The Adventures of Spike the Wonder Dog

by Bill Boggs

  People are politely inquiring, “Isn’t that the dog from TV?” but she’s got no idea what they mean. She’s telling me that we’re going to my new home at her estate in East Hampton. The neighbor’s even got a female bull terrier he might want to breed.

  For a minute, I’m actually fantasizing about sneaking off with her. Simple. I revoke my Wonder Dog identity and go into a celebrity-dog protection program. Maybe I emerge as, say, Warren, a former junkyard dog who lost his job because he wasn’t mean enough.

  Hey, why not? She’s very nice, gives me half the food off her plate, and pets me during the speeches, including a real passionate one by Bud about “never leaving your dog alone in public.” When the event’s over, she’s tryin’ to take me with her, but I won’t move. My jaws are clamped on a chair. If I go, she gets a new chair, too.

  It’s an emergency situation, and as much as I hate to do it around all these well-dressed dog lovers, I give Bud my MIA bark. He finds me, and there’s a major argument about my name, which she says is now Floyd, and who owns me. Bud’s gotta use the service dog ID with that bad picture. She makes him fork over a donation to get me back.

  Why is Bud runnin’ around at a party like that and leavin’ me alone? Why is he out late so many nights? I keep feelin’ he’s looking for something he thought was gonna happen in New York that’s not happening. Why is he so tense, even when sleepin’? Is it ’cause he’s smoking less pot, or ’cause he’s not makin’ the effort to get laid much? Some days it looks like he’s got the weight of the world between his legs.

  I’m figurin’ the reason is because he hates his own show and won’t admit it.

  When I watch, it looks like a bloated TV talk show with too many guests and bad camera angles. I see Bud struggling with topics like “transit-cop law reform” or whole shows like the revolting one on overcoming laxative addiction, where the guests kept running out to the bathroom, or on modern medical advances, where he was tryin’ to stay awake during segments on “you and your spleen,” understanding eczema, and new pronouncements on podiatry.

  They book celebrities, which Bud loves, but Erica’s always worrying about some guests being too old. He’s gotta fight for interviews with stars he had on Southern Exposure, like Michael Douglas or Robert Klein. When she thinks they’re too old, they put a soft filter on the camera and cut down on their airtime. They put so many filters on Bob Newhart that his nose practically disappeared.

  Bud is just tryin’ to follow the same freewheelin’ instincts that worked down South to make the show a big hit. Up here they’re doing what he calls “a fear-based production.” They’re afraid of losing the youth audience, or losing the young mother audience, or afraid of “offending some audience if we do that,” or being too silly, or the worst—afraid of booking a guest who’s got “nothing to plug.”

  The staff sure is scheduling stuff they want to plug, and afterward haulin’ home suitcases full of payback for themselves. Every month there’s a plus-size fashion segment, and—what a coincidence—Erica just happens to walk away with six new outfits after each show.

  Mort, the kid who’s gonna win gold if masturbating replaces air pistol in the Olympics, puts together a product demo on the new anal-care aisle at drugstores. For this, he scores a six-pack of the new and improved Handjob Helper and forty samples of Ream and Clean exfoliation gel.

  The worst is Goldfarb.

  He buys a house in the Vinegar Hill section of Brooklyn, which they say has one of the highest violent crime rates in the city. To hike up his property value, he’s producing pieces that make Vinegar Hill look like Beverly Hills.

  He’s got models walking down a street, but you can’t see the burned-out buildings all around them. The models are carrying giant shopping bags from Armani, Bergdorf’s, and Chanel, like those stores are right next to the bodega on the corner with the bars on the windows. The third time he goes there, the camera crew gets robbed and beaten. Goldfarb ends up hiding in the van surrounded by a gang of kids who’re whacking the hubcaps with baseball bats like they’re auditioning for Stomp.

  15

  Benny and Some Jets

  Donna Hanover’s away again. Bud thinks she might be at a secret camp run by Mary Carillo, where Donna’s tryin’ to learn about baseball for an audition at NBC. Can’t figure out why she doesn’t play to her natural skill set and get a job proclaiming the benefits of binge drinking for intoxication ecstasy.

