I really don’t know how to say this any other way. My dog decided to talk to me the other night and he had a lot to say.
It initially played like any other night really. Once again, I was tossing and turning, in and out of sleep. I was half awake, mulling over my job situation: I want to make money writing but I need an income more. Then the most bizarre thing happened.
“Hey human Bob! This is your best friend speaking! Wake up!”
Who the hell was that? It was a deep, low voice; strong and certain with a hint of a bourbon induced slur. Sounded like Dean Martin actually. I immediately sat up. It was pitch black. The radio clock blurred 3:53 in a dull crimson light. All I could make out was the shadowy outline of Parker, my trusty beagle, sitting upright at my feet.
“Hey boy, did you hear that?” I whispered instinctively. “Someone’s in the house.”
My vision was starting to warm up to the darkness. Parker just stared back at me, his head tilted, his long ears hanging to the side of his head like hand towels on a wall. He turned his head to the bedroom doorway, lifted his nose to the night and sniffed. He turned back to face me.
“Don’t think so.”
I swore Parker spoke but it couldn’t be. I mean his hound drawn lips seemed to move to the words I heard but that was impossible.
“Who’s there?” I yelled into the night. “Whoever it is, I am warning you that I am at this moment retrieving my loaded double-barrel twelve gauge from under the bed. I will shoot you. So leave now and I want to hear the door slam behind you.”
I made some dumb noises in a lame attempt to fool the intruder into believing what I had just proclaimed. I took the ruse to the next level.
“Okay. I’m fully armed and about to call 911 from my fully powered cell phone. Oh yeah, strong signal, four bars. Oh yeah, this is going to be a very clear 911 call.”
“You’re breaking me up. Put the phone down human Bob.”
It was Parker talking. I was certain of it. Nah, it had to be a sick trick.
“Okay, good one Steve. You wired up the dog with a little speaker. Very funny.”
My brother Steve was known to go to great lengths to pull off pranks. But I was pretty sure he was at his apartment in the city, sixty miles away, God knows doing what, and at 48 years old, unlikely to suddenly bother me with a prank—it had been 25 years since his last one. But the mind scrambles to the most implausible scenarios when so duly challenged.
“Don’t think so. Nope it’s me, Parker,” the dog mumbled.
I was positive he spoke again. By now I was sitting straight up, leaning towards him. He just sat there and looked at me with those big dark eyes. His poker face was on.
“Parker? Are you talking to me?”
“Well I’m not talking to myself.”
I leaned back against the headboard. He yawned.
“This can’t be. I’ve got to stop watching Animal Planet.”
“Listen, I’ve got something to say and I’m not sure how long this talking stuff is going to work so …”
“You are talking!” I interrupted incredulously.
“Should you want I bow wow?”
“Holy cow! Parker you are talking.”
“Yup. But I’m not sure for how long. So can I say a few things before …”
“I can’t believe this.”
“Yeah I know. Either can I but if you don’t mind.”
I looked at him with a giant smile plastered across my face. Parker can talk. The dog was talking. Who was I kidding? It had to be a prank. He continued.
“I’ve been listening to a lot of that talk radio and that C-SPAN channel you watch while you write. I’m here to tell ya I don’t like what I’m hearing.”
“You’re kidding me right?”
“Afraid not.”
Oh this was good. I was really hallucinating. Talk-shmalk, I had a few nagging questions of my own.
“Hey, can I ask you something before you get to your stuff?”
“Make it quick. I haven’t got all night.”
“You like smell things a hundred times more than we do, right?”
“Four hundred.”
“Okay, four hundred. Wow! Then I really wonder about this.”
“Yeah I know. Why do we like to sniff every morsel of excrement or yellow patch of urine we encounter on our walks?”
“Now that you bring it up, yeah, why? It must smell like the inside of Dick Cheney’s or Ted Kennedy’s septic tank? And you know how much crap they’re filled with.”
“That was a funny one human Bob. But it isn’t like what you smell. We pick up a lot more notes. It’s a broader pallet if you will. We don’t smell stink. We smell identity, mood, and illness. For instance, you know that crazy cairn terrier down the street?”
“Yeah.”
“She has stomach cancer and her humans don’t have a clue.”
“You are kidding me?”
“She probably has less than six months if they don’t get her to a vet soon.” He paused to lick his right front paw. “Yeah, and another thing. Don’t take me out at nights for awhile.”
“Why?”
“Cause there is a rabid possum living under the porch. That’s why.”
“You know this from the smell of possum poop?”
“Excrement.”
“Whatever.”
“Yup.” Parker yawned as if bored. “So is that it? Can I say what I need to say?”
“Well there is that thing you do with that licking your, you know, your …”
“Penis?”
“Well, yeah.”
“Jealous are we?”
“Well, it’s just that …”
“It’s all about keeping clean. Nothing pleasurable if that’s what you’re driving at. Nothing like what you do with your hand. By the way, I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t pet me afterwards. Nope, no pleasure; it’s all business. You made sure of that when you had me “fixed”, remember. Thank you very much.”
“Oh yeah, sorry about that. I had no idea you knew any different.”
