While I was grabbing Molly I dropped the leash of the other dog. As I wrangled Molly’s collar back on, Lupé the chihuahua casually walked through the gate to the reception area, looked around for a minute and took a dump on the floor under the secretaries. The guy behind the counter who dropped to his hands and knees to try to extract her from underneath their desk are mumbled, “At least it wasn’t on the carpet.” He basically shrugged and just started to take care of it.

Nobody looked happy about it, and three people dove on it with alcohol wipes and paper towels and disinfecting spray. But they were nice about it and said stuff like, “Oh, don’t worry about it,” and, “This is a veterinary hospital! That happens all the time.” I was still really embarrassed but I felt a little better.

As I waited with the dogs in one of the seating areas, I sat in a corner that was kind of sheltered from everything by racks of dog and cat food so the girls might be a little calmer. I couldn’t see the front desk and they couldn’t see me and evidently they forgot I was there because I heard someone whose voice I didn’t recognize say, “Oh. My. God. It smells like SHIT in here!” (mumble mumble words explaining dog incident mumble) “Jeez, what kind of dog was it?” (mumble mumble explanation mumble) “A CHIHUAHUA?! That’s from a CHIHUAHUA?! Wowwwww…” (mumble something mumble mumble) “Yeah, I know. But still!”

Then I heard a drawer slam followed by the sound of a spray can. The air immediately smelled fresher. Berry something. It kept on spraying for like 45 seconds. “Fsssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss” without any break. I was still embarrassed, but I couldn’t help laughing a little. 

Anyway, it’s been a big couple of years for dog stuff. Before all the dying started happening, there had still been plenty going on. Loki, our first New Mexican dog, came of age and tried to kill Watson one day, and there were stiches and drains and surgeries. Watson lived another year and a half, but that caused a lot of distress in the family and it meant we could never leave them alone again. (We did though, and Loki attacked Watson again. Not as bad, but damn.)

Sheba

Sheba went quickly. She first had a couple incidents of vestibular disease, not serious in itself, but it’s uncommon to have it more than once without it indicating something more serious underlying. It’s terrifying if you don’t know what it is, you think your dog is having a stroke, they’re dizzy and they throw up and their eyes can’t focus and they can’t walk in a straight line. She recovered fine from it, but it happened again. Then one evening, she made funny noises, mostly belching, so we brought her into the hyper-expensive emergency vet and it turned out she had torsion bloat. The vet explained our options and we authorized an expensive and risky surgery. By the time we got home, he called and informed us that it wasn’t worth finishing the operation, she had a lot of stuff going on. We authorized her euthanasia, and that was that. It was a little jarring because she hadn’t had much wrong with her. We were all sad that we didn’t a chance to say goodbye, but it all happened pretty quickly and she didn’t have a prolonged old age. I miss her, a street dog with rough edges, a heart of gold, and the softest hair you’ve ever felt on a canine.

Ruby

Ruby was starting to look old; her hair was brittle, and although we’d always asked about it, nothing important ever showed up in bloodwork. One day when I stepped out to meet the mailman or something, she wagged her tail so hard (very Ruby, if you knew her) that she broke the end off it on a metal object in the house. It was very bloody and probably pretty painful, but we kept the wound clean and the extremely expensive emergency vet stopped the bleeding without much fuss. They recommended followup tests with our normal vet, tails aren’t typically that fragile.  Sure enough, she was found to have Cushing’s disease, she had a couple of months to live. It had probably been developing for years, the brittle hair was a symptom, but it’s the kind of thing where “if you’re below xxx threshhold, it’s not the disease, and when you get past yyy threshhold, it is.” The one hope was an expensive and invasive surgery. We opted for it, and she lived another six months. On one hand, I will never put another dog through anything like that, but on the other hand, we made the best decision we could at the time, and once she healed she was in far less pain than she was before.

As the disease ran its course, though, she was weakened enough that she was falling a lot and hurting herself, and she’d panic when she didn’t have the strength to get up. It was a difficult decision to put her to sleep, but it was the right thing to do and if anything we waited too long. This one was a lot harder than Sheba’s, not because we loved her more (although she was my first girl dog and my second dog ever, so I had a special thing for her), it was because we had no obvious trigger point. We spent probably two months daily going, “Is this the day? Was that the fall that was too much to endure again? Is this the sleepless night we can’t allow to repeat?” It was a hard call even when we did it, but the right one. I don’t know if I prefer having months to prepare for the death of a loved one rather than having it happen by surprise. There are plusses and minuses both ways. It makes you think, and one conclusion is that it’s better not to wait to have a reason to appreciate those around you. Appreciate them if that’s your nature, or don’t do it and have no regrets.

Watson

About the same time as the tail incident Watson had a vestibular incident. It was shortly after Sheba, which the vets couldn’t believe. It’s not contagious. He recovered well from the vicious attack Loki put down on him, but his belly started getting big. Tests revealed that he had Cushing’s as well; we never bothered to investigate surgical solutions as he was already almost 14. We treated the disease with medication as long as we could; he slowly lost mobility and started falling and getting hurt. He’d fall outside and we wouldn’t realize it and he’d be stuck laying on the ground – never too long fortunately, but always longer than you’d ever want to let it happen. He’d get up at night and fall in the dark and it got to the point where every little sound either meant he’d fallen and couldn’t get up or he’d just peed somewhere. It was exhausting.

