Born to Bark (33 page)

The following evening Joan seemed to be in a good mood, so I started to present some ideas that I hoped she would like and that might also be therapeutic.

“You know, Joannie, I’ve just about finished paying off the mortgage on the farm, and since the little shack is falling down, I thought that we might think about building a proper house out there. We could stash the amount of money equivalent to our regular mortgage payments in a bank account and over a few years we could use those funds and my book royalty payments to start work on it. It will be a bit of a shoestring budget, since I don’t want to take out loans and be in debt again. That means that you would have to organize the construction and planning to keep us within our resources.”

Joan’s eyes lit up, and that sweet smile that I had been missing recently returned to her face.

“I could do that,” she said. “The adult education program here in the city has all kinds of courses on home design, contracting, and other construction-related stuff. Most are given in the evenings and they’re not very expensive. That could be fun.”

Since she was in a good mood, I broached the idea of bringing another dog into the house.

“Joannie, I’ve also been thinking about the problems that you’ve been having with Flint. I think that one of the reasons that he gets into trouble is that he is bored and is simply looking for something to amuse him. I think that a puppy might help to keep him busy and out of trouble.”

Joan was now staring at me with saucer-wide eyes, but I continued.

“Remember that when we got him, I told you that when he was around five years old, I wanted to add another dog to the house, and Flint is—”

I never got to finish that line of thought, since Joan interrupted in a voice that sounded a full octave higher than her usual tone of voice.

“I won’t have another terrier in my house!”

“I promise that it won’t be another terrier.”

“If we get another dog, it has to be the opposite of Flint in
every way. It has to be quiet. It has to be loving. It should not be destructive, or chase glints of light or tufts of lint, and it should act like a normal dog. I don’t even want a dog that looks like him! No pricked ears, no carrot-shaped tail, no hard coat!”

“I promise that the next dog we get will not be at all like Flint,” I said as I grabbed Flint’s leash and told Joannie that I had an errand I had to do. I was really dashing out of the house before Joan could think up a set of counterarguments against our acquiring a new puppy. I already knew that I wanted a Cavalier King Charles spaniel, a very affectionate breed, and I had been gathering information with the idea of getting a second dog for over a year. However, I would not mention the new pup again in front of Joan until it was a reality.

As we walked down the front steps, I found myself smiling and said to Flint, “Well, it looks like you’re going to get a new brother.”

“Great,”
came the response in a particularly silly voice.
“It might be nice if you got us a cat at the same time so that I could teach him how to chase it.”

Wiz
.

Joannie began to immerse herself in courses and books that would allow her to design and build our farmhouse within the limits of our budget while Flint continued to find ways to unravel her emotionally.

Flint’s newest obsession was shoelaces. My guess is that it all started with long shoelaces that flap about when people walk and are commonplace on runners or other soft shoes. These, like fringes, probably triggered Flint’s hunting instincts. Instead of chasing and attempting to bite at a shoelace in motion, which could be dangerous because he could get kicked in the process, he adopted a catlike stealth strategy. Flint would wait until people were quietly sitting at a table and then surreptitiously creep forward until he was next to a shoe. Then with the dainty and precise movements that one
might expect of a neurosurgeon, he would use his teeth to gently untie the shoelace without attracting the wearer’s attention. Once undone, the two strands of laces were stretched out in front of the shoe, and he would move on
to the next closest shoe. If, perchance, the laces were tied using a knot that was not easily undone, he did not worry at it, but rather proceeded to look for an easier target. Since Joan usually wore runners around the house, and since she usually tied her laces into a simple bow that could be easily undone by pulling on one or the other loose end, her shoes were often the objective of his sneak attacks.

Neither of us noticed Flint’s new pattern of behavior at first, although Joan did complain once or twice that modern shoelaces must be made of some new material that is more slippery, since her laces were coming undone so frequently. I had found my own laces untied a couple of times and had simply switched to a more secure type of knot even though I had no idea why they were loosening. Of course, there is nothing terrible about untied shoelaces, unless you stand up and one of your feet happens to be standing on the shoelace from the other foot, in which case you can easily st
umble and lose your balance. This had happened to Joan a few times, but fortunately each time she was next to a table that she was able to grab and prevent herself from falling.

I discovered that Flint was doing the untying one day when I wandered out to the kitchen to refill our coffee cups and on returning noticed Flint lying on his belly under the table and very gently pulling at Joannie’s shoelace. My immediate urge was to stop him with a loud, “Flint, no!” but that would have alerted Joan to his latest example of misbehavior. So instead I simply mentioned to her that her laces were untied and then set myself the task of thinking about some kind of solution to the problem that I could devise without her knowledge of my dog’s newest set of misdemeanors.

Later that afternoon, I went to a pet supply house and purchased a bottle of an odorless product that claimed that it could deter pets from chewing or mouthing anything that it was sprayed on. It did warn that the product, although quite safe, tasted quite noxious, so users should avoid getting it on their
hands and also be sure that it had fully dried before handling things treated with it.

That night, after Joan had gone to sleep, I rounded up all her shoes that tied with laces and then sprayed the shoelaces until they were thoroughly saturated with this deterrent liquid. I then replaced her footwear in its usual place and went to bed.

