Dog Lived (and So Will I)

by Rhyne, Teresa J.

At least he was willing to meet Seamus. I hoped they’d get along, but I knew which one was staying if it came down to that. My week with Seamus had been challenging, but the little dog had kept me so entertained. My home was suddenly filled with energy. I’d almost forgotten how exuberant young dogs—and particularly beagles—can be. I walked Seamus in the mornings and again when I came home at night, but he’d still race around the house, throw his toys up in the air, and beg me to chase him around, which I did of course. I was rewarded with serious cuddling time as Seamus snuggled up against me. He was the first beagle I’d ever had that enjoyed being petted this much. Usually, a beagle lasts a couple of minutes of petting and then his nose and boundless excitement sends him bouncing off in another direction. But Seamus was as enthusiastic about cuddling as he was about his food. I knew Seamus was staying. I’d made a commitment to Seamus. But the truth was I didn’t want to have to choose Seamus over Chris.

  When Friday night rolled around, I prepared for the introduction of the beagle to the boyfriend. I walked Seamus in the morning and again in the evening. I walked him for longer than normal and hoped I’d deplete a little of that beagle energy. Then I lit the fireplace, chilled the wine, and prepared some late-night snacks.

  Usually, Chris waited out the Los Angeles traffic and didn’t leave his place until after eight at night, which meant he’d arrive between nine and ten. I’d always liked that schedule. I could still have dinner or drinks with a friend, attend any social or community functions I needed to, or just be home relaxing and reading before his arrival. This night, though, I was anxious for his arrival. I had not thought about the possibility of Chris and Seamus not getting along. I hadn’t thought about Chris at all when I decided to adopt Seamus. I hadn’t thought about much when I decided to adopt Seamus; that was becoming clear.

  Seamus followed me around as I got the house ready and was particularly attentive when I was in the kitchen. He sat with perfect doggie posture, head tilted to the left, mouth slightly open, and eyes wide and focused, watching my every move from only a foot away. I spread crackers on a plate, did my best to artfully arrange the cheese selection, added some salami slices, and then prepared bruschetta, realizing too late that the garlic was not a good idea for a romantic evening. Still, the food was nicely displayed and about as close to domestic as I get.

  I brought the two plates of seduction into the living room and set them on the coffee table. The fireplace gave a nice glow to the room, so I dimmed the light. Candles would be nice, I thought. I walked to the dining room, grabbed two of the three candles from the table, and headed back into the kitchen for matches. As I did, the phone rang. Caller ID told me it was Chris at the front gate of my complex.

  I buzzed him in and turned to talk to Seamus. “You’ll like him. Just be nice, okay, buddy?”

  But Seamus was no longer at my feet.

  “Seamus?”

  No answer. No jingling tags as the dog made his way to me.

  “Seamus? Come here, buddy.”

  No response.

  I walked to the living room.

  “Seamus!!”

  Both plates of food were on the floor. Seamus was inhaling every bit of food no matter how large. With each step I took toward him, he gulped that much more quickly and in larger bites. The tomato-garlic topping had splashed onto the carpet and the couch. The cheese, or what few pieces remained, peeked out from under the now upside-down and broken Italian ceramic serving plate.

  “Shit! Seamus!” I reached for his collar to pull him back from the mess, but he gulped and bolted away from me. I picked up the two pieces of ceramic, and as I rose up and turned to dispose of them, Seamus dashed in and gulped down two more pieces of cheese.

  “Seamus, stop it!” I yelled, as though a beagle has ever been commanded away from food. I knew better, but I’d forgotten the rules of basic dog training. It had been a long time since I had a new dog. I decided I’d scoop up as much of the food as I could, placing it on the largest of the broken ceramic pieces while maneuvering my body between Seamus and the spilled food for as long as I could. When I stood, I could see that Chris had let himself in the front door.

  “I knocked, but I don’t think you heard me,” he said.

  Seamus, finally, stopped his vacuum cleaner imitation and turned to the noise at the door.

  Before I could even say hello, Seamus growled. A low, slow growl that I had not heard in our week together.

