Tag Archives: Teddy

A Breakfast of Champions

 

Esme taught Teddy how to fetch this week.

If there were a god, I’d swear to her. So I’ll swear on my father’s writings, as true a thing as ever was.

And in that spirit, I will admit: It was a pseudo-fetch.

I was finishing our Morning Ritual. On vertical days, we stir together. I take my meds, give Teddy his. Then we head to the backyard, where we fetch from the spa. Esme chases the Kong, dad shakes the coma cobwebs and Teddy scratches his ass on the ivy wall (he’s etched divots and ruts and bald spots into it, so it looks like a doomed comb-over). FullSizeRender 2When I call “toy!” Esme brings it to spa’s edge, so I can toss it into the tub for future fetches.

On this morning, though, as I called out, Teddy came to the stairs. With the ball. In his mouth. Sure, I had to wrench it from him his jaws (the concept is still a bit lofty), but this was a miracle on scale with the loaves and the fishes. He must have watched Esme until osmosis created a muscle memory.

I call it muscle memory because I’m hesitant to say he learned anything. Empirically, his IQ still likely hovers around that of a learning-impaired doorknob. Witness what he did during the breakfast that followed.

Because he gets overexcited by the notion of food, Teddy’s epilepsy has worsened around mealtime, forcing me to break routine and feed them outside. Teddy still gets overexcited. But he also exhausts himself in the new routine, which seems to calm him some.

The new routine simply calls for them to dine outside. But when Teddy hears the clatter of bowls, he runs around the house to the dog door, which I close as I fix the food.

Whunk. Teddy’s head regularly, dully thumps the door. Two dozen times, at least, he’s rapped his noggin in attempted entry, like that kid from the Midvale School for the Gifted in The Far Side.

far-side-school-for-gifted

Teddy will study me as I fix the food. If I step from his sight (say, to get the food), he’ll sprint to the back door. When he sees I’m not there, he’ll sprint back to the dog door, which surely must be open now. Whunk. He’s undaunted in his bloodhound-ery, sprinting and panting and whunking while Esme waits patiently by the back door, where the food always arrives.

Theodore Ruxpin Bowles: I THINK HE’S GOING TO GET FOOD!
Esme Beyonce Bowles: Yeah, it’s time for breakfast. Actually, he’s late.
TRB: I HEARD BOWLS!!
EBB: That’s where the food goes.
TRB (voice trailing): I’M GOING AROUND TO THE SIDE, IN CASE HE COMES OUT THE DOG DOOR! SIGNAL IF YOU HEAR ANYTHING!!
EBB: No.
TRB: IT IS!!! IT IS FOOD!! AND I THINK IT’S….DOG FOOD!! HE’S GETTING DOG FOOD!!!
EBB: (sigh)
TRB: WAIT, I DON’T SEE HIM! HE’S GONE! I’M COMING AROUND IN CASE YOU NEED BACKUP!!! ROGER!! ROGER!! YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO SAY ROGER BACK!!!
EBB: One night, I will smother you in your sleep.
TRB: IS HE HERE?? WHAT THE…? WHERE DID HE…??? WHY DIDN’T YOU SAY ROGER BACK?! I’M HEADED BACK AROUND!!! NEXT TIME SAY ROGER!!!
Whunk.
TRB: DON’T PANIC, SIS!! I FOUND HIM!! AND HE SEEMS TO BE MAKING SOMETHING…COMING BACK YOUR WAY!!!! ROGER!!!!

Loaves and fishes.

Of a Feather

 

My sister told me on Mother’s Day that I was going to be a father.

Wait. That sounds awfully hillbilly-esque. Let me rephrase. In May, Caroline told me that birds were constructing a nest on my back patio.

I was surprised to hear. Normally Esme stands pretty firm in her patrol of the house, which she considers her own and rules like a plump matriarch.

One rainy evening, as I was showering, I heard Esme and Teddy sniffing around in the bathroom. When I opened the shower, I found a possum, corpse-like in the doorway. I grabbed a towel, peered down at the little fella — he looked like a baby, which routinely get separated from their moms in storms — and figured Esme killed it and brought it in to play fetch.

Or he could be playing, well, you know.

Adorned in only a towel, I leapt over the rodent to exit, certain it would startle, jump up and bite me in the slats. It didn’t, but after opening all the doors and heading to the garage for a shovel, I returned to find him gone. Mom taught him well. I never saw him again, despite a room-to-room sweep with Esme. I did, however, load the BB gun, just in case an angry mom returns for her child. possum

Weirder things have happened. Los Angeles moonlights as Los Fauna.

