Yesterday I started a few days of taking care of a bulldog who would make anyone want to do some pet sitting. She is smart, funny and is an easy keeper. She also does her business almost on command - nice on a cold night. She makes me (and everyone who meets her) smile. But as special as she is, she is still a dog. She needs the same things that dogs have wanted since they joined their fate to man - shelter, food, her daily allotment of new scents and a little company.
Several hours earlier I was listening to a story on the news from a town in western Libya that was astonishing, at least to me. An NPR reporter was interviewing a 58 year old businessman on a cell phone hiding behind barricades in the town square, surrounded by opposition and government forces chaotically shifting back and forth. At one point a burst of machine gun fire broke out and he assured the reporter that it wasn't dangerous, it was opposition forces firing into the air to celebrate. A few minutes later you could hear tanks rumble by, and we waited while he figured out whether they were government tanks that might kill him or opposition forces that would protect him. These events were happening in real time, while I drove the car to the bank and the post office.
I could listen to this man surrounded by a battle in Libya as easily as I could find out who won the tickets to the hockey game in the talk show contest.
These are things that animals don't understand. Perhaps it is best that, if I did try to talk about it with the little bulldog, she'd just cock her head and wait for me to do something important like continue our walk.
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