Howl

by Bark Editors

  Nothing blows your cool worse than worrying about your loved ones. As I never really had loved ones, I found this out pretty late. Joni had kennel cough when we brought her home from the pet store, and has pretty much been in and out of the vet’s office ever since. Basset Hounds require constant and expensive care. They are prone to ear infections because they drag their long ears on the dirty ground as they walk. This, I’ve been told, and have told others who’ve asked, is how they’ve historically stirred up the scent on the trail. It’s also how they get cooties. I don’t know if Joni Mitchell the Canadian rock legend and respected painter has a sensitive stomach or not (if I had to guess, I’d say “not,” she looks like she’s pretty tough), but Joni Mitchell the Basset Hound cannot keep down a can of reasonably priced dog food like Alpo or even IAMS. She can only digest three-dollar holistic food with oatmeal, organic lamb, and sweet potato in it; a full can a day, every day. About a year ago, our vet advised us to feed her boiled chicken and rice when her runs were particularly explosive. Now, she refuses her food unless there’s hand-cooked chicken from the Whole Foods market and rice (cooked with no oil) mixed in as well; twice a day, every day. I’ve already boiled more chickens than my great-grandma Dora ever did, and she lived into her nineties.

  Joni was never crated as many puppies are these days. She sleeps with us, and always has because she gets lonely or scared in the night. When she twitches and whimpers in her sleep, I tell myself that she’s chasing rabbits or squirrels in some dreamscape Union Square park. I secretly worry that she’s tormented by dark thoughts. I’ll do whatever I have to do, spend whatever I have to spend, and boil whatever pricey fowl I have to boil in order to make those dreams about rabbits and squirrels; and I guess it’s become something of a liability as far as my street smarts go. If she spits up, I shake and blubber and fret like a little girl. People on the street have apparently picked up on this shift toward the dangerously paternal as well. Once you’ve blubbered, even in private, you wear the mark forever. I’m just not tough anymore. Reminding myself that Mickey Rourke, with his Chihuahuas, is not nearly as tough as he used to be either is no great comfort.

  New Yorkers adapt. We pride ourselves on our stubborn nature, but we are also quite fond of our ability to overcome troubling situations and events: economic crashes, the Knicks’ post-Ewing seasons, blackouts, gas leaks, and, of course, September 11. We are a gritty breed (unlike the Basset). I decided that I was going to make do with this new situation pretty quickly. I told myself that I would give people a chance. I should learn to like them. My dog likes people, and she is wise. All you need to do is look into her eyes when she’s awake and her sharp acumen is evident (when she’s asleep, her eyes roll back into her head and go pink and white and it’s creepy). My dog trusts human beings. She thinks we’re all right. Joni Mitchell, the singer, was a lonely painter who lived in a box of paints, or so she sang. Joni Mitchell the dog lives to jump on people and beg for a treat or a pat. She loves children, the elderly, and for some reason, people who pull carts best; but she doesn’t discriminate. She loves homeless people too. Homeless people have started asking me for handouts now that I’ve got her with me on the street. And I happily give to them, because people need second chances to figure out their place in the world. Although it’s not going to get anyone off the streets, sometimes a smile and a nod of “good luck getting through” is better than all of us rolling on cold and frantic like spilled ball bearings.

  Even as I wrote those last words, part of me is ashamed of myself. “People need second chances?” “Like spilled ball bearings?” What have I become? Sunny observations beget horrible similes. Joni Mitchell hasn’t made me a bad writer (completely). I don’t believe that in order to write well, one needs to be alone and angry and drunk like Bukowski. In order to be a good writer, one needs to come up with better lines, that’s all.

