Howl

by Bark Editors

  To kill some more time, Jerry and I rehearse. I had read the script beforehand, so I knew that Ruthy was to be hit by a car. We spend some time going over what I had taught him already. Jerry was to roll onto his side and simply put his head down for this trick. Even though he refused to stop breathing, he would lie still for a few seconds, looking like a miniature beached whale, before popping up to see if there were still some Rice Krispies treats left at the buffet.

  Then we were called to the set. The night air was thick with movie magic. There was to be an establishing shot, in which one of the actors would hide in a wooden barrel with Ruthy. At some point, Jerry is supposed to pop his head out of the barrel and look cute. We hadn’t known about this scene beforehand, and I admit I was a bit worried. Sure, Jerry has proven that he’s got great range—what with the standing up on cue and all—but coming into a scene like this so unprepared would unsettle any performer.

  The actor, who was wearing a pith helmet, climbed into the barrel and then I carefully lowered Jerry inside. Confused, he looked up at me, his floppy ears pinned anxiously against his head. In his six long years of life, clearly this was his first time squatting inside a barrel with a total stranger wearing a funny hat.

  But when the director yelled “Action,” Jerry’s inner thespian took over. The actor spoke a few lines of dialogue, which was my cue. Standing offstage, I then called to Jerry, who popped his head up out of the barrel and stared right into the camera with a bleary-eyed expression normally found on pet-store puppies.

  It was golden. The audience was going to eat it up, I thought. It was so perfect that they only asked for six more takes before, I supposed, we would be moving on to the death scene.

  But then something curious and a bit sad happened. I was told that Ruthy’s demise would not take place as planned. It had been decided that there would be a shot of a car crashing into the barrel, followed by a closeup of Ruthy’s red leash lying among the wreckage. Her death was to be implied rather than shown for a greater emotional payoff.

  No on-camera death? This was to be Jerry’s career-making scene—the very onset of his fifteen minutes of fame (which, in dog years, equals an hour and forty-five minutes, by the way). I wanted to call Jerry’s manager or his agent, but he had neither. I wanted to scream, “But this is when you’re supposed to kill Jerry!”

  But it was futile. So we just grabbed some cookies and left. As we reached our car, I heard a screech of tires and a sudden crash. “Well, I guess you’re dead,” I whispered. Jerry just smiled—he does that.

  During the drive back home through the blossoming Los Angeles morning, Jerry continued to dazzle me with his “death” pose in the backseat. It was brilliant, until he broke wind. But even without that fatal scene, my dog now has a résumé and I think he might be eligible for his SAG card.

  The movie is due to be released soon. It’s called Think Tank. If Jerry’s scenes don’t end up on the cutting-room floor, then I highly recommend this movie. So please go and see it. And if Steven Spielberg is reading this, have your people call Jerry’s people (that’s me).

  The Dinner Party

  A Screen Treatment

  [Erica Schoenberger and Melissa Webb Wright]

  Premise: What social life would be like if people behaved like dogs.

  OPENING SCENE:

  A living room. Some of the guests have already arrived and are racing around the room, variously hugging, colliding, dancing around each other, patting one another vigorously on the shoulders, and jumping up and down.

  Another guest arrives at the door and rings the bell. Everyone runs over to the door, evidently excited beyond belief, and stands or jumps around, jostling one another while staring at the door and yelling, “WHO’S THERE?!?! WHO’S THERE!?!?!”

  The guest on the other side of the door yells back, “WHO’S THERE?!?!? WHO’S THERE!?!?”

  Somehow, the new arrival enters and the party resumes as before.

  THE CAMERA FOLLOWS SEVERAL OF THE GUESTS AROUND, INCLUDING:

  A muscular male dressed all in black who carries a Frisbee everywhere, clutched tightly to his chest. If anyone touches the Frisbee, he whirls abruptly around and stalks off, glaring over his shoulder.

  Another man, dressed in plaid, rather jolly, who has a drooling problem. Every so often he shakes his head and drool flies onto adjacent guests, who don’t even notice.

