DOGGONE

The morning begins with the case of two barking dogs behind the fence that separates our yard from the neighbor’s yard. I don’t know anything about hound dogs' hearing abilities, but when I approach my desk to write, those two hounds start barking. I also don’t know whether the yapping is a “get busy” signal for me, or the canines identify me as a wandering raccoon, or the armadillo that has grown so fat it can hardly climb out of the backyard coulee. In any case, as long as I’m working in the backroom office, the hounds yap.

According to Jean Houston’s book about mystical dogs, there’s a legend attached to the story about the expulsion of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden that says as they were leaving the Garden, the dog and cat, in particular, decided to follow them into their lonely exile. The animals agreed to be partners with the exiles, forever afterward promising to be loving companions that would share humans’ lives as “teachers and beloveds.” Houston relates that storyteller Joseph Bruchac suggests animals are wiser than human beings because they don’t forget how to behave.

Houston continues by saying when she loses perspective she looks into the eyes of Luna, her white German shepherd who holds out her paw to connect Houston to what is really important — friendship, love, the greater life of which we are part. She attributes that action as steadfastness. I wouldn’t go so far as to dub those barking dogs “holy guides,” as Houston does, but their barking is steadfast, and her treatise about mystical dogs is worth a read.

The Greenlaws, part of my bloodline, have been great dog lovers, and I’ve owned several canines in my life, the last being a German Shepherd. Her name was Tina, and when she barked at garbage collectors on the LSU campus back when (?), she was banished from the vicinity of GI housing where my husband and I resided for five years. She became a “country dog” but came to an unfortunate ending because she raided chicken houses.

My great Uncle Ed immortalized his terrier in Zip Greenlaw, a copy of which is in the LSU library archives, claiming that the dog’s habit of digging holes in the yard on West End Boulevard, New Orleans, Louisiana, was simply a matter of making holes to let something out and also making a way to let something in. The hole was a feature he could wiggle into but also could be forced out by larger creatures (maybe an armadillo ?). Unfortunately, someone put out poisoned meat for Zip, and he died. He was buried in one of the holes he had made in the backyard.

Back to Houston, who says that we have been on journeys with dogs for thousands of years “as hunters, companions of the road, friends at the hearth.” She says that in her next incarnation, she plans to be a dog, “the kind who lives an unscheduled life…who can sneak into its owner’s library when no one is looking and read a book…It is not inconsequential that the English language allows for the dyslexia of the spelling of the word dog: God spelled backward…”*

Well, I’m again alert to the barking next door as a beautiful cardinal lands on the patio, cocks his head, and appears to be listening to the music that I know will cease once I put “Finis” to this doggone story.
 
*Mystical Dogs, Animals as Guides to Our Inner Life by Jean Houston