Things had gotten pretty darn quiet around the old dog ranch.
The dogs were into their routine; go out in the morning, perform their morning constitution, (I know what that means, but what does that mean?) bark at the horses, eat, sleep, get up and sniff other dog's constitutions, sleep, bark at the horses, and come in for the night only to start all over again in the morning. Pretty much same old, same old.
What can be said about your life, pretty much same old, same old?
Our dogs' well-ordered lives changed the day we brought home, Mugs, the puppy.
Mugs, a goofball hairball, was unaware of the routine. He knew nothing about letting sleeping dogs lie and would jump, lick and nip on the older members of the tribe all day and most of the night (when not enjoying one of his copious constitutions). When the old timers would attempt to get out of harm's way, lest they be licked, nipped and jumped upon to within an inch of their lives, Mugs, being a member of the herding group, would bite rapidly and repeatedly at their fleeing and flailing legs.
The sanctity of the older dogs' feeding dishes was also not honored, turning what used to be a tranquil scene of dogs enjoying a sumptuous meal of compressed corn, poultry and insect by products into a grade school cafeteria with the lunch room monitor missing. These daily inconveniences for the older dogs paled in comparison with the very real situation of rearranging tribal hierarchy. Our alpha dog had to reestablish his dominance; the previous omega dog, at least temporarily, moved up the pecking (literally) order; and the ones in the middle had to reshuffle.
The moment Mugs set his four big, uncoordinated feet on our property, our dogs' days had stopped being the same. Maybe it was for self-preservation, but the older dogs seemed to begin seeing the world through Mugs' eyes. There was a vibrant new life in every animal coupled with a new appreciation of everything around them. Mugs brought stimulating new smells, invigorating new activities, and exciting new relationships into a ho-hum "old" situation. I may be wrong, but if you catch him in the right light, since nutty Mugs arrived even our hound is smiling.
If you don't have a "Mugs" in your life, get one.
Lesson Embrace the crazy; it keeps you sane.
The all-leather, NFL-regulation football, inscribed -- 1963 Chicago Bears
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Sunday, September 18, 2011
IMAGINE THAT
I saw a nature special on TV showing cheetahs miss their prey nine out of ten times. We would be a bit short of cheetahs if they became immobilized just thinking about the length of grass, the heat, the humidity, the extraordinary speed of the antelope and all those giant biting flies that will be around to screw up the next hunt. What kind of National Geographic special would it be if after their seventh miss, the disillusioned cheetahs went back to their den all tigered out, and their fellow cheetahs laughed at them like a bunch of hyenas. Then they spent the rest of the day lion around, taking cat naps, looking like the missing lynx and feline incompetent. (Sorry, got carried away.)
A cheetah does not spend Monday worrying about Tuesday's hunt.
Human beings are the only of the universe's creations that worry about tomorrow's "hunt," because we are the only creatures that possess imagination. (Hooray for us?) Your imagination enables you to do incredible and marvelous things, but the active use of negative imagination can also send you to the home well before your time. Imagination is simply a picture you conjure up in your mind that has no reality attached to it. You conjure; you create. Does your imagination portray you succeeding, or in your mind's eye are you meeting your cellmate Buck for the first time?
When I was in grade school, I had this belief that anybody older than me could beat me up. I didn't know I had this belief until someone older than me beat me up. The Franklin twins did it (Names are changed to protect the innocent--me. After all, they're still older.) The twins, while there were obviously two of them, were only about 1/3 my size, but did I mention they were older?
Every lunch hour for months, I would go out to the playground, and take my expected verbal harassment and physical lumps from the vertically challenged, age-enhanced, double buggers. I'd go home after school, "knowing" what the next day would bring and blaming the little weasels for not only their wompping up on me in the immediate past, but also for a projected rotten evening I was sure to (make myself) have in the immediate future. I wrapped up a perfect victim's day by tossing in bed all night, wide awake, reliving in advance the certain terror that lay in store for me the very next day. (An uncheetah like activity.)
No amount of worry (negative imagination) on my part seemed to have any affect on the actions of the Franklins. (And they, unlike me, were well rested enough to carry out whatever dastardly deeds they devised.) What ever the double nut twins did to me physically was nothing like what I did to myself mentally. I turned my imagination, given me by the forces of good, over to the forces of evil.
I did it. I knew it. Shame on me. Better luck to you.
Lesson: Imagining the best can't hurt; imagining the worst can.
A cheetah does not spend Monday worrying about Tuesday's hunt.
Human beings are the only of the universe's creations that worry about tomorrow's "hunt," because we are the only creatures that possess imagination. (Hooray for us?) Your imagination enables you to do incredible and marvelous things, but the active use of negative imagination can also send you to the home well before your time. Imagination is simply a picture you conjure up in your mind that has no reality attached to it. You conjure; you create. Does your imagination portray you succeeding, or in your mind's eye are you meeting your cellmate Buck for the first time?
When I was in grade school, I had this belief that anybody older than me could beat me up. I didn't know I had this belief until someone older than me beat me up. The Franklin twins did it (Names are changed to protect the innocent--me. After all, they're still older.) The twins, while there were obviously two of them, were only about 1/3 my size, but did I mention they were older?
Every lunch hour for months, I would go out to the playground, and take my expected verbal harassment and physical lumps from the vertically challenged, age-enhanced, double buggers. I'd go home after school, "knowing" what the next day would bring and blaming the little weasels for not only their wompping up on me in the immediate past, but also for a projected rotten evening I was sure to (make myself) have in the immediate future. I wrapped up a perfect victim's day by tossing in bed all night, wide awake, reliving in advance the certain terror that lay in store for me the very next day. (An uncheetah like activity.)
No amount of worry (negative imagination) on my part seemed to have any affect on the actions of the Franklins. (And they, unlike me, were well rested enough to carry out whatever dastardly deeds they devised.) What ever the double nut twins did to me physically was nothing like what I did to myself mentally. I turned my imagination, given me by the forces of good, over to the forces of evil.
I did it. I knew it. Shame on me. Better luck to you.
Lesson: Imagining the best can't hurt; imagining the worst can.
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