by Al Drinkle
There once was a man whose best friend was a dog. As is common in such a relationship, there was an incongruity in regards to the way that the two friends aged. One day, seemingly all of a sudden, the dog had become elderly.
There was a time when each morning began with an excursion to a vast off-leash park. The sleep-deprived man wandered contentedly as the dog would tirelessly bound hither and thither, greeting canines and humans alike with contagious alacrity. As she aged, this routine became less tenable for the dog. During her last couple of years, mornings instead began with the friends enjoying an unhurried stroll through their neighbourhood.
The dog seemed to have developed an interminable attention span, exhaustively investigating every aroma that she encountered. In the winter, the man would daydream his way through the chills as his best friend sniffed and prodded, making headway down the sidewalk when gently encouraged. During springtime, the man inhaled the blossoms, trying to emulate his friend's relaxed pace and effortless contentment. On mornings after a rainfall when the dog was hypnotized by the acute aromatics, the man would occupy himself by rescuing worms from the sidewalk and tossing them back onto the grass. The dog wagged her tail in approval.
The blithesome dog eventually died, but she occupied an ever-increasing place in the man's heart. He remained grateful to have learned how to savour beauty in its more subtle manifestations, and he kept up some of the habits from his days with her. On mornings after a rainfall he was invariably late walking to work. It just seemed like there were always another few worms to be rescued from the sidewalk.
