Travels with Maggie: Unparalleled Love and Loyalty

I am in awe of dogs. They see things I will never see. They smell things I will never smell. They hear things I will never hear. Add to that the fact that they are fiercely loyal, unflinching in their desire to please their owners, and an endless supplier of warm and fuzzies, and I am left with days when I wonder which species really is superior, mankind or dogs.

I will believe this until the day I die: no dog is born hating people (let’s ignore the fact they are descendants of wolves for this discussion). No dog is born aggressive. Bad behavior is learned. Bad behavior is the direct result of actions taken by a dog owner as the dog grows older. In their natural state, a dog wants only to please its owner, to give love, and to receive love.

Kind of like human babies, come to think of it.

Are there bad seeds among us? Was Ted Bundy one such bad seed, born with a personality abnormality, or was he the direct result of a misshapen childhood? I think of these things often, and I suspect that a vast majority, somewhere in the 90% range, of anti-social behavior is learned behavior. The vast majority of bad kids were not bad babies. The vast majority of babies are born innocent. They are, in fact, innocence personified. To think otherwise is to invite many a sleepless night, and I won’t go down that nightmare road.

Without a doubt, the climate is changing, no political agenda there, simply observations based on seventy-plus years of banging around these parts. The summers are noticeably warmer, uncomfortably so, and the winters feature larger snowstorms than is our norm. There seems to be less rain, the lifeblood of our environment, forests are drier, the whole ball of wax, and that ball of wax is screaming CHANGE.

What does it mean? What can we do? What should we do? I think about these things as the dogs and I pass by neighbors, toss out our hellos, stop on occasion for a pat on the head, kind words exchanged. Lydia has her garden sparkling with a variety of colors, and I tell her so. Bob is pruning, smiling as he does, listening to Credence, his right leg tapping to the beat. Two young girls bike by, giggling as they do, “Hey, Mister, your dog is cute,” one shouts, a slight breeze passes over me in the wake of their travels.

A Growl of Warning

Maggie stops as we pass a wooded area, stands absolutely still, and growls, a low-guttural sound, menacing, primal, her eyes locked on something I cannot see, and I feel the hairs on my neck stand at attention. It is a growl which says this ain’t no Hollywood-manufactured horror scene but one rooted in reality, danger is nearby, the shape and form of which are only discernible by my girl, my protective girl, and she stands her ground, not giving an inch, the last bastion of defense between the unseen threat and her owner, and pride washes over me, engulfs me, emotions running freely through me, this dog, this sixty-two pound bundle of fur and muscle, would absolutely lay down her life for me, no questions asked, no command given, that she would do for me, and I feel a tear slide down my cheek, for loyalty like that is known by very few.

And then the moment has passed, the unseen having moved on, like the wispy clouds overhead, to present a threat to someone else down the road, and Maggie relaxes, wags her tail, rubs up against my leg. I pet her, tell her what a good girl she is, and I am reminded, once again, how very special these walks are, and how very lucky I am.

Another Veteran’s Day, come and gone, my seventy-sixth, still hard to believe, and I think back to when the Beatles sang “When I’m Sixty-Four,” me in college, ten feet tall and bulletproof, thinking how very old that seemed, like most youth, clueless and fakin’ it till they make it, then my mind hits warp speed and takes me back to a child of five, lonely, alone, frightened, unsure, completely lacking in confidence, and the gift his parents gave him, a little Fox Terrier, named her Pixie, and that damned dog followed me everywhere for eighteen years, loyal until the day she  died, loved me completely, never took her eyes off me, and how damned lucky am I to have had two dogs like that in one lifetime.

I wax on poetically, or at least I try to, about my dog Maggie, how much she means to me, how much she teaches me, how lost I will be without her companionship when the inevitable happens . . . but I do not allow melancholy to overtake me on this walk. I celebrate the time with her, celebrate in advance the time left, and wonder how in the living hell people get through life without a dog.

Maggie does not care one bit about my faults. She does not give a damn about my past mistakes. She knows nothing about the hard times, the wrong paths, the lack of morality which infested me during my drinking days, and going one step further, even if she knew, it would register zero on her give-a-shit meter.  All she knows, with certainty, an unwavering eye on the target, is that I love her completely and she, in turn, loves me.  It is a phrase we humans love to toss around freely . . . unconditional love . . . but which we rarely practice.

Maggie doesn’t practice it.

She is it.

Maggie is love!

Thanks for joining us. See you in a week or two, You know the place, where the pavement ends and the wonders begin.