Our Thrilling Conclusion
January 25, 2009
Well, apparently it has taken me too long to get here, but it all ends today.
“Can I see your ID badge?” asked the security guard. There was no attached “sir” which experience has taught me is a bad sign where security people are concerned.
“I don’t have one, but-”
“This entrance is for employees only. Use the service counter entrance.”
I gave the security guard an appraising look. Evidently he was a good enough reader of body language that he picked up on the whole “swift kick to the groin, then race down the hallway” strategy I was piecing together, because his hand moved purposefully toward the taser holstered on his right hip.
“Alright,” I said, backing toward the door, “I’ll go.”
The next moment I was standing outside Wesco again, and it was definitely the low point of the whole ordeal. Then I realized it was my turn to pick up Clem from the Collie-seum. Dejectedly I began trudging toward the moat.
If the route into Wesco is intended to discourage visitors, navigating it in reverse after having been foiled by the security at their actual location is utterly demoralizing. I doubt many people have the gumption to ever come back a second time….
Which I bet is why the security guard was so surprised when I came barreling back through the door an hour later, 15 pounds of squirming terrier clutched tightly to my chest with one hand. I’ll give the guy some credit – he was awfully fast on the draw. He already had his taser out by the time I flung Clem at him.
Unfortunately, he also had a very steady hand, and managed to taser Clem when she was still in midair.
I call this “unfortunate” because anything which delivers a smaller charge than the electric chair only gets Clem excited. I strolled slowly down the corridor toward the service counter, knowing that any additional security personnel would be busy for a while.
And so it was that at long last I stood in front of someone who was willing (albeit grudgingly so) and able to sell me a thousand watt light-bulb. He was a little confused at first when I walked around the service counter from behind him, and he did falter sometimes when the sounds of people running in fear or being dragged from their offices by a wild animal got especially loud (I thought all was lost when the fire alarm went off, but I was able to convince my paint-befuddled interlocutor that it was just my cell phone’s ring tone), but I was able to get him through the checkout process in the end.
Finally, I carefully accepted the proffered replacement bulb, shot back the double bolts securing the service counter door, and stepped outside. Clem was waiting by the moat, using the taser to fish for piranhas.
“Good girl,” I said, reaching down to scritch her with my free hand.
“Wanna go get some hamburgers?”
Clem snorted, then began to butt her head into my knee. Hard.
I took that as a yes.
The Arena
December 18, 2008
During the months when I have to put on Clementine’s coat, we always arrive at her school after all the other dogs are already there. I carry a squirming Clementine inside and hand her to a pair of burly wranglers that proceed to shuck her out of her coat. She cooperates beautifully. Meanwhile, I check in with the receptionist, an ex-navy seal named Marla, who asks if I will be staying to watch. This is not normally allowed, but as the backer of the Arena’s brightest star I am accorded certain privileges. When I answer in the affirmative, she signals to the two wranglers, one of whom holds an astonishingly still Clementine while the other rolls back the big sheet metal partition that separates the front room from the arena proper.
At this stage the arena is a pit filled with a writhing, yapping, snarling mass of canine lunacy. If it is true that all dogs go to heaven, the decision is not based on what is going on in this room, into which Clem is flung by her wrangler. She briefly disappears into the tangle of combatants, and I always experience a pang of worry. She’s so little!
Soon enough Clem resurfaces riding an English bulldog, her forepaws snaked around its thick neck, one of its ears in her mouth….
The first part of every day at Berenson’s Doggie Arena is the Battle Royal portion, where all the dogs are grouped together in a pit, into which single toys are thrown at intervals to “stimulate competition”. Clem never tries for the first couple of toys; she has to pace herself if she is to meet her many obligations for the day. After the dogs are split up into weight-classes she will be almost an instructor herself, moving between groups to work with tiny terriers and chihuahuas as well as bulldogs, mastiffs, and assorted hounds.
This is actually Clem’s chief claim to fame at the arena. From the very beginning she was something of a “giant-killer”, adept at sliding under larger dogs in a crouch and then stiffening her legs to flip them over, or harrying them until they tire and then pouncing atop them. I like to think that I contribute in some small way to her growth in this area.