He lost his voice somewhere along the way, most likely as a result of his big fight. He would take ugly spills down the single step into our living room and we could feel the impact and just cringe in sympathy. He was very incontinent and we steam cleaned dog pee out of the carpet probably six or seven hundred times over the last year. (Literally. 2-4 times a day for a year.) He got to the point where he wasn’t comfortable being awake and he couldn’t comfortably sleep and it was clear that he was strong enough that he wasn’t going to go on his own. Some of our more spiritual friends hinted that he hadn’t been given permission to leave us, that he felt he had unfinished work. I don’t know. It was just hard to see him suffer.

He was my first dog ever, and it was pretty sad. But it wasn’t a tragedy; he was an awesome dog and we had him for almost 15 years, and we did everything we could to give him a good life. I miss him, and I loved him, but it was a real relief to see his suffering end. Again, we probably waited a little longer than we should, but ending the life of a loved one is no easy call. The way we’ve made our decisions, there’s no way we can look back and say, “Was that really the right time? Was it really the right thing to do?” It was, and it was. Both cases.

Ruby, Sheba, Watson

So a big, heartrenching, expensive and emotional year to year-and-a-half. No regrets about any of it, when we took in each dog we’ve had, we were in it for better and worse and it’s been worth all of it. And at the end of the day, we’ve replenished our dwindling stock in a very organic way; we still have 3 dogs. I’ve learned some lessons, but none of them were the ones I expected. (This is coming from a guy who didn’t really learn anything important from almost dying in a car wreck; lessons don’t always fall where you expect.) The new guys are very much like our first team in some ways. In other ways, they couldn’t be more different. That’s another story though…

It bears repeating – it was all very sad, but it wasn’t a tragedy. I’m better for having known each of them, we did our best to give them good lives, they lived long and mostly healthy existences, and we did our best to give them a graceful exit from their suffering. Sad stuff happens, and you live through the sadness and move on. And if there’s a lesson, it’s to try to live without regrets; if you think you’re going to regret taking your loved ones for granted while they were alive, well… don’t.

For more dog photos, check this album.

Monday was hard; 50 things to start the week with, all due at once, Anette home vacuuming and blasting television while I’m on conference calls, my daughter and her friend running around. It felt a little overwhelming early on, and I was having a hard time just getting anywhere. I think a little of my practice kicked in, and I stopped screwing around and just started and finished one thing. And then moved on to the next thing to start and finish. It sounds stupid, I’m sure, and it probably is. But it’s so easy to get mired when we’re multitasking that doing the first thing first just doesn’t occur to us.

What’s mindfulness got to do with it? Well, that’s kind of what the practice is, ignoring the pointless distractions and getting back to the matter at hand. If I’m practicing being mindful about, say, breathing, my mind will absolutely, definitely wander, and the practice is to gently bring my attention back to the breathing as often as I need to, over and over. Having been practicing this lately, I found myself using the same kind of quiet discipline and turning my focus to my work, over and over, as often as necessary. When my mind wandered, something kicked in and gently brought my focus back to the task in front of me. Suddenly, I was cranking out the work. Temporarily liberated from “not knowing where to start” by the simple act of starting. 

About an hour ago, I had another “moment.” My daughter’s got a cough and was laying between us; Anette had been up with her an hour or so earlier getting her some Children’s Cough Placebo or whatever the ineffective kid’s medication was called, and she’d still roll over every 3 or 4 minutes and cough freely in my face. (And then back the other way to cough in Anette’s face. We’re all going to be sick.) This kept me awake, as might be expected. I mean, almost everything keeps me awake, so it may as well be my kid coughing in my face. I was laying facing away from her when I heard The Sound – a dog pissing, very close to my head. I yelled something like, “Arrrrghg!” and I squinted around to see what I could. My wife and kid jolted out of whatever half-asleep state they were in. Loki, the puppy was bolting away, I could tell his shape and gait even with my advanced myopia thanks to the fairly bright backlit clouds that cast a glow into our room. I was instantly out of bed and had one foot in a dog pee puddle. My rage flared.

Anette asked what was going on, and I told her Loki had peed on the floor. I used a different vocabulary to describe the situation, of course. I grabbed the pillow he’d peed on – I think he was marking it because the guest dog, Gracie, had been laying on it and he’s young enough to still be kind of possessive. He really never does stuff like that, it’s pretty out of character. That didn’t make it piss me off less. I started to walk toward the other side of the house with the pee-pillow and Anette turned on her nightstand lamp. Loki was slinking ahead of me in the dark hallway, and I was going to shoo him outside when we got to the living room. But mid-hallway, he slunk back around and headed back toward the bedroom even when I tried to stop him. I was furious, and I howled with anger and turned back around, half crouching in the totally dark hallway and trying to grab his collar with my right hand. He’s very quick, but he was only going just fast enough to stay out of my reach, mocking me.

Back in the bedroom, Anette and Sydney were fully awake. They were both propped up on pillows, and Loki smashed over them to avoid my grasp. He was carefully avoiding the spaces between and around them and instead stomped squarely on their bodies, which spiraled my anger even further. (Kind of a “How dare he!” type of outrage.) I notice myself still holding the pee pillow in my other hand, which infuriated me even more (“How dare he?” Part II, or something), and I was cursing like a cabbie and trying to grab him as he stomped over my human family, back and forth.

