Dad here; a few years ago, a "friend" used to spend his lunch hour fishing at a secluded spot by the Arkansas River. He came back telling me of a friendly black dog who had apparently been abandoned, and wanted me to go pick it up and keep it "just for the weekend"; yeah, right. I did take her some food, but we didn't have room at the Casa; the Unreasonable Bug had not yet…

Dad here; I'm not a bit interested in sharing the gory intricacies of yesterday's tragedy. Two scriptures in the Bible sometimes seem to not square with each other: Ecclesiastes 9:11 "chance happeneth to all dogs" and Romans 8:28, "all things work together for the good". As dad, I want to "fix" things, but I have to realize that some things will never be fixable, or that the fixing exceeds my skill level, not always an…

There are three types of people on this planet: people who don't like dogs, people who like the "idea" of dogs, then there are dog people. The second category seems to be the largest, but fortunately the mindless fanaticism of those of us in the third more than compensates for the other two. We dogs are simply descendants of wolves, and as such, we thrive on the interaction with the rest of the pack. The…

It's an unseasonably cool spring morning at the Casa, even the Great Khan of the Hummingbirds has deigned it too chilly to send scouts south to determine the status of our sugar stores. Dad has been making some noises about getting out of bed, but if he thinks I'm ready to give up my spot, well, he must be smoking some of what Bull Taco was smuggling across the Rio Grande. The blessing and the…

John Steinbeck called it "vacilando", the Australians go "walkabout", now I find out that 18th century French had an urban version of the same called a "flanuer". Originally the term is coined by Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) and refers to somebody who observes the city or theirs surroundings, and experiences an actual physical stroll but also is a way of philosophical thinking and a way of seeing/feeling things. Walking for walking sake and not in a…

Dad was raised in church, but has always cautioned me to keep religion out of my posts. A: there are other places for that, and B: more times than not, the "religious" approach is either so heavy handed that it unneccesarily offends or so saccharine that it sickens. On our last trip out west, dad met a self-proclaimed agnostic follower of my scribblings in Moab, UT who said, " I have to ask; are you…