Comedy vs. Tragedy (Viewer Discrepancy is Advised)

There’s a great line in the Woody Allen movie “Crimes and Misdemeanors” delivered by Alan Alda, playing this pseudo intellectual who pontificates: Comedy is tragedy plus time. In other words, once you’ve stepped away from an originally perceived crisis and recognized the human inerrancies in interpretation, well, it’s a free-for-all for comedic material. After all, what are comedies but tragedies lightened up a bit for the sake of comic relief?

I lay all this out to share TJ’s story…A love story of sorts. His first love (if you call it that) …More like a 24 hour encounter with “Lilly” …someone he met online, thanks to his human’s FB page and messaging.

Lilly arrived yesterday somewhat excited, somewhat timid…but definitely in heat. In dog language, well…these moments have their signs. I had forewarned TJ…Even brushed out his coat the night before. He was new to this, so I, as his mother, was hoping to instill a few pointers, which were (as you might imagine) useless as far as these things go.

A tad bit agitated (perhaps by the drive;  more, I suspect, by having her owner nearby and watching) Lilly at first, was not so keen on TJ, though TJ was most intrigued by Lilly. To be safe, we put Rosey in the house, the post trauma of all this being somewhat too fresh in her own doggie psyche.

What I didn’t do, was inform my neighbors what was transpiring…(Call it a mental lapse. Call it “too many things on the agenda”) …One should alert her neighbors who care about strange sounds emanating across the driveways, when the playing field of your world changes characters.

(Note: this is where yesterday’s tragedy becomes today’s comedy.)

After making absolutely certain that everyone is ok and that Lilly wasn’t going to devour TJ, TJ opted to take his own sweet time doing what red blooded male Pyrs know to do.  Little pups, still in the pen, were ducking under decking and steering totally clear of the dance about to happen…I tell Lil’s owner I’ll be gone for a few hours to tackle end of day duties involving family and homeless and typical Monday night fare…I’m a solid 40 minutes away from home when I get…

The call.

My neighbor hears a dog in distress and races to check on everyone when she spots my vehicle gone. Hearing sounds of a dog in distress, she looks out in the pen, as she witnesses what she thinks is TJ, hooking up with his sister~ (who is, unbeknownst to her, inside the house with the A/C).

Being the compassionate, caring, animal-loving soul that she is, she goes for a bucket and unhooks the two dogs now hooked in successful union. (True, TJ is new to this, and Lilly is not exactly enjoying her first go-round, but the image I get when the call comes through is one of sheer panic. After all, there is nothing worse than thinking you’ve been entrusted to protect someone else’s baby who is howling in pain over the precise reason they brought her to TJ in the first place.)

A delicate subject to write about no doubt, I have cultivated a pat answer for those well meaning people who ask “May I bring my child out to pet goats and see pups?” (Answer: Do your kids know the facts of life? For they WILL by the time they leave, for farm life is rife with these sorts of things.)

Bottom line: with or without the bucket of water between our two dogs, I myself learned a bit more on this fine sunny day about birds and bees and dogs and hook ups in general.  (Suffice it to say, after school hook ups will never sound the same after this.)

The good news: TJ got better with practice. And Lilly got to go home with her person later today, sufficiently ready to start her own road to motherhood.

Rosey, meanwhile, spent her morning and afternoon outside the fence, watching closely, but not envying for one second the road she knew Lilly was in for.