I connected to a memoir writing podcast a couple of days ago. Marion, whose podcast it was, mentioned the word dogoir (a word I’d never heard) and she and the other podcaster talked about that for a while.
A UPS truck pulled in the driveway and I went downstairs to get a package, when I came back upstairs, Marion just finished saying something I didn’t quite catch about an assignment and 750 words, maybe a short memoir about dogs... So I started writing
Dogoir? Dogoire? Dogwar, Chien Noir, Black Dog, Chiennoire
Language evolves. My father used dandy a lot, a word now seldom heard. He’d say the brown trout I caught was a dandy! He was in the mounted cavalry in 1918. I was born in 1950, and when he came home one day with a golden fur-ball, I said, ‘Dandy’, and so he was, my first best friend and co-conspirator, a long-haired, collie-shepherd-and-something-else. Back then, most dogs had their nuts intact and dog-sense and enjoyed a rich social life, roving the neighborhood by day and farther afield at night. We got another dog later. He got shot by a farmer for killing chickens, his second offense. When I was 13, Dandy had a stroke and dragged his useless hindquarters across the lawn, across the driveway to crap in the field, for a week. Until one evening my father told me to dig a grave in the vegetable garden behind the barn, and he put a gentle bullet through Dandy’s brain.
Of course, I mourned and consoled myself shooting rabbits undeterred by Dandy’s ghost in the garden. I killed many trout, but with love. My father died two years after Dandy, and within a year, both my mother’s parents croaked. My father’s parents were dead before I was born. At age 15, I was an old hand at death.
I’ve had many dog friends, mostly in Asia, happy mutts ignorant of leashes, boutiques, pet therapists, professional dog-walkers, pooper-scoopers, canned dog food, and kibble. They lived on rice and leftovers, chicken bones, fish bones, you-name-it, nature’s happy garbage disposals, well-tempered, smart, crapping out of sight. They had inborn homing devices, wouldn’t think of chasing cars, and had the sense to stop, look, and listen before crossing roads, unless hot pheromones were involved, in which case, dogs, like humans, abandon common sense.
Dogoir sounds cute and I have cultural issues with cute. I’d be more comfortable if Dogwar was the name of a Himalayan district. I could say, ‘Yesterday a Dogwari woman at the Bazar sold me a Kati of the best dog I’d eaten since Sumatra.’
In many countries, there is no word for, hobby, a self-absorbing activity. Jason, a friend teaching English in Thailand – he hadn’t been in Asia very long – in the course of enriching his students’ vocabulary, asked if they had a ‘hobby’. They looked at one another, nobody raising a hand. “You know, collecting things, like stamps, or coins, making model airplanes, something you do in your spare time.” Silence. He explained spare time. One girl collected stamps. She had two, from an aunt living in America. “How about an activity,” he prompted, “like fishing or camping,” A boy said, I like camping. “How many times have you been camping?” Once. “O-kay… pets, how many of you have a ‘pet’, an animal you love, that you talk to like your best friend?” They looked at him like he was crazy, and after work, he thought about it: Pets, like hobbies, are luxuries.
Attitudes evolve too. I love dogs and there are few I’ve met that don’t like me. But dogs are very tasty, very nutritious, very rich. In Laos, there are no pounds, or problems, with overpopulation. Keep the good ones, eat the dim-witted, the weak, the biters, and chicken stealers. Good husbandry. I look at America’s neutered canines upon whom love, and expense, is lavished; elevated to near-human status, the role they play as emotional support for scared, lonely people. Coifed, yappy, pedigreed hairballs with names like Froufrou, Fifi, Truffles, and Mr. Tibbs. Doggie diapers, condo-dogs, my god, who are these people? I want to be where dogs roam and fight and growl and bark, and come back at dawn, when the women wake to soak the rice and make the fire and teach their daughters to control men decently. And the smart dog lays near the fire, politely waiting for breakfast. I would not keep a dog in this country, out of respect for dogs.
Viets and Chinese, pay more for a black dog. Chien noir. I can’t distinguish any difference, but I do know there is power in dog meat; unlike beef or pig, it suffuses the body with heat and is best eaten in cool weather. Too much, imbalances the system, give you a rash, cold sores, hemorrhoids. Balance; it’s all a matter of balance. Language, like perfume, is more a matter of choice: “Your perfume Madame, Chiennoire, n’cest pas?” A nice black dog you’re wearing.
751 words. I’m obviously not ready to write dogoir yet.
Not the normal writing to which we a subjected. More from Learned John as they happen.
