A Dog's Day, Too!

This morning finds my dog Max in the dog-house.  Too bad, his dog-house is his home rather than some shabby warren out at the far end of the garden.  That is where he belongs this morning.  Banished.

Max is lovable indoors but a kind of beast outside.  There, his inner dog is released.  He is become a take-charge personality.  So strong can be his intent that no ordinary lead suits him; so strong, that he’d sooner choke himself than be denied his will.  We’ve tried other leads, those that attach themselves to a “take charge” head harnesses for example; but, Max is the master of escape.  He wears a padded harness, designed for dogs riding in cars; it’s the closest thing that the dog world has to a straight jacket.

A standard poodle lives in the neighbourhood.  Standing a head taller than Max, whatever the dog’s breed or disposition, is an open invitation to play.  A standard poodle is one such dog.  Trouble is, Max is a ‘coon-hound; and, his way of issuing that invitation wells up from his chest, in a resounding, deep hunting-dog’s croon.  It is a language that neither standard poodle nor its master — a plain-Jane office worker type — understand.  Imagine that you are completing your rounds in the supermarket, when someone you don’t really know shouts out, Hey! You. Yeah, you! Get yourself over here, and, let me give you a cuddle. NOW!   Indeed, it is a language that the other dog and master appear to fear.  Unfortunately, in the dog world, nothing telegraphs with greater resonance than the sign-language of fear.  That hurried backing away indicates that they’ve translated Max’s invitation to play as I want to eat you all up.

It is then that the real trouble begins.  Max knows no rejection and will never know rejection even when it bites him on the arse.  What follows the hurried backing away is a renewed coon-hound’s croon to which is added the sign-language of Wait! No, wait. We really have to play.  Trouble is, with a dog bred to leap into trees after prey, Max appears to be lunging madly.  In the slow motion of events unfolding before eyes that would rather they be blanketed, it is then that Max goes “House of Flying Daggers”.  Max is flying at the end of his lead. He is flying., I hear myself relaying events to myself in a reporter’s dispassionate calm if only to mask my horror.

With Maya, my other dog, pulling at my other arm, encouraging Escape!, it is all I can do to hold my flying dog between his Heaven and my Hell.  I lean back against his forward thrusts.  I wind the lead around my hand until the colour of the hand goes the red of a child holding his breath, until the lead is short enough to breach the space between my hand and the nape of his neck.  As I latch onto his neck — the baby-fat that a mother dog would have used to carry her pup — Max’s croon is broken like a teen-age boy’s voice, broken with surprise.

My arm is a crane.  It brings him back to earth, corps à corps.  The standard poodle’s master uses the moment of distraction to make a break, to run for it, to get away.  From the corner of my eye, it appears that she, bundled in her beige winter’s coat, its hood up, brimming with fur lining,  . . .  it appears she has become a squirrel, scrambling away with what speed her legs can muster.  It’s only more sign language in dog world.  Game on, thinks Max. I’ll catch you, if I can.  My voice commands him, Sit! Stay!, as though someone more commanding has stepped into my body.  My voice has dropped octaves.  Leave it!, I insist as though standard poodle were one of Maya’s toys.  As I struggle to command his sight, Max struggles to break free.

Amidst main street’s morning bustle, I seem to be having an out-of-body experience.  I hover above the scene, not like a halo on a saint but as a demon on my shoulder.  I notice that passersby eye me with a mixture of horror . . . fear . . . disdain.  What I am feeling is the shame of a parent, caught-out, having to discipline a naughty child in public.  The feeling is heavy; and, I seem to sink back into myself.  Be good boy, I say.  Wait ’til I get you home.  Who am I kidding?  "Home" registers as a command Max is willing to recognize.  He’s off, tail wagging, toward home.

Here, he is decided, to take his punishment laying down.  He runs off to the guest room, and, throws himself down upon the center of the body of the bed.  Corps à corps, indeed.  Here, sleep has over taken him.  He runs through wild fields — in his dreams, as indicated by the movements of legs — no doubt, joined by the standard poodle.  Here, he will sleep until the sun through the room’s sky-facing windows no longer warms him.  And, then he will be of a mind to hound me: Take me outside again!