Howl (27 page)

She Who Must Be Obeyed

[Tom Gliatto]

W
E KNOW SOMETHING
is not right with Her because of Her unenthusiastic inflection on the command “Walkies!” It is the same tone of voice she uses with Charles. She might as well be asking us if we need to be dewormed or deloused. We have often heard Her, in fact, asking Charles the same question. What we mean is that we detect a wariness there, a distraction—an unlikelihood that She will encourage us, as She does when we are all alone, to trail behind Her with the leash in our jaw while She walks before us wearing one of our collars. We believe this is Her form of private amusement. Even so this afternoon we take what pleasure there is to be had running through the tall wild grasses and smelling the odors on the highland breeze. From very far off, we can even pick up the scent of what She has called “paparazzi.” They smell like something between a dead crow and raw bacon crammed into a damp woolen sock. It is always somewhat problematic that our legs are so short, and the grasses lash against our snouts, and we inhale the pollen, and we sneeze a good deal. But of course we do not complain, any more than She does. We do not whimper or droop our ears when troubled, although—and again, we find this curious—Charles does. We take from Her our cue and comport ourselves with a—

Hedgehog!

Oh good Christ, a hedgehog!

Where?

There—by that log!

Trap the hedgehog!

Kill the hedgehog!

Yes yes yes yes—!

But this is a meaningless sport, at best, and we leave off the instant She claps her hands and summons us to return to Her side.

We wonder now what act of propitiation will bring her any small ray of sunshine and happiness. We will lick her toes, yes? It is a revolting act: if you ever heard the strange sound of a Corgi gagging, you would know this was the cause. When all is said and done, there is no joy to be had in licking Her toes, but we will do it. It is in our Corgi blood, our very fiber. However, we draw the line when it comes to the feet of Philip. There haven’t been such toenails since the time of Merlin.

Back in the castle, things have been no better. We went ahead with the licking of royal toes, calves, inner knee, and so many parts above and beyond that there was concerned talk in the House of Lords, and we have been forced to retreat. We cannot help being somewhat abashed when we hear the phrase “put down,” because we are not sure whether it refers to action taken to suppress a common rebellion or something more along the lines of what happened to Anne Boleyn’s Collie. She made the mistake of appearing on Anne’s behalf before the Star Chamber. Nor did we win ourselves any renewed smiles or nods of the head—no snacks, no treats, no indulgent pats—when in a long afternoon of obsequious fetching we brought Her the newspaper, the Magna Carta, the little metal stick she carries all encrusted with precious metals and silvers, and a small baby. Two feuding mothers of the
EastEnders
variety both claimed it was their child and needed cutting in half. She remains closeted in meetings. She speaks in a very terse voice into the telephone. She talks heatedly with her husband. She shouts to Princess Margaret to stop singing bawdy sea chanteys from the bath.

When it is time for walkies, She leashes us to a great yew tree far from the castle. She steps behind the tree and removes all Her clothes as film star Roger Moore crawls out from beneath a shrub. She knows that we are discreet, because we are Corgis, and She knows that we know that their lovemaking is merely a form of stress-releasing. It is too bad, really, She cannot simply bay at something in the sky.

Another walk, toward sunset, and She seems more dejected than ever. The phrase “walkies horribilis” has occurred to us, and at this point we ourselves have become preoccupied and lag behind Her, lost in thought. We are in fact separated when She crosses a brook, her feet secure and dry in her Wellies, while we are quickly immersed in the current and our own little specialty boots torn from our paws and borne away before us like memories of happy days. We bob and splash until we land on the opposite bank, when—

Oh, the hedgehog!

After it, after it!

Kill the—!

Bite its—!

Zwounds!

And yet we are completely mistaken: this is no hedgehog but a great and royal stag, much as we have seen in paintings in the house, only scaled to our own size—we mean that its grand body sits atop abnormally short legs. It looks like Bambi’s father after a terrible accident in a sawmill. In addition it glows with a spectral phosphorescence, and it speaks to us in a voice of limpid grace that is magically comprehensible to us. Under routine circumstances we are sure it would never occur to us that a stag sounds like Laurence Olivier reading the works of the American laureate Maya Angelou: “Oh, Corgies of Windsor,” he says, “that this sceptered isle should witness the indignities your Queen hath suffered of late! Her untaintable noblesse has been smeared, as if with cold drippings meant only for the under parlor maids in
Upstairs, Downstairs,
by tragedy and scandal, her dream of being played by Angelina Jolie in a salt-and-pepper wig dash-èd possibly forever! Oh Blair! Oh Diana! Oh black-hearted midnight! Oh—just oh! Do not desert her, brave dogs, nor question whether her actions are dictated by spleen, choler, or melancholy. Offer her nothing but your love and your loyalty. Do not fail your glorious role in history! Did not two Corgis thwart the assassin who lobbed an explosive pineapple at Victoria, swallowing it whole and raining down their puppyish shards on the royal parade? Ah—well, no: those were Pomeranians named Lucy and Drake. But was it not a Corgi, ycleped Dingy, who performed his “business” in the shoes of Wallis Simpson, giving that ignoble whore a strong and aromatic hint of how she should comport herself—viz, out the door of the palace? My time, like your legs and I see mine as well, grows short. Remember me! Farewell!”

