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A Dog with Character
Our old dog, long into his dotage, yawns- a half blind version of a breed that bred among the Celts and kept their women clean by barking off the covetous among their kind when the husbands were off a-pillageing, making poems and chaos in the next county. Later, when the Celts themselves had settled in and took to one god and wearing collars their dogs grew tame and even tempered tending sheep and living to a good age; slept for hours the way our own dog, sprawled on the linoleum, listens to the breeze sing underneath the door we never weatherstripped and hears in some corpuscle of his ancient blood the rage of wind matting his wet fur back sending a lather up from the seawrack to float among the sea birds, hears them screech above a band half blind with drink-wild men who, having brought their plunder to the land's end, ready their flimsy boats along the beach. It was, of course, the blood we paid for. Spent good money in bad times for a pedigree- a hundred dollars, fifteen years ago for what my wife claimed was a dog with character. Nor will she let me, much as I'm inclined (watching the pearlescent cataract bloom in his good eye) when he's wholly blind, coax him towards a stand of trees out back and because we've both grown over-civilized, do him in with utmost dignity.