Dog walk

Pets are wonderful. At their best they lift your spirits with unconditional love. At their worst they remind you of the primitive, selfish parts of you that you, being human, struggle your entire life to conquer or at least suppress. (Or they're throwing up on the carpet. Never a hard surface that'd be easy to mop up. Always a rug or a carpet. Always.)
I had pets as a boy. Nothing exotic, the usual animals you'd find in a suburban house in the 1960s and 70s. Dogs, cats, gerbils, fish, turtles. As a teen, I wanted to be the cool guy with a boa constrictor, but when I found out you had to feed them live animals I demurred.
I never had a pet as an adult. 
Partly this is because I moved around more than most and, even when I was in one place for awhile, I was never sure where I'd be a few months from any given time. (I had hopes, dreams.) Partly it's because I lived in cities and I couldn't imagine having a dog or a cat that stayed in all day—or longer, for most cats—the small apartments I could afford to rent. When I was a kid you'd let your dog out in the morning and he'd (we always had males) run around all day, sometimes longer, if he smelled a female in heat. The dog would come back tired but happy at the end of his time in the wild. Everyone did that back then. Leashes were things you had to hunt for if you had to take your dog to a vet. (Sometimes quiet afternoons would be shattered by the awful sound of fur-covered bone getting slammed by the die-stamped steel of a car, followed by a shriek and a series of yelps that could have been anyone's dog; no one could tell because it was a sound they made only then. Sometimes it was your dog.)
Another reason I've had no pets since childhood is that my feelings for their suffering from ailments, injury, or age hurt me more deeply the older I became. The opposite should be true and maybe it is for people who form strong connections to their partners and children, but those are things I never did.
Two animals have died while I've cared for them and the grief I feel even decades later hurts more than anything else. The memory of deaths of people I've loved gives me a dull, empty ache. With animals, the memory induces a sharp pang that makes me draw a breath rapidly.

Me walking the dog.

Right now I'm taking care of a sister-in-law's Corgi and I'll be doing so for the next four days. I've done this several times before and the dog and I know each others' routines well. She hasn't been with me for over seven months because of the operations I've had that have failed to keep a terminal illness at bay, but she remembers all the little rules and customs I follow. She knows which door I'll use to exit the house, where I'll put her water and food, whether we're going to visit the back yard, walk around the neighborhood or, joy of joys, go for a car ride. When I get up from the desk or couch she knows whether I'm going into the kitchen to do something food related or to another room for another reason.
Animals aren't psychic, but they know things. Dogs' sense of smell is so beyond anything we can comprehend that it might as well be psychic. 
After a few drinks, I hold the dog close and say, "Do you know how sick I am? Do know when I'm going to die?"
She wriggles, says nothing.

1984: Best vacation

The woman in the photo is my mother. The afghan hound is owned by Gayla, a long-time family friend, and is named Fozzie. The bichon frise is named Dudley and belonged to us. The photo was taken in October of 1984 in Westport, Massachusetts, which at the time most called Acoaxit. 

I was living in Minneapolis then (we're all from southeastern Pennsylvania) and working at a liquor factory. I was twenty-six. My mother invited me to join her and Gayla on an autumn vacation in Acoaxit, where I had spent several happy summers with my parents and one of my two brothers in my youth. I usually shied away from doing things like that with my parents, but this time I said yes.
I'm glad I did. Maybe it was the ages of both my mother and I, maybe it was that we were all at a good time in our lives, maybe is was the place—a small coastal town we all knew well and loved—but I don't think my mother and I ever got along as well as we did during those two weeks. 
I took long walks on the beach, we ate simple but good meals, and the house we stayed in was small, cozy, and just yards from the shore. It was warm enough that if I were shielded by a bolder from the wind and in the sun, I could sit outside and sketch. 
My father joined us toward the end of the vacation, and I enjoyed seeing him, too, though I initially had an ape-like aversion to having another male around. I got over that, though. 
We made brief side trips to Newport and a few other less memorable places.

Free advice

"Well," the dog said, "it's a big tree, yes, but if you apply yourself for a few hours a week you should be able to chop into small enough pieces to supply yourself with firewood for some time. Of course, being a Complete and Total Loser, you'll probably be too lazy to do that and you'll pay some tree guys two grand to get rid of it. They'll chop into firewood and sell it and you won't get any of that money, you loser."

Last day with the dog

It's been OK, life with a dog. It makes the Complete and Total Loser get out of bed a little earlier, and he's been walking two miles a day. He won't miss picking up the poop, though, and even though he's only vacuumed a few times, and small areas, the filter was clogged with dog hair, despite his frequent brushing.
And this is a small dog, weighing less than twenty-five pounds. 
The Loser will miss having a being to talk to. He's enjoyed hearing her breath in bed next to him. 

