A black Lab's golden years

When I’m 91 I’ll probably lie on my side and bark at the sky.  Or the human equivalent of that – I’ll sit on the porch and sing, “We’re off to see the Wizard!”

Our dog Beauregard is 91.  He looks it.  He has lumps and bumps where he should be smooth.  He’s grizzled – white-face on black Lab.  He passed the distinguished gray stage and slid into geezer sometime in the last couple of years.  His lips are saggy and his eyes look a little milky.

He has a hitch in his get-along.  The elbow on his left front leg is out-of-whack.  It swings wide causing him to walk like Grampappie Amos.  He takes medication for his arthritis. 

And he has begun barking at the sky.  And the north side of the house.  And his reflection in the sliding doors.  In the middle of the day.  For no discernable reason.

It’s not the bark of his days as the family guardian.  Not the throaty ‘Who goes there?’ that warned any approaching shadow to steer clear of his people.  He had a good bluff. 

He always let us know if a Styrofoam cup was rolling down the alley, or if an arrogant cat sat atop the fence and stared.

Now we’re unsure why he barks. 

I remember a scene from “The Lady and the Tramp,” that old Disney movie about a sheltered uptown Cocker Spaniel who falls for a streetwise downtown Mutt. 

In that movie, when something goes wrong in their neighborhood, the dogs call out using their own social network, barking and howling, sharing the news, spreading the alarm or sometimes just gossiping.  Their pronouncements ring out over the fences and the clothes lines and echo across town into the night air.

That’s all true for Beau except he doesn’t have any real news.  Maybe he’s reliving the pheasant hunt of 2009.  That was a good year for those wily birds.  He could flush ‘em!  Oh!  No one could rout a ring neck like Beau in his day!

He still wants us to throw the thing for him, but he’s only good for three or four rounds before he declares the game over and heads for the feed bag. 

Not so long ago he had more enthusiasm and vigor than we could plumb.  Now, we throw the thing half the distance and he just creeps up on it.  He seems to prefer the appearance of the game to the game itself.  Or maybe, in his mind, he’s sprinting.

I think sometimes he forgets that I’m home.  Maybe that’s when his mind starts to wander and his lips and paws begin to twitch.  Like Walter Mitty, he enters an imaginary world full of duck hunts and wrestling matches with our son.

He seems to know when I’m thinking of having a nap, because whenever I get situated across the bed with the pillow tucked just right, that’s when he tunes up and begins his baleful song:  “Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen!”

When I get up to see what he’s talking about, there he is, on his side in the middle of the back yard, head stretched skyward, his doggy mouth forming a big ‘O,’ singin’ the blues.

Sometimes I go to the window and bark back at him.  “Beau!”  He’s startled and jumps to his feet.  “Wha?  What was that?  Woof!”

I feel a little ashamed for scaring him, but when I leave the window, he starts barking again.  There’s almost a pattern to it, a canine Morse Code:  Woof!  Woof woof woof!  Woof woof!  And then repeat.  Woof!  Woof woof woof…

I go out to remind him he’s not alone and to commune with him a little.  While I’m out, he makes his rounds like a building superintendent, sniffing each corner of the yard with authority, making note of every mutt that passed this way.

I’ve taken to giving him a snack during our check-in visit.   He wolfs it down and forgets he ate it.  Just like when he was a pup.

It’s not such a bad life.

When I go back inside, he finds his spot and restarts the quiz.  Can you name that tune in five notes?

I should be so lucky.

Keep your mitts off my daydreams!

Who is this upstart brainpickings.org?  What do they know anyway?

I came across this article on the site, “The Art of Constructive Daydreaming.”  It’s written by Maria Popova, who calls herself a “cultural curator.”  She is founder and Editor in Chief of Brain Pickings.

Popova talks about the “science of fantasy” and “imaginative escapism,” calling them essential elements of a satisfying mental life.

Now don’t get me wrong!  I am in full possession of a thoroughly satisfying mental life, if I do say so myself.  And I do say so. 

Why on any given day, my internal flights of fancy make Walter Mitty look like Casper Milquetoast.  I achieve imaginary greatness with regularity.  Oh yes!  I soar above my mundane actual life and fly virtually alongside Wonder Woman.  She does fly, doesn’t she?  In my daydreams she does; and time after time I edge her out.

You could say I’m in the same daydreaming league as some of the greats:  Truly famous creators like T. S. Eliot who called his flights of fancy “idea incubation;” Alexander Graham Bell who dressed up the habit with the moniker “unconscious cerebration:” and Lewis Carroll who applied the pragmatic appellation “mental mastication.”

Whatever you want to call it, I can incubate, celebrate, er, cerebrate and chew with the best of them. 

So you can understand how totally annoyed I am to find this come-lately Popova who has to ruin it for the rest of us long-time practitioners of the delicate art of whiling away the time.  She just had to dredge up the research, wave it in our faces and act like she knows something about something. 

To wit:  She sites Yale psychologist Jerome L. Singer and his foundational investigation of daylight ponderings.  His findings, published in The Inner World of Daydreaming, described three core styles of daydreaming:

·        Positive Constructive Daydreaming – a process fairly free of psychological conflict, in which playful, vivid, wishful imagery drives creative thought;

·        Guilty-dysphoric Daydreaming – driven by a combination of ambitiousness, anguishing fantasies of heroism, failure, and aggression, and obsessive reliving of trauma, a mode particularly correlated with PTSD; and

·        Poor Attentional Control – typical of the anxious, the distractible, and those having difficulties concentrating.

Thanks a lot Ms. Popova!  Now I feel like I have to analyze my own daydreaming habits and therefore psychoanalyze myself!  Where’s the fun in that?  Wouldn’t you much rather doze in the sunshine and dream about pina coladas?

But OK, here goes – It’s pretty obvious – I am surely the Positive Constructive Daydreamer, right?  In my daydreams, I imagine myself to be playful and free of conflict, not the crabby misanthrope who’s on the edge of road rage.  My vivid imagery drives my powerful creativity.  Yeah that’s it.

OK…that feels a little forced. 

But even if I do feel guilty for everything that ever went wrong anywhere, surely I am not “dysphoric”?!!  Do my Wonder Woman daydreams reveal an “anguishing fantasy of heroism”?  Yikes! 

When is a cigar just a cigar?

Of course, for me, the real truth probably lies behind Door #3: Poor Attentional Control.  I guess I have to face it:  I’m distractible.  It’s no fun to concentrate!  Too many pretty, shiny objects in the vicinity of my keyboard.

I would much rather don my cape and combat crime.  As soon as I finish this column.

Carolyn will matriculate to 4^th grade, but she must learn to pay attention, follow directions and stay on task.

Humbug!