I Want to be Treated Like a Dog

The first time is always the toughest. I knew it would be terribly hard for Bob. All through the night before, he thrashed around in bed. At one point, I thought I heard him crying.

“It’ll be fine, sweetheart,” I said, snuggling with him.

“Maybe I should cancel the appointment,” he said.

“No, honey. Don’t cancel it. You’ve already canceled twice. You’ve got to go through it someday, and tomorrow’s just as good as any other time. I think you should just get it over with.”

He finally got out of bed at dawn, having had no sleep. He knelt down beside our dog Gracie and kissed her on the forehead. “I’m sorry,” he said tearfully.

“Bob, she’s just getting groomed, for heaven’s sake.”

“But what if they hurt her?”

“Grooming is all they do. She’s got all that matted fur. You’ve got to pull yourself together and be strong. You slept like a baby the night before my surgery.”

“But this is different,” he said, caressing her and looking at her with goo-goo eyes. “She’s not my wife. She’s my dog.”

At nine o’clock, he called the grooming place. “If she’s in pain, you’ll stop, won’t you?”

I grabbed the phone and whispered to him, “You called them yesterday and said the same thing.” I apologized to the secretary. “My husband’s a dork,” I said.

Gracie gets tranquilizers when there’s a thunderstorm because thunder freaks her out. Although she was very calm this morning, I said, “What about her pills?”

“That’s a great idea.” He went to the medicine cabinet and took one himself. Then he slept until her appointment time. After he dropped her off, he called me from his cell phone. “It’ll take 3 hours,” he said, sighing heavily.

“You’re right near Eagle Pond,” I said. “Why don’t you take a walk?”

“Without my dog?” he said, aghast.

“OK.” I was trying to be patient. “Why don’t you pick me up and we’ll have lunch at Sam Diego’s?”

“Without Gracie?”

“It’s not like she sits with us at the table, Bob.” He nixed lunch and came home, where he paced for 3 hours. Then he picked up our beautiful dog. That evening in the kitchen, he said, “I’m so glad it’s over.”

“Me too. You did great with this whole thing,” I lied, holding up my arms for a hug. He raised his arms in return and walked past me to Gracie, where they sat on the floor together and embraced.

There’s something very wonderful and tender about Bob’s love for his dog. That night in bed, I reached across Gracie and put my hand on Bob’s arm. “I love you,” I said softly. I moved my hand above Gracie’s head, which was resting on Bob’s shoulder, and gently combed his hair with my fingers.

“I love you too,” he said in sleepy tones. “I don’t know what I’d do without you,” he whispered. “But it’s too early,” he said, still in his dream state. “I’ll feed you in the morning.”

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   A Maine Tale: Of Moose And Men

To watch the bears eat garbage at the dump, you’ve got to get there early if it’s Saturday night in Rangeley, Maine.  It may not sound like paradise, but it’s got a draw that inevitably takes you in.

My husband, Bob, muttered something about the movie Deliverance when we first arrived.  Sparkling foliage framed this small town peppered with mums, pumpkins and pick-up trucks which held an assortment of dead wildlife strapped in the back.  We found our rental cabin, then met the proprietor named Stub.  “Are there moose here?” I asked.

He lit an inch long cigar and said, “Don’t go near ‘em if you see ‘em.  It’s rut-tin’ season.”

“What’s rut-tin’?” I asked.  Bob turned crimson and Stub started with the matches again.  Later, Bob explained, “When a poppa moose and a momma moose love each other very much . . . ”

At 6 AM, we put a Nikon and a video camera in our canoe.  Like stealth wilderness trekkers, we deftly launched in the small river.  The only sound was the swishing of the paddles.  That is . . . until we heard a much louder swishing.   Quickly, we paddled toward the noise.

Around the bend came a moose; underwater grasses dangling from her mouth.  While chewing, she saw us.

“It’s a cow,” Bob said.

“Are you nuts?  It’s a moose!”  And before he could explain moose gender terms, she pivoted her gargantuan body in our direction and charged.

Then came inconceivable fear.  To make matters worse, I saw the same ghastly expression on Bob’s face.  We back-paddled like maniacs - the canoe hydroplaning off the water.

“Do something!” I yelled over my shoulder.

“What did you have in mind?” he yelled back.

“You’re a man.  Make it better!!”

