Dogs and Me
I’ve been really lucky with dogs, much more so than with humans. Not only that, but when I think of the work I’ve done, the… larger projects:
Cosmic Banditos. Without our nameless reprobate’s canine sidekick, High Pockets, we have a so-so narrative at best.
In Search of Captain Zero. Without Shiner’s companionship – and I outright
say this in the book – I would not have embarked upon that journey.
Water Time. No Honey, no trip, no movie.
Can’t You Get Along With Anyone? A Writer’s Memoir and a Tale of a Lost Surfer’s Paradise. Dogs play a larger role than is apparent. At one point I had a pack of eleven. Then there was Fang; more on her in a minute.
Point being that dogs have played a major role in my life and work.
My new dog, Gus, is another stroke of doggie good luck. After Honey died last July, I had a tough time for a while then, in about mid-August, got myself together and visited the local East Hampton shelter, ARF (Animal Rescue Fund). It took me a few trips to pull the trigger. I’d walk two or three dogs then go home, usually feeling worse than before. I suppose I was hoping to find some version of Honey, which I of course never could. I kept asking to walk this fairly large, handsome female, Augusta (she’d come from a kill shelter in Georgia), who was shy and a bit skittish but when I sat down on a bench would sit in front of me and make sustained eye contact, as if sussing me out.
‘Augusta has been adopted,’ I was told.I almost blew it. On the fourth day I summoned my courage and went back to do the deed.
But I could see her in her usual pen, staring at me and whining and wagging her tail like mad. The couple would be back that afternoon to take her home, I was told.
I asked if I could talk to the couple by phone. Maybe they sensed the desperation in my voice, but they finally said go ahead, you take her.
So now it’s been nine or so months and Gus and I are tight. Very tight.
With some dogs, not all dogs but some dogs, you get tight with them and they know more about how you’re feeling/what you’re thinking than you do. Gus is turning out that way.
Gus senses something is up; this coming road trip is on my mind a lot and I think Gus senses my distraction. It was the same sort of thing with Honey, and, come to think of it, with Shiner, my pup from In Search of Captain Zero. But Honey was in another realm with this sort of thing. She’d know a move was in the offing before I did anything outward; almost before I even made the final decision that, say, we were moving somewhere. Like in 2007 when I was thinking about making a road movie – which became Water Time – she knew we were leaving before I really did. She’d stick very close and keep a wary eye on me. I’d catch her seemingly napping across the room but then notice that one eye was slitted with the lid vibrating slightly; she was eye-balling me. Then she’d notice that I was eye-balling her and the eye would shut down.
Back in 2004 while I was living in outback Costa Rica, I had another special dog. Fang. Here’s an excerpt from Can’t You Get Along With Anyone; A Writer’s Memoir and a Tale of a Lost Surfer’s Paradise.
But what a joy that dog [Fang] was too. The smartest of them all, Fang had a
mischievous side and was a constant source of amusement. For example,
having so many dogs to contend with, Lisa and I decided that only Honey
would be allowed in the house. Having been raised as a stateside suburbia
house dog (I adopted her when I was caring for Mom in North Carolina),
it would be traumatic and unfair to discipline Honey about coming inside.
Besides, Honey and I had so much history; she was the princess.
Fang didn’t like being banned from the house. She didn’t actually say
anything but it was obvious she was aggravated. So what she’d do was
very gradually encroach. See, we usually left the door to the patio open,
and there was literally a line there, a small step down separating inside
from outside. At first Fang would lie down with just her nose crossing the
line, a very uncomfortable position with her neck crooked to raise up her
nose, with the rest of her a few inches below the doorsill and the line it
represented.
So you notice that Fang’s nose is over the line and you don’t say anything.
You turn your back for a moment and then her whole head is somehow
over the line. Maybe you give her a disapproving look but you still don’t
say anything. Just a dog head inside the house isn’t too bad an infraction,
right? Then you turn your back again and her shoulders are now inside,
the rest of her hanging very uncomfortably off the step. Here’s where you
throw her out.
Then the whole process repeats itself. Nose, head, shoulders. Out. Again.
Nose, head, shoulders. Out. But as time wears on and you get tired she’ll manage to wriggle half her body across the line before she gets the boot.
Fang was relentless. And you’d never actually catch her in the act of
encroachment. She’d look to be innocently asleep when she was, I’m quite
sure, watching through slitted eyes for you to turn your back so she could
wriggle unseen a few more inches over the line. This started to bug me. But
no matter how many times I’d pretend to be busy, whirl around thinking
Gotcha, I never caught her. I’d even leave the room, make noise somewhere
else in the house, creep back and peek around the corner. Never caught
her.
Well, Fang outlasted us. One day we just gave up, called for all the dogs
to come on in. Boy, there was joy in Dogville that day. Four, five, six dogs, I
don’t remember if Kaiser or one of the other puppies was there, how many
dogs showed up for the party. But while the other dogs were jumping
around in celebration, Fang was cool about it. She just lay there in the
middle of the room, her room, eyes amused and triumphant, her attention
alternating between Lisa and me.
I had to laugh. Fang laughed along with me, the way certain dogs do.
When a dog outlasts you, in essence is smarter than you, and when you
laugh at that dog’s cleverness and stamina and then the dog laughs along
with you at her own goofy victory, you are in the presence of a special
canine soul, in my view.
Fang in the act of encroachment
Don’t get me wrong, though, I don’t have some overblown view of the dog mind. There are some things a dog just cannot figure out, no matter how obvious. Like a rope and a tree. If for some reason you have to tie a dog up (which I try to avoid at all costs), if there is a tree in the area the dog will immediately wind itself around the thing and have no clue as to what the problem is with further movement. Dogs just do not get it with ropes and trees. Listen: Someday someone will teach a dog calculus and it still will not get it with a rope and a tree. Gus doesn’t. Honey didn’t; neither did Shiner. Did you ever meet a dog that could unwind itself from a tree? If you do, get it on film! I want to see it.
Here’s an example of dog… let’s be nice and call it ‘density.’ An outtake from Water Time:
Right. I lock my keys in my car twice on the same day and I’m calling Honey dense?
Gus doesn’t know specifically that we will soon be giving up house and home and hitting the road with no plans to return, but she knows something is up.
Hang in for our road blog.
# # #
I’m calling this a blog even though it isn’t yet, technically speaking. Hang in, we’re working on it!
I sent out the Water Time dvds to those who wanted them; they should be arriving very soon. It was work but I liked sending them out. There’s something about knowing the film exists in someone’s home, as opposed to floating around in some cyberspace aether – I realize that it plays on your screen almost as well as the dvd, but…
…anyway, the deal stands: Email a mailing address to allan@banditobooks.com with ‘DVD’ in the subject box and I’ll mail you a dvd along with a return envelope. My expenses run about five bucks, so that’s what you owe me. Feedback welcome via the envelope or by email.
The other thing – and I hesitated to put it in this mailing – is that I’m selling my land in Costa Rica so I can buy a ‘home on wheels’ I’ve run across. I bought the 1.1 acres for a bit more than $80,000 back in 2006. The market’s softened a little since then but not that much. I need $25,000 for the wheels so that’s what I’ll take for the land. Although I bought it to eventually build upon (it’s 600 yards from a semi-private reef break five miles from Playa Negra), I am taking the drastic loss because I want to get on the road: if you’re interested, it should be looked at as an investment. If you end up living there, great.
Here’s a video I put together a while back to show the parcel in case I needed to sell it (ignore the price I give in the video):
(If the $25k price seems too good to be true, in this case it is true. The rub is that we have to do it quickly, or I will lose the summer crossing of Canada.)