Blue and Some Other Dogs

My relationship to my dog Skipper that I wrote about in my introduction is the same kind of relationship that John Graves has with his dog Blue. I've had many dogs around in my lifetime but there was just something about Skipper that made him a "Nice Dog". Maybe it was the way he would sit and guard the house or watch us as we played outside as kids to make sure we were ok. Sometimes there are just some dogs in your life that have this certain type of personality that separate them from other dogs. I can't really say much about it except for the little head tilt that he had when he knew you were talking to him or the way he always knew when someone was sad or sick - he would always sleep with that person.

"Occasionally she bit people too, always men. Women, for her own secret reasons, she liked more or less indiscriminately." P. 205
We once had a dog, Tina, that was scared of men just as Blue's mother was. We got her from a lady that was bringing her into the shelter in Utah and she said that a guy had beaten her. Her who life she was skittish around men and it had always seemed obvious to us that it was because it was a man that hit her. I don't really think it's Pan's "own secret reason" that she liked women more because it was a man, the author, who in the previous paragraph described how he had whipped her.
Sometimes I wonder what the correlation is between people who hit their dogs and people who hit their kids. I bet there's a big overlap of the two groups.


Recently my Cat disappeared just like Blue did. He was stray and I took him in. I had never had a cat before so it was a new experience for me. I consider myself a dog person but I was quickly able to bond with this cat who spent every night sleeping at the end of my bed or on my chest. He went outside during they daytime to prowl neighborhood and sometimes stayed away for a few days but always came back eventually to curl up in my bed. I never liked cats before. I didn't like how they clawed at you if you touched them wrong or how they make you work for their love but I learned to like cats after Tucker. I don't know what happened to him but I keep thinking that he is probably dead somewhere under a bush. After all he was starting to lose a little weight before he left.
"Or maybe I want to believe this because it has finality." P. 214