  Little Benny the chihuahua gets put with me, or Uber-ed to a cousin on the West Side, or picked up by Donna’s parents and hauled to Montclair, New Jersey. The dog’s almost sixteen years old, and he’s moving around like a piece of forwarded mail.

  One afternoon, it’s just me and Benny lying on the floor. We’re enjoying the warmth of the sun and listening to music comin’ through the wall. The guy next door has a new live-in boyfriend named Gabriel. To celebrate, he’s playing a bouncy little number called “Blow, Gabriel, Blow.”

  As it’s ending on a big note about Gabriel blowing, Benny looks at me and starts vibrating like that massage wand thing under our bed. His eyes close and he’s gasping for breath. Either he’s playing an Andy Kaufman practical joke, or something bad’s happening to little Benny. I’m scared, maybe watchin’ the death of my closest dog pal. We need a vet or he’s gonna bark the big one. “Keep calm and carry on,” I tell myself, but how do I get ’im outta here?

  First, I turn on the TV and get the sound blasting. It’s The Dr. Oz Show, and he’s talking about how a husband and wife can “explore new depths of intimacy at a couples colonoscopy retreat.”

  Next, I stand at the door and bark loud, real loud. I’m hopin’ all the racket is gonna bring Fernando, the skinny, chain-smoking superintendent guy who’s always tellin’ Bud that I’m making too much noise.

  I’m barking, barking, barking. Fernando finally comes in. He sees the grim sight of Benny rolling around with his little pink tongue hangin’ out. But Oz is now warning of the dangers of women puttin’ talcum powder on their private parts, so Fernando sits down to watch, hoping maybe there’s gonna be a private-parts demo. When Oz throws to a commercial, he gets on his walkie-talkie for Wendy, the office girl downstairs. He wants Donna’s cell phone number, but Wendy’s out getting a stuffed garlic knots pizza for their TGIF office celebration.

  I figure by the time these clowns either get Donna off the baseball field or pry her away from some noon happy hour, Benny’ll be four paws up. So I grab him by his neck and run down to the elevator, while Fernando’s yelling, “Halt!” like he’s an ICE agent about to shoot me at the border.

  I hit the elevator button with my nose and get lucky, ’cause it’s there fast. We’re movin’ down—ten, nine, eight, seven, six—but it stops at five. Coming on are Mary and her little girl Cathy, who’ve always been friendly to me, even when I threw up in the elevator after eating some leftover garlic knot pizza from the lobby trash.

  “We’ll hold it for you,” Mary calls to her neighbor, Mrs. Jones, a retired middle school health teacher who has a knee brace, uses two canes, and is possibly the slowest-walking person on earth.

  My heart’s pounding. Every second feels like ten minutes. “Get in here, Mrs. Jones; hurry the hell up, old lady.” Gotta take a breath, ’cause I realize I’m acting like an authentic rushing-everywhere New Yorker, who’d be happy to let the elevator door close in your face if that gets them to the lobby just a tiny bit faster.

  We start back down—four, three. Cathy’s asking, “Did a puppy just come out of Spike’s mouth? Is he a father now?”

  The door slowly opens in the lobby while Mrs. Jones is explaining the fertilization and birth process to little Cathy.

  “What’s a penis?” Cathy asks as I charge to the street.

  All I got to do is race straight to Lexington and the pet store with the sign in the window sayin’, “Man Dressed Like a Vet on Premises.”

  Can’t remember much about the run over there except hearing people screaming I’d killed an old squ
irrel.

  I force the pet store door open and go to the counter. Benny’s drooping from my jaws. The sales guy’s standing there with his mouth open gaping at me. He yells to somebody in the back, “I think this dog’s returning something!”

  That’s the moment when I know the educational bar for pet shop employees is way lower than I thought.

  They take Benny to the guy who’s dressed like a vet, and while life-saving measures are underway, I decide to stroll around the store and do some fantasy bargain shopping. The only special is a discount and a hundred-thousand-mile guarantee on little Michelin tires for those wagons dogs need ’cause they can’t use their back legs. There’s also a three-for-five-dollars sale on large bags of Chinese dog food, but they’ve got an expiration date around the time Nixon went to China.

