"His mother decides that she wants a dog. Alsations are the best--the most intelligent, the most faithful--but they cannot find an Alsatian for sale. So they settle for a pup half doberman, half something else. He insists on being the one to name it. He would like to call it Borzoi because he wants it to be a Russian dog, but since it is not in fact a borzoi he calls it Cossack. No one understands. People think the name is kos-sak, food-bag, which they find funny.Cossack turns out to be a confused, undisciplined dog, roaming about the neighbourhood, trampling gardens, chasing chickens. One day the dog follows him all the way to school. Nothing he does will put him off: when he shouts and throws stones the dog drops his ears, puts his tail between his legs, slinks away; but as soon as he gets back on his bicycle the dog lopes after him again. In the end he has to drag him home by the collar, pushing his bicycle with the other hand. He gets home in a rage and refuses to go back to school, since he is late.
When your dog can no longer jump at all (aged hips and arthritis in the hind legs) and when your real concern is not really with the rabbits or deer that might destroy your garden, the chicken wire need not be more than 24" tall. You do not want your marigolds, watermelons, peppers, tomatoes, lettuce, spinach, broccoli, beans, scallions, cantaloupe, or cucumbers destroyed, nor do you want to have to send your beloved almost 11 year old dog to an early grave, so you spend a few extra dollars on chicken wire and stakes to prevent unnecessary deaths. As an expense, it seems well worth it to you.
Two dogs—both medium sized mutts of indistinct breed—live in a cage behind the house a couple backyards over. They are too far away for me to read the expressions on their faces when Morgan and I play ball in our spacious fenced backyard, but they sit on the roofs of their homes inside their kennel and stare our direction. Sometimes they bark.
I’ve never seen anyone take them on a walk. I’ve never seen anyone throw them a ball.
I’ve only ever seen them in that kennel.
I don’t understand why anyone would want to keep a dog—never mind two dogs—penned up 24-7 in the far reaches of their backyard. The dogs apparently are not starving, for they have been there well over a year now. But surely they must be depressed. All that open space, so many smells, so many free creatures roaming the woods and trees and yards just outside their pen, yet there they sit.
When all creation is one day redeemed and made new, I have a strong suspicion that those two dogs will be there, too, and that there will be no more cages, and that they will run free, and not grow weary.
My prayer is that I would be as heartbroken for my caged human neighbors, whose lives must be no less tragic.