  “Seamus, no. It’s okay. It’s fine, buddy.” I tried to sound relaxed, in control.

  Chris stepped back. “Is he going to bite me?”

  “I don’t think…” I didn’t get to finish. Seamus howled loudly, looking from me to Chris and back again, increasing the volume and urgency of his howl. Chris stayed frozen at the front door, five stairs up from the sunken living room where Seamus and I were. When Seamus bolted in Chris’s direction, I dropped what I was holding—bruschetta and cheese remains once again crashing to the floor—and lunged for Seamus’s collar. I caught him at the third step. Chris had backed all the way up against the door. Seamus strained at his collar, howling up the stairs toward Chris.

  “Sorry. This maybe wasn’t the best introduction,” I shouted above the raspy howl.

  I pulled Seamus off the stairs, and hunched over, holding him by the collar, walked him back into the den where his bed and toys were located. I put him in his bed.

  “Seamus, sit.” I pointed a finger in his face, which always means “I’m being serious.” Any dog knows this. Except a beagle.

  Seamus looked away. He looked around me, watching for another appearance by Chris, but he did not leave his bed. I spread the fingers on my right hand, palm outward, in front of his face. “Stay.” He shrunk back and turned his glaring eyes away from me. “Stay,” I repeated, for good measure and to verbalize my hope.

  “Okay, Chris, let’s try this again. Come on into the den.”

  “You are kidding, right?” Chris said, remaining glued in the stairwell.

  “He’s not going to attack you. He’s a beagle.”

  “You keep saying that. But all I hear is ‘dog.’ He’s a dog.”

  “It’s okay.” This was wishful thinking only. I had no idea.

  Chris walked into the room, and while Seamus growled again, he did not come out of his bed and he stopped when I corrected him. When Chris and I sat on the couch, Seamus came over, quietly and a bit more calmly, sniffing Chris’s pants and paying no attention to me. Chris petted the dog’s head, and I noticed he looked about as comfortable as I did when people forced me to hold or coo over their babies. But, okay, there was no growling or fighting. And neither one looked like they’d be biting the other anytime soon.

  “Isn’t he cute?” I ventured.

  Chris widened his eyes at me. “You heard him growl at me, right?”

  “Well, he didn’t know you, and you walked right into the house. I think it’s good that he growled.”

  “Maybe, but it’s still going to take me a while to get past that to ‘cute.’”

  “Well, you two get to know each other and I’ll get us some wine.” I stood up and went into the kitchen. Seamus followed me.

  “He’s not that interested in getting to know me. Kinda rude, don’t you think?” Chris said.

  I laughed. “Dog has no manners.” I opened a bottle of wine and poured two glasses, at which point the dog lost interest and roamed out of the kitchen.

  I handed a glass to Chris and sat next to him on the couch. We clinked our glasses together. “To another great weekend of decadence,” I said.

  “Indeed.”

  We sipped and smiled and kissed. Our weekend had begun.

  After a few minutes, Chris put his glass down. “I’m sufficiently emboldened now. Where’s this rascally dog?”

  I looked about. And where was Seamus? He was
always in the same room with me, except when…

  “Seamus!” Much too late, I remembered the mess in the living room. I jumped from the couch and raced to the living room. Seamus was down on his belly, with his snout and one paw reaching underneath the couch. He was also lying in the tomato-garlic formerly bruschetta mix.

  “Oh jeez. Seamus.” I clapped my hands. “Stop!” He stopped the pawing and sat upright, shifting his weight back and forth, right to left, whining and staring from me to under the couch, back to me, back to the couch.

  I knelt down next to him. “Oh, right, and I’m supposed to get that for you?”

  He howled his response and wagged his tail, spreading the tomatoes deeper into the rug.

  I couldn’t help it; I laughed. He was so oblivious to any trouble, to any wrongdoing whatsoever. He was solely focused on his goal. I ran my hand under the sofa and brought out the slice of toasted baguette, with remains of bruschetta, delicately seasoned with dog hair. I handed it to Seamus.

