LITTLE ROCK — It’s been a while since I’ve written about Max, the timid golden retriever who at 2 1/2 can no longer be considered a puppy. Yet in mind and heart, I suspect the boy will always remain youthful.
Since arriving in my life two Christmases ago, he’s developed into a handsome young fella. His feathery tail and the flowing white-gold strands of fur that cascade from his side, neck and rear make him a glowing sight when he flounces after a tennis ball.
One observer noted that he runs like an antelope. I can see that, although to me he still looks more like just a playful pup when he throws his front paws out and falls into a loping cadence.
The most interesting thing to me about 78-pound Max—and there are a number of them—is how he never tires of chasing a tennis ball. He will run himself into rapid-panting, drooling exhaustion sprinting back and forth. Such magnificent obsession has got to be in his blood.
Each morning, I release him into the front yard, where he completes his inquiring sniffs for visitors in the night (I call it reading his morning paper) then bounds off into the surrounding woods for about an hour.
This has become his routine over the months. He always comes home with a few dead leaves clinging to his tail, and eager to collapse on the porch.
Other times he returns reeking to high heaven after finding something most foul to wallow in and on. Oh, how dogs do love the putrid. I’m convinced they believe the smell of anything in a state of decay smells to their buddies like expensive cologne.
“Say, Max,” one dog buddy might growl, “what is that magnificent fragrance you’re wearing today? Could it be a two-week-dead black snake?”
The other day I waited until he’d been gone a spell, then I walked into the forest in the direction he’d headed. I stood for several minutes with my eyes closed, just listening to the birds serenade each other and enjoying the majesty of silence.
Before long I heard a rustling of leaves followed by the sound of heavy panting coming toward me.
Max, his pink tongue hanging, came bounding into a small clearing ahead and loped around inside it before stopping to gently gather a fallen branch in his mouth and prance as if he’d just caught some wild thing. He didn’t see me.
Dropping the stick, he sat to stare into the treetops. He’d spotted a red squirrel and seemed clearly fascinated by its abilities as it leapt from one tree to another.
Then he was up to chase his tail a couple of times, then bolt off at warp speed back into the woods to continue his morning ritual.
Finally, I understood what he was up to when he headed off into the underbrush in the cool of each morning. Dogs do love to run, especially big ones.
He was frolicking out there enjoying nature as much as I was, only in his distinctly canine way. Sure enough, before long he was sprawled on the front porch panting.
One thing you’d appreciate about Max is his gentle shyness. He just doesn’t get angry or mean. While he does let out those verbal strings of “rurrrruh, rurrrrh, rrurrh” when communicating, he never growls or barks out of fear or anger. He likes other dogs and they all like him.
I still see him staring at me on occasion with those brown almond eyes, as if he’s pondering why I’m his dad, but walking upright and magically in possession of so many balls and toys and water and dried chips of food in such big bags.
He’s becoming more reflective as he matures, which I suppose is common to most animals, including we humans—well, those who grow emotionally past age 18.
The other morning I awoke early and laid a pillow over my head to block the sunlight pouring through the glass. Soon, I felt him jump onto the bed. Then I heard him sniff beneath the pillow before intruding into my air space until his long, cold wet nose touched mine. In his mouth, of course, was a ball.
I can’t help but believe these four-legged dogs that we two-legged creatures have domesticated, cared for and loved for 100,000 years (according to biologist Rupert Sheldrake) form some kind of connective telepathic bond over time. Maybe they come to understand us better than we know ourselves.
Max shows me this every day. I can just look at him and think “lie down.” By gosh, he’ll slowly do just that. When he sprints to the top of the driveway in anticipation of my throwing the ball (yet again), he strikes a crouched pose. An expression displaying such intent washes over his face that I sometimes laugh out loud.
Then I’ll just imagine him coming back downhill to me, and that’s what he does.
I don’t know how the mysteries of dog psyche work, my friends. But I do know, as I’ve written before, that these creatures are placed in our lives for a reason.
And since we all know well enough what their species spelled backwards amounts to, I’m thinking their presence among us is so that we might know, outside of our mothers, what unconditional love truly feels like to our human hearts and spirits.
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Mike Masterson is opinion editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette’s Northwest edition.
Editorial, Pages 13 on 05/22/2012