I once saw a rooster in my backyard. My next door neighbor claims to have found mountain lion scat on his roof. A backyard woodpecker I’ve named Plastics starts rapping about 5:30  a.m., the front yard mockingbirds earlier (now that’s Tweeting, bitches). A coyote ate a friend’s cat. Esme’s never been fond of crows, and shoos ravens the size of ostriches.

But the nest changed things.

It’s in a seemingly ideal spot: A crevice under the patio awning, out of reach of the ambulatory and sight of the migratory. Safe from crows and roosters and mountain lions and ostriches and possums. Always shaded.

The tenants are unremarkable. Sparrows as beige as blandness, small and missable. sparrow But once they moved in, I began paying attention. And Esme lost her aggression.

I spy them from the spa. They perch on the awning, eyeing a backyard that must teem with life unseen. I watch them dive bomb, quick and silent. If they catch an insect or crumb, they fly under the awning to gack into their kids’ mouths. They’ve even begun stopping at the dogs’ water dish for a sip.

And Esme doesn’t stir. Or even perk her ears. I think she’s had a Maude moment of enlightenment: “Dreyfus once wrote from Devil’s Island that he would see the most glorious birds. Many years later in Brittany he realized they had only been seagulls. For me they will always be glorious birds.”

maude

I know fall is coming. You can feel it at night, that approach of stillness. Soon, the nest will be gone.

I will miss the sparrows. Maybe the dogs will, too. If they’re reading, chirptweettweetchirp (translation: “You are officially invited to move in and stay forever.”).

It’s funny, when you drop your guard, how easy it is to take another’s cause as your own.

 

 

Domestic Partnerships and Slobber Love

 

Any pet owners worth their salt believe their domestic partners are god’s gift to the animal kingdom. And that’s only because it’s true.

But while I am full of shit, I fully believe Teddy and Esme are the shit.

It had been too long since I’d seen them Sunday. Ten days, thanks to two road trips that required their boarding. It would be our longest time apart. And it didn’t speed by like dog years.

When it did finally pass, I couldn’t help but marvel — again — at their differences. From color to size to demeanor, they are polar opposites. Even intelligence (let’s just say one may not be, um, MENSA-eligible).

But I also discovered that while they look and behave so differently, they are so alike.

Esme, I think, is the first dog to ever look at me condescendingly. If she has a ball within reach, she will bring it to me, friends, family members, hobos. She’ll set it on the ground and look at me. Then the ball. Then at me. Then…She is saying, ‘Come on, little guy, throw the ball. That’s it. Just throw the ball over there and play fetch. Good huuuuuuuummmmmmaaaaaaannnnn…’

EsmewithBall

When we are driving to the vet (or anywhere involving unpleasantries), she will sit in the front seat and simply stare at me. She is saying ‘I know where you’re going, and what you’re doing. Sonovabitch.’

Teddy speaks a different language. When I awaken and open the bedroom door, he is invariably, inevitably waiting, saying ‘Well good morning! Feel like a drive?! How about a walk to the washer-dryer?! Look, dad, look outside, look! It’s the backyard! Oh. My. God…DOG FOOD BREAKFAST!!!!!’

Even heading to the vet, he seems ridiculously happy with his head out the window, his tongue lolling. ‘Oh boy! A drive! The vet! RECTAL THERMOMETERS!!!!!’

teddyatcounter

esmeforeground

So I watched their reactions at our reunion. Not only was it our longest time apart; Teddy had to be hospitalized for an epileptic seizure the night before boarding. It was their longest time alone.

Esme came out first, with a ‘Where the hell is he, that sonovabitch?’ scowl with which she greets the planet. But when she saw me, she dropped the facade, hopped on the waiting room couch next to me. She pressed against my thigh, trembling slightly, not making a sound in the animal mayhem around her. She simply burrowed into my lap.

She was saying, in a pure, heartfelt, perfect way, “God I missed you. You owe me so much love.”

Next came Teddy. All clatter. Veterinary assistants calling out his name as he walks out, pats goodbye, the scrape of claws as he tries to Fred-Flintone it on the tile floor to get to me.

Fred_Flintstone

And I realize: they say the exact things, just in polar-opposite fashion.

He was saying, equally pure, equally heartfelt, equally perfect: “God I missed you. I owe you so much love.”

We stop for a Coke at the drive-through, a favorite hound haunt. I notice that Esme, for once, wanted to ride in the backseat with Ted. I could have taken umbrage, but how can you deny the beauty of a sister wanting to see her brother?

I smile and look back at the pair, to welcome them home.

Teddy greets me with a slobbering lick that covers the entirety of the right side of my face, from open grin to the lens on my glasses. And here I thought they were so different, when they are simply both sides of love.

Sonovabitch.

Dogsoutwindow