Howl (20 page)

Talking to regular people was only slightly easier. When someone with a dog would approach us, I had an in. “Uh, what kind of dog is that?” Or “How old is your…what kind of dog
is
that?”

Sometimes Joni Mitchell would get twisted in the other dog’s leash (my girlfriend calls it a “lead” but it’s only ever been a leash to me) and I could only see it as another metaphor. I was becoming entwined with the other dog-owning New Yorkers. I started to like my role. I’d patrol the dog run like Robin Williams in…
Garp,
chasing down speed demons, keeping the run safe from the miscreants who’d walk in with their dogs and leave the door swinging off the latch. Those people might reinforce my mistrust if I let them, but I won’t let them shake me. I would like to see them all jailed, or at least smacked in the back of the skull with a rolled up
New York Post.
The dog owners who
do
shake my faith in humanity are the ones who address only Joni when we’re out in the street. Like she’s out walking herself, or just happens to be attached to a man who is not permitted to speak and will only stare straight ahead like a palace guard.

“I’m reformed,” I want to remind them, “and I’m here too. Look up. Acknowledge me. Didn’t you see me at the run the other day chastising those assholes? I’m on your side! I’m good people!”

“How are you today, Joni?”

(I assume they know her name because my girlfriend walks her and she is much friendlier than I am, even with my new approach to man and hound pedestrian-ism.)

“Joni, you’re a good doggy! Good good doggy!”

“What about me? Aren’t I a good person?” I scream internally whenever this happens. And this happens at least twice a week as two culprits, whom I won’t describe in detail, should they read about themselves in this anthology, are on both my walking schedule and our route. I’ve stopped doing drugs. I have a stuffed wooly mammoth, panda bear, Vans checkered sneaker, blue Chevy Impala, American buffalo, hedgehog, anteater, sock monkey, red squirrel, and Canadian goose in my living room, all crusty with slobber. I haven’t started a rock journalist fistfight in a bar in two years. I don’t even feel comfortable in this leather coat anymore. I’m thinking about tweed. Doesn’t that at least merit a glance? A “Her coat’s looking good. What shampoo do you use on her?” Aren’t we supposed to bond? Dog owners? Human beings?

In this way, I’m no different from my friend who sat in the park with her Papillon on her booty calls. Except I don’t want booty. I want human kindness, a sense of belonging and empathy. I want my existence acknowledged too. When I’m not with Joni and I see another dog owner who happens to be sans canine as well, we never, ever say hello. Remove the dog from the equation and we all become walled-up New Yorkers again, and that’s just sad. Now that I share my life with an animal, I don’t need an animal around all the time to make me more human. Or do I? “Say hello, or…hey,” I tell myself. I never do.

My shrink says that Joni is prep for a real kid, like some of my friends have: a human baby. I can’t see how it would be much different. Joni Mitchell is our kid. She’s as much a part of our family as a kid would ever be. I guess I’m saying that now because I don’t have one. The other day I held a baby for the first time. I’d been asked to become the godfather of a friend’s newborn boy. This is their second child. Their first is four. I wasn’t even a candidate back then. It felt weird holding a human baby. But I remember when it felt weird holding a puppy too. Four years ago, I probably would have told myself, “I don’t see how getting a dog would change my life, except maybe I’d have to pick up a lot of shit,” so who knows where this is going to lead. Maybe the shrink is right. Shrinks are sometimes. When I uttered that “shit” line by the way, I’d probably be wearing black sunglasses, and smoking too…and if you saw me coming, you’d most likely avoid all human contact. You’re luckier now. And so am I. It’s not all rabbits and squirrels yet…but it’s getting there.

[
You never see dogs do their tricks for each other.—Dan Liebert
]

Carolina’s in Heat and I’m Not

[Abigail Thomas]

M
Y HOUND DOG
Carolina is sitting in the car, and I’m in the drugstore standing in an aisle I haven’t been down for fifteen years. Carolina is in heat. Such an archaic concept, heat. I’m looking for something to slip into the mesh pocket of a red Speedo-like contraption I’ve just bought for her. Who knew they made such things for dogs? I recall the flimsy little garter belts we girls got with our first box of sanitary napkins and the accompanying pamphlet regarding the human reproductive cycle. Light-years ago. I pick an item that comes wrapped in pink and says mini and then I hobble over to Aisle 4b, Pain Relievers, where I’m more at home. My back hurts. I grab aspirin, pay for everything, and head for the car. Carolina’s nose is smeared against the window. Good dog, I say, good dog, and manage to get myself sitting down without screaming and I pat her big head and nuzzle her neck, and her tail thwacks against the passenger seat. Carolina is halfway through her first treatment for heartworm and going into heat seems grossly unfair. “Jesus, yet more trouble,” as some martyr said when the executioner reached in to yank out his intestines. (I can’t remember which saint this was, but my mother loved to quote him.) Before I start the car I line up the arrows, take off the cap, stab a pen through the foil seal and gobble down three aspirin.

This is my first experience with a dog in heat but the back pain arrived thirty years ago when I bent to pick a canned peach off the kitchen floor and couldn’t straighten up. My new husband seemed familiar with the problem. “My god, what is this called?” I cried as he tried to help. “It’s called my back is killing me,” he said. This version of my back is killing me comes from wearing a pair of stylish new red shoes that pinch my left foot and make me walk lopsided. I don’t know why I keep putting them on except they show off my ankles. At age sixty-three, ankles are my best feature unless you count cake.