At first, in fact, Clementine was grouped with the larger dogs exclusively. As time went on though, Clem became bored with larger dogs, and got excessively bitey as a result. It was with some trepidation that we decided to move her into the smaller weight classes. She excelled here as well, however, proving gentle enough to work with even the smallest dogs. She seemed livelier as well, forming friendships with other dogs and just genuinely having a good time. As the Battle Royal breaks up and the doggies begin moving en masse toward the outside doors for their first “potty break”, I notice that Clem is next to her best friend, an adorable Sheltie named Maymee.
Matters of the Heart
December 17, 2008
(Note: Although I am still pretty whacked out from sleep deprivation and cold medicine, I am being compelled to take a serious shot at posting today, no more lazy “journaling”. The folks from The Internet called last night and said that overall web traffic has dropped .05% in the last couple of days, with even larger numbers in South America, where Clementine has become something of a folk hero, for reasons I can’t begin to fathom.)
An old friend of mine recently came to me seeking counsel. It concerned an affair of the heart, he said. I asked why he came to me for this advice, as I hadn’t been at all easy to get in touch with, and we haven’t really been that close lately.
“Because,” he replied, “Out of all my circle of acquaintance, I feel that you know the most about love.”
“Then you’re screwed.” I retorted, unwilling to accept this particular compliment from this particular individual at this particular moment.
“No, seriously,” he insisted, “You’re a scholar, and in both your studies of the humanities and your travels I feel that you have seen more than anyone else I can turn to.”
I reflected that, as his circle of acquaintance was mostly internet trolls, perhaps the compliment was small enough that I could let it pass unchallenged for the sake of discussion.
I’ll spare you the details of our conversation, as I am a just and merciful internet crank, but at some point he raised that old chestnut, “What is Love?”.
Though I may have put at risk my newly-conferred authority as an expert on the matter, I had to reply that the whole concept of “love” is so nebulous, and has been so widely appropriated and abused, that no definitive answer to that question is possible.
Since then, I have reconsidered. I was trolling the internet myself, looking for new music, and I stumbled across the interesting fact that grunge stalwarts Mudhoney had covered “The Rose”. I couldn’t imagine what this would be like, so I tracked down the video on Youtube. As I listened to the song, it all became clear to me, and now, with the help of Amanda McBroom’s timeless lyrics (what, you thought Bette Midler wrote that, didn’t you? Well, she doesn’t have to write, darling, she’s a diva), I will attempt to answer the question “What is Love?” for once and for all:
(Note: If you are Amanda McBroom, you may want to stop reading right now, before you see what I am going to do to your song.)
Some say love, it is a river
That drowns the tender reed
Some say love, it is a razor
That leaves your soul to bleed
Some say love, it is a hunger
An endless aching need
But I say love, it is a carpet
Upon which your dog has peed
(and yes, Bolivia, the dog is Clementine.)
Clem’s Worst Habit
December 14, 2008
The other day when Rebekah took Clem for a walk, the little weirdo (Clementine, not Rebekah) came across some tiny pellets that had been produced by the adorable bunnies that haunt our neighborhood. So she started to eat them. ‘Bekah, like many human beings, retains the capacity to be appalled at this particularly outré brand of canine behavior, no matter how time-honoured and widespread a part of their culture it is. ‘Bekah pulled Clem off of the rabbit droppings and had some hard words with her, and when they returned home the incident was duly reported to the hapless husband, who really would rather remain in the dark about all things copraphagic (for our less lexophiliac readers, “lexophiliac” means “word-loving”, and a “copraphage” is someone who eats poop.)
It seemed likely that this would have been just another gross little incident in Clem’s long record, and might soon have passed into the blessed oblivion conferred upon all such petty little horrors by the miracle of human forgetfulness. That night, however, as Clem raced several feet straight up the wall before somersaulting down onto Gypsy, Rebekah asked me “D’you think Clemmy seems…well, faster than usual, tonight?”. I agreed that Clementine did seem rather more rapid than I was used to seeing her, whereupon Rebekah advanced the startling hypothesis that perhaps Clem’s new-found speed had something to do with her, well, assimilation of some organic matter that had once been associated with rabbits, a breed of animals noted for their fleetness of foot.
