Good Dogs Don't Make It to the South Pole

by Hans-Olav Thyvold

  I’m making that mistake again. Reflecting and planning for something other than what actually is. I have to learn to live in the here and now with my whole self and all that I am. I am a dog! I know that. But my instincts may have been slightly dulled by a life with an eternally full food bowl. The house dog’s misfortune, but it wouldn’t be to the dog’s advantage if he knew about these dangers as he wagged and said yes to everything that appeared in the bowl. ‘If the dog is happy, everything is fine.’ Ignorance is bliss, they say. That’s the Animal’s privilege. The Human’s privilege is called knowledge.

  I can no longer trust my tired old snout, but I swear we’re headed for the woods.

  I don’t know if we’re on our way into the same hunting grounds as the last time we entered the woods but, as I said, it smells familiar, so the question is only of geographical interest, and geography is of no interest in a world where north is south and up is down.

  My impulses and instincts beg me to jump, scurry, and run out into the bushes, dance and bark at the top of my lungs

  We’re back. The eternal, unbeatable symbiosis of man and dog. Our collective efforts, talents, and tools make us a formidable enemy for all the world’s creatures. I have the instincts, the senses, the endurance, and the energy. He has opposable thumbs.

  Awake and alert, but gentle as if I were walking in the park with Mrs. Thorkildsen, I slowly plod along the path. My best foot forward, my tail behind me.

  Life is good.

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to:

  Halfdan W. Freihow, Chandler Crawford, Lasse Kolsrud, J. Basil Cowlishaw, Øyvind Pharo, Lars Dahlin and Ledig House/OMI International Arts Centre in Ghent, New York.

  Quotations are from:

  Laurie Anderson, Heart of a Dog, Canal Street Communications, 2015. Used with kind permission. All rights reserved.

  Roald Amundsen, Sydpolen (The South Pole), Jacob Dybwads Forlag, 1912.

  Irene McIntyre Kristensen, ‘Letter to the Editor’, Dagsavisen, 2016. Reprinted with the author’s kind permission.