The Subtle Art of Fang’s Way

JK left early last Thursday morning. Before they drove away, I knew it was bad, bad news regarding our part in their busy-ness. No matter if I laid on J’s foot, or blocked K’s way in the upstairs hall, or nudged them toward their narcoloungers with my nose, they just patted me or said Excuse me Maxie and rolled those vile little bags out to the car and put them in the back, which is where Buzz and I would normally ride.  I hate the sound of those rolling wheels, so I growled at them and tried to herd them away from the car. There was no room for us. No leashes packed. No dishes or food by the bags.  I got so depressed.  Buzz just went and laid in his bed, which he said stunk to high heaven of Tide and Bounce.  J goes on a cleaning tangent and Buzz says he has to pay the price with a smelly bed.

So they left. And we were left here. Macy came over every day with her lady and the smaller humans, and they fed us and we had a really good time, but then they would leave and back we went to just moping around wishing JK would come back.  Macy and her family are such good neighbors!!!

Buzz says not all neighbors are good.  To keep our minds off the atmosphere during a storm Saturday night, he told me about these neighbors he had in Michigan, a couple he says he will call Barls and Charbara. 

“The young sibs (the other humans who used to live with JK) vowed that the gardens this Charbara woman tended were shaped like chalk outlines of dead bodies. The daisies?  Probably a stab victim.  The snapdragons? Arsenic eater, maybe rat poison.” Buzz didn’t know for sure.  “But it could have been much worse. There were no dog outlines that I know of, but I did see a spotted grassy section that looked kinda like a Dalmatian.”  I was horrified.

Buzz says Barls and Charbara called him EDDIE through clenched teeth, if they spoke to him at all, and they were very, very mean. “Keep EDDIE off our property!!! You Montana people must be stupid!”  Spittle flying.  JK would be very careful to observe the rules because they didn’t want Barls and Charbara to have a JRT-shaped radish patch. 

It was a really scary story.  Buzz says he wasn’t scared of them but that they had very negative vibes. I know a little about negative vibes but I’ve never met anyone like that. He says they deserved every mole, snake and mouse that scooted over to their lawn to avoid his lightning-fast jaws.

Someone told J to put a mirror on their garage so it would reflect the badness and nasty energy back at Barls and Charbara’s house.  Buzz said it was called Feng Shui. JK laughed at that and never did put up the mirror, and then wouldn’t you know it,  Barls and Charbara put up a huge wood fence, but only on the length of property line they shared with JK. It was very ugly and J said it looked like a gigantic middle finger extended their way. Whatever that means.  But it had its good points. JK and the sibs were happy not to see the bad energy and the dead body gardens anymore. 

“Wait, go back.” I said to Buzz.   “What’s that called again?”

“Feng Shui, you mean?” Buzz said. “It’s about balancing energy to maximize space for calm and peacefulness. Like for instance my bed, when I get the Tide and Bounce smells out, and get the camo comforter up against the northwest corner of my bed… exactly right for a pillow.”

He dug around and scratched at the camo comforter, balling it up into a big wad. “See? It’s Feng Shuied.  Someday you’ll maybe get it a little. Most dogs do. Not as much as JRT’s, but they do to some degree.” He got a braggy runny nose and sniffed a couple times. That always happens when he talks JRT. Then he curled up against his camo pillow and dozed off.  The thunder was quieting. Man, I missed JK.

And Buzz was wrong. I know all about Fang’s Way.  I was born knowing.  The other half of me, the non-JRT half, is Border collie.  Listen to this:  The Border collie is a medium-sized dog that is very athletic, highly intelligent and has plenty of energy. This breed is extremely driven, loyal and hard-working.

Energy!  That’s me.  Not to brag, but that is me.

For instance, if my toys are all around the house after I play with them, I will go find them and get them organized.  I sometimes carry two or three of them at once, then put them in little pile.  I have to use my fangs to carry them (and I always have plenty of good energy). See? Fang’s Way. 

I’m good at herding, too, which is another form of Fang’s Way.  It’s a BC thing; we are just trying to do the job we were given before birth, which is to keep the entire world in harmonious order. That’s why we have so much energy. It’s not a job for every type of dog.  I learned early on that nipping at JK wasn’t exactly going to work, but just about every day they give me some reason to push at their legs with my nose. It can get frustrating.  Maxwell, I don’t want to go toward the garage where your ball is, I need to go to my office. Or Maxie, you still have an hour before dinnertime, there is no reason to push me over to the food cabinet. It’s exhausting work but I’m up for it. Buzz depends on me too, to herd him, but he doesn’t appreciate it all the time.  He says he did just fine before I came along, without a nose shoved into his ribcage. Then he sniffs.

Sometimes on our walks, if I ask enough times, JK will let me hold Buzz’s leash.  Oh, man, I LOVE holding Buzz’s leash.

 

Then there’s a whole other side to Fang’s Way that we Border collie types know about, and some other dogs do, too. We have to let the bad energy out of things.  I wish JK understood this better.  Instead, J will say something like, Well, that’s $24.99 we’ll never get back. Doesn’t she realize -- all that bad energy was stuck in there, and needed to get let out?  Bad energy pretty much only happens now when JK are gone, but when I was younger, things like flipflops and socks contained it too, and I had to take care of them right away.  Here's a picture of Sib C and me with her flipflop all drained of its negative energy.

Four of my beds have held really bad energy because they were downstairs.  My bed needs to be placed near JK’s bedroom upstairs, so I can herd JK if they get up in the night.  JK finally figured it out, and now my bed, in their room, is full of good energy.  And any of the bad stuff just leaks out of that one little hole in the bed. Just a little one. 

Cushions and pillows can be another source of bad energy, but only if they have left their designated spots.  Say the wind blows a cushion off a chair. What good is that cushion now? It’s not doing its job.  So I take care of it for JK.  You would think they’d be more excited about my dedication to their well-being. 

My first attack on a negative energy cushion

Once two entire huge sofa cushions were just lying on the deck.  J had removed them because of mildew. Mildew!!  Talk about negative energy! It was so hard to drag those heavy, wet things off the deck, down the stairs, and onto the lawn.  Upholstery fabric is one of the toughest for Fang’s Way to chew into. But I did it.  I arranged all the negative energy into a circle around one cushion.  And J must have appreciated it because when she came back from running errands, she just laughed and said Well Maxie you answered my question about whether to throw those away.

While JK were gone this time, the wind blew a cushion off the back of a deck chair. Of course I pounced.  When Macy and her family came over to visit, I got to get my picture taken with it.  You can see the negative energy spread out all over the lawn. I’m pretty proud of that large hole.

Now that cushion can’t hurt JK or Buzz and me. J says the deck chairs will look off balance with that cushion missing, but Buzz says that if she just puts two gigantic, beefy knuckle bones with some crispy fat on them in the northwest corner, it will put the deck back into perfect harmony and peacefulness. I think she should try it.

You know what? Good thing I took care of that cushion, because my use of Fang’s Way brought JK back yesterday. Oh, I was soooo happy!!  I herded them and Buzz down to the dock last night and did some mighty leaps after the ball.

The whole world is back in order. It’s my job to keep it that way.  Sometimes it's exhausting. But I'm up for it, and I still have herding to do. There are babies scattered all over the house.