Walking with Waldo

Look! A flower!

Eventually, everyone will be quarantined to their houses with no sports to watch… and in 9 months from now a boom of babies will be born… and we will call them Coronials.

-Unknown

This week Governor Baker put us on a stay-at-home advisory for at least two weeks, likely longer. Nonessential businesses are to be closed. Meanwhile, the cases of COVID-19 have skyrocketed both in Massachusetts and nationally. My family have all been deemed to be essential workers at this point, so this has had little additional impact on us. I went to the grocery store early Sunday morning and was able to find and purchase all that I needed.   I am shopping for what I need for a week only so that everyone else can get what they need too. So far, it hasn’t been an issue. I have plenty of dog food and have a delivery plan in place so that it gets replenished every six weeks. Waldo and I are still allowed to trek the rail-trail, so we plod along as usual, six miles a day.

Because being outside on the rail-trail is safer than indoor exercise at a gym, there are a lot of people on the trail these days. There are more people that are not working and need some way of passing the time and some of them are here too. Even though it’s been rather chilly, the path is full of bikers, joggers, roller-skaters, skate boarders, strollers with babies, old folks, parents, teenagers and kids of all ages and, of course, dogs. Waldo and I make a point to greet each as we pass. Most are agreeable and return our salutations — well, not Waldo’s kisses so much (though he does get a lot of pets, pats and scratches). Almost everyone is friendly and as sociable as you can get while keeping six feet away. There are no known cases of dogs passing the virus to humans, so it’s a safer alternative than getting close to or touching people and most dogs are appreciative of it. That’s a nice thing for those of us who like dogs as it gives us a way of making contact more intimate than an elbow bump. I don’t think Waldo is aware of any difference at all in our daily lives since the virus exploded in our midst.

The leaves in the trees stay in their bud-cocoons, but those of the smaller bushes and weeds are slowly hatching into daylight. They aren’t fully formed and still quite small, but you can see their leafiness if you look closely. I don’t think it will be long before we start seeing and smelling flowers; all it would take is a prolonged warm spell. Unfortunately, that’s not yet in the forecast – predictions are for temps to hover in the low fifties for the foreseeable future.

Birds are back in force, I hear a wide variety of calls and see a few. I’ve seen sparrows, robins, hawks, and even a cardinal. I’ve heard many more, but other than a crow’s caw, I wouldn’t be able to tell you what kind of bird is making the hubbub. I have heard the rat-a-tat-tat of a woodpecker at work, though. No Emmy-birds yet. Maybe they come with the flowers. I’ll have to pay more attention this year.

The rest of the rail-trailers seem to be enjoying nature as well. All seem to be pleased to have the time and opportunity to be outside, even when they need to be swathed in winter clothing. A few seem wary and avoid others with a wide birth, some are reserved and ignore Waldo and I as we pass, but most are happy and as sociable as you can get, given the circumstances. Some are happier than others and one, seeing Waldo trotting along with the omnipresent stick in his mouth, called him “the branch manager.” Another, seeing the leash go between Waldo’s front and back legs, a condition he seems to prefer, called out, “Look, he has a leash-wedgie!” Your head has to be in a good place to think of stuff like that. Walking out in nature may not cure the coronavirus, but it is certainly good therapy for it.

Waldo and I are more than happy to share our beloved space and time with others. I just hope it doesn’t get so popular that they have to shut the rail-trail down because it’s impossible to maintain social distancing. Until then, take a break, walk a bit, or bike, or skate, or whatever pleases you. Get outside and enjoy what nature has to offer and remember the larger part of where we come from.

Waldo and I will be here, willing to share with a warm greeting, a smile, a wagging tail and a stick or two.

Spring is not far away!

Lots of people out today.

The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched – they must be felt with the heart.

-Helen Keller

It’s forty degrees on the rail-trail and colder than it has been recently.   The sky is partly cloudy and there is a nine MPH wind that intermittently blows the temperature well down into the thirties. The coronavirus hit and the schools will be closed for at least three weeks. This is day 5 (counting the weekend), as of this writing (it will be posted later). We still don’t know anyone, personally, that has contracted the disease, but they’re sick people out there. Testing is still abysmal. Trump recommended that congregations of people be limited to no more than ten, when possible, with the result that the kids are sequestered, not quarantined, at home. They have cabin fever for sure. Matty (9) and Emmy (13 in about 2 weeks) are amenable to going for a six-mile walk with Waldo and me and I call them to make sure they dress warmly because it is quite cold when the wind blows.

