Dreaming ?

[laduck]

Last night I was watching my lab as she slept by the fire place. She is 11 1/2 now and she sleeps more and more. During her sleep she would really move her paws. Was she running to retrieve a bumper? Maybe she was swimming and retrieving a duck.
Sometimes she will wag her tail. Could she be seeing another lab or a person that she used to hunt with? Maybe someone was saying good things to or about her.
Now and then she will whine in her sleep. Is she back in her youth, when she would whine when the birds would land in the decoys? That was before she learned patience.
Now and then she will try to growl in her sleep. Is she meeting some critter in the marsh that she does not care for?
I just wonder if dogs remember and dream of good and bad things in their hunting life. The older they get the more they think of the past and the good hunts that they have made, much as we do. I believe that it is good to dream sometimes. Jack

[crow]

Good post, Jack. But according to my wife, your dog sounds a whole lot like me!

[bluwtr]

Jack,

I agree with all you said. I have heard the saying that dogs are the closest thing to God on earth--I truly believe it; why else would dog be God spelled backwards? Thanks for the neat story.

Merry Christmas and best of luck with your season.

Wes

[mdoc138]

Good Post, and CROW...That was funny!!!

[Marty N.]

There is nothing like watching your hunting partner sleep and dream of all the good times that the two of you have had. They are with us for so short a time. It does not seem fair to us or them, The brightest flame burns the quickest. Great post.
Marty

[your-pal-al]

you folks ever read the poem "a dog sleeping on my feet" by james dickey.
you may know him better as the author of "deliverence". remember the movie with burt reynolds and the back wood inbreds in georgia? anyway, a good read.

al

[Ringbill]

I have always wondered what my lab is seeing when she dreams. All I can say is that I hope very much it's a bunch of fat mallards, all for her.

Ringbill

[your-pal-al]

Dickey, "A Dog Sleeping on My Feet"

Being his resting place,
I do not even tense
The muscles of a leg
Or I would seem to be changing.
Instead, I turn the page
Of the notebook, carefully not
Remembering what I have written,
For now, with my feet beneath him
Dying like embers,
The poem is beginning to move
Up through my pine-prickling legs
Out of the night wood,

Taking hold of the pen by my fingers.
Before me the fox floats lightly
On fire with his holy scene.
All, all are running.
Marvelous is the pursuit,
Like a dazzle of nails through the ankles,

Like a twisting shout through the trees
Sent after the flying fox
Through the holes of logs, over streams
Stock-still with the pressure of moonlight.
My killed legs,
My legs of a dead thing, follow,

Quick as pins, through the forest,
And all rushes on into dark
And ends on the brightness of paper.
When my hand, which speaks in a daze
The hypnotized language of beasts,
Shall falter, and fail

Back into the human tongue,
And the dog gets up and goes out
To wander the dawning yard,
I shall crawl to my human bed
And lie there smiling at sunrise,
With the scent of the fox

Burning my brain like an incense
Floating out of the night wood,
Coming home to my wife and my sons
From the dream of an animal,
Assembling the self I must wake to,
Sleeping to grow back my legs.

[crow]

your-pal-Al, speaking of Deliverance, the man who was Burt Reynolds' body-double in the movie, Larry Hallford, died this weekend after a long bout with cancer. Larry used to laugh about that alot , calling it his "brush with fame.". He was a good man and I will miss him in my Sunday school class. Burt Reynolds attended the funeral yesterday and brough Nita, Larry's wife several pictures of Larry from the days when they were filming. He was a young turk full lof life, and it was good to see him that way. Raised everone's spirits a bit.