Letting sleeping dogs lie

Sunday, 19 January 2025

A sleeping dog is the most peaceful thing in the world.

Mike White is a senior writer and columnist for the Sunday Star-Times.

OPINION: Right now, the dog is asleep.

He’s outside, between the barbecue and a skeletal chair that has three functional legs and a lost cushion.

He’s on his beanbag, in the shade of a wooden fence that sparrows dance on, and wasps dance around.

At this time of year, shade is important to the dog.

In midwinter, he’d spy the first hint of sun slanting through the window and stand where it fell on the kitchen floor, stare at me, and demand his sheepskin be brought into the light.

Every 20 minutes, he demanded it be shifted to accommodate the sun’s rotation.

When it had fully risen over the nearby hill, in all its weak glory, he’d demand his beanbag be shifted outside for him to enjoy whatever warmth there was.

So passed winter.

But now summer has come, the sun is a ferocity that needs escaping from.

An enemy of black dogs, a 12-hour menace stayed only by breeze, or shade.

So, right now, the dog is hiding from it. If it can’t see him, he’ll be OK.

For once, the dog has done a good job of lying on his beanbag.

The beanbag is not small, not an insignificant target when he ambles over to it, intent on a nap.

But he seems incapable of centring himself on it so that every bit, from nose to tail, is comfortably supported.

The dog is absolutely rubbish at lying on his beanbag.

Invariably, his head will hang over the end, his neck, curved around a hump, snoring an inevitable consequence.

My partner coos how cute his snoring is.

Not like mine, I’ve been reminded.

“Among the billions of men alive,” I suggest, “you’re so lucky I hardly ever snore.”

After a long walk, a long sleep comes naturally and instantly.

She says nothing, looks at the dog, metronomically honking on his bed. “Sooooo cuuuuute!”

But positioned perfectly, as he is now, it’s a picture of peace.

I guess it’s the same mesmerising nothingness that sees people entranced by YouTube videos of someone’s fire, somewhere in Norway.

Often, I’ll glance over at him and think, is there anything more wonderful than watching a sleeping dog? I can’t think of it.

Occasionally, the dog will lift his head, look over at me, and think: “God, there he is, still banging away at that laptop. What a waste of a life.”

The dog, of course, does not have just one bed. There are three.

There’s the beanbag; there’s the designer one with a faux sheepskin which lives by the double doors, meaning nobody can use the chairs on that side of the kitchen table when he’s there; and then there’s a real sheepskin, which sits in front of the log-burner.

He used to have another one, a cane basket which he filled a corner of when a puppy, but then struggled to stretch out in as he grew, his head eventually drooping over the uncomfortable edge, with snores an octave higher.

When he was young, the dog, left, could fit in his cane basket with his best mate, Hobbs.

It used to be his safe place when scared: of thunder, of the hose, of bastard fireworks.

His hearing is diminished now, its waning acuity matching his reduced agility. But it’s mercifully spared him the terrors of Guy Fawkes bangs and booms.

It’s also mercifully spared couriers from the greeting he’d routinely give them. Now they can arrive, leave the van’s engine idling, drop a box on the front doorstep, sing out a cheery hello, and be back down the drive with the snoring dog none the wiser.

Old dogs sleep a lot. Far, far more than they’re awake. Hour, after hour, after peaceful hour.

But there are brief moments when that peace is trifled with, when dreams arrive.

And therein is an eternal question: what do dogs dream about?

Endless supposed experts have miraculously got inside the heads of sleeping dogs, and tell us they’re dreaming of their daily doings, neighbourhood interactions, their routine.

Well, given the capacity for human dreams to be absolutely off-the-planet bollocks and bonkers, I tend to think we do dogs a disservice in dumbing down their dreams.

If you saw the dog in full REM, legs pumping, paws flipping, whiskers twitching like tussock in a norwester, you’d know his dreams were transcending life as he knows it.

“Rabbits,” a mate used to say. “They’re chasing rabbits.”

Unlikely. The dog has never chased a rabbit in his life. He’s not going to suddenly start thinking of them as juicy villains when he’s asleep, I figure.

Cats, however, are a different thing altogether. Cats he does chase.

Sleeping the sleep of a thousand martyrs - or one old dog.

So it’s not a stretch to think his enthusiastic dreams might just be a thrilling pursuit of the neighbours’ black and white thing that taunts him from the fence, where it sits smug and safe.

The dog is 15.

Right now, he’s asleep, again.

He’s earnt every blissful, restful moment.

It’s hard not to keep staring at him.

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