Walking with Waldo

The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn’t said.

-Peter Drucker

Waldo and I took a day off from the rail-trail and, today, we return for what, for us, is a short walk. My ankle is a little sore, but I figure I can do two miles without too much problem and that’s our goal. It’s early morning, a bit on the cool side, compared to the heat that’s recently baked us, the sky is clear and the wind is light. Waldo is very excited to get going as soon as he gets out of the car, and I hobble along behind, as best as I can, towed by a taut leash.

The birds are out and I swear I can hear one call, “Emmy,” in a high-pitched raspy voice. My granddaughter’s name is Emily and I cannot let this go by without comment. “Emmy!” I call out, imitating the sound as best as I can.

“Emmy,” comes a reply.

“Emmy?” I return.

“Emmy!” comes the birdcall.

This goes on for a minute or so, then the Emmys fade into the distance as Waldo and I continue on down our path. One might think that this is syntactically even more limited than “I am Groot,” but I’m not so sure. I remember watching a skit on “Laugh-In” (a predecessor of SNL), decades ago, where Ruth Buzzi and Arte Johnson (or maybe it was Lily Tomlin and Henry Gibson?) carried on an entire conversation sitting on a park bench, using nothing more than the single word “Oh.” Now, I’m not saying that the Emmy-bird and I had a meaningful discourse on the intricacies of relativistic astrophysics, but The Emmys flowed back and forth as if there was real communication there. Not that I have more than the foggiest idea about what either one of us was saying, however. I think it was in the vein of, “I am here!” and “So am I!” followed by, “I’m doing well, you?”, with maybe a “What do you want?” or a “You friendly?” Who knows? The point is, there seemed to be a give and take that had limited content.

Waldo and I, of course, have a much broader vocabulary and communicate in much more depth. In addition, we have body language and eye contact as well as tone of voice to deepen the conversation. I use words and hand signals, Waldo uses more action and occasional nonverbal utterances to tell me what he needs (although, now that I think about it, the noises he makes are usually more punctuation — most often exclamation marks). I am sure that he also pays attention to my body language that I don’t intentionally transmit, and I read a lot into his movements and facial expression that is ill-defined, but informative. We talk to each other, not only through the language centers of our brains (Waldo obviously has one because he does respond appropriately, when he wants, to my spoken words), but also through other parts of our brains. In fact, most of our communication is done nonverbally. It’s a subliminal intuitive communication that I think can be best described, as I’ve mentioned before, as grokking. We human beings do it amongst ourselves as well, it is omnipresent, but we’re so distracted by words that we barely notice and it remains subconscious most of the time.

I look at Waldo waltzing down the grass on the side of the trail. His tail tells me he’s happy, his pace says he’s excited, his posture telegraphs confidence and comfort, his nose gliding close to ground with perked-up ears and occasionally lapping tongue make it obvious that his auditory, visual, gustatory and olfactory senses are focused on something right in front of him and he is curious. He’s a happy, energized puppy. He stops and briefly turns to look at me. For an instant, our eyes meet and I know he sees an old man who is calm, plodding (in a halting kind of way) engaged with what’s happening and who has his back. His brief glance signals me that he knows that I am responsible for making this happen and he is grateful for it. And then he is back doing his Waldo thing.

Yeah, I speak Waldo and he speaks me.

Happy. Curious. Engaged.

Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans.

-Allen Saunders

Well, dammit!

The day after the first day of about 1.5 miles, we ventured 2 miles down the rail-trail. I’ve been wearing hiking boots on the trail in order to preserve the ortho-boot, which I use the other times I’m on my feet. Even so, things seemed to be going well, so the next day we went three. Our prior routine is pulling at us like the irresistible force, ergo, we then went to four and I was thinking about extending it to five the next day, which is today. After four miles, however, my ankle began to hurt a bit more than when we started out. Today, it hurts, not terribly, but uncomfortably. This may be exacerbated by the fact that late last night, Waldo and I were caught in a downpour and the ortho-boot got soaked. Now, I can’t wear it at all until it dries out. A good portion of the thing is foam rubber and this is taking a while. The ortho-boot fixes my ankle so I can’t hardly flex it and that allows the joint and its ligaments to rest. Without it, the pain in my ankle is slowly getting worse. Discretion wins out over hubris and we are resting for a day — that is, no prolonged walks — and then we will see how it goes. God, it’s taking a long time to heal.