With time, Her command of “Walkies!” regains some of its old lilt—it’s sort of a quick squeal, as if an inflated bagpipe had been stepped on by Godzilla—and we are rewarded for our steadfast support. We are fed free-range pheasant breast from the Windsor silver, treated to hot-stone massages, and—a dream we would never have admitted indulging in—knighted. Wonderful finally to meet Dame Diana Rigg!

Per Her instructions and design, a beautiful doghouse is built among the topiaries in the west garden. It is made of cedar and cypress and other soft aromatic woods, inlaid with mother-of-pearl and topped by a mad but inspired profusion of Tudor gables and spires. Then She commands, “In, Charles.” And in he goes.

Our Twelfth Labor

[Ben Brashares]

W
E HAVE TWO DOGS,
Angie and Greeley. Greeley is our good dog and Angie is our bad one. Greeley, though troubled by allergies, nocturnal incontinence, an obliviousness to moving cars, a taste for expensive leather, and a generally weak constitution (which reveals itself monthly in eye-watering vet bills), has always been well-meaning and malleable. Angie has only one problem: she attacks other dogs. But this problem trumps all others because here in Berkeley, California, aggressive dogs are fronts for bad owners, bad people, gang members, or, worse, Republicans. And, sadly, in the world of dogs, Greeley’s “good” doesn’t cancel out Angie’s “bad” to produce a “just fine” dog. Instead, they find the lowest common denominator and morph into what Kate (my fiancée and original owner of Greeley) and I have come to call “Angreeley,” a Cerberus-like thing (albeit with two rather than three heads) that wreaks havoc at dog runs.

Indeed, of all Greeley’s traits, her worst, by far, is her willingness to do whatever Angie tells her to do. If pressed to fuse our own names (à la Brangelina, Bennifer, Angreeley, etc.) it seems fitting that Kate and I would be “Bate” (as in “bait”). Angreeley uses us to pull in its victims. The attacks happen infrequently enough that Kate and I can be lulled into a hopeful state of dog trust. And that’s the real genius of Angreeley. If it happened every time, we’d ban them from dog runs ourselves, take them out separately or whatever, but they know just how often they can do it and remain free and wild.

When it does occur, it goes like this: Unsuspecting dog (always smaller, often arthritic) saunters up for a hello, Kate or I give him a pat, Angie gives Greeley the signal, they touch noses, become “Angreeley,” and attack the dog. In response, I summon the strength of Hercules and pull the beast off the poor dog. I chase off Greeley and hold down Angie until her growls fade to soft, demonic gurgles. I apologize to the owner and to the dog, and put Angie on a short leash. This effectively saps the Cerberus of its power. Greeley can frolic and play again, free of her evil burden. Why not just always keep Angie on a leash, you ask? Again, she’s a genius. She lulls you with cuteness the way Hannibal Lecter lulled his victims with fine wine and delightful conversation.

After three or four of these incidents (usually over the course of a few days), we are invariably banned, and Kate and I pick up and move Angreeley on to the next dog run. You might say we’ve developed a “slash and burn” strategy for exercising our dogs. In fact, if you plot our homes over the last two years on a map, you’d find a trail of tears from Brooklyn to Pennsylvania to Connecticut all the way across the country to Berkeley, California. It’s not job-or school-related as many tend to think. Sadly, we’re just looking for fertile, dog-friendly territory to spoil.

And it’s been fine. Until now. The truth is, we’ve found a dog park we really like. It’s big yet mostly contained; has ducks for chasing, ground squirrel holes for digging; it’s suitable for jogging; it’s on the water with views of the San Francisco skyline and the Golden Gate Bridge; it even has free Mutt Mitt turd bags at stations posted about every hundred yards. We really want it to work out. So we signed up for a private training session for Angie.

We’d been working with Angie for a good twenty minutes when Sharon, our trainer, said she was going into the back office to get Floyd. Judging by how well Angie had responded to Sharon’s efforts thus far, Kate and I figured Sharon was going to get help from a more seasoned trainer. She walked back out moments later holding a stick. On the end of the stick, hovering a few inches off the floor, was Floyd, the stuffed bad-dog-baiting Basset Hound. Floyd’s job was to coax an attack from the dog in training, and judging by the missing leg, the saliva-matted ear (one), and torn corduroy coat, he’d been working this unfortunate gig for some time.