When I get home I discover it’s nearly impossible to put this thing on my dog. There is a place for her tail and Velcro fastenings that go over her haunches but try sticking a dog’s long tail through the hole of a small slippery garment while the dog turns around and around in circles. It takes fifteen minutes and when I succeed, Carolina turns her baleful eyes on me and I want to apologize. She is a dog dressed like a monkey.

The next morning I can barely walk. My friend Claudette comes to the rescue. She puts Carolina on a leash lest a pack of hormone-addled canines show up in my yard, and later she drives me to her acupuncturist. I have never been to an acupuncturist but I’m ready for help here. The process is very interesting, all those needles tingling in my feet and legs and hands, and so relaxing that I would probably doze off were it not for the needle stuck right under my nose. I just can’t stop thinking about that one. Nevertheless I do feel better until I hit the dairy case at the Hurley Ridge Market and reach for half a gallon of milk. On the way back through town we drive past the half-dressed youth of Woodstock lying on the village green. They are a beautiful sight, but what with my bad back and good memory I am glad not to be one of them. They have far too much future. Sometimes it is a relief to be over the hill.

Meanwhile, my fat Beagle Harry has found himself capable of leaping straight up into the air like Rudolf Nureyev. If Carolina doesn’t notice, and she doesn’t, he does it again. He is no longer capable of reproducing, but that doesn’t dampen his spirit. Rosie too is affected by whatever hormones are flying. She engages in much vigorous grooming, attending obsessively to the nooks and crannies of both Harry and Carolina. She would have made an excellent mother. Now and then Carolina rouses herself long enough to emit a howl. Everybody’s getting hot around here except me. I am just beginning to wonder where all the would-be suitors are when a big white dog materializes in the driveway. Ha! Carolina’s first admirer. Harry and Rosie take up their positions on the back porch barking their heads off, and I call my sister and tell her proudly we’ve got an intact Huskie hanging around who probably never finished grammar school. “Now you know how Mom and Dad felt,” she says. I go outside holding Carolina’s leash in one hand, and a mop in the other. The mop doubles as cane and threat, and I shake it at the ruffian when he comes too close. He looks at Carolina and she looks back. Oh yeah, I remember that look. If this animal were human he’d be wearing jeans and a white T-shirt. He’d be lighting a cigarette. Forget my bad back, my advanced years. If this animal were human and I were in Carolina’s shoes, let’s face it, I’d be all over him like white on rice.

[
Beagles get drunk on their own voices.—Dan Liebert
]

Bone Alone

[Rob McKenzie]

with art by Graham Roumieu

W
HAT YOUR DOG
thinks about when you’re gone:

2:47
P.M.
: Yumyumyiamyiamyiam…brother this is good peanut butter…haven’t tasted peanut butter like this since…oh damn.

2:48: Every time. Every frickin time. They get that hollow rubber ball with the holes in it, they jam it full of high-grade p.b. and I, I can’t help it, I’m like a cat in a kibble shop, I lose my mind, I just have to fill my snout with peanut butter—and then I come up for air and they’re gone, vamoosed, fast as squirrels. And I’m alone.

2:55: Maybe they meant to bring me along but just forgot. After all, I’m
the dog
—what kind of trip would it be without
the dog
? So maybe every now and then I ralph in the backseat—who hasn’t? Let he who is without sin cast the first tennis ball. Hey, did someone just say “tennis ball”?

3:01: It’s no use. “Chase the ball” just doesn’t work when you’re alone. It’s like solo synchronized swimming. I can sit here all day and drop the ball down the stairs, I can hear it pa-dunk pa-dunk down the steps, I can see it pinball all around the landing, but it’s not the same without someone to bring it back to.

3:03: I wonder what time it is. On second thought, I wonder what time is.

3:05: Zzzzzzz lamb chops zzzzzzz all-beef wieners zzzzzzz Beagles in heat zzzzzzzz.

3:28: It’s been, what, six days now?

That’s it. I’m doomed. They ain’t never coming back. I’m the Papillon of puppies here. Dogman of Alcatraz. The Mutt in the Mask. Bichapoo Caruso. Bone Alone, with me in the Macaulay Culkin role. A three-hour cruise…

3:31: America Held Hostage: Day 38.

3:33: Oh jeez. It’s Sprinkles the idiot Dalmatian and he’s being walked right by my house. WOOF WOOF OVER HERE A-HOLE! SEND FOR HELP YOU USELESS PIECE OF CATNIP! WOOF! YES I MEAN YOU! And what does he do? He pisses on the pansies. Last time I sniff his ass.

3:35: Must…have…food. But what idiot designed the tall box that keeps the food cold? It’s impossible to open unless you have claws like the two-legs do. Maybe if I stare at it for a while, it’ll, you know, miraculously open.

3:36: Damn—I blinked. That thing has a will of iron.

3:40: Gotta go. Gotta go real bad. Shouldn’ta drunk all that water. Gotta go. Maybe if I let loose on that shaggy, ropey grassy stuff they have all over the living room, maybe it’ll kind of disappear.

3:41: Or not.

3:45: Aye, a man gets lonely at sea, he does. A man has needs. Ever been to sea, laddie? True, it’s you I’m talking to, Elmo. I know what you’re all about. You sit there in the far end of the playroom, day after day, not moving, but I feel your big eyes on me. And Elmo, I am about to tickle you like you’ve never been tickled before. And be forewarned: We operate by the “What happens in Vegas” rule today, my friend.

3:46: YES! YES! LOOK OUT ELMO’CAUSE I AM—

3:47: Coming up the driveway! They’re coming up the driveway. Woohoo (repeat). Gotta jump up and down till I’m dizzy. Gotta wag the tail. Gotta lick ’em. Yes, I forgive you! I do! Elmo, I’m not so sure about.