Dog and I (5 page)

“And now for our final contestant of the night,” the man called Roy barked into the microphone. “Roy— good name, that!—and his Wonder Dog, Cindy!”

I pulled and Cindy balked. I'd expected that. She was shy and still just a puppy. I tugged again and this time Cindy came with me.

We rounded the tarpaulin and came out onto the stage. It was, to me, a shock. The lights, the warmth, the sea of smiling faces, the huge powerful presence of the man called Roy and his microphone, the sense that Cindy and I were trapped.

“Walk her around now,” the man called Roy ordered. I did, and Cindy came fairly well. A warm round of applause rippled through the crowd.

“Let's see if she'll stay,” the man called Roy said. I tried to do as Donnie had done to Ric. I stood and pointed firmly at her.

“Stay!” I commanded. I backed away. Cindy came with me. I remembered the biscuits, pulled one out, and dropped it. Some in the crowd laughed. I picked it up and tried again.
“Stay!”
I yelled. I must have frightened her, because when I backed away she jumped from her haunches and then dipped back down again.

Something fell from her rear end. I realized immediately what it was. It was as if my face had been dipped in a boiling kettle.

The man called Roy noticed, too. “Well,” he barked into the microphone. “What do we have here? Is that another
‘dog biscuit'
on the stage, Roy?”

The crowd roared.

I had no idea what to say. I backed farther away, Cindy followed, but first dipping again and dropping something else on the stage.

“Biscuits are coming fast and furious here!” the man called Roy announced to another roar of the crowd. Cindy still had another in her. “And another!” he announced, giving a play-by-play of her lack of toilet training.

I was mortified. I grabbed her leash and we scrambled off the stage to more roars and laughter.

The man called Roy was still talking. “We'll have the presentation, ladies and gentlemen, soon's we get these …
dog biscuits
… cleaned off the stage here!”

I had played dozens of hockey games and lacrosse games in this same arena, but never heard such cheering as followed the man called Roy's endless witticisms about the “biscuits” that had fallen from poor Cindy. I wanted to leave right away but my friends, who were also laughing at me, were all staying. I wanted to cry, but they were all looking, and I couldn't possibly.

I leaned down and picked up Cindy. I hugged her hard. She was shaking like a leaf.

The man called Roy was calling out the judges' decisions. “First place, seven dollars, goes to Donnie and his dog Ric.” Donnie and Ric bounded back out onto the stage. “Second place and six dollars goes to Sinclair and his dog Lady.” Off went Sinc and Lady to collect their booty.

I burned even more with envy. Seven bucks, or six bucks, would pay for an entire day on the midway. Rides, candy, games—perhaps they'd even win something at one of those games where you tried to land a ping-pong ball in a small goldfish bowl or something.

Down through the line they went. Brent and Ron won. The other kids won.

“Sixth place, and two dollars, goes to our biscuit boy, Roy and Cindy!” I heard my name, heard the laughter, and found I was being pushed out onto the stage, Cindy staying behind with Brent while I collected. “Careful where you step now!” the man called Roy commanded. He pretended to jump away from something. “
Hey
—that a fresh
biscuit
or a fresh something else?”

The crowd howled once more. I grabbed my twodollar bill—this was when there was still such a thing in this country—and virtually ran off stage.

“And last place, one dollar,” the man called Roy announced, “goes to Bob and the little dog that wouldn't come out, Queenie.” Laughing, Bob bounded out onto the stage, grabbed his money, and hurried back. We were all winners. Sort of.

Soon it didn't matter at all. We all had our money. Ric and Lady were the stars. And no one was saying anything cruel about Cindy, who after all was no more than a puppy. The five of us and our five dogs walked home together, up past the high school, up the street and onto Reservoir Hill.

I got home and showed my mother the two-dollar bill that Cindy and I had won at the fall fair dog show, but I never said a word about the biscuits incident and the way the crowd had laughed at us.

“You better get to bed,” she said. “It's late.”

It was, now well past ten. I called Cindy and let her out once more before the night—though after her performance on the public stage, it hardly seemed necessary—and then let her back in and leaned down to pat her and hug her before she curled up on the old blanket in the back room. I wondered if she had any realization, or memory, of what had happened. I wondered if a dog, like a cat, can be embarrassed. I wondered what she thought of the horrible thing I had just put her through.

But she was no different this night from any other night at bedtime. She took the pats on the head and the scratches of the ears and moaned and wiggled and, suddenly, put her front paws on my crouching knees and leaned up, tail wagging, and licked me.

Right on the lips.

Shoes and Socks

Choices, choices, choices. The garbage needs putting out, so I could put on a right roller skate and a left running shoe. Or a left slipper and a right winter boot.

Soon I have to go out myself, which means tracking down a right and a left dress shoe and hoping they're the same colour. Fortunately, there are only two pairs, one black and one brown, so the chances of matching colours—presuming I can find a right and a left—are somewhat improved. Later on I have hockey, and mercifully the skates are inside t eir own zippered pouches—but even so, I'd better check. Just to make sure I don't end up stepping on the ice with one left skate and one right snowshoe.

It was never this way before the puppy arrived.