Waldo is being a real trooper and, although I’m certain he’s aching to get back to the rail-trail, as am I, he does the best he can entertaining himself in the apartment. He seems to have found a black hole in here, however, or maybe it’s that place where lost socks disappear, as many of his bones, antlers, balls and other toys can’t be found. I’ve looked under the tables, chairs, couches and the bed, in closets and in every nook and cranny I can see and can’t find them. I’m thinking I won’t find them until a good spring cleaning is done, which, like so many things, is going to wait until my ankle heals a bit more. Today, I bought him more toys. I even sprayed the building around the balcony with some stuff dogs are supposed to avoid in order to encourage him not to eat the place and I’ve let him go back out there. So far, so good. He’s tolerant, although it’s obvious he’s raring to go.

This has given us the impetus to work on games like fetch. Waldo loves to play keep-away, which is okay, except his idea of the game is to make me chase him around, trying to get at whatever we’re playing with. That’s something I tire of pretty quickly, so I’m trying to get him to return toys when I throw them. This is a real challenge because that’s not the game he wants to play. So far, it’s a work in progress, a negotiation, an admixture of fetch and tug-of-war, but at least he’s bringing the toy within reach where I can get it without running after him. And it helps keep him entertained and deepens our bond to one another.

The damn rail-trail is just over there, just a mile away. On the trail we can go about our business, be entertained, get exercise and enjoy each other for hours, until we’re pleasantly exhausted. We can be in nature, a part of the greening world with all its sights and smells. We can meet other people who also enjoy going out for a walk, and encounter other dogs who are eager to play. And that’s to say nothing of the possibility of finding a rabbit, squirrel or chipmunk to pursue.   It’s not fair! And all this is due to a minor indiscretion, a moment of inattention while walking down the stairs. Life is so unforgiving – heavy sigh. Convalescence sucks.

Waldo’s nudging my arm as I write this. He wants to go out. I take him out about every two hours and stumble along, dealing with whatever pain arises. This way, he gets at least some limited stimulation the outdoors has to offer – as do I. That’s not much, but it’s something.

Maybe tomorrow, my ankle will feel good enough to do the 1.5 miles.

Ah, dog, this sucks.

When man will return to nature, nature will return to him.

-Grigoris Deoudis

We’re back. Sort of.

Waldo prances eagerly about the rail-trail, now blue-bootless with no sign of his prior right paw injury. He is, however, dragging anchor and wishing he could cut the rode (anchor line), hoist full sail and head out into the open sea. Unfortunately, although it’s been three weeks since the injury, at the other end of his tether is an old man slowed even more than usual by nagging ankle pain. Waldo makes the best of it and goes about his business, sniffing everything and tasting a disturbing amount of it. He’s excited as we start down the trail, towing me behind on a taut line as I hobble along at a speed not much above hove to (barely moving).

It’s early morning, the temperature is cool, and the air is clean and fresh, bearing the scent of moist fecund earth. We walk through a verdant tunnel, the path winding its way through forest undergrowth. I spent my early years living in the semiarid west where everything was yellow and brown. I’m still enthralled by how green the world is on the east coast, even in July and August, and it seems even more so when the low angling morning sunlight is filtered green as it dances through the leaves. There is something primordial that tugs at my soul – perhaps old species-memory passed to me in my genes from my distant arboreal ancestors. It makes the world seem so idyllic. I missed this as much as Waldo did.

Birds are out in force, singing and chirping – as they are wont to do at the beginning of the day. I close my eyes and listen with loose attention. Focusing first on the birdsong, I then let my attention drift to whatever else I can hear – the soft rustle of wind in the leaves, the buzz of busy insects, the clacking of Waldo’s clawed footfalls on the tarmac. From there, I shift my awareness to my other senses, one at a time. I center my attention on each of my steps as I move along – the ground pushing reassuringly up on the soles of my feet, the pain in my ankle waxing and waning with every step – incessant, but tolerable and the muscles in my legs effortlessly contracting in a synchrony that allows me to keep my balance. I feel the air as it plays with the small hairs on my exposed skin and the feel of it as it enters my nose and expands in my lungs with each breath. I smell the odor of the life around me, vague and complex, difficult to distinguish and define. Only my sense of taste is unexposed to the world around me – the thought of opening that to my surroundings, as Waldo does, is not compelling. I wonder what it would add to the experience, though. Finally, I open my eyes and see my surroundings in a new way, absorbed in the moment. It’s not at all sad or depressing, but the rawness of it makes me feel a bit like facial tissue soaking up tears. I look at Waldo, prancing about the grass and weeds on the side of the trail. Does he feel like this all the time?