  I’m a rock journalist most of the time, and shortly after observing this change in myself, I started complaining about it to my interview subjects. I’d kvetch to the more misanthropic stars about how I’d lost my edge. This was, more often than not, preemptive, and all of them came after a truly awkward Nine Inch Nails interview I’d conducted in pre-Katrina New Orleans; early 2005. Trent Reznor related how he was enjoying his reintegration into accountable society now that he’d beaten his drug and alcohol demons. “Yeah, I know what you mean,” I said. “It’s like…not all about you anymore. Like you have a dog, and she needs to be walked whether you like it or not. If you’re not ready to engage with your neighbors at eight A.M., tough shit, right?” Reznor nodded his head in agreement but I could see he was also trying to determine whether or not I was taking the piss from him. Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist from the Hives understood my amazement when I told him that for some reason Joni (or “Yoni” as he called her in his Swedish accent) would always pull Steve Miller Band’s Book of Dreams album from my vinyl pile, but he couldn’t seem to work up much interest otherwise. Maybe he was just being polite about Book of Dreams too. The Swedes are very polite. Even their porn is polite. Only Chan Marshall of Cat Power, who once had a Basset named Franklin (he apparently got bit by a snake and his jowls froze in a Nicholson-as-the-Joker face for a time), really seemed to feel me when I went on and on about Joni the non-icon: how she had pulled the stuffing out of every plush toy we’ve ever given her, and then kept the gutted skins like Buffalo Bill. How she had a dark side, but also a good soul. How I was trying for both but failing to get the balance right. Getting human-friendly had, ironically, made me a shitty rock star interviewer. It used to be so easy. I’d inhabit a Nick Kent or Lester Bangs-ian persona. Throw on some shades, put a cig in my mouth, and I could go head to head with any of them, even those with quicker wits than me, like Morrissey. When I interviewed Morrissey pre–Joni Mitchell (shortly after the release of his You Are the Quarry album) in L.A., I felt like a badass. When I interviewed him in Rome two years later, and post–Joni Mitchell, I talked about my dog, revealed my weakness, and was zinged. “You call your dog Joni Mitchell?” the great man asked. “And does she come?”

  Talking to regular people was only slightly easier. When someone with a dog would approach us, I had an in. “Uh, what kind of dog is that?” Or “How old is your…what kind of dog is that?”

  Sometimes Joni Mitchell would get twisted in the other dog’s leash (my girlfriend calls it a “lead” but it’s only ever been a leash to me) and I could only see it as another metaphor. I was becoming entwined with the other dog-owning New Yorkers. I started to like my role. I’d patrol the dog run like Robin Williams in…Garp, chasing down speed demons, keeping the run safe from the miscreants who’d walk in with their dogs and leave the door swinging off the latch. Those people might reinforce my mistrust if I let them, but I won’t let them shake me. I would like to see them all jailed, or at least smacked in the back of the skull with a rolled up New York Post. The dog owners who do shake my faith in humanity are the ones who address only Joni when we’re out in the street. Like she’s out walking herself, or just happens to be attached to a man who is not permitted to speak and will only stare straight ahead like a palace guard.

  “I’m reformed,” I want to remind them, “and I’m here too. Look up. Acknowledge me. Didn’t you see me at the run the other day chastising those assholes? I’m on your side! I’m good people!”

  “How are you today, Joni?”

  (I assume they know her name because my girlfriend walks her and she is much friendlier than I am, even with my new approach to man and hound pedestrian-ism.)

  “Joni, you’re a good doggy! Good good doggy!”

  “What about me? Aren’t I a good person?” I scream internally whenever this happens. And this happens at least twice a week as two culprits, whom I won’t describe in detail, should they read about themselves in this anthology, are on both my walking schedule and our route. I’ve stopped doing drugs. I have a stuffed wooly mammoth, panda bear, Vans checkered sneaker, blue Chevy Impala, American buffalo, hedgehog, an
teater, sock monkey, red squirrel, and Canadian goose in my living room, all crusty with slobber. I haven’t started a rock journalist fistfight in a bar in two years. I don’t even feel comfortable in this leather coat anymore. I’m thinking about tweed. Doesn’t that at least merit a glance? A “Her coat’s looking good. What shampoo do you use on her?” Aren’t we supposed to bond? Dog owners? Human beings?

