When I was a boy, a dog lunged at my cheek and broke the skin. It was my piano teacher’s dog, a German shepherd mix named Toots. My piano teacher never apologized for her dog’s behavior, which is what good dog parents should do when their dog children act out. It’s what I used to do back when I was a dog parent.
If my dog Skippy ever did his business on someone’s lawn at the same time that person happened to be opening his or her front door, I would say “Bad Skippy. Bad dog,” loud enough so that the homeowner would hear me. It was an attempt to ward off the look that the person would shoot me – the “your dog is pooping on my lawn, asshole” look.
It’s the same look that my ex-girlfriend Diane used to give me when she would complain about our sex life, which had little to do with defecation or, as Diane put it, “anything remotely interesting.”
In general, I try to be respectful of people’s property, but if and only if I received a particularly nasty look, I wouldn’t bother to pick up Skippy’s dog poop. I would just leave it there on the person’s lawn, congealing in its own juices.
Skippy was a good dog. He was good for me. He forced me to get up and exercise in the mornings. Without him jumping on the bed, nudging me awake with his cold, moist nose, I would have overslept every day, as I’ve been informed by others, Diane for one, that I sleep the sleep of the dead. The fact that Skippy needed a walk morning and night really helped me with my exercise regime. I lost twenty pounds in the year I owned Skippy, although, our walks could get dicey. Skippy was a Great Dane who weighed as much as I did. He tended to hold this over my head.
Skippy pulled violently on his leash, because he could, and even though I tried my darndest to remain in control of the situation, Skippy would drag me off into the middle of the road in his quest for something – a squirrel flitting through the grass, a pine cone, or perhaps a plastic bag he wanted to eat. A few times, we were almost hit by cars. I’ve been criticized in the past for not having much upper body strength. To his credit, Skippy didn’t hold these accidents against me. He wasn’t one to bear a grudge, not like other people. But that was just like Skippy.
Skippy, like most dogs, felt most secure on a schedule. I appreciate a firm schedule as much as anyone, but when we would get off track for some reason, we would clash. Skippy’s way of getting back at me was as simple as him peeing in the house. One night I came home from a dinner event with colleagues only to find that Skippy had peed in the bathtub. I’d had a doggy door installed as soon as I adopted him, so it’s not as though he was holding it. I like nothing better than to take a warm bath after work. Diane can denigrate the practice as “unmanly,” all she likes, but I believe that a soothing bubble bath does oodles for improving one’s well being. That’s why Skippy peed in the bathtub, as a way of putting my masculinity in doubt. He played that card often, as illustrated by the conflicts during our walks, him pulling me into the street, causing people driving by to yell things like “control your dog, asshole!”
It was tiresome having to deal with that kind of tension every day, but Skippy’s loyalty made up for a lot. I trusted him implicitly, which is more than I can say for most people, mainly ex-girlfriends.
When I adopted Skippy, he was already a grown dog. I had decided early on in the adoption process that I wasn’t going to adopt a puppy. Unlike Diane, I did not have any interest in babies. I wanted a dog with a fully formed personality, a personality compatible with mine.
If pressed, I might have referred to my work colleagues as friends, but I can’t say that I ever had a true companion until I met Skippy. At one point in our relationship, Diane would have qualified, if she hadn’t ruined things by being such an emasculating bitch.
Maybe I’m wearing rose colored glasses, but in retrospect, I believe that Skippy was my one and only love.
The idea of dog ownership seemed like heaven: A dog would be there for me when I watched TV, when I took my bubble baths, when I ate my meals. A dog would be around every day but wouldn’t comment on how inexpertly I was taking out the garbage or complain that my dish-drying didn’t live up to his expectations. A dog wouldn’t judge me.
I went to the animal shelter and surveyed all the available dogs and then I waited for the voice in my head to tell me that one of the dogs was indeed The One. But for some reason, the voice stayed quiet, while I stared into the cages for hours, inhaling the stench of dog piss.
