Dog talk: Animal Communications Dept.

Dear Cary,

I met an animal communicator a few years ago, read the books she recommended on the subject, and was surprised to get verifiable results with several different creatures. (“Tell Carl I need my green ball, please,” and “The full moon is in three days.”)

Now I am running out of things to talk about with my main communicatee, a dog. Do you have suggestions?

Veronique 

Dear Veronique,

Yes, I have a few suggestions for topics. I would prefer, however, to direct my questions to the dog. In this case, a certain standard poodle with whom I talked quite a bit over the years. There were several things I never got to ask her,.

Some questions seemed too personal to ask, possibly insulting. Maybe that’s why I didn’t bring them up. (Speaking of “bringing things up,” that’s a turn of phrase one should not use when talking about dogs; it “brings up” too many disgusting associations.)

For instance, on Saturday afternoons writers would come over to the house and we would sit in a big circle and write together in the living room. (Gee, since we sold that house and moved to Italy I miss those dogs and I miss that living room.) But we’d be sitting there concentrating on our work, our minds going who knows where, our secret lives being played out silently on paper, and then, she’d have lain down somewhere nearby, and a smell would reach us, a fart that burns your eyes, a fart as acrid as pepper spray or a chemical fire. You’d have to get a drink or splash water on your face. I always wondered and never asked: Was it something she would eat?

As you can see, some of these questions would rude if asked of another human, so maybe that’s what made me hesitate. For instance, I would love to have said to her at times, what is it with your arrogance? You walk around like you own the place. Are you descended from royalty or just a royal bitch? Were you the queen of Luxemburg in a former life? I mean, she was nice about it and all but we knew she felt superior to us and our kind, and at times it ticked me off so much I would hide her ball. And just watch her walking around looking for it pretending not to care. For hours.

I mean, I’ve got a million questions. What’s the thrill in rolling over the carcass of a dead seal? What the hell was that all about? And another thing: In a fight between a standard poodle and a raccoon, why did she think she could take him?

For an animal smart enough to do our taxes every year, she showed little understanding of the importance chewing food. If a gopher tastes so good, what’s the point of swallowing it whole? You spend forty-five minutes staring at a hole waiting for one to pop up, and then forget the salt shaker and just down it like a gumdrop.

If I could talk to her now, I would especially like to know the purpose of a couple of habits she had. We would go out walking somewhere and if we ran into someone we knew, or sometimes she would pick out a stranger standing on a street corner or waiting for a bus and she would walk over and then lie down on the person’s feet. Just fall over and make herself comfortable there, like they’d known each other all their lives, like in front of a warm fire in the deacon’s parlor. She was a heavy dog, too, a big dog, but people always smiled. That was a good trick she had. I always wondered where she came up with that.

One other thing: Did she have a grudge against cocker spaniels? What had a cocker spaniel ever done to her? Or a chocolate Labrador? Was it just that they seemed so goofy and unaware, like they’d never read Thucidydes? (I haven’t either but she was highbrow.) Anyway, we used to go out to the dog park at Fort Funston in San Francisco and every now and then she would see a spaniel or a Labrador far across the dunes (Oh how I loved those walks!) and would crouch down at my feet and begin crawling like an infantryman going lizard-like under barbed wire, and then with a burst of speed she would erupt into a full gallop, all eighty pounds of her, and launch herself straight into the rib cage of the unsuspecting Labrador, full-on broadside, and send the Labrador tumbling, airborne, like a cyclist hit by a minivan. This did not endear her to other owners. Generally it made people mad and could have gotten us banned if she weren’t so darned lovable and charming the rest of the time.

I never did get to ask her: What was the friggin’ point? By the time I wanted to ask, I was already carrying her into the vet’s office and that was that.

Maybe if you are talking to some dogs you could ask them about that, if they knew her, or other dogs who did the same things. They share lots of habits but then each dog has certain tricks they like to keep to themselves. Maybe you will run across a dog who knew her and get some insight. If you do, let me know. My wife and I would both like to know. We haven’t really closed the book on that poodle. We probably never will.