CHARMED LIFE

I know that I live a charmed life but it doesn’t come home until something trivial disturbs it. I’ve been helping care for a friend’s dogs while she is out of town. I let them out early in the morning; 6:15 is early for me and they are waiting at the door. One stands up behind the glass, pumping paws up and down like a church-bell ringer. Their anticipation is not about me still, they can’t wait for me to open the door. They blow by my feet in a heartbeat, down off the back porch and out into the yard. They have business to do. When my bladder sends me that message, neither do I stop to socialize. Shortly they are back under my feet, wanting some attention. 

The neighbor across the street lets them out sometime after noon and feeds them. I’m back in the evening for the second shift and the neighbor gives them their last chance to play outside and pee before he goes to bed. All in all they get over an hour, maybe two, outside during the day and have human contact 4 times. Their preferred human will return tomorrow night and a happy home will be restored. 

Being helpful satisfies a fundamental need in the human psyche. Through the ages, evolution has endowed us with not only a need to serve our own best interests but also to help others. I don’t think it was thought out; trial and error sounds more likely but we serve our own best interests indirectly when we help others, who reciprocate the favor. I’m not referring to Machiavellian, tit-for-tat score keeping. I think it’s more Yin-Yang, what goes around comes around. That kind of social accommodation tends to make us feel good about ourselves and it strengthens bonds between individuals. So saying ‘Yes’ to the dog-sitting duty was a no-brainer. 

I didn’t expect it to change my life. I really like dogs; other people’s dogs and I like the monkeys at the zoo too but I don’t want either living with me at my house. I tried the dog thing sometime back, more than a few years but at my age, it feels recent. As much as I liked the dog I didn’t adapt well to managing poop and trying to anticipate a truculent child. In this case the poop was literal and truculent child, the metaphor. So after spending a ton of money and three months of chasing my own tail, I gave the puppy to a family who still have and love him. I’m out the money but live and learn. I learned: they should be like grandkids - playing with them is awesome and then you go home. 

In the past ten days my life has been altered to meet the needs of three dogs who simply, can’t let themselves in and out. The only thing I do after I rise, before I go to let them out is tend to my own personal needs. Then as the day unwinds I have to jigger my coming & going so I’ll be there an hour or so before dark, with at least a half hour to bow-wow and fraternize with a miniature speed-racer, an old tail-wagger and a compulsive licker. It doesn’t sound like much and it’s not really. But it’s reminiscent of  a house full of teenagers and I do know about that. They must need the human interaction even if it’s not their dedicated, mother figure. So I pet them, talk to them, throw toys be retrieved. I ignore their bad breath and clean up their accidents on the carpet. I think their indoor poop events are anxiety driven but I don’t have credentials there to speak with authority. 

I do have pets; I have lots of pets. I watch them in the morning at one of two bird feeders where they can come and go, poop wherever they like and care less if I’m in town or out. But I care. All I need is to see finches taking turns at the millet and sunflower seed buffet. I delight at woodpeckers on the peanut feeder and even the grackles, struggling to balance on a perch designed for much smaller feet. When the starlings come in droves I wish the neighbor’s cat would come around. It thinks it’s a cat feeder, the seeds are bird bait. Then the sight of a cat makes the idea of a dog there sound not so bad but that nonsense snaps me back to my charmed life.