Country Roads: Dogs of All Sorts

Christmas Day only hours away; year’s end in its last gasp – a mixture of joy and pain which is life, is it not? When we look around us, lucky us, we see the faces of family and friends, relatively safe, hopefully well fed and well loved. We’ve got to feel gratitude. So many others in the world are neither safe nor fed and if the world loves them, it certainly isn’t obvious. We thoughtful and caring folk, from the safety of our warm homes and full cupboards may give monthly to Doctors Without Borders, providing a bandage here and there to a victim who has just been blown apart. It’s on the nightly news, nagging at our conscience and disturbing an otherwise comfortable evening by the fire.
Closer to home, it’s so absurd you have to laugh, you really do. Crying may bring relief for the moment but it’s no way to live through the day. The party dog in Washington D.C. who’s been chasing the government car has caught it in his teeth and plans to stuff it in his dog dish and eat it, part by part. Realizing it’s just too huge a job, he has wisely delegated it out to those who despise the different materials. Hate rubber? You get to be in charge of tires and hoses. Electrical cords and computers? Driver and passenger safety? Fresh air? Engines? Bring in the smashers and crushers.
Now that the car is in shambles, what to do? Hmmmm. There’s no fun left in the life of the dog devoted to chasing cars. In order to renew his reason for being, he must rebuild the vehicle. Now that will be interesting to watch. He can consult “The Google” and watch videos about constructing a government car. There is historical data going back to 1776 and the Second Continental Congress about how to form a government and it’s all in real books. Imagine that.
Closer to our time, President Teddy Roosevelt, a Republican, had great concern that our country lacked universal health care for its citizens. Another Republican, Richard Nixon, signed into existence the Environmental Protection Agency. Imagine that, again.
Ronald Reagan, the 16th Republican president and driver of the government car said in his farewell address in 1989:
“…in my mind, (America is) a tall proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace, a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity, and if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here.”
The imagination soars, the heart warms, and hope, of course, springs eternal.
Even the dog is jumping with joy. There is evidence that the car will rise again, even with a cadre of designers who thought they historically weren’t the least bit interested in cars.
It’s Christmas and I am feeling better and better. I am imagining consideration and care instead of chaos; reconfiguration and renewal instead of wreckage.
I refuse to close my 2016 years’ end Country Roads with such a serious set of sentences as has been set forth above. It is time for “Christmas With Cooper the Corgi” stories.
True tales of Cooper come from Pat and Roger Swan of Windsor who hosted Cooper in their home over Thanksgiving. Cooper belongs to their daughter’s family who had rented motel rooms (no pets) for the weekend. Pat, thinking like a Corgi who likes candy, placed the bag of yummy treats high on a shelf, away from temptation. Awakened by the sound of crinkling paper in the living room area, she discovered empty candy wrappers strewn around the rug and the long-eared, short-legged perpetrator.
The next night, she heard “crackle crackle crackle” and found Cooper midst walnut shells on the same rug, merrily cracking and consuming the tasty walnut meats.
Did Cooper suffer any ill effects from his midnight snacks? His family reported that there seemed to be none. The only evidence of his misbehavior was his morning-after scat which included many little cellophane bar codes.
 Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and keep your eye on Cooper.
Renee Kiff weeds and writes at her family farm in Alexander Valley.