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Dogs and Yellow RibbonsAugust 28, 2005 I started a new horse-sitting gig today and so left the house around 7:30. Rhodry stayed home, on his tie outside, because the gig includes two cats and two large, rather excitable dogs. He got his morning constitutional when I got back an hour later -- 8:30 isn't all that late for the Malamutt, because the Malamutt is not a morning dog. If it's overcast or raining (remember "overcast"? remember "rain"?), he sometimes sleeps in as late as 11 or so. So we were strolling up Skiff and a sedan passed us. I noticed Rhode Island plates and a yellow "Support Our Troops" ribbon on the back. It pulled over just past the intersection with Mt. Aldworth on the right. Rhodry and I turned left, as usual, onto Hinkley Circle. A guy got out of the car and crossed the road toward me. Maybe he needed directions? I paused. "What kind of dog is that?" he asked, face and voice both suffused with admiration. Rhodry is 10 1/2. He's been turning heads and stopping traffic since he started toddling in public. I'm his agent: I answer the questions, he gets the cookies. "Malamute, samoyed, and border collie," I said. "He looks a lot like my my dog," said the man, who was probably around my age, maybe a little older. He showed a picture: sure enough, his dog, Shadow, had a Rhodry look with mostly border collie features. He reminded me even more of Rhodry's older brother, the late Tigger. (There are a couple of Tigger pics in Rhodry's photo gallery.) Shadow came from a pound, so the man didn't know what breed(s) he was, or how old either; about 7, 7 1/2, he guessed. It wouldn't surprise me if Shadow had some northern dog -- malamute, husky, samoyed -- in him. We talked about dogs, and wished each other's dogs well, and each other likewise. He returned to his car; Rhodry and I started around the circle. As usual, I was thinking, I know the guy's dog's name, but not his; he knows Rhodry's, but not mine. And I was thinking about how that yellow ribbon doesn't get in the way of talking about dogs. Or about the unrelenting sunshine, the crunchy grass, the hay that isn't growing, or the dust that accumulates so fast on my dashboard that I can write my name -- or Rhodry's -- in it anew each day. Also as usual, I wondered how to get from here to there, from talking about dogs to talking about the war. Dogs are here; the war is over there. We make connections by appreciating each other's dogs, not by fighting about the war. Don't rock the boat; there's really no point in rocking the boat. But still the boat needs rocking.
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