Walking the Dog

Fair warning: I’m writing about my dog. (She’s fine— no worries, there; old, like many of us, but fine…so far.)

Or mostly fine. This morning we went on our usual circuit around our little acreage—up and down hills, through the woods, down to the creek, over to the stock tank. No stock and not much water, right now. But lots of lovely mud. Dog is a whitish Labrador, currently two-tone—bottom half dirtbrown.

One of my country pleasures is being able to ignore that. Knowing it will dry, sluff off outdoors, no problem.

Rosie is the dog’s name. I always admire folks who give their dogs the names of literary figures. Hemingway. Socrates. Elevated names. Our previous Lab was known widely as Charlotte Bronte. Hale added Charlotte. I’d named her after a character in the film Green Card.

I can be somewhat eccentric about dog names, you see. We named my mother’s Basset after a French relative, and called the pup T-Bass (for Tassie Basset).

Curi was the name of Hale’s and my first pet together, a tall and sweet Black Lab. Not Madame Curie, though, but short for Curious. She’d been the most inquisitive of the litter on the day we visited.

The poet Billy Collins pointed out a few years ago that most dog names are twosyllable in the tonal range of an augmented fourth, a twonote high-low like a European police siren. That makes them easier to holler, basically, when you want the dog to come home.

Ro-sie! Yep. Does she come? Sometimes. It depends on how delicious whatever she’s smelling or eating happens to be.

This morning she found a hawk’s wing. The whole wing, no body, no head. She didn’t seem especially interested— it was mostly bone and feathers, after all.

There are always reminders of reality like that among sylvan pleasures—even the leaves themselves, the process of their falling, the slope of diminishing autumn light, so beautiful and sharp and what some call bittersweet.

My late husband and I first connected on a blue-sky day in fall like this one. We married, too, in late October. Related images flicker in every flash of sunlight. I’ve mentioned elsewhere how your loved one’s death releases him into living memory at all the ages when you knew him. Quite overpowering at times.

Rosie’s discovery this morning of the hawk’s wing got me thinking in a different vein, though. What predator managed to tear a wing off such a mobile creature? What animal living here with us, generally unseen, might be able to accomplish that feat?

It suggests for me the mystery of nighttime in the country. Night brings a stillness, a calm—especially if you live a distance away from town. Critters roam. I heard coyotes the other evening, in fact, quite nearby. First time in a long while.

But who or what else is out there?

At those lonesome times, a dog like Rosie provides welcome company. At other times, too.

Last Monday I had my first ever MRI and I occupied myself throughout it, by taking Rosie for her walk, right here at Winedale.

Step by step, minute by minute, we moved through the woods on our usual path. I have the details by heart, it seems, the sloping dead cedars, shining understory leaves, clumps of yellow flowers. She moved at her usual pace and I followed. I would stop when needed to clear a fallen branch or trim one.

In that MRI tube, with my eyes closed, Rosie and I got all the way to the tank before they told me the test was done.