Waldo tugs at the leash. He’s on a mission, his mind set on going down the trail, discovering the next experience, whatever that may be. Being out here has flipped a switch in his psyche that energizes him an order of magnitude above his apartment-dwelling routine. He seems to see being here as an opportunity to exercise his mind. The gears in his head are turning and the look in his eye says that he is taking it all in and processing it. I wonder what he is learning. One thing for sure, his hyperactive state is not going to quickly evaporate when we get home. I feel sorry that I can’t provide this for him all day long, at least until he tires.

The goal for this first foray back into nature is about a mile and a half. Waldo is focused on continuing and gives me a puzzled look when I pull on the leash and turn to go back, but he complies. We’ll go further tomorrow, puppy. I’m fearful that over-doing it could worsen my recovery and slow the return to our established routine. Each step causes a little pain, but it’s bearable. When we return, the pain is not significantly worse than when we left – yet.

Maybe tomorrow, we can try for two miles.

Come on, old man! Lets go!

Synchronicity is an ever present reality for those who have eyes to see,

-Carl Jung

One week into the sprained ankle and it’s obvious I was initially overly optimistic. The thing swelled up to twice its normal size and the pain still goes up to an eight-out-of-ten whenever I put the foot below waist level for more than about two minutes. It isn’t a boney pain, but more of a burning pain associated with the swelling. Still, it’s quite uncomfortable and I’m really disappointed that it isn’t significantly better after seven days.

I suck it up and walk Waldo around the building every two to three hours. It’s agonizingly slow going, but Waldo seems to take it in stride. After each trek, I have to get into the recliner and put my foot up for at least an hour, and more often than not, until it’s time to go back outside. Waldo is grateful for the sojourns outdoors and isn’t going too crazy indoors, but I can see that he needs more, so I call my daughter and ask if I can bring him over to run around in her fenced-in back yard. At least there, I can let him tire himself out and he’ll eventually come inside when called. Plus, my daughter and her husband are around to help me corral him if needed.

It works out well. I sit on the deck and put my foot up and watch Waldo do his thing. He runs in a gallop, round and round, always in a counterclockwise, anticyclonic pattern. I know it can’t be due to the coriolis effect, the force that drives weather patterns, because it’s in the wrong direction. No idea why he does that, maybe he’s just being rebellious. More likely, it’s just another one of those Waldo things.

After the first hour, Waldo gets hot enough he has to stop and lie down, but only for a minute. His firehose length tongue is flailing about outside of his snout, spraying saliva everywhere. We provide him with a large bowl of water and he stops several times and tanks up, then proceeds to unwind at full speed. Occasionally, he’ll stop and lunge at something I can’t see, then continue on his circuit. I figure I’ll give him a good two hours to run it out, unless he becomes obviously uncomfortable in the heat. Meanwhile, I’m sitting in a comfortable chair, with my foot up on another, in the shade, pleased with the easing pain and so happy that Waldo can get some needed exercise without my having to walk with him and make my ankle hurt.

Almost two hours have passed and we notice that Waldo is limping a bit, favoring his right paw. What is this? Sympathy paw pain? I get up and stumble over to his path and notice a little bit of blood on the cement patio. I call him to me and, surprisingly, he comes. I check out his pads and he has two spots on the largest, scraped down to raw tissue. It’s bleeding only a little and spontaneously stops. It’s painful enough, though, that he’s limping and I’m going to have to watch it closely to make sure it doesn’t get infected. I’m totally puzzled. I watched him the entire time and didn’t see him do anything that would cause the injury. Weird.

On the way home, I stop at a pet store. I don’t think he needs any antibiotic cream, the scrape on his foot is minor and the cream would only soften the pads. But they have these little blue rubber balloons designed to fit over the paw and protect it from any further injury until it can heal. I put one on Waldo and he doesn’t seem to mind it too much. After about ten minutes he’s walking more comfortably and ignores that it’s there. He doesn’t even mind when I start calling him a Blue-footed Booby.

