In a mood

"I want."

 Rosie is in a mood this morning. She's been owly the last couple of mornings; I wonder if she needs more sleep, or more coffee. I know that I do.

I think Angus sometimes gets on her nerves with his perkiness and his vivaciousness and his adorable misbehaving ways (I have, so far this morning, rescued two gloves, four boots and a dish towel from his jaws). He gets a few treats, a sing-song, "Drop it!" and he is free to prance off and go chew something else.

Rosie stalks around and glares. She knows he's doing wrong and there's not a thing she can do about it except watch him get rewarded with treats.

I wonder what gets into a dog, what affects its moods, because clearly they have them. Rosie stares at me from about a foot away and lets out a little moan from time to time and it is clear she wants something, isn't happy about some situation--the Angus situation, the food situation, the situation in the White House, I have no idea--and I can either endure it or try to decipher it.

Angus wakes up sweet and happy and playful and yet when I come home from work he is frenzied, jumping on me, clawing at my clothes, desperate for something--not liberation, apparently, because he doesn't want to go outside. Attention, maybe. But it's hard to pet a dog that is clawing at your sweater.

Sometimes I am overwhelmed by the responsibility of caring for another living creature--one that cannot talk and so communicates its needs through stares, actions, barks and moans. Sometimes they are easy to understand: Angus' 5 a.m. squeaks, for instance, have a clear meaning: Time to get up!

But sometimes it's a guessing game. (And sometimes that's a game I don't want to play.)

"I am adorable."

I'm not anthropomorphizing here; while dogs certainly have a range of emotions from joy to guilt to sadness I don't think they feel these things in the same way that we do, nor with the same range and complexity.

Rosie just walked into the kitchen and stared pointedly at the top of the refrigerator. Aha!  Angus's chew toy is up there, the bully stick he started and didn't finish. She knows it's there, and she wants it.

Sometimes emotions aren't all that complex. Sometimes they are simply desire.

Sorry, girl. Not gonna get it.