Imbolc                                                                                Valentine Moon

Dogs.  A friend wondered why we keep so many.  And have done so for so long.  Not an easy question to answer on the page.  Much easier to answer on the couch or in the bed during our nap or outside working in the yard or when we come home and hear the baying the kitchen, the dogs having heard the garage door and the Rav4.

Dogs are not surrogate children.  We don’t own them, even if we buy them.  Dogs are fellow travelers, pilgrims on the journey.  We love them, feed them, care for them, play with them, and grieve for their loss.

They are companions.  Companions with a full and complete space of their own.  As dogs.  Not as replacements for something else, but as what they are, mammals like us, individuals like us, with a life to live, like us.  They agree in their big hearts to share their journey with us.

We keep at least two dogs, preferably litter mates, for a simple reason.  We believe dogs need canine companionship and who better than a brother or a sister?  Actually, we know dogs need canine companionship.  That’s the definition of a pack.  It takes a pack to raise a puppy.

Our days and our nights interlace, interweave.  I have my writing and my Latin.  Vega and Rigel have holes to dig, rabbits to run to ground, each other to chase.  Gertie rolls in the snow, plays with stuffed gorillas and squirrels and cows, searches for food to steal.

Their outside world is largely opaque to us.  We let them out and they run, always run, to the sheds to look for critters.  Down the fenceline to greet or respond to other dogs.  Into the woods to find opossums or groundhogs or raccoons or, as twice this last summer, turtles.  We do human things inside.  They do dog things.

We come together for meals, for naps, for time on the couch or individual time.  We all seem to need it, from each other.  And, this is part of the magic of dogs, we seek it out from each other.  A house with many dogs is a house filled with interaction, with a pat or a nuzzle or a lean or playful nip or a crisp bark that signals a need to go outside or a readiness to go to bed.  The web of these interactions, often brief, would make a thick matrix on any given day, horizontal pillars on any given week and, over the years, whole cathedrals of touching and loving.  Come to think of it, I think this is why we keep dogs.  And so many.  And have done for such a long time.