Day 29: A Dog Will Be a Dog

Happy National Poetry Month 2023! Curious about what I’m doing? Want to play along? Read more here.

[Heads-up: If you’re visiting regularly, please know that the bold, blue text is what I’m writing fresh each day. The black text is the same each day:>) ]

There’s something about dogs that just draws them to the smelliest, grossest stuff around to roll in. I remember when we were dogsitting Suzy (sweetest dog ever), we took her and the kids to a park and lake. Suzy found a dead fish to make friends with. Eeeeuwww. We learned how to use the self-grooming stations at PetSmart on the way home that day! This also makes me smile and think of a picture of Jackie (Captain Jack Sparrow), our late beagle. My husband, Randy, is holding Jack, who is absolutely coated in mud from racing back and forth along the fence in spring, carving a trench in the dirt.

Randy and Jack

When I saw the word “escape,” I thought of a dog getting off its leash or out of its place and getting into stinky mischief. I mean, who could resist the words “rotten” and “disgust”?  So that sent me chasing my poem.

There are way too many fabulous picture books about dogs for me to list, but the classic by Mark Teague, Dear Mrs. LaRue: Letters from Obedience School, is one of my all-time favorites! And I want to read Push-Pull Morning: Dog-Powered Poems About Matter and Energy, by Lisa Westberg Peters. Do you have a favorite dog picture book?

What words will we be digging through today? Oh my gosh, it’s our final set of word tiles! Make it count, friends!

And here’s the card that we might pull our topic from:

So some possible topics are:

  1. spine
  2. appendix
  3. index
  4. page
  5. book

Will you join in? Would love to see what you come up with!

 

14 Responses

  1. This month in your challenge, wishing I’d had more time to do it! Thanks for all the fun and work to create it for us readers, Laura. A recent favorite dog book, beautiful, though sad, is The Longest Letsgoboy by Derick Wilder & Catia Chien. Year ago, when there were no leash laws, our dear Dalmatian would ‘hunt’ the alleys for, yes, like all dogs, garbage. She’d eat it, roll in it, just as you wrote. Wonderful dog but “ew”! Here’s my poem, also about dogs! Happy Saturday! (I used the title combining two words into a computer command.

    control-shift

    play today
    friend pleasure
    always a giggle
    you will love my dog
    am howl – ing

    1. Oh, dear, Linda. Gross… I’ve seen this book mentioned (maybe on your blog?), and thought it looked beautiful but too sad for the moment in. Just the cover and title make my throat clsoe up a bit. But it does look heart-filled. I’m putting it on my tbr shelf and will look for it. Thanks for this poem, Linda. I love the way you end it. Dogs are so great for living in the moment…

  2. Hahahaha! I’ve known dogs with a nose for discarded diapers. OHHHHHHHH NOOOOOOOO! It’s just so awful to have to clean up. All the while, the dog is happy-happy. I love your April project and how it’s giving you wonderful ideas. Someday, I hope to have an April reserved JUST for poetry.

    1. Eeeeuuuuwwww. I’ll take the fishy dog, thank you very much. Oh, doesn’t an April JUST for poetry. Doesn’t that sound amazing?

  3. Laura, I love your dog being a dog poem. “her rottening pleasure” is a great phrase!

    Linda, your poem is so sweet. Love the warm doggy feelings in it!

    Here’s my attempt. I appreciated all the positive words, so I tried to write about a shift in attitude.

    Shift
    Step smartly
    Spur strongly
    Push love
    Plant heart
    Today
    You will ache
    yet sing

    1. Oh, lovely, Denise! This is such an urgent anthem, but loving, too. I really feel this one. That ache makes it feel not cliche‑y, and deeply true.

  4. Coming in late after a busy day! Love the dog poems… rottening pleasure!! Always a giggle!

    1. Oops… anonymous is Diane ( hit submit by accident)

      To continue, Denise and I had a similar thought to go with the word Shift.

      Shift

      Hostile
      Disgusting, rotten
      Push to heart ache
      Friendly
      Pleasing, rosy
      Spur to love

      1. Thanks, Diane–I’m sometimes accidentally anonymous, too :>) What a lovely shift this is. It feels a bit like the heart of a diamante poem. Thanks for playing.

      2. I love the change in the middle of your poem with “push to heart ache”

  5. The many dichotomies lent themselves to self-improvement as well as our lovable four-legged messes.

    Shift

    disgust shift love
    hostile step play
    howl spur giggle

    rotten peel rose
    ache push strong
    dig plant pleasure

    crunch correct create

    1. Thank you for playing, Juliana! I love the structure of this and the tumbling feel of these three-word lines.

    2. Juliana, I love the sound of “crunch correct create”, especially that it ends with create.

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