  A depressed-looking woman who spends the entire evening methodically ripping a large, stuffed chair to shreds.

  A small group huddled together in a corner. They are all talking loudly and at the same time about completely unrelated subjects.

  A huge guy, with jeans jacket and tattoo, who goes up to various people, drapes his arm over their shoulders, and gives them a giant squeeze. Whoever it is immediately hands their hors d’oeuvre to the guy, who eats it.

  A very small old lady with frizzy hair who leaps out from behind the furniture at passersby and speaks sharply to them. Even the huge guy is daunted.

  The party Lothario who sidles up to anyone, male or female, and tries to smooch, but often misses the other person’s face. Nobody seems to mind.

  VARIOUS BITS OF ACTION OCCUR:

  Someone emerges from the bathroom, and everyone rushes over and crowds in to see what’s happened.

  A guest, looking out the window, suddenly gets very excited and yells, “A CAT!!! A CAT!!! A CAT!!!” Everyone rushes to the window and joins in, yelling, “A CAT!!! A CAT!!! A CAT!!!”

  Two people—one big, one little—grab an appetizer at the same time. They stand stock still, each holding on to it and staring out the corner of their eyes at each other. Suddenly, the big one whirls around and tries to walk off with it. The little person, however, doesn’t let go and is flung around in the first one’s wake.

  In the kitchen, several guests have knocked over the garbage and are going through it.

  In the backyard, several people with little spades are digging holes.

  A fight breaks out in the living room between two guests, but it’s over in three seconds and the opponents hug each other joyfully.

  Several guests can be seen hiding bits of food around the living room. They carefully scan for a likely spot, put the food down, then pick it up again and start looking for a better place.

  One guest, with his hands full of food, simply holds on to it and snarls at anyone who approaches him. He keeps trying to add more food to his pile, spilling as much as he acquires.

  DINNER IS SERVED:

  Everyone races over to the table and there’s a big to-do while the seating arrangement is worked out.

  Then all the guests eat as fast as they possibly can. Every so often, one guest simply grabs something off the plate of the person next to him/her. Sometimes that person grabs it back.

  When everyone’s finished, they jump up and change places to inspect one another’s plates.

  After dinner, everyone takes a nap. They are sprawled around the room, some in little groups huddled together, some on their backs on couches with their feet up on the arms and their hands flung over the back, some curled up awkwardly in overstuffed chairs with their chins propped up on the arms. Occasionally, we see limbs twitching and hear little contented noises.

  PARTY GAMES:

  Tug of war

  How many tennis balls can you hold?

  A relay race in the backyard where the baton is never passed off. Each member of the team simply grabs hold when his or her turn arrives and everyone runs together.

  Tug of war

  Singing together around the piano, but everyone sings a different song.

  Tag

  Grab the tail of the donkey.

  Musical chairs, where shoving is allowed and you can sit on more than one chair. The big guy in the jeans jacket always wins.

  GOOD-BYES:

  A real dog party, of course, would never stop. So we have to introduce another group of humans who gradually arrive to pick up the guests. This is no easy task, as the target gue
st runs off when called. There’s a lot of milling around and loud confusion as the caretaker humans go after the guests, sometimes grabbing them by the collar or the arm and hauling them away while the guest looks back at the crowd, waving joyfully.

  Outside, on the sidewalk, a passerby is knocked down by a group of departing guests.

  Everyone looks very happy, and the good-byes are loud and enthusiastic.

  She Who Must Be Obeyed

  [Tom Gliatto]

  WE KNOW SOMETHING is not right with Her because of Her unenthusiastic inflection on the command “Walkies!” It is the same tone of voice she uses with Charles. She might as well be asking us if we need to be dewormed or deloused. We have often heard Her, in fact, asking Charles the same question. What we mean is that we detect a wariness there, a distraction—an unlikelihood that She will encourage us, as She does when we are all alone, to trail behind Her with the leash in our jaw while She walks before us wearing one of our collars. We believe this is Her form of private amusement. Even so this afternoon we take what pleasure there is to be had running through the tall wild grasses and smelling the odors on the highland breeze. From very far off, we can even pick up the scent of what She has called “paparazzi.” They smell like something between a dead crow and raw bacon crammed into a damp woolen sock. It is always somewhat problematic that our legs are so short, and the grasses lash against our snouts, and we inhale the pollen, and we sneeze a good deal. But of course we do not complain, any more than She does. We do not whimper or droop our ears when troubled, although—and again, we find this curious—Charles does. We take from Her our cue and comport ourselves with a—

  Hedgehog!