If I were a conspiracy nut, I might try to read something into all this, try to argue that the laws of nature could not explain how both of us wound up with right foot injuries at the same time without some kind of supernatural hand being at work. But I’m not. I do believe, though, that there is a synchronicity that our brains have attained that allow us to work together. A subliminal, as well as verbal and body language, communication that we developed over the months we’ve been together that allows us to dance, hand in paw, to the tune that life is playing for us.

And that’s just magic.

The Boot Boys.

The formula for achieving a successful relationship is simple: you should treat all disasters as if they were trivialities but never treat a triviality as if it were a disaster.

-Quentin Crisp

It’s dark. I’m out walking Waldo, just getting back to our building.   There’s a series of cement stairs leading down a hill to the front door. Not paying adequate attention to where I put my feet, I set my right foot on the edge of one of the steps, put my weight on it and more than the front half of my foot is supported by nothing but air. My toes go down, flexing my ankle forward in a totally unnatural angle. I fall to the ground and immediately know I have seriously sprained my ankle. Goddammit!

Waldo sees that I’m down, runs over to me, does a quick doggy triage and decides that I’m not on death’s door and returns to his mission, whatever that is. I lay there for a couple of minutes, doing a systems’ check. I’m pretty sure nothing is broken, so, with some effort, I stand and gingerly try putting some weight on that foot. It will support my weight, but it’s telling me to straight leg it – no bending the ankle. I hobble back to the apartment, take Waldo off-leash and send him to bed (it is his bedtime). I sit in my chair, recline back and do a quick physical exam of my right ankle. It’s tender and I know the pain will get worse, but I’m now certain that nothing is broken.   But it’s going to mean no prolonged walks for at least ten days, maybe longer. Damn.

What am I going to do with a dog that’s as hyperactive as Waldo? Just a few weeks ago, Waldo’s surgery restricted what we could do and we had to live with a cone-of shame. His resilience was remarkable. Now, walks again are out, except for short poop and pee jaunts around the building. Prolonged standing is out, so any playtime we have will have to be modified so it’s done from my chair with my foot up. No dog parks because once I put him off-leash, I’ll never be able to get him back on-leash when I can’t walk worth a damn. I just hope the poor dog can hold it together for ten days – or more. Before I took care of him, will he now take care of me, at least by happily allowing his activities to be limited? I feel really bad for him.

Next day, Waldo wakes me a little after six and tells me he has to go out. I get dressed as quickly as I can and carefully and slowly go down the stairs. Once outside, Waldo races off to the end of the leash as he always does. I give him a gentle tug when he gets there to ensure he doesn’t pull me off balance. The last thing we need is for me to injure the ankle even worse. It’s hard enough to walk on the cement walkway, but the uneven turf we have to cross causes the ankle to flex ever so slightly, which hurts like hell. Waldo runs about, gathering up his woodchips and sticks and makes the best of it. I don’t go far, it takes about twenty minutes to go around the building twice, but Waldo is able to run around at the end of the leash so that he gets almost as much exercise as if we were doing our regular walk.   I take him about every two hours. Somehow, we manage.

Inside is something more of a challenge. He grabs one of his balls and brings it over to my good foot. He holds it in his mouth and tries to tempt me to knock it free. He doesn’t fetch worth a damn. He either plays tug-of-war or keep away. He does, however, get close enough to my good foot so I can, on occasion, knock the ball free. We play tug-of -war with a couple pieces of rope, but if I let go of it, he won’t bring it back so we can continue. I have a laser pointer and he loves to chase after the little red dot. He looks up at the hand that is holding the pointer and seems to know that it’s where the light is coming from, but he doesn’t seem to care. He would pursue it all day if I didn’t tire of the game. When I’m writing, Waldo goes about the apartment, trying to find something to entertain himself with and I have to keep a close eye on him so he doesn’t get in trouble. Somehow, we make adjustments in adversity to each other and our needs.

We are a team.

Bored. Bored. Bored.

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.

-Carl Jung

Have you ever wondered if your dog has one of those parasites in his head? You know, like the ones that infect an animal’s brain and causes its behavior to change. Like the hairworm that infects grasshoppers and produces proteins in the host’s brain that causes the grasshopper to seek out water where it will drown and release the worm so it can continue to pursue its life. Or toxoplasma gondii that infects rats and mice and reduces their fear of cats, allowing them to be eaten so the parasite’s life cycle can continue in the cat. It might explain an awful lot. Dogs do some pretty weird shit.