Anette and Sydney didn’t budge as he evasively smashed them, and some part of my Hulk-mind noticed them just calmly watching the back and forth, only moving their eyes as though following a tennis match. Anette shifted out of the bed and quietly said, “Why don’t I take him outside? Everyone in the house is shaking.” I sort of froze to take assessment. I took a look around me and saw my other dogs nervously circling around, noticed the pee pillow still in my left hand and extended away from my body, felt my Popeye grimace of a half-asleep-glasses-wearing-angry-guy trying to grab a puppy in a mostly dark room while holding a pee soaked pillow in one hand. Denied the chance to implement my “put the dog outside for a little while” plan for justice, I stomped out of the room, still cursing and grumbling, threw the pillow in the laundry room and slammed the door.

The insanity of it all hit me as I walked back to the room with Dog Pee Smell Remover and a roll of some kind of paper product so I could sit and mop dog pee out of the carpet next to where I put my head when I “sleep.” My daughter watched me and made some small talk. (It’s weird to catch your 4 year old making small talk.) The anger totally faded, and it only took a couple minutes once some part of me allowed me to let go of it. This is a new thing for me; I used to pride myself for being able to maintain a grudge for years at a time – and I don’t mean some weak, part time conceptual grudge, I’m talking about all consuming constant sleep-depriving single-minded anger for months and years. I took my freshly lucid non-angry state and used the pleasant clarity to dig up a humidifier and some kid’s Vick’s Rub to try to help with her cough. It was then that I became pretty aware of how my mindfulness practice had facilitated my quick shift.

What’s meditation got to do with it? Everything. My imperfect and human initial reaction of anger, not so much, but the ability to let go of it, 100%. In the practice of mindfulness, emotions and distractions are permitted and even expected, but you’re not expected to follow them – that’s the discipline, that’s what you practice. So after having practiced watching emotions like anger pop into my mind and then working to not let my attention be carried away by them, I found myself doing the same thing in real life. I had pee to sop up and a daughter to talk to, and my attention quietly and automatically went there and the anger dissappated since it was no longer needed or relevant. 

Again, it probably sounds dumb or  even imaginary, but for me, just letting go of my anger over a minute or two is a big deal. It wasn’t like some automatic saintly response, nothing like that. The effects of mindfulness practice are not dramatic for me, they’re subtle. It was like driving very quickly toward a tree, and rather than hitting the tree as I normally might, I made a tiny course adjustment early enough that I easily cleared the tree. Not a last minute swerve, either, just a tiny correction. Little differences that result in a greatly different outcome. Nothing more complex than me catching myself doing stuff that I’ve always done but haven’t always caught myself doing. 

Wide awake, I sat and did zazen for 15 minutes. I was pleased with my focus, normally it knocks me out at the end of a day, and while it should have bugged me, I found it pleasing to be distracted by laughter instead of stress or anger or frustration. I caught myself chuckling and snickering at the ridiculousness of it all during and after my meditation. I’d caught a little glimpse of how funny life really is and how silly my own actions are even when I’m not being silly. My half-asleep wife wanted to know why I was snickering, and I couldn’t quite get the words out to explain how funny it struck me to see how seriously I take myself in such matters as dog night-peeing, or the weird fun I was experiencing at having caught myself in it.

So it’s been a full night. Face-coughing, dog pee, rage, laughter, meditation, humidification, Children’s Placebos, a mini-satori, and now blog-rambling. Maybe I can get some sleep now.

I was a little scared of it, but my house is big enough and we’ve got decent, walled-off space outside for them to play, and the neighbors on both sides have dogs that bark at least as much as ours, so as long as things were reasonably under control – which they were – it wasn’t going to generate any controversy. The 4 extra dogs were in pairs, 2 little mini-dogs (Bijou and Marley), sort of Wiener-dog mixes, and 2 maxi-dogs (Shush and Tiger) that were bigger than any that live with us, hovering around 100 pounds.

 My 3 old dogs are from the New York City area, and they carry with them a certain kind of attitude that seems worrisome but works out really well. (Some New Yorkers are like this; a tough or daunting exterior when you cross them on the street, but incredibly helpful, kind people if they see that you need something. It’s not a facade, there’s real toughness, but there’s a lot more under the surface.)  

Watson is a pimpish character from Brooklyn. A cool, distant-to-strangers Rottie/Shepherd mix, he’s actually very sweet with people, but won’t take any shit from other dogs. (He was actually great with other dogs, too, until we got a second one and he had to “protect” her one time. After that moment, he wouldn’t take any shit from other dogs.) He was remarkably patient and kind to all our visitors. Ruby’s a neurotic beauty from Staten Island, and she walks around and grumbles to herself. If she were a person, she’d smoke, drink coffee, and be on her cell phone while she was getting her nails done; she’d probably take diet pills and and be a hypochondriac. She ended up chewing on the head of Tiger to scold him for getting too close while she was eating. It was a warning, there was no real malice behind her head-chewing, and the big, young hundred pound puppy just stood there while this lanky, 40 pound dog in her later years made terrifying noises and bit his head. He was very patient about the whole thing, no hard feelings. (Dogs are so cool.) He comes across as a little slow sometimes so we kept an eye on them, and it was just fine.

Sheba is from New Jersey, and she’s got a big mouth. She looks and sounds like a junkyard dog because, well, she’s a junkyard dog. If you were to poll strangers, 10 out of 10 would say she’s the scariest when they first enter our house. But she’s really all bark, and is the sweetest, most affectionate soul in the house. Even knowing that, we are surprised at how gentle and cool she was with the visitors, and on more than one occasion, she would quietly get in the middle of our dogs and the visitors if they started barking. The noisy, terrifying Jersey Girl is actually a natural peacemaker. Loki’s our puppy, he’s quickly becoming our biggest dog, but he’s a big goof. He makes scary noises at strangers sometimes, which is mostly OK with me, and there’s not a mean bone in his body.