  After a week, little Benny comes home and Donna takes us to Nello to celebrate that I saved his life. Benny still has to recover from some severe neck trauma that must have happened during his treatment, ’cause I was very careful while carrying him. And if people need me to feel guilty because Benny’s in a miniature neck brace, can’t rotate his head, and is slowly getting addicted to canine painkillers, that’s their problem.

  Until he’s stronger and this neck thing clears up, Benny’ll be “going” at home on a Wee-Wee pad—an invention I put up there with air-conditioning and sedation during canine anal gland releasing.

  Donna’s not gonna be takin’ me and Benny out like before, so Bud signs a deal with Walkin’ ’n’ Waggin’, an exclusive Madison Avenue dog walkin’ operation. They pitch him a Platinum Birth-to-Death Excretion Needs contract. He opts for the à la carte package—guaranteed six leaks and two dumps a day, photographed and downloaded on the Wag-Walk app for owner review. He vetoes the option of live drone coverage of each walk. Way more complicated than strolling out the back door to the yard in Thomasville.

  These dog walkin’ guys work about as hard as Michael Moore’s wardrobe adviser.

  The first walker they send comes in, turns on the television, goes to Bud’s closet, puts on one of Bud’s sport coats, and sits there fondling himself while watchin’ Bud on the show interviewing a woman who’s the head of an organization campaigning for longer sexual foreplay on TV.

  She’s explaining that a survey of twenty R-rated cable dramas reveals that the average “first kiss to coitus interval” during consensual sex is only thirty-one seconds. She announces that The Affair set the record, at 18.2. “This kind of rushing to make love sets a terrible example for the impressionable youth of America,” she warns.

  My second walker ends up being a sweet little twenty-year-old kid named Larry David Seinfeld Garcia. You can figure how his family learned English, ’cause his sister’s name is Mary Tyler Garcia. I hope nobody’s out there rocking an innocent baby named Wonder Dog Lopez.

  Larry David Seinfeld Garcia is on the challenging career path of dedicating his life to dog walking.

  He’s practicing barking for better client communication, and takin’ an online course in stoolology. He studies everything that comes out of my body like he’s in the Smithsonian peering through bulletproof glass at fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

  Bud likes him ’cause he’s on time, neat, and has artistic talent. He says some of his close-up stool shots are better than stuff hangin’ on the wall of MoMA. The kid’s so calm all the time, he calls himself “the Hispanic who never panics.”

  It’s only later we learn that he stays placid by exploiting the daily benefits of Thorazine to manage the anger issues that started to plague him in seventh grade. The first sign was when he bit his math teacher’s thigh outta frustration over long division.

  As soon as word gets out in his neighborhood that Larry David Seinfeld Garcia is walking the Wonder Dog from TV, my fame starts growin’. I gotta say it; get ready: The Hispanics love me!

  I get asked by a committee saving homeless dogs in Puerto Rico to show up at the dock for a photo op for local news. A pack of street dogs famous in Puerto Rico as The Jets is being delivered on a ship from San Juan. Some shelter in Southampton’s gonna take The Jets and switch them from their diet of sun-ripened San Juan street garbage to bowls of kale and quinoa served in Martha Stewart dog bowls in air-conditioned cages.

  It’s a cool, drizzly day with wind from the Hudson River blowin’ my ears back. I’ll try to greet ’em with the new Spanish-accent bark Larry David Seinfeld Garcia’s taught me. I’m next to Roscoe The Bedbug Beagle from the TV ads. Also part of this made-for-TV-event are six transit-police German shepherds, who’d rather be back at work ripping the pants off turnstile jumpers. Of course, there’s a bunch of publicity-hungry politicians who rented dogs for the photo op.

  Slowly descending the gangplank are San Juan city officials who must have suddenly made a commitment to help homeless dogs to get a free cruise to New York. There’s also a bunch of dolled-up Hamptons women. The whole thing’s being covered by Extra. Christie Brinkley, Kelly Ripa, Donna Karan, Jane Rothchild, and a few others have to walk down the steps with a dog on a leash.

  The dogs were never leashed before. They’re pulling and straining and leapin’ so much that even that Dog Whisperer guy who’s leading the procession is havin’ a rough time not being dragged down headfirst.

  The mayor of San Juan and his wife are beaming with joy that these filthy-looking dogs aren’t still back home terrorizing tourists. Unfortunately they forgot one minor detail: They shoulda hosed down the cargo. The first sign of trouble is when my new pal Roscoe’s tail flies up in a “Bedbugs ho!” alert.

