My Favorite Quotation About Dogs:

“Very, very early a dog learns that life is not as simple a matter to his master as it is to himself. There are times when he reads trouble, that he cannot help or understand, in the man’s eye and voice. Then he can only look his love and loyalty, wistfully, as if he felt his own shortcoming in the matter of speech. And if the trouble is so great that the master forgets to eat his dinner; forgets, also, the needs of his faithful little friend, it is the dog’s dear privilege to bear neglect and hunger without complaint.”

Greyfriars Bobby by Eleanor Atkinson, page 17

I don’t really believe in the Golden Rule. I don’t think we should treat others the way we want to be treated, I think we should treat others the way they want to be treated. This is much more difficult, because it requires us to carefully observe others and try to see things from their point of view.

One of the things I like about having pets is that it’s clear that they’re different from us, and have different interests and needs. Right now, I’m living with two dogs, and they’re not only differerent from me, they’re different from each other. Nina, who is my dog, loves the snow and wants roll around in it, run around in circles scattering it around, loves to dig in it. Toby, my daughter’s dog who is spending a few months with me, dislikes the cold and hates snow, and never wants to leave the house if there’s snow on the ground. His point of view in undoubtably affected by his size — he’s a tiny thing with short little legs, so even a few inches of snow is overwhelming to him.

But today the three of us went for a walk that was perfect for all three of us. The weather was mild and the sidewalks were clear, which was good for Toby; there was still a lot of snow piled next to the sidewalk, which Nina enjoyed; and we took a route with a lot of stone walls, which I like to photograph. (At one point, Toby decided he’d had enough and stuck a pose of passive resistance, but after I picked him up and carried him for a few minutes, he was willing to continue walking.)

This is an old favorite of mine, but I haven’t read it in many years. I was almost afraid to read it again. I’ve been rereading a lot of favorite books lately, and many of them have been disappointing. The books simply aren’t as good as they used to be. Ribsy, however, seemed as sweet, fresh and funny as it was when I read it to my little brother over forty years ago.

Ribsy is a good-natured mutt who lives with his boy Henry Huggins. He certainly never intended to run away, but one rainy day he escapes from the parked car while his family is shopping to chase a little dog who has been barking at him, and finds himself lost and confused in the parking lot.

“Ribsy had a pretty good nose, but unfortunately he was no bloodhound. He had never tracked a lost child over mountains and through forests. He was just an ordinary city dog, trying to track his owner across an enormous parking lot that smelled of oil and exhaust.”

And so Ribsy’s adventures begin. He’s misses Henry and the familiar pattern of life at home, but he has no idea how to find his way home. He’s an optimistic and resourceful dog, and he makes some friends along the road. He doesn’t like the violet-scented bubble bath he receives from a group of rambunctious children in one home. He enjoys his time as the class mascot for a group of second-graders until the day someone brings their pet squirrel for show-and-tell. Lonely old Mrs. Frawley is kind, but Ribsy doesn’t really like wearing a coat, or posing for her friends wearing a straw hat and spectacles and clutching a corncob pipe between his teeth. When he disrupts the final play of the high school football game, he gets his photo in the newspaper, which ultimately helps Henry, who never gave up hope, to find him.

The wonderful thing about this book is the point of view, which is almost totally Ribsy’s. We see the world through the dog’s eyes…or more often, his nose. We understand how he thinks, what he wants and how he feels.

Although I still love this story, I couldn’t help but feel like the Huggins family are terribly irresponsible dog owners. They allow Ribsy to come and go as he pleases and roam freely through the neighborhood unleashed. In the opening chapter, they leave him alone outside when they go on their shopping expedition, and allow him to chase the car for several blocks through busy intersections, only stopping to let him in the car when Henry worries that he’s going to get run over. But when I was growing up, there were no leash laws and all of our dogs ran free. Lots of neighborhood dogs chased cars. And it was sad but not particularly unusual for dogs to run away and get lost, or to get hit by a car and be injured or killed.

I don’t think it’s fair to judge the Huggins family by today’s dog care standards, but I wonder how today’s kids, raised in a leash-law world, see this aspect of the book.

The little dog’s story has a sad ending. When he reached a certain age, he retired from his travels, but he took one last trip, hopping a train to Toledo, Ohio. The story isn’t really clear, but apparently he was being shown to a reporter, there was some sort of incident, Owney bit a postal clerk, and was shot and killed, a terrible and sad ending to the life of a dog who had led such a life of adventure and friendship.

Books about Owney

Owney, the Mail-Pouch Pooch Written by Mona Kerby, illustrated by Lynne Barasch. New York: Frances Foster Books / Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2008.
“In 1888, a straggly dog wandered into the U.S. Post Office in Albany, New York. Owney liked the smell of the workers and the mail pouches. He started guarding the mail. Before long, he was traveling on mail trains all around the country. He even took a trip around the world.”

Owney, the Mail-Pouch Pooch — Mona Kerby maintains this blog to provide students and teachers a place to explore and exchange ideas and activities related Owney’s story.

Owney, the Mail-Pouch Pooch — Mona Kerby made this lively video collage of old photographs and movie clips to show what Owney might have seen on his travels.

The thing that really attracted me to this story was those photographs of Owney, who reminds me of my own dog, Nina. She’s a friendly girl who likes to travel and meet new people, so I think she might be a long-lost relative of Owney’s. Wonder if he ever got down to Puerto Rico, Nina’s birthplace?

Dogs in Art — Link to the Flickr group page

Mark and Arden are living alone with Mark’s lover Wally, who is dying of AIDS, when Mark decides to get another dog. It’s really the last thing they needed, at that point.

In Doty’s words:

My friends think I’ve lost my mind. You’re taking care of a man who can’t get out of bed, and you’re adopting a golden retriever? They do have a point, but there’s a certain dimension of experience at which the addition of any other potential stress simply doesn’t matter anymore. Oh, say the already crazed, why not?

Beau comes into a home filled with sorrow, and makes his own place in it. Together, Beau and Arden provide comfort and companionship to the dying Wally, and consolation and distraction to the bereaved Doty.

A year after Wally dies, Paul becomes a part of the family, and the two dogs and two men share some adventures in Provincetown and on the road. But dog’s years pass more quickly than our own, and both dogs develop health problems, and eventually die, first Beau, and after a long, slow, heartbreaking decline, finally Arden. Loss is everywhere in this book, not just in the lives of the author and his dogs, but in the world around them. They are living in Manhattan on September 11, and Doty provides a powerful portrait of the city during those dark days.

But ultimately, this is a book about hope and courage, friendship and love, and the special bond between dogs and their people.

I especially love the cover of this book — a soft, hazy photograph of the two dogs, Arden and Beau, walking together up a snowy Provincetown street, walking away from the camera, off into the distance, like a dream, like a memory.

Links :

• Mark Doty — The author’s website
• Howl — New York Times book review by Danielle Chapman
• ‘Dog Years’: Best friends, joy and heartbreak — Review from USA Today