Howl

by Bark Editors

  [Mongrels are God’s folk art.—Dan Liebert]

  13 Questions

  No Matter How You Frame the Question,

  There’s Only One Answer

  [Susan Miller]

  LATELY, I’VE BEEN interviewing dogs.

  One thing I’ve learned about dogs. They don’t like to be interviewed.

  I tried to frame my questions creatively. They were breed-specific, yet accommodating to mixed breeds. Sensitive, even. Yet, curiously enough, several of the dogs I spoke with gave the same answer to every one of my questions. Which I thought to be nuanced and well considered. Still, no matter what I asked, the response always came back: Squirrel.

  Sometimes there was a different inflection. Eager: Squirrel? Or annoyed, even defiant: Could you be more of a fool? Do I have to spell it out for you? Squirrel. End of discussion.

  I posed a series of questions that I began to fear might elicit nothing but “squirrel” as idée fixe. Still I pressed on.

  What do you think about? Am I your world? Do you know more than you’re saying? Why do you like humans?

  Where did you learn to put your head on the bottom of the bed like that with your eyes like that? And the sigh?

  What embarrasses you, other than the one who is your world but who has named you Fred or Gumdrop or Larry?

  How come you will lick a Republican?

  What smells so f**king good everywhere? I’m not smelling it.

  I know dogs don’t talk. Please. I know that. But, they can tell you things. They have information. They can tell you things.

  Our dog is a rescue. By that I mean we are rescued. She’s our rescue. Our fifteen-year-old black Standard Poodle, Pepsee, had died a year earlier. Pizza came to and went from our apartment without incident. Or joy. We were getting far too comfortable not going out in the middle of the rain-soaked muddy ice storm of night. We were bereft of dog. But could we love another?

  We named her Henree. Well, why shouldn’t she have gender issues too? She was two and a half. We adopted her in February. We were just going to take the drive and meet her and her foster mom in the parking lot of the Short Hills Mall. That’s all. We’d just meet her.

  In the first weeks, she ate an entire bag of Reese’s peanut butter cups and a chocolate cake; recently, it was a box of truffles we brought back from Paris. Then there was the letter from our upstairs neighbor. Did we know that when we left her alone, Henree ran from room to room, barking and howling without cease? We bought a digital recorder and taped her. She ran from room to room and barked and howled without cease. We hired a trainer. She learned in a minute.

  We got her to see that we might go, but we always come back. We got her to believe that this is where she’s going to live for as long as she lives. And then she almost died.

  Once we knew she would survive, I took the opportunity to interview the animals in the waiting room.

  Do you know what death is?

  Squirrel.

  Come on!

  There came then a kind of buzz, a hum, an instant and communal agreement, this grand energy of desire to tell me.

  We don’t know. We have no idea. We don’t think about it. We don’t want you to think about it.

  I turned my attention to the old dogs in my building: Do you know what’s happening to you? How can we make it better? When our aging Poodle entered her last years, there was this brief moment of surprise that registered in her eyes as she reckoned with each new loss. I can’t get up on the chair. What’s that about? Okay. I’ll just lie down at the foot of it. Then—I can’t get up from the foot of the chair. Or: The humans are in the house. Last time I looked they were out. How did they get past me? So, this is how it is. All right. All right, then. Her sweet acceptance and reliance gave me a tenderness for old dogs, old people. Old me. For a while, I couldn’t even look at a puppy.

  But, back to the day we brought Henree home. She’s a brown Standard, by the way. Thirty-three years ago I had a baby who died. When I was a young girl, I always had this feeling that I would adopt someone someday somehow. And so, a few months after we lost our baby, there came Jeremy, my son—adopted at two and a half days old. And so it was Jeremy who called from L.A. first thing each day to see how Henree was when she almost died.

  One of the questions I posed to Bess, a Terrier who prayed for Henree even though she would sooner bite her than share the Earth with her, was this: If she pulls through, will it change things between the two of you?

  Bess was noncommittal.

  In the parking lot of the Short Hills Mall—remarkable for its lack of detritus—my partner and I stood contemplating the papers we were about to sign giving us this darling, goofy, big-nosed, brown-eyed gal who had jumped up to hug us like long-lost soul mates but who still wasn’t, after all, our old gal—our beloved Pepsee. We looked at the papers, at each other, and then we noticed something on the otherwise pristine, well-manicured, clean green grass. It was an empty can. An empty can of Pepsi.

