It's a Dog's Life

I have a dog. She's brown with white spots, light-boned, about 40 pounds, and she's half farm-collie, so she's got kind of a sporty border-collie thing going on. Except she's very skittish, so she's more like the after-image of a border collie (as in, "was that a border collie I just saw?"). This month, her cousin has come to visit; Meg is my mother's dog and she is a standard sable collie, with a huge collie coat and long needle nose. She's a little bigger and a little younger than Chaos. (And yes, I realize that Meg is technically Chaos's aunt, but we decree all our dogs to be of the same generation.)

I'm writing about them because I took them for a "hike" today. The hike consists of a walk in the woods in a community park near my house, and it takes about an hour. Today we did it in the pouring rain, the first rain we've gotten in at least five weeks. I did this because they were restless and because I am trying to lose weight, so we all needed the exercise. I also did this because it seemed like an adventure to hike in the rain; it's still warm out, so I thought it would be very soothing and natural and not particularly uncomfortable. I wore a rain poncho, but otherwise I just got wet, and indeed by the end of the hike, my hair and jeans and boots were soaked, and my tshirt had wet streaks down it where the water had gotten in.

What surprised me, though, were the dogs. As far as I can tell, they really were not "with me" on this whole back-to-nature thing. Unlike me, they are not steeped in middle-class suburban angst; they're not worried that we're losing the environment, that our metropolitan area is getting overcrowded, or that we spend too much time away from the outdoors. They don't worry about the health of their soul if they spend hour after hour sealed off from the world. They didn't mind the fact that their rambunctiousness was tearing up our house. They don't care about their cholesterol.

So the entire hike, while they accompanied me willingly enough, they trudged along, casting woeful glances up at me that said, "What have we done wrong?" Occasionally they would stop and rub their drippy wet faces with their paws, and once, my dog Chaos just stopped in the middle of the path and hung her head while we walked on without her. I spent much of the second half of the hike trying to encourage them; they acted thoroughly defeated.

I always kind of think of my pets as reminders of the beauty of the simple life. They find enjoyment in very basic things; they're not materialistic; they plainly care more about being with me than about the circumstances of our mutual existence. But I think I learned today that they're a little more materialistic than I realized, at least in an indirect way. They may not have any concept of buying a house, but they sure do want to live in it. If you let them choose between being with you out in the rain and being with you in the pillow-top queen bed at home, they do in fact have a pretty definite opinion. And if you hike with them in the rain anyhow, they will look at you as if you're cracked.