Andrew and Me

Andrew and I spent last weekend together without his mom, who was off to a high school reunion in Wisconsin.

It turned out to be a somewhat traumatic and intellectually challenging experience for both of us.

He’s three, and pretty smart for his age.  He knows and understands words.  He has good instincts.  He seems to sense what is happening around him. He knows when it’s time to go to the bathroom, and almost always knows how to tell me. He announces in his own way when he is hungry or thirsty. And when I put his food in front of him he won’t touch it until I put grated cheese on top.

I sense that he really likes me. He follows me wherever I go, even into the privacy of my bathroom. He sits under my chair when I eat. He even comes with me to den to watch the Indians game…and unlike me he seems rather relaxed about it.

Is he suffering like I’m suffering? I asked myself, after my once beloved team began to fall apart.  My jaws were tight, my mouth dry I was sweating, wondering what this embarrassing performance  means to the reputation of my beleaguered town…I’m beginning to hate the coach, the owner and everything about the team. I even hate the announcers. 



And Andrew, his mom calls him Andy, seems so relaxed. He even dozed off for a moment and woke with a start when I screamed at an inexcusable error.

Is it that he just doesn’t care? Or is it that he exists in a kind of canine paradise where our miseries just don’t seem to matter in his scheme of things. I’m not sure he even cares much about Iran’s new nuclear weapons reactor, or whether that blind African American in New York is going to run again for governor.

Clearly he has problems. Some, perhaps psychological. He was abandoned as a baby and seems to have need for assurance, comfort and companionship. What’s more he has been deprived of his manhood denying him the need and ability to feel the joy of sexual anticipation and its consummation. Sadly he doesn’t seem to care anymore. Occasionally he sniffs at a girl’s behind and simply walks away.

Humans, it seems, are driven, sometimes ruinously, by sexual passion, and the need to succeed and be admired. Cursed by the instinctive ability to ask why, to wonder about the consequences of the future, pursue the meaning of life and death, the emptiness of it all.…I’m not sure that Andy has given a moment’s thought to when he is going to die or if he going to go to dog heaven. That’s probably why he hasn’t created his very own God, or invented supernatural answers to questions that have no answers.

As things got worse with the tribe, I turned to wondering if perhaps his is the better way, an Andrew-like canine way to exist, so to speak... Or perhaps there is some midpoint in my search for tranquility.  Perhaps something like a clueless Forrest Gump.

About then the phone rang. It was my granddaughter Hayley calling me from Ann Arbor, telling me that not only is she graduating from my beloved Michigan with “distinction”, but she has been named social media editor for Seventeen Magazine in New York, beginning early in May.

Her words were joy to my ears. I forgot about the agony of the Indians, of the potential pleasures of being  a dog or Forrest Gump…I had found my own paradise in this terribly challenging human world…Andy would never know the pride that I felt at that moment.

He has his pleasures, and, for now, I have mine. he is going to die or if he going to go to dog heaven. That’s probably why he hasn’t created his very own God, or invented supernatural answers to questions that have no answers.

As things got worse with the tribe, I turned to wondering if perhaps his is the better way, an Andrew-like canine way to exist, so to speak... Or perhaps there is some midpoint in my search for tranquility.  Perhaps something like a clueless Forrest Gump.

He has his pleasures, and, for now, I have mine.