It never ceases to amaze me how we can hear the same words over and over in our lives and yet misinterpret them so profoundly. For instance, a young lady among my youngest son’s teenage friends had often heard her parents discussing the news as “it’s a dog eat dog world out there”. She really tickled us one day by referring to a particular news story, and drawing the conclusion that “it’s a doggie dog world out there”. Thinking of this memory brought to mind all the dogs that have touched my life in one way or another over the years, including beautiful Tyra, one of my nine grand-dogs who went to doggie heaven at Easter time this year, just before her fourteenth birthday. Thinking about all these pets reminded me of a poem I wrote back in 1974 when my own dog, Penny, was forever running away to play in a nearby stream. The  poem has nothing to do with that, though. I don’t even know how it inhabited my brain, but here it is.

WOE IS MOE

I have this dog, his name is Moe

he follows me wherever I go.

While tackling my daily jog

I’m followed by this doggone dog!

He cramps my style

I tell him “Scram!”

But soon he reappears with Sam.

Sam is Moe’s best pal, you see

and now they both are dogging me.

At last I’ve done half a lap

but Moe and Sam have done the track.

Joined by Jigs along the way,

these dogs think I am out to play.

Now jogging isn’t play to me,

I take it very seriously,

until I looked around and found

we’d added quite a large greyhound.

Now Grey and Jigs and Sam and Moe

all follow me wherever I go.

It follows that I gave up jogging

and the dogs have had to give up dogging.

Now I sit at home and pine

for some good old dogless jogging time.

©1974

I’m aiming for a little humor today. Is anyone out there smiling?