Howl

by Bark Editors

  The next day I leave the Prince-of-K sunbathing on the shag carpet and visit a different dermatologist, also fancy, also in Beverly Hills. She gives me the same face-dissolving cream the first one doled out. When I get home the Barrel-Chested Creature barely looks up; he knew this would be a waste of time. I lie down on the floor and hug him as I wonder if we should just leave L.A. and go someplace where people don’t judge women with blisters and flaky lumps on their faces. He breathes into my ear as if to say everything’s going to be okay. Easy for him. He hasn’t lost his looks.

  Weeks later and still welty, a Sherman Oaks acupuncturist suggests I make the Bearded Wonder an outdoor dog. When I run this by Kenyon, he flashes his pointy little grin. But what does he know? He thinks coyotes are just extra-fun dogs with no parents, not vicious beasts who want to lure him into a game of tag and eat him like it’s sunset after Yom Kippur.

  At the dog park, I share my woes with a sympathetic stranger who writes down the number of her West Hollywood homeopathist. The homeopath, an exuberant German in a halter top, mixes me a potion of liquid dog hair to put under my tongue three times a day. I do so in the bathroom mirror—as if I can’t find my tongue otherwise—while the Little Man watches, giving his body a good shake that causes a bouquet of dog hair to fly into the air. A simple reminder that I could’ve gotten this particular remedy for free.

  My sadness continues, my welts remain; nothing works.

  I resolve not to cuddle Beetlepooch. I only pet him with my feet and he’s confined to the bottom-right-hand corner of the bed.

  And since Sir Barks-a-Little is accustomed to sitting on my lap in the passenger seat while my husband drives, nuzzling his neck against mine as he sucks in his fresh air (okay, it’s smog, but I haven’t told him yet), I let His Highness have that seat while I ride in the back. He occasionally stares at me, as do other drivers and pedestrians, wondering why we’re separated by two feet of seat, carpet, and my Rollerblades, which haven’t seen asphalt for the past six years. “It’s temporary, Pup-Headia. Mommy will be with you as soon as she gets better,” I say, and pray—but not on my knees or anything.

  This lasts for two days. Just like when I was single and had too much to drink at bars and hugged men I shouldn’t, now I’m having too much to drink at home and hugging my dog when I shouldn’t.

  The clerk at our neighborhood pet shop, who also fixes computers for $35 an hour less than our computer guy, gives me the card of a Chinese herbalist in San Gabriel. Since we adopted Teddy Bear Nose in nearby El Monte, I have a good feeling about this referral.

  In broken English, Dr. Tsao, who has cinnamon-y breath, tells me to smear baby oil onto my face three times a day. The oil is to be followed by Dr. Tsao’s special white lotion that, unfortunately, doesn’t exactly absorb into the skin. (Good thing I work at home, because I look like a porn star about to finish her shift.) I’m also instructed to take fifteen of his herb pills a day, refrain from hot showers and workouts, avoid mango, red meat, dairy, sushi, coffee, and wine for two solid weeks. I go back to the car and inform Growls McGee that it all seems doable, except for the coffee and cabernet part. He licks my wrist and sticks his head out the window. Maybe he can smell his parents in El Monte.

  For two days I smear baby oil and white ointment on my lesions while Kenyon watches. For two days my husband gloats because he’s getting 100 percent of Ferret Face’s attention. Miraculously, on the third day, I’m cured! No itches, no splotches, no redness. I have normal skin again! I hug Kenyon to celebrate! I eat dairy to celebrate! I buy mangos and ruin my favorite T-shirt while cutting them to celebrate! I even call Dr. Tsao to thank him.

  “Good! No let dog sleep in bed anymore.”

  “But I have to!”

  “You no have husband?”

  I hang up and look at my Monkey. They just don’t get it, do they?

  Seven months to the day, it’s hats off to Eastern medicine, because Kenyon and I are cuddling at night and at least twice during the day. And I’m proud to report that not only has my head become his permanent pillow, but my shoulder is his ottoman. Although I still ride in the backseat of my husband’s car because I kinda like it—and Sock-Pawed Giraffy Legs prefers having the front seat to himself.