  Oh good Christ, a hedgehog!

  Where?

  There—by that log!

  Trap the hedgehog!

  Kill the hedgehog!

  Yes yes yes yes—!

  But this is a meaningless sport, at best, and we leave off the instant She claps her hands and summons us to return to Her side.

  We wonder now what act of propitiation will bring her any small ray of sunshine and happiness. We will lick her toes, yes? It is a revolting act: if you ever heard the strange sound of a Corgi gagging, you would know this was the cause. When all is said and done, there is no joy to be had in licking Her toes, but we will do it. It is in our Corgi blood, our very fiber. However, we draw the line when it comes to the feet of Philip. There haven’t been such toenails since the time of Merlin.

  Back in the castle, things have been no better. We went ahead with the licking of royal toes, calves, inner knee, and so many parts above and beyond that there was concerned talk in the House of Lords, and we have been forced to retreat. We cannot help being somewhat abashed when we hear the phrase “put down,” because we are not sure whether it refers to action taken to suppress a common rebellion or something more along the lines of what happened to Anne Boleyn’s Collie. She made the mistake of appearing on Anne’s behalf before the Star Chamber. Nor did we win ourselves any renewed smiles or nods of the head—no snacks, no treats, no indulgent pats—when in a long afternoon of obsequious fetching we brought Her the newspaper, the Magna Carta, the little metal stick she carries all encrusted with precious metals and silvers, and a small baby. Two feuding mothers of the EastEnders variety both claimed it was their child and needed cutting in half. She remains closeted in meetings. She speaks in a very terse voice into the telephone. She talks heatedly with her husband. She shouts to Princess Margaret to stop singing bawdy sea chanteys from the bath.

  When it is time for walkies, She leashes us to a great yew tree far from the castle. She steps behind the tree and removes all Her clothes as film star Roger Moore crawls out from beneath a shrub. She knows that we are discreet, because we are Corgis, and She knows that we know that their lovemaking is merely a form of stress-releasing. It is too bad, really, She cannot simply bay at something in the sky.

  Another walk, toward sunset, and She seems more dejected than ever. The phrase “walkies horribilis” has occurred to us, and at this point we ourselves have become preoccupied and lag behind Her, lost in thought. We are in fact separated when She crosses a brook, her feet secure and dry in her Wellies, while we are quickly immersed in the current and our own little specialty boots torn from our paws and borne away before us like memories of happy days. We bob and splash until we land on the opposite bank, when—

  Oh, the hedgehog!

  After it, after it!

  Kill the—!

  Bite its—!

  Zwounds!

  And yet we are completely mistaken: this is no hedgehog but a great and royal stag, much as we have seen in paintings in the house, only scaled to our own size—we mean that its grand body sits atop abnormally short legs. It looks like Bambi’s father after a terrible accident in a sawmill. In addition it glows with a spectral phosphorescence, and it speaks to us in a voice of limpid grace that is magically comprehensible to us. Under routine circumstances we are sure it would never occur to us that a stag sounds like Laurence Olivier reading the works of the American laureate Maya Angelou: “Oh, Corgies of Windsor,” he says, “that this sceptered isle should witness the indignities your Queen hath suffered of late! Her untaintable noblesse has been smeared, as if with cold drippings meant only for the under parlor maids in Upstairs, Downstairs, by tragedy and scandal, her dream of being played by Angelina Jolie in a salt-and-pepper wig dash-èd possibly forever! Oh Blair! Oh Diana! Oh black-hearted midnight! Oh—just oh! Do not desert her, brave dogs, nor question whether her actions are dictated by spleen, choler, or melancholy. Offer her nothing but your love and your loyalty. Do not fail your glorious role in history! Did not two Corgis thwart the assassin who lobbed an explosive pineapple at Victoria, swallowing it whole and raining down their puppyish shards on the royal parade? Ah—well, no: those were Pomeranians named Lucy and Drake. But was it not a Corgi, ycleped Dingy, who performed his “business” in the shoes of Wallis Simpson, giving that ignoble whore a strong and aromatic hint of how she should comport herself—viz, out the door of the palace? My time, like your legs and I see mine as well, grows short. Remember me! Farewell!”