Several of the dogs locked eyes with me so intently that it was as if they could see directly into my soul. If a dog stared at me with that kind of religious fervor, I quickly moved on to the next cage. I was struck that the staring dogs might be an incarnation of the Divine, or possibly of the Beast, and I didn’t want that type of relationship, not after Diane. After a few hours, I left empty handed. I considered giving up the idea of adopting a dog completely, but the silence in my condo that night was even more deafening than usual.
The second time I went to the shelter, everyone was talking about a large dog that had been recovered from a home in foreclosure. The owners had moved out, and the neighbors had seen a rangy, blue haired Great Dane through the picture window in the living room, sleeping and padding around the empty house. The volunteers at the shelter called him Skippy. He was too big to fit in a regular cage at the shelter and so was sequestered off to the side in a large pen.
I went over to take a look at him, expecting him to act skittish and traumatized, but he was surprisingly nonchalant. He sniffed my fingers, gave them a quick lick, and then settled back into the corner of his pen, his large head snuffling at his huge balls. He seemed to me to be at home. At that moment, I knew what I wanted – a dog with low expectations. I signed the necessary papers and took him home that day. The shelter told me that they would run a background check on me, but I never heard from them, so I guess it was meant to be.
The one thing Skippy did care a great deal about was food, but it was mostly quantity over quality. I always kept dry food out in Skippy’s bowl, but I also kept an available assortment of both dog and people foods around for him to try. He took such pleasure in food that it was almost a sin not to give him a choice. I don’t cook as a rule, but sometimes I would scramble Skippy up an egg with American cheese, just like my mother used to make for me after my piano lessons.
I started to enjoy doing little things for Skippy, like buying him treats or the newest thing in doggie toys. It’s a nice feeling when you can make someone feel special; when the little things you do have the effect you are hoping for.
Skippy would look me straight in the eye sometimes and it was as though I could almost hear him speak. I would envision him saying, “thanks, old chum” in an upper crust British accent.
When I think about Skippy nowadays, emotions threaten to overwhelm me. First, I have many happy memories of our all-too-brief time together but then I vacillate between despair and depression and after a few hours, the pain finally gives way to acceptance. I’d like to think that Skippy would be proud of the progress I’ve made since he’s been gone. I think he’d want me to bear up well and soldier on, despite all that’s happened.
Diane found out that I had adopted a dog a few months after she broke up with me. I had changed the message on my answering machine to “You’ve reached Bob and Skippy.” When Diane called one time, most likely to reproach me about something, she heard the message and called my cell phone.
“Who is Skippy?” she asked. “Is there something you want to tell me?”
Diane always suspected that I might swing both ways. It stemmed from a misunderstanding.
While we were still together, I confided in her that for some strange reason, I had the urge to lick Henry Rollins’ testicles whenever I saw him on Letterman. She didn’t understand that I didn’t mean it in a sexual way.
“Skippy is my dog,” I told Diane. “And he happens to be a very nice dog.”
“Yeah, well don’t teabag him,” she said.
When we first met, I thought Diane’s potty mouth was endearing. Towards the end though, her foul language reminded me of the dialogue coming out of the mouth of an Ernest Borgnine-type character in a World War II movie, his bulbous nose streaky and sweat-stained, his fingers pressed against the trigger of his machine gun, waiting for a chance to blow some Nazi’s head off.
“A dog is a big responsibility,” Diane said. “And you know how that goes.”
Diane broke up with me one rainy Sunday afternoon at Starbucks, and over two vanilla lattes, paid for with my debit card, she listed out all the reasons why. Among her litany of complaints, she found me fundamentally irresponsible. She also said that she had become completely disinterested in me sexually, and was fixated on procreating with someone of another culture so that she could produce a beautiful, interracial baby.
“You’ll find someone who loves you one day,” she said, spooning whipped cream into her red lips.
