Is it boring being a dog?

I mean, really! The questions one’s asked! The price of celebrity, I suppose. Mind you, I never sought this acclaim. I might have been purchased by a plutocrat who never met a semicolon. Then I’d be accounted a lucky dog, tended by household servants, suffering my gilded neglect.

Dogs that don’t publish are accounted dimwits because they don’t speak human. I beg to differ. (I beg for treats, too, but that’s different.) Dogs speak dog fluently, communicating all they need to instantly and sparingly. Show me the human who can convey their entirety so efficiently. Carll talks and talks, but does he get any closer to what he’s trying to say? Seems the more he talks, the more he complicates, refines, ramifies, yanking himself farther from the evident truth. I know Carll better than he knows himself because I don’t ask so many questions. The meaning of meaning, value of being, nature of the divine (if any) – give me a break. Life is a simple and satisfying proposition if you don’t torment it with queries. We’re born, we eat, defecate, bark, race in the sun, lick, sleep, sniff odoriferous quarters for info, what more do you need to know! I can’t speak for all dogs but I’m pretty sure most, maybe all, are delighted to be alive. Then one day we won’t be – so what? Nothing lasts forever and if it did, what a bore. (Count yourself lucky Carll’s missives quit after six hundred words. Otherwise he’d go on and on – to an emptying auditorium.)

Humans think. They boast about it. In the Great Chain of Being they rank themselves nearest the angels (angels!), who live next door to God (God!). They flaunt their wondrous achievements – Shakespeare, Bach, the Sistine Ceiling, smart phones. Which other creature, they huff and strut, could create such marvels! I’ll grant them their ingenuity but which other creature would want to? We don’t need Bach, or the Sistine ceiling, or Ambien to sleep. We don’t fret about death or our neighbors’ politics. We don’t need politics. Carll keeps tearing his hair out about this guy Trump. If he’s a creep steer clear of him. The world is full of creeps.

Dogs’ minds are as busy as they need to be. They are not – pleased to report – honking hollering intersections like Addis Ababa’s where they have no traffic lights. When we’re idle, confined to our quarters, we don’t brood, unless something’s worrying us (such as abandonment or hunger or a need to pee). Pascal, Carll tells me, traced all man’s woes to man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone. Dogs have no difficulty doing this, once we’re trained. (Dogs enjoy untrained dogs as much as humans enjoy untrained humans.) Carll and Jane keep me pretty busy – I’m lucky that way – but when they don’t, when there’s nothing doing, I don’t make a big deal of it, I tune out, chew, doze, till the next thing happens which it always does. No, I do not get bored – why would I? Boredom is only boredom if you think about it. Relax, pal, dream, let the time slide by.

Does complacent acceptance of life’s limitations reflect inferior intelligence? Is it preferable to leap with gladness at opportunities or kvetch one’s been shortchanged? From what I’ve noticed, humans, for all their smarts, are the stupidest creatures ever, making trouble for themselves – waging wars, poisoning their planet, abusing one another – less triumphs than evolutionary mishaps.

Do dogs get bored? Not this one. Not while I’ve got humans to observe.