These dog days of summer are a perfect time for talking to a stone-deaf old dog.
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Prince Finski knows something is happening.
Our golden evenings are shortening, cool breezes have arrived, yellow vine leaves are tumbling to the verandah deck and men with leaf blowers are rushed off their Blundstoned feet.
But he can’t hear the leaf blowers or the psychopathic corellas or the buzz saws or pressure washers or screaming street basketballers or whipper snippers.
Only I am trapped in this mad aural world.
These days his royal dogness spends a lot of time dozing, either lying flat on the deck with legs outstretched or with his long snout resting on his paws as if he’s waiting for something.
Perhaps Godot, or more likely Dogot.
Occasionally his head lifts to sniff the breeze and I catch his leonine profile in a moment of stillness.
This is the perfect moment to fire a question at him.
“What is that chord at the start of Hard Day’s Night?
“Is it a Dm7sus4 or an Fadd9?
“And what do you think of a study by a mathematics professor which concluded that George Martin’s piano chord contributes as much to the resonance of the chord as does George Harrison’s guitar because the piano actually reverberates in the soundbox of John Lennon’s acoustic guitar and is picked up by his microphone to give the chord that distinctive ‘wavy’ quality? What do you think of that?”
Then his dogness turns and looks at me with those brown glaucomatous eyes, which say: “Does it really matter?”
He’s deaf and partially blind and anyway, he’s never really mastered the nuances of the English language.
But a look is enough for me.
Sometimes those eyes are incredulous or pleading or accusatory.
At other times they are searching.
There has always been this unspoken language, just as there have always been questions that get asked with no real expectation of an answer.
Why are things so?
Why am I here?
What is that magical chord and why is it so sweet?
This idea of the unspoken answer is at the centre of prayer.
The question matters more than the answer.
And so it is with old dogs.
His dogness is now so profoundly deaf I have to wake him with a gentle prod or risk startling him out of his dreams.
Sometimes he stands and stares blankly out into the bush wondering where the rushing world went.
Even a thunderstorm leaves him unmoved.
The peculiar thing is, I still talk to him.
I still ask him what he thinks about the madness of the world.
And I still rub his ears and tell him what a good boy he is and ask him if he wants to go for a walk, but it’s not until I put my hat on and dangle his lead that he responds.
Then he’s up and ready and shaking his body with the ripple of a wet puppy.
I’ve stopped taking him around Victoria Park Lake every day because at the half-way mark he’s lagging three paces behind and panting like a marathon runner.
So we just go for short walks around our semi-urban block.
The other evening was the end of a real summer dog day and there was an illusory quality to the world.
It could have been the Gewurtztraminer, but the light was softer, the tips of the long grass swayed and sparkled, the little blue wrens were bluer than yesterday.
As we strolled down the centre of our silent street I heard a soft murmur behind me.
I turned and saw a young mother with a pushchair enjoying the quiet evening too.
She was talking to her baby, not in the rising notes of baby language but in the sure and steady tones of an adult discussing the day and it’s delights.
She was asking questions but expecting no answers.
John Lewis is a former journalist at The News
Columnist