Waldo does some stuff whose motivation I just can’t fathom. Where we live, there are flowers and bushes whose beds are covered by a layer of wood chips. Waldo will run up to the chips and come to a dead stop. He’ll stare, motionless, at a particular spot, as if he were stalking something. There is nothing but wood chips there. Rising up on his hind legs, he pauses for a moment, then explodes, pouncing on the chips as if to catch them by surprise before they can get away. This is followed by a nonchalant waltz in the direction he had been going with a fist-sized mouthful of those nefarious wood chips. These, he’ll carry for quite a ways, then see a stick he likes and somehow add that to the mess. Sometimes he has three or four sticks, of various sizes, in his mouth, while running along at the extreme end of his leash. Only on demand will he open his mouth and give up his valued load, and then only when convinced he has no alternative. But I can’t for the life of me understand how a parasite could possibly benefit from this behavior.

Or maybe it’s the CBD oil I put in his food to calm his anxiety. I know, I know, the oil contains no hallucinogens. At least not for humans. How do we know that dogs don’t react differently to what’s in there? For that matter, how would you design an experiment that would test that? Is Waldo hallucinating some stalk-worthy game in the woodchips? He has been going down the stairs that lead outside without problem for months. In fact, he’s usually so eager to get going on a walk that, as soon as I let him out of the apartment door, he runs down the stairs to the end of his eight-meter leash, in the process winding it around the railing of several flights. Yesterday, he started to go down the stairs and stopped, staring uncertainly down them. Was he seeing something scary down there? Maybe, he wasn’t hallucinating, but just being stoned. “Wow, dog, look at the cool pattern in the carpet!” Whatever his motivation, he repeated this for every flight, but going down the stairs only. Going up was not an issue.

Or maybe he’s just being an almost eleven-month old puppy who is just finding his way in the world. God knows I did some pretty weird stuff when I was a kid. I even put questionable things in my mouth (I ate some chocolate covered insects, for example, on a dare) and I neither had a parasite in my brain nor was I stoned. In kindergarten, some classmates and I spread several bags of manure over the playground at school – I have no idea why. Of course, that happened back before I figured out which was what and such was thus. Come to think of it, I’m still working on that. Even to this day, there are more than a few people who would claim that I get some pretty weird ideas that seem to come out of nowhere. I wonder what Waldo thinks of my behavior. I know there are more than a few times when he finds it pretty baffling. He is quite puzzled by why I spend so much time in my recliner, writing, for example. I can see it in his eyes and the tilt of his head. And I know he has no clue whatsoever why we aren’t outside ninety percent of the time.

You know, if instead of being dumfounded or even amused by Waldo’s behavior, I try to understand it from his point of view, maybe I can learn something. Imagine myself being a puppy who stuffs his mouth with woodchips and walks around (even swallowing a few that appear later in my stool) and speculate what I might get out of it (I am not about to actually perform the experiment), maybe I can feel something of what life is like for him. Now, if I could really do that, see the world through the eyes of another species, that would be something truly spectacular, wouldn’t it?

As it is, Waldo and I, we baffle each other.

Explain to me again. Why aren’t we outside?

The tree was barren of leaves but you brought a new spring.

Long green sprouts, verdant flowers, fresh promise…

-To Lady Mori with Deepest Gratitude and Thanks, Ikkyu Sojun, fifteenth century Japanese Zen monk.

Waldo and I have been together now for about five months. Somehow, it seems longer. It’s been a little over four months since I retired. It feels like a life-time ago. This is good, I think. It means that I have adjusted to the change and settled into a new way of life that is comfortable. Before, I woke to an alarm, rushed to get dressed and ready to go, drove an hour to get to work, spent eight to twelve hours (without break) striving to make people healthy and keep them alive, then drove home for an hour and collapsed in bed, worried about the people I saw, and finally fell into a fitful (and, often, way too short) sleep, just to repeat it all the following day. Now, I wake to an alarm, get up and take Waldo out for a walk (sometimes lasting for three and a half hours) in lush, green, fragrant nature, feeling the breeze in my hair, the sun (and sometimes, the rain) on my skin, and return for a nice nap (if I feel like it), then get up, walk the dog again (a temporary solution to a permanent problem), then sit and do some writing. The difference was a change hard to make. Not (I write this with an “aaaaah,” as I repose in my recliner). Retirement has proven to be an easier transition than I thought it might be.

