More on Dogs: Navigating other dogs

Running into other dogs on a dog walk is a crap shoot. I am pretty unable to tell which dogs will cause my dogs to react, or which other dogs will react to mine, so I stay cautious, hold the leashes tight, and move or get ready to move off the path to the side. Many (?most) other people also do, which can create an “After you, Alphonse; no, after you, Gaston” situation, but we usually work it out. Some folks seem unaware (often related to looking at their phones and having earpieces in) and so I’m extra careful. And, while my dogs might react to small dogs and small dogs often precipitate the issue by barking a lot, I myself am more concerned about potential altercations with big dogs. There are a lot of both.

I try to anticipate what others are going to do, coming toward you or moving in the same direction. How soon, given their rate of speed, are they likely to catch up to you or you to them? Will they stop at a bottleneck, like, the entry to the park? It is not 100% but it helps. Groups of people, with lots of big dogs, are a particular problem, although I know their owners think their dogs are just peachy. One group has about 6 people and 6 dogs including a couple of (very well behaved) rottweilers and a curious off-leash small poodle. Nice folks but I try to keep my distance, and not run into them on a blind, narrow path (sometimes happens though).

Something I observed is that when the person/dog pair coming toward me steps off to the side before I do, but not very much to the side, just to the edge of the path, it seems to provoke my dogs; it happened twice yesterday, and almost a third time but with the same other dog (a lot of the trail is loops so can you pass people twice) but either they recognized it or it was more off the path. I wondered about this, and while I do not at all know I guess it is possible that they perceive a dog standing still right on the edge of the path as something like “lying in wait”. ?maybe? In any case, I have noticed that most of the time (nothing is always) moving past each other on opposite sides of the path, or maybe a little off it, is less likely to generate anxiety, barking, and lunging than one party standing still.

Timing and luck are a lot of it. This morning, we were walking down the street opposite the entrance to the park, and the dogs wanted to cross over. But, in addition to the truck coming down the street (it passed) there were two women approaching the entrance to the park, a total bottleneck, and moving remarkably slowly. And two people with two big dogs coming up from behind. I tried to time it to stay ahead of the latter and hope the former would move on into the park from the Z-shaped brick entrance. Nope. One of them hung out there. And coming out of the park was a woman I know, a terrific and wonderful person who has a big young dog that hasn’t completely mastered non-aggression. But she went out of her way to cross the street and go a bit down a side alley. And then inside was a man with a small dog that my dogs love to see because he spends time petting them. But now we contributed to the bottleneck! Not quite sure what purpose this entrance is supposed to serve…

Eventually, we got going into the park, and for the next 30 minutes only had a couple of widely separated interactions with other dogs and owners (including the ones staring at their phones with AirPods in who we had to negotiate around…)

Philosophizing and pontificating by authors in their novels gets more Intense when they get older and successful

It could be reasonably argued that the more power someone has, the less accountable they may be to others who would help direct their actions, and the more often they use it to serve themselves. This can be to enrich themselves, often unethically or illegally, or just to put forward their “wisdom”. It may be wiser than your wisdom, or not, or really dumb, but if they have the power then they can put it out there. 

You may think I am talking about the President of the United States, and from what I have written above I certainly could be. Especially the first part, corruptly enriching himself. He is, to use the technical term, a ganif (Yiddish, for thief; plural ganevim). Or I could be talking about the new (and this adjective should be understood in the context of me being an old person for who anything that has come about in at least the last 30 years is “new) profession of “on-line influencer”. These folks mostly do the second, proclaim their “wisdom”, at least insofar as what brands of crap (this is again a technical term, although English) you should buy. Or what you should believe, on health, on politics, on immigration, and especially on conspiracies. These folks generally get paid for making recommendations for products (“crap”) but it is not, strictly speaking, corrupt; they are being paid for work that they do that is advantageous to the company paying them, just like TV commercials. It may be corrupt if they are being paid surreptitiously, such as from a political foundation that wants to encourage their viewpoint.

Anyway, I am not really talking about either of these things, applicable as those thoughts may be. I am talking about an old (after all, I am old) genre, books. In my non-scientific observations, the authors of successful series of novels get to do things that their editors and publishers likely would not have allowed them to do (or at least with so much leeway) in their earlier books. I am specifically referring to “pontificating”, sharing the lead character’s (and presumably the author’s) worldview and philosophy and observations, at length, and usually with minimal or no real relationship to the plot of the book. This (again, in my observation, and I’ll stop writing IMO but you can assume it applies to this whole piece) kind of creeps in gradually, manifesting in small amounts in earlier books and, by the time the writer is old and really successful, tending to so dominate the book that the story (plot) seems almost incidental. That is, it increases from a few sentences here and there, to paragraphs, to pages, and so on.

There is nothing at all wrong with this; as is clear from this piece, we old people like to share what we think is our wisdom, or at least our observations and opinions. Certainly, famous and successful authors may have wise things to share, in articles and even in books. My issue is that when this occurs not in an ostensible treatise but a novel with a story, it can be at least distracting from the story, and is often so pervasive and extensive that I find myself giving up and going to another book. I feel it is a little sad to give up, but I only do it if the philosophizing/pontificating has been going on for a while and shows little sign of letting up and permitting the plot to take over; I try another book.