“Wait a minute,” I said, “Are you suggesting that when Clem eats an animal’s doodoo, she is somehow attempting to steal its power?” We were both silent for a moment. “Well,” ‘Bekah finally said “it would explain a lot…”
So now we live in fear that one night Clementine will be watching the news with us when some paleontologist discovers fossilized velociraptor puckey.
Dogfight
December 8, 2008
I believe we left our account of a typical attempt to get Clementine’s coat on with our tiny protagonist atop her would-be oppressor’s back gripping his arm in a hammerlock…
Although I don’t have the leverage to pull my arm free (that being the whole point of a hammerlock), I quickly realize that Clem weighs about sixteen pounds. I take a moment to plan ahead, that being my biggest advantage over my diminutive adversary. Then I roll over. Clementine is more than fast enough to leap clear, but she is also a terrier, and loathes giving up a good hold. I am counting on her to hang on too long, and she obliges me.
This allows me to employ my other big advantage over Clementine: weight. I can feel her mighty back legs pressing against my ribs as I turn so that she is pinned under my right side, but she is as likely to budge me as I am to leg press a minivan, so I concentrate on poking her in the chest repeatedly with my left hand so that she’ll be distracted while I slowly lever myself up on my right elbow, taking care to leave enough weight on Clem that she can’t scoot out from under me.
Once I have regained the use of my right hand, I gradually work it around behind her neck as she attempts to wrap her forepaws around my left wrist and begin gnawing on my left hand. This nearly proves my undoing, but somehow I manage to pass my right hand behind her neck while frantically jerking my left hand away from her mouth. Once my right hand has passed behind Clem’s neck, I am ready for the trickiest part of the operation. Suddenly I snake my left arm down between Clem’s left forepaw and neck, trapping her paw and enabling my hand to press against the side of her neck. I exert similar pressure with my right to complete the katahajime sleeper hold.
Clem struggles a little bit, but gradually her bulbous eyes begin to close and she relaxes. I’ve learned the hard way to wait until I am sure she’s not faking before releasing the hold and scrambling over to retrieve her coat. It is imperative that I have at least the three primary straps buckled before she wakes up.
Clem is usually awake enough to squirm and snap at me as I finish securing the numerous secondary cinches and ties, but it is the last trouble I’ll have with her for a while. Once her coat is on she’s generally far more preoccupied with worrying at the straps than interfering with me as I scoop her up and bundle her into the car.
We’re usually running late by now, so I tuck Clementine into her car bed, insert her mix CD into the CD player, and give her a quick scritch behind the ears, pulling my hand away quickly to avoid the surly little snap she gives me by way of reply, and throw the car in gear. It’s off to the Doggie Arena.
Round One
December 4, 2008
Some mornings, right after I put Coke in ‘Bekah’s bag, I have to take Clem to Doggie Arena. The first step in this process is to get Clem’s coat and tuck it carefully into one of my pockets. Then I head to the kitchen, reach carefully down past the razor wire that tops Clementine’s enclosure, and pick up my little dog. I cradle her in my arms like a baby as we head to the laundry room, where I set her down in front of the door to the garage. I open the door and head through, Clem frisking merrily about my feet. ‘Bekah and I park on the street now so that the garage is empty for this particular morning ritual. I take a few deep breaths and try to empty my mind of extraneous thoughts. Clem scampers about, snuffling at the floor and chasing scraps of paper or stray autumn leaves.
All the romping stops the instant I pull Clem’s coat out of my pocket. Clem’s coat is a cross between a flak vest and a straight jacket. As soon as Clem catches a glimpse of it’s black expanse, festooned with heavy-duty straps and buckles, she comes to a complete stop. For a single pristine moment she is utterly still, her head up, ears cocked forward, bizarre bulging eyes regarding me intently.
In the next instant Clem is hurtling through the air toward me, propelled by one of her lighting-quick leaps. It is her usual opening gambit, so I am able to anticipate it and pivot out of the way, preventing her little black cannonball of a head from colliding with my groin or abdomen, her targets of choice. A loud crack followed by a series of crashes tells me that Clem has at least partially demolished a shelving unit, so I turn and lunge at her as she attempts to scrabble out from under the wreckage.