Burt the Burd was really cool, a pleasant surprise. He’s not hand trained, but he likes being in the middle of things so he’d chatter as loud as the noise floor in the house encouraged him to. We’d drive up to the house, and all the dogs would be lined up in the window barking at us, but over the top of them all, we’d hear Burt tweeting away right along with them in the piccolo range. It was nice to have a happy little bird in the house just doing his thing. I thought our house might be too cold for him, but a trip to the zoo in Albuquerque right after Christmas alleviated my fears – their budgie exhibit is a walk-in cage totally exposed to the elements, and those plucky little characters were flying around and chattering in 28 degree weather. 

Bijou was a little sweetheart. She’d sit with me while I worked. She’s needy, in that she CONSTANTLY wants up, but she’s so small it hardly matters. My daughter loved being near the little dogs. Marley’s actually a sweet little guy, but he barks at tall people. I’m not short. There were little issues with him, I guess, but he gets along with my puppy, Loki, really well even though they’re 90% different in size. They’ve known each other since Loki was tiny, so it’s only natural. It’s very different having small dogs around, I’m not totally used to it, but I’m not complaining, they’re sweet little monsters.

There’s no pretty way to say that 8 dogs makes for a lot of dog shit. It snowed and froze and melted and froze and snow, and we had to really make an effort to keep things halfway under control. Also, hundred pound dogs leave much bigger evidence behind compared to, say, 50 pound dogs. Or 7 pound dogs. These are things you sort of understand but don’t fully grasp when you agree to take on 4 extra dogs for a little while.

The only real hassle was the smallest dog of all, Marley. He pissed all over our house. He’s probably 2 years old, and he’s tiny, and he’s unfixed. He’s the kind of dog that will jump up under a bigger dog and bite his wang and hang there, and the bigger dog will stand there, unsure what to do. If you were at a bar, and a guy who was a foot tall jumped up and bit your groin, you’d have to be careful how you handled it. On one hand, you could probably stomp him out without much fuss, but then you’d really seem like a jerk for kicking some 1-foot-tall guy’s ass, or you could let him continue to hang from your wang by his teeth, and that’s not sustainable. You’ve got options, but none of them will make you look cool in front of chicks.

So this little dog was marking all over my house, and the big dogs that live here were all a little confused. The day after Christmas, I caught him pissing on one of my daughter’s gifts, and before I could get some paper towels and the anti-dog-piss stuff, I caught Watson marking over the little guy’s mark. I scolded him, and he obviously felt bad and didn’t do it again; it’s probably been 10 years since he’s had an “accident” of any sort, but he was also like, “Oh, come ON! This little dude is jacking up my whole scene! He’s making me look bad!” Watson’s the alpha dog here, and he was as powerless to stop this little dude from muscling in on his territory as we were. His looks of informed frustration are always heartbreaking, and this was worse than usual.

One afternoon, we came home from town, and I was carrying my daughter into bed. She’d fallen asleep in the car. While I was trying to cover her up and take off her shoes, that little dog ran in and started barking at me. It annoyed me a little, because a) it’s my house, b) my daughter is asleep, and c) this little dude is getting territorial on me. (Me!) So after Sydney was secure and snug, I turned around and raised my arms and ran after him. I do it to my dogs all the time, and we bark and growl and wrestle and it’s all good dog fun, and everyone gets riled up for a couple minutes and then we all calm down again. I do it just to goof with them sometimes, and sometimes to break the ice if they seem like they’re getting too serious about something, and usually a little chasing and playing burns off their extra energy and they have fun and we bond and everything’s pleasantly calm afterwards.

Evidently, this little 7 pound dog hadn’t played with a person in quite this way before because he bolted off with his tail between his legs followed by a 30-foot trail of pee, ending in a pee-circle by the front door where he finally stopped. Anette picked him up and he looked pretty shaken up, he was shivering a little. As she held him, he lifted one paw up and looked at me as though to say, “NO MORE!!! PLEASE STOP!!!! I CAN’T TAKE ANY MORE!!!!!!!” I felt horrible, I was just trying to play a little and get him to burn off a little energy because he’s such a spunky little dude, and it sort of wrecked his day. It seemed like a pretty big reaction to 2 seconds of half-hearted chasing, but I still feel guilty.

He wasn’t at all mad at me, he let me hold him and calm him down, and he wasn’t extra-edgy with me later (little dogs seem to be good at holding grudges when they want to, and he was perfectly sweet). I’m not convinced that it wasn’t just an act – he instantly stopped shivering when we put him down and went off to attack my big puppy, Loki – and he was back to normal just that quickly. But he pretended to think twice about barking at me next time I left and returned. It didn’t actually stop him, mind you, but he pretended to have thought twice at least. And he may not have peed in the house any more after that. It’s hard to tell with a little guy like that. 

I don’t think he’ll actually learn anything from it since it’s probably the first and only time he’ll ever get chased by an arm-raised 6 foot guy in cowboy boots. His reaction was way out of proportion to what I had in mind, and I really felt bad for shaking him up, even if it was only for 30 seconds and then he instantly got over it. Me, I got a pretty valuable lesson in “a little bit goes a long way.” Poor little guy.

