Someone to Watch Over Me

There is no accounting for taste - including what you dislike. For me, dogs are on that list. As a former paper boy I have a bumpy history with canines. I have never owned one. Much later on, my daughter got a dog. It happened gradually. The dog was in pretext a guide dog in training, so it was a rent a pet for a time period only. Then the dog became permanent. This has all taken some getting used to. Basically we carved out an existence where I took a wide berth around the dog, and in kind, the dog would see me, and go around and enter the room by the other door. To add salt to injury, the dog is named Dandy, which I find to be a ridiculous moniker. And… a poodle which is the kind of dog a man can find hard to take seriously. The dog was not on my top ten list of likes in the world. 

Then it happened. I had a life-changing health event. Specifically, a four artery coronary bypass that about killed me. They say that in terms of body trauma, the five to six hour operation itself could well do you in and is about on par with having a major car accident without a seatbelt. All of your systems are held in a very delicate balance by machines and when you come out you feel about one percent alive all except for the extreme pain which reverberates through any kind of drug you might think to mask it. So there is a convalescence time. Six weeks minimum to get up to any normal-ish kind of energy level. There is a lot of physio, every half hour. You are a little busy…. healing. I never thought to find myself in such a state. 

Enter dog. Something funny started to happen during this convalescence. The dog, who hitherto avoided me, started coming over and licking me. I did not pull away. The dog, who is attached to my daughter’s proximity whenever she is in the room, suddenly started guarding me. I was sick and the dog sensed that I needed a bit of dog guarding. So… that’s me in the picture, kacked out on the couch sleeping and the dog guarding me. My daughter could not explain it. 

What my daughter didn’t know is that there was something else going on. When she went out, I was bored and the dog was bored. The dog has a ridiculous-looking big squishy octopus that it likes to throw. The dog never tires of the game. You might say it is like a kid with a harmonica. And so we began. Bored Trevor would throw the squishy octopus for bored dog and both started to get along. Somehow it is not that hard to make friends with a dog and you might say the dog grew on me. 

I don’t like to be told stuff. I have my own mind and I have been responsible for much of the stupid things that have happened to me in life. So the question of change looms large. I must for example learn to heed the notion of an exercise routine and I guess cheeseburgers are off the list going forward. I must refocus my attentions so that I won’t get riled up about politics or the stupid things the government does. I will have to learn to worry less. I never would have guessed that a dog would be the thing that would set affairs in motion though, to give hope to the notion that as they say an old dog can learn to do new tricks. We are seeing it play out in real life. 

Meanwhile they prayed for someone to watch over me. I am the least suspecting that it ever would have been the dog. When it comes over now I scratch its head and it wags its tail. I guess change is possible, sometimes even miraculous and for old dogs like us.