Sunday Dog Talk

Parked on the living room chair, the dog looked at me with incrimination in his soulful, dark eyes. When are you going to leave that computer keyboard? they seemed to say. Levi was bored. Heck, I was bored! So I put my coat on, grabbed the leash and shouted: “Let’s go get the mail.” It was Sunday but what does he know. A trip to the mailbox always tricks him into thinking I’m not such a bad old person after all.

At the mailbox Levi discovered he’d gotten some pee-mail from the dust-mop looking dog that lives down the street. He lifted his leg to leave a reply then checked his spelling and lifted his leg again to add a P.S. I hope he told him to get a haircut. That dog is a walking paradise for dust mites…unlike Levi with his sleek $45.00 haircut and perfectly trimmed, regulation schnauzer beard. I wonder if he appreciates how frigging much money that is! Probably not. He’s a dog with trashy tastes. He’d rather play with paper towel that accidentally gets too close to the edge of the counter top than to play with his veterinary recommended Kong toy. He hated his designer coat last winter and when Levi goes shopping at Chow Hound he always picks up those disgusting pig’s feet no matter how many times I put them back and show him something else.

After going to the mailbox the dog did what he always does afterward. He took up sentry duty in the library chair where he has a full view of where he leaves his pee-mail. Sure enough, it didn’t take long before a set of Golden Retrievers came by and intercepted his mail to the dust-mop. From the noise he was making you’d think an axe murder was outside the window trying to get inside. Lord, no wonder I couldn’t find the concentration to write my way out of my boredom!

Over Thanksgiving Levi and I watched the 2012 National Kennel Club Dog Show---both of us lying on our stomachs kitty-corner across the bed, giving the screen our full attention. I felt like a teenager again watching the Miss America Pageant only without the popcorn. The show was hosted by John O’Hurley, the guy who played Elaine’s boss on the old Seinfeld show. He strikes just the right tone of pompousness to go along with all those Barbara Doll show dogs. Every once in a while Levi would let out a woof-woof as he watched and he seemed pleased that the Wire Fox Terrier won. He probably knows they both come from common ancestry, the terrier group of "feisty dogs once trained to hunt and kill vermin."

Levi would hunt vermin if I’d let him. We argue about that all the time. Late every afternoon he sees a cat walk through the back yard and he goes nuts trying to get at it. Please, Mom! Just once let me chase that flea bitten, black vermin! Thank God he finally quit barking at birds that come in the yard. It only took him six months to learn a very important house rule: Birds are good and cats are bad.

So this is what my life has reduced to…talking to the dog. Talking about the dog. Talking to myself. Talking to the ghost in the house and wishing I got as much mail as the dog does. He even gets Sunday deliveries! How cool is that! ©