Can you just imagine what this little guy is finding out while sniffing? Oh, what stories this dog's nose tells!
Tip of nose to tip of wagging tail, he reads a busy cast of characters!
Listen, squirrels, chipmunks...bunnies (oh, especially the bunnies, he loves the bunnies best of all)...
Deer...mice and birds...
And yes, coyotes, we heard them last night, made his ruffle stand on end, and of course, there's those other half dog-half coyotes...those are the bad ones who cause lots of trouble because they are very bold...no worries, they're not here now...(just so you know, the pictures that I didn't take of my dog was of him marking every tree, twig, leaf, and blade of grass because of the coy-dogs and coyotes that have passed through our yard leaving their calling cards!)
Max is the Best of Good Boys! (Darn it, he won't look at the camera!) My handsome boy-dog...the little black face is getting grayer...just turned eleven years old...not old yet...still a pup, right?Today I thought about one of my favorite passages in The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje, it is about a dog's paw...yes, far from the dog's nose, but not that far, and still very much part of the beauty of a dog...and the stories they can tell...
Her father had taught her about hands. About a dog's paws. Whenever her father was alone with a dog in a house he would lean over and smell the skin at the base of its paw. This, he would say, as if coming away from a brandy snifter, is the greatest smell in the world! A bouquet! Great rumors of travel! She would pretend disgust, but the dog's paw was a wonder: the smell of it never suggested dirt. It's a cathedral! her father had said, so-and-so's garden, that field of grasses, a walk through cyclamen - a concentration of hints of all the paths the animal had taken during the day.
And so...yes, it's been a difficult week, we buried my Fred's father on Monday, and the family from out of town left, and we've moved on to the latest version of normal...we draw close, talk more, cry now and then, wait and watch, we think too much about our inevitable...which one of us will be the one left alone? We wonder, can't help but wonder...but we mustn't dwell on it...we must move on, go forward, and live life to its fullest...and always love one another especially more now than ever...we have a beautiful life together...we shall savor every day.