I saw Waldo as a little puppy, small enough to hold in one arm. He was skittish and afraid of the change that came to his life when I picked him up and took him to his new home. He went from living without restraint on a large farm in Pennsylvania, to living in a third-story one-bedroom apartment that had open stairs, with no risers, that were scary as hell. The only way to relieve himself was to somehow get this old fart (whose pace was as slow as a worm) to take him down the damn stairs and through three doors – and he had to do it all on a leash. The leash attached to varying devices designed to interfere with his natural drive to run, play and go where he willed. They included straps that went around his chest and rubbed his skin raw around his arm pits, to chains that (gently) choked his neck and abraded the hair on his back, and even a set of straps that went around his muzzle that squeezed his snout and turned his head sideways when he yanked at the leash. Now, he has learned how to get by with the constraints and still have fun. He has learned he can romp and play, stalk rabbits, and empty his full tanks when he needs to, but just do it all within a set of guidelines. This is a transition that we have all learned to make as we grow up, although as humans, we (mostly) do it without the physical leash. Anyway, I think Waldo’s adjustment was more difficult and stressful than mine, and he now needs only a leash attached to his collar and a little direction to get him what he wants and needs. And I know he sometimes lays down on his well-padded bed and relaxes with an “aaaaah” as deeply felt as mine.

I have moved to a life of fewer constraints and Waldo to one of more constraints. Yet, we both seem to be quite content.

I keep Waldo safe, healthy and as happy as I can. I train him so he stays out of trouble (a work in progress), I feed him a diet designed for dogs, make sure his medical needs are addressed, play with him and take him for walks in the natural world that surrounds us all (but which we humans take all too much for granted). Waldo motivates me to get the exercise I need, keeps me entertained and is a damn good companion. The two of us go out into the world and open ourselves up through our senses of sight, hearing, touch and smell (Waldo also tastes it, but that’s a little yucky for me). These are personal things that we experience on our own. But we do it together and I would not be doing it at all without Waldo. He is leading me, both figuratively and literally, more than I am leading him.

Well done, Waldo. Well done.

“Ðon’t make friends who are comfortable to be with. Make friends who will force you to lever yourself up.”

-Thomas J. Watson

I’m sitting on the toilet, doing what I came to do. Waldo is laying quietly at my feet. I let him in the bathroom with me because otherwise, he scratches at the door. He’s lost the puppy-urge to sniff my butt and lick the toilet (with some help from me) and he seems comfortable enough. Then, he looks up at me and talks.

Now Waldo is not really a verbal dog. He sometimes whines very softly when he needs my attention and he sometimes barks when he’s on the patio and sees something very interesting he can’t get to. Other than that, he’s quiet. He sleeps through the night without a whimper, until it’s time to get up, he jumps at my chair when he wants to go out, and he scratches at the door if he is ignored (interpret this as an effort, seldom, if ever, successful). But, for a dog, he is pretty nonverbal.

What he does in the bathroom is verbalize a series of sounds that would be words, I’m sure of it, if he had the anatomical equipment that would allow it. But he doesn’t. It isn’t soft or high-pitched like a whine and it’s not loud and excited like a bark. It is conversational and varied like he is saying something he wants me to understand.

Now, I don’t have to be Dr. Doolittle to understand what he’s saying. It’s not going to be obtuse philosophy, complicated mathematics, or a skewed view on current politics. I’m pretty sure it’s some variation on the theme of, “I gotta go, I gotta go, I gotta go,” or, “I wanna walk, I wanna walk, I wanna walk,” or “Let’s play, let’s play, let’s play,” or even, “I’m bored, I’m bored, I’m bored.” Whatever it is he’s trying to tell me, I am quite sure it can be adequately addressed by going for a walk. And I really, really, really like that he is trying to talk to me. He’s exploring the boundaries, trying to find out what’s possible.

I finish my business, put myself together, grab the leash and water bottles, and head for the door. Waldo runs around me in excited expectation until I can, finally, grab his collar and connect his tether, and we’re off. Today’s the day we go for our long walk down the rail-trail.

