Daisy's diary: An old dog and a strange story
March 13th 2010 20:15
He was a strange-looking greyhound, especially with those funny tufts of hair on his ears and elbows.
I just met a strange old greyhound in the park who had some weird ideas about history and the Lore of the Great Greyhounds.
The Lore, of course, is the great guide to our breed, passed on to all puppies by their mothers in the first weeks of life. It hasn't changed for generations. It teaches us about the grace and gentleness which are at the core of our physical beings. And it teaches us about the unconditional love we offer to all creatures, even less advanced ones like hoomans, and excepting only anything small, fluffy and moving.
This is at the heart of our spiritual being.
The Lore teaches about the greatest of all the Great Greyhounds, the First Greyhounds, the Mothers and Fathers of our breed who arrived on Earth in 1912 from parts unknown. They came in the company of the Great Hare, also known as The Uncatchable. GH installed himself on Earth's first Running Rail, gathered the Greyhounds and the hoomans around him, and said, "Catch me if you can."
"Okay!" said the Greyhounds.
"We'd rather watch and drink beer," said the hoomans.
And so the world as we know it came to be.
But the silly old Greyhound in the park had an entirely different story. The Great Hare, he said, was invented in 1912 by a hooman named Owen Patrick Smith and was not a being from the cosmos at all. What's more, he said Greyhounds are far more ancient than the Lore tells us, having been around for at least 3,000 years, and being closely related by blood to Salukis, Earth's most venerable dog breed.
Salukis, said the old Grey, have been around for about 8,000 years, are possibly the first dog breed to diverge from wolves, and generally consider themselves the best-looking creatures in the known universe. They are also rumoured to be able to run just as fast as greyhounds but, like hoomans, they refuse to chase the Great Hare. They don't drink beer, though.
What a strange story. I don't believe it, of course, and I have never even seen a Saluki. I guess they are just a product of the old dog's vivid imagination, or a wandering old mind. Still, the picture he painted made me wonder what a real Saluki might look like.
The old guy didn't quite look like a Greyhound, in fact, and with that slightly distant and faintly superior manner, he didn't quite act like one either.
Thinking about it, I really like the old guy's story. Wouldn't it be nice if his version were right.
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