Country Dog & the Arcade Tree

April 19, 2005

Country dogs. Who could make a golden retriever vicious? They have the run of the land and are far from any social circle. Horses, cattle and sheep are herded. Why not runners and their dogs? A surfer paddling his board looks like a seal to a shark. A runner and his dog passing by the mouth of the long farm gravel drive are either intruders, rustlers or strays. It’s a clampdown or a shot into the sky that keeps the crows away. Bare your teeth. Raise your hackles. Bluster. Cut off the angle. Get under the wheels. Nip at the heels. City dog lowers her haunches and pulls her tail in as she runs. Ears flat to the head and lips tight she abandons her charge to draw the attacker further away. She’s fast and schooled in the evasive tactics of play. Comes in handy when it’s no longer shinny and the real game is on. Snarling golden reaches the tether of his own limits far at the corner post of the property. He returns with a bouncer’s swagger back down the gravel drive to his place on the porch. Runner is done yelling. Runner and dog talk each other down for the next kilometer. Good girl. Good girl. Never mind. Chest heaves. Near miss, car accident adrenaline turns to wild awareness and the countryside turns brighter colours. Fuji greens and Kodak blues. There are birds in the tree coming up. A willow hanging over the roadside stream. Small blackbirds all with a different song. One squawks. One trills. One screams. One is so impressed with a new scale that she repeats it without a breath in between. Glissandos. Shrieks. Hundreds of birds all affected by the dog battle. They must have been silent for the time it took to play out the farm perimeter Discovery channel highlight reel. Now they are all phoning in their coverage to any other bird that will listen. They jam the airwaves to reach all species within birdcall distance. The cacophony is a massive spiral made from so many delicate instruments. A loud snowflake. An Escher painting made of bird sound. One lone tree with acres of empty grassland around. It’s all coming from one place. It is an arcade tree. All the pinball tilts and high score bells and a hundred kids with their heads down into their own little worlds. It all adds up to something big and strange. All of them tune each other out and the one lone pheasant punctuating the pasture, with its sleepy green head and red beer-belly, ignores the arcade roar like any senior at the bus stop outside a “Playdium” -- Another generation’s folly. The city dog sits down and looks at the tree. The runner pets the dog's head gently and stares. They are both thinking the same thing. If the country dog sees the Buddha on the road this must be what happens.