As we walk along, Waldo out front, eagerly pulling at the leash and picking up sticks, I like to point out various things I’ve noticed about that part of nature we’re trekking through. Emmy knows about the Emmy bird and we listen out for it. Nothing yet. I point out how the trees have little buds on their branches and some of the other plants have tiny leaves growing from their buds. Spring is all coiled up, ready to be sprung — a little surprising, given the temperature today. I show the kids where, about a week ago, the wind blew over a big old tree, taking out part of one of the fences. The city came down to the trail and cut up the tree with a chainsaw and left the pieces on the other side of the fence line. Robins have reappeared and we watch them flit about doing their bird thing. Emmy and Matty already know that they are dinosaurs, that birds are the only ones left from the mass extinction millions of years ago. We’re able to look out over the bare landscape, made naked by the winter, and get a good sense of the area we’re walking through – something we won’t be able to do during the months ahead, once all the leaves come out and block our view. Emmy thinks it looks too barren and is ugly. I point out that it’s just different and that soon, we’ll be walking through a green tunnel that’s full of new life and is incredibly beautiful. We come across a couple of algae-infested ponds and cross over a creek and that is quite scenic. We stop and listen to the tinkling voice of the water as it trickles its way around the rocks and sticks in its way.

As we walk along, we talk about all kinds of things that interests the kids. One of the big things is the coronavirus and its impact on our lives. They’ve been told to keep six feet away from other people, but other than that, it is safe to be here, outside, amongst a part of the world that doesn’t have such a heavy human hand controlling it. Other people are on the trail, some afoot, some jogging, some pushing baby carriages, some on bicycles, and some walking their dogs. The people keep their distance, but Waldo eagerly meets other dogs, when allowed, and I can’t avoid a greeting pat or two as we pass. No one, of course, appears ill. Who would go for a walk in the cold if they weren’t feeling well? Still, we are mindful that there are asymptomatic carriers. The kids aren’t afraid of getting sick, they know that the virus doesn’t seem to be affecting people under 18 much, but they are also aware that they could pass it on to those of us that are older and they know the consequences of that could be bad. So, we’re careful. It’s the social isolation that bothers the kids the most. Emmy misses her friends at school, she is a teenager now, and Matty is just bored by having to entertain himself all day.

As we walk along, I try to turn the kids’ attention to the natural world. I’m hoping if they open themselves up to experience it, they’ll learn to appreciate it and value it. It also turns their awareness toward the moment, something else to be enjoyed and treated lovingly. I try to encourage them to be curious, about everything, and to appreciate the golden opportunity of not knowing – something I feel is richer than the complacent hubris of thinking you know.

Waldo can help me out with all of this too. But for this trip, I try to just entertain the kids and give them some relief from the boredom of being locked inside. The coronavirus disruption to life might just last quite a long while.

And what better place to give them that relief than out on the rail-trail with Waldo?

Always eager to make new friends.

Who goes here? Man, he has some range!

Continued from last week…

Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery.   Today is a gift. That’s why it’s called the present.

-Alice Morse Earle

Taste is something that I don’t use except to decide what I want to eat and then enjoy it. There are only five tastes: sweet, sour, salty, bitter and umami (also known as savory). The rest of our gustatory experience is due to the sense of smell – there is not a lot of distance between our mouths, where the food is, and our noses and they are connected. If I try something new to eat, I’ll put it up close to my nose and tentatively smell it to make sure I want to taste it, then put it in my mouth, taste it and decide if I want to eat it. When I give Waldo something new to eat, he’ll accept it in his mouth, put it on the ground and sniff it, then, if it’s up to snuff, he’ll eat it. Taste, for Waldo, is subordinate to smell.

There is one last sense, a sixth sense – and I’m not talking about ESP. For want of a better term, let me call it the mind sense. It is the sense that allows us to experience our internal world – thoughts, ideas, emotions, feelings of all kinds, our internal dialogue, all those things that happen exclusively inside our heads. You could call this self-awareness and be done with it, but you can also think of this awareness as being possible because of a sixth sense that allows us to experience our inner world like the other five senses allow us to experience the outer world. I’m pretty sure that Waldo also has a mind sense, but his inner experience is bound to be different. I wonder if that difference is more one of quantity than kind — his inner world would be dominated by smell-o-vision tinted glasses and he would probably have no internal dialogue that I would recognize as such. Underneath that, though, the rest just might be very similar.

