March 9, 2025 11:44 am
to jaru with unconditional love and joy
A KISS -Kettle Inspired Short Story
Adapted from Domino, Buster, Keisha and Spike
Domino [m] – O E Sheep Dog
Buster [m] – Cocker Spaniel
Keisha [f] and Spike [m] – Jack Russel
Mourning Longshadow
JaRu
It is such a nice day today…I think I’ll take a dog for a walk.
It would be fun… throwing and chasing chewy balls and sticks, darting around the ‘knee-high-to-me’ alfalfa. Sun and fun, in the lush-green, tall-grass meadows… ’Hilly Fields’ as it is colloquially named.
JaRu loves to frequently jump in the air above the swaying sea of green, to ensure his location. That’s his GPS!
I think that he gets lost in his dog world when he picks up the scent of other creatures, like rabbits, with head down, nose to the ground, following convoluted trails of intricate circles and zig-zags. I would like to view some of these hunt chases from above. I am sure that they must resemble or even be the cause of, or evidence of alien visitations…also known as … crop-circles, but I digress.
I have not been able to work this out – [because I don’t have the ability to ‘sniff out’ the scent trails myself] – if it’s the actual trail of scent that is followed, or a hap-hazard hunting technique that’s developed on the fly, but he does flush out a few rabbits and the occasional partridge, but never…. (so far)…. any little green men or women, from other, more exotic, green worldly pastures.
He has never ‘caught’ anything that I’m aware of, so I’m not sure that he would know what to do with ‘it’ once ‘it’ was caught…. probably let ‘it’ run free again, so the chase could continue, or so I would like to believe.
He was called Dodo, by the previous ‘owner’, but I felt that the name had ‘negative’ overtones, like the Dodo bird being extinct…so I named him JaRu, which is abbreviated from his breed label… Jack Russel.
I am not quite sure, if he actually ‘knows’ that ‘JaRu’ is his given name.. I think that my voice does illicit some attention, but not always immediate, mind you, he does seem to respond to more of the general tone.
Hey…good luck though, trying to call him back from the fields… uhmm..NOT until he’s tired and tuckered out, which can take an unknown amount of time.
I have been taught by JaRu, to be prepared though…. my agenda calendar is…let see….ahh…yes..its empty for the afternoon. That is the important ‘step one’.
OK clarification required….the all-important-necessary-step one to be aware of, before initiating the immediate intentions of ‘lets go walkies’.
Those words need only be thought of, and the tail wags the dog. Should I even look at my hiking boots and the leash appears at my feet. I’m talking ‘David Copperfield’ type of magic here! There just has to be a mental conduit that JaRu ‘taps’ into, because he knows before I do, that ‘walkies’ is only a waft-of-a-thought away….
Maybe it is ‘I’ that does the ‘tapping’, and he supplants the thoughts! Who knows!
On the way back from Hilly Fields, we’ll stop off at the village inn, for a ‘shandy’. I always order 2 ( half-pints), one for me, one for JaRu. We walk up-to the entrance, stop at the door, and he has taught himself to hop into the wicker-type shopping bag and hunker down – he really does know that he’s hiding!
He makes a bed of sorts, using a blanket and my rain jacket. I carry the basket, with him in it, and we sit in a high backed alcove, by the window. I know that alcohol ‘probably’ is not ‘good’ for him, I don’t think that he would ‘lap it up’ like he does, if he didn’t like it. But I do know that he gets drunk pretty quick, so I only ‘allow’ low ‘doses’ of consumption.
Later, the food game, at home, is so much fun to be involved with.
I make two hamburgers, complete with the toppings that I like. He knows the game!
I eat in the dining room, while JaRu is in the kitchen, separated by a closed door.
I cut his hamburger into six pieces and hide them around the room, he has to come and find them. He has a nose for hidden human food and always finds them!
When he’s full, half drunk, and satisfied the games are over, he retires to his basket, clutching his ‘amorous’ pillow…. there is a reason why it’s called his ‘amorous’ pillow! That is a confidence not disclosed here!
After my late afternoon snoozy-nap, I rouse with thoughts….
You know…I just gotta get myself a dog….maybe a ‘rescue’,
….a Jack Russel perhaps…
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