Perspective
Turned out a much cooler day than yesterday and windy as well. We felt hot yesterday, cool today. It little mattered since we spent much of this day doing chores. I cleaned the house and he cleaned up the garage. A matched pair, we are. It's likely we'll have some frost the coming evening, so it'll be comfortable for sleeping. Not so comfortable, perhaps, for the annuals we've just finished planting in the garden and the garden pots. We'd left the planting for later than usual this year, but even so, you never can tell what late May days will bring in the Ottawa Valley.
When we took our afternoon walk in the ravine - late, because we were so busy earlier - we felt relaxed, though tired, and it was pleasant ambling along, even clambering up the hills, our two little dogs in tow. When Riley began barking we knew there would be someone coming up behind, and likely with a dog. He barks at other dogs, a silly little dog he is, too generously hormoned for a toy poodle. Looking back, we saw it was a young man we'd met on a previous occasion, with his newly-acquired little black miniature poodle. Purebred, not like our black miniature poodle, part Pomeranian .
It's an adorable pup, a little male, shy and friendly, whereas our toy poodle is neither shy nor friendly with other dogs. He will become friendly once he has met a dog once or twice, but initially we have to keep him well away from a strange dog. He's attacked large breeds in the past, and we want no repeat of that. So we hold him and he gets on about his snarling while we keep telling him what a disgrace he is. The little black male made friendly overtures to our female, Button. It does not move rashly forward, but timidly, yet full of curiosity. I bend to pat its little head, and its hair is lofty, soft as a baby's.
And its owner seemed to want to stand about, talking, so we obliged. He spoke of his pride in the little dog, how intelligent it is, how it differentiates between the people in the family, knowing it can do whatever it wants around the young man, but not his mother and sister. They won't have it jumping onto the furniture, it must know its place. I tell him our dogs accustomed themselves to sleeping on our bed, at night, and the young man said his tried the same, but he was worried about inadvertently smothering it at night, so he's accustomed it to sleeping in a 'cradle' beside his bed.
He's a slight young man, barely taller than my husband, with a saturnine-appearing face that belies his friendliness. Sallow skin, thin, high cheekbones, not given to smiling. The kind of face that makes it difficult to guess age; could be 20, could be in his mid-30s. His English slightly accented; I thought Spanish at first, but then amended it to European. But his use of the language casual and easeful, perfectly pronounced and boasting a good vocabulary. On this occasion he told us where he lives, and we know the house, a few streets over from ours, just off another entrance to the ravine.
His family is involved in landscaping. Originally from Russia, he said. Then more explicitly, Moldova. Which may mean his family left Moldova when it was still part of the Soviet Union, which it no longer is. So it's likely he came to Canada as a boy, and learned his impeccable English here, educated in this country. He is inclined to talk, and does, tells us that while they still lived in Moldova, a business acquaintance of his father, after concluding some kind of mutually-beneficial deal, gave him a dog. A black standard poodle. He was, he said, twelve, and excited beyond imagining that he had a dog.
But, he said, he owned that dog for a mere two weeks, before disaster took it from him. We inferred an accident, that the dog had been run over, killed. An older cousin, he said, going off on an errand, wanted to take the dog with her. He refused. He refused, he said, because he wanted to keep his eye on his beloved dog, did not want to let it out of his sight. Also, he said, because - and he struggled for an explanation. I offered the word 'premonition', and his eyes lit up. Yes, he said, that was it, he had a premonition that if he allowed that dog to leave his side he would lose it forever.
We knew immediately that someone dreadful had happened, the dog was inadvertently killed by a motor accident of some kind. No, he said, it was worse than that. Worse? We looked at one another apprehensively. Did we want to hear about something worse, about some poor animal suffering a painful and unavoidable end? It was clear he meant to tell us, and we stood there, listening. The dog, he said, must have been stolen, because when his cousin walked in the street with it, the dog suddenly broke away, broke the leash in fact, and leaped toward people walking on the street. Overjoyed to see its previous owners.
A dog reunited with people it loved and who loved it. How could that possibly be construed as something dreadful, rather than something to celebrate. He was only twelve at the time, he said, happy that he had a dog of his own, and couldn't accept that one moment it was his, the next it was gone. The outcome of that little trip with his dog was one he would never forget. To this day he regretted succumbing to his cousin's pressure to allow her to take the dog with her. We nodded, at his reminiscences, then parted, said our goodbyes as he went on off home with his little dog.
