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Saturday, June 25, 2011

Watch Dog



He came into my life slowly, almost by assimilation. When I first met him he belonged to my boss, Nigel. He was in his prime, a fully grown Golden Retriever, though you might have been forgiven if you mistook him for an Irish setter; from a distance at least. He was very dark; which is, so I am told, not uncommon in the breed. His name was Seiko. “He’s a watch dog; get it?” Nigel told me when I looked at him askance when he told me the name. “More people would get the joke if you named him Timex.” I said and over the years when I explained the name to others the joke had spawned at least four dogs named Timex. But Seiko he was. Tall and proud and immensely strong; he was gorgeous. I was new to the north and a long way from home and loved ones. The transition was made a little easier by the fact that Nigel’s wife Anne and I were from the same home town and I knew her family. We had attended the same high school but did not know one another. It was made easier too by this gregarious Golden Retriever.
We struck up a bond right away. Golden Retrievers are notoriously friendly and Seiko was the rule not the exception. He followed me everywhere. When I was working in the warehouse he would come in to get some attention and I was always glad to see him. On my days off I took to asking Nigel if I could “borrow” his dog. Seiko went fishing and hunting with me. We went on long walks together on every trail and back road that there was in the surrounding area. He was good company. If I ever had to go somewhere without him he would follow my vehicle for miles. The speeds he could reach and the length of time he could follow were prodigious. Three kilometers from home I could still see him in my rearview mirror. I spent a happy year and a half in Wabasca but then was transferred in the spring of 1987. I bid Seiko a sad goodbye and thought I would never see him again.
Happily that was not the case. A few months later Nigel called to say they were moving and they would not be able to take a full grown Golden Retriever with them. Would I be interested in taking him? It took about ten seconds to make the decision. I was about to own my first dog. I only had to get him there. Wabasca is over 500 km away but fortunately Nigel was coming to Fort Vermilion. Fort Vermilion was only a short flight away by Cessna 206. I just had to find a pilot willing to fly an eighty pound bundle of muscle and energy in a cockpit the size of a loveseat. I thought I’d better talk to the pilot in person so the next day I met the mail plane and when we’d finished loading my truck I said offhandedly “By the way I wonder if you could help me out. My dog will be in the Fort on Monday and I need to get him in here.” I looked at the pilot with my most pathetic look. “Eighty Pounds!” he exploded when I answered him how big the dog was. “Is he part horse?” I decided to go all in and play my trump card., I pulled a photo of Seiko from my pocket, one taken on one of our many walks. The pilot took it dubiously but a smile crossed his face as he looked at it. “A Golden Retriever; well why didn’t you say? My daughter raises them. He’s a beauty. Look how red he is! Is he a good flyer?” The question caught me flat footed. It hadn’t even occurred to me to ask Nigel if the dog had ever flown. Of course I couldn’t tell him I didn’t know so I stammered “S-S-S-S-rue he loves to fly!” I had to lie as anybody up here who owned a dog any length of time would have had to have flown with him. I called Nigel that night to let him know that arrangements had been made. “How’s Seiko in an airplane?” I asked “I guess we’ll know next week.” Nigel answered. He had never flown before. I was waiting with baited breath the next Monday when the little plane taxied to a stop, I waited for the prop to stop spinning then I ran over and opened the passenger door. “How was the flight?” I asked when the engine noise died down. “He was my Copilot.” Said the pilot with a smile. “He never moved, just sat in the copilot’s seat and stared out the windscreen.” I was worried that he might not recognize me after so long apart but once out of the plane he planted his hind feet on the gravel runway and put his front feet on my chest and licked my face. He was not a dog who did this often so I knew he was saying “Hello; sure I remember you!”
We embarked on a new life together both off us adjusting to a changed existence. I could not have been happier, I know he felt the same. As before we went everywhere together. He slept by my side. He seldom slept on the bed but when he did he took the whole bed, lying diagonally across it stretched out to his full length; I was forced to sleep diagonally too. Usually he slept on the floor by my head. Occasionally I would hear him vocalizing in his sleep his legs would twitch like he was dreaming of chasing rabbits. I would hang an arm over the side of the bed and pet him. His tail would thump, thump thump against the floor in his sleep. I wonder what he was dreaming and was he picturing me petting him? In the mornings when he was ready to go out he would stand between the bed and the wall and his tail would make an arc from the two objects. It would whack the bed frame and then the wall in a whack, ting, whack ting that became my alarm. I woke up every day to his smiling face. No one could roll over and go back to sleep after looking into those brown eyes.