Most recently, this has occurred with two writers I have depended upon for intelligent entertainment, Walter Mosely and John Burdett. Both are close to my age; Mosely is 72 and Burdett 74. Mosley has several heroes, the most famous being Easy Rawlins, but the book I recently put down featured King Oliver (“Been wrong so long it feels like right”, 2025). Maybe I’ll try the latest 2025 Easy Rawlins book; maybe it is the character, Oliver, rather than Mosely, who is given to philosophy. But I doubt it.  Burdett’s books are (mostly) set in Bangkok, featuring Thai police detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep, and the one I have stopped reading in the middle is the most recent of those, “The Bangkok Asset”, 2015 (over 10 years old, but the latest in the series).

This is not a new phenomenon, as it has happened before with other authors, and I felt disappointed to let them go. Maybe the first books I stopped reading for this reason were the Dave Robichaux stories by James Lee Burke (89 years old). Also I found that re-reading the Travis McGee books by John MacDonald (died at 72 in 1986) was almost painful for the same reason. And even the many protagonists of British writer Dick Francis (d. 2010, 89) were not above extensive preaching. For me his opinions were even more objectionable, as they tended to be conservative and elitist, usually self-made successful men (always men) decrying those who were not as smart and hard-working as they, and the fact that society allowed them to nonetheless continue to live, if not thrive. I tend to like more criticism of those who do thrive, often handsomely, despite being neither particularly smart nor hard-working, but somewhere on the privileged-birth, corrupt-to-evil spectrum.

There are, of course, others who fall into this category  in this genre (in case anyone does not know, almost all crime/mystery/detective stories) and I am sure others. And there are many crime writers who do not have this particular characteristic. Agatha Christie (d 1976, 86) stories are often wordy and can be tedious, but not for this reason. The observations on the world of, say, Hercule Poirot, are terser.  Nero Wolfe, the detective written by Rex Stout (d 1975, 89) certainly has opinions and observations, including political views that I sometimes disagree with, but they are usually expressed in sentences, not pages. One example I like and often use is “This is a pleasant surprise, Archie. I would not have believed it. That of course is the advantage of being a pessimist; a pessimist gets nothing but pleasant surprises, an optimist nothing but unpleasant.” I am not always pessimistic, but more than some, and find comfort in this bon mot. Anyway, if not literally a mot it is two short sentences, not pages of worldview.

Indeed, Stout’s Wolfe books have another characteristic that I value in reading novels. Everything that happens on a page occurs after what happened on the previous page. Yes, they talk about past events, for example in reconstructing the evidence and describing the crime, but the live action is continuous, and there are not flashbacks or subplots to confuse simple minds like mine.

Obviously, some, many, people like subplots and flashbacks or even regularly alternating timelines. Even me, if it is well and not too confusingly done; one of my favorite novels (not a crime novel) is “Leonardo’s Bicycle” by Paco Ignacio Taibo II, which has about a half-dozen stories going on, but they alternate chapters and it is not incumbent upon one to understand each in order to follow the others. Also, of course, there are undoubtedly some who love the insertion of long philosophical text in the middle of their mystery stories, and think that this is one of the best things about MacDonald, or Burke, or Francis, or more recent Mosely and Burdett. After all, this piece is just my opinion.

And, while an old if not successful or celebrity author, it is my blog so I get to put it out there!

Rosa the Dog, and the Five levels of alertness

My dog Rosa is very alert and aware of what is going on in her environment. I assume that most of this is innate, genetic, a result of the DNA of whatever breeds she, of non-pure bloodlines (a good thing, to us) is comprised of. It also may be, in part, to her early life, spent on the streets of Willcox, AZ, where she was found with her puppies and brought to the Humane Society in Tucson, from which we adopted her several years ago. We walk at least once each day in the local park, which is a “natural resources park”, most of which is in its natural state, except for trails, and is popular with other dogs and their humans. Also has lots of wild fauna, including lizards, rabbits, birds (including lots of mourning doves and hawks, especially Cooper’s hawks) javelinas (collared peccaries) and the occasional bobcat. 

Rosa has roughly five levels of alertness (identified by me). Level 1 is the general awareness, turning her head, looking around for movement. It is her baseline, and I keep track of it to see if it moves to a higher level. The next, Level 2, means she spots something that holds her attention for at least a few seconds. It could be the movement of one of the ground animals (quail, lizard, squirrel, rabbit) that I often do not see, and quickly goes away. Level 3 means she spots something of significance, mainly a person or dog or more usually both together, that requires attention. I give it; sometimes we have to wait or move to avoid them, and sometimes it is an old friend with treats! Occasionally, her perception of the dog is that it is not benign. Although sometimes related to size and whether it is barking or pulling toward us, or whether the owner has decided that they do not need to obey the law and common sense and have a leash on their dog, I have yet to figure out the dog radar that lets them know that the potential threat level is up. We do avoid them as best as possible, and ask her to try to stand down. That is Level 4.

Level 5 is coyotes. That response is unmistakable; it is marked by sudden loud barking, hard pulling (which involves Rosa’s colleague, Molly) and significant strength to restrain them from (unwisely, usually) chasing after the coyotes. When she reaches Level 5, I know it right away and look for where the coyote is; often it has gone past us and is nonchalantly moving in whatever direction it was headed. Coyotes are not usually interested in approaching people or good-sized dogs (they might chase after and try to snap up a really little on if it is unguarded), although they too are much more vigilant and threatening if they have pups. The big problem for me is keeping the dogs under control. Once in a while I actually spot a coyote before they do, and can try to lead them away, but it is hard to be more on top of this than Rosa is.

Her alertness and reactions are different from Molly’s. They are similar to some other dogs we have had, though even more vigilant. She is a wonderful dog, but walking her in this environment requires awareness and attention.