November 10, 2012
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Shake Shake Shake
It is a wonderful temperate day, the kind of Saturday I like to spend running outside behind my dog and shaking a tin can with about 25 pennies every time she barks. (It’s cheaper than the citrus collar I have not yet located for her.) I’m not sure shaking a tin can of pennies has deterred her barking any, but I can feel my biceps tightening with each shake.
Inside the house I am baking beans for the barn party tonight and playing spider solitaire. There are only about so many games of spider solitaire you can play. There is always the ultimate question: how hard do you want to make this game? I play the easiest game and win about 60% of the time. I need to win. Nancy plays the harder version and almost never wins, but she is made of stronger stuff.
Right now her stronger stuff is piled on the couch in the living room. She’s watching a movie on TV. Between her recent surgery and the drugs she’s taking to control the pain, she’s only good for about 2-3 hours of upright activity a day and then she disappears into the couch and snores for a while.
I have an unnatural affection for this photograph. I think it demonstrates the tank-like qualities of my dog. When she trots around the back yard she looks like a little rhino. I put a pink collar on her so people would know she’s a girl, which is the first time in my life I have ever actively courted pink. Look at the solid set of those muscular little legs. This is a dog intent on her personal purpose, which is the detect and disarm whatever may lie on the other side of that fence.
Good Lord, what is on the other side of that fence? you might well ask.
Usually nothing. Worse case scenario: two chow chows, neither one any bigger than Annie. Neither one has ever made a single sound that I’ve heard. They don’t bark back. I sense they do dash around the back yard, perhaps even in a semi-stalking manner like Annie: the point is, there’s a fence between them and they’ve all lived in the same place for 2 1/2 months now. There are at least 7 dogs in residence in the 5 houses that comprise our half of this city block, plus the 3 dogs across the street from us. The newest dog is Annie. Every time any one of these dogs comes outside, Annie runs outside to bark.
A few years ago, when I was pure and dogless, I wrote unkind things about my backyard neighbor whose dog dashed out to bark hysterically at the wind at 4 o’clock every morning. Her name was Princess. She was a min pin. She had a bark that could peel the hair off the top of your skull. He managed her barking tendencies by throwing open his patio doorway and shouting, “Princess, God-damned it, GET IN HERE!”
I have since issued commands very much like that. I don’t wake up at 4am to let my dog out, but then…I was out there at eleven last night muttering bad language and pointless commands, so…
Now I rage out into the back yard shaking a tin can with a handful of pennies inside.
But my dog’s bark is not annoying as his dog’s bark was, and besides, he did it first, so he owes me so many 4am wake-up calls before he can really complain.
I’m sure that’s exactly how he sees it.