  In this way, I’m no different from my friend who sat in the park with her Papillon on her booty calls. Except I don’t want booty. I want human kindness, a sense of belonging and empathy. I want my existence acknowledged too. When I’m not with Joni and I see another dog owner who happens to be sans canine as well, we never, ever say hello. Remove the dog from the equation and we all become walled-up New Yorkers again, and that’s just sad. Now that I share my life with an animal, I don’t need an animal around all the time to make me more human. Or do I? “Say hello, or…hey,” I tell myself. I never do.

  My shrink says that Joni is prep for a real kid, like some of my friends have: a human baby. I can’t see how it would be much different. Joni Mitchell is our kid. She’s as much a part of our family as a kid would ever be. I guess I’m saying that now because I don’t have one. The other day I held a baby for the first time. I’d been asked to become the godfather of a friend’s newborn boy. This is their second child. Their first is four. I wasn’t even a candidate back then. It felt weird holding a human baby. But I remember when it felt weird holding a puppy too. Four years ago, I probably would have told myself, “I don’t see how getting a dog would change my life, except maybe I’d have to pick up a lot of shit,” so who knows where this is going to lead. Maybe the shrink is right. Shrinks are sometimes. When I uttered that “shit” line by the way, I’d probably be wearing black sunglasses, and smoking too…and if you saw me coming, you’d most likely avoid all human contact. You’re luckier now. And so am I. It’s not all rabbits and squirrels yet…but it’s getting there.

  [You never see dogs do their tricks for each other.—Dan Liebert]

  Carolina’s in Heat and I’m Not

  [Abigail Thomas]

  MY HOUND DOG Carolina is sitting in the car, and I’m in the drugstore standing in an aisle I haven’t been down for fifteen years. Carolina is in heat. Such an archaic concept, heat. I’m looking for something to slip into the mesh pocket of a red Speedo-like contraption I’ve just bought for her. Who knew they made such things for dogs? I recall the flimsy little garter belts we girls got with our first box of sanitary napkins and the accompanying pamphlet regarding the human reproductive cycle. Light-years ago. I pick an item that comes wrapped in pink and says mini and then I hobble over to Aisle 4b, Pain Relievers, where I’m more at home. My back hurts. I grab aspirin, pay for everything, and head for the car. Carolina’s nose is smeared against the window. Good dog, I say, good dog, and manage to get myself sitting down without screaming and I pat her big head and nuzzle her neck, and her tail thwacks against the passenger seat. Carolina is halfway through her first treatment for heartworm and going into heat seems grossly unfair. “Jesus, yet more trouble,” as some martyr said when the executioner reached in to yank out his intestines. (I can’t remember which saint this was, but my mother loved to quote him.) Before I start the car I line up the arrows, take off the cap, stab a pen through the foil seal and gobble down three aspirin.

  This is my first experience with a dog in heat but the back pain arrived thirty years ago when I bent to pick a canned peach off the kitchen floor and couldn’t straighten up. My new husband seemed familiar with the problem. “My god, what is this called?” I cried as he tried to help. “It’s called my back is killing me,” he said. This version of my back is killing me comes from wearing a pair of stylish new red shoes that pinch my left foot and make me walk lopsided. I don’t know why I keep putting them on except they show off my ankles. At age sixty-three, ankles are my best feature unless you count cake.

  When I get home I discover it’s nearly impossible to put this thing on my dog. There is a place for her tail and Velcro fastenings that go over her haunches but try sticking a dog’s long tail through the hole of a small slippery garment while the dog turns around and around in circles. It takes fifteen minutes and when I succeed, Carolina turns her baleful eyes on me and I want to apologize. She is a dog dressed like a monkey.

  The next morning I can barely walk. My friend Claudette comes to the rescue. She puts Carolina on a leash lest a pack of hormone-addled canines show up in my yard, and later she drives me to her acupuncturist. I have never been to an acupuncturist but I’m ready for help here. The process is very interesting, all those needles tingling in my feet and legs and hands, and so relaxing that I would probably doze off were it not for the needle stuck right under my nose. I just can’t stop thinking about that one. Nevertheless I do feel better until I hit the dairy case at the Hurley Ridge Market and reach for half a gallon of milk. On the way back through town we drive past the half-dressed youth of Woodstock lying on the village green. They are a beautiful sight, but what with my bad back and good memory I am glad not to be one of them. They have far too much future. Sometimes it is a relief to be over the hill.