  “I cannot believe you just did that,” came Chris’s voice from behind me.

  “Um…yeah. Well…” I waved my arm in the direction of the broken plate and tomato stains. “I’m pretty sure we won’t be eating it.”

  “Still. The dog probably should not be rewarded.”

  “Says the ‘not a dog person.’” He probably had a point, but it was not one I was going to concede. Not from my prone position on my wet, stained rug with shards of Italian ceramics and tomato smears surrounding me. No sirree. I had my dignity.

  “It’s not like I’ve never been around a dog. My parents have a dog. And she does not get table scraps.”

  I had the urge to mimic the “she does not get table scraps” in that child’s voice that usually says “neener neener” with the drawn-down, lemon-sucking face, which was probably further indication that I knew I had been caught doing something wrong. Naturally, I turned to my cohort in crime for support, which I’m sure Seamus would have given me had he not been so busy sucking the carpet.

  “Okay, well, can you just hold the dog while I clean this up?” I said.

  “Uh, no. You hold the dog. I’ll clean up this disaster.”

  Oh. Well, okay. I’d much rather hold a dog than clean a house. There was an upside to his dog aversion.

  Seamus stopped howling and growling at Chris after the mess was cleaned up and there was no food in sight. We joked that perhaps he just thought Chris was a food burglar and once there was no food at risk, his work was done. He slept.

  Well, let me amend that—Seamus slept until Chris got up in the middle of the night and stepped on him on the way to the bathroom.

  AR! AR! AR! AR! AR! AAAAAARRROOOOOOOOO! This was easily translated from beagle-speak to Asshole! You scared the shit out of me! because Seamus leaped onto my bed, ran up next to my head, and turned to face Chris. Seamus may have been shaking, but he was still up to calling out the perpetrator in no uncertain terms.

  I sat up, cradled the dog, and checked for broken limbs, despite the fact that the dog had just leaped up three feet onto the bed. “What happened?” I turned on the bedroom light.

  Chris stood, naked, in the hallway, looking distraught and more frightened than the dog. “I didn’t see him on my way to the bathroom. The dog has a bed upstairs, another one downstairs, two couches, and a recliner he could sleep on, and he sleeps in the middle of the hallway?”

  “You stepped on him?”

  “No. I nearly fell on my face trying not to step on him.”

  “He’s scared.” I wrapped both arms around Seamus, and he leaned into me, but he continued to look at Chris.

  “He’s a hypochondriac.”

  “The dog is a hypochondriac?”

  “I did not hurt him.”

  “I don’t think you did. He’ll be fine,” I said, rubbing Seamus’s now exposed belly as he flopped onto his back and stretched out across the side of the bed Chris had been sleeping on. “Go to the bathroom and come back to bed.”

  When Chris returned to the bedside, Seamus did not acknowledge him and made no effort to relinquish any space.

  “A little help here?” Chris said. “I can tell you’re laughing at this.”

  “Sorry. But that is kinda funny. He doesn’t normally sleep on the bed, but he seems to be communicating something here.”

  “Gee, I wonder what?”

  They had not made good first impressions on each other. Still, it could have been worse, I tried telling myself. I wondered, though, had I given the dog the sense that Chris was temporary, whereas the dog himself intended to be a permanent part of my life? Had I created an accomplice in my charade already?

  While Seamus and I established a routine for the two of us during the week—walks, cuddles, sharing our meals (well, my meals; I let him have his kibble all to himself), Chris and I continued with our Friday night tradition—wine or chilled champagne, fire going, music playing. And Seamus continued to ruin it all by howling and growling at Chris when he arrived and lunging for the food. Shrimp cocktail, cheese, crackers, strawberries, pizza, stuffed mushrooms, quesadillas, and éclairs all became a Friday night staple for Seamus.