I capitalize on my temporary advantage by rolling Clem onto her back. This impairs her mobility, if not her capacity to fight back, which she swiftly demonstrates by snaking her hind legs around my left wrist and clamping her teeth onto three fingers of my right hand, causing me to drop her coat in the process.
While I carefully work my right forearm away from Clem to prevent her from wrapping her forepaws around it, I make my next move. Although there’s little I can do with my left hand, which is held tight to Clementine’s belly by her amazingly strong hind legs, I start sliding it slowly to my left. Clementine, still intent on consolidating her hold on my right arm, doesn’t notice until my hand reaches the pressure point behind her ribs. She gives a low growl when she realizes what is about to happen, but it is too late. I scritch gently with the tips of my fingers. After a moment, the steely bands of muscle which are Clementine’s hind legs relax, and her jaws loose their hold on my right hand. She lays there panting, paralyzed by the canine euphoria I have unleashed with my underhanded belly-rubbing tactics.
Unfortunately, putting Clementine’s coat on requires both hands. I grab the coat with my right hand and drag it over Clem’s head, scritching madly with my left. Then I have to use both hands to pull it down over her torso, and that’s when she shakes off the lingering effects of the belly-scritch. She writhes like a thing possessed and kicks me in the wrist with her hind leg, knocking one of my hands away. Before I can recover she has wriggled out of her coat and corkscrewed back onto her feet. I go for a waistlock, but just as I get an arm around her middle she pushes off my chest with her back feet and shoots out of my grasp like a bar of soap in a convict’s nightmare.
I stumble to my feet and race after, not wanting her to have time to regroup. She easily stays just out of my grasp, then, with no warning, she turns on a dime, darts between my legs, and delivers a two-footed mule kick to the back of my left knee. My leg folds up faster than a topless bar in Tehran, and I crash to the hard, hard cement floor. Clementine grabs my right hand in her mouth and leaps onto my back, dragging my arm around into a hammerlock. I tug experimentally to see if I can just pull my hand free, but I can feel her feet dig into my back for purchase and she pulls back hard enough that I can feel it in both my elbow and shoulder. “Dammit Clem,” I mutter, “I’m just trying to put your coat on.” Clem gives a little terrier growl as she squeezes down on my hand…
Feeding the Beasties
November 22, 2008
(part III in an intermittent and ongoing series)
I shall resume my tale of a typical morning at the point where Clementine, who is being a right bastard today by the way, has gone outside. While she offloads her metabolic byproducts, it is time for me to feed the cats. Now, on mornings when Gypsy begins his food-yowling before sunrise, or augments it by flinging himself bodily into the bedroom door, I usually give him discount cat food we get from Sam’s Club. This may not seem like much of a punishment unless you’ve read the ingredient label, so I reproduce it for your edification:
Ingredients: Brewer’s Rice, Shredded Newspaper, Toenail Clippings, Powdered Cellulose, Gravel, Scabs, Calcium Sulfate, Strychnine, Potassium Sulfate, Despair.
Anyhow, Gypsy’s been good this morning, so he gets his prescription weight-loss food from the vet, which is made mostly from black magic and guys who squealed on the mob. I quickly dial the combination on the cat food safe and scoop Gypsy out some of the good stuff, then deposit it in his bowl in the laundry room. After Gypsy minces in there, I close the door for his protection and head back to the kitchen. Clementine is pawing at the door now, so I scoop food into Cleo’s bowl, pluck her out of the air as she drifts by, and set her down in front of it. Past observation has shown that it will now take her anywhere from five to seven minutes to find the food directly in front of her, but I don’t have time to watch, because it’s time for Clemmy to come back in.
Clem shoots a stiff paw to my groin as I let her in, and I do my best to shrug it off as I head over to turn on the stove and get the ingredients for her breakfast out of the refrigerator. For the next fifteen minutes or so I will be busy searing steak and sautéing mushrooms, as well as preparing a fresh green salad. It may not sound that hard, but trust me: anything becomes a challenge when you have a sixteen-pound dog hanging off your sweat pants and snarling incessantly.
