PUPPY

“Scooter, you pointed! You’ve never done that before.”

“You’ve not seen me do that before, you mean.”

“I’ve never seen you do that before. I stand corrected.”

Scooter stepped down the hillside through tall, rain-bent grass, rejoining me at a point along the path where I waited.

Quivering with joy, he said, “You saw why.”

 Did I ever. I was initially captivated by the sight of my dog standing stock-still. If you know Scooter, you know his standing still is unusual. Then, I was startled to near fright when a small dove pair, like synchronized swimmers, shot from the deep grass not more than a foot from where Scooter stood pointing. In one swift-winged lunge they flew to bare branches of the tree nearest us.

 When Scooter reached me, I asked, “Where did you get that?”

“That?” he asked.

“The point. You are three years old, and I’ve never seen you point.”

 “You humans point. You pointed to the birds in the tree,” he said, trotting along beside me. He had flushed a pair of birds. He was obviously proud.

“Elephants in the wild point with their trunks,” he said. “They understand human pointing. Did you know that? Some people believe that cats understand human pointing. How funny is that!”

“Scooter!”

 “Mom,” he said, looking up at me. “You’ve read the books. Retrievers point to show their people that small game is close. I just did that for you.”

 “And the flushing scared the wits right out of me,” I said. “So that’s the retriever part of you?”

 “Hold it,” he said. “Poodles can point. They are bird dogs. Water dogs. You know that haircut you see on standard poodles in dog shows? The haircut that uninformed humans point out as sissified? You do know, I hope, that people created that cut so the poodle’s joints and chest were protected from the cold while its shaved parts allowed for swift swimming. They retrieve. You do know that, right? Think of a poodle’s hair cut like a competitive swimmer’s Speedo. Each may earn a second look, but there is purpose.”

 “So the point is, you come by pointing quite naturally, from both sides of the family.”

“I do. But let’s not do the haircut,” he said, while counting ducks on pond’s water.

 “Mom,” Scooter said. “We’ve used the word “point” more than ten times in this conversation. “What does it mean?

 A WORD STUDY: “POINT”

“You may not like this, Scooter,” I said, “but a dog’s ‘point’ is the 17th definition in the New Oxford American Dictionary. English goes wild with this word. Our word is from the Middle English which is from the Old French ‘point’ which developed from the Latin word ‘punctum,’ ‘something pricked,’ or ‘sharp tip, promontory.’”

“Here are the many ways we use that very simple word,” I said.

“In order to confuse those of us who learn English as a second language,” he said.

“Right.”

A sharp ‘point’ on a tool

A dot in punctuation, a decimal point  

The prong of a deer’s antler

A point on a map, as in, ‘turn at this point’

A moment in time, ‘at this point, the crazed woman raised her rolling pin in warning’

A ballet dancer ‘on point’

A listener might miss an important spoken point

What’s the point?

You’ve just won ten points

Thirty-two directional points marked on a compass

They headed to Ecuador and points south

A boat rounds a point

A unit of measurement for type sizes and spacing, like ‘pica, 10-point’

A point-guard

Electrical points in a distributor

A short piece of cord for tying up a reef in a sail. 

And here it is, #17, the action or position of a dog in pointing: a bird dog on point. 

And, just what is a counterpoint?

Is it beside the point?

Case in point.

 It was about at this point in the path at a particular point of time when I had pointed out my reason for pointing into branches of the tree. Scooter’s point had flushed birds, frightening me to the point of nearly peeing my pants, when the conversation turned to using the word “Point” in the blog’s “Word Series.” This is how conversations occur, is it not?

 “Speaking of ‘Point,” Scooter said, “Are you going to write a third installment “Boondoggle?” Are you still trying to make your point with Mint Mobile?

  #36  A WOMAN’S BRIEF: BOONDOGGLE

“What’s the point,” I pointed out.