Year of the Dog

This is my Dad's beginning on his book "Year of the Dog", since i'm the main character i'll try and get him to post excerpts as he goes, but you never know about him.

Why does this dog speak so profoundly to my inner life.
I'm walking Brady, our youngster of a Chocolate Lab, across the street, through the neighborhood of our Cape Cod sanctuary. As sanctuaries go this is where i'd be happy to stay until the end of my days. The quiet, serene, environmentally rich landscape with all its intricacies, and hub bub of summer life.....the quiet isolation of winter, all speaks to my soul. Walking is too docile a word for what we are doing this morning, on the pavement, in the grass, filtering through brush and weeds, I am being led as if being shown all the low to ground fun that i miss in my six foot frame. And then a jerk 180 degress around to find some penial essence on a nearby leaf.

I love his ferocity for life and the moment, his unconditional love for Lynda and I, qualities I lack at most times. Being human I find is a much lonlier endeavor than being a dog. Dogs spend a great deal of time in solitude, waiting for someone to come home, for the world to begin again - but they live in a state of connectedness, it seems that we have lost, if we ever possesed it. Is that why i have turned to him, he who is always ready to receive, to join in wholeheartedly, as so often i cannot? I think to be human is to be a watcher; sometimes even at our moments of undeniable joy or overwhelming grief there is a part of us conscious of our being, observing that being. I do not think dogs have such a part; they are all right here, involved in whatever it is, and therefore they are a sort of cure for our great abiding loneliness. A temporary cure, but a real one.