Category Archives: Fang & Claw

Today

Geertruidenberg  

responsively Today was like any other.

I woke up…queasy. Why is the night such a goddamned beast? I swear to god, I don’t remember the last time I went to bed when it was dark and awakened to sunlight. It’s been 15 years, I believe, since nausea has allowed five straight hours of sleep.

Finally ambulatory, about 9:40 a.m. (not bad),  I trudged to the kitchen, gave Teddy his meds, fed the dogs and ushered them into the backyard.

I wrote a little, selected a lesson plan for the next class. I surfed Netflix for a bit, found a documentary, and by movie’s end it was time to medicate and feed the dogs dinner.

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As I set the food down, hit the Mellow Mix on the stereo and settled to inthe backyard lawn chair — always facing west — I began to recall the day. The way days should be recalled:

I woke up…again!

I gave the medicine Teddy needs to live a life free of disease, epilepsy. I gave them a dinner they routinely scarf so quickly I feel like a sous chef (they love a good Snausage chaser). They depend on me. For food, a roof, a scratch. And all they ask in  rental fee is that I let them love me, unconditionally, uninhibitedly and publicly. How many souls can lay such claim?

I wrote today. I taught today. Those things matter. I am a zealot for both. Somehow, I have been permitted to chase those loves, court those passions, my entire adult life. How many souls can lay such claim?

I watched an amazing film called The Camden 28, about a raft of Vietnam War protesters, including a Catholic priest, arrested for breaking into and trashing a local draft office. They destroyed hundreds of files so the military wouldn’t know which kids were left to send to Southeast Asia. When the feds realized the PR nightmare of jailing a priest for opposing Vietnam, they reduced all felony charges to a single misdemeanor. Not one protester took the deal. They believed that a jury would acquit them, simply because the war was wrong. And the jury did. To the last, accused and peer chose to do the right thing, even if it weren’t the legal thing. How many souls can lay such claim?

As I watched the day prepare to punch its time card, as Cat Stevens’ Don’t Be Shy began its trickling piano, as the dogs, bellies full, stretched out on a patio toasted by a sun as warm and regular as a heartbeat, I realized:

Jesus.

Today was like no other.

Pipsqueak Pit Bulls and the Just Comeuppance

 

I’ve had her since she could, literally, fit in my palms. But I am just now realizing how badass Esme is.

God knows I bray enough about the dogs, like a granddad with a photo album. And I’ve spewed plenty of wind-baggery on her intelligence, her fetching skills, her TV viewing habits (I can’t watch America’s Funniest Home Video because, when she sees a dog or anything similar, she hops on the TV stand for a closer look). Oz

But, truthfully, Teddy has always overshadowed her. Four times as heavy and eight times as social, he sort of insists on making out with anyone who steps into my house. Esme has to wait for an open lap.

Today, however, on our daily stroll at the dog park, Esme didn’t need a lap, bitches.

As we did our clockwise walk through the park (we’ve always walked in the fenced-off Big Dog Yard; otherwise didn’t occur to us), we stumbled on a thick, gray pit bull. Beautiful, but menacing not only for his maw and baritone bark. A leash hung off his neck, a telltale sign that an owner doesn’t trust a dog to roam free.

The pit wasn’t pouncing other dogs. But it insisted on sniffing every hound there. And when a dog dared lift its head, make eye contact or venture a sniff, he held stock still, as if awaiting a sudden move. When he came up to us, Teddy made the mistake of saying hello. As he sniffed the pit’s ear, I heard a deep growl. I’ve had a pit mix, and I know that sound. They also make it when they see a cat they’re about to maul.

I stepped between the two and ushered an unwitting Teddy away. “The owner’s over there,” I heard a guy say as he nodded in the direction of a woman, perhaps late 30’s, glued to her cell phone. If Darwin is correct, one day the human hand will evolve into a curve to naturally cradle its most vital tool, the cell.

He walked over and said what we all felt. “You need to watch your dog,” he hissed. The woman not only continued on the phone, but covered her other ear to hear the line.

The man held his ground, pointed in the dog’s direction. Without moving the phone from her mouth, the woman screamed “Apollo!” The dog trotted by her side as the man shook his head and joined the other humans and canines. He stopped by me again, introducing Bella the Beagle and allowing me to blather  yet another theory: If you have one long enough, a dog will reflect its owner.

