Listen to Natahna read Big Feels 7.5 here👇🏻
I am dog-sitting for the week. My horoscope keeps saying that I’m gonna crack the code on new streams of income, so maybe being a pet sitter is the ticket, who knows. I grew up with pets who lived outdoors – the dog, the cats, the chickens. I guess the chickens were not pets (because it’s cruel to eat a pet).
Anyways.
The dog is a five year old short haired German Pointer. I practice saying this a few times before we go to the dog park. Five years old. Short haired. German Pointer. I wouldn’t know a type of dog if it bit me in the face
Speaking of, I did get bit. Five minutes at the park and some dog (again, I’m not good at types) bit the back of my knee! Everyone was surprised! Me! The dog! The dog owner! My god! The owner asked if I had been bit, if I was okay, if he could do anything. I pulled up the leg of my snow pants to reveal my sweatpants which then revealed my bare leg in the stark winter daylight. The skin was broken, a drop of blood, but nothing more. I said I would be fine…but I had no idea if I would be fine. I felt fine, but I couldn’t remember if rabies was still a thing, or if that was just the prairies in the 90s.
(I texted my doctor brother-in-law afterwards and he said I would be fine.)
The dog looks like a human the way his legs are when he squats to poop. He could be a very tiny, very sprightly old man. The kind of old man who keeps running. He’s been running for forty years. Just running and running. Just bones and muscle and sinew and skin that hangs like wet rice paper.
The daughter of the owners said it was okay for the dog to eat poop. He eats a lot of poop. I wonder if he eats more poop when he’s with me because he knows I do not know how to stop him. A man ahead of me on the path said, “Hey, your dog is eating poop!” so that’s how I found out that other people do not let their dogs eat poop. When we got home I googled “Is eating poop bad if you’re a dog?” and “How to get your dog to stop eating poop.”
A different man in the woods (there are women in the woods too, they just don’t talk to me) tells me about all the trails I can use. I don’t tell him that I am a visitor. I want to be a local as long as they’ll let me. I don’t tell him that I got lost in those trails for a half hour yesterday.
When the men in the woods do talk to me, I talk like I’ve known the dog for years. I say things like, “He’s a runner!” The dog park is a respect game. I don’t want the other owners to lose it for me, knowing I’m not really the owner of this dog, knowing that where I come from dogs run free all the time all day and only sometimes get hit by cars on their way home for dinner.
My dog wears a bell and when I can’t hear the bell anymore, I yell his name louder. I am yelling his name all the time. We play Marco-Polo. That’s what I tell the man who asks, “Have you lost your dog?” No, no. We are playing Marco-Polo. He runs and I yell his name so he doesn’t lose me. He’s a funny dog. He knows he has to come back just close enough so we make eye contact, then he can go back to jumping over logs and chasing rabbits. I had the thought today, “He doesn’t want to lose me as much as I don’t want to lose him.” I felt so relieved, I said it out loud, lost in the forest.
Talk soon,
Natahna
The Recommends: The poetry collection, VIRAHA by Yena Sharma Purmasir. And if you haven’t already, you may as well buy her collection, Our Synonyms from Party Trick Press as well. They are both exquisite.
I'm really enjoying this Stack!!
“A man ahead of me on the path said, ‘Hey, your dog is eating poop!’ so that’s how I found out that other people do not let their dogs eat poop” 😂 What an adorable pup. I love your reflections on these beloved canines.