by

PG

“Dogs do speak, but only to those who know how to listen.” ~Orhan Panuk.

     One day Pearly-girl, being a young but very smart and wise dog, not to mention being very good looking, decided to use her adopted Dad’s keyboard to download her most important silent thoughts, which she thought humans could take advantage of to be more successful. Earlier, in dog Kindergarten, she had read a psychiatrist’s book, William Glasser, called “Reality Therapy.”

     PG didn’t really learn anything new in this book, but just recalled the number one fact of life she was born with—That you can’t be successful in life, without seeing and dealing with things as they really are, rather than they way you want them to be. Here are a few of PG’s most useful facts of life to consider:

1. Life only has two speeds—slow and fast. Time really drags when you are bored, but it seems to fly by when you are busy having fun. So, if you want to have more time to enjoy things, like gnawing on a good bone, then stop trying so hard to have fun.

2. When you stop to think about things, what you see really depends on two things: (a) what you are looking at, and (b) where you are looking from in time and place. So, if you don’t like what you see, all you have to do is wait awhile and move a little bit. Strange how this changes things.

3. Life really doesn’t have good or bad in it, that distinction is a human opinion that really doesn’t hold water in the dog world. Things just are the way they are for us and that always saves a lot of valuable time to enjoy them by not misunderstanding and misinterpreting things so much, or especially imagining life to be more complicated than it needs to be. Oops, I already when past the point of no return on this one, sorry!

4. In the beginning as a puppy it is all me, me and more me. But as we dogs get older, our focus shifts more to you, you and more you. It is too bad that humans can’t get the hang of this little dog trick. While it may be true that old dogs can’t lean new tricks, but that doesn’t necessarily apply to humans, remembering what they forgot because language got in the way.

5. More about the beginning. It seems to be forever, but at the end forever seems to come and go. Of course, this is a human affliction, because dogs get lost in between and lose all track of time. “Furthermore,” ponders PG,  “if there really is a doggy heaven which I strongly suspect, then the perspective here may change drastically.”

6. Most of the time facts get in the way of the real truth of something, especially when they are shiny, new and popular.  On the other hand, unpopular truths, compelling as they may be, usually give way to false facts and rejection, at least until they become less unpopular (PG scratches her head, knowing what this means directly, but wandering if humans can ever know things that same way?).

7. My main communication skill has nothing to do with words. When I like something and want more, all I have to do is use my eyes to convey that desire. And the nice thing about this skill is that it can be used when I don’t like something and want less of it. But to this end I also have a little lifting of my mouth as a beginning to a friendly growl, in case another dog or person doesn’t get what I am saying with my eyes.

8. Although I don’t much fancy college basketball, at least until the fourth quarter or when March Madness gets all the hype, I do enjoy listening to mom and dad’s enthusiasm when their teams—the Kansas Jayhawks and the Wichita State Shockers are playing well. It is not much fun around the house when these two teams are losing. That is usually when I take a nap on the couch.

9. Humans know more than they will ever understand and not understanding this is the reason for most misunderstanding, including this fact of life. We dogs know that when you start noticing what you have been failing to notice all along, real facts of life start accumulating in your useful fact bank.

10. I would like to leave you with this one final pearl of wisdom, so to speak. Dogs don’t get depressed very often and certainly don’t run around chasing their own tails like a Tasmanian devil or humans with their foolish talent of being depressed about being depressed and even depressed about that. We have an easy cure to depression—a crunchy, well-cooked piece of bacon, preferably smoked. What the heck folks, didn’t you see “A Dogs’ Purpose?” I loved that movie because I just know my dad knows I am his boyhood dog Dukie, a pink-nosed, gender-challenged Britany Spaniel, who loved peanut m & m’s and ham on rye with mayo, and waited for him to return from Vietnam before going on my long canoe trip because of heart worms. This life with dad is even better!

    If you think PG should continue a book of facts of life, please let her know. She doesn’t like wasting good time on the computer, which she could be using better, to play fetch, eat kibble or run in the local mole field dreaming of chasing elk and geese into the sunset.

“Everything I know, I learned from dogs.” ~Nora Roberts (and Pearly-Girl’s dad)