We’re back home, I’m in my chair with the legs up. I’m going to try to channel Waldo. When I do this, I’m going to suppress my inner dialogue (because he doesn’t have one) and try not to label everything. I will fail because I’m going to describe what I’m experiencing and that requires words. But I’ll try.

I close my eyes and stop the stream of language that incessantly runs through my head. I can only do it intermittently, but I can do it for short periods. I picture what I just saw Waldo doing and what I’ve seen him do before. I imagine I’m seeing the world through his eyes and behind his nose.

I jump out of the thing that magically carries us [the car] to the place where we walk every day [the rail-trail]. I am so ready for this. Gotta go, gotta go, gotta go! Wait! I need a stick. There’s one right next to me on the ground. Quick sniff. Smells okay. I grab it between my teeth. I wait at the edge of the place that’s black, hard and has a smell like nothing in the rest of the outside [the street] where the big scary noisy things [cars] with funny black feet [tires] rush past and make bad smells from their butts. Come on, come on, come on! Let’s go! Finally, I hear “Okay.”   I’m off, across the black hard place and down the place that has all the interesting smells [the rail-trail]. I want to run so bad! Just let it out and go as fast as I can. My muscles are aching to pound where I run [the ground] as hard as possible, but something pulls me back, the thing that always curbs my style [the leash].

I can smell familiar stuff and some that is not. Hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands of different odors. Always there and always changing. There’s that smell that’s strongest when I’m near a soft gooey place [mud], the one that’s heaviest near the little flat things [dead decaying leaves] that sometimes fly when the air moves [wind], the nasty smells that are worse when I’m near the black hard place [tarmac] and – whoa! What is that smell? It seems to be coming from that place over there that’s sort of like the big sticks stuck in the walking place [trees] where the animals that have long fluffy tails that I can never come close to catching [squirrels] hang out and the little animals that can jump so high into the air [birds] live. But it’s way different [a fence post]. It’s not very high and it has sticks [fence rails] that connect it to other sticks nearby [other fence posts]. Sniff, sniff, that smell is dog pee, no doubt about it. Gotta get closer to that weird stick [fence post] and check it out. Sniff, sniff. Yep. Male dog, older than me and bigger. Had some breakfast that tastes like the food I used to eat [chicken flavored]. Sniff, sniff, seems emotionally unstable [bipolar disorder] and kinda edgy [in a manic phase]. Has a mean streak and is hurtful too. Sniff, sniff, but pretty dumb. Definitely nasty and pushy and wants to dominate and control everything. Somebody I want to avoid. Sniff, sniff, his name is Trump.

Oops, snuck a little politics in there.

Whatever Waldo’s real experience is like, one thing is certain. It’s in the moment. Here and now.

Sigh. I’ll never be as good at that as he is, with or without nasal superpower.

Sniff, sniff. I dunno, Waldo. I got nothing.

What is that smell?

“I smell the smelly smell of something that smells smelly.”

-Spongebob Squarepants

Waldo and I are on our first walk of the morning. The sky is clear, there is next to no wind and it is cold. It’s still quite sleepy out and full wakefulness comes gradually as the fog of slumber slowly drains from my mind. As I exhale, I watch my breath condense in steamy clouds and then just hang there, a foot or so in front of my face, as if time were suspended. The yellowed grass still bears patches of ice left over from the last snowstorm and I have to be careful where I step. The sidewalks and driveways have been cleared of ice and snow, but where we walk, beneath the barren apple and pear trees, around the thickets of bushes where rabbits make their homes, it can be treacherous and I keep my eyes open to avoid the worst of it. I can see Waldo’s breath as well, as he trots about the grounds, sniffing everywhere, his odar (odor ranging and direction) on full power. He stops and sticks the tip of his nose a fraction of an inch above the stinkiest poop, that even I can smell from where I stand, and spends a full minute taking it all in. It seems his nasal superpower (some estimates are between 10,000 and 100,000 times more sensitive than human’s) not only picks up the faintest of odors, it’s also able to distinguish between a wide variety of nuance. There must be a lot of information there he needs to process. I wonder what all that smell tells him. It begs the question, what’s it like to see the world through your nose?

Of course, dogs do have a good sense of sight as well as of smell. In broad daylight, it’s not as good as we humans have, but it’s good. They can see better in low light than we can, but it’s not very good vision then. To watch Waldo, you’d think that sight was merely a long-range alert system, telling him what to seek out and sniff. At least most of the time. Humans are very visual and spend most of their sensory attention on what they see. No wonder. My eyesight is good, although I wear glasses. But when I take a whiff of the freezing air, I don’t smell much of anything. Today, I have a runny nose from the cold and most of what I smell is snot, which doesn’t smell like much at all.

