I’ve never had a dog. I mean my own dog. We had a dog in the house when I was a kid, but I didn’t have any relationship with it. Miko was my sisters’ dog. One day, in Miko’s thirteenth year, my mother left the front door of our house open for a minute while she went to do something and Miko took off. We never saw him again, though someone told us that a grey poodle had been hit by a car a few blocks away. That dog had died.
I actually would like to have a dog. I’d like to have it as a companion but not as a house mate. I think dogs belong outside with space to run and expanse to explore — like on a farm.
My Uncle Bill, who had lost most of his fingers on both hands to a stalled though running corn-picker used to have a farm dog which he called “Dog.” The chief job of the otherwise lazy dog was to go when my uncle said “Go!” The milk cows would be grazing high up a hill next to a fence several acres away. Dog and Uncle Bill would be idling by a lower fence at about 4 PM when my uncle would casually turn to Dog and say in an even tone,”Go!” Dog would race at full speed across and up the hill and nip at the legs and hooves of the cows, rounding them up and bringing them down for afternoon milking. I should mention that, Dog was also used to gather the cows for morning milking.
Aunt Gen fed Dog once a day. That was the only relationship she had to Dog and Uncle Bill saw Dog at milking time. That didn’t seem to bother Dog who had his own stuff to do each day. He was part collie and part everything else and looked just like the brown and white knee high dogs you see at any farm.
If I had a dog, I’d like him to have his own schedule, a private dog-house and a yard big enough to make him happy. I might sit outside with him once a day and tell him about life for as long as he would care to hear about it. No cows, though.