Canine Lifeline

The blank page stares at me, the snowy white pixels unmarred by groupings of black pixels that amount to letters. I stare back and drop my focus down to the box at the bottom of the page that says ‘zero words’. Zero. The little round empty circle. Like I need to be reminded of what my life amounts to. Zero. Empty spaces. Thanks for that I say to the word count box.

Dropping my head, I look farther down. I see my fingers poised over the keyboard in the home position. Hovering motionless but ready, I can’t seem to make them move. Fingers that should turn my thoughts into words, and words into paragraphs, are stuck on the other side of the abyss. The bridge is out. I can no longer cross.

Alone and empty in the dimly lit, quiet house, I am stuck. A writer who doesn’t write must so move on. What should I write? A narrative. A memoir or thoughtful piece like an autobiography? Nope. Too personal. If allowed to escape, the truths I keep within could ruin too many lives. A fiction story. I can create characters and depict them in situations I have faced. Give them lives like mine. But in every piece of fiction lies the grains of truth. If they know me, the reader will identify actual people upon which are based the characters in the story.

From behind me comes the tappy sound followed by a synthetic crinkle as Winnie pads across the tile floor and enters the carpeted office. I turn my chair away from the computer screen to greet her and she yawns, looks at her bed on the floor, then back at me with those hopeful and questioning eyes. She takes a seat.

“Is it time to wake up?” I ask, grateful for the interruption.

Winnie’s tail makes a stiff pass against the floor in a wagging response. Her answer is ‘yes.’

In the winter, Winnie, my pug-beagle mix, is the last one out of bed in the morning. Sometimes hunkered down under the covers, or in a tight ball surrounded by mounds and wrinkles of bedding, she can sleep until ten. Not the exact image of a hero. In the summer, we have to get up early, start our morning walk before sunup, and be back in the climate controlled interior before six am.

I stand up from my desk, stretch and reach over to turn off the lamp with my left hand as I maneuver the mouse with the right and instruct my computer to ‘sleep.’ As if I am the most interesting thing in the world, Winnie watches.

“Okay,” I continue the conversation aloud, “I have to get dressed and then we’ll go.”

Winnie’s head turns sideways when she catches the word ‘go.’ Of the millions of words I say to her, she picks out the ones that mean something. The rest she lets pass by. One of the many ways dogs are more fortunate that humans. I have a hard time letting go of the words people say. Especially the hurtful ones.

Walking down the hallway, I chat with Winnie. “We have to get an early start, you know. The sun will soon make its unrelenting presence known.”

Winnie follows behind. Past the media room and through the kitchen. When we get to the bedroom, I hear the groan of the third household occupant. Mike is not a morning person. Getting out of bed for him requires a lot of effort and comes with many annoying sound effects.

“Life is tough,” I say to Winnie. She and I have transferred our communication method from spoken words to thought exchanges so I can ‘talk’ about Mike and not hurt his feelings. “Get up, old man,” I see Winnie looking towards the bed and I add, “Maybe he’d feel better waking up tomorrow if he took better care of himself today. Hmm?”

Winnie listens but doesn’t respond. She harbors no resentful feelings towards Mike the way I do. In my defence, he never hurt her the way he did me.

“He has no resiliency.” I say to Winnie.

Still supine on the bed trying to get his tired self moving, Mike spews some more offensive sounds. Fired up and ready to start the day, I move through the room and head to the closet.

Winnie sits down in the doorway between the bathroom and the closet to supervise the dressing process. “Humans waste a lot of precious time doing things I don’t understand.” She says.

“Socks.” I say out loud, then head for the bedroom door. To Winnie, I say, “we could just slip out and go alone.”

At the back door, I grab my shoes and stoop over to put them on. Taking advantage of the proximity of my face at its closest to the floor, Winnie wags her tail and licks my nose. “Yay,” she says, “we are going for a walk.”

“Lets hope he doesn’t ask if he has time to make a cup of tea.” I say.

Winnie’s eyes drop, and she looks up the hallway. Winnie would resign herself to waiting for him if he wanted tea.