The following morning was a Sunday, and I often try to make a special breakfast on Sundays. This morning it was freshly baked biscuits with butter and a variety of cheeses, served with a Louisiana-style coffee with a hint of chicory. I have to be careful preparing food like this because Joannie’s sense of taste is much more sensitive than mine, and just a pinch too much chicory could easily have made the coffee too bitter for her. Joan came to the breakfast table dressed in jeans and T-shirt, wearing her favorite pair of running shoes. I smiled because I knew that her laces w
ere quite safe. I wished that I could see Flint’s reaction when he first took the noxious-tasting shoelace in his mouth and wondered how many times he would return to try again before giving up.

I poured our coffee and watched Joan break open a biscuit with her fingers. She dabbed on some butter and inserted a piece of cheese. It pleased me to see her enjoying something that I had made especially for her. However, as she bit into it her face took on a look of true disgust.

“Ugh!” she said. “What is wrong with these biscuits? They taste awful!” She spat the half-chewed piece into her paper napkin and then grabbed my napkin and used it to wipe her tongue. She then dashed for the sink, quickly filled a glass with water, swished a mouthful of it, and spat it out. She repeated this process several times, accompanying the performance with sounds like “Ack,” “Yuk,” and “Blah!” along with several rounds of mopping her tongue with a paper towel until whatever she was tasting faded away.

I quickly sampled a bit of the biscuit on my plate and it was
fine. Then it dawned on me. Perhaps her newly treated shoelaces had not been quite dry when she put them on today. If that were the case, then some of the dog-repellant compound could have transferred onto her fingers when she tied her shoes. Since I knew that she came directly from dressing to the table, it was likely that some of that noxious-tasting compound might still have been on her hands. I like to use a muffin tin to make biscuits since it gives them some shape and they come out a bit more moist. The biscuit was fresh from the oven, hot and steamy. The steam and even some
perspiration from her fingers could have been enough to reliquefy the compound and allow it to be transferred to the biscuit, causing it to taste bad enough to ward off even a hungry dog, let alone a woman with very sensitive tastebuds.

My problem now was how could I get Joan to clean her hands without revealing what I had done and in the process opening the issue of a new pattern of misconduct by Flint? I quickly improvised—to be more accurate, I quickly devised a string of lies to cover for my dog (and me).

“Oh, I used an old sack of flour, from the back of the cupboard for the biscuits. I thought that it was okay, but maybe somehow it had gone bad or rancid. We have a new unopened sack. I’ll make you a new batch of biscuits. Could you wash the muffin tin for me while I mix them up?”

Joan tossed the offending bit of food into the trash can and went to the sink to clean the muffin tin that I used when I made biscuits. “Use lots of soap and water to make sure that there is no residue that might flavor this batch,” I added.

I watched her run soapy water over the muffin pan and in the process over her hands, removing any trace of dog-repellant from her fingers. Rather than waste the perfectly good first batch of biscuits, I quietly set them aside to be Flint’s dinner. Joan agreed that the second batch of biscuits tasted fine. My secret dog behavior modification scheme remained undetected
and Flint avoided having another item added to my wife’s growing list of his delinquencies. The noxious-tasting compound did work, because the epidemic of untied shoelaces disappeared from our lives, but I never got to see Flint’s reaction to the foul-tasting shoelace. I was quite sure, however, that Joannie had acted out a very creditable version of what his response must have been when she encountered the repellant-tainted biscuit.

The shoelace incident convinced me that I had best get that second dog quickly before Flint invented another form of misbehavior that would get Joan to focus on him again. The dog I felt that Joannie needed had to be a kind of “love sponge,” emotionally supportive and loveable in a way that Flint would never be for her. This fit the description of a Cavalier King Charles spaniel, which is a toy breed. Although very popular in the United Kingdom, the breed was then relatively unknown in North America.

Small companion dogs have been around for a long time. The dog I was hoping to get first made its appearance in sixteenth-century England, and is recorded as being a “spaniell gentle, otherwise called
Comforter.”
These little dogs were favorites of the British Royal House of Stuart—Charles II in particular.

Tradition has it that Charles kept one or two of his dogs with him at all times. One day, as the king was about to enter the House of Lords, the Sergeant at Arms informed him that the dogs could not accompany him. “Only lords may enter, my liege” he stated. The king promptly issued a decree conveying a hereditary title upon his dogs, making all of their breed members of the peerage. Not only does that entitle them access to the House of Lords, but also to all public and government places. Also, in theory since the decree has never been revoked, if a Cavalier King Charles span
iel were to scratch at the gates of Buckingham Palace, by tradition, it must be granted entry.

These dogs became so popular among the aristocracy and prosperous families that that were casually referred to as “royal spaniels.” They appear in numerous paintings spanning the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries, and were the subjects of such well-known artists as Titian, Van Dyck, Gainsborough, and Reynolds, among others. Over time they began to be considered more of a lady’s dog. To emphasize that role, they were crossed with pugs and some other toy breeds to produce a smaller dog with a dome-shaped head, low-set ears, a much shorter muzzle, and a pushed-up nose. This is the bree
d that is currently known as the English toy spaniel in the United States and as the King Charles spaniel elsewhere.