For a while, my angst dreams went away. My friend Keith Golden, a bassist and a hell of a guy, cured them for me unintentionally. He’s that cool. I was having a normal angst dream, it was a college-age party at someone’s dank house. I didn’t know anyone. (This would have been enough of an angst dream for me, but my subconscious had other plans.) I would walk up with a red plastic cup of college-party-beer and stand with a group of people who were talking and laughing, and when there was a break in the conversation, I’d introduce myself or make a joke. Each and every time, the entire group would look at me like I’d shit my pants or something and walk away in disgust. (This isn’t entirely dissimilar to how my daily life works some of the time, but I digress.) I finally gave up and just sat on a sofa in a corner and nursed my warm college-party-beer in the red plastic cup. (Red on the outside, white on the inside, and ribbed for your college-party-beer-gripping pleasure.)

At the opposite side of the couch, a cute girl plopped down and sighed. She had her own red plastic cup of beverage. Without looking at her, and against my better instincts, I made some kind of comment about the party. To my surprise, she acknowledged my dark assessment about the crowd, and we struck up a pleasant conversation. Nothing deep, nothing sexy, just entirely pleasant after a night of complete alienation. After a little while, she said, “What did you say your name was?” I said, Robert, Robert Muller. She said, “Ohhh, you’re a friend of Keith Golden’s, right?! He says you’re a hell of a guy!” In all seriousness, I replied Yes, yes I am. And with her mention of Keith Golden, the party’s sinister atmosphere totally changed. The room, which was formerly “crowded” was now “vital,” the “oppressive” lighting became “groovy” or something (I was going to say romantic, but there wasn’t anything romantic going on), and the sinister activities of the individual chatting cliques suddenly gave the room a nice comfortable feeling since nobody was alone and everybody was involved with something. It was fun. And it was probably how real life works; a party isn’t fun until you have fun at it, then it feels different.

I didn’t have angst dreams again for probably 3 years, and they’ve never come back full force. Yes, Keith Golden is that cool.

It’s been a pretty bad week of work, and my daytime explorations of the darker regions of my mind have triggered some dreams again. I forget them usually, but the one last night woke me up and I remembered it. It was brief.

My job was at a zoo. I was outside in sunny weather standing in front of a really inviting looking pool, the kind you see in Florida real estate ads with fountains and steps and a funny kidney shape. Big, wide steps, too. But it housed a really big alligator, and the alligator was grumpy and fast. So my job was to keep people from swimming in the big inviting pool on a hot day. They seemed to know it was an alligator pen of some sort (that’s how I know it was an alligator and not a croc, I overheard people), but their toddlers and preschoolers just wouldn’t stay away from the water. I was mostly successful in yanking kids off the first step as they started to walk into the pool. After several successful saves in a row, a guy dressed like Steve Irwin – khaki shirt, khaki shorts – walks up and stands next to me. He’s apparently also a zoo employee. He shouts like a circus caller, and with his British accent, he invites people to step right up for a nice swim. For some reason, it doesn’t occur to me to stop him from doing that, after all, we all have a job to do, right? As a result of his encouragement, people are more aggressive about getting into the pool, and I find myself forcibly shoving the alligator back down with my alligator-shoving stick and frantically snatching kids with water wings just barely out of his gaping maw. I don’t bring swim toys to the zoo when I bring my daughter, but it made sense at the time. The pace of people speeds up and each rescue gets more demanding, and I finally can’t outpace them. As the alligator is finally about to snap some kid in half, I wake up, freezing and heart racing.

I’m on top of my covers, and dogs have stragetically snuck onto the bed and pinned them down for maximum dog comfort and minimum access by me. If I had been completely awake, I’d have kicked the dogs off the bed, but I was carefully avoiding anything that would have made me fully wake up. I was pretty cold, and my brilliant way of getting back to sleep and trying to stay warm was to roll onto the floor with my pillow and sleep the rest of the night totally uncovered. I found sleep quickly, eventually woke up even colder than before and just before I should start working. I fought the dogs off the bed so I could cover up and warm up for 4 minutes before I had to get up and work.

No more angst dreams for the night, but this was an unexpected deviation of my not-a-nightmare-but-not-fun dreams. Strange as it may sound, I’m curious where this will lead and I look forward to more.

I noticed a shiny wrapper of some sort next to Loki, and since that little courtyard is his secret burial ground for things he finds, I wasn’t worried. I remembered my daughter had left some graham crackers on the coffee table, and it looked pretty much like it fit the bill. You don’t practice fathering for 4+ years without being to identify a cellophane graham cracker wrapper at 30 feet or so. Next to it was a weird, shiny red plastic thing. Not as easy to identify; they’ve got my curiousity.

I put some sandals on and walked out. It was the base for the “dippy bird” I got my daughter after we saw one in an old Loony Tunes cartoon. It was annoying – that meant he’d been in my daughter’s room and finding stuff to just wreck. I picked it up and he already had the “I’m a bad dog” look. I didn’t yell or even look at him as I walked by. Then it occurred to me – where’s the rest of it?

My pace picked up a little as I went through the components of a dippy bird so I could keep an eye out for them. So from the picture in my mind’s eye, I pieced together that the dippy bird consists of:

• gut-entangling plastics
• very thin test tube glass, great for intestine-shredding fun
• a presumably toxic colored liquid
• a twisted metal strip that wraps around the test-tube part of the dippy bird’s body; small enough to swallow and awkwardly shaped enough to lodge somewhere in the tract
• lead. (Well, I don’t actually know where the lead would come from, but I assume there’s some in there somewhere.)

And yes, I gave it to my 3 year old daughter to play with.

