Every once in a while you tell people you’re looking for dog anecdotes and they really come through for you. Don’t you find that’s true?
For example, we were having dinner with our new friends Cary and Val the other night and I said I wrote for a dog newspaper and they told me about the little dog who introduced them. Quite a story. Cary is an introspective middle-aged writer of short fiction. He’s not exactly a lady’s man, though I suppose you could say he was moderately good-looking (due largely to women’s mercifully lax standards on what constitutes handsomeness – thank the gods!).
Several years ago, he was walking down a street in Pt. Reye’s Station when he saw a tall brunette walk out of Cowgirl Creamery. She was so beautiful that it stopped him in his tracks. In fact, he said, he felt slightly dizzy and needed to sit down. Because this wasn’t just a fleeting attraction, it was fate, and as fate would have it he crumpled onto a bench next to a little black dog who had been tied to it by its owner, who was nowhere to be seen.
Normally, Cary might have just let the moment pass and then one day years later written a short story full of pathos, of roads not taken and opportunities lost, blah blah blah. But this time there was a quiet voice in his head that said, “Just do something.” What did he do? He offered the little black dog a piece of his croissant. The rest is history. The dog was his instant best friend and Cary ran with it.
When Val was about to pass his bench she noticed the pooch and said, “Oh! What a cute dog. Is he yours?”
“Me, um, yes,” Cary said.
“What’s his name?”
“Oh, um, her name is Inky.”
Like a pro, Inky started licking Val’s hand, and Cary said he could have adopted her on the spot. What commenced was a sweet conversation about how Inky’s soft exterior hid the fact that she was a ferocious rat dog. He shared how her previous owner, a local rancher, was saved from an angry bull by Inky and a few of her yappy littermates. (Did I tell you that Cary is a fiction writer?)
The conversation ended soon after he told Val how much Inky enjoyed catching mini-discs. Val said her dog liked catching discs, too, and so Cary suggested a play date and was rewarded with an email address. At that point, Cary knew he was in like Flynn because he is the Cyrano de Bergerac of emailers.
Val walked on just before a big burly dude with a furry biker beard sauntered up and said, “Cute dog, is it yours?”
Inky’s happy wriggling told Cary that this was her real owner. “Mine?” he chuckled. “Oh no, I’m just teaming up with her to meet girls.”
“HIM, Bruiser’s a him,” the burly guy blurted.
“My mistake.”
“Hey, you haven’t been feeding him that croissant, have you? He’s not allowed to eat simple carbs.”
“I would never do such a thing,” Cary answered solemnly.
Cary confessed his sins to Val before their first date, and it’s been an amicable and honest relationship to this day. Huzzahs to all good-natured little black dogs and to all good dog stories.
Herb Canine is one of writer/musician Tad Toomay’s many alter egos. Get acquainted with the others at www.tadtoomay.com.
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