  Play Dead, My Darling

  [Jeff Ward]

  THE DOGHOUSE IN question was a slope-roofed affair out back, about as pretty and pretentious as a mud fence. I liked it. An honest little shack, probably the only one in California—the kind where you can stretch out and roll around and lick yourself without fear of Architectural Digest coming to poke around with a photographer. I lay there, still smarting in the flanks, with no plans for the rest of my life. I was seven years old and feeling forty-nine.

  After a couple hundred years, the tassel loafers came out and kicked at the portico of the house.

  “Come on—walk,” he said. “Go for walk.”

  Chain off, leash on, and once again we were dragging each other around the bleached-out block between Sierra and Gardner. For the first time in my life the exercise felt hollow, even ridiculous, like a wild, romantic hump on your first day after being fixed. The other dogs on the walk were lurid and grotesque, and I saw only their sins. Prince, the Great Dane who had dragged three children into a burning building. Mr. Alexander, the Saint Bernard whose improvement on the traditional rescue had been to show up staggering with an empty cask, just in time to slobber on the dead. And Muggles, the mincing Dalmatian who yammered endlessly about his affairs with Asta and two of the Lassies. With a terrific effort I managed to make small talk with these parading champions and sniff their crotches.

  And even this sorry spectacle was too good to last. At the corner of Gardner and Hollywood I spotted a familiar squat figure—a hatless woman holding a leash that trailed down and disappeared into a hedge. When she saw us, a jack-o’-lantern smile turned her big, angular face even more so. She had a skull that I could have picked out from a table full of skulls if I had to—which, given the week I was having, seemed a pretty likely scenario.

  Then Sheba emerged from the hedge and there was no more past, only the blinding radiance of her innocence. She was like a pristine snowbank on a leash. It was just how the Virgin Mary would have looked if she had been a good deal holier and a Beagle. The blood hadn’t been washed from her coat—it had never been there.

  Anyway, it was a good act. It fooled me. It would always fool me. Our owners chattered about the weather and their darlings. Our girl, I learned, had heartworms and was due in the shop for repairs at the end of the week. Sheba’s brown eyes leapt hopefully from one speaker to the next, politely avoiding me. I guess we’d never been properly introduced.

  “Come on, now, Sheba—good girl!”

  And the woman moved on, her little fur saint floating behind, and they were gone.

  How could I have resisted her? How many others had looked into those eyes, at those wet black lips, and fallen over backward with their paws in the air? How many more would kill for her, just because she said the word? My advice to the heartworms: Don’t waste time looking, fellas. Find yourselves another bitch.

  “Okay, s’ go home now, let’s go,” said Tassel, tugging me toward Sunset. “But if I have to throw out another rug, I’m throwing you out as well.”

  It was naptime, but I wouldn’t be sleeping. I would be thinking of something that could have been—which is to say, of nothing at all. I had no plans and no plans to think of any. At three o’clock the mailman would come and I would burst through the doggie door and bite him hard enough to split his calf, but my heart wouldn’t be in it.

  Where the Dogs Are

  [Dan Zevin]

  THE DOG PEOPLE are the people who gather at dawn to throw saliva-soaked tennis balls around parks nationwide. A while ago, I wouldn’t have said they were my kind of crowd, as five A.M. was frankly not an hour with which I had much familiarity. But a while ago, I didn’t have Chloe, the orphaned Lab mutt who appeared frisky—as opposed to frenzied—when she first c
onned me into taking her home from the pound. To say that Chloe’s internal alarm clock goes off at five A.M. would be misleading, because it would suggest that she requires sleep. In fact, she requires Ritalin. Either that or forty minutes each morning with the dog people.

  I feel very close to the dog people, though I do not know any of their names. We remember only the dogs’ names, you see. As for our identities, we’re just “Chloe’s father,” “Augie’s mother,” or “Sadie’s parents,” to name but a few. Our mission is the same: to chuck the tennis ball until Chloe, Augie, Sadie, and the rest collapse from acute canine exhaustion so they’ll spend the remainder of the day sleeping (or, in Chloe’s case, “resting”) rather than dining on our speaker wires.

