Time

Yesterday was the first day that we changed back to Standard Time after being on Daylight Saving Time all summer.  So I got to thinking about Time, and I decided I would write in my blog about it, but Mom said that Time was too big and too deep a subject for a little dog like me to write about.  She said I could not possibly wax as philosophical as a writer should do when talking about Time.  Well, I told Mom I would just say what I knew about Time from a dog's point of view, and I would not use any wax at all.  So  finally Mom said okay.

Anyway, first I will talk about DST, which stands for Daylight Saving Time.  Most people say Daylight Savings Time, with an "s" on the end of Saving, but I have learned in my research that the proper name is Daylight Saving Time.  Mom does not like having to change back and forth from Standard Time to DST.  She finds it annoying to reset all the clocks and watches twice a year.  We dogs don't have any clocks or watches.  We just tell time by where the sun is in the sky and other secret methods that only dogs know about, so I can't reveal them here.

When humans change their time schedule, it's confusing for dogs.  For instance, the last two mornings, Mom made us sleep an hour later, which we were mostly willing to do, but Barry was kind of moving around and shaking himself and otherwise politely hinting to Mom that maybe she had forgotten to get out of bed.  This situation could be avoided completely if we just stayed on either Standard Time or Daylight Saving time all year round.  If we did this, Mom would be happy, and all of us dogs would be happy also.

A lot of people have different opinions about Daylight Saving Time.  Some people like it, and other people don't like it.  Some people don't even do it at all.  Here is an interesting map I found which shows the countries that have DST.  These countries are BLUE on the map.  The places that are ORANGE are where they used to have DST, but now they don't have it, maybe because they decided they didn't like it.  And the RED shows where there has never been any Daylight Saving Time at all.  You will see that in much of Africa, there has never ever been DST, which means that my cousins, the basenjis who live in Africa, don't need to put up with having their moms and dads change the clocks twice a year and make them get out of bed an hour early or an hour late.

There used to be this Spanish artist named Salvador Dalí, except that he's dead now.  But he hasn't been dead long enough for his paintings to be in the public domain, so I am not going to put one of his paintings in my blog because if I do, the cyberpolice might come and get me.  Anyway, Señor Dalí painted a really weird picture that showed a bunch of clocks melting and kind of oozing down over things.  He also made a sculpture that is sort of like the painting.  I can show you a photo of the sculpture because it is legal to use this photo.

I am not an art critic (Mom said I had to tell you this), but I think maybe the artist was trying to say that time is all kind of melty and gooey.  It's not really solid and strict like a clock or a train schedule.  Of course, dogs know this already, which is why we don't use clocks or watches to tell time.  Dogs know when certain things are likely to happen because that's when they happened before.  So for instance, dogs know when it's time to get up and when it's time to get fed and when it's time for their moms and dads to get home from work, and important stuff like that.  In my opinion, that's all you need to know about time!