Assez vu.  The vision has been seen in each of its variations. Assez eu.  Smells of the parks, in the evening and in the sun and always. Assez connu.  Life halts.  O scents.  O visions. Departure in the sounds beyond the midnight traffic on the other side of that river,

This is the winter when the snow covers the tops of the park benches.  This is the winter when the fences are buried in snow.  The humanoids build elaborate pyramids alongside their driveways, but the base of the pyramid is no longer sufficient for the angle of repose, and the snow tumbles back down onto the driveway again.

I have seen the future and its name is Cleo.  Remarkable dog.  There we were one night, cavorting in the blizzard, sniffing as the snow drifted along the river bank.  Suddenly something catches Cleo’s attention. Couldn’t have been a squirrel.  Those faint-hearted beasties emerge from their nests neither at night nor in blizzard. But Cleo goes racing off with all her border collie instincts, straight for the willow tree.

The Pup, Sport and Sunshine ran ahead looking for what they regarded as the perfect tree.  Their criteria are different than yours or mine would be.  Apparently it’s important that the tree stand straight, and that its branches be evenly distributed on all sides.  They don’t seem to care one iota whether there are interesting smells on the lower branches. But find the right tree they did.  Alpha cut it down with a little hand saw while The Mom took pictures as we proudly dragged it back to the van.  Then we had the ceremonies of bringing the tree into the Kemptville house, setting it up in those plastic containers, and festooning it with all kinds of baubles. 

And now we have extended our empire to this little town.  Lily and I leave our scents on the lawns along Clothier Street, from the church and the school in one direction to the pub in the other. Yes, we have more and more ground to cover and to keep free from cats and squirrels.  We expand our living space.  But we have no territorial ambitions in Poland.

Lily and I didn’t know what to make of it.  For weeks everything was in turmoil as more and more boxes were packed and piled in the dining room, then in the hallway, then in the kitchen.  For one day we all went through absolute frenzy, as strangers came to our home, left the door ajar, and carried all the boxes out to a waiting truck. 

Once a dog has reached a certain seniority, she should be spared the indignity of yanked leashes.  I have earned my right to take time to smell the hydrants. And as I proceed with my more decorous pace, it often occurs to me that we miss much as we hurry bee-like from place to place.  Often if we stop to observe from a different angle, familiar sights look startlingly new.

Meanwhile, the chip that Lily carries on her whither continues to provoke problems.  Out at the cottage, the ramifications can be quite painful, she’s found. I could have told her, but she doesn’t listen to me.  I have taught her to stalk minnows in the shallow waters of the lake, and we know that the minnows will not strike back. But I could also tell her, from my own experience, to stay away from the porcupines. 

Dear Editor, As newcomers to the neighbourhood, we were disappointed to read the column entitled the Politics of Dogs.  As the owners of the dogs referred to in the article, we do not understand why the OSCAR would print a one-sided, mean-spirited account of what was a very unpleasant incident. 

Lily doesn’t refer to them as the lap dogs.  She calls them the floor mops, because they are the same size and shade of white.  In Windsor Park, they are rarely allowed to walk when there are other dogs around:  their alphas hold them in their arms. I don’t know what it is that these two dogs have said to Lily, but they’ve certainly set a burr under her tail.

There are some who believe that extra-terrestrial beings leave their marks in the wheat fields of remote places.  There are some who believe visitors from another planet wrote the hieroglyphs on the monuments of ancient civilizations. And there may be those who believe that space creatures left the white marks in the middle of the field at Windsor Park.

Ah spring! And yet, I seem to recall that we had that snowfall a few weeks back.  Yes, I distinctly remember it now.  Dumped on us overnight and into the next day.  It’s gone now.  Who cares? But with spring comes the playoff season, and Lily and I are eager to take on Alpha at our favourite game.  All winter, Lily and I honed our skills at fooling Alpha.  We have perfected our “split the defence” strategy, and we are on a winning streak. 

A family had two pets.  The cat said to the Alpha, “Hey, you!  Give me all the pet food that is my share,” and the Alpha divided all the food between the cat and the dog.  And not that many days later, the cat gathered everything and went on a journey to a distant neighbourhood. 

The surface is smooth – much more smooth than the surface of the Windsor rink where Alpha and his friends gather late at night to flood with a long hose.  There are scarcely any skate marks cut into the ice – and certainly not the kind of gouges and scrapes you get when they play hockey on Windsor rink. Instead, the tracks of the skates are delicate and small.  A child has skated here – a very young child learning to love the winter as much as we do.

We’ve been gathering at Irene’s Newfoundland Pub to mark the passing of an era.  Well, we don’t exactly mark it the way you and I would.  We mark it in the way humanoids do, by drinking together.  Our two species, after all, have a fixation on which end of the continuum is appropriate to mark a special occasion.

The boards for the hockey rink have been up for many weeks, but the children are still playing basketball on the asphalt.  Alpha wonders when he’s going to have to start flooding the ice; his friends tell him it’s more likely he’ll be called upon to cut the grass. 

And so for the last few days when Alpha and I go to the park, I’ve been looking up.  I’ve been trying to understand the system of boughs and branches the way that a squirrel would understand, and it seems to me there is a big distinction among different kinds of trees.  But the biggest distinction would not be between this species of tree and another.  For a squirrel, the biggest distinction is whether a tree is solitary, or it grows close enough to another so that two solitudes protect and border and greet each other.

First the trucks came in to deposit big heaps of topsoil.  Then dozers came to scrape away the gravel.  Somewhere around that time, the fences were removed.  Then other vehicles spread the topsoil so that it was ready to receive the autumn rains and turn into our mud baths. I’m not sure that the humanoids are smart enough to leave a good thing alone, though.  I hear Alpha tell the Pup that eventually they will put grass there.  Something about turning a baseball diamond into a soccer pitch. 

And in addition to new routines and newcomers, the season has been remarkably disruptive.  For several days, things fell apart, the centre could not hold, and mere anarchy was loosed upon the world.  The inner sanctums itself was disrupted when I was unceremoniously turfed out of my bed, which was piled in the living room with every other stick of furniture from the kitchen, sun room and dining room. And why?  So humanoids could destroy the hard work of many years on our hardwood.  After all our scratching and scraping with our sharp doggie nails, we had finally reached the stage where the floors in this home looked and smelled very natural. We had removed the uncomely sheen.

So imagine my astonishment, then, when our recently-expanded family actually welcomed rodents into the house.  Gerbils, the kids called them.  Sort of like white mice with tufted tails. But instead of laying traps with peanut butter, the humanoids petted and fawned over them – gave them more attention than they even gave to such a noble and deserving animal as a dog.