Dogs Raining (reigning) in My Mind 10

What’s with the phrase “dogging it?” Football and basketball coaches from my youth always screamed about not “dogging it” during practice. As if dogs take it easier than humans while playing? Was the implication that dogs loaf and humans shouldn’t follow suit when competing at sports? It makes little sense, but then again it does, because human insults that reference dogs are legion in American speech. Such as “hot dogger,” a derogatory phrase applied to a basketball player who plays with a certain panache and executes theatrical dribble drives, behind-the-back passes and balletic fade-away jumpers. Pete Maravich was the greatest hot dog basketballer in the history of the sport. Who wouldn’t want to play basketball like him?

“Keep on Doggin’ in the Free World” was the original title of Neil Young’s classic “Keep on Rockin’ in the Free World.” That’s not widely known.

Many years ago, I dated (and eventually married) a remarkable woman who taught me many important lessons. Perhaps the greatest one involved a dog. It goes like this: in the slower days before cell phones, a stray dog crossed our path as I drove us to a movie in Portland. Rain fell in walls across the streets. It was one of those Oregon rains where drivers pull over to wait out the deluge. She told me to stop—now!—but I objected because arriving late to a movie then ranked as my worst pet peeve. She raised her voice, commanding me to stop. I did. She said, “There are three kinds of people in the world: 1) people who help lost dogs when it’s not convenient; 2) people who help lost dogs when it’s not convenient and raining; 3) people who never help lost dogs. I only date the second person.” The rescue mission was on right there. It required considerable effort, but we corralled the dripping dog in the car, and read a phone number on his tag. We drove for what seemed like forever until we found payphone. She made a call and left a message. A few hours later, we reunited the dog with its overjoyed owner and celebrated by cooking a fancy Italian meal and going bowling.

This is also the woman who drew the illustration of Bonnie and Clyde that will adorn the cover of the Bonnie and Clyde book.

During his final hours, holed up in bunker under war torn Berlin, Adolf Hitler euthanized his beloved German shepherd Blondi and her four puppies with cyanide capsules. His obsession with the breed apparently began in young adulthood when he came into possession of a German shepherd but was unable to keep it where he lived and had to give it away. The dog escaped his new home and returned to Hitler. The love of dogs can’t humanize every human being and Hitler was certainly not the first person to love dogs and terrorize and murder human beings. Southern plantation owners of the Antebellum era come to mind. Some Wall Street types, too. After her kidnapping, stint as an urban revolutionary, bank robberies, sensational trial and imprisonment, Patty Hearst turned to dogs to reorder her life. I know something about that, you know, the trial and imprisonment, and life as a rural revolutionary, dogs and reordering, too.

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