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Part Pooch, or: More Than an Act

[David Smilow]

I
DON’T HAVE
a dog. I am one. At least in part. Call me
Canis erectus
—the latest hybrid in the tradition of Schnoodle and Cockapoo: a Humutt. I’d always suspected I had bowzer in the bones. (Something about the way I wolfed my food and cozied up to the funkiest of couches.) But confirmation came last summer when I was cast in a regional theater production as, yes, a dog.

“Not a cartoon dog, or a dog that talks,” the director explained at the audition, without a fleck of irony. “A dog.” Which is where the irony
did
come in. Straight dog made getting the part a cinch. All it took was one scratch. Specifically, behind my left ear.

I’d “sat” alongside a production assistant who was playing my master in an improvised scene. He looked down at me. I looked back, soulful with love. So he smiled, said “Good boy,” and reached to work that ear spot. A little Norman Rockwellish, maybe. Still, the instant he made contact, my whole body contorted in a rictus of pleasure. My head twisted and thrust forward. My eyes glazed over. The corners of my mouth pulled back as far as they could go. One foot drummed against the floor in helpless autonomic rapture. I was prepared—like any dog in blissful seizure—to go on like that, rigid yet thrashing, until I either died or the scratching stopped. It didn’t even matter to me which way it went. The ecstasy was all. And was pretty much it: I got the gig. I was officially a show dog. Stage show, that is.

The director instructed that in the time before the play went into rehearsal, I was to study every dog I came across—really pay attention to how they sat and walked and reacted to things. She needn’t have worried I’d show up unprepared. The dog in me began to assert itself almost immediately.

Take what happened a few days later. I was at the counter of a diner waiting for my short stack (no, no meat with that) when I realized I was tracking the waitress’s every movement. Not unusual, in and of itself. I’m big on watching waitresses move. Only this time I wasn’t following her with my eyes. I was swiveling my entire head, doggy style. This resulted ina) my keeping the waitress directly in front of me and blatantly focused on and b) the waitress sensing there was something off about her customer, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on.

Then there was the Face/Sniff Thing. I’d started inching my face forward and sniffing to check out any change in my environment. Anything at all. Somebody would walk in the door. Face. Sniff. A plate of food would be carried past. Ditto. An ant would appear on a windowsill. Ditto ditto. I even did the Face/Sniff Thing with my own mail. (Hmm. [sniff] Seems like a phone bill. [sniff-sniff] Yup.) Meanwhile, in parallel developments, I’d taken to ostentatious lip-licking, sub-vocal “mffs” if unsettled, and—of course—cocking my head when someone called my name.

What struck me about all this wasn’t how quickly I’d shifted to the Fido frequencies of the behavioral spectrum, but how natural it seemed. In fact, my sense is that if I’d been able to scratch that spot behind my ear with my foot, I might never have come back from my woof on the wild side. Clearly, I was ready to perform.

I arrived early the first day of rehearsal, yet, within an hour, had learned an important lesson: If you’re a dog in a room full of humans who’ve only just met, the humans pay attention to each other, not you—unless you’re vomiting, or preparing to vomit. For the read-through of the play I sat in a chair. (Human style. The torturous perching on block-like scenic elements wouldn’t begin for another week.) And for hours at a clip simply, well, sat. Everyone else had jobs (director, dramaturge, actor) and a lot to say about how they were going to do them. I was just a dog. Not a cartoon dog or a talking dog. A dog. What was there to discuss?

The play—about the cross-country journey of a man and his long-in-the-tooth, terminally ill pet—was composed of long monologues delivered to the man by an assortment of oddball characters he meets along the way. Aside from the occasional script-mandated look in my direction or pat on the head (which I savored shamelessly), I was ignored that first day—a victim of phylum bias. Even when we moved to a rehearsal hall, I proved to be too doglike for my own good—so convincingly obedient, so resolutely looking to my master for cues, nay, for my very reason for being, that nobody gave me a second thought. When lunch break was called, the actors would scoot off to eat without a backward glance. And there I’d be, alone. Because, hey, I was just a dog.

I became despondent. I was isolated—stuck between two worlds. On the one hand, I was a human being (at least according to my driver’s license) but on the other, I was now too doggy to
not
be a dog. I’d gone past the Pointer of no return.