Waldo’s hearing is quite good too, including sounds octaves higher than I can sense. It seems to me that he uses it more as passive sonar in order to find things that may be interesting to sniff than as primary input. Like the way he uses his sense of sight. My second most used sense is hearing. I have excellent hearing for my age. I like to ignore the visual input, sometimes by closing my eyes and sometimes by just not paying attention to it, and focus on what I can hear. It not only puts my awareness squarely in the moment, it also opens up an entire universe not accessible by sight. Gay, piping birdsong, the sound of wind tickling leaves, the thunderous turbulent noise of an approaching gust of wind as it elbows its way through trees and around bushes, the slapping sound of my footfalls as I walk, the tinkling babble of water in a nearby brook as it flows around rocks and branches that try to block its run to the sea, all of this and much more can open my attention to a world I cannot see. But I have never used it to find something to smell.

Then there is the sense of touch. I do use it, sometimes, to locate things when I want my eyes on something else. Like finding the button on the key fob in my pocket so I can lock or unlock the car door. I don’t consciously use touch much anymore, to explore the world. I did when I was much younger and sometimes still do to enhance my visual experience. For example, if I want to test if something is wet or to check its temperature. Humans have densely packed tactile sensors on their fingertips and tongues. Dogs have the same on their tongues and I think that when Waldo licks some piece of yuk on the ground, he’s doing it to see what it feels like more than taste it. The pads on his paws are way too thick and cornified to be able to feel much so he probably doesn’t use his feet’s sense of touch for exploring his world. Touch does not offer Waldo much to compete with his sense of smell.

To be continued next week…

Nice to smell you.

Atop Mt. Kilimanjaro, Uhuru Peak, Tanzania 08/25/2010.
5895 meters, 19341 feet

Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth.

-Henry David Thoreau

The day is a little warmer than it has been – temps are in the high forties and low fifties. Nature is still in hibernation mode on the rail-trail, though.   The spring equinox hasn’t arrived yet and she slumbers on in a cloak of dead leaves and naked limbs. There are some subtle stirrings, though, harbingers of greener, lusher times to come. The birds are back. I can see some of them, although not well enough to identify most of them, and I can hear those that I can’t see.  They sometimes come in flocks and, in places, are quite noisy. Things get awfully quiet when a cold spell hits, and then the birds are back in abundance on the warmer days. Either they follow the warm air as it moves around the country, or, when it gets cold, they disappear into some warm cozy cocoon somewhere out of sight and hearing. Either way, they are back, even if intermittently.

Before I retired, my day was spent indoors, or inside a metal cocoon going down the highway. I interacted with many people, most of whom I barely knew or had only a working relationship. My exposure to the larger world was limited to a few days here and there, scattered throughout the years. Like when I climbed Kilimanjaro, or went on a ten-day canoe trip on the Boundary Waters in Minnesota. I’ve always loved being out in the wilderness, surviving on what I could find and what I carried with me on my back. It’s rejuvenating, somehow, to leave the artificial, man-made environment that defines most of our lives. It feels sort of like going back to the essentials of what it means to be alive.

Since I retired, things have changed. Now, thanks to Waldo and his canine needs, I’m surrounded by nature every day. Even though we’re still inside a city limits, it feels like we’re out in the country — the artificiality of humanity surrounds us, but it’s mostly unseen and easily ignored. I get to directly experience the ebb and flow of life as it changes with the seasons. I see the budding of trees (maples, sycamores and black walnuts), bushes and weeds I can’t identify that then become fully leafed-out and flowering, followed by the bearing of seeds of various kinds that fall on the ground, the cycle ending with bare limbs and twigs buried in orange dead leafage and then snow. I see and hear the coming and goings of various animals – squirrels, rabbits, chipmunks and an occasional opossum, that are there in abundance on warm days and then gone when the temperature drops. Some animals are present only in the warmer months, like chipmunks, robins, sparrows, the Emmy bird and bugs (noseeums, gnats, mosquitoes, flies, crickets, beetles, ticks – the list is huge) and gone when it gets cold.

