Canis Major

We had a dog growing up.

The first dog I remember was Mickey, a brown and white mutt.

Courtesy: author

Mickey was a wonderful dog.

One of his few bad habits was his seeming to want to bite the tires of adjacent vehicles, whether they were bicycles or automobiles.

Even when those vehicles were moving.

Particularly when those vehicles were moving.

This was the source of his undoing.

Finally, while chasing a car, his head came between the tire and the pavement.

There are an estimated 90 million pet dogs in the USA alone.

That makes them by far the single largest group of pets.

By far.

When one views the spectrum of dogs, ranging from the Chihuahua which may be carried about in a woman’s purse, to the Irish wolfhound, which can dispatch a wolf single-handedly (make that single-pawed), it is astounding to realize they all came from a single pair of wolves.

My son and his girlfriend own a pomsky: result of a union between a male Pomeranian and a female husky (don’t even go there; it boggles the mind).

Courtesy: son of author

The fact its irises are of two different colors (one blue, one brown) raises more questions than it answers, but it seems to see just fine.

My daughter and her husband own a medium sized good natured dog that seems to be of mixed breed.

Courtesy: daughter of author

They rescued her and her brother from a far different and harder fate on the mean streets of Tijuana, where dogs are not nearly as cherished as they are here.

Her brother has gone to doggie heaven — where, as radio raconteur Garrison Keillor might have quipped — all the females are strong, all the male are good looking and all the puppies are above average.

He might have titled his little spiel PRAIRIE DOG COMPANION. Except prairie dogs are something else entirely. We are not talking about them.

Then there are others; many breeds.

While playing tennis I spied a couple walking their giant Schnauzer on the sidewalk.

It reminded me of a black pony or small horse, it was that big.

But it is small compared with a black and white St. Bernard which frequents the same park and at distance resembles nothing more than a small Holstein.

People sometime congregate in force, brought together by their various dogs, which cavort and bark with abandon depending on their age and health.

If dogs could talk (they can, but, absent Dr. Doolittle, we cannot understand them), what stories might they tell?

Waiting at home all day, only to be kicked by your owner because he had a bad day at work and cannot very well strike his boss, wife or children?

Lovers who quarrel, then perhaps make up as you snooze by the fireside, oblivious to their movements.

Hop in the SUV as mom takes the kids to school, nose out the window.

Why do dogs not like being blown on but love to stick their nose or whole head out the window of a moving vehicle?

One of life’s lesser mysteries only worth pondering when you’ve nothing better to do.

Wait patiently at the table for scraps, which may or may not forthcoming from the occupant of the chair?

Humans, like our canine friends, await patiently at the feet of the Master, hoping to garner a few crumbs from the table of Wisdom.

Did not the woman with an unnamed disease of the blood for 12 years hope for this when she touched the hem of Christ’s garment and He knew instantly?

It was a zero-sum situation.

Her gain was His loss.

Of divine power, of vitality, of what the Chinese might call chi, or Qi.

Curl up in bed while your owner watches TV and scratches your belly on the sofa.

Just a little higher and to the right, you want to say.

Ahhh.

That’s just right.

Who needs a Chinese backscratcher (‘lao tou le’ in Mandarin, or ‘old man’s joy’) when I’ve got you, oh benevolent master?

How many cold cases might be solved if we could only understand our canine friends, who may have witnessed many a felony, not to mention countless misdemeanors?

I admit to mixed feelings about Holy Writ’s assertion there will be no dogs in heaven.

I recall William F Buckley’s assertion that if J S Bach was not going to be there, he (Buckley) wouldn’t want to go, either.

I might not go so far as that, but I concur with Mark Twain’s assertion that some dogs definitely deserve to go to A Good Place over humans (if merit has anything to do with it).

The notion of merit is perhaps as much a conundrum as the concept of the Trinity.

Humans are saved not by merit but by grace, Christians believe.

But Holy Writ also contends that faith without works is dead.

The fine line between the two often gets blurred.

You don’t have to be drunk to have difficulty walking that line.

There have been a number of films made about dogs.

‘HACHI,’ a remake of a Japanese original, with actor Richard Gere playing the main human protagonist, depicted an Akita dog which met his master after work every day.

Even after his owner died, Hachi made the daily trip to the train station. His devotion was recognized by a statue erected in his honor.

More recently, a 2024 film, ‘The Friend,’ starred actress Naomi Watts, who adopts a Great Dane, Bing, after the latter’s owner, Bill Murray, passes.

There are others, attesting to the importance of dogs in the lives of humans.

So the next time you go out on a starry night, tilt your head back and gaze at the brightest star you can find.

Chances are it is Sirius, the Dog Star, and part of the constellation Canis Major.

Sirius is a merely 8.6 light years from Earth.

With lines connecting bright points it does resemble a dog, albeit a small one, perhaps a dachshund.

Then ponder why ‘dog’ is ‘God’ (in English) spelled backwards.

Maybe, after Eden, God felt sorry for man, and gave humans the gift of dog. Perhaps a creature after His own heart.

To let us see what, in different depiction, unconditional love looks like.