  I see flies and fleas, gnats, mosquitoes all buzzing happily, celebrating arriving in a country where DDT’s illegal. Christie and Jane are wavin’ off big green flies. Someone’s yelling, “I got mites in my Manolos.”

  “We’re infested!” the mayor’s wife starts screamin’, “Hormigas en mis pantalones! Hormigas en mis pantalones!”

  I hear the sound of twelve leashes hittin’ the ground. The Jets charge by us and run up Twelfth Avenue, dodging taxis and draggin’ leashes on their way to a new life of feasting on the pollution-enriched garbage of New York.

  That night, Extra ran the escape in slow motion.

  16

  The Gaze

  I finally get something to look forward to other than “Spike at Noon,” marching in the Dominican Day Parade, and leftover Taco Bell Volcano Nachos at the office.

  Buffy is comin’ up for a stay and bringing Daisy!

  There’s some kind of affiliate meeting she’s gotta go to, but maybe it’s an excuse for a visit, ’cause she’s always tellin’ Bud how much she misses us and the old days.

  The last time I was this happy is a toss-up. It’s either when I heard the Eat It Live restaurant was closed by the Board of Health for what happened with a live sautéed owl they were serving. The Daily News said the owl was served unconscious ’cause of electroshocks from the chef but somehow woke up after being put on the table. The report said that “diners recoiled in horror as the bird began flapping its wings, lifted off the platter, and started flying around, drenching the live-food connoisseurs crowded below with smoldering olive oil.”

  The other time I was this happy is when the bum on the corner won the lottery with a ticket he bought with the ten dollars Bud gave him for food.

  The bum immediately moves to Trump Tower, where there’s no board approval during something they’re calling “a bail sale.” On the ten o’clock news, he announces he’s using his Mega Millions money to buy more Trump Tower condos for other bums and realize his dream of carbon-neutral bum communal living there.

  Sometimes he comes strolling back to Sixty-Third and Madison in his same filthy clothes but wearin’ a new bowler hat. He gives the replacement bum advice on how to work the corner and gleefully tells Bud about his new PC campaign to relabel homeless people.

  “First we were hobos; next, bums,” he says. “Then homeless. Now we’re ‘outdoorsmen!’”

  The plan is that Buffy and Daisy’
ll be next door at The Lowell Hotel until they come stay in our place. Bud can’t be here for her whole visit, ’cause the TV show is going on location, recording a show from some new cruise ship sailing around the Atlantic.

  The cruise is the biggest comp deal Erica and Goldfarb pull off since her free full-body liposuction and his failed robotic hair transplants, where he ended up with something that looked like a palm tree sprouting out of the top of his head.

  Bud’s not happy about being trapped at sea for three days with people he can’t stand on land. He was gonna drag me along, but when he notices my glee when I heard Daisy’s on her way, he somehow figures I’d rather be home than floating around on a ship taking mambo lessons with him.

  She’s comin’ up right after the weekend when Bud’s goin’ to a meditation and mindfulness class. He got invited by a guy named Yogi Bob, who’s been on Noonday showin’ people at home how to breathe and relax.

  This is something dogs do naturally, but I guess humans need special training. It musta worked, ’cause viewers call the next day tellin’ Bud they fell asleep and they can usually only do that by scrolling Lindsey Graham’s Instagram feeds.

  So Bud, thinkin’ maybe some meditation will calm him down from his battles at work, decides to go.

  Yogi Bob lets Bud bring me along ’cause, he tells Bud, he thinks I’m very centered. I guess he can’t see that the only thing I’m centered on is tryin’ to calculate whether Daisy’s now old enough to be willing for a little “action in the afternoon” when Buffy’s off shopping.

  We show up on a rainy Saturday at the Hunter College Spirituality and Wellness Festival. I’m hoping to attend the Advanced Body Worship workshop and spend an hour with twenty people who’re breathing deeply while admiring themselves in mirrors, but as usual, I gotta stay with Bud. We’re on the floor next to a couple of women in the Lotus position who got their BlackBerries strapped to their thighs in case they get the familiar urge to scroll Facebook while meditating.