Dog Man and Mutual Aid

“If you’re going to live with a dog” he thought, “then you have to decide what kind of person you want to be.” 

 

Dog-man was learning essential secrets about himself—what he began calling love’s way of living . 

 

He had sufficient irony to understand this sounded like the equivalent of loud kissing. 

 

He decided he didn’t care. 

 

He was flying when love’s way of living first came to him. It was a domestic flight from New York to Chicago, the plane one of those “regional jets” with an overcrowded cabin and a prevalent odor that reminded him of gym socks.

 

The plane hit some turbulence and dropped. A woman beside him, a stranger, screamed and grabbed his arm and shouted “Oh my God, Oh my God!” 

 

Then Corky, big dog that she was, sat up and put her head in the woman’s lap and then the plane was smooth and the woman began crying and Corky washed her tears and several passengers, seeing this, applauded.

 

“I have to unlearn much that I was taught,” he thought then. “Much.”