COLUMN: Watching the Dog Chew a Bone

By Tobin Barnes
I’m sitting on my porch watching my dog chew a bone...or, as they used to say, “worry a bone.”

Neat expression. Folksy.

And like most folksy expressions, it’s got a kernel of truth because if you’re paying attention to the dog, as I am now, not much seems to be happening to the bone while the dog’s working on it. Just kind of irritating it is all.

Matter of fact, the process seems futile--gnaw, gnaw, gnaw and nothing. Not much of a show even.

But if you’re patient, like the dog, every once in a while you’ll hear a crack, and that’s progress. Time passes--depends on how often the dog takes it on and then leaves it off--and eventually, there’s not much left of that bone.

Now at this point, some people would launch into a “life lesson” based on a dog and a bone, but not me. It’d be a cheap shot. Besides, I’ve had enough of those instructive moments, and I know you probably have, too. Only so many life lessons a person can take in a life. At a certain point, you’ve got it or you’re never going to get it. Don’t need someone harping on you with another lesson.

Being a high school teacher, I see it in teenagers all the time, and they’re the ones who could still use a few more lessons. Some well-intentioned someone starts in on them way too directly, and they almost always immediately roll their eyes and shut down. Doesn’t take a philosopher to understand why, but you’d be surprised how many advice-givers could use some more philosophy.

Then again, this isn’t about that. This is just about me watching my dog. It’s a relaxing thing to do, watching a dog. I suspect it’s the reason people have dogs so they can sit there and watch them. Dogs’re kind of like us but mostly not. Makes them interesting.

Of course, sitting watching your dog conjures up a family of rednecks out on their porch on a steamy southern evening watching their dogs work over the leftovers: ribs and ham hocks and such. I’m not looking down my nose at rednecks. Not on this particular, anyway--watching dogs for entertainment--here they’ve got the right idea as far as I can see.

As I watch my dog chew the bone, I think it’s better than what she used to chew on when she was young and dumb, which was just about everything, and that wasn’t nearly as enjoyable for me.

She’d chew the wood trim around the outside door jam. She’d chew up our water hoses. The tin dryer vent on the side of the house, for crying out loud. She even chewed off all the lattice I’d so painstakingly installed around the bottom of the deck. Every last slat.

And I was lucky. An acquaintance said his dog chewed the foam seat right off his riding lawn mower.

All this chewing, evidently, to prepare for the real work of a dog’s life, bones.

But I think the bone burying thing is a cartoon myth. Leastwise, I’ve never seen it. She’s hid her bones plenty, and she won’t let me have them when I come close--you know, not that I’d really want them--but I’ve never seen her bury one and dig it up later. That’d present a whole nother set of problems with holes around the yard. The urine dead spots are bad enough.

So yeah, my dog’s been strictly a bone chewer, thank goodness, for the last eight years or so. No more dryer vents.

But she’s getting old now. In her seventies, according to the dog-year charts. Meantime, I’ve aged, too. Nothing, however, like her sprint through life. She’s gone from gangly, stupid pupdom to elder-statesman complacency in seemingly no time flat.

And I’ve watched her all this time and I’ve seen her watching me, too. We’re both, no doubt, puzzled by the other.

Difference is, I think she thinks not much has changed through the years. And I’m pretty sure they have.

But she may be right. Another day, another bone.