What The Grey Hairs Of A Dog Teach Us
The dog's gift of wisdom.
I usually write about the philosophical implications of our way of life in comparison to the some aspect of the ancestral world. But I also like writing about something completely different—dogs.
Nothing reframes our existence like this divine animal. If you enjoy this piece, I linked my previous dog essays at the end.
A number of concerns were spinning inside of my mind—a recent call, dozens of unread emails, finding thirty minutes to go to the grocery store—when Carson, my dog, appeared before me. He looked up at me. I looked down at him. A savage light was in his copper eyes. It took my own eyes a few seconds to shift from an unfocused inward gaze at the mayhem flying about in my skull to the four-legged monster sitting before me.
Suddenly, he pounced for his cloth chicken and waved it in front of me. With each swing of that shredded fowl, my knees bent a fraction of an inch, I hunched a little more, and my frown receded bit by bit. Suddenly, my entire existence was reduced to the image of this grinning black-lipped mutt at the end of his toy chicken. Suddenly, all four of Carson’s hooves were off the ground as I spun him in circles in the living room. Suddenly, he let go, tucked his butt, and sprinted into the kitchen.
Zoomies.
The moment he turned his back, I ran and hid in another room. He zoomed past my ambush position when I sprung my trap and filled the hallway with a war cry. He did a one-eighty mid-stride, flattened his chest on the ground, and stuck his ass in the air with a manic light in his eyes. He tucked his butt once more and sprinted back to the kitchen. I leapt into another room, but Carson got wise; on his return zoomie, he stopped mid-hallway before crossing the open doors. I watched through the crack of the door I was hiding behind. He stood still as stone. His ears were vertical. He wore a look of extreme seriousness on his face. I gently scratched the wood of the door to lure him in. Carson stalked warily into my snare with his head held low, his nails going click click click on the floor. I jumped out from behind the door and slammed my feet on the ground, and he tucked his butt and zoomied away grinning ear to ear
I am glad zoomies exist. I am glad when his eyes burn with insanity, as if he had just done a line of cocaine or brought a gazelle to the ground with naught but his claws. He growls at me and his jaw and fangs threaten to tear my forearm to shreds. But it is all show. When I shove my forearm in that snarling cavern of sharpened enamel spears suited for a meat-eating predator, he refuses to chomp down. He does not want to draw blood but joy. This is a divine madness.
What then?
Carson once had zoomies every day. They are less often now. It strikes me that they will end entirely at some point. Zoomies are to the dog what sand is to the hourglass. I sense a secret wisdom in this diminishing of zoomies, some solemn gift from the dog to us.
Carson—the dog—does not ask us the all too human question of “What is life good for?” The dog asks a different sort of question: “What is the good life?” And how does the dog answer? The dog says: Forget the future—it does not exist and it may never exist, so spend a few minutes on your hands and knees with me before I pass out on my Temper-Pedic mattress in blissful exhaustion. Forget the past—it is dead and done with, so spend the next few minutes marveling at the sound of me lapping water from a bowl on the other side of the house. Forget whatever it is you are frowning about— remember that right now you are alive and free and with me.
He will not hold the chicken in front of my face until the end of time. The days of chicken toys and black lips are limited. Finite. What, then, if I add up all the time I did not play with him? What if I refused him a mere five minutes a day over the course of his short life? How will I think on this in ten years’ time when those five minute intervals add up to days and I know I said No to him time and time again? When I know he will never again stand in front of me with his shredded chicken asking for five meager minutes? And when all I want to do is go back in time and say Yes and give him five more minutes?
I want to be with him when he takes a single blueberry from my fingers with the tips of his teeth so gently that the process takes three full seconds. When he comes trotting into the kitchen at the scent of olives which, strangely, he is addicted to. When he finds the softest spot in the house to nap: a plush blanket lying on top of a down quilt which is itself on top of a king size mattress. When I give him his inhaler in the morning that suction cups around his black snout and which he attempts to evade by shaking his head left and right in the exact same way each morning to no avail. When, for reasons known only to him, he spontaneously changes where he drops his morning bowel movements every two or three weeks. When his deep copper eyes flecked with green gaze into my soul and offer me a choice—either care or apathy, either the certainty of now or the if of the future, either I gave him so much I had nothing left to give or someday I will wish I can do it all over again.
We cannot control the flow of time. We cannot stop maximal zoomies as a puppy from dwindling into minimal zoomies as a gray-beard, and minimal zoomies as a gray-beard dwindling to zero zoomies as a memory. But we have been given, however, control over how we use our time with our short-lived friends.
What then?
The immortal Elves of Tolkien’s Middle Earth watched men and women age, wrinkle, grow grey, and die, while the Elves themselves did not age. They witnessed generation after generation grow from bright-eyed babies to white bones in a tomb.1 So, too, do we. We are cursed to watch our dogs grow from puppies to grey-beards and from nails on oak floorboards to silence. I believe in my bones our divine mutts are saying to us, Fool—why do you not learn from the grey-hairs around my wet and blackened nose? Why not look again at your parents? Your friends? Your brothers? Your sisters? Your sons? Your daughters? Why do you not remember they, too, will grow old?
The greatest contradiction we are capable of is treating those we love as casually as though they will live forever.
I wonder if those who are thought of as wise are those who learned to rid themselves of this contradiction.
I wonder if this is why we consider the dog to be wise.
I wonder if this wisdom of five minutes time is a gift from the dog to us as they die, and we live, learning to say Yes while we still can.
What then? is a passion project.
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See you for the next essay on Tuesday.
Tolkien, J. R. R. (John Ronald Reuel), 1892-1973. The Silmarillion. Boston :Houghton Mifflin, 1977.
Fantastic piece Sam, these essays always perfectly capture my own feelings toward my dog. There are few joys greater to behold than zoomies.
Dogs are amazing beings. We all need to play zoomies every day to remind us that life needs to be more spontaneous.