Howl (24 page)

One Step Out of the Dog House

[Frank Gannon]

T
HE
C
ITADEL,
the military college in Charleston, South Carolina, which only recently admitted female cadets, faces another crossroads this September when it officially admits a dog as an incoming freshman.

“This recognition of Canine Americans has been too long in coming,” said a prominent authority from the Midwest who prefers only to be known as a dog whisperer from the Midwest. “CAs should never have been seen as ‘second-class’ citizens—now they’re in the
same
classes as humans.”

In the best-forgotten past, “dogs” were not even allowed on the Citadel campus. Even friendships between cadets and CAs were rarely acknowledged.

“I had a dog, Otto, and we were close,” says Joe Forbear, a mid-60’s Citadel graduate. “And I know he was interested in a military career. In those days ‘K-9’ was as good as you could hope for if you were a military-minded CA. I knew in my heart that Otto was better than most cadets—maybe even better than me. But I never felt comfortable talking about our relationship. We always arranged our meetings in secret.”

Forbear gets emotional when he recalls those days.

“I guess I’m a little ashamed,” he says. “Ashamed about myself, but also ashamed about the system. Goddamn the system! Oh, goddamn the system.” He breaks down.

Today opportunities for CAs are obviously better, but how much better? No doubt, Citadel’s first freshman CA will have a less-than-smooth path. But those who know the “first dog” say they have chosen a very good bellwether in Sparky.

Herb Finan, who has been feeding Sparky for years, has a lot to say about him—almost all of it laudatory.

“He has an air of maturity far beyond his three years—those are human years. So he’s like twenty-one in dog years. He’s very perky, but if you tell him to sit, he will. He rides in a car really well. He used to sort of loll his tongue out the open window; he liked to feel it flopping in the breeze. But he cut that out. Therapy helped. Now he rides with the window up, just like a statesman.”

Many things set Sparky apart in his quest to be “the first.” Admissions director Ted Tendon tells of being struck by the dog’s application: “I had to check to make sure that it was, indeed, a dog who had sent it in. Sparky is clearly an admirable dog who would find success in any pursuit. He’s clearly not limited to traditional Canine-American fields. When his military career is over, I wouldn’t be surprised if he found himself in politics. Throughout his application, you could almost FEEL his leadership qualities. His singularity of purpose was striking, but it was Sparky’s maturity that was the deciding factor. He looks at things the way a much older dog would. Maybe five. And he shows both canine and noncanine influences. Take his analysis of something as simple as ‘retrieving’: anybody can retrieve; Sparky understands WHY the act of retrieving is beneficial to us all.”

However, in the military world, it seems that, eventually, you will hear something negative about every cadet. Andrew DiMaio, who lived next door to Sparky, paints a darker picture of the CA.

“Oh, he’s very good, for a dog. Every few years it seems there’s another highly touted dog. But my experience has been that when things get tough, the real dog in these individuals shows through. He’s flashy; I’ll grant you that. But he’s got some bad habits, like chewing stuff. He actually shredded half of his own application. I came in the room and he was CHEWING UP his transcript. How much trust can you put in an individual who has official documents sticking out of his mouth? How can you trust someone with your life when he slobbers—and not just a little bit? It’s major slobber.”

DiMaio paints a grim picture. But, in all fairness, this writer couldn’t find anybody who would say anything good about that crabby bastard, as DiMaio is known to his associates. DiMaio, it has been revealed, is also a dues-paying member of the anti-dog organization Canines: NO!

DiMaio downplays the allegations. “I used to belong to lots of organizations back when I was a kid. I was a product of the times, and there was a lot of anti-dog sentiment back then. It had just been revealed that there were actually
multiple
Lassies on that TV show. You can’t hold a man responsible for things he did as a kid.”

But even beyond DiMaio’s voice, questions persist regarding Sparky’s background. On the surface, his family is not an atypical CA family: he has eight brothers and nineteen sisters. But at least one of his siblings is the product of an incestuous relationship, and there is evidence of as many as 150 half-brothers and-sisters. One brother was hit by a bread truck last summer, and alcohol may have been involved. Also, rumors continue to suggest that Sparky experimented with group sex when he was younger. (Some allege that photos may yet surface.) One of his brothers, Bobo, had sex with a Basset Hound and apparently fled the state. Sparky made no mention of Bobo—or the alleged group sex—on his Citadel application.

Sparky is, at present, residing in his backyard in Pennsauken, New Jersey. When his lawyers brought him mention about his acceptance at the Citadel, onlookers described him as “happy but guarded.”

Sir Edmund Hillary, Roger Bannister—history books are filled with names that are famous chiefly for the reason that they were in fact “the first” in one avenue or another of near-human behavior. Sparky stands at the threshold of another “first.” Perhaps he will be the great success who opens the door to other Canine-Americans across the world. Perhaps he will pee on somebody important or chew up more vital documents and ruin everything. Only time will tell.

