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Valley City, North Dakota |
Friday, September 5, 2008 |
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Prairie Lite... Man's most forgiving friend |
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Thursday, 26 July 2007 |
I like to pretend I’m not overly sentimental, or prone to surprise. If you ever had any doubts, trust me: everything’s been done. The Preacher in Ecclesiastes was right – there is nothing new under the sun. Theoretically, nothing should surprise someone my age.
But, shucks, I’ll admit I’m sentimental. Sometimes it catches me unaware and never more so than when I watched the movie, “Eight Below.”
Maybe you saw it. The movie is based on what happened when a 1958 Japanese expedition to Antarctica was forced to abandon its sled dogs. When the Japanese returned months later, a few of their dogs were still alive, having survived what are arguably the worst conditions on earth. It was far worse than a North Dakota winter, stranded with only a DVD of “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure,” or maybe a tape of “I’ve been to the desert on a horse with no name,” on continuous loop.
You get the drift. The 2006 Disney version updates the story to 1993, when a guide at a U.S. research base is forced to leave behind his eight dogs, with no prospect of rescue until Antarctica’s long winter lifts.
“Eight Below” got solid reviews. I watched it recently.
Let me state here I don’t like the cold. I thought “Dr. Zhivago” was a sappy movie because I couldn’t wrap my mind around the idea of people too stupid to move to a warmer climate, for crying out loud (I was in southern California at the time).
I don’t like dogs, either. Big ones scare me and little ones look mostly ridiculous, especially when they think they’re big dogs. This means you, all pugs and poms.
I am wary of those Husky, Samoyed, Malamute types. I spent a summer in the Aleutian Islands once, and never got over the creep factor of looking into the face of a dog with eyes bluer than mine. Tain’t right.
Carla doesn’t like snow much. She prefers cats to dogs. She claims she’s not sentimental. Then why on earth was I sobbing like a fool through major portions of “Eight Below”? Maybe it’s because there’s something heart wrenching about the trust animals and children have in grownups. Maybe they just naturally assume that adults are, well, more adult.
The guide, thinking the research team would make one more flight to save the dogs before winter clamped down, had staked them out as usual, and his Huskies trusted him. They hunkered down to wait. And wait. Old Jack died. The others finally broke free of their chains and somehow survived through a long, dark winter. What happened to them during that time is purely speculative. The filmmakers were plausible in their suppositions, so it worked. The scenes flashed back and forth between the dogs as they soldiered on, and their guide in the U.S., anguished because he could not keep his promise.
I cried. I finally abandoned any pretense of dignity and just wallowed in my movie misery, worried about the dogs who – in their master’s mind – had been betrayed.
There is one thing I like about dogs. In fact, it never ceases to amaze me. When the rescuers finally returned to Antarctica, there were the six surviving dogs, so gosh-darned grateful to see their frail, fallible humans, and bearing not a single grudge.
Cats would never have done that. Any feline worth its catnip might have slooowly approached the rescuers, but it would have elaborately turned its back and sulked for another six months, give or take a year or two.
Not dogs. Not for nothing is there that prayer: “Lord, please make me the kind of person my dog thinks I am.”
My sister, Wanda, and her husband, Bob, were adopted by a mutt they named Fox. He’s loyal. I’m sure it’s old hat to my sis, but I’m always amused by Fox’s eagerness when his humans return. His cup runneth over. He’s in ecstasy, whether they’ve returned from two weeks in Egypt or down to the 7-11 for a Slurpee. If Fox could blow a trumpet, he would. That’s fine for some. I know my cat – the late, great Yoda – loved me. Recently, scientists have discovered that cats “kiss” by looking at their humans and slowly opening and closing their eyes. I wish I’d known that when Yoda was alive. I’d have had the good sense to repeat the gesture when Yoda did that to me.
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Last Updated ( Thursday, 20 December 2007 )
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