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Life at the Speed of Dog

The more I learn about people, the more I like my dog.” Mark Twain. (Amazing how much received wisdom is contained in sayings attributed to Mark Twain.)*

Did you hear about the insomniac, agnostic, dyslexic man who stayed up all night wondering if there really was a dog?

(A few people find that joke offensive. Sorry, kind of. But it’s one of my favorites. Second favorite joke — what did the blind guy say when someone gave him a piece of matzoh? “Who wrote this nonsense?”)

Suggested soundtrack while reading this piece: Me and My Dog, by Lucy Dacus, Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers (boygenius), which includes the following lyric:

I wish I was on a spaceship
Just me and my dog and an impossible view

We got Mobley when he was about 8 weeks old. He’s a chocolate Lab. He turned 13 on March 3. He likes cold weather and snow (Labradors are from Newfoundland), being outside with his people (that’s us), peanut butter, pork chops, hamburgers, and lots of other foods. (He’s a Lab.)

He’s not very smart, which is a kind way of saying he’s as dumb as a bag of rocks.

He’s high-strung, which is a kind way of saying he’s nuts. Insane. Unhinged, mad, deranged, daft, distracted, distraught, lunatic.

Some of his quirks are funny. Others are exasperating. He’s taught me a lot about patience (and, ahem, I had quite a lot to learn).

Life without him these last 13 years would have been very different. Different as in worse. Much, much, worse.

He’s old now. So am I. I can imagine how we look, two old guys with bad hips, shuffling along.

We already had our walk this morning. Because it is a top-ten very beautiful day, sunny with deep blue skies and a few white puffers floating around up there, this afternoon we’ll go outside and I’ll sit and read and he’ll sleep on or near my feet. He’ll pick up his head and bark if someone or something comes by on our road. Intruder!!!

Over the years we’ve walked together a lot. A lot.

Every day.

Except for a few periods of incapacitation (mine, not his), I can count on one hand the number of days when we didn't walk. (He walked, I didn't.)

He wasn't very old when we started walking. Our initial short “business trips” quickly got longer.

Weekdays/workdays, we’d walk about a mile. He’d attend to business — read and send some pee-mail, sniff sniff sniff sniff sniff, life by the inch.

While we walked, depending on what was going on at work, I’d try to plan the day or find the organizational “thread” for something I had to write. Best briefs and memos I wrote came together during our walks.

Life at the Speed of Dog.

Weekends, free of the ordinary time constraints (work, the curse of the working class), we’d go. And I mean go.

We had our routes. Mileage. Three, four, six miles. In the winter, we could click off some long ones — eight or more miles, two to three hours.

We had one special, extra-long walk we only did on New Year’s Day.

He’s a Lab. He likes the cold. We’d come back from a long walk when the temperature was in the single digits and the snow was blowing. He’d look up in a way I interpreted as “ok, where to next?”

We live a mile from a golf course. Years ago we started walking along or around it. I picked up stray golf balls. It didn't take long to figure out the pattern; i.e., where the mis-hits landed based on where the tee boxes or greens were located.

I picked up a stunning number of golf balls on that route. How many? A lot. (Whatever amount you’re thinking of, start by tripling it. Then double it. Again. And one more time.)

Life at the Speed of Dog.

I tried to calculate how many miles we’ve walked together. Even using conservative per day/per week numbers, I figure we’ve covered at least 6,000 miles. New York to California. And back.

Goddam.

Moving at the Speed of Dog we’ve seen people at their best and worst.

We’re a familiar sight on our local roads. Because of when and where we walk we see a lot of the same people and they see us. More accurately, we see their cars.

Almost without exception drivers move over and give us a wide berth, often accompanied by a courtesy beep and wave. (And sometimes, I imagine, they look at us and think “are they nuts? Wtf is wrong with them— it’s freezing out!”)

But walking where we walk, we also see an appalling amount of garbage on the side of the road.

Litter pisses me off. Always has, always will. It is stupid, selfish, completely unnecessary, inconsiderate, and reflects laziness and sloth. (Do I sound like a Puritan preacher? Good.)

What really pisses me off are the beer cans and bottles among the roadside debris.

I will assume for the sake of argument that the empty cans are not dropped by people walking along, but tossed by people driving. Driving, and drinking. Drinking and driving.

So absolutely indisputably fucking stupid. People at their worst.

What you notice when you move at the Speed of Dog.

Because we walk around the same time every morning, I became more aware of sunrise. Spring and summer, walking in the morning light. Birdsong. Lovely.

Winter, walking in the cold and the dark and the snow. Not nearly as nice.

The cruelest cut — daylight savings time. After weeks and weeks of walking in the goddam darkness, finally walking in the light again. Only to get pitched back into the darkness.

It only lasts a few weeks, but still. Gimme a break.

We had a helluva run (walk), Mo and me.

About a year ago he slowed down. It took longer, and then much longer, to do our customary routes. It became clear that this was not a temporary thing.

I asked our superbo wonderful angel vet who has taken care of Mo since he was a pup. Yep, she said, he’s at that age. Keep walking, and keep walking every day. That’s good for him. But the long walks are over.

Oh well. Disappointing, for sure.

But then a funny thing happened.

I’ll spare you the details, but a chronically sore hip (mine, not his) became . . . more than that. So at the point when Mo could no longer do long walks, neither could I.

Funny how that worked out. Kinda cool, actually. Two guys, getting old together.

We’re not ready for rocking chairs yet. We still walk every morning, down and up and down and up our hilly three-tenths of a mile long road. He sniffs along; if it were up to him we’d stop about every six inches.

A walk that used to take ten minutes now takes thirty.

We get home, he gets his “we made it back” treat, slops up a big slug of water, and lays down with a contented grunt.

Life at the Speed of Dog.

I love it. I love my dog. He’s my absolute all-time best friend.

*There are so many terrific Mark Twain quotes and sayings. Some of my favorites:

“Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.”

“It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.”

“When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.” [There is a serious question as to the accuracy of this quote.]

“Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed down-stairs one step at a time.”

My absolute favorite: “If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.”

Words to live by.

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