I experience the changing of the seasons intimately, because I’m in whatever weather the day has to offer, for up to three hours at a time. Long enough to grow icicles on my hood in freezing rain, to have my cheeks and nose become numb with the cold as my armpits moisten my shirt with sweat. I watch the bowing of Waldo’s leash, fully extended, as it’s blown about by a strong wind. On a snowy day, I tramp through deep snow, my feet and gaiters buried to above my ankles. In the summer, I get up before dawn to start our daily six mile walk before it gets too hot. I slog through pouring rain and grit my teeth against the cold, gusting wind. And I do this every damn day. On the rare occasion we skip the rail-trail, we still go out for half-mile poop and pee breaks, roughly fifteen minutes at a time, four or five times a day.

And Waldo is with me each and every time. He is the force of nature that propels me forward, literally as well as figuratively. Oh, I enjoy being outside every day, but I know that if it weren’t for Waldo, I would find some excuse to stay inside, sitting in my recliner, growing roots. I would stay in my artificial box I call a home and witness only that small part of nature I can see through my living-room window.

And Waldo has become so much else. He is my constant companion. My charge that, totally dependent on me for everything, I care for and worry about, whose welfare I am constantly thinking about. The surest way to fall in love with something, including inanimate objects, like cars or airplanes, is to tend to their needs, daily, hourly and in detail. Best of all, I can say that Waldo is my friend.

Waldo has changed my life, and so much for the better.

Today, with Waldo on the rail-trail.

Waldo as a little puppy on his farm in Pennsylvania.

Continued from last week…

It’s only after you’ve stepped outside your comfort zone that you begin to change, grow and transform.

-Roy T. Bennett

When I first brought Waldo home in the car from the farm, he was obviously uncomfortable. It was a seven and a half hour drive from his birthplace in Pennsylvania to his new home in Marlborough, Massachusetts. I stopped every couple of hours and lifted him out of the car to pee. He sat where I put him on the ground and wouldn’t move, too insecure to relieve himself. Finally, he couldn’t hold it anymore and he did what he needed to do. Slowly, he became comfortable with being on a leash and in my company and we were able to go for walks.

When we first got to our apartment, he wouldn’t go up or down the stairs. I had to carry him up and down and then encourage him to navigate the stairs on his own by lifting or lowering his front paws onto the next stair, followed by his hind paws. This took a couple of weeks, but he finally was willing to go up and down without hesitation. Thank God, he then weighed some forty pounds.

For months, when we walked around the property and we came close to the street, he would chase after the cars as they went by – not in the street, but on the grass next to it. I don’t think this was all instinctive herding — his tail was tucked and he was quite agitated. After many months, CBD oil and discouragement from me, he now is used to the car-sheep and ignores them as he walks along next to them. He even stops at street crossings and waits for me to tell him it’s okay to cross. Which he then does, after looking both ways.

Waldo still has moments when he comes across something new and startles. Jumping back from the new object — a snow shovel, a snow blower (not operating) or a Vespa — ears back, tail tucked, he eyes the thing suspiciously and gives it a wide berth. I roll my eyes, tell him it’s okay and call him over closer to the offending object. He pauses, puts his head low and slowly, haltingly, comes over to give the thing a close look and a sniff. That done, he turns his head and continues on his Waldo-way as if nothing happened. Waldo trusts me now.

Today, it’s really cold. The wind bites through my pants, chilling my legs, and blusters my exposed cheeks and nose, making them numb. Icicles grow on my mustache, condensed from my steamy breath. My fingers hurt from the cold, despite the heavy gloves, and I pick up my pace to generate more body heat.

The rail-trail landscape is bleak — skeletal trees and bushes, yellowed grass and patches of ice scattered on the dun-colored ground, tinted orange by masses of dead oak and maple leaves. I hear no birds – they’ve either gone south or are hiding in some cozy nook or other. I miss talking to the Emmy bird. Guess that’ll have to wait for spring and warmer weather. Even the squirrels are nowhere to be seen today. There are a few people and dogs that we pass, but not many.

Waldo trots along, sniffing and picking up sticks. On occasion, he will turn around, come close to me, stick in mouth, and try to get me to play keep-away. We do this awkward dance as we work our way down the path, both tugging at the overvalued stick. Finally, he lets go and I give it a toss, landing out in front of us, but within the eight-meter length of his leash. His tail is up and he gallops after it in a rush. Once again in possession of the precious thing, he brings it back to me and the game starts all over again. This is not what his breed was genetically selected to do, but he’s having a grand old time doing it anyway.

Waldo has changed in so many ways. He’s a work in progress, for sure, but he’s gone from being a farm dog to a city dog. He was not created to live in a city; none of us were. The city was created for us to live in and we adapt as best we can. The best part? He seems to be very happy about his adaptation.

And I am eternally grateful to have him in my life in the city.