  With time, Her command of “Walkies!” regains some of its old lilt—it’s sort of a quick squeal, as if an inflated bagpipe had been stepped on by Godzilla—and we are rewarded for our steadfast support. We are fed free-range pheasant breast from the Windsor silver, treated to hot-stone massages, and—a dream we would never have admitted indulging in—knighted. Wonderful finally to meet Dame Diana Rigg!

  Per Her instructions and design, a beautiful doghouse is built among the topiaries in the west garden. It is made of cedar and cypress and other soft aromatic woods, inlaid with mother-of-pearl and topped by a mad but inspired profusion of Tudor gables and spires. Then She commands, “In, Charles.” And in he goes.

  Our Twelfth Labor

  [Ben Brashares]

  WE HAVE TWO DOGS, Angie and Greeley. Greeley is our good dog and Angie is our bad one. Greeley, though troubled by allergies, nocturnal incontinence, an obliviousness to moving cars, a taste for expensive leather, and a generally weak constitution (which reveals itself monthly in eye-watering vet bills), has always been well-meaning and malleable. Angie has only one problem: she attacks other dogs. But this problem trumps all others because here in Berkeley, California, aggressive dogs are fronts for bad owners, bad people, gang members, or, worse, Republicans. And, sadly, in the world of dogs, Greeley’s “good” doesn’t cancel out Angie’s “bad” to produce a “just fine” dog. Instead, they find the lowest common denominator and morph into what Kate (my fiancée and original owner of Greeley) and I have come to call “Angreeley,” a Cerberus-like thing (albeit with two rather than three heads) that wreaks havoc at dog runs.

  Indeed, of all Greeley’s traits, her worst, by far, is her willingness to do whatever Angie tells her to do. If pressed to fuse our own names (à la Brangelina, Bennifer, Angreeley, etc.) it seems fitting that Kate and I would be “Bate” (as in “bai
t”). Angreeley uses us to pull in its victims. The attacks happen infrequently enough that Kate and I can be lulled into a hopeful state of dog trust. And that’s the real genius of Angreeley. If it happened every time, we’d ban them from dog runs ourselves, take them out separately or whatever, but they know just how often they can do it and remain free and wild.

  When it does occur, it goes like this: Unsuspecting dog (always smaller, often arthritic) saunters up for a hello, Kate or I give him a pat, Angie gives Greeley the signal, they touch noses, become “Angreeley,” and attack the dog. In response, I summon the strength of Hercules and pull the beast off the poor dog. I chase off Greeley and hold down Angie until her growls fade to soft, demonic gurgles. I apologize to the owner and to the dog, and put Angie on a short leash. This effectively saps the Cerberus of its power. Greeley can frolic and play again, free of her evil burden. Why not just always keep Angie on a leash, you ask? Again, she’s a genius. She lulls you with cuteness the way Hannibal Lecter lulled his victims with fine wine and delightful conversation.

  After three or four of these incidents (usually over the course of a few days), we are invariably banned, and Kate and I pick up and move Angreeley on to the next dog run. You might say we’ve developed a “slash and burn” strategy for exercising our dogs. In fact, if you plot our homes over the last two years on a map, you’d find a trail of tears from Brooklyn to Pennsylvania to Connecticut all the way across the country to Berkeley, California. It’s not job-or school-related as many tend to think. Sadly, we’re just looking for fertile, dog-friendly territory to spoil.