Where We Live: What the dogs know

I have a hammock somewhere, upstairs in one of the boxes I guess. Even if I hung the hammock, I'm not sure I could let myself relax in it. After eight years of renovating the old farm, there are still projects everywhere you look.

I know my priorities are a little, well, skewed. Half of the upstairs should be gutted, insulated and rewired but I haven't gotten to that. But fields are shaping up - my friend T.J. and I have a combined 70 hours of chain-saw work just this past winter.

I like sleeping 9 to 5 and getting up before daybreak, since I require two cups of coffee before I know my name. For the past 14 years of my life I've been accompanied by Josey Wales, a German shorthaired pointer.

In fact, it's mostly his fault that I bought the financial abyss that is this farm. I wanted him to have more space to run, so much so that I overlooked many glaringly obvious failings of the farm. And the more time I shared with Josey, the more I became certain that I needed another German shorthaired pointer. And another. And well, another. OK, five.

At 14, Josey doesn't walk so well now. Sometimes I have to touch his shoulder to wake him, and his eyes are cloudy blue.

I remember one day, during the first summer on the farm, I labored in the gnat-laden sun on a series of failed chores. The big lawn mower wouldn't start; the little push mower wouldn't start. When I tried to remove a section of a sliding-glass door, which the former house owners had installed as a fixed horizontal window, the glass broke into a zillion tiny pieces.

When I turned on the wet-dry vacuum to clean up the glass, I instead blew the vaccuum's contents (dust, dirt, Sheetrock dust) out into the house.

I decided I needed a walk. Josey and I took a stroll through the fields and woods, but I couldn't shake my frustration. I trudged along without noticing my surroundings, until I heard Josey whine. He was on point. Wow, I thought, a woodcock? It had to be something special, he was wound so tight, his body quivering.

That was the first time he pointed the mating box turtles; he pointed the same two turtles again four years later. I remember seeing the turtles and then looking back at Josey. If it would have been possible for him to belly-laugh and slap his leg, he would have. His eyes shone with delight at my reaction.

I smiled all the way back to the house. Later, after dark, as I downed still more coffee and typed industriously away on the computer keyboard, Josey scratched at the front door. At that time, I never used the front door. The frame for the deck was there, but the deck wasn't completed. Instead, the area was patch-worked with scrap pieces of plywood.

I thought Josey might have to go out and opened the porch door, but he again went to the front door. I opened it and let him out onto the future deck. He stepped carefully and chose a spot to sit. I left the door open so I could keep an eye on him. From time to time he looked back at me, with his head practically upside down, his jowls and ears hanging comically.

He kept doing that - looking ahead and then looking upside down back at me. Soon I joined him to see what was so intriguing and found it was all the night sights and sounds, the stars and the little frogs. It was so peaceful out there, so I sat down and let my legs dangle, with one arm around Josey's shoulders.

Josey's shoulders are much thinner now. On a warm spring dusk we like to sit together on the porch deck. I don't think he can see or hear at all now, but I whisper in his ear anyway how much I love him. I listen to the night and wonder at the stars, and he leans against me like he'll always remember it too.