How many toys do your kids have? Could you tell me off the top of your head? Probably not; just like I cannot tell you how many bones of all kinds my house dogs have.
In our abode we have three dogs. One is a Siberian Husky that was born blind a decade ago, and while I thought she could be a good member of my dog sled team despite her disability, my wife swiped her up into her loving arms as a puppy and proclaimed that she would forever more live in the house. She never spent another day outside in the sledding kennel. To the other kennel dogs she must have seemed an immigrant seeking political asylum to the land of the brave and the home of the free, getting to live in the heated and cooled big house with the boss. Never let it be said that our house is not ADA friendly, because Astoria, as she is called, basically rules the roost despite her not being able to see.
A second house dog came to me a little over six years ago when a very good friend of mine had Border Collie puppies come into the world on her ranch, and she offered to give me one. I went out and looked at them one day and fell in love with a little red one, but she wasn’t quite ready to come home with me at the time.
Love at first sight – in a box
Over the ensuing weeks I kind of decided, being a Siberian Husky kind of guy, that maybe a cattle herding type dog would not fit into my life style. But my friend didn’t give up and one night at an employee party my boss came in with a brown box and set it in front of me. Out of the top popped a little red head and I couldn’t resist. Suddenly my life was split wide open by the most loving dog I have ever owned (and I have owned a lot of them). My wife now says that I love Scarlet more than her. Of course I tell her she is silly to think that, but on the other hand Scarlet never gets after me for loading the dishwasher improperly either. Anything I do is okay with her.
Then this past summer a dog I had admired from afar came into our life kind of by the back door. My oldest grandson had picked up a pup he called Dakota, a half Siberian Husky and half black Labrador dynamo of a dog. I first saw this dog at my daughter’s house and thought she was cool. That black Lab look with bright blue eyes was haunting. And she immediately took to me. Alas, as cool as she was, she was my grandson’s.
An immigrant dog
However a few months later for reasons too vast to explain here, he could not keep her and my daughter, having more sense than I do, proclaimed she did not want another dog to mind along with the two she already had. Never minding that I already had two myself, I volunteered to take her. Technically she is on loan because my grandson said he would like her back some day. But I doubt it is a loan where the payment of giving the dog back will ever come due. And in reality she is an immigrant dog to our home, who isn’t perfect, but adds so much to our lives.
So with each new addition we have adjusted, but three is definitely more work than two, and the newest member of the family has had some issues with Astoria. And a bit with Scarlet too at times. Like kids they fight once in awhile; nothing bad, just loud.
The disputed issues usually center around dog toys, more to the point the myriad of dog bones that lay around the house, in baskets and pails and in kennels the dogs sleep in at night. It always seems one dog wants the bone another dog has, despite the fact that there is another just like it laying five feet away from the pair. But somehow, they seem to sort it out pretty well.
Sleeping quarters
Astoria sleeps in her corner with a soft stuffed wolf like dog my wife picked up at Yellowstone National Park some years ago. Scarlet is a hoarder in that she packs bones into her crate every night and after a few days we need to dump the contents of her sleeping quarters onto the floor because she runs out of places inside it to lay. And Dakota seldom takes a bone in her enclosure and seems content to be there without anything to chew on, unless there is a bag, a strap to something or plastic just laying outside her kennel and then in the morning we find a mess of chewed up material strung around her kennel.
Sometimes when I get up at night and wander around the house because I can’t sleep, I have to avoid the pitfall of tripping over the bones in the hall.
Despite these little problems I have learned over the years that dogs are usually pretty good at living life without hatred, rancor and disputes. When they do disagree there is a fight, but a few minutes later (with some exceptions I have seen) they forget the spat and move on. It is one of the reasons I often like dogs better than people; no presumptions, no ego trips, and seldom no long term acidity. Working together they always seem to be able to learn to share the bones.
Humans often state what a dominant species they are on the planet. It’s true in many ways, but might doesn’t always make right. We hold prejudices, we hate others from generation to generation, we declare all out war on other people, and yes we have our various sets of alternative facts that we like to use to prove that we know the best, or at least better than whoever we are up against at the time.
How it could be that learning from the life of dogs humanity could become a better race I plainly see. Yet it is beneath us to do that it seems. The world is a complex place, people say. Things cannot be solved easily or simply they say. The Utopia of people living together without hatred, without presumption, can never exist they say. There will always be those who want to be better than others they say. The differences are too great, they say.
Yet a simple species like dogs, which come in all colors and sizes and all looks and intellects seem to be able to sort it out quite nicely.
What a great world it would be if we could only learn to share the bones the way they do.