TheBanyanTree: Another Dog Story

[Monique Colver]

If you don’t like dog stories, best to stop reading now. Occasionally
someone will say to me, “Not another dog story! Can’t you write something
else?” To which I reply, “Well, yes, I can, but maybe I don’t want to.”


                The other night Ash and Honey and I were hanging out
together. Charming husband was in Seattle, and so it was up to me to
entertain the dogs in the manner to which they’ve become accustomed. Honey
is no problem, now that she’s elderly and not overly ambitious. Ash,
however, is still a demon on four paws when he wants to be.


                Which is often, but then he wants to lay his head in my lap
and go to sleep, and he’s so sweet I can’t be annoyed at him. Well, I CAN,
but then I get over it.


                I was, after a particularly hard day in the office,
attempting to rest my oh-so-annoying legs. It wasn’t that I had a hard day
at the office, it was that after sitting for hours my legs hurt. A lot. And
the rest of me too. Apparently sitting at a desk is one of the top causes
of death, and so I was well on my way to death when I quit work for the
day. I had my feet up, which helps reduce 1) the swelling, and 2) the pain,
and Ash was wandering around looking for something to do.


                He’s often looking for something to do. Earlier in the day
he taught himself a new trick. Instead of dumping over the kitchen trash to
get at what was inside (all, according to him, perfectly good edible
stuff), he would open the lid, take an item out, play with it until it was
of no interest, then get another item out. He especially likes the single
serving pie containers from my recent pie infatuation. The advantage to
this innovation is that I couldn’t hear him – when he’d knock over the
trash, I could come running from upstairs and put it upright. But now . . .
he took out quite a few containers and trash and spread them around the
living room before I caught on. Two days later I’m still finding
licked-clean pie containers in random corners.


                But this night he was focused on his toys. There’s a former
magazine thingie that now holds everything he owns, and he proceeded to
remove items one at a time. First all the synthetic bones. He’d take one
out, chew on it for a few minutes, then go for another one. Soon the living
room looked like a dinosaur graveyard, if dinosaurs have a only straight
hollow bones. I don’t think they do, but how would I know?


                Then he looked at me, put his head back down into the
former magazine basket, then looked back at me. He pulled something out,
tossed it aside, then looked at me again.


                When I didn’t quite catch on to his obtuse message he let
out a little whine, just enough to get my attention.


                I asked what he wanted, and he whined again, stuck his head
in the magazine basket, then looked at me again.


                I eventually realized, using my superior detective skills,
so I went over to see what he wanted.


                I took out a stuffed kangaroo. “This what you want?”


                He just looked at me, as if to say, “What the hell? What do
I want that for?”


                I took out a stuffed duck, an elephant, a pig, a hedgehog,
a rabbit .  . . still the same look from Ash, the look that told me I was
failing as a parent.


                Eventually I got to the bottom of the basket, and there it
was, the prize, one synthetic dinosaur, hard and gnawed on, the sort of
thing that lays around and then when one steps on it, one yells, “What the
hell is that?” because of all the sharp spiky protuberances that are meant
to represent whatever kind of dinosaur this is supposed to be.


                Ash’s eyes dilated when he saw it, and I’m certain he
started to drool. I held it out to him an he grabbed it, as if I might take
it back if he didn’t jump on it.


                He moved about a foot away from me and relaxed with his
dinosaur. THIS was what he wanted, this was the prize! All those toys, and
it was the one at the bottom of the basket that he had to have.


                Yes, we do say “what the hell” around here a lot.


                The living room was a shambles, toys strewn from end to
end, but since that’s how it normally looks anyway, I just put my feet back
up and watched him play.