Dog Days

Anyone who thinks modern politics is too nasty hasn’t seen a dog fight a raccoon. No quarter, no rules. If you slash off a hunk of your opponent’s nose, there is no clarifying tweet the next day that apologizes for sentiments expressed in the heat of the moment.

You cannot blame either combatant for its deplorable actions, unlike in modern politics. They are operating by instinct: The raccoon is lumbering around like an idiot full of rabies, looking for something to eat, and the dog is fiercely protecting the pack from a creature that might get in the house and eat the Milk-Bones. There is no dissuading the dog, since honor and safety are at stake; all you can do is turn on the hose, which makes the dog stop and think, Wait, I’m protecting the kibble, and you think this is time for a bath? You want to do my nails next?

At the end of the struggle, our dog did not raise a paw in victory, because that is not their way. He limped inside and had his wounds cleaned and daubed with unguent. I told him he would live in the annals of combat and be sung about like Hector and Achilles. The incident was quickly forgotten, just like the time when he consumed an entire rabbit and spent a day immobile as his innards labored to move the thing to the haunch-trembling conclusion, an event that required X-rays and a dinner of charcoal. I know it was forgotten because he ate another rabbit the next week.

But I remember. And here’s the thing: While I remember the long, worried night at the 24-hour vet, the heart-smothering sight of your beloved pet immobile with discomfort, stoic and resigned, the long vigil to ensure that the discharged cud of rabbit was not left on the best rug, I do not remember what was happening in politics that particular day.

Odd, I know. Odd! Surely it mattered so much. Surely someone in Congress had announced hearings into something that would result months later in a video on Twitter in which someone OWNED the witness who refused to admit that the bad thing was actually a bad thing, which then led to nothing. I would wager that there was a law proposed that would have regulated the standard thickness of garden hose, spurred by a USA Today piece about cheap, substandard garden hoses that kinked too easily, and a congressman had a press conference with a family that had been a victim of substandard garden hoses, and he encouraged the passing of “Betty’s Law,” as they were calling it, because Betty, nine years old, had been watering the flowers, the hose kinked, and she cried.

It’s entirely possible that someone in my own state made an adjustment to a law that governed the adhesive strength of the license tabs we stick on every year. Or Donald Trump said something was SAD, and also Joe Biden said he was PROUD of the 60th executive order that skirted the perimeter of the Constitution, and various solons said things about how history would forever look back and say that today was the day civilization had been saved by a new rule that restricted dishwasher drying time, thereby fighting climate change.

None of that matters when you are binding up your dog’s snout.

Yes, I have a daughter, too, and no, I don’t remember what John Kerry said when she had a 104-degree fever. I use the dog as a current example because I’m paying more attention to his limp than to what Kamala Harris says about anything. It doesn’t mean I don’t, er, have a dog in this fight — just that my dog in his fight puts things in perspective. As much as I follow the health of the republic with keen interest, wary hope, and occasional bouts of resignation and despair, the world does not end on November 5. Whereas a very small but precious world would have ended if the raccoon had been the victor.

This is one function of age, I suppose. In some cases, it makes people so cranky that they endorse the candidate who stands for everything they oppose, and all their lifelong fans feel like a wife whose husband says he’s trans at age 52. Me, I figure: We’ll fight another day. As Cicero once said: “Bloody is the struggle we join with resolve. If only it was covered by pet insurance.”