The Best Friend of Man

Martin came home early today. He left at the normal time, right in the middle of my favorite dream, and woke me up as normal, to throw me outside and then yell at me to come back inside. Having gulped down a small, tall bowl of weird smelling bean soup, he turned on his stinky wheel-box and disappeared. So I wandered over to my bed, laid down, and waited for his return, where he would probably yell at me, throw a few things, put one bowl of food upside down into my bowl, and then lay on his own bed, the one I wasn’t allowed on because of the pillows, and look depressingly at an ever-changing window. He usually smelled of beer at that point too.

            But as I was settling into my first nap of the day, the smell of benzene hit my nose. Then the rumble of the house as something pulled into the driveway shook me awake. The door slammed. Martin walked through the doorway; rather upright and not reeking like cheap alcohol. He fell onto his bed, laid his head on the side and looked at me. He turned on his beloved window, pulled out a strange black box from his trusty brown box that always accompanied him to work. That one also had a window that projected blue light on his face. Then it became clear. The work must have fired him, and so he was going to work from home. It would be no different than normal.  

            I stood up, stretched, and turned around. I set my head on one of the pillows. He didn’t notice, so I whined a little bit. That made his head turn and look down at me.

            “Not now little buddy,” he said. “I’ve got a lot to do right now. Workers might be stuck here but that means in no way that there isn’t work to do.”

            I whined some more, to no avail, so I laid back down on my bed, and went to sleep.

            I got up around dinnertime, found food in my bowl, and eventually ate. Martin was his window-bed as usual, I supposed, but he stunk as if he had only laid there since his return home. That was highly alarming. He needed to take his daily walk, or at the very least, go outside. I got up and nuzzled him a little bit. He stirred, waking up from the light sleep that comes from boredom alone. After a few minutes he stood up, and looked at me peculiarly.  

            “Don’t you have a bone you could go chew on? Why bother me now, when I had just started my restful nap?”

            I went and found the bone he had mentioned, and brought it to him. It had been at least two weeks since we’d last played, and if he was going to spend time at home, it could at least be with me. I was able to outmaneuver him and thus fit the bone on the bed, where he chucked it off in some direction.  

            “Well, go find it!” he said. “It’s out there, just waiting for you to catch it.”

            So I bounded off and found the poor bone. This time, when I brought it back to the bed, I was outmaneuvered, so I dropped it on the floor and sat down, expectantly looking at him, panting with excitement.

“Not again,” he said, picking up and tossing the bone, his enthusiasm obviously dropping with each coming second.  

I bounded off, hoping to convince him that this activity was worth his time and energy, found the bone, retrieved it, and set it on the cushion of the bed.  

“Louis, I don’t want to. It’s not your fault, I’m just too tired.”

He had just woken up. He couldn’t be tired. So I bent down, both to stretch and to be playful, and waited for the bone to go flying. It didn’t. I used my nose to determine that the bone was still there, and tried to steal it. Martin did nothing to try to stop me, so it ended up in my possession without any struggle. I gave it to him again, hoping desperately that he would accept. But it stayed in the place where I had set it, simply ignored instead of being thrown. I took the bone again, and set it down on my bed, and chewed undramatically as the light window Martin so loved showed its always-changing scenes of the outside.

            The night gave me a completely restful sleep, excluding the intermittent blue light from the ever-changing window, for I was not woken up in the wee hours of the morning to be kicked into the outside cold. When I did wake up, to brilliant morning sunshine, Martin was also awake, slumped over the little table in the kitchen. I stretched, yawned, and wandered over to him. He was mumbling something incoherent, a half empty glass of water set in front of him. Loudly sitting down caused him to look up.

            “What can I even do? There is nothing for me now. There is no more work to do. I…, ” he paused, seeing me. It brought no real change about him, but he continued with a different set of incoherent words.  

“What do you even want? I have nothing to give you, nothing for you.”

He put his head back on the table. It must have been comfy there. I stood up, my stomach rumbling slightly. Not enough to cause real hunger, but I was made aware that it had been a few hours since the last mealtime. Thus I found my bowl, and sat down next to it. Martin didn’t lift his head for its comfortable spot on the table. Looking at my bowl, and judging its weight poorly, I set my mouth around the edge and gave a big lift. It slid a little, but that was nothing my years of chewing couldn’t handle. With a grunt I moved it from the corner it usually occupied all the way over to the table, and set it down before Martin. Set it down from an inch and a half above the floor so he noticed. It was durable enough to withstand the fall, as a bold cat had tested years before, but Martin jumped up, ready to defend his house from that noise. Finding that it came from me seemed to disappoint him.  

“I already fed you today.”

The boldness of that lie. He knew very well that he had not opened the silver sealed bowl of delicious puppy eats for the day. I grumbled.

“I told you buddy, I’ve already given you food for today.”

The lies started to hurt, for he believed them far too much. It was time to up the stakes. I barked.

“No. You ate. Go lay down somewhere. You’ve had enough care today.”

I nudged my bowl and barked again.

“You stupid dog! I told you that you ate! What don’t you understand? Go outside!”

I whimpered. He was starting to scare me.

“You are causing only problems, distracting me from my work, that is actually important, unlike feeding you for the second time today!”

Had he not just said that he had no work, respective of the fact that there was nothing for him? I dared not turn, lest something unwanted hit me, but I backed into the kitchen, placed myself in front of the cabinet that held my food, and sat down.

            “You!” He stood up. We were finally getting somewhere. He walked over, opened the cabinet, and said, “See?”

            Yet then he looked himself, only to find that there was, in fact, the exact bowl I knew should have been there. He looked surprised.

            “Oh god… what have I done? I’d forgotten to feed my dog… How do...”

            I just stood there patiently, as I still wasn’t very hungry, while the food came out of the bowl into mine.

            “There you go buddy. Guten Appetit.”

            He went back to the table, letting his head resume its favorite spot. Not really wanting to eat, I sat by Martin, and put my head in his lap. He sat up enough for me to take more space on his lap, and he gently pet me.

            “Did you even want the food I just gave you?” he asked.

            Of course not. I just let my tail wag a little bit.

            “Buddy, why did you put me through that then?”

            He got up, gently pushing my head out of the way, and went back to his bed. I fetched my bone as I followed. He laid on his bed, unable to even turn the blue window on. I gave him the bone. He took it reluctantly, and tossed it only a few feet. I retrieved it. Brought it back, and he took it again, more readily this time. We repeated this cycle a few times, until he sat up to throw. Then I started putting in my energy. I felt the excitement that had been brewing boil out of me and I bounded around the house. He smiled at me every time I brought the bone back. Until the time he threw it, and when I returned to the bed he was gone. He’d disappeared.

Thankfully, after a minute of pure terror, he returned through the kitchen doorway, my favorite leash in hand.  

            “Shall we go on a walk?” he asked.