The other day, I was strolling around Lake Merritt when I saw a French Bulldog coming the other way with the most crestfallen look on his face, like his whole world had been turned upside down. I wondered why and speculated that it must be the flock of Canadian geese gathered on the lawn next to the path.
There were about fifty of them, each one about three times his size. It must have been an Alice-in-Wonderland moment for the pooch as he thought, “Birds are supposed to be three times smaller than me!” Maybe he didn’t consider them birds at all, but the offspring of pterodactyls. Imagine if you suddenly found yourself in the midst of a pack of truck-sized Cliffords. No wonder the Bulldog was feeling kinda puny.
On a recent walk in Skyline Park with our friends David and Eric, amidst the redwoods on a perfect day, I learned something from their spritely Corgi, Nia. I used to think the breed was a companion dog primarily, but watching Nia play with a neighbor pooch, I realized otherwise. She didn’t really take turns being “it” in tag like most dogs do. She was always the pursuer and her path was always elliptical, because she wasn’t playing, she was working. It was obvious to all observers that she was herding the other dog. The owners finally called the round off when Nia had corralled her “pal” at the edge of a small cliff.
Later, out on the trail, we passed a man with a couple of dogs going in the opposite direction. A few minutes after that, we heard the dogs bickering about something down in the forest. We turned just in time to glimpse Nia shoot off like a heat-seeking missile down the trail towards the commotion. Clearly, she was going to have to straighten things out between the two, even though they were twice her size. Nia has taught me that Corgis aren’t just lapdogs, they’re cops.
I caught an old Nova program on instant play Netflix the other day, the one about the Pluto controversy. You remember, some astronomers decided Pluto was too small to be a planet while others were quick to use dog metaphors to defend its planet status. Their argument was that Pluto orbits the sun, it’s round, and it even has three moons – all the characteristics of a planet. You wouldn’t call a Chihuahua a cat because it’s not as big as a Great Dane, would you?
Always eager to stretch a good dog metaphor as far as it will go, I con-cur. Pluto, whatever its breed, sort of followed us home and, though a little scrawny, has wiggled its way into our hearts. So I say let it be a kind of pet planet.
One problem, though. There is that pitiful scratching at the door by another heavenly body discovered a few years ago by an L.A. astronomer. It, too, meets all the planet criteria, and it’s even bigger than Pluto. Said astronomer named it Eres, after the Greek goddess men always seemed to fight over, because he anticipated the controversy he was about to ignite. For no logical reason I can see, so far it hasn’t even been tossed a bone by scientists. Good luck, Eres, finding that pet planet shelter in the sky.
Mark Twain’s autobiography is soon to be published, 100 years after his death, as per his instructions. I doubt it will be a fount of sweetness and light, produced as it was in the period when he wrote, “Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you’d be out and your dog would be in.” The perfect rebuttal to this statement was penned almost a hundred years earlier by the Sufi saint Rabia of Basra. In one of her poems, she speaks of a dog she occasionally walks to a field where it can run free. When she doesn’t do this, she feels she owes a debt. She writes: “I hope God thinks like that and is keeping track of all the bliss he owes me.”
I hope so, too. Just being nice to a dog should buy us a little heaven. Read this to your neighbor. Maybe it will convince her that she can earn big karma points by taking your dog to the no-leash park a few times a week. It takes a village, as we all know.
Herb Canine is one of writer/musician Tad Toomay’s many alter egos. Get acquainted with the others at www.tadtoomay.com.
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