I began to take long walks in the blazing heat during breaks to get my mind off my dilemma. But something would always bring it back. Usually something with four legs and a wet nose.

Perfect example: One day on walkabout, I saw a sun-wilted family far down the sidewalk trudging my way—a harried mom pushing a stroller, herding a clot of toddlers, and leading a Papillonoid mixed-breed on a leash. Suddenly, the dog’s head snapped up. He stared at me for a second, then strained at the leash, pulling it taut as he struggled to close the gap between us, tail thrashing, tongue out. By the time we were ten feet apart, the dog’s claws were scrabbling on the sidewalk and he was choking, so mighty was his effort to get to me. The expression on the woman’s face was pure “What the hell…?,” but I knew what had happened. I’d been sniffed out from over fifty yards away.

I sighed and squatted down, addressing the dog. “Okay, come say hi.” The little guy was on me in a flash, muzzle in my face, sniffing, licking, whimpering.

“He never does this,” said the mom.

I smiled feebly. “Right.” What I should have said was, “He thinks I’m his uncle.”

Things began to look up after that, in part because actors run in packs too. They stick together and defend each other when confronted by their natural enemies. Like directors and stage managers. I might have just been a dog, but I was still a cast member. And since during times of duress (i.e., rehearsal) there’s safety in numbers, I was welcomed into the actors’ pack, making me a kind of double dog. But more and more, what soothed me was a phenomenon I began to experience onstage: the serenity of not being human. I got to untether myself from the prerequisites of man. Language, for instance. That was a biggie. I’d look up attentively at whoever was speaking (good boy that I was) but the words grew increasingly meaningless. Soon they were just sound. All that registered was tone and inflection. The
vibe.
I never had to answer anyone, or make so much as an effort to understand them. Oh yes, this was a part I could get into.

Indeed, by opening night, I was completely at home in my separate, ground-level reality. Despite the physical rigors of the role (I wore multiple layers of padding on my shins to make my protracted “sitting” bearable and, in curling my fingers under to convert my hands into paws, had actually developed calluses on the first knuckle joints where they made contact with the floor), being a dog meant liberation. The characters around me may have been churning with regret and loss and worry and confusion, but down on the floor, I was free to sniff things. And sit. And look over there. Then over there. And sniff something else. Then look over there again. Life had become so clear: it was
all
sniffing and looking. Time didn’t even matter anymore. There was no future, no past. Only what turned up in front of my nose right now. Isolation had transformed to meditation.

The audiences knew right away I was fully commutted. When the lights came up at the beginning of the play to reveal me sitting next to my master, dutifully looking up at him between sniffs at what have you, a ripple would pass through the crowd. I could feel them thinking,
Oh my God. He’s a dog.

Not just any dog, though.
Their
dog. It’s funny, I’d seen myself as being of strictly promiscuous provenance—a little idiosyncratic Terrier mixed with a lot of doleful Hound on a base of sweet, patient working dog—but I’d invariably hear of audience members who, during the show, had whispered to the person next to them with absolute certainty that I was a Portuguese Water Dog. Had to be. I was exactly like Farfel. Or Beeps the Springer. Or Otto the Mastiff. Or Hans. Zeke. Max. Lulu. Somehow in moving to a different species, I’d embodied its every breed. The transference went even further. Full circle, in fact. A close friend of mine got hysterical during the play because everything I did reminded her of her dog Chris. A few weeks later, she reported that everything Chris did now reminded her of me.

People would come up after the show giddily wanting to pet me, or wishing they could take me home (to meet Hans, Zeke, Max, Lulu) or, in one instance, weeping that the pooch in the play wasn’t long for this dog’s life. What they all had in common was a certain look in the eye: a tacit acknowledgment that they had seen a dog onstage—even if it had been, in the end, their own. I didn’t mind. I was too busy lapping up the attention.

I did get my own jolt of recognition as to how deeply I’d delved into Dog. One night during Act One, I wheeled to follow my master off, and suddenly noticed my sharply etched shadow on the white-painted stage. “Look at me,” I thought. “I’m a fifty-four-year-old man clambering around on all fours under a spotlight in front of total strangers.” It wasn’t the thought itself that jarred me. I
was
a fifty-four-year-old man clambering around on all fours under a spotlight in front of total strangers. No, it was the fact that thinking at all had become so alien, so intrusive. Fortunately, I was able to banish further cerebration with a quick sniff of my master’s shoe.

