Dogs Riding in Cars

photo courtesy of animalclinic.ca

On New Year's Day it's probably common to reflect on years past...or look optimistically towards the future.
Maybe to reevaluate old habits and forge new paths. Today, however, something struck me that just needed to be addressed here.

Dogs.

Dogs riding in cars.

While driving to pick up my daughter from her friend's house, I saw something that made me hesitate and struck me much the way odd things sometimes tend to strike people.

Thoughts like these are probably more common than you would think. As a matter of fact, if I were capable of seeing people's thoughts in bubbles over their heads like in a comic strip, I bet I would see a lot of thoughts like this. An awareness that some of the things we do in this era are so far removed from what is natural that if you thought about anything completely objectively you would have cause to stop for a moment and say "Hmmm, okay"

This goes against the grain, the nature of things. Like the dog riding in the passenger seat of a rusty old Trans-Am, (they stopped making those didn't they? Probably a good thing.), sitting up in the front looking quite dignified and entitled. A large Pit Bull Great Dane type of dog who, if it had been summer, might've had his paw leaning out the open window, wearing sunglasses. That's when

I thought. Dogs...descendants of wolves, pack animals, capable of hunting dinner and devouring it raw in a matter of moments...these powerful animals who rely on instinct and a keen sense of smell, are now riding shotgun in Trans-Am's.

What would his canine ancestors think? I wonder if the dog had his own presets on the radio station or played some of his own music....probably on an 8-track player given the year of the car, but I digress....still, the thought of humans driving around highways with dogs seemed to me at that moment to be really funny. It was like one of those thoughts I have sitting in the parking lot at Target when I think that somewhere, someone among the crowd of people getting swallowed up and spit out by those automatic doors has just purchased a chia-pet.

Perhaps this will make sense to some of you, or not. However I know out there that there are those of you who may think the way I do. That the next time you see a poodle wearing rain boots and a hat you may find yourself wanting to scream "Oh...the humanity!!".

The comic genius Charles Schultz was the master of this type of thinking. His characters often looked at life in a way that cut through the expected and right to the crux of the matter. One of my favorites is a line where Linus is sitting still, then makes an uncomfortable face followed by a look of fear and puts his hand over his mouth and says "Suddenly, I'm aware of my tongue!"

I guess you could say I had one of those Linus moments. The dog in the car probably feels as natural there as he would running through a field...maybe even more so. Who knows....as I look around my home with its microwave, convection oven, toaster and crock pot I think to myself that all these things do is provide a way to heat food to eat, and I feel a little like that dog...that I should shed some of these trappings meant to make life easier because maybe they're entrapping me?

 But then I realize that these are just thoughts and that the best way to handle these would be to go on my computer and blog about it, because after-all, in the human world I am the equivalent of small terrier.....I think I'm big and strong but in reality I'm small and weak and maybe a tad neurotic with a bit of an attitude....and I love my iPad and laptop and the internet. I'm not about to go outside and chop wood and carry water - although somewhere in my psyche I understand how far removed I've become from my ancestors who would likely look at me strangely.

Like a dog riding in a Trans-Am.