I found the rest of the plastic base, and nothing else. I called my wife.

Anette has had just as little dog-eating-dippy-bird experience as I have, so I got off the phone to look around for the rest of the evidence. Little by little I found most of the rest, and at her suggestion I checked his gums and tongue. Not stained with Dippy Bird Blue, and no obvious cuts. So far so good. 

Then I found the head of the Dippy Bird. It was not all totally there, but if he ate a little chunk of red plastic, that’s not the most serious challenge his tract has encountered. Next, I found the chewed-off glass tube from the body. That just left the giant-grape sized globe at the bottom of the dippy bird’s body that contained all the delicious liquid toxins. (I ran inside to Google dippy birds. The contents are used as an industrial cleaner and a paint remover. Yikes.) I found most of that.

The “most of it” was, and is, troubling. A wet flagstone patio that’s littered with shiny gravel and little puddles is not an ideal place to find a couple tiny shards of glass, but I went through the house and the outside to find it and have no evidence, so it’s not impossible that the dog ate some shards. Picturing how he sits out when he chews things – his head to one side and the thing he’s chewing on pinned to the ground under a paw – I don’t imagine he ingested much of the blue toxin elixir unless it was really delicious; the place I found the body tube was between 2 flagstones, so dirt would have just soaked it up anyway. It’s rained enough that it would have easily washed away the small amount of color, but I’d still feel better if I could see some evidence of where that liquid went.

So thinking preventatively, I Googled what to do if your dog eats glass. It’s more common than I would have thought, and the most practical remedy is what some vets use for when dogs eat ornamental Christmas Tree bulbs – cotton balls. You put something delicious on them like liverwurst or half and half and let the dog scarf down 3-5 of them. (More for larger dogs.) The cotton balls swirl around the digestive tract and theoretically trap the sharp objects and thus avoid the trickier problems; the testimonial in one link I found revealed a tribe of puppies who had eaten staples, and the cotton ball remedy reclaimed every single staple without incident. (They’d x-rayed them, so they probably  had an accurate count.) 

So I’m having Anette pick up cotton balls on the way home. We have plenty of delicious cotton ball condiments, that won’t be a problem. Those extra shards may be out there somewhere and it may all be for nothing, but it doesn’t sound like there’s a lot of downside to preemptive treatment in this case. I can’t help but think of the chapter in Catch 22 where Milo feeds Egyptian cotton to the troops he’s mess officer for, and they all get sick. It’s probably different for dogs, though. Right?

Loki seems really smart and sweet and grown up a lot of the time, and he uses the camouflage of an innocent demeanor as his foothold for evil. He’s shredded book, that’s going to have to stop, wrecked some expensive leather seating in our living room – a pain in the ass, but it’s all stuff we went through with Watson lo those many years past. Hell, Watson even ate a Black Flag cockroach trap; you figure when you eat things with skulls and crossbones on them and walk away from it you’re a member of a pretty tough species. But I’m a little worried about the little guy. He’s acting just fine for now, but time will tell.

My kid was sleeping in my bed between us, and I was surrounded by dogs, and I heard kind of a squeeking, whistling noise. I assumed it was the puppy Loki with a typical burst of night energy and he was just tearing up some squeeky dog toy. But it set off Sheba, which would have been odd if it really was Loki, and she did her growling-barking-running-into-things deal and ran outside and was barking and growling and running into things outside our bedroom window, which was open. My wife groaned, the girl tossed and turned, and I just remained in place. Sheba gave up quickly and came back in. Watson started his click-panting, and they everyone was restless for a minute. Anette asked if I heard it as it happened again.

I said, “It’s just the puppy with a toy.” She didn’t say anything. As I took inventory of my aches, I realized I had a dog laying next to my feet, a dog across my legs, one on the floor next to me with my hand on it, and I could hear Watson’s click-panting at the foot of the bed, so it couldn’t be the puppy. My eyes popped open and I was awake. Not scared or nervous, just curious, and I’m The Dad, after all. I put on some glasses, which are really useful in an unlighted house in the middle of the night, and went to the window first and when I didn’t see anything, I did a quiet patrol of the house. The puppy followed me around, and I could feel him bumping into the back of my leg and stopping when I stopped and just generally staying close. I didn’t see or hear much until I was in the kitchen, and I heard something outside through the window again. It wasn’t close, definitely not anywhere on our property, and while it had a whistling quality to it, it sounded more like a smaller animal squeaking. It’s hard to play “Do These Sounds Match?” in the middle of the night, so for all I know, it wasn’t the same noise. Or maybe it was. I don’t know. It was a half moon, give or take, so the coyotes would be out hunting, so as much as I felt bad that it was probably a rabbit being taken out or something, I was also slightly relieved that it didn’t sound man-made. I heard some distant dog barking and some kind of howling – it’s hard for me to distinguish a single unenthusiastic coyote from a single enthusiastic dog, but it was all in the distance, and on a calm night here, “the distance” was most likely several miles away.

I put my glasses somewhere I could find them and laid down again. The dogs were mostly settled, and since it had only been a couple of minutes, that was reassuring, too, because they’d lose their minds if whatever they heard was close. After a couple of minutes, we all heard something again. With the fan on in the room and all the dog panting and stuff, not to mention years of playing loud music, it was hard to make it out, but it didn’t get more than a couple growls from the pack so I let it go. Then Anette said, “Should we be worried about the car or anything?” She was still convinced it was someone out walking around, and maybe she’d heard actual footsteps or something. Since the car out front is not even a month old, what with me dramatically wrecking the old one in a spinning, flipping freeway accident and all that, I figured I’d check again.

