Dog House

Table of Contents

 

 

 

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Published by Gotham Books, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

 

First printing, May 2010

Copyright © 2010 by Carol Prisant

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eISBN : 978-1-101-42741-5

 

 

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For

 

Tucker Velocity Prisant

Because I realize it can be frustrating to the reader to suspect he's mispronouncing the names of important characters—even in books that aren't Russian novels—you might like to know that “Millard” is pronounced as if it were “Miller” with a “d.”

And “Cosi” is “cozy.”

And was.

Our Juno____1994-2010

True love is what we hope to be uncomplicatedly given by our parents and grandparents, by our children, our grandchildren, our husbands, our wives and our friends. We long to be beloved on this earth, and how lucky we are that most of us are born into a potential for unbounded love.

In my time, I have been every one of the above except a husband, and I think you should know—in case you don't already—that people are dauntingly prickly, and that true love ... the Real Thing ... isn't easy at all to find. I suppose I won't be delivering any news either if I mention that relationships are complex.

Husband-love, though, is especially tricky.

The polls tell us that marriages are most commonly imperiled by money, by sex and, to a lesser degree, by in-laws. Simple stupidity is in there somewhere, of course, though most polls overlook it. And while my own long marital experience included at least a smattering of all these things—plus a decent-size chunk of some—it was true love nonetheless.

 

 

Which brings me to dogs and dog-love: the heart's great balm.

Come home tired and cranky, for example, and your dog doesn't care.

Mix its kibble with chicken franks and kids' yogurt and holler “dinner” and your dog will whine in happy anticipation and lick the bowl when it's done. Make a tuna and pea casserole for your husband, on the other hand (and I only did it once), if you're newlyweds, he may, manfully, eat it.

My own husband, except for that tuna casserole, was singularly unspoiled about food. He didn't care to know the given name of the fried chicken he ate as long as it was accompanied by lettuce sandwiches on buttered white bread. He didn't expect a yellow and green vegetable every night, like a friend's husband (they're divorced now), and he didn't even mind that I didn't like to cook.

He did mind about money, though, unlike dogs, which never care how much you spend on them or on yourself.

Says Rover (and where is Rover these days, not to mention Fido and Rex?):

“You want to buy that fancy fleece-lined double doughnut heated dog bed? Go ahead. I'll be happy to sleep on it when the sofa isn't free.”

Says the husband, “You want to buy a what?!!!”

Dogs don't care who you have sex with, either, as long as you aren't intruding into their space on the bed and as long as you don't kick them accidentally.

In-laws? In-laws just don't play a big part in the lives of dogs unless their owners are deeply involved in dog shows and pedigrees.

And dogs are simply never stupid. They wouldn't dream of telling you you're looking old today or getting “a little thick maybe.” They always like your hair and clothes. They like their hair on your clothes.

Your dog—unlike your friends, who let you down; your children, who leave you; your grandparents, who leave you, too; your parents, who disappoint you—will love you faithfully, devotedly, unquestioningly, unto death.

If you get lucky, your husband will, too.

 

 

That's why this book is about true love and dogs and husbands. And dogs and life.

And dogs.

 

 

I know other people's dog books usually begin with some delightful tale of their first dog, the one they owned and loved through blissful, doggy childhoods and have enshrined in memory's pantheon. Maybe you had one of those dogs: always soft and fluffy, always clean; a dog that met you after school and carried your books home in her teeth and crawled across thin ice to grab you by the coat sleeve when you'd fallen through. I wish I'd had one of those dogs.

But this book has to begin with three half-dogs; the dogs that never quite made it, mostly because of my beautiful, inflexible, devious mother.

 

 

So it begins, then, with Sparky, a black-and-white long-haired mutt who scratched on our kitchen door one day, came in for a bowl of bread and milk, stayed for—was it three days or six?—and then was gone from my life forever. Sparky was a dream dog. He could sit and lie down and he could “shake,” which meant that someone had civilized him long before we met. I loved his ever-alert ears and I loved his nonjudgmental affection for a five-year-old who dropped milk bottles a lot. Yet it seemed to have become quickly apparent to the key people in my house (myself not among them) that Sparky could also shed like crazy and howl like a lonely wolf, and that these traits were undesirable enough that his continued presence in our kitchen was becoming an issue. You won't be surprised to learn, then, that my heart crumbled in my chest when my mother told me he had run away.

How could he have left me and my bread and milk and devoted attention? And how could he have run away? He hadn't been out alone since he'd trotted into my kitchen.

I looked everywhere for him (without crossing streets alone, of course) and brooded on his loss for weeks.

Of course he'd been a stray to begin with, my mother explained quasi-consolingly; why would I think he wouldn't stray again? But I had gathered from the reliable six-year-old source who lived next door that dogs were being poisoned in our neighborhood by a mysterious old man who hated dogs, and in my heart, I was certain—and am still certain in some childlike corner of my mind—that my mother, one rainy day when she wasn't playing golf—had put Sparky outside and the man came along and fed him poison wrapped in raw hamburger meat.

 

 

She liked dogs, she always said. And it was true that when we walked together down our street—she in her chic heels and a beautifully fitted suit and hat; me in my fitted scarlet coat and hat—and met a dog, she'd bend down to give it a gracious little pat. Though she wasn't comfortable about that pat, I could tell. She didn't seem to know a thing about good behind-the-ear scratches or bottom-wiggling tushie rubs. My dazzlingly pretty but frequently scary mother hadn't had dogs herself, and she wasn't at home with them. This was mainly, I'd concluded, because my mother liked a really clean house and a really clean little girl's room. (“Immaculate” was the operative word. I think she just liked to say it.) And dogs don't do immaculate. Nor do little girls.

 

 

Yet my next try was with a specimen that was as far from immaculate as dogdom gets. He was a big red Irish setter—golden retriever mix that I arranged to have “follow me home” from school one day. I don't think he had a collar, but I wasn't above taking a collar off and throwing it down the sewer. Anyway, this dog had a matted coat studded with burrs and big, mud-covered paws, and was only a little slobbery. Perfect for a sneak-a-dog, I decided. Though even stranger than my choice was my belief that the followed-home routine could slip past my mother's no-dog radar.