Last week the two beagles, Doc and
Kate, had their first birthday. Doc has
a white stripe running from his nose to his forehead, Kate has unsettling mad
eyes. Nicole’s pa bought them about a
year ago. Technically they’re puppies
but they can pull on their leashes with the strength and rebellion of adult dogs. They like dog treats, they’re fine with
affection and they’re ambivalent about actual dog food. The thing which excites them to the point of
dementia is any opportunity to go out and smell new things. When they are near something that they want
to smell this excitement turns into a sort of panic which, if not placated,
degenerates into morbid fear. If they
get the idea that I’m going for a walk without them, you might as well call the
animal cruelty hotline. Before I can
take a half dozen steps they are yowling and shrieking like things in the House
of Pain from “Island
of Lost Souls”
(1933). They’re being flayed,
disemboweled, dismembered.
Besides smelling things, their
other monarch delight is stomping in their own unspeakable waste. As soon as I moved here I appointed myself to
the dog turd patrol and I take the duty seriously. Collect turds with a grabber mechanism and
throw them in the garbage. In comparison
to dog waste, cat vomit is no more offensive than clothes dryer lint. Because of their stomping tendency, turd
patrol also involves cleaning the dogs’ feet with disposable, hygienic
towelettes before they can track their foulness into the house.
But if it wasn’t for Doc and Kate,
I wouldn’t have an excuse for taking them for a walk down the rehabilitative
country roads. Green grass, yellow
farmland, blue sky, orange sunset; the other day I told Nicole, “Illinois looks like a
screen saver!” Also, this is the only
exercise I get. It includes an upper
body work-out because these unruly beasts, in their carnival delirium over
foreign odors, pull on their leashes like a pair of human wrestlers’ torsos
with paws and floppy ears. If they got
off their chains they would destroy whole fields of crops, claw up the roads,
knock down trees and pass through walls.
If I could harness these two dogs to a sleigh I could become a second
Santa Claus.