“I know you are right, Winnie,” I say when she tells me to cut him some slack. “And I am trying, but it’s just so frustrating. We are so different.”

I look up towards the ceiling, and we wait. I don’t hide my impatience, letting out a huffy sigh when Mike comes into the vestibule and reaches for his sneakers.

“You said you’re trying.” Winnie reminds me.

To honor her, I pull up some energy and attempt a conversation.

“Neighborhood?” I ask as Mike sits down to tie his laces. I give him one word. He knows what I mean.

“Yeah,” Mike responds, then stands up and trudges to the kitchen.

“What good is it?” I ask Winnie in an even bigger, silent huff. “We take our dirty shoes on and off here by the door then all he does is walk across the floor anyway?”

Laying out Winnie’s harness on the floor, she step into it and says, “Dogs don’t understand shoes.”

Since we moved into our brand new house, I have voiced my desire to keep the floors clean. It irks me Mike can’t honor a simple request to keep street shoes off when we’re inside.

I lean forward with my hands on my knees and chew to pieces the words I want to say out loud about shoes in the house.

“He’s getting my doggy water bottle.” Winnie says, defending Mike’s actions.

“He is just so unclear on the concept.” I argue. “Take off your dirty outside shoes and leave them at the door. We even have a shelf! That way the dirt stays contained. Don’t put them on, then walk across the floor. He is missing the point.”

“Forget about it,” Winnie says, wagging her tail when Mike reappears from around the corner. “Let’s go.”

Maybe I’m the one missing the point. It’s important to me to have a clean floor, but Mike doesn’t seem to care. Why sweat the small stuff, so they say. I breathe in a big swig of air, lifting my shoulders. I feel the tightness in my ribs and expand through it, then exhale, releasing all the unsaid words.

“It’s going to get hot,” Mike says.

Mike’s comment floats away into the ether. My eyes roll up to the ceiling. I say nothing.

To Winnie I say, still using our secret communication method, “Small talk? Tedious.”

Winnie seems to agree with my opinion and she checks out of her conversation with me when I open the door. As she always does when crossing a threshold between one area and another, Winnie works it for the source of odor. Winnie ventures ahead and the outside smells take control of her olfactory system, overriding her interest in me.

Mike’s obsession with small talk continues as we make our way down the driveway. “Sure wish the neighbors would finish their front yard.” He complains.

I have responded to this comment about the un-landscaped yard too many times to count. I’ve repeatedly said, “They have at least kept it weeded.” Defending them only leads to more complaints, so I’ve switched to agreement. “They could at least put down some gravel.” Mike seemed satisfied with that approach. Today I say nothing.

Winnie takes the lead on our walks, and I follow her. Looking back from time to time, she checks in to stay connected with me mentally, but follows her nose. This is the standard method of operation when she and I, as a competitive K9 detection team, go out and about.

Nose work is the game. For Winnie, the entire world might have target odor and she is always working. Though finding target odor results in a reward and praise from me, not finding odor is also valuable. Knowing where odor isn’t is just as important.

I can tell when Winnie is catching critter or canine smells by watching her and observing changes in her mood, drive, and body language. I add to my file of knowledge. The file that I access to decipher her non-verbal cues. After years together, she and I are fluent in our own private language.

From slightly behind us, Mike walks. He is mumbling about something and interrupts my focus. As we approach the corner where our court joins the main road through the subdivision, I say to Winnie, “I bet I know what he’s going to say next.”

Winnie sniffs the newly laid rocks the neighbor by the court across the street just had installed and says, “these rocks have covered over all the messages I left here for the other dogs, but I can still smell them through the spaces in between.” Then she pees.

“Good girl.” I praise her out loud for her efforts. Then, continuing the ‘guess what Mike says next’ game, I say to Winnie, “He will most likely be complaining about the house in the middle with the unfinished driveway.”

On cue, Mike says, “They need a ditch on the side to catch the runoff. I’m tired of walking through the displaced gravel from their driveway every time it rains.”

I don’t even register his comment with a response. Focusing only on my dog, I project to Winnie with sick satisfaction. “See? I was right. Negative comment.”