Waldo today towing my grandson on the rail-trail.

Cold, rainy, foggy day on the rail-trail.

The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.

-William Arthur Ward

It’s cold out, about thirty degrees, and rainy. The past few days have been warm enough to melt the patchy sheets of ice that made it slow going in places. I can now walk on the rail-trail tarmac without risking a fall that could cause me significant injury and Waldo a hiatus from his beloved daily walks. Waldo, he was never at as significant risk of injury as I was. He’s closer to the ground and has four supports keeping him up to my two. Not that I haven’t seen him fall on the ice; I have. He doesn’t seem bothered by it, though. He goes along, doing his Waldo thing, and sometimes even seems to think that sliding on the ice is kind of fun. But, until the next snowstorm, that’s now a thing of the past.

I watch him as he saunters down the path, out in front at the end of his eight-meter leash, gently (most of the time) pulling me along behind him. Maybe I should train him to be a sled dog. But, if he were a sled dog, he would have to be the lead dog. He does not like being behind anyone. On the other hand, I don’t think that pulling on the leash is his goal. I think he just gets into a hyperactive state of mind where he feels, “Gotta go, gotta go, gotta go!” I think he just wants to let it all out and run full throttle. Unfortunately, the leash won’t allow him to. I know he loves to gallop to nowhere as fast as he can — I’ve seen it when I let him off-leash in fenced-in areas. And who can blame him. His genes have been selected to run after sheep in wide open fields.

I got a puppy who was born on a farm without leash or fences, bred to wander far and wide, running at will, wherever he might want to go. Have I done him a disservice by bringing him into city life? Allowing his only freedom to be within small fenced-in areas or at the end of a tether? I struggle with this a little, but if the only places where there are border collies are on farms, there wouldn’t be very many border collies. And Waldo is really such a sweet dog. The world could use more like him. I think, instead, it is my responsibility to try to bend his instincts to life in the city.

When I knew I was going to retire, I looked online for a border collie puppy. I researched their needs and decided it would be good for me to be forced to get out and exercise an active dog. Border collie puppies for sale are not hard to find, but I had in mind owning a tricolor dog, don’t know exactly why, and they are not that easy to come by. When I saw Waldo’s picture on the computer screen, I decided he was the one I wanted and I bought him. It was still five months before my retirement and I didn’t want to get a dog if I couldn’t be with him regularly – that wouldn’t be fair to the dog. So, I made arrangements to buy the dog, then have the breeder keep him until I was ready to pick him up. I visited him once for three days three months before retirement and finally picked him up three weeks before my final day at work.

I brought a portable crate for when I had to work nights (which I mostly did) and put it in the physician’s office just outside the ER. That way, I could keep him in the crate and take him out when needed, with lots of visits for pets and pats in between. He slept the rest of the time. He was remarkably quiet and the ED staff fell in love with him. Waldo and I lived like this – home, work, home, work — until my last night on the job – the night of my seventieth birthday. That was a lot of change for the little puppy and I know he felt pretty insecure.

Since I got Waldo, I’ve paid attention to the fact that Waldo wasn’t bred for a city life and tried to find a way to make him happy as he adjusted to it. You know, maybe the fact that I had to pay attention to Waldo’s adjustments made mine easier.

Life is always easier when you focus on problems outside of yourself.

To be continued next week…

Wald in the city, towing my grandson.

Atop Kilimanjaro, Tanzania, 2010
19,341 ft

Old age is just a record of one’s whole life.

-Muhammad Ali

When I was younger, I decided that, rather than saving up money for retirement, I should use what money I had to do the things I wanted to do while I was still young and could enjoy it. What was the point, I argued with myself, to be old and feeble and have lots of money, but no vitality to take advantage of it? So, I traveled on a shoestring, learned how to do things that cost a lot of money, like flying small planes, went on adventures by third class in Africa, and spent what money I had building a laser instead of buying a car. I met a lot of people from many different cultures, gained a nodding familiarity with a few languages, learned that all people are much more like me than they are different from me and befriended many. I studied what interested me intellectually without regard to how viable that study might be to my making a living – relativistic astrophysics, Tibetan Buddhism, and the Ethiopian language, Amharic, to name just a few.