  The only time it is permissible to stop chucking the ball is when one of the dogs needs a time-out to “poop.” Canine excrement, I have learned, is referred to only as “poop” by the dog people. I once made the mistake of using a more colorful term, and was met by stunned silences all around.

  But now that I’ve got the lingo straight, the other dog people and I talk every morning. We don’t small-talk, either. We engage in the kind of deep, meaningful conversation you can only have with someone who is outdoors at five o’clock (A.M.) using a plastic Star Market bag to pick up a pile of dog shit. Poop, I mean.

  “Hmm, looks like Chloe has diarrhea again,” I proclaim.

  “Yes, I see what you mean,” Augie’s mother concurs. “Must be eating too much grass.”

  “Sadie ate a washcloth last night,” interjects her father. “Vomited it up like a Super Ball.”

  I cannot emphasize enough the significance of these morning chats. With each discussion of Sadie’s swollen anal sacs or Augie’s weakness for squirrels, I feel a little more connected; a little less like the only father in the city whose daughter does not come every time (okay, any time) she is called. Who else but the dog people would have clued me into the Drs. Foster and Smith catalog, featuring hickory-smoked Choo-Hooves at rock-bottom prices? Where else but at the dog field would I have learned that, when it comes to problem “hotspots,” the guck from an aloe plant is nature’s alternative to cortisone cream? We are all about support and sharing and honesty. Show us a playground full of real parents and we will make them look like amateurs.

  One evening I saw one of the dog people at the Sir Speedy copy shop I go to. We were both without our dogs. We looked at each other in that fleeting way people do when they think they know each other but aren’t really sure. Then it occurred to me: Sadie’s mother! What was she getting copied? Where does she live? Has she seen any good movies lately? Both of us stood there stupidly by the lamination machine until I finally decided to break the ice.

  “Uh, how is your dog?” I said.

  It took a long time to find the canine clique that felt right to Chloe and me. In my neighborhood alone, there were three major scenes going on. We started at Fresh Pond Park, where most of the dogs seemed like they just came out of the Westminster Kennel Club, and most of their mothers and fathers seemed like they just came out of the Harvard Faculty Club. The dog people there didn’t really throw the tennis ball as much as they stood around observing the animals’ behavioral responses with regard to retrieval-avoidance pack interaction. Plus, a woman with a giant black poodle named Margaret asked me—swear on a stack of Drs. Foster and Smith catalogs—if Chloe “has a problem with ethnic diversity.”

  Chloe, at the time, was barking at this guy who happened to be black. I immediately experienced that familiar self-consciousness that only we dog people understand: the sense that strangers are passing judgment on us based upon our dog’s behavior. What has Chloe’s father been telling her about people of color to make his dog so prejudiced? Margaret’s mother was obviously thinking about me. I felt ashamed, though I knew the truth: Chloe was barking because the guy had a tennis ball.

  The dog people at Danehy Park were an entirely different breed. This was the salt-of-the-earth dog scene, and rarely did we see anyone with a purebred anything here, much less a poodle named Margaret. Danehy doggie mothers and fathers just chucked a few balls until they finished their cigarettes, then went home and got ready for work. The couple of times I actually spoke to any of them, we covered the customary subject of effluvia, of course, but they all seemed preoccupied with the man I’ve come to call “the bad guy.”

  From what I gathered, the bad guy is some sort of official canine cop who protects parks from the threat of dogs who are not properly licensed. According to Bo’s mother, who was holding a load in a CVS bag at the time, the bad guy also issues fines to dog people whose pets are “off-leash.” I split this scene pronto, worried that I’d be booked on two counts: unleashed and unlicensed.

  And so it was that I stumbled upon my doggie scene of choice: a lesser-known softball field abutting a parking lot and a graffiti-covered grammar school. We’re a misfit bunch, Sadie’s parents, Augie’s mom, and me, but we are going to be the next big thing, I tell you. Why, just this morning we were joined by a potential new member—Rocket’s mother—who found herself displaced when the Tufts football field was closed off to canines (surely by decree of the bad guy). I’m amazed at how well I got to know her in the forty minutes we spent chucking the ball and picking up poop. For example, Rocket has ear mites, is scared of luggage, and likes to sleep in the bathtub.

