I do not have a dog, nor do I wish to have a dog.
It is not that I don't like dogs. As a youth, I had several dogs; I had cats, too.
Since we have been married, we have had a succession of cats. Both of us worked long, and often odd, hours. A dog would have demanded far more attention than we could give. Cats, on the other hand, regarded us as staff and occasional entertainment, often pretending they hadn't noticed we'd been gone. Their demands for affection, while single-minded (it's impossible to ignore a cat who doesn't wish to be ignored), are brief.
We are retired now, but when the last cat disappeared, we decided that we did not want to have another pet. At least not now. It is nice to simply close the door and leave home without boarding an animal.
As I am writing these words Raka is lying on floor of my study, regarding me with his sad brown eyes. Raka is definitely a dog. And he is living in my house (all of my dogs were outside pets) But he is not my dog. He belongs to our older son and his family.
How he came to be here is one of those long stories that is best told briefly. Our son, an Air Force officer, spent the past two years in South Korea. He moved on to a new assignment in England this summer. The family couldn't take Raka directly from South Korea to England without the dog spending six months in quarantine. If, however, Raka spent six months in the United States, he could go to England without being quarantined. So Raka came to the states to stay with our daughter-in-law's family. When our son's family came to stay at our house en route to England, Raka came with them. Somehow he never got back our daughter-in-law's folks, and when time came for the humans to go to England, Raka stayed here. He will be eligible to go to England sometime this fall, and I suppose whoever goes to visit England first will take him.
The family got the dog when they were stationed in Turkey, and they originally named him Raki after the Turkish national drink. No one seemed to be able to pronounce the name properly, so they changed the spelling to Raka.
Raka is a Vizsla, a Hungarian breed which Wikipedia describes as "elite sporting dogs and loyal companions." It goes on to say that "through the centuries the Vizsla has held a unique position for a sporting dog – that of household companion and family dog."
I don't know about the hunting part, but I can attest to Raka's qualities as a household companion. He is very much a people dog, and he likes to be where we are. When I go downstairs to have coffee early every morning, he follows to see whether I am doing anything interesting. When he decides that I'm not he goes back up and curls up in his bed in our bedroom. I go up and down the stairs about a million times a day, and each time Raka follows, although he is somewhat conflicted when one of us is upstairs and the other down. When I -- and he -- make one of my brief trips up and down, he looks at me with some disgust, as if to say, can't you just sit still for a minute?
Like most dogs, Raka likes to sit on the car seat and poke his head into the breeze, reveling in new smells and sights. When I pop out of the car for a minute, he is sitting behind the steering wheel when I come back.
All of this may sound as if I am leaning toward getting a dog.
I am not.
I do not have a dog, nor do I wish to have a dog.
But if I did want a dog, I would want him to be like Raka.
Contact the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com
