Skip to main content

Oh My Doggy Deity

A dog's vocabulary is just a bit too narrow. I mean, there aren't too many ways you can say Woof! Woof! - there's the I need food now WOOF!; the get off my property, fierce, heckles-up WOOF!WOOF!; the you haven't forgotten me again Wooooof?; the pleeese take me for a walk, I'll be good Wuff, woof,woof!; and the low growly leave me alone I want to sleep Grrrru-woof!Basically all woof then.

What I would really like is a woof that expresses surprise - I know jumping almost out of my skin, leaping off my mat and dancing around a bit, kind of shows my surprise, but it's not very cool. In dog years I'm a teenager and Long-legged boy and his friends have this great thing they say at the beginning of most sentences. And it even has two meanings: "O.M.G." If they say it quickly, with their eyes wide, it's a bit like me leaping off my bed, but if they roll their eyes and say it slowly, "Ooowe- emmmm-geeee", it means they're soooo bored, or fed up, or both, and a grown up is probably saying something really annoying at the same time.

O.M.G. wouldn't really work for dogs, though. What about 'Oh my dogginess'? - no, that plus my swinging hips would be a bit too camp. Or, 'Oh my doggy deity', or O.M.D.D.? That might work. I don't know if us dogs have a deity - would we need proof that one exists? Or can we just happily go along like out two legged friends assuming that maybe he does, so maybe we'd better believe in him, or not, and maybe we can say O.M.G. or O.M.D.D. anyway because it sounds so cool.

I, of course can't actually say O.M.D.D. ... but I can think it. And the next time I woof, if I woof seven syllables then O.M.D.D. it is!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Colour, Delacroix, flochetage and why don't we all have a go at inventing words

Yes - it is a real word. Flochetage. Well, a real-ish word. One invented by the painter Delacroix, when he found the dictionary cupboard bare and required a word to describe his technique of layering different coloured paints, using lightly pulled brush strokes to create texture and pattern and thereby enhance his base-layer colours (... lost? - stick around, read on and all will become clear. Or perhaps muddier ...). Flochetage implies both stringiness and threadiness. Apparently. And it sounds good - in a filling-the-mouth-with-sound sort of a way. Try it ... flochetaaaage. Not that I speak French. So I am probably mis-pronouncing it. Nor am I an artist. So what do I know about painting techniques - except that I think this one works. What I do like is the concept - you invent a new technique in whatever it is you do, hunt around for the vocabulary to describe it, find the dictionary is lacking, so make up a word of your own and announce to the world what it means. Delacroix isn...

My beloved boy, how lucky I have been

It's an odd thing that when we are waiting for someone to die ... and I say someone here even though the one in question was a dog - but to us he had character and a place forever in our hearts and was more of a familiar someone than some of the people in our lives. So, I'll start again - it's an odd thing that when we are waiting for someone to die, our senses go into overdrive. We notice things that normally would be part of the background of our every day. We breathe more - or rather, we don't but what we do is notice our breathing more, as we watch his. We pause. We think. We listen to ourselves and our inner voices speak. Memories flood our dreams ... though sleep is fitful.  Why am I telling you this? ... ... we lost this beautiful boy today And in the hours before he went, I saw perfect spheres of dew on blades of grass - little orbs holding micro-images of our world; a bumble bee drunk on nectar, yellow-dusted with pollen, resting in a crocus; ten - yes, ten! ...

Walking, wondering and not walking at all

We all walk. I walk every day. I also lie. I don't walk every day, as in I don't take the dogs for a walk every day. Poor boys, in this season of tax returns and desperate seeking of extra work and working to pay the tax bill, they are the losers. Four-legged-friend was looking distinctly skinny in his hind legs, when I brushed his coat while he wolfed down his supper this evening (he tries to eat the brush if I take it near him at any other time, so meal times have become grooming times). Oddly, I lose out on the walking too, but this fails to have the same effect on my 'skinniness'... Anyway, we all walk. We walked on Christmas day - Littlest and I walked at the weekend - Slowly. Time to appreciate the trees. Time to encourage the smelly boys into the freezing water. Time for the sun to go down. Time to walk very, very slowly - Littlest's finger phone was engaged throughout in deep discussion with the zoo warden - da...