So maybe I’m a dog person.

I was looking at photos from a new book I was reading about in the NYT’s. For more on that go here http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/05/books/05squa.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

But there’s a photo in the slide show they offer where a guys sleeping on a cot in the street and on the cot next to him is this big dopey golden retriever and both of them are sacked out.

Back in high school I remember taking road trips with either nate or issel and a couple of times I’d realized we’d been just riding along in silence for somewhere over an hour. That’s kind of what I like about dogs, its like a silent understand because speaking is confusing.

I started thinking back to Cyclone which was my dogs name until his brother died. At that point we didn’t need words. There was no differentiating, he’d just follow us around the yard, generally my father who would usually survey the garden for what was selling and how things were growing. He never really grew old, he just sorta settled into his surroundings. They never told me but I think he was hit by a car, but until that time he never stopped leaving dead animals on our porch.

When he was younger, if you gave him three weeks, he’d figure out how to get out of whatever was holding him. He could jump about 3 feet vertically and if it didn’t scale fences, it would get him onto something that would allow him to hop over it. At the end of the day we’d sometimes decide our shoes were too muddy and we’d sit on the stairs to take them off. He’d come up and sit next to us, taking in the same view, and maybe it was just assumed, but you sorta felt like he was thinking about the same thing. How to pay the bills, and what did you feel like eating tonight. How your buddy from high school was doing and whether or not that girl really was interested in you. And you’d sigh deep and he’d lay down and look up at you in a manner that said he was comfortable, “don’t make me get up.”

And when you’d been exhausted with the weight of the world, he’d be a pain in the ass and come lick your face, but he generally understood. You didn’t need to explain anything to him, words would just be confusing. These days I wish he was still around, he scratched up the paint on my car and knocked shit out of my hands, but I think he was the only one who got me. We shared something, and the blues lost their sting when he was around.