Last night Sage woke me up growling around midnight. I told him to go to sleep, but he was very concerned about something, and with the windows closed, I could not hear what. I have learned that I get back to sleep a lot sooner if I just go find out what he is alerting to and acknowledge him than to keep telling him to knock it off, so I went downstairs with him and opened the slider to listen- he was barking and growling pretty hotly now and the rule my trainers ingrained in me is “Crazy gets you nothing!” so I did not let him out, but instead had him sit and he reduced his voice to a low but persistent rumble. I put my ear to the opening in the doorway and watched Sage’s head and muzzle- he looked so intensely through the glass, his ears up as high as he can get them. And just as the growl is forming in his throat, his whiskers stiffen and he puckers his lips forward. Then I could hear it- Great Horned Owl- two of them I think, or else the sound was bouncing- back and forth up towards Stratton and Keith hill Road. Very cool! He lay down and I told him he had great ears and that it was an owl and thanks very much, and we both went back up to bed.
Why he cares so badly about the owls tonight but not the cats two nights ago is just part of what makes being Sage’s friend such an interesting and strange experience. Our relationship is one where Seiji follows me unless something he feels is urgent is happening, and he knows that I don’t always detect things he feels are significant, so he tells me and I believe he is not just going crazy on his own but that he actually wants me involved too in whatever he is reacting to. We follow each other and my acknowledgment of his concern is comforting to him and he is calmed by it. If I dismiss things that are significant to him, he becomes frustrated. All he knows is something is important and I don’t understand and am not WITH him.
Acknowledging Sage’s alert is not just about me going back to bed sooner, it’s how friends treat each other. In fact I fell asleep again only to have a nightmare in which I lost Sage when he slipped off the edge of a frozen rocky chasm, covered in the kind of thick white lumps and icicles that you see on the blasted rock faces by the sides of highways. He was on the edge and I was not yet close enough to catch hold of him. I called him to Wait, but he was too interested in something below and was trying to climb down the ice but slipped and I saw his body free-fall and grow tiny as he fell far out of sight against all that white ice. There was no sound, and I could not get down to find him and see if he was broken or if he lived, and if he did, he could not get back up to me. I called for Reilly and she was safe beside me as we stood on a bridge across the chasm, but the band of fear around my heart on then suddenly waking was hard and very cold. I reached down beside my bed and wove my fingers deep into Seiji’s thick mane. He stretched his legs out and sighed.
I reminded myself about his needs as he operates in this world with me, and the choices I must make for him, knowing his fears and stresses and that many of the pleasures we celebrate of time spent with dogs in public contemporary american culture are not open to him, and are not fun for him. If he is on leash with me he doesn’t slip off that icy edge. It is on me to keep him safe and although I used to think so, it is NOT unfortunate that he is better off leashed, happier at home- to Sage that is his briar patch. He would not be made more healthy and smart by being allowed to wander around. He is a special needs dog, by nature and by unfortunate experience. He is not a BARK magazine cover dog- he is the cover dog for some magazine no one has written yet that says that if you understand this creature, you put yourself aside and forget about all your plans for that puppy and do what works for him.