  Although I never again left a plate of food in a room without me, the beagle was a quick study. He easily figured out that there were certain moments when Chris and I, while physically present in the room with the appetizers, were decidedly not paying any attention to the food. If we leaned toward each other for a kiss, Seamus made his move too, deftly sweeping in and inhaling whatever happened to be on the plate. I so frequently lost the battle that I began to plan the menu so it didn’t include any foods dangerous to a dog. Even a dog that was part garbage disposal could get poisoned by chocolate, macadamia nuts, grapes, onions, or garlic.

  When Chris eventually started doing most of the weekend cooking, he’d either arrive with bags of groceries or head out on Saturday mornings, returning with bags of groceries. As my every-other-weekend rule began to slip and Chris visited more often, eventually Seamus concluded that Chris = food. He stopped growling and began to look forward to Chris’s arrival as much as I did, anxiously pacing about after dark on Friday and looking at me with that “Food guy here yet?” face. If Chris was later than normal, Seamus waited at my front courtyard gate.

  I knew it wasn’t Chris’s winning personality the dog was waiting for, but Chris seemed flattered that he’d been able to win the dog over. Until Seamus made it obvious what he was about.

  One Saturday evening, as Chris began cooking dinner, he found he was missing an ingredient.

  “Baby, did you put the sourdough bread anywhere?”

  “No, I haven’t seen it.”

  We opened cupboards and checked the countertops, and Chris double-checked the trunk of his car, thinking he’d left a bag of groceries there. Nothing.

  He walked around the kitchen counter to the other side, in the dining room.

  The bread wrapper and a few—but not many—crumbs were on the floor. Telltale paw prints were on the wall below the counter.

  “You won’t believe this,” Chris said.

  “Oh, crap. Seamus got it?”

  “So much for bread with dinner.”

  “There’s no way he can eat an entire loaf of bread,” I said. I looked around but didn’t see a beagle in any of his usual spots. “Seamus? Seamus?”

  Seamus declined to respond. I went upstairs. He wasn’t on my bed. And he wasn’t in the recliner in the library—his other favorite spot, especially when Chris was with us. I went back to the corner of my room where Seamus’s upstairs bed was.

  He was there, on his side looking every bit like one of those snakes in nature films with their bellies extended in the exact shape of a mouse or a giant egg recently consumed whole. Seamus’s belly was extended in the shape of a sourdough bread loaf.

  I rubbed
his belly. It felt tight—stretched to its limit. I worried what would happen if he drank water. Should I take the water away from him? Would that make it harder to digest an entire loaf of bread? I was also sure he’d eaten the bread in three seconds flat. Should I take him to the emergency room?

  Chris was calmer. “He just seems uncomfortable but not in pain. He didn’t choke, so let’s just wait it out.” And then he laughed.

  “This isn’t funny!”

  “Are you kidding me? Look at that dog!” Chris pointed, and Seamus lifted his head.

  And yeah, it was kind of funny the way the dog’s belly protruded. So I laughed. Maybe Seamus would actually learn from this experience. Something besides how tasty sourdough is.

  We finished dinner, without the purloined sourdough, and made our way upstairs to our bath. Our tub time was quickly becoming a tradition for us. This was how we started our weekends and where we’d recently begun to slowly, tentatively explore that maybe this was about more than sex and a good time. Maybe, just maybe we might have something here. We both looked forward to our tub talks and time spent soaking and sipping.

  Seamus hated it.

  Seamus hated anything that didn’t involve him. Frequently he would poke his head into the bathroom or come right up to us in the tub, howl, and run away. If we had our Friday night snack in the tub with our champagne, Seamus would put his two front paws up on the tub and stare at us intently. If the rapid tail wagging didn’t immediately produce his appropriate share of the food (read: all of it), he’d howl. Loudly. And not at all romantically.

  On the night of his sourdough heist though, Seamus was out of it. Sleeping off his yeasty hangover, he gave us a rare respite from his antics. We quietly soaked in the hot water and silky bubbles, surrounded by silence, steam, and candlelight.

  Thirty relaxing minutes later, I heard a noise. A scraping sound from the other side of the wall. Mice?

  “Do you hear that?”

  Chris listened. “Yeah. It’s like a digging noise. Sounds like it’s in the wall.”

  “Do you think it’s a rat?”