All dogs have nervous disorders. Some immediately fall over and turn up their stomach. Some hump your leg. Some pee when they meet strangers. Some even lunge for the throat. This one called Willow, five months old and looking like no breed ever before known to man or dogkind, has to have a shoe in her mouth. It is the oddest thing. The slightest excitement—a knock at the door, a kid arriving home from work, a loud commercial—and the puppy will suddenly appear, wildly wiggling, with a shoe in her mouth. It may be the last time you see the shoe, or its match, for days.

None of this makes the slightest sense. She does not chew the shoes, but merely holds them in her mouth until, at some point of neurotic comfort, she decides to stop her wiggling and drop the shoe somewhere, anywhere, and move on.

And it is not as if a shoe is all there is around here to serve as a pacifier. Because there are no longer very young children around, and because there are now almost as many pet stores in the country as there are Tim Hortons, she has an endless supply of toys to turn to in stressful moments. There are ducks and penguins that squeak, furry rabbits that honk, footballs, red-white-and-blue balls, Frisbees, plastic bones, rope pulls, and fake squirrels. There is even a rubber shoe— which, incidentally, holds not the slightest interest for her.

The vanishing shoes have brought back memories of that brilliant, long-ago episode of
Married With Children
in which Al Bundy becomes convinced that his socks are going missing because green aliens are sneaking into the Bundy home at night and taking them to use as fuel for their spaceships.

“Peg!” Al shouts at one point. “Three little aliens came in here and … they stole my socks!”

“Were they green before or after they touched your socks?” Peg asks.

Al, much to the shock of Peg, turns out to be right. The aliens were, in fact, green and were, indeed, after mizzoozzoo—alien talk for “fuel.” Al's stinky socks proved to be exactly what was required to send ships off to intercept a giant comet hurtling straight for Earth— which made for another happy ending for
Married With Children
.

Poor Al might have been laughed at here on Earth, but, according to a trailer that followed the program, “On planet Philydion, they still sing songs of the man who made it possible for the comet to be destroyed. The man who saved Earth and a hundred worlds by providing fuel for the ships which diverted the comet. And that man is … Al Bundy.” Brings a tear to the eye, doesn't it?

There are, however, no little green men around here, just a young mutt that steals the cats' food for
mizzoozzoo
and isn't comfortable unless someone's shoe is hanging from her mouth.

The search for missing shoes has, naturally, brought up the third most perplexing puzzle humans have been known to ponder since the beginning of time. The first, obviously, is “Who created God?” (For the answer, please turn to page 368.) The second, and more recent puzzle, is “If people truly get the politicians they deserve, what did we do to deserve this?” And the third, of course, is the Mystery of the Lone Shoe.

The Lone Shoe is a conundrum considered by everyone who has ever driven a car on a busy freeway and wondered why there is only one sneaker in the fast lane. It is a question debated internally by everyone who has ever looked into a ditch and wondered how such a fine-looking sandal, single, came to be lying there.

There are, in any given community at any given moment, more single, lonely shoes than Imelda Marcos has pairs. There are, around this world, entire monuments erected to the Mystery of the Lone Shoe, single sneakers and sandals and baby shoes and rubber boots hanging by their laces as if, absurdly, expecting a mate to show up unexpectedly. There are websites featuring the Mystery of the Lone Shoe. People in chat rooms trade theories on their existence. There are even eccentrics who go around photographing lone shoes at roadsides.

One successful writer, David Feldman, a man obsessed with unanswerable questions (which he calls “frustables”), has apparently devoted seven pages of his book
When Do Fish Sleep?
to the Lone Shoe phenomenon. I have not seen the book and now do not need to, for the answer is, at this very moment, curled up on a small mat at my feet, sleeping beside a lone shoe.

The answer is, obviously, neurotic puppies—the lone shoe fetish perhaps the only genetic stream that is traceable in this curious creature that looks far more like a fox than the border collie the owner of its mother predicted. Crazy, insecure puppies everywhere, each with a single shoe in the mouth every time the doorbell rings. The other shoe is off travelling somewhere on its own, perhaps never to be seen again.

The Puppy Brain

Come join us on a tour of the puppy brain. It's a walking tour, so watch where you step, please.

My own experience, garnered from years of reporting on Parliament Hill, is to deal with brains that spend every waking minute thinking of ways to stay in, or get back in—so it is quite something to consider a brain, of roughly equal size, that spends every waking minute thinking of how to get
out
.

We will begin the tour by entering through the ear. Again, careful as you step. Beware that slashing back paw. And pay no attention to that odd-looking bug hiding in the hair below where the paw is raking—it's just about to go off and lay some eggs in the living room rug anyway. You will note that the ears of this particular model, known around here as “Bandit,” make no sense. The size would seem to come from Labrador, the flop from border collie, the colour from Dalmatian, and the cocky twist of the left ear probably from that male terrier who broke loose down along the Ottawa River last March. He's the one they say is responsible for all this in the first place.

Those receivers you see set up all around the ear channel are extremely sophisticated, so try not to touch, if you don't mind. They are highly sensitive and capable of hearing a mailman at two hundred paces, a hand being formed into a fist for knocking at the front door, a squirrel leaping from branch to branch half a block away—but they cannot, for some reason, ever seem to pick up the sound of its own name, no matter how loudly shouted or, indeed, screamed.