Angie’s hackles shot up when Floyd sauntered over. Sharon told us to notice Angie’s body language, her frozen anticipation. She placed a plastic clicker device in my hand and instructed me to “click” when Angie’s eyes drifted from the stuffed Basset Hound to me. The click was to be immediately followed by a treat. A click and a treat, easy as that, but the click has to occur at the precise moment Angie looked at me. That was crucial. We needed to reward distraction. Angie’s eyes meeting mine meant she was out of fight mode. And that’s where I wanted her. But you have to click at the
precise
moment she looks at you, Sharon stressed once again, otherwise the connection between click and moment-of-hackle-free distraction would be lost.

The trick was to wait for that moment. One walk-by after another, Angie leapt at Floyd, snarling and choking at the end of her leash. Each time, Kate’s and Sharon’s eyes stayed on me, ready to pounce on my late click. During the thirtieth or so walk-by, Angie’s eyes finally drifted up to mine. I was paralyzed, out of practice. I heard a click. It was Sharon. Sharon clicked for me. My click wasn’t far behind, milliseconds probably, but in dog-time, apparently, that’s just too damn long. Kate looked at me as if I’d already failed as a father to our future children.

“Maybe you could click-train Ben to click-train Angie?” Kate said to Sharon. Sharon giggled and I handed the clicker to Kate, muttering something about how it’s harder than it looks. She glared back at me in a way that said,
It’s always harder than it looks with you.

Skeptical of my results, I decided to consult the Google Gods. Turns out, clicker training is all the rage. Amid ads for something called Clicker-Expo, one dog-training site offers an article called “Amygdala: the Neuro-physiology of Clicker Training.” It says that clicks work better than words because words need time to be recognized and interpreted, whereas clicks travel a direct pathway to the brain’s bean-sized amygdala, the place where superfast “fight or flight” responses are conducted. Another article boasts about a guinea pig that’s been clicker-trained to give high-fives. It says clicker training “helps you engage in more activities with your pet, improve her behavior, clip her nails without a fight, and teach her to come out from behind the fridge, among other results (high-fives).” It goes on to give step-by-step training tips on how to pull this off. When it mentioned rats, I began to wonder how small you could go with this clicker training. Could I clicker-train the mice living in our walls to crap in the trash instead of our silverware drawer? Could I clicker-train the ants to divert their parades away from our kitchen table during meals? Perhaps I’ve been unknowingly click-training Angie’s fleas to perform circus tricks for my entertainment. Come to think of it, maybe Kate
could
click-train me to click-train Angie.

The fact is, it’s the first stage of clicker training that Angie and I can’t seem to get past. As demonstrated by the session with Floyd, clicker training requires a great amount of patience, not to mention precise timing. For high-fives, I can imagine it’s an efficient tool. However, for behavior you
don’t
want, it seems fundamentally different, and much harder. For instance, I tried to use the clicker to teach Greeley not to bark at the slightest noise outside our apartment. For each moment she sat on the couch not barking, I clicked the clicker and gave her a treat. She’d lift her head off the pillow for a moment and look at me as if to say,
Huh. Thanks.
A few moments later, another treat.
Me again? That’s great. Thank you.
And then back to the snoozing. She seemed to enjoy this training very much, but it didn’t help at all with the barking.

And, I had to wonder, what if I misplaced my clicker or took Angie somewhere without it? I can easily imagine going to a friend’s house with Angie and her attacking the friend’s dog as I frantically search my pockets for a clicker. “Yeah, sorry, I don’t have my clicker with me.” GrrrrrrrrArghghh YELP GrrrrrrrrrArrrghgh YELP! Then trying to click my tongue to produce the same sound. When it comes down to it, Kate and I are too lazy, too scatterbrained to stick with clicker training as long as it needs to be stuck with.

But, frankly, we’re running out of options. After witnessing Angreeley’s bullying, my father said he’d buy us a round of shock collars. My brother suggested we get some muzzles, or perhaps a Hannibal Lecter mask. My mother has, on more than one occasion, offered to put them down herself. According to Greek mythology, Psyche was able to subdue the Cerberus with drugged honeycakes. In Roman mythology, Hercules completed his twelve labors by penetrating Cerberus’s well-guarded cave and taming him with brute strength. We don’t have the heart, nor the strength, to implement any of these suggestions. And that’s where our problem really becomes clear: we’re too soft for shock collars, too lazy for clicker training, too weak for blunt force. And the pet store doesn’t carry drugged honeycakes.

We’re thinking about moving back to New York. It’s been more than two years since we burned that bridge. We think there’s a good chance they’ve forgotten about Angreeley. If they haven’t, Kate and I are getting married in England, where she’s from. We could stay there, see if the cultural differences work in our favor. If that doesn’t pan out, we could look into reintroducing them to the wild, finding a congenial wolf pack that’ll appreciate their excellent high-fives. More likely, we’ll just keep hand-feeding the beast its treats and let it continue its useless job of guarding our cave.