My dog, named America, curls on a backroom bed with her face against a window, wet nose inches from the pane for hours at a time, alert, shifting focus now and then, not barking or whimpering, just staring.
When I look up from the words I’m trying to tattoo on my computer screen, there she still is — still, is.
Because her name is America I enjoy playing off that. When I wonder, “What does America see?” my mind balloons to the national question. Then I deflate to the immediate mystery.
Out the window there are pines and oaks — this is Cape Cod after all. There is a shed where I stack wood and store tools. There is a descent. At the bottom a shell-covered driveway toothpastes a white strip beyond dark tree trunks. A neighbor’s home is beyond a swath of wetlands where phragmites stalk.
What is so fascinating to hold attention for hours at a time?
I assumed America fixates on camouflaged squirrels, birds, rabbits, voles. But when bigger animals show up, it’s different. A tom turkey elicits a yip and run for the door, which I don’t open for both their benefits. A coyote evokes a full-throated bark, a more insistent bolt for the door. Again I don’t open, though America usually has the run of our hill and my neighbor has seen her herd and howl trespassing coyotes off the property.
Her fixation also is evident when at day’s end I amble to a little deck to drink a beer and watch the lowering sun. She sits at attention, head pivoting, eyes focused. She won’t bolt, though nothing is stopping her. She observes.
Even at night, I see her staring into the beyond, attentive in blue-light full moon or new-moon black. When I get up and peer in the same direction, dark branches move with the wind but I see nothing beyond what I would expect. I go back to sleep. America watches.
They say poodles, America being a full-bred embodiment, are super-smart. It has crossed my mind that if she had an opposable thumb she would drive me to the post office.
But actually I don’t subscribe to this. If America and any mutt were thrown into the wild, would she survive better? I don’t think so. The thing about poodles is they were bred to pay attention to humans versus, say, tracking or tundra travel, so we think they’re smarter than other dogs.
We like to be the center of attention and assume it’s quite intelligent of others to put us there.
Which circles back to what America sees when she stares into space, like that great Andrew Wyeth painting, “Christina’s World.” I don’t know and never will (about America or the painting). But I believe it’s something, more like some things, I don’t perceive, yet more proof that my reality, human reality, is incomplete.
As I go back to tattooing words on a computer screen, maybe she’s sitting there wondering too:
What the hell is that guy so focused on anyway?