And then the play closed. In one fell swoop, I lost both my stage family and my excuse to act like an animal who can lick its own privates. Behavior that had been deemed Spot-on was now regarded as bizarre, even borderline disturbing. I’d catch myself doing the Face/Sniff Thing on a date. Panting and whining at the Department of Motor Vehicles. For my own protection, I forced my inner pup back in.

But evolution doesn’t go in reverse. Once mutations occur, they can’t be undone. So while it’s true I now walk upright, follow movement only with my eyes, and actually listen to people, the real story comes out when I visit my dog friends. They look up at me, quivering in that instant before the joyous orgy of licking and playing begins, and they
know:
I’m one of them.

[
Chased by a Saluki, a rabbit becomes an Egyptian hieroglyph.—Dan Liebert
]

Do You Take This Norwegian Elkhound?

[Alysia Gray Painter]

THE DECORATIONS
(balding tinsel strands and last year’s Christmas ornaments, the round kind that become hairy when the fibers begin to fray) were hung with pomp. The reception buffet, complete with a variety of different tastes like beef, chicken, and beefy chicken, was elegantly displayed on a nearby rock chosen for its proximity to the altar, its largeness, its flatness, its surprising lack of sunning lizards and the fact that it was remarkably clean as far as rocks go.

Dressed for my role as wedding consultant/minister/flower girl/best man/maid of honor/mother of the bride/caterer/reception singer in a semi-damp bathing suit, flowery shorts and bare feet, I went to go check on the groom’s progress. Conveniently, he was staying across the street from the ceremony, which was scheduled to commence under a small grove of palo verde trees promptly when I could round up all the napping participants. Not yet dressed, the groom looked meditative when I found him, his eyes mostly closed as he sprawled on the sunny pool deck, head lolling, his stocky legs splayed this way and that. After some gentle coaxing and pulling to get him on his feet, he lazily (nervously?) followed me to the First Church of My Front Yard, where I loosely arranged one of my father’s favorite ties around his foldy neck.

After huffingly and puffingly positioning Lars, a handsome Norwegian Elkhound, to sit (and stay! stay! stay!) under the Christmas decoration-laden branches, I ran inside my own home to collect the bride. I found her standing in the kitchen, quietly, solemnly even, staring at the garbage can, perhaps taking a moment to wonder if she had made the right choice by agreeing to enter into this eternal union. Or perhaps she was wondering whether it wouldn’t be a grand idea to knock over the garbage can, hastily spread 98 percent of its contents around the room and snuzzle about for that luscious, liquidy bag that once held last night’s pork chops.

There was no time for a pep talk or pork chop juice. I picked the bride up, opened the back door, and sprinted for the altar, where Lars was licking wetly at his tummy, my dad’s tie now draped across a prickly pear cactus a few feet away. Setting Lucy, our mouthy mix of a Poodle-Terrier-Something, down next to him, I scurried away on my last errand—find a witness or two. The Labrador down the street? Staring from a window, inconveniently locked inside while his family was out (his huge, moist eyes seemed to say, “Tell the bride I love her”). The mutts who loiter around down in the cul-de-sac? Either at the kennel or sleeping under some bed. I paused. I needed a nuptial witness who could sit and stay (and fast). Should I invite Greca, the Siberian Husky currently living with Lars? It was a thorny issue, one I’m not even sure Emily Post would want to address: Can the female—and a gorgeous female with a swishy tail and silvery coat of thick hair at that—who is currently living with the groom attend the wedding, or will there be a scene? Throwing etiquette to the warm Arizona wind, I located the Husky snoozing on some hot pebbles in her driveway and got her moving, slowly, slowly, come on, slowly, in the direction of my house.

Where was Lars? After a dash around the yard, I spotted the reluctant groom wandering over to greet the mailman. Lars! Larrrrrs! I helloed the mailman, grabbed the mail, got Lars, escorted him back to the palo verde grove, shooed the bride away from the buffet rock (where she had handily gulped down the entire reception feast during my witness search) and began. I was sweaty, out of breath, and barefoot, with a pile of catalogs and bills in one hand and a “don’t-wander-off” arm around the groom, but a marriage was happening and that was something sacred and beautiful. Near the end of the forty-five-second-long ceremony, the bride began to bark, the groom began to doze, and the witness pulled the tie off the prickly pear cactus for some quality chewing action. And I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may now wander off in search of a rawhide treat or a lap to curl up in.