I turned off the one light that was on in our hallway, nobody was up walking around anyway, and I felt around in our front closet for some shoes to put on. I’d found my glasses easily, a lifetime of half-blindness has created generally good habits about where I put them, and it wasn’t nearly cool enough to need a sweater or anything. Loki the puppy erupted with some barking when he heard the front door open for me to slip out, so my “slipping” was rendered pretty un-ninjalike by my hissing “Shut up!” because I didn’t want to really wake my kid up. He’s not old enough to be stubborn, so he stopped right away. Good dog. (Mostly.)

It was very, very calm out. I could hear the bristly sound of my shoes on the front doormat, and with my first couple steps I could hear every little piece of gravel or barkdust I stepped on. I could hear the sounds of the few cars on the freeway several miles away, it has to be pretty calm to make it to us, and I could hear the hum of a couple of the neighborhood electrical transformers – or whatever they’re called, the green boxes at the front of each property where people hook up to the grid. Every little breath and scrape and shuffle seemed to carry forever. I stopped about 15 feet in front of my house in the shadow of our big pinon tree, and I took a moment to recognize that even halfway full, the moon here is strong enough to cast shadows in the middle of the night. It gives moonlit nights a pretty strange quality, like in the early James Bond movie Dr. No, or in old Star Trek episodes, where they simulated night by filming during the full light of day with some kind of lens filter on to give the impression of darkness. (On full moon nights, it’s not at all difficult to read by the light of the moon, it’s more like a street light than a celestial body.)

I didn’t hear anything unusual, I could even hear my dogs whining and complaining a little a half acre away in my bedroom, so I walked to the street. It was genuinely still while I stood where my driveway meets the dirt road. There had been workers out earlier grading the street and using a backhoe to empty out the culverts – monsoon season has caused some trouble, and out here, a good mud is much harder to drive in than any amount of snow or ice, and they were trying to help the drainage on our road – so I could smell the fresh, damp dirt, and I could hear some crickets. I took a deep breath and just soaked up the night for a second, and I felt a vague appreciation for where I live. (I can only say “I really like living here” so many times without feeling stupid.)

Suddenly I heard a howl of some sort, and it was unlike any coyote or dog howl I’ve heard before. I knew it had to be a coyote, we don’t have wolves in this area, but it was still a different version of it than we usually hear – it’s a lot more common to hear the “laughing” type calls, or the “we’ve just torn up something delicious” pack noises, this sound was more like a foley library’s wolf call, something you’d hear right after Sesame Street’s “The Count” has enumerated 7 cookies. I could tell it was coming from the north and a little west, but as the sound spooled up and got louder, it surrounded me. It echoed off the houses and cars around me and I could actually hear it surround me. Clockwise. In music-production-geek terms, it sounded as though it had a slow chorus effect created by some sort of Doppler motion.

The sound was distant enough that I didn’t sense any imminent peril, but it was creepy enough that it sent chills down my back. I froze, just in case there was some kind of movement around me that was going along with it that I’d missed – the sound blocked out everything else for a second, and it startled me to realize that my other senses had just checked out for a second. A slow, second howl started, and it was followed by a couple others this time, and it was more like the usual coyote din, and there was some of the “laughing” barking as well, so I figured one of the local packs had just found some food. I’ll never get used to the sound, and it gave me another chill, but I rationally knew that my car was OK, and that’s what I was worried about. As I realized that most of an acre lay between me and my front door and I was listening to coyotes out hunting in a pack somewhere nearby under the light of the moon, my sleep-deprived and generally addled mind realized that I should probably also take some basic steps regarding my own well being, so I walked back to the house, slow enough to keep the foot noise down and fast enough to get the hell out of there.

I didn’t hear them again the rest of the night. It was another one of those odd things that made me feel that those sounds were meant for me alone; nobody else was out standing in Surround Sound Coyotevision like I was, and while I rationally realize how narcissistic it is to feel that it was all just for me, it’s also easy to believe it after having been there. It’s somehow reassuring to think that in this big, modern, technical world that it’s possible to be completely alone and have old experiences right in the middle of your neighborhood. It probably doesn’t hurt when your neighborhood borders America’s Outback, but still…

My daughter decided at the last minute that she didn’t want to come, and I was a little disappointed but it’s easier to find out she doesn’t want to be on The Big Walk before we leave than while we’re out, so it was all fine. When she didn’t come with us, my oldest and largest dog, Watson, refused to budge, so he stayed, too. He sensed that this was The Big Walk anyway and probably just didn’t feel like it, no worries. So I turned my iPod back on (Cannibal Ox) and headed out.

We passed the railroad tracks and were in unfamiliar territory before 10 minutes was up, and it was beautiful. Sunny and warm, but it had rained some the day before so everything smelled great. Lots of little lizards darting across the path, and the tumbleweed crop looks about ready to break off and blow away, pretty cool. I’m on a totally unfamiliar stretch of greenbelt that will eventually lead to a playground I take my daughter to. Another 10 minutes or so into the path, I realize that we’re being hunted.

Up ahead on the left, there are two big-ass dogs hunched down and growling and hair-sticking-up. They’re watching me – the brush is too high for them to see Sheba and Ruby at my side. My dogs, as usual, are leashed, and they don’t know what’s up ahead yet. I realize some craziness it about to go down, so I fumble with my iPod to shut it off, and I dig in a little with my shoes so I can get some traction in the sand/dirt. In the 2 seconds it takes me to get straight, they’re on top of us.