In retrospect, I did find someone who loved me, although Skippy was loathe to wear his heart on his sleeve. He liked to cuddle when it was cold out, and tended to sleep on my bed, outside the covers, but other than that, he didn’t show me much affection. Sometimes it was frustrating, but usually, he made up for it in other, perfectly endearing ways, like the way he would occasionally put his large head close to my hand so that I would scratch his ears or the way he sometimes leaned into me when he was tired, the way a small child would.
Diane never did find a man of another race willing to procreate with her, so she decided to adopt a baby from Kazakhstan instead. Last I heard, she was waiting for the papers to come through, and was excited about the prospect of becoming a mother. I think she’ll make as good of a mother as any parent, dog or otherwise.
One night around Christmas time, Skippy and I were sitting in front of the fire, both of us eating popcorn and watching the local news. Even though the news was full of stories of violence and death, it strikes me now that it was the most content that I had probably ever been: I had my health, my home, a warm hearth and a dear companion next to me. I stroked Skippy’s head. The rest of the night passed uneventfully.
The next morning, however, Skippy wasn’t in the house. He wasn’t in the yard either. I frantically searched for him, calling his name and ringing neighbors’ doorbells, neighbors to whom I had never uttered two words before, asking in tears if they had seen my dog, my Skippy. No one had. One neighbor even had the nerve to say, “You’ve got a dog? I’ve never seen you with a dog.”
After ruminating over the situation again and again in my mind, I could only surmise that sometime during the night, Skippy had taken off through the doggy door. He left, suddenly, urgently and without regard for my feelings.
I plastered the neighborhood with posters but I never went got any leads. The police were certain that it wasn’t foul play – the fence was locked from the inside, and frankly, Skippy could have easily jumped it. One officer commented that it didn’t even look like a dog had ever lived in my condo, but he didn’t know Skippy the way I did. Skippy could be as quiet as a church mouse, and as neat as a pin when he wanted to be.
I started checking the animal shelters again, asking if anyone had a blue haired Great Dane in their custody. But none of them did. No one from the shelter even remembered a Great Dane named Skippy who had been living in a foreclosed home only a year earlier. Somehow, the record of my adoption had been lost or purposely destroyed. It was a very confusing time.
I always thought that Skippy was satisfied with me and with our life together, but I guess I was mistaken.
I am happy to report that in the years since Skippy left me, I am doing much better. I do still think about him an awful lot, as there is so much to miss about him. I will confess that occasionally, I will pee in the bathtub, for old time’s sake.
I’ve considered adopting another dog, but I don’t have the stomach for it. These days, my life is much simpler. I’m in touch with few people. My colleagues finally gave up trying to contact me after I stopped showing up to work. I read a lot of Shakespeare aloud in a British accent, but not as well as Skippy used to.
Sometimes I wonder about Diane. Maybe one day I’ll get a call from her telling me that the adoption papers finally came through, and that she is jetting off to Kazakhstan to pick up her child from an orphanage teeming with children, their staring eyes full of the light of the Divine, or of the blackness of the Beast. Who can really tell the difference?
Most days I wait until it gets just dark enough, and then I take Skippy’s leash, which I leave hanging on the doorjamb, out for our nightly walk. The leash curls up in my coat pocket, as though fast asleep. At the first sight of oncoming traffic, I clench my buttocks as the sudden urge to throw myself in front of the cars washes over me and then passes just as quickly.
When I am safely past the neighborhood cul-de-sacs and I can see the lights of the subdivisions off in the distance, I scale up the steep side of a hill, where the cool dark envelops us, Skippy and me.
There is a moment of trepidation when the leash finally awakens in my pocket. At last, Skippy appears to me, a blue haired angel.
Skippy glows white and he runs, his limbs lean, as the dusk gives way to dark. I follow him. If I appear hampered by indecision or fear, Skippy drags me forcibly, his will crushing mine. We are tethered by invisible, connective tissue, like identical twins in the womb. He pulls me farther until we disappear into the night, becoming faint shadows against the rising moon. I howl as I have never howled before. It is both an ending and a beginning. When I awake in the morning, all is well. I can only marvel at the beauty of this earth and my small place in it, and at the abundance of kibble in my bowl.