The rest of the way around the neighborhood, Winnie and I communicate. We joke, and I crack up. She catches an interesting smell on the left and turns on a dime. I exaggerate a fake stumble and pretend my 24lbs dog is knocking me off balance with her abrupt changes of direction. I stop to watch Winnie, nose to the ground, tracking a critter. Most likely a rabbit. I feel complete joy watching as she circles an area, spikes outward, then back in, calibrating the intensity of the odor left behind. Once she knows which direction the rabbit went, she leaves the area. My inside fills with the laughter I hear as Winnie huffs and snuffs the ground. On the outside, I barely smile. Mike doesn’t understand the bond Winnie and I have.

Mike makes some more comments about this and that. He talks about the latest request submitted to the Home Owners Association architectural committee, of which he is a deciding member, and I listen. I have no faith in the HOA since they don’t seem to enforce any of the CC&Rs anyway.

Mike complains about where this neighbor parks, or how that neighbor needs to plant more trees. I am not in the mood for the song and dance. With Winnie to be followed, I have an excuse.

“Doesn’t he notice I am concentrating on you?” I say to Winnie, trying to hear her sniffing noises. Winnie leads the walk with a clear mind, so I clear mine, too. Becoming more like my dog, I listen only for the words Mike says that may mean something.

Mike continues with brief comments here and there, nothing for which a response is required and within five minutes into the walk, I lose interest in his presence. He might as well be walking alone. I have Winnie.

Winnie is now curled up in her bed behind me as I sit back down at my desk after our walk. She has had breakfast and is ready for the rest of her morning sleep. Her rhythmic breathing soothes me, but the cursor blinking on the blank page still mocks me.

I place my elbows on either side of the keyboard on the glassy smooth surface of my desk and prop my chin on my palms-up hands. A million words try to form a thought in my head, but like the ever-expanding blank space between myself and the other person who lives in my house, the page remains empty. I turn away from my screen. No one can help me.

“One word. I said one word to him the entire walk, and it’s like he doesn’t even notice.” I say to Winnie. She opens her eyes, then closes them. “How can I write when I can’t even speak?”

I don’t cry either. The absence of tears only exposes my blocked feelings. I am blank.

In nose work, blank areas, aka searches without target odor, are valuable. In human relationships, not so much.

Never shying away from life, I have embraced the good times and the hard times, too. Knowing that wanting was less about satisfying the need for something, and more a sign of the lack of it. I contemplate. “I want a red Mustang” in translation means I don’t have a red mustang. If I can stop wanting, then I won’t remind myself of what I do not have. I shouldn’t want for anything, anyway. By most standards, I have it all.

“I want a good marriage,” when translated using the same standard, means I don’t have one. Better to focus on what I have. A good man. Financially sound, honest and fair. Intelligent, with a good sense of humor. Supportive and non-interfering regarding things about me he doesn’t understand.

Focusing on what I have is easy. I have never wanted more. Enough has always been enough. Gratitude has filled my soul, even for the smallest of things. If I’m stranded on the side of the road with a flat tire, I am filled with gratitude. “So my tire is flat.” I say, “At least it isn’t raining. At least I have Triple A roadside assistance, and they are on the way.” I account for all the things that go right and never tally the negative. There are always more things that go well than wrong.

When Winnie interrupts my thoughts, I turn to see her yawn and stretch. She maneuvers herself from her bed and goes ‘down-dog’ nearer to me so I can massage her shoulders. This is part of our routine. Keeping her butt pointed up, she remains in this position until I’ve rubbed enough to satisfy her. Then she lowers her haunches.

“Is it time for coffee?” I ask out loud.

Her tail sweeps across the carpet in response. “Yes.” She answers with those soft brown eyes.

I turn back to the desk and to my surprise, there on the screen in my word processor window are words, paragraphs. A story.

“Guess you found something to write about,” Winnie says to me as we leave the office together.

“Thanks to you,” I say to Winnie. “That’s one formerly blank space filled.”

Padding along behind me, ready to watch me make coffee and whatever comes next, Winnie says, “In time, you may fill your other empty spaces, too.”

I have no doubt she could be right.