Hudson Valley Astrologer

“Recollect that the Almighty, who gave the dog to be companion of our pleasures and our toils, hath invested him with a nature noble and incapable of deceit.”

Sir Walter Scott

Jimmy struggles with depression. Hard to say if his condition is precipitated by the drinking, or if the drinking was the cause in the matter. Then again, he’s also been jabbing himself with a needle since he was 9 years old, to inject life saving insulin into his body. Without it he would die. He has a morbid outlook on life despite having many advantages.

His dog, Emmet, had a sad concerned look for his master. Jimmy captured his essence, his “whatness” in the graphite drawing above. Did Emmet know Jimmy was suffering? Jimmy is an extraordinary artist but it’s a tough passion to make a go of, or should we say “Gogh?” Vincent Van Gogh himself hardly made a living without his brother’s support. Vincent also drew a dog and called it “Dog.”

I am reminded of the dog in the 1971 film called Big Jake staring John Wayne. His character had a black dog in the film simply named “Dog.” Offset the dog was named Laddie and won the PATSY (Picture Animal Top Star of the Year) award.

But it’s hard being a creative! Even if you are all in as Vincent was, despite suffering from a range of physical and mental health issues, that makes the journey harder still. Jimmy’s a creative! But the modern world makes it increasingly difficult to pull off being creative, especially for an impoverished male who doesn’t exhibit his Neanderthal side, his Darwinian embrace of survival, not without a patron, or a brother, someone who is “more fit” and can support them.

Emmet is a Hebrew name that means “Truth.” Unlike Quiddity, which is Latin and refers to our essential nature. Alexandra Horowitz you’ll recall gave her dog that name, and then wrote about Quiddity in her book The Year of the Puppy. We talked about this a few posts ago. I appropriated the name for “my persona,” a therapeutic device Carol Dweck introduced to us. Van Gogh might have taken quite easily to Dweck’s suggestion. He also might have had an army of stuffed animals to talk to. Reading Dweck’s work I did stop to ponder that her much heralded therapeutic device was what once thought to be a “symptom” that landed folks in mental institutions. C’est la vie

“I have sometimes thought of the final cause of dogs having such short lives, and I am quite satisfied it is in compassion to the human race; for if we suffer so much in losing a dog after an acquaintance of ten or twelve years, what would it be if they were to live double that time?”

~ Sir Walter Scott

By proximity my favorite animal is the dog: I am a dog lover. At this point in my life I’ve had 5 dogs, and shared a post on Rosie my Labrador and 6th dog. My assistant, who has worked with me for 10 years, told me that her father had 7 Irish Wolfhounds in his lifetime. He kept all of their ashes and wrote in his last will and testament that he wanted to be buried, back in Ireland, with his beloved dogs.

Although today I am partial to the Labrador, my very first dog was a White Shepherd. I read a dog training book that opened with the Sir Walter Scott quote at the top of this post. It gave me pause, enough to ponder the “truth” of his statement, and to name her Veracity.

I suppose if I had the opportunity to be nearer to horses, then the horse might be my favorite animal. But in this life it’s dogs. Having lost and buried five dogs already I can attest to the sentiment Sir Walter Scott shares in the second quote. But on the flip side, the relatively long lives we lead as humans means we sometimes take each other for granted. We wrongly assume that we will just go on living forever. Perhaps the short lived lives of dogs is not only a grace, as Sir Walter suggests, but also a reminder, that our time here is finite and that what we most love and admire in others is loyalty and truth; may we give each other as much grace as our dogs have given us.

HVA

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