Through Thick and Thin (19 page)

As a thunderstorm rages outside, a wheezing sound emanates from DB Sweeney as his partly wirehaired fur flies off him by the handful. Meredith holds him under his front two legs, trying to restrain him from his earlier endeavor of trying to climb, quite literally, right up the wall.

In
Beyond Fetch: Fun, Interactive Activities for You and Your Dog
there are a total of one hundred and nineteen activities, seven vacation tips, and sixteen craft projects. And out of all of that, out of that entire tome of doggy bonding, entertainment, and enrichment, there does not seem to be a section on what to do with your little friend when he is literally climbing the walls because the weather outside has turned inclimate. And inclimate, in his little doggy psyche seems to be the exact same thing as extremely frightful.

That gives Meredith an idea. “Oh, the weather outside is frightful,” she sings in what she hopes is a happy voice, “but the fire inside’s delightful.” Nothing.

Just to be clear, she does think
Beyond Fetch: Fun, Interactive Activties for You and Your Dog
is an excellent resource. She and DB Sweeney have tremendously enjoyed some of its suggestions, especially the ones from the section “The Best Mind Games,” which is all about indoor activities such as “Treasure Hunt,” and the slightly-to-very-embarrassing “Love Seat Game.” They keep DB Sweeney quite amused, engaged, and entertained, without even having to wander around the neighborhood. As it turns out, DB Sweeney seems to have quite an interest in fighting every large dog he sees, right down to the death. Sometimes going for long walks with DB Sweeney is not so much peaceful and bonding as it is extremely stressful. Meredith imagines many dog owners, before they were dog owners, must have looked forward to the long walks alongside their dogs. That could make her one step ahead of the game, she figures, since she never longed to be a dog owner. But couldn’t it be that it’s possible to long for something without even knowing what it is? Just in the same way she’s sometimes sure it might be possible to miss someone you haven’t met yet?

To be fair, there are five items included in
Beyond Fetch
that fall under the heading of “The Best Ways to Relax,” complete with doggie massage instructions. And it’s not as if those instructions didn’t have some merit, quite a lot really, it’s just that DB Sweeney, at present driven to despair, so immensely preoccupied with the thunderstorm, would have none of it, none of anything it seemed, least of all a misguided attempt of Meredith’s at doggie massage.

She moves on, sings a few lines of James Blunt’s “You’re Beautiful.” She’s not sure why that song—it’s really a fair amount more melancholy than it is soothing and uplifting, but then, DB Sweeney is quite beautiful. “You’re beautiful! You’re beautiful,” she repeats with what she hopes is less melancholy than James Blunt usually infuses into his lyrics. “I saw your face in a crowded place.” Still nothing.

DB Sweeney wriggles free of what might not have been to him such a soothing grasp. He gets up on his hind legs, and makes this horrible gagging sound. It’s not that he’s choking on anything, it is just a sound he makes, mostly on the aforementioned stressful walks when he passes the borzoi who lives on Sixty-seventh Street of whom he has become increasingly unfond.

Maybe it would help if she played James Blunt for him on her iPod, through the Bose speakers. Or better yet, she thinks she’ll play him his new CD,
Dog Gone Songs: Music to Soothe the Animal Spirit.
She ordered it from
Target.com
to play for DB Sweeney, just in case he had any issues with separation anxiety when she went out at night. Not that she’d really thought he would, because other than the desire to fight every dog larger than him (and when you are the approximate size of a mini dachshund, the number of dogs who are a great deal bigger than you is myriad and vast) he has always been a brilliant sage. He has never had a house-training accident, has never destroyed property, has always just stared at her wisely and assuredly, and made her feel safe. Except when he encounters something on the pavement that he finds to be especially dirty. DB Sweeney loves dirty things, and whenever he comes across them, he feels the need to pivot himself sideways and shimmy down to the pavement. This movement is apparently what he has determined as the absolute best way to smear as large a surface area of his body into whatever sidewalk disgustingness it is that he has found. Even brilliant sages have their weaknesses.

DB Sweeney stops his gagging noise and settles back down onto four legs and looks at Meredith like he would very much like her to do something, like he would like her to make him safe. And she knows, as she has known at times before, but never in this way, so completely, that it is time for her to step up.

She scrolls quickly through the iPod and selects the album
Dog Gone Songs: Music to Soothe the Animal Spirit
and puts it on, turning the volume up, but not too loud because there is quite a lot of oboe (or could be it’s bassoon) and she’s long thought that an oboe, or even a bassoon, played too loud can indeed sound quite threatening. She grabs her phone quickly and dials Dévi. They pick up on the first ring.

“This is Emily Shea,” she says quickly. “I’m sorry but I’m going to have to cancel my reservation for tonight.” They locate her reservation and thank her for calling. Next she reaches for her BlackBerry and sends off a quick joint e-mail to her two planned dinner companions for the night: she’s so sorry but something has come up and she hopes they’ll be up for a rain check in the near future to sample Indian food in the Flatiron District. E-mail, she thinks, is so much easier, so much better sometimes. With e-mail, so much more can be left unsaid; you can cancel plans without people having any idea that compared to your dog they don’t matter nearly as much.

She opens up her copy of
97 Ways to Make Your Dog Smile
, she stretches out on the floor with it, in the hopes that DB Sweeney might want to take a look at it, too. There are some good ideas in it, and some stunning pictures of very fetching dogs, too.

