Gnawing the Bone

Secret Admirer

Published on May 11, 2013December 24, 2013 by Raud Kennedy9 Comments

The two dogs stood next to one another, sniffing the dog park ground for news.

“I’ve been sending my two-legger love poems for weeks now.”

“You’ve been doing what?”

“I felt sorry for him and he looked like he needed cheering up, but now he thinks he has a secret admirer, which is true, but he thinks it’s a two-legger woman who’s in love with him. Now I’m even more sorry for him.”

“You got to love the computer. With a pencil in your mouth you can type anything and you don’t even need the pencil to hit the buy button. I can do that with my nose. My two-legger should be getting six cases of canned chili from Preppers-R-Us any day now.” Continue reading “Secret Admirer” →

Dog Breath

Published on May 5, 2013 by Raud Kennedy11 Comments

When my dog, Wyatt, was dying of kidney failure, there was a distinct odor to his breath that my vet said was due to his failing kidneys. His breath had always been unique to him. None of the other dogs I encountered had his distinct odor of breath and I encountered a good many through work in the four years I had him. Early on I didn’t think much of it because he had a penchant for eating poop and I associated it with that and it wasn’t until the end that it became noticeably strong.

Recently, while playing with my five month old puppy, Fleegle, I smelled this same distinct odor on his breath. Fleegle is related to Wyatt. He was sired by one of Wyatt’s littermates and as I remembered my vet telling me there could be a genetic component to kidney disease in dogs, I began to worry. Continue reading “Dog Breath” →

Sparkatus

Published on May 3, 2013December 24, 2013 by Raud Kennedy3 Comments

He looked like a genetically modified coconut standing on four fury legs in the middle of the dog park as he shook his head in disagreement with his friend and housemate. “No giant dog is going to fall from the sky and smash everyone’s backyard gate,” he said. “Sparkatus is a myth. Dogs throw his story around and the one about the Night of the Broken Gates when they’re bored and depressed, stuck in the their yard sniffing their own piles of… well, you know what I mean. And who can blame them? Not every dog gets out and travels like we do. I’ve peed on sixty-four trees just this morning.”

“Sparkatus is not a myth. He’s real,” said Coconut’s housemate, a mutt, who was big and round like a watermelon. “I talked to a friend on the way into the park who said he’s seen Sparkatus, that he’s in town, and that he actually sniffed his butt. Can you believe that? Sniffed the but of Sparkatus?” Continue reading “Sparkatus” →

Dog Souls

Published on April 21, 2013 by Raud Kennedy7 Comments

I believe in reincarnation, not because I grew up with the belief or because I have proof that people’s souls live life after life, but because my earliest memory is of dying. Sometime in the 1800s, I was badly injured as a young man while on an expedition in a land far from my home. I remember laying down in the thick grass on a hillside, too weak to continue, and wondering how I was ever going finish this trek when there were thousands of miles left, let alone get back home to family and friends. Then I closed my eyes and died. Continue reading “Dog Souls” →