Bay

There's a bloodhound that lives within half a mile of my house, which means that sometimes I know when he's throwing back his head and letting his ears flop around as he lets loose that noise from the deepest part of his chest that only bloodhounds can make. The sun is bright, but with a rim of clouds on the horizon that lets me know we live in Pittsburgh and a storm will break at any moment. The rest of the dogs on the block go wild after just one bay from the hound, and they try as hard as they can to get that long-wave sound to happen.

I imagine him trotting back into the house, satisfied with sending everyone into a frothing rage with just one bellow, and going back to sleep.

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25 April 2014 12:14

The Sneak

As I approached the intersection, I saw the scruffy terrier tailing the woman and yapping as she crossed the street. Instead of crossing with her, it stayed in the bike lane, inscribing tight circles just short of cutting into traffic, and then I realized it did not belong to the woman.

It had the good sense to get out of the road and onto the sidewalk when I got close, but I already pulled over and crouched down to say hello. It was collared, but unleashed, and displeased with my attempt to present some formalities. I set aside my bike and started taking off my gear, knowing that lots of dogs don't know what to do with bicycles or helmets, but by then it was already streaking across a series of lawns.

It seems that at least every couple of months, I find a rogue unattended dog somewhere and end up corralling it until I'm convinced it's back in the hands of its people. The first time I encountered a pup on walkabout, I didn't catch up to it fast enough, and saw missing dog posters go up for that same dog later that day. I contacted the owners with a timestamp and heading, and they said it was consistent with the rest of their data points. They never did find that dog after it was spotted heading towards the woods way out of town, and I don't think I've yet forgiven myself for giving up on that chase.

The terrier I followed slipped through a doggy door on some front porch and resumed loudly protesting my existence from their living room window. I concluded that this was a dog that occasionally failed to resist the urge to take off and chase strangers down the block, but knew about going home eventually, so I went back on my way.

It wasn't until much later that it occurred to me that stray dogs might be savvy enough to know about doggy doors, and I have no proof that this dog ended up in its own house; that's someone else's problem now.

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15 April 2014 22:50

Beaz

The dog is clearly privvy to information I am not, for all the times she stops and plants her feet and refuses to look in the direction we'd like her to walk. Quietly, with ears flat, she protests our direction, frustrated by our inability to understand what is so obvious to her. We cajole and encourage and drag her along because she needs to learn to trust our decisions, and because dogs are not emotionally equipped to make decisions on their own.

She understands how to walk through a room full of cables snaking across the floor without uprooting anything, and despite a furiously wagging tail, I have never known her to knock things over. She doesn't drool, lick, chew, or touch anything we didn't ask her to, and picks up her feet carefully to skip out of the way of a tangling leash. Sometimes, I know she is ruining me in terms of expectations of intelligence and self-awareness in a dog; soon, she will return to her usual home and leave me wondering what can possibly go on in her head.

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15 March 2014 16:47