Cogito: Dog Metaphysics--The Interdimensionality of Dogs

Cogito

THE INTERDIMENSIONALITY OF DOGS I've almost always had a dog, or been around dogs. When I was about five, my neighbors' dogs had a litter of lhasa apsos: not exactly the coolest dogs on the planet, but good loyal family dogs. I was fascinated by what went on in Muffin's little doggy head. She'd be looking outside into the distance when she'd suddenly start barking at intruders unknown.

Now, I know that dog's eyes are better than our own, but there was absolutely nothing there to be seen: no birds, no bugs, no fleeting cats, nothing. This was a puzzling behavior from an otherwise well-grounded dog. The idea began to creep up on me that perhaps the dog was seeing beyond. Whenever I rubbed my eyes really hard, I could see "stars" floating behind them, and so I figured that perhaps this was my glimpse into that same realm that the dog was seeing.

I grew older and discarded my childish ideas about a great many things, but every so often the dog would suddenly start barking at unseen intruders, looking at them quite squarely. I was a freshman in college when my parents found Sasha out on a country road. Sasha was some sort of Shi Tzu thing, quite silly, and very loving. She was quite different from Muffin in many regards, but she also was able to see beyond. Sasha would be sitting there and suddenly cock her head to the side and watch something invisible to our eyes. What the hell was the dog looking at?

It wasn't until my junior year in college that I was able to find concrete proof of dog's interdimentionality when we rescued Chianti from the pound. Chianti was a large black lab/border collie mix who is too smart for his own good, most times. As it turns out, he apparently is smart enough to traverse into that "other" space that my family's two dogs could only glimpse.

I know what you are thinking: this all sounds pretty fantastic. Well, maybe. Consider this: when we first moved in, the yard was fairly clean and devoid of stuff. There was a small shed that contained a few cast off gardening supplies, but nothing for a dog to get into. One day we came home to find the dog gnawing on a large wooden plank. Figuring that this was not exactly the best thing for the dog to be chewing on, my roommates and I scoured the back yard that weekend to clear out anything else that the dog might get into. We junked everything, and fenced off a goodly part of the yard to boot.

Despite this, we would come home the next week to find the dog gnawing on another large piece of timber. Again we disposed of it and again the dog found another timber. Where the hell where these coming from? We'd made doubly sure that there was nothing for the dog to get into, and yet he still got into something. The acid proof was when we'd come home to find an empty plastic bag of cow manure. The bag was bright yellow, and was one of those things that would have been impossible to overlook. But there it was. The only possible explanation was that the dog had gotten it from beyond.

On at least two occasions soon thereafter, we managed to catch the dog while he was "away". Our yard had a L-shaped side yard that the dog would sometimes head down. One evening, we came home and found the dog was nowhere to be seen. Pretty odd. Odder still was that when we checked the side yard, the dog wasn't there either. "Well", we thought, "maybe the dog is in the shed". As we returned from the shed, the dog came trotting around the corner, looking a bit startled to see us. He'd returned from beyond.

I didn't mind so much having a dog who could seemingly cross dimensions at will so much as the idea of what, or who, he might bring back with him. I could just see coming home one afternoon to find the dog panting in the midday sun, proudly lazing in front of a large pile of rescued wallets, keys, and lone socks. Or walk into the back yard to find him playing catch with Elvis and Amelia Earhart. Or wake up to find the dog barking at some Lovecraftian nightmare slogging its way through the grass. Perish the thought.

It was at this same time the dog stopped his wanton trips through space and time. We never knew how such a wonderful dog ended up at the pound. Perhaps something, or someone, had happened to the prior owners and the dog was found at their freshly abandoned house. Perhaps the dog wised up. Every so often, he has doggy nightmares; maybe something he's seen haunts him. I wrote something about this back on TCR in about 1993, and hadn't given it much thought until recently. You see, the dog managed to come jogging out the side yard that he hadn't been down the moment before recently...

[THINK SOME MORE]