For the remainder of our walk in the woods, my husband kept shaking his head in disbelief. That anyone could be so completely consumed with his own younger self's egotistical ownership of a companion dog that had belonged to someone else, finally rightfully restored to its former owner, still grating on the young man's consciousness as an unfair and personally regrettable event.
When we took our afternoon walk in the ravine - late, because we were so busy earlier - we felt relaxed, though tired, and it was pleasant ambling along, even clambering up the hills, our two little dogs in tow. When Riley began barking we knew there would be someone coming up behind, and likely with a dog. He barks at other dogs, a silly little dog he is, too generously hormoned for a toy poodle. Looking back, we saw it was a young man we'd met on a previous occasion, with his newly-acquired little black miniature poodle. Purebred, not like our black miniature poodle, part Pomeranian .
It's an adorable pup, a little male, shy and friendly, whereas our toy poodle is neither shy nor friendly with other dogs. He will become friendly once he has met a dog once or twice, but initially we have to keep him well away from a strange dog. He's attacked large breeds in the past, and we want no repeat of that. So we hold him and he gets on about his snarling while we keep telling him what a disgrace he is. The little black male made friendly overtures to our female, Button. It does not move rashly forward, but timidly, yet full of curiosity. I bend to pat its little head, and its hair is lofty, soft as a baby's.
And its owner seemed to want to stand about, talking, so we obliged. He spoke of his pride in the little dog, how intelligent it is, how it differentiates between the people in the family, knowing it can do whatever it wants around the young man, but not his mother and sister. They won't have it jumping onto the furniture, it must know its place. I tell him our dogs accustomed themselves to sleeping on our bed, at night, and the young man said his tried the same, but he was worried about inadvertently smothering it at night, so he's accustomed it to sleeping in a 'cradle' beside his bed.
He's a slight young man, barely taller than my husband, with a saturnine-appearing face that belies his friendliness. Sallow skin, thin, high cheekbones, not given to smiling. The kind of face that makes it difficult to guess age; could be 20, could be in his mid-30s. His English slightly accented; I thought Spanish at first, but then amended it to European. But his use of the language casual and easeful, perfectly pronounced and boasting a good vocabulary. On this occasion he told us where he lives, and we know the house, a few streets over from ours, just off another entrance to the ravine.
His family is involved in landscaping. Originally from Russia, he said. Then more explicitly, Moldova. Which may mean his family left Moldova when it was still part of the Soviet Union, which it no longer is. So it's likely he came to Canada as a boy, and learned his impeccable English here, educated in this country. He is inclined to talk, and does, tells us that while they still lived in Moldova, a business acquaintance of his father, after concluding some kind of mutually-beneficial deal, gave him a dog. A black standard poodle. He was, he said, twelve, and excited beyond imagining that he had a dog.
But, he said, he owned that dog for a mere two weeks, before disaster took it from him. We inferred an accident, that the dog had been run over, killed. An older cousin, he said, going off on an errand, wanted to take the dog with her. He refused. He refused, he said, because he wanted to keep his eye on his beloved dog, did not want to let it out of his sight. Also, he said, because - and he struggled for an explanation. I offered the word 'premonition', and his eyes lit up. Yes, he said, that was it, he had a premonition that if he allowed that dog to leave his side he would lose it forever.
We knew immediately that someone dreadful had happened, the dog was inadvertently killed by a motor accident of some kind. No, he said, it was worse than that. Worse? We looked at one another apprehensively. Did we want to hear about something worse, about some poor animal suffering a painful and unavoidable end? It was clear he meant to tell us, and we stood there, listening. The dog, he said, must have been stolen, because when his cousin walked in the street with it, the dog suddenly broke away, broke the leash in fact, and leaped toward people walking on the street. Overjoyed to see its previous owners.
A dog reunited with people it loved and who loved it. How could that possibly be construed as something dreadful, rather than something to celebrate. He was only twelve at the time, he said, happy that he had a dog of his own, and couldn't accept that one moment it was his, the next it was gone. The outcome of that little trip with his dog was one he would never forget. To this day he regretted succumbing to his cousin's pressure to allow her to take the dog with her. We nodded, at his reminiscences, then parted, said our goodbyes as he went on off home with his little dog.
For the remainder of our walk in the woods, my husband kept shaking his head in disbelief. That anyone could be so completely consumed with his own younger self's egotistical ownership of a companion dog that had belonged to someone else, finally rightfully restored to its former owner, still grating on the young man's consciousness as an unfair and personally regrettable event.
Labels: Companions, Perambulations
posted by Pieface @ 6:03 PM
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