No dogs

The Complete and Total Loser does not want a dog. He is enjoying taking care of his sister-in-law's dog, but he does not want his own dog.
Two days ago, he was at a friend's house. The friend and her husband have six dogs. They are all tiny and some of them are rescues. Four of them are very old, for dogs, and one has cancer that will kill it.

Their original dog is a Jack Russell terrier and is wasting away with age. He stumbles on things, pees randomly, has arthritis. They care for him and make his life as comfortable as they can. The Loser remembers when he was a puppy and a young dog. He would fetch a ball non stop for hours at a time, a streak of white and brown as he sped across the yard. Happy as could be that dog. Now he has dementia and looked at the Loser with sad eyes. He seemed to be wondering why he was still alive. If he were the Loser's dog, he would have been put down a year ago, but the Loser knows that if he really were his dog he'd probably feel otherwise.
People who get dogs forget that they're going to be old for a long time.

The dog

Yesterday, the Complete and Total Loser's sister-in-law dropped off the dog he'll take care of for three weeks next month so it could get a preview of where she'll be staying. The Loser knew modern pet owners coddle their pets—he's read that a large percentage celebrate their dog's and cat's birthdays—but he didn't think his sister-in-law was one of them.
The dog arrived at noon and stayed until nearly five. During those hours she gave the Loser new respect for his attention span, which dwarfs the dog's. Clacking toenails on hard surfaces as she sniffed corners and somehow found things to eat on what the Loser had thought was a clean floor. Whether they were edible or not, the Loser couldn't say. 

He took the dog, a four-year-old female corgi, outside hourly. She urinated many times and crapped three times, though she doesn't look overfed and the stools appeared normal. She was eager to approach other dogs as they walked by on leashes. Two attractive women said hello to the Loser as their dogs eyed each other.
When inside, the dog would soon forget that she had just been outside and would whine a little. Passing cars excited her and she hoped they marked the return of her mistress. When that became true, she became frantic with joy. Corgis don't look like the kind of dog that can jump up and down, but this one could. 
Three weeks of this?

An animal answer

The Complete and Total Loser's neighborhood has changed since he grew up in it in the sixties. 
It's still made up of mostly well-to-do whites, though now they're whites who grew up in the suburbs, not ones who emigrated from the city, like the Loser's parents and neighbors. The population has burgeoned, but the proportion of whites to other races is probably about the same as it was.
The change the Loser's talking about is in animals.
When growing up, you'd hear about people seeing an opossum, raccoon, or skunk, but about the only time you'd see one yourself was when it was dead on the road, killed by a night time driver, a college kid, probably. When the Loser was sixteen, a deer vaulted across the road he and a friend were driving on. They were so excited by the rare vision they went to the area the next day to look for its tracks, as if to prove to themselves it had been real. 
It's different now. 
Since summer, the Loser has caught four raccoons (the most recent just yesterday), two skunks, an opossum and the same feral cat twice. Deer often hang out in his back yard for hours at a time. Last night, the Loser shone a flashlight out back and two pairs of deer eyes glowed back. Both had laid down, ready for a cold November night.
One word explains the change. Dogs.
When the Loser was a kid, dogs were never leashed in the suburbs. They ran free, got in fights, killed animals or, if they found an already dead animal, rolled around on its corpse. Seldom neutered, the males would disappear for days at a time, traveling for miles to mate with a bitch in heat. The Loser's dog did this into his sixteenth year, returning hungry and grinning. His DNA is in a lot of dogs by now. 
Now, of course, everyone's so timid and litigious that the idea of a child being nipped by a dog and the packs of personal injury lawyers has made that impossible. Any dog just roaming a neighborhood is assumed to be feral, maybe even rabid. 
So the animals run free, with no natural predators except maybe a fox or two and, of course, cars, their primary foe.

If the Loser knew how to hunt and butcher deer, he'd have to buy a meat locker.

A Complete and Total Loser Rule - 1

Volunteer work is not supposed to be pleasant, rewarding, or satisfying in any way. Whether it is or it isn’t, don’t talk about it. Don’t even tell anyone you do it, unless you absolutely must.

