.

A first-hand account (originally from a Salon.com message board circa 1999) of a woman whose two primitive-type dogs – a Basenji and a New Guinea Singing Dog – found an elk carcass, holed up inside it, and refused to leave it.

An assorted list of my favorite excerpts:

“It’s way too primal in my yard right now.”

“If ever they come out, catching them and returning them to a condition where they can be considered house pets is not going to be, shall we say, pleasant.”

“What if you stand the ribcage on end, wait for them to look out, grab them when they do and pull?” “They wedge their toes between the ribs. And scream.”

“Sometimes, sleep is a mistake, no matter how tired you are. And especially if you are very very tired, and some of your dogs are outside, inside some elks.”

in a follow-up story about a basenji who got his head stuck inside a Thanksgiving turkey, while his two basenji friends gnawed on the outside. “I sent it in to one of the dog magazines but they did not print it, they said it was ‘too contrived.’ Obviously they did not know anything about basenjis.’

“My mother has gotten multiple copies [of this story] from friends, asking if my dogs are *really* that out of control.”

like apparently my roommates don’t understand that feeling that sits at the juncture of “secondhand embarrassment”, “exasperated”, and “turned on” 9_9

which i admit is kind of a weird one

but also i’ve met people who have difficulty understanding, for example, the idea of being really happy and really sad at the same time??, or the idea that there’s a kind of sad you could like being, or the idea that you could really love something or someone and also make fun of it/them (partly as an expression of affection, not a contradiction or attempt to mask affection or anything), or the idea of, like….making something happen on purpose so you don’t have to be afraid that it’s going to happen anymore? or the idea of being aggressively dismissive of or flippant about something because it frightens you terribly, which is related. or the point of light thing, the thing where nearly everyone else is living like a ray of light, going in some direction, and you’re just this point, this dot on the wall, that’s your whole existence, and as long as you don’t look to any side of you that’s just fine; there’s nothing to any side of you but rays of light streaking by on their way to whatever, and you can’t worry about certain things or really invest much care or thought or understanding in them at all because they just don’t exist on your dot, they’re far off and elsewhere, but there’s this overpowering constant sense of i guess yearning or saudade too, wanting to go to those places you can’t even really visit. the happiness of being at the bottom of a well.