Super Bowl could use canine perspective

It can really be an eye opener, or perhaps an ear opener, to listen to conversations between your pets — in this case, dogs.

Their perspective on life is sometimes refreshing, sometimes amusing and never what you might expect it to be. As an example, I overheard this conversation in the backyard earlier this week.

Kassidy, our diminutive and high strung Jack Russell (or whatever:) “Oh, oh, oh, Aunt Bonnie! Aunt Bonnie, what is a Super Bowl? Why are all the two-legged ones getting so excited about it? Why do these teams of animals play in it? Oh yeh, and what do they eat in that bowl?”

Bonnie, in her stolid West Highland terrier way, was patrolling the back fence of the yard, keeping the forces of evil at bay. She had to stop and think about it for a minute. Scratching her fluffy white mustache against a tree, she raised an eyebrow to respond. “Well, lassie, I don’t rrrightly know aboot it. Nay all the humans are excited; our wee Jason could care less, for example.”

“Oooh, oooh!” Kassidy jumped four feet or so in the air. “And what about the food? What do they eat ?"

Bonnie laughed her craggy North Sea accented laugh.” It’s nay a food bowl teeny one. The teams be not animals either; Seahawks is just a name. It be some other kinda bowl, a bowl they put thousands of two- leggeds in.”

“What do they do? What do they do?” Kassidy shivered with excitement, turning her ears like radar screens. “I like games. What do they do? Can we play, Aunt Bonnie? Can we play Superbowl?”

Bonnie sighed a raspy sigh, and looked to the night sky as she often does when Kassidy puzzles her. “ I don’na think we’d like it, wee girl. They acquire a ball but it’s shaped like an egg and far too large to get your mouth around. Then they struggle for control of the ball, like we do when we play ball, but it be very tightly organized and much of the fun be overwhelmed by rules."

Kassidy chased her own tail, distracted as usual. Then she stopped. “Oh, and do the thousands of humans all chase the ball? Is that why they call it super? Tell me, tell me.”

Bonnie pulled a goathead sticker out of her paw fur. “Nope, the most of them just sit and watch. That’s the odd part.

Them sits and watches and many a more of them watches on television, like us watches the Westminster Dog Trial, and the men what plays the game....”

“They what? They what? Tell me, Aunt Bonnie!”

“Well, these two - leggeds are bigger than Rottweilers, bigger than Mastiffs even, and some run like Greyhounds. So nay everyone can play, you see.”

Kassidy looked confused. “Is that why the bearded Clyde is wearing black and gold, Aunt Bonnie? Is that why? Huh ?”

Bonnie shook her head. “They are a strange lot, wee girl, a strange lot. If we didn’t take care of them, I dunno how they’d survive.”

Clyde Davis is pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Portales and an instructor at Eastern New Mexico University. He can be contacted at:

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