been storms, and my guess is that his trembling this morning with the approaching thunder and lightening is not a reflection of his fear of the weather but rather a flashback to that horrible time when he was all alone, abandoned by his family, cold, hungry.

I would shake, too.

But Charlie is once again a happy dog. Now that the storm has passed, his shaking has stopped, his pensive gaze has returned, and the luminosity of his zen is glowing out from under the desk where he is very contentedly curled up.

There were dogs in Michigan when we put the dock in — two white dogs and one black one.

Izzy would have run circles around them (in the literal sense, not in the my-dog-is-better-than-yours sense), and then she would have run straight into the woods which would have been the last we saw of her, because within seconds she would have been on a bee-line off to … Kalamazoo.

And this, alas, is why there was only one black dog and two white ones up there in the woods.

Trudy objects to this characterization of Miss Izzy.

“She would come back…,” she says, but I know no such thing.

Besides, Izzy would never sit quietly for hours in a carrier under a seat in an airplane. But don’t tell Trudy about this opinion of mine, because there is no doubt that she’d love to put the hypothesis to the test when fall comes around and the dock needs to come out.

With a bright sun shining and Pomp and Circumstance playing, the graduates streamed into the stadium, walking to their seats on the field.

We saw them come in. We saw the radiant smiles. The relief. The joy. We all saw it. We all shared it.

Tomorrow they would finally be able to sleep in without guilt. If that’s not joy, what is?

1. Flying Over

We left Austin on a Thursday afternoon. And as we flew over fly-over country, we saw the red monuments of  Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park.

source: maplogs

And we saw the winding water of Lake Powell up to where in the distance the water abruptly stopped at Glen Canyon Dam.

source: Lake Powell Tours

We saw these things looking straight down from 30,000 feet.

2. Chowing Down

We arrived in Berkeley around dinner time. And seeing how Trudy and I are all about dinner at dinner time, we texted my brother and told him we were headed to Razan’s Organic Kitchen.

source: The Fair and Industrious Trudy

We met at sea level, and we all chowed down.

It was chilly this morning — by Central Texas standards. At lunchtime in the park, we sat in the sun to warm our bones. It will be blisteringly hot soon enough. So the cool air blowing against our faces as we walked thru the woods was medicine for the soul and inoculation for the coming summer.

As the sun went down in the evening, as the shadows of the trees across the street stretched over to where the dogs and I were sitting, as the cool air got cooler, as the yellow Texas Star began to glow in the late afternoon light, I sat down and leaned against the stump of the old Ash tree and crossed my legs and let the last rays of sun hit my face as the breeze blew thru my hair.

Don’t tell Trudy. She was inside being industrious. I was sitting outside being not.