  The last question I put to the dogs was something I know a lot of you were probably hoping I would have the courage to ask: What do you really do when we’re out of the house?

  And you are not going to believe this! They just sleep.

  So, I had to know. Why do you need so much sleep?

  But, to dream, of course. To dream of—

  Us?

  I was laughed at.

  Then what? To dream of what?

  Oh, don’t. Don’t say it.

  …Squirrel.

  [Poodles look as though they’d be good at math.—Dan Liebert]

  By Fifteen Minutes

  [Melissa Holbrook Pierson]

  THERE’S THE Nobel Peace Prize, the National Book Award, and the MacArthur “genius” grants. Watch us pat ourselves on the back for excellence. But we judge using such a paltry human scale. Arf-woof! snort the dogs. Small beer. Most people have no idea how finely practiced their dog arts, how great their glee when true brilliance in their own endeavors is attained. But I do. For some reason fate has picked me to know more than my share of Canine Behavior World Cup holders. They compete in several events, among them, Ha-Ha Fooled Ya, as well as Championship Food Snatching. The dogs I have known make Marley look like an untrained piker, which I gather he was, although I didn’t read the book (which has never seemed to me like much of a prerequisite for criticism).

  My sadly missed former dog was a champion among champions in many of the dog world’s most meaningful challenges. One of her highlights, in a life of highlights that also included the theft of an all-butter chocolate-ganache birthday cake meant to serve thirty, occurred one day in the city. Just a routine walk in the morning. Past the bagel shop. Mid-sentence, muffin poised to aid in dramatic point-making, a fellow seated on a bench outside turned to look at his suddenly empty hand. My dog continued on, her stride unbroken, but I could see on the back of her head the muscles around her ears moving rhythmically.

  I often wonder if to one another they communicate telepathically: Hey, watch this! Wanna see me make my old lady pee in her pants? It’s really funny. My new dog, a sort of chip off the old block in that she’s size-wise a true fragment but also working toward an advanced degree in Hijinks, has been tutoring a pal of hers. Mine is a twenty-pound Border Collie–hellion mix, and her friend is a hundred-pound Labradoodle (“I didn’t buy him!” his conscientious owner always offers quickly, aware of the political and ethical incorrectness of that act. “This is his third home!” as if she’s not, maybe, giving away a bit too much about his character). But these dogs are in love, and like many in the first blush of oh-please-won’t-you-put-your-whole-head-in-my-mouth, they want to do everything together, in exactly the same way.

  So Nelly has been teaching Willy a crucial maneuver. Its first step consists of looking so happy, grateful even, that Mom has brought you on a hike in the woods. That causes her to let down her guard, see, because she now she believes she did the right thing in letting you off-leash to enjoy yourself; the joy is so obvious, it
makes her joyful to see it in you. So she gives you a really long, glorious walk, safe in the belief that gratitude makes doggies behave nicely. That’s when you let it rip. It takes much practice to perfect the next step: a pause—well out of reach, naturally—and an expression on your face so clear to read that it might as well be the Times Square news zipper: “That car over there? You want me to get in it? Do you take me for a fool? Ha, I say. HA.” You have to make sure you stand there for a good long while, because apparently moms are slow on the uptake. Then, and only then, do you take off.

  Willy has been a supreme student. Nelly sometimes gets waylaid by the scent of rabbit in some brush, and while she’s digging a hole that’s meant to swallow her eventually, I can usually get in there and just reach her tail. This particular day, I had gotten her on-leash when Willy turned to look at us. “HA!” Then he turned and ran up the hill, away from the lovely waterfall and all the sticks and the nice path and most notably his owner, and proceeded across a busy county route. He was heading for a quaint little village filled with fancy eateries and French cookware and eight-dollar soaps; the shoppes backed onto a fabulous alley where one could get positively lost among the garbage cans, parked cars, and discarded furniture that was deemed a mite too vintage to be saleably antique.

  My friend looked at me with despair. She had learned that Willy’s perfection of the routine meant the addition of another couple miles to the chase if he even caught sight of her coming after him holding a leash. I volunteered to go get him; there was always the surprise factor, I thought (Silly human! I think he telegraphed to Nelly at this point).

