The spouse and I were doing a little red wine reconnaissance one night at P.F. Chang’s on Bay Street in Emeryville.
When we left the restaurant we saw an old Golden Lab leashed to a pole out front. Standing nearby having a nice chat were two mall security guards. Knowing most dogs’ uneasiness around uniformed types, I wondered what would happen. The heavyset guard reached down to scratch the dog under the chin and… Goldy barely blinked an eye. “Hmm,” I thought. “A composure indicative of the breed?” But when the guy pulled out a camera phone and started showing the other guard pictures of his own beloved pooch, I understood. A dog knows a dog person a mile away – no matter what he’s wearing.
Garrison Keillor, in one of his “news from Lake Wobegon” schticks, says that when he was a boy he wrote stories about talking animals: “A family is sitting in their dining room eating their supper and their dog walks into the room and says, ‘I wish you people knew what you smelled like to me.’”
This got me thinking. There is nothing dogs like better than aromas au naturel, yet their owners are constantly marinating themselves in chemical concoctions to mask their smells. It must be confusing to Buster, who is probably thinking, “And just when their scents were starting to mature…”
It’s fortunate that god, in her infinite wisdom, rendered the languages of other species indecipherable to the human ear. That way our pets can talk behind our backs without consequence. Imagine the exchanges:
Dog: You gonna finish that Mariner’s Catch in your bowl there?
Cat: No way. Mom forgot that she already served me that flavor this month. Such a space cadet.
Dog (talking with mouth full): Picky, picky.
Cat: It’s called a discriminating palate, chow hound. I bury my poop, remember, while you sniff at the stuff like it was some kind of artisan cheese.
Dog: And you call yourself discriminating. I’m not “sniffing poop” – I’m savoring its bouquet.
Save us from Dr. Doolittle’s fate.
One of Bay Woof’s revered cartoonists, Ben Davis Jr., was visiting a cousin in Santa Barbara recently and met her miniature poodle, Sugar. Sugar, as it happens, is a big fan of Animal Planet. Other TV channels leave her cold, but “The Planet” pricks up her ears every time. So riveted is she by the action on screen that when the channel once televised a cattle stampede, Sugar went bonkers trying to get everyone in the room to run for their lives.
Apparently TV can do to dogs what it does to people – scare the be-jesus out of them. Research shows that there’s a direct link between how paranoid and socially conservative a person is and how much TV he or she watches. Too much boob tube and the dog might start thinking he needs to wear camouflage and carry an automatic weapon when patrolling the perimeter of your yard.
Hopefully some twisted cable exec will never create the Foxhound News Channel for dogs, dedicated to portraying the world as a giant pit of rabid jackals terrorizing one another endlessly.
Then again, maybe we could use television on our furry friends the way we use the cartoon channel on our kids. I can just see it – the Dog Sitting Channel, consisting of hours of canine-cam fun – dogs playing fly ball, dogs digging up bones, dog teams pulling sleds across the tundra. Instead of harassing the cat or chewing up the sofa, your dog would just sit mesmerized on the couch while you slip out for the evening.
Would be kind of embarrassing, though, to have to beg off a 6 PM dog park rendezvous with your fellow Fido-philes because that’s when Rex’s favorite shows come on.
Hey, it’s almost Thanksgiving. Time to ponder that great conundrum: Why do we love these funny, noisy, shameless, slobbery, high-maintenance, adoring, four-footed buffoons so darn much anyway? The answer, dear reader, is in the question.
Herb Canine is one of writer/musician Tad Toomay’s many alter egos. Get acquainted with the others at www.tadtoomay.com. His new CD, “Touch the Sky from Where You Stand,” is available at www.cdbaby.com.
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