Dog Dreams
At 3:58 AM, my dogs start making increasingly urgent noises in their garage suite. The barking is incongruous to my still bedroom and the faint LED display: Three. Five. Eight. I go downstairs to chastise, though the form nowadays is subtle. I talk to them with body language. A slow, pained gait; a breathy exhale; exhausted relaxation of the shoulders; a wry flat-mouthed look (the one which once prompted my oldest daughter to say: “I don’t like that face”) -all conveying my intense disappointment; my chief dog-rearing corrective: shame.
When I get to the garage, they are in a lather. They double down, erupting, pleading the urgency of the pre-dawn menace outside. They are sufficiently convinced of their righteousness I open the door and they bolt like leaves before a hurricane fly; only louder.
I follow outside in the wake of their haste and sound, momentarily drafted into the night. Then darkness and silence rush back in, sealing the space broken by their pell mell. I hear Kima far downriver, unmistakable in her hound bark; baritone, adamant, faintly psychotic.
I walk back inside disconcerted; the same vague fear that comes when my children are away, when something precious and innocent is beyond the bell of protection. In the amount of time it takes to brew a cup of coffee the dogs do come back; individually, slowly, embarrassed.
First, Raven with spittle flecked in unlikely places, her ears, her chest, her back. Her tongue is so long -her effort so extreme -when she runs, it bounces like one of those karaoke balls tracking a song’s rhythm along a line of lyrics; silent spit music rejoicing in time to her heaving huge lungs. When she runs, she unwinds and coils, an effortful spring, churning, splashing. She rolls her eyes up at me, aware of her empty-handedness and its dissonance with her earlier urgency; flops in the kitchen where her body heat fogs a little wet corona on the floor, glistening dully in kitchen light already diminished by dawn.
Second, Scout, wet with dew, bustling, even after his sprint. Like Raven, he seems aware he has nothing to show for his earlier guarantee of a menace in the cloud-broken, full-moon predawn. He tries to skirt around me to the front door and I beckon him with a small sound. His gate changes with his angle of approach; both oblique, hedging. I feel along his body, look in his mouth. Everything is flushed, winded, intact. He leans into even this vaguely clinical touch, closing his eyes and savoring.
Last, Kima, my shelter hound, redbone red, ornery. When she arrives, I am waiting at the front porch, with coffee. My hands are wet and smell like my dog-morning: turned earth, decayed leaves, river water, coffee. There is a bell of light from the front porch; she appears at its edge without a sound, casual, muscular, reluctant to leave the romance of the night. She is a russet dog on a dark night: powerful, big, confident. She strolls like she is the baddest thing out there, reluctant to leave her heart-surging night run for the old couch in the garage. It turns out, she does want to come inside but as she leaves the darkness and rounds into form, I can see her reluctance is tangible as well; her rear quarter is covered in thick, black schmutz.
As she draws near, it’s clear she has rolled in a gigantic pile of poop. The amount stuck to her is prodigious; she is visibly proud. I beckon her over to a garden hose and spray her clean, wondering about the amount and origin of her coverage. Animals’ bowels release when they are in mortal fear. I wonder if she wasn’t chasing something big -like a bear or an elk -which eliminated on the run. Maybe she rolled in this mess as a sort of consolation prize, while retracing her steps home after the chase. She is unleashed and still as I spray her off, proud of herself but indifferent to being cleaned. I make a sound turning off the hose and she trots off to the garage, to her worn couch and the continuation of her grey lit dreams.
