Spring 2025

O ver the holidays, Winnie and I hunkered down and watched some wonderful old movies on TCM (Turner Classic Movies, for you youngsters). I intro- ducedWinnie to that all-time 1942 classic,“Casablanca,” featur- ing Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. I confess, the older I get, the more emotionally stirred I am when Bergman tells Dooley Wilson to “play it, Sam” and Wilson sings… You must remember this A kiss is just a kiss A sigh is just a sigh The fundamental things apply As time goes by As true in the war-torn year of ’42 as it is today. “The fun- damental things apply…” especially for those of us whose time is flying by faster than ever.This great lyric by Herman Hupfeld also made me consider what actually is fundamental .The song says,“hearts full of passion, jealousy and hate…” But of course there are also sweet hearts full of compassion, tolerance and grace. Fundamental things define our very essence, what it means to be human, the essential stuff that determines our well-being and happiness. Fundamental things are timeless. Which may be why we watch classic movies and listen to old music and songs.They stir emo- tional touch points of things and people from the past. Simply, “The Way We Were” (which is another great film and song from 1973)—or at least the way we’d like to think we were, often helping us make sense of, and/or get through some fun- damental thing in the here and now. All of which led me to take a second look at these “Dog Tales” columns over the last six years. As suspected, I found that many came down to the premise that dogs revel in more fundamental things than us. Our fur-babies live in the funda- mental stuff of what it means to be fully alive as a dog in the here and now. As simple as stretching and fetching, lap time, nap time and play time.WhenWinnie takes me for a walk, she woofs, wags and sniffs all the wonder nature has to offer. She notices everything while I stand there mired in a mental mulli- gan stew of yesterdays and tomorrows. In the Winter 2022 column I quoted Eckhart Tolle from his wonderful book, “Guardians of Being”: “Most of us live in a world of mental abstraction, conceptual- ization, and image making—a world of thought. We are immersed in a continuous stream of mental noise. As a dog loves to chew bones, the human mind loves its problems.” So much talk today about our need for “mindfulness.” Unfortunately, my mind is too often full of it! Please, just shut up! My salvation comes when I allow myself some “mind-less” time.Turn off the mental noise and simply notice all the amaz- ing fundamental dogginess of Winifred. Eckhart Tolle again: “It is so wonderful to watch an animal, because an animal has no opinion of itself.The dog has no self-image, good or bad. So he has no need to play roles, nor does he love himself or hate himself.You just watch the tail…with some dogs you just look at them, and their tail goes…‘Life is good! Life is Good! ’ ” And then there is us. Life is too complicated and stressful to just wag our tails,“Life is Good!”We are more inclined to wag our mouth about past should-haves, future what-ifs or twitter the latest twaddle on our new digital body part. Dogs have no time for such foolishness. They don’t rehash the past or cogitate endlessly about next week’s trip to the groomers. Makes me wonder whether dogs have been put here to show us how to be better humans. Sadly, we often don’t appreciate this until after they are gone. Or we are. “The vital function that pets fulfill in this world hasn’t been fully recognized.They keep millions of people sane.”—Eckhart Tolle. And that’s about as fundamental as it gets. A screenwriter and best-selling golf humorist in a previous life, Mark Oman forsook his golf addiction and took up with Winifred, co-author of their screenplay, “Murder, Misfits and Mutts!” Mark and Winnie live in Carmel with four-legged little sister, Molly, and two-legged wife, Barbara. Contact Winifred (or Mark) at: mark@markoman.com . DOG TALES M A R K O M A N Our fur-babies live in the fundamental stuff of what it means to be fully alive as a dog in the here and now. As Time Goes By… 52 C A R M E L M A G A Z I N E • S P R I N G 2 0 2 5