It’s warm, without being hot, cloudy without the threat of rain and there is only a soft wisp of a zephyr. It’s late morning and the birds are still chattering in their high-pitched whistles, bugs are buzzing around without being annoying, and the leaves in the trees rattle out their constant and calming babble. On both sides of the trail, we’re swathed in a refreshing blanket of green that I never experienced during the years I lived out west (the green makes me feel comforted, somehow, perhaps due to some prehistoric ancestral memory buried deep in my RNA). I pause, stop thinking about all this, and just soak it all in. I can hear my soul go aaah.

Waldo is doing his Waldo thing, running from one side of the trail to the other, checking out everything that’s there. His senses are heightened, his nose to the ground, ears perked up and moving like radar dishes, eyes moving this way and that and even, on disgusting occasion, tongue lapping out to taste what he just saw, heard or smelled (I wonder at why he doesn’t suffer from continual diarrhea, but I am eternally grateful that he doesn’t). Yep, this is what he wanted when he talked to me. I resist the urge to tell him this is the same trail we were on two days ago, two days before that, two days before that and so on ad infinitum (or so it seems). He wouldn’t agree with me anyway, even if he could understand what I was trying to tell him. And you know what, he’s right. You don’t have to be Heraclitus to realize you can’t walk the same trail twice.

Waldo has given me this moment. Without him, I wouldn’t be here, experiencing the depths of Now in the embracing arms of Mother Nature. I’d be sitting in my chair, doing something immobile and relatively inane.

Thank you, Waldo. Let’s talk again.

“If there are no dogs in Heaven, then I want to go where they went.”

-Will Rogers

Waldo and I are in Ghiloni Park. I’m too beat to go on our rail-trail walk today, so I brought us here to run and play. There are trails here too, but I decided we’d just stay on the open grass soccer fields today. We’re a ways from any traffic and there aren’t a lot of people or dogs out, so I put Waldo on his fifty foot leash and let him go. He is free to run at will, but he is dragging the florescent orange leash behind him so it’s easy to grab if need be.   I’ve brought a ball and a toy that amounts to a braided rope at the end of an elastic cord that’s attached to a four-foot rod. These keep him interested and entertained for a while.

It’s a bright, sunny, warm day and it doesn’t take long before Waldo works up a pant. At first, he races after the ball when I throw it, then returns it. He used to drop it when he brought it back, but some time ago, I wanted to play tug-o-war with him, so I taught him to do that. Now he won’t release a retrieved toy without some work. He even ignores treats when I tell him to drop it. It doesn’t take long and instead of bringing it back, he goes some distance from me, lays down, grabs the ball in his front legs, pants and looks at me as if to say, “You run after me, old man. It’s hot out here.” I agree it’s hot, but instead of running after him, take out the other toy and entice him to go after that. I’m not stupid.

The braided rope toy is about 18 inches long and it’s effortless to make the thing hop around in a way that is irresistible to a young border collie. They seem to think that anything that moves fast and erratically needs discipline and they are more than willing to provide the obviously needed guidance. This continues until it’s obvious that Waldo’s interest is waning. I let him rest and sit down next to him for a few pets and pats.

Why do human beings have pets, I wonder. There are probably as many answers to that as there are people that have pets. For some, they are surrogate children or even spousal replacements. For others, they may be trophies or animals for work. For me, Waldo is none of these.   He is just a dog. Another living being who, because of pack instincts, or whatever, is an animal that I can interact with, communicate with, and share life with. He doesn’t replace any people that I wish were in my life, but aren’t – I still have those and I am grateful for them. He’s a welcome addition, something extra. A canine friend.

I’ve had many dogs and I knew very well what having a dog would bring to me before I got Waldo. I got him so that I could have a dog-presence in my life. Someone who would provide something only a dog can provide. Anthropomorphize all you want, but I wasn’t looking for something a human could provide. I wanted a dog. And I got a good one.

It’s getting hotter and I can see that Waldo is uncomfortable, despite the water I give him. It’s time to collect his toys and return to the AC. I open the car door and say simply, “Okay, get in,” and Waldo jumps into the passenger seat and curls up with his tail under him and his chin on the console. Soon, we’re home, me in my chair and Waldo curled up on the floor.

