In a moment of blankness, I asked various AI tools to suggest topics for blog posts, based on my interests and activities. Then I set myself “dog walking and conversations with nature” as a challenge, despite it’s slight oddness.
Today, while walking the dog, I saw a sprig of blue (so blue!) plumbago flower, hidden in other plants on the pavement of the house four doors up from ours.
That might not sound much like conversation with nature. The Oxford Dictionary’s definition goes like this:
the phenomena of the physical world collectively, including plants, animals, the landscape, and other features and products of the earth, as opposed to humans or human creations
That’s fairly prosaic. Unlike the way in which the word is often used, to mean something elevated and apart from human beings, as in this sample sentence from the Oxford entry on the subject:
Humans are encroaching on nature, but we can be more mindful of our impact when enjoying summer wilderness.
But that little sprig of plumbago is nature, even if the pavement on which it lives is not. The dog I am walking is, I guess, also part of nature. He is, after all, not human.
Meet Worcester the dog
He may not be human but he’s been on our minds a lot recently. He ‘s been ill, and may or may not, be recovering. Worcester has Immune-Mediated Haemolytic Anaemia, an auto-immune condition in which his immune system attacks his blood cells and which takes a long time to sort out.
We’ ve been back and forth from the vet every couple of weeks since October last year, and have had several moments of wondering if he was going to survive. Now in February, his blood results have been normal (at least, they are until we get the next set of results).
Meet me, an impatient person
Here, in the usual narrative convention, is where I say that every moment with him is precious, and the walks are golden moments of connection.
In fact, dear reader, while every moment with him is precious, they are also deeply irritating. He’s been on variable doses of cortisone all these months, meaning he is thirsty all the time, which means he drinks water all the time, which means he needs to be let out of the house to pee about once every ninety minutes. Since my home office is upstairs and he spends every waking moment at my feet, that means I am going up and down the stairs, a lot.
He’s anxious by nature, and all the stress of the illness means he’s gone back to nibbling at his own paws. Which causes “hotspots”. Which means he is now wearing a large plastic cone, which bangs into the back of my knees as he follows me around.
He is ravenously hungry, all the time (from the cortisone). Which means that our walks are punctuated by regular yanking on the lead – “No, you are not eating that!” – as he tries to eat anything and everything he can find.
His superpower? Finding a lot of extremely unsuitable food. That’s because he is a rescue dog who lived on the streets and knows a thing or two about the value of an old chicken bone in the road.
All of this is dreadful for the poor dog, who bears it all with fortitude and patience. Me, not so much. A lot of deep breathing, and a lot of muttering, is happening as we go about our lives.
Conversations with nature?
He is also terrified of other dogs, and especially dogs which are not on leads. And that means we cannot walk in the local park, or any park for that matter. Or the beach. Or the forest. Or the mountain. (These being the favourite haunts of dog-owning Capetonians).
Our Worcester, instead, gets taken around our neighbourhood, along several well-worn routes (“round the school” being a favourite). This happens at 10am, because that is the time when most other people have already walked their dogs.
Our dog walks are not in fact peaceful rambles through the countryside. We do gutters and roads and street crossings. We know which houses to avoid because there’ll be a dog barking at the fence (we see the same dogs so often, we’ve given them names: Fluffy Dog, The Yappers, Pink Collar, Boxer Dog). We know which routes will be a little more shady than others on a hot day.
The nature we observe is all the things that grow in gardens and on pavements and in cracks in the gutters.
And in fact, there are conversations with nature all the time. There’s always a moment when I see something small and beautiful. Plumbago, where Boxer Dog lives. Miniature roses, bright scarlet against a wall. Lucky beans (small red seeds from a coral tree) on the tarmac. Sparrows playing in a puddle. A sprightly cannabis plant in the leaf mulch in a gutter.
These dog walks may not be precious moments in the conventional sense. But the small moments of joy are wonderful. I am hoping for many more precious and irritating years with our Worcester, and many more lessons in being patient from my canine teacher.
OTHER THINGS I HAVE WRITTEN
Everything I know about rescue dogs | Safe Hands
Saving the world, one dog at a time | Safe Hands
Farewell to Shiloh of the Ears | Safe Hands
Main picture: Blue plumbago, by 709am, Unsplash
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