By Edward H. Garcia
One of the joys of walking around in our community is the companion dogs we often pick up. Over the years on our daily walks, my wife and I have had at least a dozen part-time pets. Typically, we’ll walk in front of a certain house and there is the dog we call Emily or Tess or Martina, a dog who belongs to someone else, but who keeps us company for a block or two before returning home. We’ve run into a couple of dogs we were afraid of, but, for the most part, they are friendly, and dangerous only in their exuberance.
Right now, when we walk the streets around our house, we often are met by Tess and Baby Bear. Those are almost certainly not their real names – just the names we call them. Tess is a lovely golden retriever who looks like our long-deceased Tess, hence the name. Baby Bear is a fluffy puppy with coloring like, well, a baby bear.
The two dogs rush up and greet us. Baby Bear is especially rambunctious. Both take their petting and the high-pitched baby talk people usually use on dogs, and then follow us for a block or two, sometimes all the way home. We like the companionship, and we like that we don’t feed them, clean up for them or take them to the vet. I think my wife might like to own a dog someday, but for me, our occasional walks together are all the dog I need.
Our first borrowed dog we called Chula. (In Spanish, Chula means something like “cutie”). She was a beautiful Lab. She walked with us around the neighborhood, and sometimes we ran across her far afield. One memorable day, she came to us while we were working and sat contentedly next to us as we cleared our lot.
Among our favorite temp dogs are a pair who joined us a few years back on another of our walks, Martina and Rake. Martina was a white Lab-looking shorthaired dog who ran back and forth around us with incredible athleticism. That was where we came up with the name. We were thinking of Martina Navratilova. Rake was a thin, muscular Catahoula mix who followed Martina around slavishly. His name came from his leanness and from a poem by Theodore Roethke which goes, “She was the sickle; I, poor I, the rake. Coming behind her for her pretty sake.”
Rake followed Martina wherever she went, including sprints alongside cars. She wasn’t really chasing cars; she was racing them. After a while we didn’t see Martina any more on our morning walks and heard she was hit by a car. Of course, that’s one of the disadvantages of our casual relationships with these dogs – they go away as mysteriously as they come to us, and we don’t get to tell them a proper goodbye.
Our relationships with these dogs must seem puny and superficial to those who live and die for their pets, but aren’t all dogs, all pets in a sense borrowed – the way all children are adopted, no matter how they come to us? It seems to me that everything in life – and life itself – is borrowed. We might think we own it. We might cling to it fiercely, but finally things, pets, friends, parents, children, and life are taken from us. Like the books I borrow from the library on my Kindle, all things, all people, and eventually we, suddenly disappear.
My wife and I have had 20 dogs over the last few years, each one appropriately named, enjoyed and fondly remembered. They are a reminder to seize and enjoy every borrowed thing we are lucky enough to have.