And that was the unfortunate moment I learned that this male-protector business is all tripe.

I prayed this would turn into one of those tunnel and white light near-death experiences; you know, when we meet all our dead relatives, which frankly, never sounded all that heavenly to me. 

Finally, there was only one choice.

“Toss the cameras!  Flip the canoe.  We’ll hide underneath!”  I shouted.  I flailed right, which tipped the canoe.  My hysterics luckily scared the moose to the left, which caused the canoe to correct itself.  And she, in a quandary, fled the scene.

We spent six more days in Maine, where the silence of the nights is broken only by the haunting midnight owl and then a gunshot.

Oh, but we loved it.  In the Rangeley Lakes region, ‘nearby’ means thirty-five miles and mother loons on Mooselookmeguntic Lake are legally protected.  The stark, no-frills cabin on the glittering wilderness lake had hand-pumped water and a wood stove.  The aged curtains had tiny faded golden leaves around the edges.  It was, as the proprietor aptly said, “everything you’d ever want”.

And so, I was not surprised to feel the pangs of leaving.  The eminence of western Maine had taken a stronghold on my soul.  Fleeting autumn radiance was now behind us as we headed south.  I touched Bob’s shoulder, knowing that there will always be beasts from which we’d try to shield one another if we could, whether they be wild beasts of the woods or imagined beasts of fear or ultimate beasts of destiny. 

Before putting the map under the seat, I put an arrow and a star next to the lakes and the legend which is Rangeley, Maine. 

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Want People To Know What You Really Think?

My husband Bob loves Gracie, our dog, more than me. So for his birthday, I bought the new invention - the Bow-Lingual, aka The Dog Translator. You attach a small red transmitter to the dog’s collar. There’s a wireless receiver you hold in your palm. When the dog barks, it’s translated into an English sentence that shows up on the screen of the receiver.

Gracie is trained to bark on command to, “Say goodnight, Gracie.” It’s from an old George Burns shtick. I know it sounds stupid. It’s especially stupid when I’m alone and a stranger knocks and I want him to think my dog’s ferocious. But I have to say, “Say goodnight, Gracie,” so she’ll bark. Then she sits and looks up at me, wagging her tail in expectation of a cookie. This makes would-be burglars belly laugh.

Bob put the red thing on Gracie and gave the bark command. She barked. Nothing translated. Again he commanded. She barked. Still nothing. A third time she barked. Nothing. Bob had forgotten to turn it on. When he did, he repeated, “Say goodnight, Gracie.” She barked again. On the translator, it read, “Can’t you hear me?”

Then Gracie barked at our cat. She hates cats. The translator read, “Get out of here.” After her supper, she goes to her toy box and picks out a stinky old stuffed toy for Bob to toss to her. The translator read, “Let’s play!” And when I commanded her to get off the only chair in the house that’s not cat-clawed to death, she did and said, “I did good, right?”

There’s a Home Alone mode that stores your dog’s barks while you’re out. I won’t do this. I don’t want to read, “I’ve spent the whole day crying, but I hope you had fun.”

So then I wondered, “What if everyone wore these things?”

1. The politician, on TV: “No new taxes. Better health care. And children,” with a deeply concerned look, “come first.”

The translator: “I can’t get this chunk of tuna out of my tooth.”

2. Your doctor: “We’ll have to repeat the blood tests.”

The translator: “Pay on your way out – today.”

3. Your teenage daughter: “I slept at Susan’s.”

The translator: “With Tom.”

4. My mother: “I’m thrilled you married Bob.

The translator: “I can’t believe this shlepper’s going to inherit our money. The first thing he’ll do after we drop dead is buy a brand new pick-up truck.” (He did.)

We spent most of Bob’s birthday cuddling, then doing what people in love naturally do. Like lunatic monkeys, we yelped, barked, growled and woofed into the translator at the top of our lungs to see what we could get it to say.

Nothing we “barked” made sense. But while we were screaming into the thing, Gracie barked. It said, “Pay attention to me!” So Bob snuggled with her - instead of me. 

Later, I asked him who he loves more – the dog or me. “You,” he said without hesitation. I looked down at the translator but he grabbed it from me and quickly shut the power off. Hmmmm.

Before bed, he said goodnight to me and then kissed the dog. She barked, “I love you.”

So I guess that now in our house  . . .  Gracie quite literally has the last word.

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