Seven Days of Finny

[Ann Brashares]

with art by Jacob Collins

D
AY
O
NE:
Finny visits farm. Fails to notice plate glass door. Finny leaps through plate glass door, cutting self, demolishing door. Finny’s family not invited back.

D
AY
T
WO:
Finny swims in Great South Bay. Finny punctures buoys marking channel. Finny swims far out and greets/terrifies water-skiers. Finny brought home by perplexed speedboat captain. Finny earns parents several summonses.

D
AY
T
HREE:
Finny humps small children at birthday party. Finny scolded. Finny humps more small children at birthday party. Finny called “pervert” by irritated parent.

D
AY
F
OUR:
Finny leaves home while new refrigerator delivered. Picked up by kind stranger fifteen feet from home. Finny goes home with stranger. Happy Finny eats stranger’s pricey dog toys. Stranger receives large reward from parents.

D
AY
F
IVE:
Finny finds four-foot-long stick/log on beach. Finny runs and plays, takes out knees, clears beach. Finny’s parents make enemies, incur heavy fines.

D
AY
S
IX:
Finny prances around park with balls intact. Finny bitten by another dog. Finny keeps balls, discontinues prancing.

D
AY
S
EVEN:
Finny eats seven pounds of raw pork and ball of tinfoil. Finny vomits repeatedly during long family car trip. Finny loved anyway.

Newman

[Thomas Cooney]

T
HERE WAS ONCE
a slogan that implored us all to “make it a Blockbuster night,” and this is the story of how my dog Newman and I did just that.

It was late on a Saturday night and I had no idea what I wanted to rent, no clue. I knew only that I wanted to lose myself in cinema and get away from the computer that was still grazing on the appetizer that had for months been Chapter One of a slow-developing novel.

We perused the New Arrivals, disappointed by the dregs left behind by those organized masses who had clearly chosen that morning to make it a Blockbuster night. I headed toward the foreign films section, hoping that a quietly intense bout of foreign cinema would inspire my own work, when all of a sudden, the plate glass windows began to roll in that way that stops all native Californians in our tracks as we quickly deduce:
Did a truck speed by? Is some NASA craft exiting or entering the atmosphere? Is this the Big One? Should I have had that second serving of cabbage?
My heart raced and Newman’s back legs started to buckle, his tail withering between them.

The commotion was quickly explained when a Blockbuster employee who couldn’t have been older than fifteen whipped out from behind the cash wrap and onto the street, where he found three guys pressing against the floor-to-ceiling windows. Everyone inside the store could hear him as he demanded that they
back their shit up.
Two of the guys apologized, hands up, palms out, while the third pointed through the window directly at us. The employee, who clearly couldn’t have handled these kids should they have decided to take things further, motioned for them to go inside if they wanted. They followed him, this trio of nations did—one of the kids was Filipino, the other was black, and the third was too blond to be from anywhere in this country (even Utah) and so he must have been Swedish or Danish or some other fish-for-breakfast type—and they immediately headed straight for me. The Filipino kid slid his hood off his head, patted his hair down, and said: “Dude, your dog was talking to us through the window.”

Before I could muster a response, before I could ask what Newman was saying to them, a girl three aisles over led her boyfriend by the hand toward us and said, “Oh my God, look, it’s a Disney dog!” She then squeezed her boyfriend’s hand before kissing him on the cheek.

“Say something,” the Swede demanded of my dog.

“Oh my God!” the girlfriend squealed in delight.

“Dude,” the Filipino said to me, “your dog rocks!” And it was from this last word that I recognized that distinct smell from my teenage years spent hanging around my brother and his crew: cannabis. So I looked closer at all three of them and realized that they were way gone, flying high, stoned out of their minds.

The two guys who had spoken began a bizarre game of punching each other on the shoulder and laughing, and then looking at Newman and then looking at each other again before repeating the same behavior. Newman, surprisingly, remained calm and seated through all of this, loving the Disney girl’s fingernails atop his head and behind his ears to the point that
he
looked stoned.

The third guy, the black kid, the slightest of the three, had at some point sat down Indian-style in front of Newman. Finally, as if arriving at a decision, he said, “I f **kin’ hate dogs, but can we borrow him?”

The “yes” that followed from his buddies was like that “yes” one hears in a room of guys when an impossible catch is made in a football game. It was a “yes” that spoke of the brilliance of such a suggestion, leading the Filipino to say, “We’ll give him pizza, and what? F**king pretzels, and, dude, like, like, like—”

“We’ll give him ramen,” the Swede said. “
Top
Ramen.” This sent them over the edge. The black kid sprang to his feet and they all fell into one another as if huddling.

As I pulled Newman away and continued my search for a rental, I couldn’t help but wonder what they’d seen in him through the plate glass windows. What clarity had come to them in their stoned state?

Though I occasionally like a good five gin-and-tonics and have been known to single-handedly polish off entire bottles of Champagne, I rarely engage in any sort of illicit hedonism. I prefer to live dangerously in other ways: going onto the street in my bathrobe to get the mail or arguing with RadioShack employees about restocking fees. In fact—as most of my friends know—somewhere in my Reagan-Again-in-’84 younger days, I made a vow to Just Say No. And though only a year after Reagan’s reelection, I left all those ridiculous morals behind, I somehow still clung to the no-drugs approach—something of a novelty in California.