My first thought is that some other owner is out walking with them and they just ran ahead, so I figure I’ll yell a little and the owner will materialize from around the bend in the path and pull the 2 big-ass dogs off, and we’ll pant and laugh about it and go our own ways. After about 40 seconds, I realize that there’s nobody coming, and I’ve got 4 fairly large dogs to try to control.

Ruby’s my smallest dog, maybe 37-38 pounds. Sheba’s the next biggest, she’s about 60 pounds. They’re both well over 10 years old, we don’t know exactly since they’re both off the street, but we know they’re at least 10 just from how long we’ve had them. The pair in front of us was made up of a pretty purebred-looking Weimeraner that was at least 110 pounds, and this really thick and evil looking red dog that was at least as big. So my dogs add up to maybe 100 pounds after they’ve eaten, and the ones snapping and foaming at us are well over 200, maybe closer to 250.

Ruby instantly tangles up my legs and gets behind me. No problem, I don’t want them fighting. Sheba is instantly frustrated by my attempts to keep her close with the leash and does this dog-yoga move and slips out of the leash. There’s a crazy circle of dog violence where she jumps between the big-ass dogs attacking us and she just goes for it. I can’t tell exactly what’s happening between the snapping and growling and yelping and foaming, all 10 feet from me in knee-high brush, but one step forward reveals that she’s going NUTS and the 2 big-ass dogs are getting the worst of it. It ends after about 30 veeeerrrrryyyyyy long seconds with her chasing them off and still growling and lunging at them. I’m amazed, either one of them was twice as big as her and they looked pretty young, but there’s still some spunk left in my old Jersey girl.

She snaps out of her furor and jogs back to me. I look her over and can’t find any evidence of the fight outside big frothy deposits of enemy-dog mouth foam. I get her collar back on her and we walk away. The 2 big-ass dogs have casually made their way to a little pinon or juniper tree and sat underneath it, kind of hiding and kind of watching us, it seemed like a pretty familiar spot for them. So I figure it’s probably over, territorial dogs are less likely to attack you while you’re leaving their territory, but I haven’t taken my eyes off them.

I’m still in early stage adrenaline mode, which for me is eerie calm. I just want to get up to the playground to check my girls over more thoroughly and give them some water and let them sit in the shade for a bit. Then the big dogs rush us again.

They’re a little farther away this time, so I have a little more than 2 seconds. I’m still very calm and I look easily around for some kind of stick and at the same time maneuver Sheba so she’s caught between my knees so I can grab her if she tries to break free and fight again, and I already know Ruby’ll just tangle my legs up and hide behind me. I spot a survey stake about 3 feet from me, casually lean forward and pluck it from the ground. The dogs are in front of us again, taking turns lunging and foaming and snapping at us.

I’m a genuine animal lover and have a special soft spot for dogs. I live with 3 rescued street dogs and 2 mix-breed kittens, etc.. But my love for my own dogs is much greater than the love I have for savage knee-snappers engaged in unprovoked attack on me or my family, so I know what I’ve got to do. I take a couple swings with the stake, and I connect with the Weimeraner on about the 3rd try. A survey stake is more like a yardstick than a baseball bat, but it got my point across, and it yelped and jumped back about 10 feet. Still made plenty of noise, but it was just background noise now. That REALLY pissed of the thick red demon dog and it increased its frothy snap-lunges. At that moment, I had the profound insight that this was some kind of crazy shit I was involved in right here, and my back sweat ran cold and the hair on my neck stood up. That’s probably the onset of adrenaline stage II, and that gave me the burst of nerves to speed up my defense, and I managed to crack the red dog alongside the head. It also yelped, and the 2 of them instantly decided to just move on. They jogged easily back to their hiding spot to wait for some kids or little old ladies to attack. As they jogged off, I noticed for the first time that they both had on nice looking collars and tags, and I got my first taste of anger about the situation – they weren’t wild dogs or street dogs, they had a home and someone had set them loose to hunt me. On the walk back, I made a note of the street nearest where it all happened.

I got the girls home and got them some water and checked them over, they were basically OK, kind of stiff and tired, but no visible injuries, so I considered us fortunate. I got on the phone with our local security office, I figured they’d write it in a book or something. Ultimately wouldn’t do much, probably, but at least they’d have some other complaint on file when someone eventually got killed. I guess it was a pretty feeble first response, but my priority was just to make sure my guys were OK, and I could deal with any other follow up, i.e. the county animal control or the cops, on my own schedule. Not 30 minutes had passed when the security guy called back. He’d gotten other complaints recently and decided to follow up to see if he could match the dogs up with some owners, so he had driven to where I described and walked out onto the greenbelt. They attacked HIM, too.

He located the owners, it was one of the houses right off the greenbelt, and they couldn’t have cared less. So not only are they setting their big-ass dogs out to roam freely, if there have been previous complaints, that means they’re doing it knowing fully well that the dogs are pretty likely to attack anyone going by. I’m sorry for what will eventually have to happen to those dogs, none of it is really their fault, but when someone angrier and better armed than me goes to deliver their own justice after some future incident, I’ve got no sympathy for the owners. If I’d had my daughter with me, I don’t know what would have happened, and if I’d had my big dog with me (or my big dog AND my daughter), I can’t imagine how I would have had even the tiniest bit of control, and someone would have been hurt. I don’t even want to think about what would happen with some little old lady and her poodle.