  I hope she (and her son) will be back tomorrow, and will one day become permanent members of our little scene. For we are the dog people, and everyone is welcome. Everyone except the bad guy.

  A Plea for Canine Acceptance

  [Phil Austin]

  AS CANINE-AWARD shows steadily flood the cable channels, you may have noticed that many popular breeds of dog are never officially recognized. These excited television programs feature the same panoply of carefully groomed animals dragging around oddly dressed humans of varying sizes on lengths of string as, over and over, the same old favorites—Labrador, Cocker, Pekinese, Shepherd (German and otherwise)—are awarded the prestigious trophies, as if they alone were the only worthy recipients of the public’s televised affection. (A side note: If this is a sport, then why can’t the human handlers wear at least warm-up suits and running shoes for a properly athletic look? Why dress like Rotary members and school-board supervisors? But, to my point…)

  I’d like to suggest that it would be wise to take a look at some dogs whom innovative breeders and handlers are promoting these days and, indeed, some whom the public finds increasingly attractive. Please consider several newish breeds that I think deserve not only recognition and attention, but above all, love from people for whom dogs are something more than mere award-winners. These are valued family members with skills more directly tied to modern times than those outmoded skills celebrated by herding, sporting, toying, working, and terriering. The AKC may not find them worthy, but I think you will.

  Nova Scotia Cell-Phone-Minute-Counting Retriever

  A thoroughly modern breed of companion dog, this slim animal can keep track of minutes, make calculations up to nine places, remember calendar events, and store an extensive list of phone contacts. The Nova Scotia is friendly, flat, and colorful. The breed’s ability to take pictures without being seen has been found useful by the insurance industry. The Nova particularly enjoys running with children, especially on weekends and after five o’clock. It may charge an extra amount for an early termination of its plan.

  Breed origins: Bred from the larger Flip Hounds and crossed with Hungarian Text-Messaging Herders, the Nova can be taken anywhere, though there is growing resistance to its presence at Broadway shows and intimate restaurants.

  Day-Old Danish Pointer

  Also known as the Rack Dog in its native Denmark, this marked-down favorite of the urban young is a rare favorite. Two colors, cheese and prune, give the breed a distinctive look. It can be trained to track wounded game and can be found, tightly packaged, even in places like Utah roadside mini-marts, but it most readily adapts to urban environments and has inde
ed been specially bred for them in Europe. A strong taste for sugar makes it unacceptable as an all-season outdoor dog, but indoors it becomes an excellent coffee companion. This is a thick-boned, hearty breed of modest habits. The dog enjoys the Sunday New York Times and can even make hopeful phone calls to attractive young women.

  Breed origins: Descended from the Black Pastry Hound of central Europe, these dogs historically pointed at things in Vienna, particularly Puff Poodles.

  Liberal Kansas Gundog

  For the several hundred years in which black wild-eyed howling gundogs were active members of the Wild Hunt—ducking and retrieving, bullets flying overhead—it was presumed they were willing and able participants in that ancient Germanic ritual. But early gunpowder firearms were remarkably inaccurate, spewing fire and shot in all directions, and the traditional use of alcohol in the ritual continued unabated with the passing of years. Rumors swirled through the canine community in the 1700s that the number of loyal animals actually shot by drunken hunters was increasing at a rapid rate. In America, by the late 1900s, several strains of gundog began to exhibit traits that would eventually lead to the crossing of the Duck-Grabbing Retriever with the Cimarron Pointer by a breeder in western Kansas to create the Liberal Kansas. This is an extremely unusual gundog, naturally adept at taking guns away from hunters. The NRA has declared it to be an even greater threat than weeping inner-city mothers. The Liberal has been known to physically force inebriated hunters into twelve-step programs. It particularly enjoys digging shotgun-size holes for the burial of weapons.