As I stepped out the door into the brisk early morning darkness, the first thing I noticed as I trotted down off of the porch steps was the brightness of the stars that hung high in the moonless Idaho sky. Despite their best efforts, though, those thousands of stars didn’t come close to producing the light that reflected off of a single full moon. I was never really fond of forcing myself out of a warm bed to check heifers at 3 a.m., but the chore didn’t seem quite so burdensome under the light of a bright moon. Still, I appreciated the effort of those little stars.
As I was semi-lost in my semi-profound thoughts on celestial light, I was suddenly jerked back down to earth by a clanking beneath my feet as I stumbled over two previously undetected pots that seemed to be purposely placed directly in my path from the front steps to my pickup parked in the driveway. I held my composure and forced the cuss words on the tip of my tongue back to their box in the far corner of my consciousness. I was in the first days of calving season. I’d have plenty of use for those words in the coming weeks. I’d best save them for some real catastrophes. That didn’t stop me from wondering what in the world those pots were doing there. I didn’t recognize them, and they appeared to be of fairly high quality. Sometimes, in my wife’s absence, I’d prewash the pots and pans by allowing the dogs to lick them clean, but I’d never do it if she was home (which she was at the time). She doesn’t fully appreciate the soft-scrubbing capabilities of the canine tongue like I do, and I knew she didn’t put the pots in the yard. And so the question remained. What was this mystery cookware, and from whence did it come?
I didn’t give much thought to the matter throughout the day, but I was reminded of it again that evening when my wife questioned me about it when I dragged myself into the house for dinner as the sun was giving way to another moonless night. She had no more idea of the pots’ origin than I did, and to be honest, I think she was once again pondering the seasonal appearance of the senility, which seemed to afflict me each year as calving season wore on. At the very least, I think she believed I’d somehow made it home with the pots from my mother’s house and had ignored my duty to return them. A phone call to my mother, ever fastidious in the order of her own kitchen, eliminated that possibility. I was then tasked with the chore of finding the rightful owner of the mystery kitchenware. The stuff was of too high of a quality to simply be dog dishes.
Thankfully, my detective dexterity was not put to much of a test. A day or two later, our widow neighbor from half-a-mile down the road called with what she termed an odd question. She wondered if we had by chance come across a couple of her missing pots. She usually fed her cat on her back porch in a big, heavy old skillet but had, just this one time, set her good stainless steel pot out the door with some leftovers. She’d seen my dogs skulking around her place from time to time in the evenings. She’d even caught them cleaning up the cat dish. Mystery apparently solved.
Although they looked pretty shiny to me, my wife insisted we properly wash the pots. Though my dogs appeared to be fairly adept at thievery, despite the pots’ outward appearance of cleanliness, she doubted the ability of my mutts to adequately wash a dish. When I showed up at my neighbor’s door, she gleefully identified them as her own.
As much as I wanted to, I found it difficult to defend my dogs’ behavior. Wasn’t it enough for them to get a free meal? Why in the world would they want to bring a pot home? I guess it’s the canine equivalent of taking silverware from Denny’s or towels from Motel 6. I wanted to think they were well behaved and that they stayed out of trouble when I neglected to tie them up or make sure they were home. I knew they sometimes caroused about at night chasing down skunks and raccoons. That’s why I often left them loose. Otherwise, I probably wouldn’t have much of a flock of laying hens. Nevertheless, I couldn’t condone the pilfering of pots or terrorizing the neighbors’ cats. I accepted the blame for my unwitting part in the caper and told my good neighbor that I’d do my best to keep the canines under control.
It reminded me of some of the idiotic but mostly inane stunts pulled by my two youngest sons when they were teenaged wannabe rebels. It wasn’t until years after the fact that I realized much of their distaste for early morning chores was a result of their late-night shenanigans with their buddies in town. I’m still not sure how they managed to sneak out of the house and back in without my knowing it. I guess I should be thankful they were the ones sneaking in and not someone else with more nefarious motives. Most of their nonsense was fairly inane, and they’ve turned into impressive, functioning adults, in spite of the parenting deficiencies of the top side of their genealogy.
My experience through the years with half-trained canines and kids has taught me that in spite of, or maybe because of, my best efforts, things sometimes go awry. And the best option is to own up to our missteps. It’s impossible to get everything perfect. Still, that shouldn’t preclude us from trying. And even if my dogs or kids and grandkids aren’t perfect, they’ll never hear it from me.