My bass Andrew had a border collie named DeeDee and the two dogs became inseparable. Seiko picked up any number of habits from DeeDee including her habit of sticking her nose under your hand and kind of flipping your hand into the air when she wanted to be petted. Seiko also took to rolling in mud puddles, one of DeeDee’s favorite things. The maddening thing is that he would go for a three mile walk and stay totally clean. Then; less than a hundred meters from home he would drop into a mud puddle like a stone. I kept a garden hose at the back door. He loved the water. Being a retriever that is only natural I suppose. When we went walking by the river which was almost every day; he would plunge in and swim usually grabbing a piece of driftwood. But no matter how far from the river I stood he would inevitably walk to within ten feet of me before he shook himself dry; thus soaking me. It was a game we played and he loved doing it. I pretended to be mad but he always saw through me and I could not help but hold him he was so charming.
From Fox Lake I moved to beautiful Ft Liard. Seiko loved the river and the mountains. He loved walking the trails and chasing the rabbits. He was getting older and he began to appreciate the wood stove as he got quite arthritic, especially in his hind quarters. Golden Retrievers are prone to that. I used to take him for runs on my bike so I could tire him out better. That became less necessary. Soon our normal walks became too much for him. One night in late February I knew he was not going to see another dawn. I had been talking to a friend who was a wildlife officer. He had told me that he could give Seiko an overdose of Nembutal which he had for tranquilizing bears. I wanted to put it off until the last possible moment. The last night I called Jerry but it was too late Seiko did not make it until he arrived. With a loud sigh he passed. I let out a scream of his name and he momentarily opened his eyes and looked right at me as if to say “It is O.K. Old friend it is my time,: amd then he was gone. I wrapped him in his favorite comforter and put his favorite toy a pink “My Little Pony” that Jerry’s kids had given him,. I picked up the toy and remembered how he had gotten it. One night we ewre visiting Jerry and his family. When we got home I noticed that Seiko had the pony in his mouth. I took it back the next day but the kids were adamant that they had given it to Seiko and his tail wagged furiously when I returned it to him. It had no tail and was one the girls no longer wanted. He loved it. He carried it everywhere. Once when he lost the toy he was beside himself. I have never seen a dog so despondant. The girls again came to the rescue with a “My Little Pony” unicorn. He loved that too nut not as mush. That spring under the snow I found the original and he never touched the unicorn again.
I got my friend Rick to pick me up a pick at the hardware store and I buried him in the back yard that Sunday. Rick was going to help but I was finished before he got there. We sat and had coffee. “It was brutally cold today you should have waited for me.” He said . “It was the only trouble he ever caused me. He was worth all that and more.” I put a cross over his grave and nailed his dog tag to it. I buried him with his pony. I thought I was doing well after he died. One evening while walking home from work about a week later I met my friend Elizabeth; the social worker. She was walking her dogs. We had walked dogs together many times. She looked at me askance and asked “Wherever is Seiko?” In her British accent. I tried to get the words out but nothing would come. I stood there like an idiot and she instantly knew. She hugged me and said “I am ever so sorry. I didn’t know!” It must have been five minutes before I could tell her what had happened. Nearly twenty years later I have tears in my eyes. He still stares out at me from a thousand pet food bags. One day I walked into the store and there was a wet Golden Retriever in the porch. The smell is like no other breed. I got down on one knee and petted him. “Sorry, he’s a mess.” said one of my Mountie friends. “He is beautiful and he looks just like a Golden Retriever should look.” I said. I have had a number of dogs since; each one of them as different as each person is. The one common thread is the unquestioning love that I have had from each one of them. I never came home to find them grumpy or ungrateful or not understanding. They have only been a source of undying love. No matter how much it hurts to lose one I will never regret the commitment.

