So Much More to GuntherDog: Memorial Day

So Much More to Gunther and to his aging compadres! Eerie ... Friday night, I dreamed that a new Director was chosen at a Drug Clinic in which I had consulted 20+ years ago. I was unhappy about it. "How could you replace Bill?" The morning after the Dream, I received a note from his wife ... Bill's Dementia was getting worse in Texas where they had moved to be close to their kids (who ain't kids no more) and keeping him at home and away from what is called euphemistically ... "The Home" ... seems inevitable. Some not-so-many years ago, "The Greatest Generation," the one that fought and supported the Great War in Europe, was openly lauded and mourned as those troops began to disappear even from the Obits. It's now the turn of maybe the craziest generation ... those who fought for and against the involvements in Viet Nam, Granada, Iraq I, Iraq II and Afghanistan. Including those who "let their freak-flags fly" (Crosby, Stills, et freres) and those who held on for dear life to the values of the Backyard-barbecuing Fifties. Ah, but I've left Gunther in the kitchen where he's resting after his earlier trek outside to relieve his bladder.

We Players in the Last Quarter want "new experience" (the contribution of some long-dead sociologist named Smith) but we passionately want the familiar, as well ... we are creatures of habit. Gunther, too.

He rises in the morning before 5. If I'm still in bed, he goes right to M. Gunther had a Mother; indeed, we had wanted to rescue her but she was already spoken for ... A visitor of mine once said that all the Good Ones are spoken for, but she was referring to the absence of Good Single Men in the Americas. The Canine Rescue we worked with evaluated us by phone after reading a ten page application. Then they visited our property and had us meet with G before the adoption could be final. He was, perhaps, just less than a year old and full of energy. He could fly around the yard like California Kitchen, or whatever the recent-biggest name in horse-racing is. Horses, Dogs, ... run so much more beautifully that we people do. When California Kitchen (I know that's not the second name but I just can't recall it in the moment; you know the experience) runs and when G runs, all four feet go airborne at the same time. I've had dreams that I can fly but running has never looked that way for me.

So, Gunther rises at about 5 or I wake him when I'm ready to start life for the day. If I start at 3, he recoils from the thought of disturbing his sleep and it requires both M and I to tell him that it's time to pee. While I take care of my AM lavage for two minutes, he rolls about in bed trying to capture M's attention and then slowly ... very slowly ... makes his way to the bedroom door and the top of the stairs where he sits.

"I'm not moving until you luv-me-up ... Run your fingers 

through my hair and make me feel loved, you Schmuck!

Hey, maybe tickle me under the chin!

But stay away from my Belly; leave that to Mom!" 

I swear that's the look on his face, even if his ability to articulate the feeling that says I'm a hapless idiot, a Schmuck, lags behind. If I've satisfied him, he flies down the stairs.

"You can't do that, Schmuck! You hold on to the railing 

like maybe it's time for me to worry about where my next 

bowl of Kibble is coming from .... errrr .... Schmuck."

G runs to the back door.

"Gotta pee. C'mon. What ya waitin' for, .... Schmuck. 

Put a little kick in that Old Man Two-Step before I take 

my bladder impulses out on one of those plants you leave inside! 

Don't ya know that plants like it outside, well, 

except when it's raining ... Schmuck!"

A little clarification is in order. The word Schmuck came to English via Yiddish and before that in German, where it's used to refer to jewelery ... like maybe a hanging bauble or a jewel, anyway. In Yiddish, it came to be used to describe that ornamental piece of flesh that hangs around -- most of the time doing nothing --between a male's legs. M thinks Gunther read my volume on Freud's Oedipus Complex and, anyway, that he doesn't ever say to himself that I'm a schmuck.

Hey, if ya don't believe that Dogs can put together complex ideas, read the 3/4 page Last Will and Testament of Silverdene Emblem O'Neil, ... Eugene's spotted kid. You'll see.

I don't believe that he read my book, and anyway, M thinks she can get away with fooling me because SHE thinks I'm going deaf.

Sad!

What will we do when GuntherDog stops running? I dunno.