August 8, 2021: Dog-day afternoon, in a nice way

August 8, 2021: Dog-day afternoon, in a nice way. It was sometimes saddening to see the Golden Retriever being walked in the hot and humid evenings in front of the verandah. As I would sit and try to take in the slight breeze that portended rain, I would hear the walker bring the dog close to our gate and I would step outside and pet the dog. Had built a connection with the animal. Perhaps I still have some lingering odors of Snowy, and other dogs might sense it. My son pointed out that I had really connected with Snowy, unlike what everyone might have expected, and there are moments when we had truly connected, and those habits linger. So, the Golden, who was rather unimaginatively named “Goldie” and I had connected as well. And on this Sunday it was another dog day. First, it was Toby. The camera can make a relatively small animal look large in size and as we bantered on about Covid and other things on the Sunday afternoon, Toby kept coming into the room. I suppose this was meant to be a dog-day afternoon because later had the encounter with another puppy, although that could be a misnomer for an animal that is strong and stocky even at an early age. Wonder how she will be when grown. There are connections one makes with animals. Our Snowy was named so, some people thought unimaginatively for a white furred animal, because the dog was the connection with a childhood memory. Most people outside America would instantly know who Snowy is. The dog who talked wisdom to Tintin, and occasionally got drunk on Captain Haddock’s whiskey. Snowy was the connection with those days and the naming had more to do with that literature as opposed to the color of the animal. The dog this afternoon took me back to a different story. Somewhat sinister, but a classic. Reminded me of the story of Bill Sikes. In some recess of my memory, I had mistakenly thought Bull’s eye was a bulldog. Dickens had never mentioned the breed in the book, but some have likened it to a bull terrier. I visited a bulldog today. They are vastly different in all ways. But to see the puppy topped off the dog-day experience. A friendly animal who created a sense of comfort in the space with old bondhus as we thought of the coming days with our World opening up soon. A strange sense of foreboding hangs in the air. How will it be, to be back? The experience of the past several months coming to a screeching end as we leap into the fiction of normalcy. Trying in every way to block out the lessons of the days gone by. The puppy was unconcerned. Perhaps that unconcern is what we have to fictionalize in our minds and ignore the fact that there are cities where there are no more ICU beds available. All is well on this dog day afternoon, we must believe, like the myth that Lobo gave us, “Another tank of gas and/Back on the road again” with a dog named Boo!