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Dharma: The Enlightened One

Owner of Susan

Dharma:  I would like to thank the many readers of our Dog Blog for bringing me treats, petting me endlessly and generally fawning over me in response to my last posting. Your kindness has touched my Canine Heart  (Please continue.) Woof!

My Human tucked herself in under the reading light every night for a week with The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach. She simply had to see for herself what all the fuss was about. Gauging by the amount of hand-selling going on back at the store I'm thinkin', she REALLY liked it. ( For once she agrees with America's best- selling book lists!)

Human:  Who'd a thunk, a book with baseball as a central theme that isn't really about baseball? Human frailty and the meaning of family, friendship, and as a back drop, the Zen of being a gifted baseball player. She found within its pages an original story with characters she cared about in an irresistible read.

Dharma: This Summer I became separated from my Human in a very busy Uptown intersection. The loud metal things honking and squealing, just missing me and my leash. I could not hear her calling over all that noise! So. I ran. Fast. Very fast. No one could catch me. No scent trail to follow, so I headed West. One hour running stretched into two. Three. Eight. Darkness, and still I ran.

(Human: Only someone who has lost a pet can imagine the absolute gut- wrenching horror of knowing that your dog is lost in a busy Metro area, dragging a long leash and with no bearings to home.)

Dharma: Thirsty, my paws are very sore, and still I run until the Sun comes up. I am very, very frightened. I am very lost. Water! The Lake! I know this way! Run. Run. Drink.

(Human: By noon the following day I had put up 100 posters, placed a "lost" ad on Craigslist, and added 100 miles to my car. No dog. Many had spotted Dharma, but she ran away in fright. I am at the bookstore. I despair of seeing her alive. The busy city streets she had to manuveur seem impossible to cross unscathed.

The front door to the bookstore is open on the warm Fall day. At one o'clock a black blur dashes into the store and collapses, panting heavily on a favorite stuffed chair. Dharma had found her way to the place she occupies each day with me. My big-hearted friend had found her way to the bookstore!)

Postscript: Birchbark Books is right around the corner from the Kenwood Veterinary Clinic. Dharma was in good shape but the pads of her paws were shredded. The Doc said she must have never quit running on the city asphalt.

Dharma: I got a LOT of chicken to eat for a week!

So, to remind my Human of how special I am, I will recommend Old Dogs Are the Best Dogs by Gene Weingarten. It is the perfect book of photos and essays for any one who loves or has loved one of us!

O, frolic! O, glorious fragrance! O, great hiding places! O, Tallgrass Prairie Alphabet! From Aromatic Aster to Zizia Aurea, artist and author Claudia McGehee brings to vivid life the creatures and plant life that make up the eco-system that once covered the entire Heartland of America. A helpful and informative Prairie Notes at the back of the book give an older reader more to contemplate. My human loves this book for ALL ages. For more we also recommend A Woodland Counting Book and Where Do Birds Live also by McGehee and published by the University of Iowa Press.

Bad Dog! My ears pick up instantly. (Couldn't be me... napping in my cozy bookstore chair.) No, my 2-legged is again extolling the virtues of the book Bad Dog: A Love Story by Martin Kihn. Apparently the author is attempting sobriety and dog training at the same time. Great book for dog lovers, people in recovery, humans. Back to sleep. Good dog!

Oh, the lovely fragrances that reveal themselves as the glaciers of snow and ice around me melt! Wait! Human! More things to sniff THIS way!

Back to the place where my two-legged companion keeps a small pile of books next to the sofa (where I can curl up on no fewer than four down pillows). Time for a nap. But first let me tell you what has been holding her interest during these final days of winter.

On the top of the pile rests Horses Where the Answers Should Have Been: New and Selected Poems by Chase Twichell, winner of the $100,000 Kingsley Tufts Award. Ms. Twichell recently visited Birchbark Books and as a result Horses wound up at home, ready to be savored. The poet is a practitioner of Zen Buddhism and has a deep love of the natural world. The collection celebrates these influences. How could one not appreciate a poet who has written a book entitled Dog Language?

Dharma's Human has just finished Standing in the Light: My Life as a Pantheist by Sharman Apt Russell. (She can stand in the light all she wishes, but I prefer lying down, thank you.)

The author had my two-legged hooked immediately with this wise and  intelligent memoir.

Apt explores the history of Pantheistic thought from the Stoic philosophers to the Transcendentalists during a year in the pristine and fragile lands of New Mexico.

I guess you can say:

   She is
   Rapt
   by Apt

Hey! I'm a Dog-Poet!

Susan, the Two-Legged I live with, has actually been known to brake for rocks! Any interesting boulder (or pebble) will do. They wind up in her garden, for some odd human reason... Recently Susan has been seen reading Roadside Geology of Minnesota by Richard Ojakangas, filled with maps and photos of highway cuts with exposed layers. Geology Geek alert! (We have no equivalent in the dog world.)

Being one-half Labrador, I am truly a "hydromancer" (a really fancy two-legged word for "water-lover"). Just ask Susan. When she's paying more attention to warblers than to me, I will bolt into the loveliest of the post-winter fragrant pools, chase turtles off of logs, hear the red-winged blackbirds scold, stop-drop-and-roll... you get the picture. Following the Water: A Hydromancer's Notebook by naturalist David M. Carroll is Susan's reading pick these days, therefore, mine also! Your devoted dogness, Dharma

Her mind is dog mind. In her clarity she sees and knows, yet does not seize at moments of seeing and knowing. She learned much this summer when she burrowed after a mother woodchuck and ended up with a face full of stitches. There is also a tear in the fabric of her consciousness. At heart, in spite of the woodchuck, she would rather be a farm dog. Chasing chickens. Eating the left over oatmeal. Therefore, she recommends Little Heathens, a book of great charm and true happiness that describes Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression. Her other book of choice is The Love of Impermanent Things by Mary Rose O'Reilley. Dharma is always struggling with exactly the love of impermanent food, impermanent chew bones, squeaky toys that disappear under the couch. Truly, aren't we all?

Always fully present. Always in the moment. Aware. You really can't get Dharma to think ahead or to remember the past because she understands that all we have is the NOW. In this now an occasional fantasy surfaces, a fleeting wish, but as soon as Dharma tries to sieze that thought it is gone. A Wolf. Twilight. The Wolf At Twilight by Kent Nerburn. The one who feeds Dharma is seen reading this book and loving it. There, now gone. But there is the lingering sense of self loping across the South Dakota prairie and seizing an occasional gopher in her jaws. Her jaws tighten. What was that thought? Gone. Back into the NOW.