Of Hounds And Other Essentials
We’re back by the fountain again. The sun is casting his forever shine and across the way in the courtyard of City Hall a large ceremonial gathering of the local police department celebrates some occasion of importance. People stand close together in groups and applause breaks out enthusiastically at regular intervals. Blink and for a moment it’s as if the past eighteen months with all of their dystopian horror never existed.
The water behind me flows and my daughter and the dog engage in some lighthearted play; his patience with her not missing a beat. The heart of our hound and the love he bears for his family are as deeply boundless as ever they were.
I was reminded of this a few days ago. As the business of a Friday, into which everything that had to be done from the rest of the week was scheduled to be packed, unfolded, my precious minutes on the treadmill were interrupted by my children who had noticed something strange about the hound’s paw. It took my brain a moment, or several minutes in fact, to kick into gear and realise that this broken and bloody dewclaw was not something we could fix at home. My precisely calibrated day was dead in the water. Into the car we piled, dog, daughter and I, racing down the freeway to the vet.
Due to the prevailing mood of Covid caution one’s pets have to be surrendered outside of the surgery in the car park. And so we watched as wild eyed Dukie pulled frantically at his leash as he was taken inside. His fear as he was forcibly separated from us wanted for no words. How tight the connection is between domestic canine and family and how powerless our beloved hounds are in the face of their own ignorance.
The vets took wonderful care of him in the end and he was returned to us an hour or so later, groggy and disorientated from his sedation. When we arrived home I carried him up from the garage to the sofa; the mute look of appeal in his eyes convincing me that such extreme measures were necessary.
Otherwise it’s been a busy few weeks here in the City of Angels. Sometimes I have the sensation that time is running at a sprinter’s pace and then on other days it barely seems to move at all. Deep in the midst of autumn term schooling we’ve seen Halloween sneak past and our American cousins are preparing for their all important Thanksgiving week. Our eyes meanwhile begin to gaze forward to a Christmas that will be spent in London for the first time in over a decade. I’m starting to feel the tingle of excitement at the thought of finally experiencing it in a cold climate rather than the through the warm lens of a Californian winter.
My reading thoughts by contrast have been much taken up with terror, sorrow and death. I have finally finished the sobering masterpiece that is Bloodlands by Timothy Snyder. It was a book that took me over six months to read. Every page contains vital pieces of information about some aspect of Stalin’s terror or Hitler’s unspeakable regime and thus a slow pace ensured that the full weight of the material was absorbed. I have been subsequently pursuing some particular lines of related study that will appear in a longer post in the near future. But for now it’s back to the day and the light of California and to the glorious happiness of a grinning hound basking in the sunshine.
