Even though calories are Sammy’s great passion in life, the leash is the key to her heart. I believe this, because I used to be the key master, and now I’m not. I’m ashamed to admit it, but it’s been three years since I took Sammy on a walk by myself. Three years of protecting my bad back from being jerked out of alignment and thrown into spasms by the force of her tugging on the other end of the leash, and she’s become a total mommy’s girl during that time.
Used to be that Sammy would cuddle up next to me in the living room every night. Now, next to Mommy on the couch is the only acceptable place to be in the evening. If I’m sitting with Sammy on the loveseat and Danyelle is in the rocker, Sammy will look nervously back and forth between Danyelle and the couch, anxiously awaiting the time when the two of them can be pressed up against each other. Which is fine. If I had a choice between a healthy back and Sammy’s love, I’d choose a healthy back every time. Still, I’d like it if I weren’t so obviously the lesser choice, and it seems like a kind of healthy back is the best I’m ever going to get, so when Sammy and I find ourselves alone in the house and she goes to stand next to the door and stare at me, I decide to get up from my desk and grab her leash. Very quickly, I’m reminded of how different our ideas of a walk are and of how irritating that difference can be.
The first half of a walk with Sammy is the worst part. At the sound of her leash being picked up, her mood is buoyed to heights unreachable by humans. She may have some concern for the physical well-being of the person on the other end of her lead; indeed, she seems to almost try to restrain herself, but the pull of the smells that surround her are just too much for her to resist. As soon as my mind wanders and my gaze shifts to the birds or the sunlight filtering through the live oak canopy adorned with Spanish moss, I’m tugged into a plant bed where Sammy sniffs about, exploring a world of past leavings, pseudo-edibles, and the occasional subterranean creature that drives her into a digging frenzy. There’s no space for my thoughts. Sammy’s need to smell trumps them. She keys in on spots she needs to visit well in advance of our reaching them, and she pushes the pace to get there and investigate. For every one second of pleasure, I get about five seconds of being dragged.
Back when I was the leashmaster, I had ways of defeating this behavior. I would take Sammy out on the bike, holding the leash with one hand and steering with the other. I’d haul ass up the road for a quarter mile so that both of us were in a full sprint. After that, I was in charge of the pace for the rest of the way.
It was a good partnership. Sammy got to throw off all that energy coursing through her body, and I got to get away from Danyelle and the kids and clear my head for a while. We both needed it. Living in a house with two little babies was maddening at times. So much crying, so much poop, and so little sleep. The two of us were like each other’s escape.
Sometimes, I would take her out to Dad’s house on Sullivan’s Island and we would walk on the beach. This was great because she could be off the leash, so I could walk in peace, and she could run and smell like wild. As is usually the case with Sammy, though, there was a problem. This particular problem had to do with marine life . . . and how delicious Sammy finds it.
In all my years frequenting the beach at Sullivan’s, I don’t think I’d ever seen a starfish. If I could have told Sammy that, she’d have thought I was an idiot. She found lots of them on the shoreline. The dead, rotting ones were her favorite. She also found lots of dead fish that I wouldn’t have noticed either. She liked to prance around dramatically with these treasures clenched in her teeth, thrashing them about before gulping them down with minimal chewing. Afterwards, she’d look guiltily at me as she squirted diarrhea on the way back up the access towards the house.
My solution for this problem was to get the bike out of Dad’s garage. It was early one morning after a particularly rough night, and we were on one of our escapes. No need for the leash. Sammy doesn’t like falling behind. I figured that if I were rolling along on the bike, she’d be compelled to run alongside me without gorging on rotting carcasses along the way. I was right, but as usual, there was something I hadn’t accounted for: She got thirsty. Naturally, right around the point where I turned around, she waded out into the ocean and filled her belly with sea water. Now, Sammy is a great looking dog, and back then when she was in her early prime, to see her run was a beautiful sight. So thought the family of beachgoers setting up their umbrellas and chairs as I pedaled past along the waterline that day. Sammy ran in between them and me, and I could hear the daughter say, “Aw, look how pretty that doggy is!” I was full of pride when she said it. Then, running full tilt, her tail lifted high behind her, Sammy let go a spraying arc of diarrhea right in front of where these people were sitting. They groaned in unison, and Sammy and I did the only thing we could: kept fucking going. It was a spray and run situation.
Knocking the starch out of Sammy took a lot in those days. Now, by the time we turn around on our walk, she’s moving in slow motion. It reminds me of when she was a puppy in Florida and the latter part of our walks would sometimes consist of me literally dragging her through the grass while she resisted the leash. These days, I’m happy to walk slowly next to her. Rounding the corner on our street, her bowels empty (and not due to self-poisoning), her smelling needs satisfied, Sammy shows me the whites of her eyes for a second and shines a smile at me that lasts several paces.
Sometimes I wonder what Sammy might say if she could talk. Maybe she wonders when I’ll start listening. Looking into each other’s eyes at the end of our first walk in three years, though, it doesn’t seem to matter.
The Raging Elitist 