The Sports Fan

He has flags, hats, banners and a little pennant he puts on the window of his car. He wears clothing with his team's logo on it even when the team is doing badly. He spends twenty minutes arranging food and drink around his reclining chair before away games are aired on television. When "his" team wins, he's happy for a day. When it loses, he's snappish but likes talking with his friends, who are as devoted to the team as he is, about what went wrong. Those conversations, in fact, are longer and somehow more bonding, despite their negative theme.
He holds the players in high esteem. In this team's case, he forgives the quarterback for having abused dogs as a matter of course for years. The fan loves dogs and he was uncomfortable with this for awhile, but it's now conveniently forgotten and neither he nor his friends bring it up anymore. He also knows that all the players make in one year many times what he and his friends combined will make in their lifetimes, despite all working hard, and that none of the players are products of his region. If offered more millions by someone else, they would give a heartfelt press conference, then leave without a second glance. The next year they would talk about how special and loyal the fans of their new city are with the same sincerity as they talk about the fan's city and its people now.
He knows all this on some dim level, a level similar to the one we all have on mortality when we're not seriously ill. He knows this, but he goes with the flow. He conforms.

A typical sports fan.

Dogs (Poem)

A cat can be a wonderful pet,
Clean and quiet and small.
It can be the best thing to get,
If your apartment isn’t tall.
But a dog can be the living end,
Loyal, steadfast, true.
So he’s called man’s best friend,
Just the guy for you.
Unlike other critters he feels much joy,
He jumps and dances and smiles.
How good to say, “C’mon, boy!”
When walking those lonely miles.

Future Pet (Poem)

When it comes to liking the household pet
I’m good with cane- and feline.
But thinking of which one to get
I’m waiting before to choose mine.
The brave new world of gene splicing,
Should give more options for us yuppies.
It will be oh so enticing
To see litters of pitties and kuppies.
Half cat, half dog, that’s what I’ll pick,
A friend both loyal and mysterious.
The idea may make some sick,
I am, however, completely serious.
My Persian pit bull will climb a tree
And scare off all the bad guys
He’ll me-ark! and then jump up on me
And bloody both my thighs.
Or how about a golden catriever
To fetch my pipe and slippers?
She’ll purr and whine, a stress reliever,
I’ll feed her beef and kippers.
My cog or dat I’ll keep for life
My house will need no locks.
But I’ll need to find a good strong wife
To clean the litter box.

Ten things the Loser has learned from Flickr

The Complete and Total Loser is a voyeur, peering into the lives of the successful and happy. In the past he stared at the photos coming down the little slide on the photo machines in pharmacies while pretending to peruse the batteries. Now he needn't leave his apartment. He can go to flickr.com and click the reload section on the home page and bring up photos from all over the world. He can click on those and enter the photostream of a complete stranger. It is as if he has broken into an apartment building for the United Nations and is entering the apartments where all he does is thumb through their photo albums. He has learned the following:

It's not supposed to be, but this photo is sexy as hell.

1. South Americans are sexy. Europeans are stylish. Americans are fun-loving but often overweight. Asians are cute.
2. You can never take too many photographs of: Parties, weddings, your baby.
3. Provocative: Girls taking pictures of each other in come hither poses. Creepy: Men taking pictures of women from behind in public spaces.
4. Cats are calm and often half asleep. Dogs are eager to please and as active as the people they're with. The result: Cats are easier to photograph than dogs so there are many more cat pictures.
5. When young people, especially men, are photographed they make fake gang signs in the belief this makes them witty yet mildly threatening.
6. There are hundreds of photographs of wool. Or is it yarn? Is there a difference? Is yarn just wool that's been turned into string?
7. Professional photographers take the least interesting photographs.
8. Photos of the elderly are usually sad.
9. Never show your friends photographs you took of: Sunsets, flowers, interesting cloud formations, most landscapes, interiors of the room you stayed in while on vacation. In fact, limit most vacation photos. Getting drunk on a beach was fun then. The memory of it is pathetic.
10. Very few people look good while singing or playing musical instruments. Never photograph someone while they're eating.

Pets

A dog.

Why would anyone get a dog? When the Complete and Total Loser was a kid everyone had dogs. He lived in the suburbs. You'd let your dog out in the morning, if the weather were nice enough, and he'd roam all day and return when you got back from school. Sometimes they got in fights with other dogs, which would add drama to a young life. Sometimes the Loser's dog, an un-neutered male, would smell a bitch in head from miles away and be off for two or three days. He'd return famished but smiling. This now would rightly be considered irresponsible pet ownership. The Loser sees dogs in the city and they're miserable. Sure, they jump up and down when their masters come home, but they're filled with nervous energy, unable to run free, penned or leashed for all but as little as half an hour a day in most cases. Bad pet owners let them bark, disturbing their neighbors by shattering the peace.
Even though he lives in a big city the Loser can see enough animals living free to satisfy his link to nature. He sees squirrels, Canada geese and any number of other birds. When he goes to the suburbs just 15 miles away he sees deer, groundhogs, rabbits and foxes.