Now, I’m retired and have just enough wherewithal to live. No big nest-egg for me. And I don’t regret it a bit. Though the spirit is eager, the flesh, well, not so much. I’m seventy-one and, although quite healthy, my body will just not let me beat the crap out of it the way it used to. So, though I might fantasize about going and spending a summer climbing around the Himalayas, I can walk with Waldo and remember my time climbing Kilimanjaro and let the Himalayas go. I am content to watch Waldo as he joyfully explores his little piece of wilderness and reminisce about the time I raised a cheetah in Africa. Oh, I still travel a little, but not on the scale or with the exposure to risk that I used to. And I’m still mentally with it enough that I can study and learn what I want from the comfort of my easy-chair.

The need to go out and gain as much experience of life as I could, when I was young, has now, in my retirement, morphed into a deep-seated curiosity of how to integrate everything that I experienced. My mind is compelled to draw together all I’ve seen into some kind of Universal Understanding of Life. To answer the question, “What the hell was that all about?” To sort out the most important things in life from those that are merely chaff. And to pass on whatever conclusions and insights I gained to my children, grandchildren and anyone else who’ll listen.

Waldo is playing an interesting role in all of this. As I see him romp and play, explore the rail-trail, learn how to integrate his instincts with living in a city environment filled with and controlled by human beings and all of their accoutrements, I am pulled out of myself, enabled to see it all removed from my inner experience.   I see the world through the eyes of a young animal, new to the world, who struggles to develop an understanding of dog-life-in-the-city from a nearly clean slate. I experience with him, to some degree, what it’s like to experience life unencumbered by the concepts, ideas, preconceptions, hopes and fears that are intrinsic to the human condition. What does Waldo think the summum bonum (greatest good) is? A steak in his dish? Or maybe just the freedom to experience the moment as it unfolds?

The day is chilly, but not cold. Waldo trots along down the rail-trail, tail wagging, ears up and nose alert. He does S turns back and forth across the path, trying to take it all in. I fantasize what he’s thinking – What’s that smell? Did I just hear a bird? Or was it a squirrel? What’s that blotch of white stuff on the ground? It smells weird. Ugh, it don’t taste so good. I know, what I really need is a good stick. Here, stick, here, stick! There’s gotta be a stick around here somewhere. What’s that over there?  I’m right there with him and, for a second, I understand everything.

The most important thing in life is right here, right now, in this moment.

In the here and now with Waldo

Enjoying the rail-trail.

So we grew together,

Like a double cherry, seeming parted,

But yet an union in partition,

Two lovely berries moulded on one stem…

-A Midsummer Night’s Dream 3.2.208-11

It’s a fine winter day on the rail-trail. The temperature is in the low thirties, the sky is a cloudless blue, the sun is bright, the wind is light and the path is clear of snow, ice and slush. Waldo is doing his Waldo thing, trotting along with nose less than an inch above the ground, in search of something interesting. He goes off-trail toward a rail fence. Something over there got his attention and he’s crawling under the lowest board to get to it. His body is stiff with curiosity, his legs pushing him on his belly toward some treasure.

I can see his excitement in his posture. I don’t smell what he does (thank God) and I pretend I don’t see him stick out his tongue and lick the target of his attentions (ugh!). But I not only see how he feels about the experience, I, somehow, feel it too. It’s a shared experience – I’m right there with him. It’s curious and it’s magic.

We must be a lot alike for that to happen. After all, 84% of dog and human DNA is the same. To put this in perspective, chimpanzees and humans share 99% of the same DNA, birds and humans (whose evolutionary paths parted hundreds of millions of years ago) share 65% and humans and bananas share about 50%. So, dogs and humans are biologically close, but, more than that, we are spiritually close.

No rational person who has loved a dog can doubt that dogs have consciousness. They are aware, they understand language, they interact with us. You say, “Sit,” the dog sits. You throw a ball, the dog brings the ball back to you. The dog whines, you take him outside. The dog paws his bowl, you give him food and water. These require a common understanding of what it means to sit, what a ball is for, that one has to pee and poop and that there are biological needs for nutrition and hydration. And it also requires that each of you understands that the other understands what is meant. But this only scratches the surface.

I know, beyond a reasonable doubt, that when I see Waldo dancing down the rail-trail, stick in mouth, tail wagging, eyes besparkled, that he is feeling something that, if I felt it, I would call happy. When he is startled by something unfamiliar to him, causing him to have his tail tucked, ears back and a crouched posture, I know he feels something I would label fear. When I am upset with him, he looks at me with those damn doe-eyes that melt my heart and I know he knows I’m upset and, although he probably wouldn’t label it “mad,” I know he knows what I’m feeling. When I call him to me and give him pats, rubs and head-hugs, he responds with licks, love nibbles and body rubs and I know he knows what I’m feeling. But we not only understand what the other feels, we feel it. We have a rapport, an empathy, an emotional, no, a spiritual, give-and-take. I can’t imagine how this could be possible if we didn’t share a great deal of the same experience of what it means to be alive – more than what we don’t share. Of course, this isn’t unique to dogs. You can bond with chimpanzees and birds as well. Bananas, well, not so much. But they taste good.

