Creak Floats

I never said I floated through life. Other dogs have, and the only reason to believe that I don't is not, as you might expect, my proclamation of their distorted view of my own sagging productivity, but the blaring reality that they only know the side of me that I choose to reveal at the times I choose to reveal it.

So, gripped by others' need to standardize and compartmentalize, I have become known, in certain circles, as a dog who floats through life.

Any reputation has it's upside and this one, depending on my mood, has many. Floaters aren't suspect. Floaters don't threaten the aggressive, the insecure, or other floaters. Floaters don't remind you of someone you wish you were, or someone you knew you used to be. Floaters are the benign motivators of society because of their ability to benchmark inactivity. Those comparitors of success among dogs need floaters in order to create self-worth, credibility in the pack, leadership, and ultimately, the ability to dispense wisdom. In our non-competitive state, we are the catalyst for competition, as well as comfort, among those who need to compete and need to search for comfort at the same time. We offer both -- through canine emotional multi-tasking that is more robust than any UNIX derivation of the multi-tasking concept.

But I said, depending on my mood the floater moniker has its advantages.

The dark side of it is that the emotional lie I pass on to the world as a would-be floater isn't passed on at all. It stays with me. Identifying myself off as the inquisitor of nothing who never met Machiavelli, is the ultimate in masochism when Machiavelli is my soul-mate and change is my ally. The expensive sacrifice for this pieced-together presumed peace is the definition of a canine dark side. But don't misunderstand, those dogs who have no floater's face, who bite and are put down, don't die happy. But those of us who move our caretakers through the painful realizations of their facts despite their protestations, those of us who sometimes resort to teeth bared, and those of us who are ultimately not floaters, are the ones who find a peaceful sleep at the end of our seven-for-one years' of life. Showing the floater's face and the pain-inducing changer's face in the right measure, and the right time is the canine tightrope we walk. It's our fungible art that, like most great art, isn't really appreciated, but commands a high price anyway - sometimes by the artist and sometimes by the art lover.