Dog Days Are Over

A little love letter to dogsitting

Every day out the door is a new adventure for you. Each step you take holds within it a possibility, an everything all at once, waiting to burst like the teeth of zippers on jeans too intimate with skin. You bring us to squirrels with peach seeds in their mouths; to robins hopping along the grass on their reptilian feet; to stray humans, walking or jogging, in and out of our line of sight. Whatever it is, at any time of day, the movements of the moment go fully noticed. We walk our well-worn routes, zipping and trotting and bumbling along in search of the forlorn in the familiar.

Something snaps—a twig, crumbled blades of grass, self-control. You bolt like lightning after the culprit: an empty-handed squirrel. I hold on and think of how envious monks must be of your dogged focus. Nothing escapes the laser of your nose, that porous interface with which you give shape to your world. You’re a subject of impulse, but I want to believe there is intention behind your eyes too. You bring me here after all. While I sift in and out of total awareness around the clock, you swim in the constant stream of the present.

Another dog has your gaze, a pup as appealing as a bone. The barking begins, self-consciousness churns. She’s not mine! I’m just her sitter! I pull you aside to quiet you down, but your eyes are fixed. There’s tension on the leash. You want to smell him, assess if he’s a threat, feel out his vibe. Every muscle is contracted, primed to lunge. It’s control and restraint versus freedom and desire. We move into the graveyard that prohibits dogs. The tracks here are quieter.

Back in the apartment you tease me with your chew toy, pretend to yield it only to yank it away at the last second. I grab it after chasing you for awhile and pull you into a hold. Both of us are feral when we wrestle, though your bites are nips, a pearly kind of playfulness. It astounds me, your ability to discern rough-housing from danger. You could bite my face off if you wanted, and the urge in me to strike back is strong, enlivening, animalistic. Your teeth hit me like a shot of adrenaline, filling me with the energy to crush you like a candy cane—but I grit my own and hug you instead. In the minutes it takes me to make a coffee, you’re already out cold by the foot of my work desk.

I look at you in your sleep and remember: once, you pooped three times in a single walk. Only two of the loads ended up in trash bins—I didn’t have enough poop bags on me. Your third proceeded to live rent-free on the corner of some poor soul’s lawn. This is bad etiquette, I know. But we marched on. Guilt can’t morph into shame without any witnesses. You were holier than me: you kept turning your head back. I lean down to kiss the top of your head, and you kiss me back on the ear. Love is dealing with your shit.