  Meanwhile, my fat Beagle Harry has found himself capable of leaping straight up into the air like Rudolf Nureyev. If Carolina doesn’t notice, and she doesn’t, he does it again. He is no longer capable of reproducing, but that doesn’t dampen his spirit. Rosie too is affected by whatever hormones are flying. She engages in much vigorous grooming, attending obsessively to the nooks and crannies of both Harry and Carolina. She would have made an excellent mother. Now and then Carolina rouses herself long enough to emit a howl. Everybody’s getting hot around here except me. I am just beginning to wonder where all the would-be suitors are when a big white dog materializes in the driveway. Ha! Carolina’s first admirer. Harry and Rosie take up their positions on the back porch barking their heads off, and I call my sister and tell her proudly we’ve got an intact Huskie hanging around who probably never finished grammar school. “Now you know how Mom and Dad felt,” she says. I go outside holding Carolina’s leash in one hand, and a mop in the other. The mop doubles as cane and threat, and I shake it at the ruffian when he comes too close. He looks at Carolina and she looks back. Oh yeah, I remember that look. If this animal were human he’d be wearing jeans and a white T-shirt. He’d be lighting a cigarette. Forget my bad back, my advanced years. If this animal were human and I were in Carolina’s shoes, let’s face it, I’d be all over him like white on rice.

  [Beagles get drunk on their own voices.—Dan Liebert]

  Bone Alone

  [Rob McKenzie]

  with art by Graham Roumieu

  WHAT YOUR DOG thinks about when you’re gone:

  2:47 P.M.: Yumyumyiamyiamyiam…brother this is good peanut butter…haven’t tasted peanut butter like this since…oh damn.

  2:48: Every time. Every frickin time. They get that hollow rubber ball with the holes in it, they jam it full of high-grade p.b. and I, I can’t help it, I’m like a cat in a kibble shop, I lose my mind, I just have to fill my snout with peanut butter—and then I come up for air and they’re gone, vamoosed, fast as squirrels. And I’m alone.

  2:55: Maybe they meant to bring me along but just forgot. After all, I’m the dog—what kind of trip would it be without the dog? So maybe every now and then I ralph in the backseat—who hasn’t? Let he who is without sin cast the first tennis ball. Hey, did someone just say “tennis ball”?

  3:01: It’s no use. “Chase the ball” just doesn’t work when you’re alone. It’s like solo synchronized swimming. I can sit here all day and drop the ball down the stairs, I can hear it pa-dunk pa-dunk down the steps, I can see it pinball all around the landing, but it’s not the same without someone to bring it back to.

  3:03: I wonder what time it is. On second thought, I wonder what time is.

  3:05: Zzzzzzz lamb chops zzzzzzz all-beef wieners zzzzzzz Beagles in heat zzzzzzzz.

  3:28: It’s been, wha
t, six days now?

  That’s it. I’m doomed. They ain’t never coming back. I’m the Papillon of puppies here. Dogman of Alcatraz. The Mutt in the Mask. Bichapoo Caruso. Bone Alone, with me in the Macaulay Culkin role. A three-hour cruise…

  3:31: America Held Hostage: Day 38.

  3:33: Oh jeez. It’s Sprinkles the idiot Dalmatian and he’s being walked right by my house. WOOF WOOF OVER HERE A-HOLE! SEND FOR HELP YOU USELESS PIECE OF CATNIP! WOOF! YES I MEAN YOU! And what does he do? He pisses on the pansies. Last time I sniff his ass.

  3:35: Must…have…food. But what idiot designed the tall box that keeps the food cold? It’s impossible to open unless you have claws like the two-legs do. Maybe if I stare at it for a while, it’ll, you know, miraculously open.