Olè.

            A word about our morning routines.

            I wake up feeling like a million bucks, whatever they are, bursting with vim, pawing, licking, urging us outdoors. Carll’s in a good mood too, if he’s slept enough, if not he grunts “OK,” takes me out to evacuate, then returns to his bed, till, as he says, he’s “slept out”. That bed is usually his work-bed because after our wee hour wee together, under the stars if we’re lucky, Carll opts not to return me to my bedroom crate lest my fussing rouse Jane before she’d like. Jane doesn’t resume sleep pronto like Carll, when she’s up she’s up, so Carll figures he and I will finish out the night in his study to preserve Jane’s rest. I’ve got a bed there too, but sometimes I prefer the floor and sometimes to share Carll’s. The factors that influence this decision I choose not to divulge at present.

            So there we are, Carll and me, in his bed, me gnawing one of the proliferous chew-toys that make Carll’s carpet perilous for the unshod (I’m talking humans; we canines are more sure-footed), happy as can be, me nuzzling, often Carll’s odoriferous feet, he absent-mindedly stroking my ruff or gut while he scrolls (his word) his metal box. Suddenly – this happens every morning, holidays included – his calm is not so calm or his happy so happy, he tenses, I can feel it, turns impatient, grouchy, sometimes hisses an imprecation I’d dare not record even if I knew what it meant. Something distressful has arisen from that brushed stainless steel box (embossed with a stylized apple), something toxic to Carll’s serenity, vile as a whiff of vermin, but what? I can detect nothing with my incalculably more capable olfactory apparatus.

            Sometimes Carll slams the box and mutters – I won’t say what – gruffly summons me for a walk I don’t need – chides me to do my business though I just went – stomps back into his study and reopens the box – imagine, Pandora as recidivist, how dumb can you be! – only this time his fingers start tapping the little black squares and rectangles in a noisy dance (I’m thinking hornpipe or hopak, nothing silken). Tap, tap, tap – stacatissimo! – until – could that be a grin? – his sinews relent – something has appeared on the screen that pleases him – some alliterative invective perhaps that he’s tapped into being.

            His fury dissipates into words, his aggravation into (call a spade a spade) self-satisfaction. By an inexplicable alchemy, what he’s made has made him feel better. But why put yourself through that! Why open Pandora’s box in the first place? Why not leave those toxins dozing invisibly beneath that apple? Why return and return to that noxious news, why not let, as the phrase goes, sleeping dogs lie? (also a good idea).

            Humans – I’m generalizing here from a small sample – torment themselves with terrors they can neither avoid nor repair.  Their sky is (per fellow creature Chicken Little) always falling. What steams up from that metal box like acrid smoke ignites their distress. My contentment is comparatively imperturbable. Yeah, big shapes and loud noises spook me, I get fidgety unfed, but on balance, I’m thrilled to be alive. Look around you – what’s so bad in the world that you should mope and mourn? Haven’t you shelter, meals, affection, sunshine? What more’s needed?

            Such selfishness! – I can hear more than a few of you tut-tutting. Such shallowness! Maybe so. But with so much to celebrate and so little time why sicken ourselves with grim forebodings?

            Carll dislikes me saying this but it’s what I think.