Category Archives: Fang & Claw

Then There’s the Dane…

Miller's Crossing | Cinema 1544: The As-Official-As-It-Gets Site

God help me, I’m considering a Great Dane.

I’ve never owned one, and only met them at dog parks. I met one so handsome and Paul-Newman-blue-eyed I told the owner it may have been the most beautiful animal I’d ever met. He said thanks, but that he was just the walker. He said the dog had its own agent, it was booked for so many commercials and magazine shoots.

Every Thing You Need To Know About Great Dane Eye Colors

I don’t give a shit about magazine covers, but I gotta admit: I’ve always loved horsedogs. In truth, my Walter Mitty existence involves owning a horse. But let’s be real; I’m no cowboy.

I am, however, a dogboy. And the bigger the better. Teddy tipped the scales at 75 pounds, Larry 80. Now I’m flirting with the idea of a single dog that outweighs them both.

I’m not sure why I’m drawn to such an enterprise, because every column and YouTube video I’ve watched warns: Be prepared to do the work. There’s no short-changing training or attention with a Dane.

Perhaps that’s the appeal. I once knew a 120-pound Detroit Rottweiler, a frightening site to behold. She looked like she’s have you for an appetizer, but she was all softie. And when a 120-pounder splays on you, it’s a lovegasm, plain and simple.

Should You Let Your Dog Sleep in Your Bed? | Hill's Pet

I think I want that again. I’m not one with the natural world; I don’t commune or meditate or chant a mantra. Your cosmic unity will always sound like a horoscope to me.

But maybe I find the world through dogs. I know this is parental dementia, but a dog’s breath to me must smell like what baby’s breath smells like to a mother. I don’t engage in dog speak, but that’s only because I think it demeans both parties. But if I could get through, I’d bark over talking.

I know this instinct would cost, literally and figuratively. I would want insurance. Dog food would cost some people’s rent. Shit would drop like a Trump rally.

And still…

WOLF IN YOUR DOG? | TheDogPlace.org

I’ve never had a parenting urge. But this desire to bring a wolf to guard my campfire is primal.

If a dog is my entree to the universe, maybe it should be soul that blows the goddamn doors off.

To the Mutt in Us All

The Cost of Love | The HollywoodBowles

I came across your collar today
Sorting what remains
So faded
These eyes
Can barely make you out
But pretty in pink I breathe you in
And jingle jangle
For a moment I think you’re here
To know me
No me
Into the drawer to fragrant past days

In honor of National Make a Dog’s Day, let’s do so with four-pawed Factslaps (E&T Remix):

  • As of 2018, Americans own 89.7 million dogs.
  • The world’s oldest dog died at age 29.
  • Dogs poop in alignment with Earth’s magnetic field.
  • Humans and dogs first became best friends 30,000 years ago.
  • Every dog’s mitochondrial DNA is 99.9% the same as a gray wolf.
Gray Wolf | National Wildlife Federation
  • In English-speaking countries, the most popular names for dogs are Max and Molly.
100 Great Names for Dogs and Why Pick Them
  • Dogs have 13 blood types, horses have 8, cows have 9, while humans have only 4.
How do Human Blood Cells Differ from Animal Blood Cells?

Paul McCartney recorded an ultrasonic whistle audible only to dogs at the end of “A Day in the Life.”

A Beatles hit. It's rumored that, at the... - Skyview Animal Clinic | Facebook

What I Miss

Crow | The HollywoodBowles

The only failing of dogs is that they don’t outlive us.

That’s become acutely clear over the past day. There’s a ringing in my ears, as if a flash bang went off in the house. I know it’s the tinnitus of absence. But there’s a larger void.

For the first time in my adult life, I’m without a canine companion. And that’s only because I count my college days as adulthood. Esme’s northern passage also marked the end of a duo — Teddy & Esme — the first buddy-cop movie to ever play out before me in my 8 dog years.

While my parents were never animal nuts, my sister and I are, particularly for wolf cousins. Caroline and I are of one mind on this: Cruelty to animals should be punished twice as severely as cruelty to humans. At least humans have therapy.

I guess that would have made Ezzie a therapy dog, because god knows she was an emotional salve. While Teddy was easily the alpha dog — from his size to his cartoonish personality — Esme set the rhythm of every day I’ve spent in this house since we moved here in 2009.

If I were lost in a column here in the office, Ezzie would stroll back to remind me: It’s dinnertime, dummy. Fetchtime, too. Oh, and bring a baggie; I left something warm for you in the backyard.

A Breakfast of Champions | The HollywoodBowles

Without a word, she was the crossing guard. She taught me: close doors; latch the gate, pick up your shit, check your suit for fur so you don’t look a corporate tool for Big Dander.

So it goes with all furred family members, it seems. What miracles! that meeting of the mind across species. That we would evolve to have the same endgame in mind: a safe, loving home that stands until the carousel stops. A home so intricate-yet-synchronous we could only hope for such symbiosis with homo sapiens.

And let’s bow back to our furred roommates for a moment. No matter your shortcomings, real or imagined, no matter your demons, manifest or budding, No. Matter. What. You are a rock star, they tell us. You hang the moon every night.

There’s something about that surreal bond that sets off meth-level dopamine hits in my brain. Maybe that’s what I’m jonesing. The problem with losing a love is that you can picture what you remember, but cannot see what you really miss: that aura of presence.

And I realize, here in the office, where nothing reminds me of the setting sun except memory and a wristwatch, that the question really isn’t a question at all: Another hound will roam these grounds someday.

Maybe two.

Archives for November 2014 | The HollywoodBowles - Page 2