  It’s not a really good escape unless it gives the mom an indigestible wad of fear in the gut. Making her look like a lunatic in need of some grooming is the icing on the cake. I had no idea where Willy was heading. But it might take him back across the road on which cars heedlessly attained 40 or 50 mph. Sweat began to wet my hairline. I started to run. Whatever Willy turned to see what effect his performance was having I abruptly pulled to a stop, in an interspecies game of Red Light Green Light. Now I unzipped my jacket, dog treats, used Kleenex, and Ricola drops trailing from the pockets. I gracefully jumped over one trash can on its side. Unfortunately this had prevented me from seeing the other one right next to it.

  It is still a matter of some amazement that I had the time and inclination, while brushing cinders from the knees of my already filthy jeans, to look up at the car that had just pulled in behind the emporium next door. Hmmm. BMW station wagon—they are nice, aren’t they? Willy apparently thought so, too, since he stopped just in front of the car. Someone was getting out, and Willy was interested in that too. Whoever it was liked dogs, because he instantly put his hand out, and what dog can resist an outstretched hand? “Grab that dog!” I shouted. Maybe it was more of a hysterical scream. Anyway, he looked up and saw this insane harridan coming closer, and probably figured he’d better do what I asked. I saw his hand close around the collar and hold fast.

  As I hurried toward him I was already throwing out pathetic explanations: Oh, thank you, I couldn’t catch him and he’s not really my dog, you saved my butt! And when I got there, I hooked Willy to the leash and brushed my hair out of my face and looked into the transparent and rather stunned blue eyes of Aidan Quinn. The handsome movie actor Aidan Quinn. The handsome movie actor Aidan Quinn whom I’d always wanted to meet.

  Willy’s life had been saved by Aidan Quinn. Not just because he prevented Willy from running into the road. Because my friend could not kill Willy now that he had been captured by Aidan Quinn.

  A couple of months later I was at a party. My hair was brushed and my pants were clean. Even “a little lipstick,” as my mother always pleaded. I turned from the hors d’oeuvres and felt someone’s eyes. There, across the room, was Aidan Quinn. His look clearly said, I know you from somewhere. I smiled, then turned away.

  No, sir. Only in my dreams.

  [Many dogs have a sense of humor, but only Dachshunds make jokes.—Dan Liebert]

  Joni Mitchell Never Lies

  [Marc Spitz]

  HOMELESS PEOPLE WOULDN’T ask me for change. The campaigners on my corner assumed that I didn’t care about the environment or gay rights, or the Democratic Party. Unless a tourist was so lost that it was a question of “ask the sour-looking tall man in the leather coat” or “end up in the Pine Barrens sucking ketchup packets like they did in that famous Sopranos episode,” they’d find someone else to guide them toward the Marc Jacobs store. I was convinced that my instinctive mistrust of my neighbors had helped me survive half my entire adult life here in New York City. I’d never sign for packages for any neighbor who wasn’t home, despite urging from the UPS man. What if there were drugs or kiddie porn in there? “People ain’t no good,” Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds once sang, and I was inclined to believe it. My resistance to mixing in, I was also quite certain, had helped me establish some kind of identity as a creative individual. I read Against Nature, and thought it was a self-help guide. This misanthropic disconnect probably has its roots in my adolescence. When my father, a self-described degenerate gambler, used to introduce me to his friends at the racetrack, he’d warn, “Keep your mouth shut. Mind your business, and stay out of trouble,” and pat me on the head firmly. It seemed like sound, paternal advice. By my thirties, I had my high walls and knew they were good ones.

  I never thought I’d be a dog owner. I grew up among dogs. Whenever one of my grandmother’s white, high-strung, yipping Toy Poodles would pass away, she’d quickly replace it with a look-alike. All these look-alikes were named Pepe, just like the original dog (whose vintage my sister and I could never determine). Dog owners seemed strange to us. I did make an effort, when I was thirteen or fourteen (in the mid 1980s), to convince my father to buy me a dog of my own. We were in Lexington, Kentucky, where he was working as a salesman of equine products. I was visiting for the summer and according to him, I saw a mother with a litter of puppies at one of these horse farms and it triggered some kind of tantrum when I was told that both the dogs and I were too young. This must have been so painful that I’ve blocked it from my memory for twenty years. My father recently reminded me of this, and it made sense out of my subsequent pet-ownership: cats.

