EXTRA DOG TIME? SET THE CLOCK

Extra dog time happens after you’ve had your last dog?

Or your first dog?

You could call any time spent with dogs extra time because they do something to the minutes and hours.

I think it has something to do with 7 to 1 year ration, that a dog ages seven years to our one.

Dog time speeds by as a result with big dogs faster than small dogs, and they take us along for the ride.

I had a miniature dachshund for sixteen years.

Every day was feisty except the last.

Daisy seemed a little down one morning so we took her to the vet.

That was her last day.

For sixteen years she bossed the house, making sure everything and everyone was in their place.

A black and tan long-hair, I used to say she was a Rottweiler puppy that didn’t grow.

In spite of her size, she bossed two women, two men, and two kids along with anyone who stepped though the front door.

Of the two men in her life, one thought she looked like a rat. (It wasn’t me.)

After she died in the vet’s parking lot I pledged Daisy would be my last dog.

By that time the house was down to my wife and I. First to go was my father in-law. Next, my mother in-law.

The kids started lives on their own, leaving us the last two standing. Without a dog.

It made sense.

Any dog would be an extra dog. That’s how I explained it.

Dog Nurturer?

A year passed.

Wife: I’m thinking about a dog.

Me: I am too. I miss Daisy so much.

Wife: A new dog.

Me: No dog could ever replace Daisy.

Wife: It’s been a year.

Me: Feels like just yesterday she was cuddled in my arms.

Another year passed, then another, with the same dialogue.

Then a fourth year.

Wife: We’re getting a dog.

Me: I remember Daisy like it was yesterday, cuddled quietly in my arms.

Wife: We were in the parking lot five years ago.

Me: Four, but who’s counting.

Wife: A woman at work got a dog that would be perfect for us.

Me: We already have the perfect dog.

Wife: We don’t have a dog.

Me: Perfect.

Wife: What men don’t understand, what you don’t get, is women need to nurture.

Me: ???

So we got a dog.

No Extra Dog Or Replacement Dog?

A Dog Alone

Once you open the dog house door the first time it stays open for life.

The first to wander in was Lucky, followed by short-timers Jake and Roxy.

Then Daisy. And now?

With a lineup of five dogs my wife still says I’m not ‘a dog person.’

She might be right, but this dog is changing my mind.

The door was open and she finally made it in.

In and out.

What dogs allow:

Dogs harken back to the rural roots of early America.

Today we see it reflected in men wearing Romeo slippers in public with flexible adult-cut blue jeans.

Soooo comfortable.

What about the nurturing part?

Since a dog doesn’t qualify as a young child or plant, where would you guess, if you had to guess, where would you guess the urge to nurture lands?

It lands on everyone with a dog, everyone you see with a dog.

It lands on the memory of past dogs.

If you know someone who used to have a dog?

It lands on them. Be a good listener, (fill-in-name.)