Saturday, June 4, 2011

Ask a stupid question...

Steve Martin the comedian once said “If you are studying geology; which is all facts, as soon as you get out of school you forget it all, but philosophy you remember just enough to screw you up the rest of your life.” I minored in philosophy. A light bulb is going on for a lot of my friends right now. “Ahhhh….” They are saying to themselves. “That explains a lot!” I blame Rene Descartes. “I think therefore I am!” He taught me to question everything; shook my belief system right down to it’s’ bones. I used to think I knew that I existed because I was hot or tired or hungry, “I crave a big greasy donair therefore I am!” But that wasn’t good enough for old Rene; no sir he said what if I just think I am craving a big greasy donair; the one from Revanna Pizza on Portland with the works and extra sauce on the side? In spite of the fact that I can almost taste that donair; with its’ toasted pita shell and donair meat glistening with that crusty skin on the outside. He stripped away all the unessential, all that was not pure philosophical logic. He said to himself “I might only think I am hot and tired and craving a donair! But I know this. I know that someone is thinking that they are hot and tired and craving a donair. So stripped to its’ logical essentials. I think I am hot and tired and craving a donair; therefore I am!” Existentialism in a nutshell. I just saved you three years of class time, not to mention tutorials and tuition and books and all that money spent on beer in the student lounge. I cannot however save you the cost of a large donair with the works and a can of Pepsi as they are the essential tools of the philosopher.
But now you see my dilemma. I constantly question everything. If you have to question your own very existence then what about; why do Ketchup chips have to be red they don’t have real ketchup on them and that dye gets your fingers all red. Why is suicide illegal? I mean if the guy dies what are you going to do to him? Why don’t they just lower the nets so that short people can play basketball too? If you ran a school for suicide bombers the only ones getting jobs would be failures and dropouts. What’s with those stupid commercials for automatic soap pumps? You wouldn’t want to touch a germy soap pump so it dispenses the soap automatically. You are about to wash your hands for Pete’s sake! What difference if there are germs on the pump; there are germs on your hands; that’s why you are washing them. The soap will kill all the germs, not just the ones on your hands but the ones from the pump too!That new sugarless gum, the one that brags that its’ flavor lasts forever why does it come in packs of five? Remember those deals on the packages of popsicles when you were a kid? Send in 200 wrappers and a dollar and get a Frisbee or something. Do you suppose they actually had people counting the wrappers? Imagine sitting in a room trying to prize apart 200 sodden sticky wrappers to see if some seven year old was trying to rip off some poor little multinational food corporation.
You can see what deep philosophical issues I grapple with every day. I like to share these issues with those around me too. No sense suffering in silence misery loves company. So it is for my long suffering wife and my employees at work. They get the distilled wisdom of four years of university and thirty years of experience on a daily basis. Sucks to be them. But every once in a while one of the great questions of life gets answered. One of the great mysteries of the universe is revealed; even to a pillar of dust such as I. But of course I shared it with the other human being who was there when it was revealed. It happened while in Winnipeg that center of the Canadian universe last month. I was driving along in a cab when one of those tow trucks with a flat bed on the back passed us with a brown cube van parked on it. I leaned around the Plexiglas shield and said to the cabbie “Well that answers a question I have always wondered.” He looked into the mirror and we made eye contact; in a fashion. “What question is that Sir?” he intoned politely. “Who delivers UPS trucks?” I said. Now if I could just figure out why there are no shocks in any of the cabs in Winnipeg?