Across the room, my enormous dog, Cassidy, a bloodhound/Rottweiler mix, snores on his gross round pad that stinks like he does. When I start to move around, Cassidy stands up, does a gigantic downward dog stretch, and shakes his head. His floppy black ears slap back and forth against his head and his dog tags jingle with a flat metallic sound. At 10 years of age, this 106-pound pooch is an old man, and his routines are very important to him. “It’s 6:00. Time for dinner,” the high-pitched groan from the back of his throat announces. He rears up, and puppy-like, lifts his ridiculously large front paws into the air in gleeful anticipation of the grandest event of the evening.
Garcon, a Jack Russell terrier runt, whose head is the size of one of Cassidy’s paws, notices Cassidy’s cues and looks at me with intelligent-eyed anticipation, perking his perfectly triangular ears as high as they’ll go. I give in. I’m a sucker for the eager pleading of brown dog eyes, be they large or small.
I stand and squeal, “Is it time for . . . DINNER?!” Garcon comes to his feet, quivering with hope. Cassidy snuffles through folds of bloodhound-baggy face flesh and begins to prance. I love to get them riled up with excitement, so I say it again: “Is it time for . . . DINNER?!”
Garcon races in a blur to the top of the stairs. Cassidy, usually terrified of the ferocious terrier monster, forgets himself and barrels past Garcon, heading down the stairs. (Literally—his huge square skull almost drags him headfirst to a heap at the bottom of the stairs, claws clattering on the wood all the way down.) Garcon, tags jingling, gracefully zips behind Cassidy, and, bullet-dog-style, runs under Cassidy’s belly and beats him into the utility room. The ritual of doggy dinner has begun.
Much to my displeasure, Cassidy’s food bag sits on top of the dryer. We haven’t come up with a good solution for where to store his voluminous stash of food since an unfortunate bloody diarrhea incident last summer that resulted from storing his food in the Texas-hot garage. Both dogs pant with anxious hope as I pull open the corner of the Advanced Protection Senior dog food bag. The brown paper packaging crinkles as I dip the big 2 ½ cup measure into the dry brown “food.” I scoop up a hefty portion of marble-sized chunks, and set the cup of lustrous food pieces on the dryer.
I turn back toward the dogs to begin the only disciplined part of this routine. “Cassidy, sit!” I say as I point to the floor behind his rear. His baseball bat of a tail beats back and forth with such fiercely happy anticipation that it shakes his whole body, so it’s hard for him to settle into sitting. So I say it again, louder and more firmly this time. “Cassidy, sit!” He sighs loudly and sits, looking up at me as if to say, “See? I’m a good boy! Right?”
I turn to Garcon and give him the same command. He’s so much smaller that he can sit and shake his whole body at the same time, so he sits immediately. Plus, he’s the smarter animal. He knows that sitting, even though it’s beneath him, will get him his dinner.
“Stay,” I say and open the door to the garage. Slamming the door behind me, I step over the recycling bin and walk toward the garage refrigerator where Garcon’s food is stored in a reasonably sized bin in the freezer. This storage plan is also due to last summer’s ugly and perilous dog digestive incident.
Both dogs’ pitiful whining vibrates through the closed door as I open the freezer. Light pours out into the garage, along with cold smoke. I pull out the bin of diet adult dog food. (Garcon fights an ongoing battle with pudginess if he eats regular food.) I dip the ¼ cup measure into the frozen bits of “food” and grab a heaping cup full. I seal the bin’s lid, load it back into the dog-food-littered freezer, and head back into the house.
I open the door and the dogs’ control rips the seams of its limits. They leap up from their sitting position and prance around, rearing, whining, panting, twirling. It’s a mayhem that I love, and I egg them on, laughing.
Cassidy faces his dish, and again it’s “Cassidy, sit.” This time he eagerly obeys and sits right away, but every muscle in his body strains forward toward the gleaming dish. I dump his chunks-o-food into the stainless steel bowl with a clang. “Goooood boy. . . . Goooood boy.” He drools. “Okay!” I say and he commences chomping loudly.
I turn to Garcon. “Okay little buddy, here we go!” We feed them in separate rooms to avoid bloodshed during a simple meal, so he eagerly follows me to the kitchen. He stands alert with every sliver of intelligent awareness engaged as I open his drawer and pull out an empty wine bottle we use as a food puzzle.
I begin to load the cold brown chunks into the neck of the bottle. The hard pellets musically drop into the glass bottle, but of course some of them “accidentally” drop to the floor. Garcon expertly races from chunk to chunk, devouring each one in an instant.
Finally the bottle is fully loaded. “Garcon, sit.” He sits immediately, yet reluctantly, his eagerness replaces with disdain. “Fine,” I can see on his face. “I’ll play your stupid little game, but know that I’m only putting up with your nonsense so I can have my food.”
I set the bottle on the floor in front of him. He looks to me for the signal. “Okay,” I whisper, and he slaps the bottle with his front paw. The glass rings as it hits the floor.
I’d tell you about his hilarious way of eating, but that’s another story.
(Written May 25, 2007)