Finally I’m done cooking and can lay Clem’s breakfast out in front of her. She dives into the steak and mushrooms while I croon encouragements to her: “That’s it Clem, eat up so you’ll grow big and strong”. I watch anxiously as she sniffs at the salad, because I’ve decided to try something new today: Arugula! Clem snuffles around the salad bowl very carefully, then turns and squats over it, urinating deliberately as she looks back over her shoulder at me to make sure I get the message. When she’s finished weeing, I scoop her up and carry her to her corral.
A Day in the Life
November 20, 2008
(Part II of an intermittent, ongoing series)
On any given day, my first order of business after waking up is to loose Clementine upon an unsuspecting world (actually, I’m pretty sure the world suspects by this time, but there’s not much it can do). This is a fairly involved process, for safety reasons. First I take the master remote which controls Clemmy’s cage defenses from its wall dock. Next I deactivate the perimeter fragmentation charges, and kill the voltage running through the cage itself. Finally, I draw back the three tempered-steel bolts and fling wide the door of her cage while crying “Havoc!”. Originally this was intended as a warning, something akin to yelling “Fore!” on the golf course, but I find that it also helps keep Clem’s attention focused on me as we head for the bedroom door, so that she doesn’t pounce upon my sleeping wife.
Then we head down the hall to…oh wait, crap, actually, I have to go back to the bedroom now and put on some sweats, because the school bus stops right behind our house at this time of morning, which means that there’s a crowd of school children milling around across the street from our back yard waiting for the damn thing, and apparently their uptight parents don’t think they’re ready to see the kinds of things that are sometimes left uncovered by the secondhand maternity lingerie I usually sleep in. So I go back and change while Clem cavorts in the hall. Gypsy makes a plaintive cry of “Food!” which must seem to Clem to be an accurate assessment of Gypsy’s ecological role, because she takes of after him, which thankfully rids me of both of them for the precious time required to get dressed.
Then I close the bedroom door behind me, so that ‘Bekah will be spared any further ruckus, and pad down the hall. When I reach the kitchen Cleo, the remaining member of our little menagerie, attempts to dive-bomb me from the top of the fridge, but her miniscule bodyweight and the unique aerodynamic properties of her incredibly fluffy coat conspire against her, causing her to get caught in a sudden updraft and float off-course. Figuring that it will be some minutes before she drifts down to the floor, I ignore her and focus on more immediate matters.
I can’t see Clementine, but Gypsy’s panicked bleating leads me to suspect that she has him trapped in the excruciating Fujiwara Pawlock variation she’s been practicing at Doggy Arena. “Clementine!” I yell in the general direction of the living room as I sling open the sliding door to the backyard. Clem shoots by me like a streak of heat, yapping out her diminutive Boston Terrier challenge to the disinterested mob of adolescent punks across the street. I flip them a desultory bird myself as I shut the door. It’s going to be a long day…
The Four Pillars…
November 13, 2008
Clementine is a very well-fed dog. There is no good reason for her to supplement her diet with random bits of filth, and yet she insists on doing a little bit of surreptitious crud-grazing whenever we take her for a walk. Although I do my best to remain vigilant, I inevitably fail because Clemmy possesses that superb combination of sneakiness and focus that will get you nearly anything you want in this world.
And so it came to pass that on one of our recent rambles, Clementine, furtively munching on all manner of horrible, nasty things, ran headlong into one of the scavenger’s greatest occupational hazards: disease. She managed to contract a wicked little case of giardia, which is one of the less pleasant afflictions in the veterinary universe.
The sudden and gruesome onset of the disease rather upset me, and as often happens when I am upset, I babbled like an idiot to anyone in proximity. One thing that I said to Ezekiel (who happened to be the “anyone” at the time), has stayed with me since. “I hope that little dog is alright,” I said “because she is one of the four things in my life I can’t do without right now.”
I realize that I am a neurotic creature, compulsively ordering everything in my life into little hierarchies, and I can’t help feeling like most people don’t enumerate the essential components of their lives that specifically. In order to contribute to a more complete taxonomy, then, of my strange, sad little evolutionary offshoot, I feel like I should identify what I consider to be the four principal supports of my happiness and sanity:
- My wife Rebekah
- My companion, rival, ward, lost twin, and occasional foil Clementine
- My band of brothers, the weekly gaming group
- My interface with all things vulgar-but-necessary: my job in the sulfur mines