It’s magical how much Waldo and I can share nonverbally. I can feel what Waldo feels and I know he can feel what I feel. The accuracy of what we feel about the other may be questionable, but it is consistent with our reactions to our feelings and our interactions because of them. How do you know when you are communicating with another person? How do you know they can accurately parse your words into meaning and understand what you’re trying to say? You know when they consistently respond in an appropriate fashion. How do I know Waldo and I feel what the other is experiencing on a deep and precognitive level? Because we can have an interaction based on that, one that is consistent and predictable. Our bonding has put us in a place where we interact by intuitively “speaking” to each other on a level that is subliminal and profound.

Yep, Waldo and I, we grok each other.

Chillin after our walk.

Cold? This aint cold! Come on, old man!

Many human beings say that they enjoy the winter, but what they really enjoy is feeling proof against it.

-Richard Adams

It’s about two degrees, with wind chill, on the rail-trail. I’m dressed in gloves with liners and down parka, with hood up, overlying a fleece jacket. I’m even wearing a balaclava to protect my face. Waldo is dressed in his sable-fur birthday suit. A storm visited us a couple of days ago and the ground is crunchy with an icy sheet of snow, even where the path has been plowed.

Gusty winds of up to twenty miles an hour play havoc with my temperature regulation, particularly in my fingers. I keep one gloved hand warm in a pocket while holding the leash handle with the other. When the fingers start hurting too much in the gloved hand out in the arctic air, I switch them up. This lasts about twenty minutes, then I have to switch hands again. After an hour or so, just about the time we get to our turnaround point, I’ve worked up enough body-heat that the circulation is bounding in my fingers and they no longer get cold.

The balaclava is a sheet of neoprene with a large hole for the eyes and a smaller one for the nostrils so I can breathe through my nose. Even smaller holes over my lips allow me to breathe through from my mouth. It puts pressure on my glasses and isn’t really very comfortable. When I exhale, my steamy breath is redirected, if I’m not careful, up under my ice-cold glasses, causing them to fog up so I can’t see a thing. I can pull the lower part down so it’s crumpled under my chin, leaving a large hole that exposes my entire face, but if I do, it’s not long before my misty breath grows icicles on my mustache. All that ice on my upper lip hurts — a lot. It’s not long before I’m trying to figure out how to get rid of body heat as my armpits get damp from sweat. I’m constantly making tweaks here and there, trying to adjust to my varying temperature needs.

Waldo, he just goes on down the trail, bounding in the snow, even rolling in it, tail switching back and forth, not bothered by the cold at all. He doesn’t slow down, he doesn’t shiver, he doesn’t limp. Sometimes he’ll stop and bury his nose in a snowbank as if he’s found a rabbit hole. He loves the stuff. Thank God. I would have some real trouble getting a cold, anxious, fifty-five pound dog back to our car when we’re three miles away. But, unlike this wimpy old man, the young pup doesn’t seem to need any protection from the cold, other than what he was born with.

It strikes me that there is something of a metaphor here. It doesn’t take too much of a stretch in the imagination to see old age and retirement as a kind of wintering. Just as I dress warmly before I go out into the elements in the winter, I braced for my retirement with a warm puppy. Living with a young dog has its difficult times, just like walking in the winter wonderland has its slippery, windy, and freezing moments. But Waldo makes all of it bearable. He gives me an inner warmth that flows from my heart and spills out over my life. I have family and friends that I love dearly as well, but Waldo is here twenty-four/seven. He protects me from the cold reality of the approaching end of life (something that is still far off, but inevitable) with his puppy antics and joyful heart.

In return, I provide him with a security blanket of support and safety. I feed and house him, exercise him, engage in play with him and keep him out of trouble that could easily do him serious harm.   I don’t think he thinks he needs all that I do for him, but I also think he is very grateful for what he’s got. Waldo is a happy, playful, sweet and loving dog.

And Waldo is catching up. In about ten years, I figure we will be at about the same equivalent age. Then I can provide for him the same protection against the cold winter of his life as he does for me now.

Side by side, Waldo and I walk life’s trail, to its inescapable end.

Definition of hubris.
No, you cannot take that home!