Chloe

Illustration by Ryan Miller

ESSAY

I could spend my life writing about dogs, on the principle that humanity would not and could not exist without dogs as our co-author, benefactor and companion. Not to disparage cats, canaries or cantaloupe, but dogs and human evolution are symbiotic, co-conditional, cooperative, co-conspirators.

One known rule of dogs is never ever visit a dog pound just for the heck of it. There is no such thing as window-shopping at a dog pound; it is like a “John’s” standard excuse when caught at a company of ill-repute. “Just visitin,’” they say, “visitin’ Aunt Janie.” As is true to dog pounds and whore houses, ain’t no such thing as “just visitin.’”

Which is the rule my daughter-in-law Angella violated, when she visited a dog pound, worse yet, she lingered. Previous to this, one of their household dogs had died and as is often the case with dogs if not lively, a house requires a certain mass equivalent to function, whether kids, dogs, cats, books or chainsaws. A distinctive absence is felt when a fraction of the membership succumbs.

As can be guessed, Angella came home with a new dog, if from my traditional agrarian point of view, a non-dog. A miniature poodle, a dog type I tend to particularly loathe because not only is it a useless dog, it is likely to be a cat in disguise. A miniature poodle to my frame of reference has no right to enter the legendary domain of the heroic farm dog. In short, my private belief was that dog wouldn’t last.

To insert a moment of silence here…I am hereby confessing my guilt, publically tugging my fetlock to particularly admit A POODLE IS A DOG. A statement I thought I would never make, the equivalent of saying the Vikings are a good football team. True, a poodle is a mistreated, misconstrued, misaligned dog. And if there is a god in heaven who adjusts wrongs of life, whoever did that to poodles is toast. Which isn’t to say wolfhounds don’t look goofy, they do however get to run like the wind and knock down an eight-point buck at full throttle. To wonder here…why don’t we hunt deer anymore with dogs? The case could be made it is way more sporting than rifles, or perhaps not so sporting, just more efficient. In the age of Robin Hood and Sherwood Forest the real story was dogs did the hunting, the bow and arrow were to keep the sheriff at bay. It was a corporal offense to own a deerhound or terrier. Such is the rural reference to dogs to believe the Constitution should be amended to include dogs. Precisely the freedoms of dogs, part of which is not to be rendered miniature. The 1st Amendment written to the purpose of dogs might read: life, liberty and running, which I suppose is but another version of liberty. My memory of farm dogs is of dogs running the town road whether after a hay wagon, tractor or pickup truck, the dog is running. The dog at the apogee of its existence. I have runner friends who feel this same way about running, likewise for hunting, fishing or just being a wood rat, humans feel the same way, joy is exertion. In an age of auto-this, auto-that and remote control, the joy of doing stuff is being overtaken by robotics. Dogs it seems have never forgotten this 1st Amendment right of life.

As brings me back to the non-dog miniature…poodle, now named Chloe. Nobody ever told Chloe that she is miniature. Our farmstead is completely, thoroughly, universally punctuated with TOs (throw objects), such is the jurisdiction of dogs on our farm. Most whom are categorical farm dogs; big, fast and even faster Borders – ever keen to a stick thrown and the chance to run. Among our throw objects is a ball with a rope attached, and off goes Chloe scrambling along among the legs of greater dogs, lost in their antic forest, all of them chasing that ball.

One more image and I will conclude: that ball, the one with the rope attached, being brought back to the master of throw with the pride known only to dogs, (in hopes it will be thrown again); suspended from the end of the dangling rope is Chloe, hanging on. To her mind she is not only retrieving the rope and the ball, but retrieving the other dog. I am of a mind to believe she is right. To miniature dogs everywhere, my humble and abject apology for my previous criminal thought, that miniature isn’t a dog.