So, what is it that I think a dog can provide? I’ve mentioned a few things that I enjoy with Waldo, but there’s also a lot of stuff that lies in the category of je ne sais quoi. An ineffable quality, like whatever it is that a lover provides, but different. You go for a walk with a dog and you’re not alone. You may still be lonely, but you’re not alone. You can interact with a dog and there is real communication there. Oh, you can’t share the intricacies of relativistic astrophysics, innuendo is lost on them and they can’t text worth a damn. But there is something basic, something essential to life, something subtle, but profound that you can communicate. These are things that you can’t normally communicate with people because with them, you are too busy with that other stuff.

Robert Heinlein had a word for it. Waldo and I, we grok each other.

Waldos rope toy.

Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret.

-Ambrose Bierce

I know I’m prejudiced, but Waldo is one of the best dogs I ever saw. He’s friendly, happy-go-lucky, sweet and loving. He learns quickly and is a joy to share long walks with. Mostly.

During the colder months, I developed a habit of getting up early, taking Waldo out to do his business, then returning to feed and water him and feed and coffee myself. Because I’m wimp enough to want to wait for the day to warm up a bit before spending too much time outside, I then return to bed for an hour or so to take a nap. Waldo’s crate is next to my bed in the bedroom and all I have to do is motion toward the crate and say, “Go to bed,” and he walks right in and lays down. No fuss. It’s gotten to the point where, an hour or so after we return from his morning ablutions, if I’m still in my chair, he’ll get my attention, then go lay in his crate as if to say, “You coming, or what?” When I nap, we nap. No whining, no complaints from Waldo. With the warmer temperatures, the only thing that’s changed is that we nap after our walk instead of before.

And that’s just one example. There are so many others. When we get to a curb on a street, he will (mostly) wait until I tell him it’s okay to cross. When he’s on leash and walks so there is a tree, a sign post or anything between him and me, I’ll say, “This way,” and he’ll back up and go around the obstacle so the leash doesn’t get all wrapped up. He’s really a great dog.

Then there’s the dark side. Waldo knows very well what “sit” means. Yet, when trying to train him to sit and wait until I tell him it’s okay to go through a door, he acts as if he doesn’t know what I want him to do. I take him out for an 8.6 mile walk, we come home and one hour later, he wants to go out. I take him out and one hour after that, he’s jumping at the door again. When on a walk, if I have the leash attached to his collar, he goes to the end, 8 meters away, hunches down and pulls hard. I stop, wait for him to stop pulling, start walking again when he does, and then he’s back at the end of the leash, pulling hard. He finds something rotting on the ground, he puts it in his mouth and tries to eat it. He gets his mind set on something and there’s no connecting with him. I can’t redirect his attention, even by offering him a treat; he just ignores it. I put a dog door in the sliding door (there is a glass panel with a dog door at its bottom you can buy on Amazon that fits into the space provided by the partially opened sliding door) that connects to our balcony. He likes to go out there and just look around. It gets him out of my hair so I can get some writing done. For a few days, I heard him gnawing on something. I thought he was chewing on his bone and ignored it, happy he was keeping himself entertained. Then I checked. He’d been chewing on a wooden part of the outside wall and damaged it as high as he could reach. That one, I’m still working on how to repair. For now, Waldo is locked off the balcony unless I’m there with him. All this drives me crazy and, sometimes, it really pisses me off!

I lose my composure, especially when I’m tired or distracted, and yell at him. I swat him on the butt (not hard) and push it down until he sits. Sometimes I tug back on the leash harder than I should. I yell at him to wait and don’t let him out for a while (but usually give in before too long). I lock the dog door so he can’t get onto the balcony. None of this is good training practice, it’s because I’m angry. I’m feeling, Goddamn it, dog! Just do what you’re supposed to do! None of it is abusive, but I’ve lost it and Waldo knows it. He can hear it in my voice and see it in my face. Damned dog gives me a “What did I do?” look and I melt. It’s then that I realize that being mad at him is inappropriate and ineffectual.

The thing is, he’s not making me angry. It’s all coming from me. He’s just being Waldo, just being a dog. My anger is due to me failing to adjust to Waldo in a positive manner, not him failing to toe the line.

I am so damned lucky because, you know what? Waldo forgives me and goes on being the happy, loving puppy he always is. I take a deep breath, count to ten in Chinese, even though I don’t know how to count in Chinese, and reset my mood.

We love each other despite ourselves.

I really like my chair.