The Dogs Dream in Tandem
I’m sitting on the bed looking out through the bedroom window over the river as I write and the two terriers are sleeping on either side of my outstretched legs. The dream together: at almost the same instant, both Jett and Candy begin twitching their ears and moving their paws, emitting little subvocalized yelps. I’ve [...]
Hanoi Street Scene
Dogs (VN Diary No. 39)
The taxi’s route to the airport passes through a number of suburban neighborhoods of varying degrees of prosperity and in each I noticed well cared for dogs on people’s stoops. I’d noticed this in Hanoi, too, and it was one of the differences from eight years ago, when the few pet dogs I saw looked [...]
Writers & their Dogs
Via The Valve, a portfolio of photographs by Jill Krementz of writers and their dogs.
Balmy
You know it has been a cold week when 20 degrees feels warm. Went out & filled the bird feeders, shoveled last night’s inch of snow off the porch, started the old Subaru to see if it would go (cranked right over on the first try), and generally breathed outdoor air. When Carole gets home [...]
Happy New Year
It was only an accident that I was awake for the actual moment of the new year’s arrival. Neither Carole nor I have been awake for the turning of the year in many years and last night we went to bed, as usual, around eleven o’clock, but one of the terriers woke me up jumping [...]
Between Storms
Just went out into a bright, sunny afternoon to shovel the walks and deck clear of last night’s foot of snow. It’s cold — hovering around zero — so the snow is light and easy to move. I cut a racetrack around the dogrun in back so that the terriers wouldn’t be over their heads. [...]
Dogs & Justice
Fred Clark points to interesting research that shows that a dog has a basic sense of fairness, at least when they are the ones being treated unfairly. If you have two dogs who know how to “shake” and you put them side by side, then ask them to shake, but reward only one with a [...]
Animal Cruelty
In a comment to the previous post, Chris Robinson makes reference to a poem from my book Magical Thinking. We bear a special responsibility, greater perhaps than the responsibility we bear toward each other, to care for animals. Whichever philosopher said that we reveal our character through our treatment of those weaker than ourselves was [...]
Guillermo Vargas Habacuc
I’m not going to link to the photos / video of artist Habacuc’s work. If you want to see a dog starving to death as an art installation, you can search on the name.
Proposal for funding: An art installation: Guillermo Vargas Habacuc comes to my house & we tie him to a tree out back [...]
