At certain hours of the day, I hear voices. No, this is not an hallucination; and I am not hearing the same things as did Saint Joan (of Arc).
It’s the sound of people with dogs; actually, just the sound of two people, the two dogs with them are always silent.
The dogs are always silent because their attention spans are not centered on frivolity; but instead, on business, namely, “doing their business” (some dealings done in the world of business bear a figurative likeness to this variety).
They have Bluetooths in their ears (the ladies, not the dogs); but they seem to have no trouble with multi-tasking by conversing with each other and whomever is on the other end of their “line-less” phone line.
The ladies talk to the dogs too, an invariably one-sided conversation.
I titled this “The dog run,” but it’s not actually like a traditional “dog run,” since the ladies hold the leashes. The dogs are not attached by chain to a clothes line like the “dog run” of my youth back on the Old Concord Road.
I’ve written about family dogs, Susie and Taffy, but will now briefly mention their full time “dog run.”
When I google “Pictures of dog runs,” structures resembling cages appear, one of which actually reminds me of the caged-in dugout of a baseball field.
Our dog run was more “runnable” lengthwise, consisting of the family clothesline, made of metal wire and attached to several oaks in sort of “line of sight” of each other. This provided Suzie and Taffy with much more range than being tied to a tree, which is inhumane (or “incanine”).
On a visit with the couple who presently live in my boyhood home, I found remnants of the enclosing wire of the old hog lot at the edge of the woods. Every bit of the old family clothesline is long gone (like many old family clotheslines), as those who lived there after us graduated to the electric clothes dryer.
Whereas Suzy and Taffy were outside all of the time, the lab-mix dogs next door only come outside when nature calls. Their connection to the outside world seems like a “Pavlovian” connection involving bodily function.
I think the two women are mother and daughter, and I’m not sure if that relationship is paralleled by their dogs.
The other morning, I awoke to see where a great oak limb had fallen during the night close to one area of the dog’s “places of business.” I hoped neither the ladies nor their canines had been near enough to get hurt when the limb had fallen; but I wasn’t awakened by any nighttime commotion, so I guess they were okay.
I thought it funny that the limb had broken in equal sections,as if Nature (and gravity) had sawed it (rather roughly). The great limb had grown old in the boughs and died there, its weathering in death (and a thunderstorm) finally bringing it down. The living boughs below, and multitude of hand-like leaves in its fall’s path were not strong enough to grasp it and keep it “memorialized” in lofty situ.
The ladies of “the dog run” speak to each other very amicably, and likewise to their dogs, making the Golden Rule a cross-species thing!
Sometimes on their way back home with the dogs, the ladies do seem to walk a little “hop-scotchidly” in certain areas of the yard, as if treading in a mine field, due to the numerous, over time, “deposits” there.
In some city lawns, there are signs with images of a dog pooping with a slash through it. In a way, I find this more offensive than the actual “droppings.”
The pleasant things of this world should be celebrated, even a happy “dog run,” no matter the “end result.”
Gosh knows, the “nitty gritty” of this kind of dog run is still preferable to the figurative “stuff” which frequently falls into our lives, “stuff” from which we must duck, and around which we must carefully step after it has hit the ground (sometimes after a brush with the blades of “the fan”).