“No idea my butt. I’ll ‘no idea’ ya.” He paused again to lick his right paw again and then continued. “But I don’t hold it against you. We don’t hold grudges. Heck, if we did, we would have mauled most humans dead by now. Which brings me to why I am talking to you.”
“No grudges. Really? I mean that “fixing” stuff is pretty serious. That’s pretty good if that doesn’t bother you.”
“You done? Can I get to my concern?”
“Sure. Sorry. Go ahead.”
“How can humans be so smart supposedly, while they single handedly are destroying the Earth?”
“You mean global warming?”
“It’s more than that. It’s the air. It’s the water. It’s the dirt. It’s the forests. It’s the killing. It’s the anger. It’s the hate. It’s the grudges. It’s the fear. It’s everything.”
“Oh come on. You’re being a little dramatic.”
“We don’t know dramatic.”
“Well give me examples of what you mean.”
“First of all, the air is filled with danger. Dogs, cats, birds, animals of all kinds can smell it. It is our biggest topic when we get together.”
“I don’t smell a thing.”
“Yeah, that’s part of the problem. And you can’t taste the troubled water either.”
“Scientists don’t seem to be complaining. So I should be listening to a dog?”
“We have no agenda. Dogs call it as they smell it.”
“ ‘call it as they smell it’; I’m suppose to just accept that?”
“Yeah, there is a lot you should just accept.”
“Oh yeah, like what else?”
“Well, and here is what I think is the crux of the problem, you keep choosing the wrong alpha humans.”
“What?”
“You’ve got this alpha thing all wrong. Just because animals order their packs based on physical size and strength doesn’t make it so for humans. We do it because we are simple. You do it because you are thoughtless. That’s what we, and I think it is fair to say I am speaking for all animals, don’t get. Humans are able to think things through. But they never do. Well, that’s not completely true; some have but they are mocked or marginalized.
An alpha dog barks and gets all puffy, like that wacky shepherd Sarge from around the block. The worst he can do is break out of his electronic fence and charge one of us. But you humans take it up a notch.”
“Can you give me a for instance?”
“God there are so many. Let me see. Okay, you’ve elected a president who pounds his chest and walks around like a gorilla with its arms all out to the side, all tough and all, carrying on with ‘bring it on’. When he jumps the fence, he brings tanks and bombs and humans loaded down in weapons and in body armor. Meanwhile, you have alpha males all over the place, flexing their muscle in their packs, threatening to obtain nuclear weapons, the great equalizer, giving the president one excuse after another to hop the fence. It’s nuts. And I for one am telling you, you’ve got it all wrong.”
“Well, I don’t know what to say.”
“You don’t need to say anything. Just start picking the right alpha humans; humans whose visions see beyond fighting, whose hearts hold no grudges, whose thoughts and reasons are not the products of testosterone, whose collective knowledge is rooted in the concept that true peace is never the consequence of war but the outcome of constant learning, negotiating and adjusting.”
“This is what you want to tell me? Nothin’ for nothin’ but it’s a little heavy for a little chat with a dog at 3:30 in the morning.”
“In a nut shell, yeah.”
It was hard to accept this from my beagle. I mean, he’s a dog; a sleeping, eating, sniffing, crapping dog. I was chalking this whole episode up to stress. I was apparently snapping.
“That’s it. I’m pretty much done. Just one last thing while I have the chance.”
“What? World hunger? String theory?” I asked sarcastically.
“You get the right alpha humans and the world hunger thing will take care of itself, smart ass. As far as string theory, who do you think I am, Hawking? I’m just a dog. No it’s more pedestrian than that, something I think you can manage.”
“Then what, already?” I asked impatiently.
“You know that thing you do occasionally where you empty the dish washer in the buff.”
“Ummm … yeah I guess.”
“Put some clothes on. It’s disturbing. I’m beggin’ ya, please!”
“All right, but only if you lick your privates in private.”
“I’ll see what I can do. No promises.”
“So this is it? No more talking? You know we could make a fortune on Letterman with his stupid pet tricks.”
“It’ll never happen. You see, this is a one time deal. Not sure why or how this is happening. Maybe that God guy is involved somehow. All I know is that when it is done, it is …” He abruptly stopped talking.
“Parker?”
Not a grunt. He yawned and as he did he stretched his front legs out and spread across the foot of the bed, his ears resting flat on the blanket.
“Parker … are you done? Is that it?”
He slowly closed his eyes and floated off to sleep.
“Parker … just like that?”
He began to twitch; in hot pursuit of a fox I imagined.
“Holy smokes. I must be dreaming myself.”
I curled back down under the safety of my covers, scratched my butt and thought about the conversation I had just had with Parker or myself or both. I sniffed the air. It smelled fine to me. What the heck was he talking about, ‘danger in the air’? It had to be a dream.
As I drifted off to sleep, I thought about getting a real job real soon, apparently this writing stuff was getting the best of me. I also made a point to remember to talk to the owners of that crazy cairn terrier. I thought it was the least I could do. One can’t be too dismissive of the unexplainable these days.
This article was written by humorist Robert Crane. Please visit his popular and free website for a lot more of the same.
http://www.cranelegs.com
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