  Emotionally distant. I could take or leave my cats, and they felt the same about me, and it worked. We liked it that way. We were cool. We were the cover of Bringing It All Back Home by Bob Dylan (if you don’t know what I’m talking about here, Google Image it and you’ll quickly see the scene and the attitude I was cultivating through the ’90s and well into the new century). I was allergic to cats, of course, but I was even more averse to opening up my heart to any companions who required a bit more accountability. This included, for a similar length of time, women. But then, in the spring of my thirty-second year, I met a woman who changed me a little. And together, we purchased a dog who changed me a lot. Didn’t alter her so much. She grew up in New Mexico and had horses and goats and dogs and cats and toads and turtles right there in her yard. When she moved to Manhattan after college, she went through some kind of nature-girl withdrawal.

  We had each other but she yearned for animals. We started watching a lot of Animal Planet, but that only seemed to make things worse. Soon, I’d spy her downloading dog porn. In particular, a video of a Basset Hound stumbling across a lawn, its ears and cheeks flapping as it bounded. She’d watch this on a loop. We were living together in my former bachelor pad: a studio on Christopher Street. There wasn’t enough space for two people, much less two people and a Basset Hound. And what kind of messed-up-looking dog was that anyway? But I gave in, because I loved her. Not because I wanted a dog…at all. I was a cat guy. I wasn’t even a cat guy anymore. I was a cactus guy. I had one on the bathroom windowsill and that was enough nature for me. Even the name we gave our new Basset was somewhat noncommittal. I suggested that we name her Joni Mitchell. By the time I’d fallen completely in love with her crepe-like old-man belly and snowshoe-size paws she already knew he
r name. We couldn’t change it.

  She was stuck with an ironic name. I could not have felt more sincere in my devotion to her.

  Once Joni was fully vaccinated, I’d take her out into the city, but I soon realized that nothing could inoculate me from an unexpected invasion of fellow New Yorkers. At first, whenever people would approach us, I’d respond to queries like “Can I pet your dog?” or “How old is your dog?” or “Is that a Beagle dog?” or “Is that the Hush Puppy dog?” or “Is that the Sherlock Holmes dog?” or “How old is your Beagle?” with a cold glare. Sometimes I’d jerk little Joni away when someone would try to squeeze her without asking. Or I’d shrug, “I don’t know,” as if I’d just dognapped her, or was a particularly disgruntled professional walker. I knew exactly how old she was, to the day. And I also knew that she was the Hush Puppy dog but she was certainly not a Beagle-dog. Beagles are more slender and not nearly as grand as Bassets. They’re like economy cars. Once I said, “Mind your own business, man,” but in my defense, it was seven in the morning and West Fourth Street was covered with ice. I understood why they couldn’t help themselves, even at that hour. It’s like that scene in Cronenberg’s remake of The Fly where Geena Davis explains to Jeff Goldblum about why the computer wasn’t understanding how to transport the plate of steak; it’s like how old ladies want to squeeze babies’ cheeks. It’s the power of the flesh. And Bassets have a lot of loose and powerful flesh; even French ones like Joni Mitchell. Some English Bassets, I’ve since discovered, are so dangly that they have to undergo eye lifts in order to see properly.

  What I didn’t get is why it was suddenly okay for strangers to talk to me. I knew people my age, single people, who got dogs for this very reason: to attract other single people and have sex with them. One female friend used to sit in the park and wait with her dog in her lap, and angle for eligible men. Most of those who approached her ended up being gay, but she had a Papillon, so what did she expect? I wasn’t on the make, however. I wasn’t single, and everything about my physical energy—my stance, my look, my black clothes—said: keep back or I will do something bad to you. Or did it? Had growing to love Joni Mitchell made me soft? And if so, how was I supposed to defend her against all these unknown people with their grabby hands and their crooked mouths that say things like “So cute!” and “Oh, puppy, puppy!” How was I supposed to defend myself against them? I loved Joni, but she was embarrassing me. I fantasized about constructing an indoor kennel with a mile of running track. We would go on “trots” in our bubble and never have to encounter anyone else. I could walk her, pick up her poop, and still be cool. Nobody would have to know that I “trotted.”