Bruce Cameron - The Dogs I Know

In my neighborhood, it’s best to be a dog — but isn’t that true of all neighborhoods? I never see dogs out raking leaves or fixing their screen doors. Instead, I see them wagging in ecstasy over finding an unclaimed stick: What an amazing world, there’s this stick sitting here I can just have for the taking! Want to stop raking leaves and throw it for me? Come on, don’t you want to be happy?

Probably the most overjoyed dog on the street is my neighbor Bailey, a 4-month-old golden retriever who is always so excited to see me he tries to jump from the ground to my head. As he levitates, Bailey yips and twists, and his tail wags his body all the way to his nose.

You don’t pet Bailey so much as just thrust a friendly hand into a tornado of joyful fur. After a walk around my block, you will have Bailey hair on your pants, on your shirt and in your ears.

Then there’s Dewey, a Boston terrier who puts his feet on my shins and tries to climb up my legs. Dewey likes to be scratched just above his nonexistent tail. His owner is a woman who models bikinis for a living. None of the men in the neighborhood has been able to summon up the nerve to talk to her.

“I can’t believe you stop her on her walks to chat with her and play with her dog all the time,” one guy tells me enviously.

“Who?” I ask.

“The hot woman with the little black-and-white dog,” he responds.

I realize he must be talking about Dewey. “His owner is a woman?” I reply. I’ve always been so engaged with Dewey I’ve never noticed he even had an owner. I don’t know the person or people who own Bailey, either, though I am usually conscious of someone muttering “sorry, sorry” as Bailey tackles me in the chest.

I don’t feel that I’m missing anything. I doubt the bikini model would ever be as happy to see me as Dewey is, and probably if I tried to scratch her rump she would have me arrested.

Sometimes I’ll see Ben, an old cocker spaniel who slowly walks the neighborhood in quiet dignity. Ben regards Bailey’s dervish-like locomotion with thinly disguised contempt: You’re supposed to walk with the leash limp, not seize it in your mouth and dance in circles until you become tangled and fall to the ground like a roped calf.

Ben knows something about me that the much younger Dewey and Bailey don’t: I’m Carly’s dad — Carly, an old female black Labrador with a snout covered in gray. Lately, when I run into Ben he’ll sniff me up and down carefully, and then knowingly regard me with sad, rheumy eyes. The scent of Carly has faded from my hands and clothes.

It’s been some time since Carly walked with me around the block, but I haven’t been able to bring myself to stop writing as if she were still alive, just as it has taken some time to become accustomed to eating a sandwich without her staring intently at every bite. It’s far easier to move through the world as if I still had a Lab at my side than to remember the sad fact of her passing.

That’s what dogs do — they bring us so much joy that when they’re gone the happy part of you doesn’t believe they’ve really left.

Sometimes I would catch Carly watching me as I sat at my computer, and there seemed to be some concern in her expression, a worry that without her, I’d just sit all day and rattle the keys on the keyboard, my face washed in pale light from the monitor, never having any fun. I might have been imagining it, though — she probably thought I’d be just fine in a world where every yard offered free sticks.

I’ve been thinking lately that it’s time to get another dog. I miss all that joy. So I will, one of these days. But until then, I’ll just have to content myself with the dogs of the neighborhood.

To write Bruce Cameron, visit his website at http://www.wbrucecameron.com. To find out more about Bruce Cameron and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at http://www.creators.com.

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