I wondered if these kids had detected something in Newman that I’d missed. What if they were on his level? Communicating? And, what was he telling them about me? Did he tell them that one gin-infused evening I lifted his velvety earflap and put my ear against his, convinced that all his internal dialogue was in French? Did he tell them about the year I watched the Super Bowl in the aforementioned bathrobe, eating only soupy things straight from the microwave—oatmeal during the pre-show, cheddar cheese soup at the kickoff, chili con carne at halftime, baked beans for the second half? Or did he tell them that he knew he hadn’t been the dog I’d come for that day four years earlier? That he was an accidental discovery?

It was spring and I had been in a deep depression, spending weeks on end with Churchill’s black dogs. If it weren’t for my job teaching at a local college, I might never have gotten out of bed from February to April. My friend, Denise, kept sending me endless e-mails with links to dog rescue sites, certain that I needed a real canine to chase the black ones away. The subject headings on those e-mails were hard to ignore: “Hey Little Puddin’, Isn’t There Room in Your Heart for Him?” or “You Buy the Collar, I’ll Buy the Leash.” One day, she finally beat me into submission, and we went to the local SPCA.

“I’m here to see about a dog named Tuffy,” I said, loud above the din of the homeless canines. We were thanked for coming in and asked to follow the woman in charge. She fingered her way through key after key after key before finding the one for Tuffy. She put a temporary leash around his neck and led us to the fenced-in play area where we could take him for a “test drive.”

He was a smallish dog, perhaps thirty pounds. I let him off the leash and put my sunglasses on to shade the glare that angled into the area. He ran to one end of the yard, stopped, turned around to look at me, and then took off full speed for a good twenty-five feet before leaping at me and, as if with opposable thumbs, ripping the sunglasses off my face and then barking in my nose as though I were the one who brought him into this dark cursed world to begin with. I stood up, rescued my sunglasses, and took him back inside.

“He’s a bit of an asshole,” I told the woman, my two-month depression affording me such behavior.

“Well,” the attendant said slowly, “we can look at others.”

And so we did. By then, however, I was in no mood for test drives. I had to be seduced; it had to be love at first sight or nothing at all. We looked and looked, Denise asked about this one or that one. Didn’t I think he’d be great with her dog, Seamus? Didn’t I think this girl over here would be a nice lady friend for Seamus? But it was No, No, and hold on…No.

“Well, that’s it. You can always come another day,” the attendant said as she struggled with the gate to the last kennel she had opened. The latch wasn’t clicking shut. She cursed it. Finally, she swung the door out wide and slammed it shut. The whole building shook. “Sorry about that,” she said meekly. But it had been so loud that it woke up a youngster, who stood on hind legs to see what the *&#@! was going on. And right then and there my eyes landed on the most fantastic set of dog-eared dog ears I had ever seen. Those ears capped two deep brown eyes as big as malt balls. Below those eyes was a beard as hysterical on a ten-month-old dog as it would be on a five-year-old child, but this dog wore it as if part of his rogue identity. It was almost a goatee and almost a Vandyke, and it certainly made him look up to no good. I took him home.

Now, at Blockbuster, he had worked this same charm on the miscreants and the Disney girl. He was in his element, ready to be loaned out to three stoned nineteen-year-olds, who were now taking turns kneeling next to him in order to be captured on cell-phone cameras. The Swede panted with his tongue out as he sat next to Newman. The Filipino posed with his back to Newman’s flank, his arms poised gangsta style, and the black kid reclined in a manner that, with his elbows propped, put the top of his head just under Newman’s chin. Newman was then photographed standing between the Disney girl and her silent but adoring boyfriend, for perhaps their Christmas card or wedding announcement.

Soon enough, however, they grew bored, or just hungry, the “munchies” kicking in. We had been in that store for over half an hour and there was clearly nothing to rent. I finally resigned myself to a night of TiVo’d episodes of
Judge Judy,
and we left. I think I detected a bow from Newman as he departed to a round of thunderous applause.

Later that night I thought about life and experience and how, just maybe, I would take the leap and try to get stoned so that I could find a new connection with this dog. So what if to do such a thing, to engage in such fetid sport as getting stoned, meant that I ran the risk of ending up using a hookah instead of a bong?

At the very least couldn’t I bake a batch of “magic” brownies? I called a friend and ran this by him. “Thomas,” Evan said, “pull yourself together. You know, one of the few charms about you is this stance against pot. It’s so ridiculous. Besides, Newman looks like Woody Allen to me when I’m sober, so of course he’s going to freak out a bunch of faded dudes on a Saturday night. You’ll get nothing from this.”

I looked down at Newman and could swear just then that he locked his eyes on to mine, and they said:
“Même si je pouvais te parler, ce seraît tout en français.”