Today I found hidden value in my pet Beagle. Stanley is now 14 years old or 98 in dog years. He was only 4 months old when my wife and I rescued him from the local SPCA. Stanley and I share a lot of history--both good and bad. I was a young 56 when Stanley came to live with us. Two years earlier we had put our Black Lab Hosier to rest. He had been with us for 17 years and neither my wife nor I wanted to start down that path again. However, with an empty nest, my soon-to-be married daughter insisted that a dog would be good company for me and I would benefit from the exercise gotten by having to walk the dog every day. Note the Hosier was a backyard dog that never took to the concept of walking around the neighborhood. Stanley was just the opposite. He would wait for me to arrive home from work. Soon as I opened the door he would give me that "let's go now" look and even in the dark of winter, I found myself walking the neighborhood making frequent pauses for a sniff break and prepared to collect whatever soft, dark scent messages Stanly decided to drop that day. He took special delight in selecting the most pretentious places. Never in secluded areas where I could quickly clean and go. Usually it was in well lit easily viewed places so if neighbors were taking in that view it was even better from Stanly's perspective. And that brings me to the hidden value part of this message.
No I am not going to sell you on the notion that cleaning up after a Beagle makes one humble or that having to bend over is good for the joints. The hidden value is in finally understanding Stanley's perspective of his daily walks. People who study such things say that dogs communicate by their liquid and solid droppings in much the same way we use e-mail and texting. Their sense of smell is so acute that one sniff of fecal matter can tell them the sex, age, health, breed, and mental state of the dog that left it and even things about the dog's owner. And just as we humans categorize the status of each other, dogs do the same both of themselves and their owners. So for Stanley to select the most traveled and visible places to leave his calling card indicates that he is very proud of me and enjoys parading me around the neighborhood bragging to all of his acquaintances. He is such a dog!
Pick 102 - Generation Alpha
Screen technologies are the base of everything that characterizes Generation Alpha and truly distinguishes them from every other generati...
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