Witness Teddy: Dim-witted but a glass half-full kind of guy; terrible vision but will come along for any road trip; foreign parts in his body and shaved down with the clippers set at No. 8, same as me. I can’t wag like him. I do, however, drool splendidly. wag

As we walked toward the exit, I began to leash up Teddy. Esme trotted behind. Suddenly, I saw Apollo was back, now sniffing the girl. His head, about the size of her torso, nearly lifted Esme by the hind legs as he got a bouquet-full of her rear. I stopped to grab Esme by the collar while I attached the leash.

Too late. Without warning, Esme turned and snarled as I’ve never heard. Faced Apollo, who froze for a second.

I guess that’s all the beta signal Esme needed, because she suddenly lunged at the pit, snapping and snarling. I’m sure, in an all-out fight, Apollo could snap Esme like a twig. But confidence is everything. And she does not lack for it. She was so mad that she not only had the dog on his heels, but the owner dirtying hers.

By the time I picked Esme up (still flared, still growling, still glaring at the pit), the woman was at her dog. She took his leash, castigating him while she checked for (his) blood. If we could, Esme and I would have stepped over the two like Jack Johnson stepped over wannabe contenders.

“Your dog all right?” I cracked, not awaiting an answer. I fixed the leash on the girl and we all climbed into the car.

As we drove home, I remembered once getting suspended in Detroit for scuffling with a student known for picking fights. I was certain Dad would be furious. Instead, that night, he simply offered me a fighting tip: “If you get cornered by a bully, punch him right in the nose, and he’ll back down. Bullies always do. And he’ll stop picking fights.”

I don’t know if bullies will ever stop picking fights. But I guess that’s less the point than standing your ground. And, in all honesty, Esme may never understand why she got a rawhide wrapped in cheese when we got home. sprawled

But she sure is going to enjoy tonight’s America’s Funniest Home Videos.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vk7g8waRNWQ

Piglet Love and the City Surf

I have needed the dogs nearer of late. To feel visible. Or, more accurately, I have needed to be nearer to them, though for the same reason.

They do not care my reasons, of course. All they know is I’m around. They see me.

And they’ve taught me. Man, they’re onto something with this whole backyard thing.

I used not to give it much thought, their everyday world. Hire a lawn guy. Install a dog door to kick them out and not feel guilty. Repair the fence when the Santa Anas show me she’s boss.

But there is more to it than that. So much.

Because of daylight savings time (come on, Indiana, pick a side), the sun sets on the yard around 6 p.m. And because that’s dinner time, that means unbolting the dog door, calling them in, pouring the dog food, preparing for the night.

But I walked out recently, apparently so quietly they didn’t hear me from the side door. And suddenly, I realized: Their world is kind of wonderful.

I could hear the train that bristles by at Balboa and Roscoe. I heard the rising traffic on Sherman Way as people began the buzz commute home. I smelled the Anheuser-Busch brewery two miles away (it’s the smell of grain after it’s been processed of its sugar and before it’s fed to cows). Planes droned the Van Nuys Airport, awaiting their turn.

It was…alive. Particularly when Teddy and Esme realized a real human being! was outside and sprinted around the corner to greet me as if I had been gone since Christmas.

But it was too late. I had felt it, the city surf, in its high tide. I would discover there are low tides as well. After 9:15 p.m., you can hear the gentle hum of the night owl traffic, though rarely a honk. The single prop plane — what do you think up there, at once above and below the heavens, alone and aloft? The train’s whistle now more a melancholy wail than a churn. Just as alive. Just in deeper breaths.

And so is borne tradition. If I’m home, I’m back there at 5:35 p.m. The dogs have learned there’s no need yet to lose their shit over kibble. They know; their landlord is going to want to be in that chair, which has to be positioned just off the porch, at cement’s edge, to catch the sun’s full and final rays, to tell it good night and see you tomorrow. And they must assume I’ll bring the Mellow Playlist. Because I will.

house

They still don’t care my reasons. I guess they don’t need to. All they need to know is that they have new company at the shore of the city surf, where you can smell summer on the way, feel a warmth that’s beginning to linger, hear a heightening hum and still curl into a lazy, sun-drenched ball of fur that says dinner maybeontheway but what’s…the….rush?

What better place to be sure?