I spent the close of the 1970s presiding over the marriages of just about every dog to every other dog in the cactusy desert north of Tucson. Family dogs—and it seemed like just about every family had a dog—had more roaming privileges back then in the wilder nooks of the Catalina foothills, where car traffic was low and nature ran up to (and sometimes straight inside, thanks to the occasional curious tarantula) each home’s doorstep. So procuring a groom and a bride, especially if I felt a certain dog had gotten married too many times in recent weeks (nearly an impossibility in my mind; the more “I dos” a dog had, the better), was never an issue. A potential nuptial candidate was likely to wander in from the desert at any time, and I knew just about every dog in the zip code, it seemed, so I always had a promising bride and groom in mind.

If you lived in that neighborhood at the time, and had a canine, I must admit to you now that it was extremely likely he or she got married a few times while you were at work or out running errands. Maybe that explains why one evening your pup arrived home with Christmas tinsel threaded around his tail, not hungry for dinner after having gorged on a reception buffet of bologna slices and Milk Bones. Mystery solved.

Even at the time, I recognized that one of my favorite summer pastimes was a bit absurd; dog weddings became one of my favorite ways to spend my time because I liked spending my time with dogs. Of course, I liked organizing my day, planning events, and making itineraries, still do, and if anything has a set-in-stone structure, it is a wedding. But if you had told me that, by the time I reached adulthood, people would be throwing lavish weddings for their darling woofers, but for real, like, complete with florists and an organist, I would have scrunched up my freckly little nose with a “nuh-uh, not even” look on my face. And they are indeed; entertainment channels and magazines frequently feature expensive ceremonies between two dogs soon to be bred; the groom has a tiny tux, with an embroidered hole for tail, while the bride licks demurely at her lacy veil. I make no bones about these over-the-top rituals between consenting (or, at least, tail-wagging, if that can be considered consent) canines; I send the happy couple every joy (and toy) along the way. What gives me pause is the too-late aspiration that perhaps, by limiting myself to dog weddings, I had not fully explored, through my pooch protégés, other adult rites of passage. Surely if dog weddings have become de rigueur, won’t other major moments of our human lives soon go to the dogs?

Rather than placing the Norwegian Elkhound, the Husky, and the Poodle-Something in front of an altar and invoking the marital vows, I wish I would have thrown my own college graduation, complete with the formal handing out of diplomas (in this case, slices of turkey cut in squares and rolled up, parchment style). I’d then lecture the furry graduate about getting a decent job; he’d grow weary of my advice, and soon would waddle over to sniff the college president, who would in turn sniff him.

Or, I could have sat down behind a small boulder (my desk, in this case) and faced my canine client, who would likely scratch with boredom on the other side, while I did her taxes. I’d ask her if she had any write-offs to declare (one woof for “no”), then I’d ask her to “shake” before she put a dusty paw of approval on the crumbly piece of green construction paper that would serve as her W-2. My crayon signature would attest to the veracity of the document, and off to the government agent (the nearest Golden Retriever’s mouth) it would go.

There could have been the DMV (line the dogs up for an interminable amount of time, only to tell them they had not brought the correct paperwork before letting them wander off ). Or a job interview (the dogs would have to talk about goals and their best qualities, or at the very least not chase their tails during the salary negotiation phase).

In fact, the more I find myself going through the routines and procedures of adulthood, those thousands of tasks, meetings, and appointments we must participate in daily, the more I think how much better it would be if my dog could go in my place. He doesn’t care about per diems or income brackets or signing on any dotted line. Rather than worried questions, the filling out of forms and the making of late payments, there’d probably be instead some languid ear scratching or rump scooting or foot smelling, all things I myself have never done during an important interview or conference (not that I wasn’t tempted).

Somewhere right now, I hope, there’s a little girl convening some neighborhood mutts under a thicket of trees, not for a wedding but rather to play traffic school or empowerment seminar. I’m not saying that in twenty or thirty years we’ll actually see real dogs attending a real seminar called Extreme Goal Setting in Romance and/or Finance Now!, but the chances are seriously good.

[
Chihuahuas possess the jittery intensity of a dime dropped on a marble floor.—Dan Liebert
]