Pet Stories
Zen Dog
Submitted By: Wendy Greenley
Like people, some dogs are fast, and some dogs are slow. Then there is our dog, Angel, who is out at the very tip of the slow end of the bell curve. In fact, just the other day, one of our neighbors knocked on our door to find out if she was dead. This might have been funny—if it hadn’t happened before. Not the same neighbor, mind you, but the same concern over our dog’s lack of animation.
Two or three years ago, the first time the phone rang with the dead-dog inquiry, we raced outside to find Angel sprawled on her back, legs splayed, eyes open, and mouth open wide, tongue lolled out one side of it. She was fine, just a little cranky at being disturbed from her doggy daydream. What had caught our neighbors’ attention was that Angel chose to take her upside-down siesta halfway up a steep hill in our backyard. They checked back several times over the course of an hour, and she hadn’t moved. After our interruption she dozed off again, still balanced on the side of the hill.
The latest false alarm came one cool evening as other neighbors walked past our side fence and saw Angel flattened on the ground. She looked as if she had melted—like the Wicked Witch of the West after Dorothy doused her with the bucket of water. They stopped and watched her for five minutes and she didn’t move a muscle. Even more alarming, she didn’t bark when our neighbors called her name.
What the neighbors don’t realize is that our other dog does all the barking. She is the yang to Angel’s yin: the fence-charging, squirrel-chasing, loudmouth counterpoint to Angel’s Zen lifestyle. We can count on one hand the number of times Angel has made any noise, besides snoring. If her sweet, gentle temperament is any indication, meditation may be as good for dogs’ souls as it is for humans.
It isn’t that Angel can’t move fast, it’s just that she rarely wants to. So, if you want to see our dog move, don’t bother shouting at her. She has learned to ignore such day-to-day trifles. You have to transcend the mundane . . . and try waving bacon.
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