“Look, DB Sweeney,” she says, holding the book out to him. He has no interest. “No, look. Look, really,” she tries again. She’s no stranger to the school of If You Don’t Get the Reaction You Seek Initially, Why Not Try the Same Tactic Again. She’s taken a few classes there. And she doesn’t see why he wouldn’t like this book with all its helpful suggestions and charming pictures of adorable dogs. She likes the book; she found it, by the way, on the Internet, too. And on that, do you have any idea how many things there are on the Internet for your dog? It is a vast multitude of offerings that could truly boggle the mind. Even if your dog has already decided that he will not dress. (Well, to be truthful, Meredith decided that for DB Sweeney, but she’s pretty sure that on that topic, as on many others, they are of like minds.) There is so much stuff out there in the world to buy for your dog, from books to CDs to beds to dishes to bowls to treats to travel bags, a cornucopia of plush toys. She has purchased a few more than several plush toys for DB Sweeney, including a bear in a bee costume which she thinks is an exact replica of the busy bee the Weimariner had in the movie
Best in Show
and she gets a kick out of that, though of course she sees no similarity between the Parker Posey character in that film and her own character.

DB Sweeney loves his plush toys, he carries them around, from living room, to bedroom, to pass-through kitchen, to small square area right in front of the door, one by one, with such love and care and tenderness that Meredith is sure he thinks of them as his babies. She gathers them all up and presents them to him soothingly.

“Look, DB Sweeney, look at your babies,” Meredith coos, gently pushing a yellow duck, Daniel Duck to be specific, in his direction. He doesn’t acknowledge it at all. It looks as if his eyes are making a game attempt at rolling back in his head. She hopes he doesn’t start with the gagging sound again. It’s so unsettling, really. Upsetting could even be the right word.

“What about Vernon Vermin?” she asks, presenting what might actually be a beaver but somewhere along the way she decided looked very much like a woodchuck. “And who’s this? Is this Busy Bee?”

She moves slowly, cautiously, dragging herself on her stomach to where DB Sweeney is situated, half on the carpet, half off. She didn’t think it possible to feel so concerned, so loving, so responsible, so at a loss. She puts one hand on him, on one shoulder, he lets her. She puts her other hand out. He lets her. In one motion, one that is almost graceful, she slides him toward her, over carpet. Once she has him, she steadies herself with one hand, and in motions slightly less than graceful she gets herself and DB Sweeney up off the floor. She walks with him over to the computer and sits down at it. She goes to
Google.com
and types in
dog relax thunderstorm.
And, as you might now imagine, a tremendous number of results come up. Among them: several sites offering doggie foul-weather gear; one-on-one dog training; interestingly, a link to Target to buy
Dog Gone Songs: Music to Soothe the Animal Spirit
; one for something called G-Doga; and one for a day care and grooming place called Biscuits & Bath.

Presented with this list, confronted with the links and descriptions, the Google ads and Amazon links running up and down the sides, so many things go through Meredith’s mind. They always do.

She clicks at last on the link for G-Doga and discovers that it’s a yoga class for dogs, held weekly at the 92nd Street Y. The subtitle says,
Doggie and Me Yoga.
The animated words
Zen
,
Relaxation
,
Stress Release
,
Thunderstorm Consolation
,
Peace
, and
Freedom
jump out at her from a lavender wallpaper. She clicks; the class meets on Wednesday nights. Granted that is a work night, but there’s something about it, and she says to herself,
Just add on a lunch.
Frank Bruni has lunch. Just recently he wrote about a lunch he had at L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon at the Four Seasons Hotel. She wonders if Frank Bruni is ever on a diet.

“Look, DB Sweeney,” she says, pointing at the lavender screen as a transparent image of a somewhat perplexed-looking Clumber spaniel with his tail in the air emerges slowly into solid view. “What’s this? Do you think you might like it? Do you think you might want to embrace your inner Zen doggie?”

There is a flash of lightning, followed by a clap of thunder. DB Sweeney leaps onto the desk, sending piles of paper onto the floor.

“No, no,” Meredith says as calmly, as reassuringly as possible. Reassurance, she thinks, is what she should be going for. “You mustn’t climb on the desk.” She reaches for him but he is wily in his hysteria and evades her. Using the keyboard of her laptop as a springboard, he leaps off the desk, and charges, like a bullet, for the living room. She closes her laptop and slowly follows him back into the living room, where she sits down next to him on the corner section of the purple velvet couch.

She looks at DB Sweeney, who seems to have relaxed slightly. He’s also making a very concerted effort at wrapping his body completely around her waist. Every few moments, his body shudders. She keeps her hand pressed gently against his side and notices how the spaces between each shake of his body are almost exact, perfectly timed, as if they’re programmed, determined long before this thunderstorm. She wonders how many thousands of years of instincts inform so many things about DB Sweeney, how many generations of dachshund, terrier, and corgi came before him and for some reason felt it was imperative to be wary of the thunderstorm. She wonders how many things she should be wary of that she doesn’t even know about.

“Nothing bad is ever going to happen to you during a thunderstorm,” she promises him, and he looks up at her, with his big, brown, soulful eyes. The way he looks at her, it seems to say,
You think so? Because I’m not so sure I believe you on that one.
In fact, it says that pretty clearly. She pets him, a long steady pet from the top of his head, over his wiry back, down to his tail, and tries again, “You will never be hurt by a thunderstorm.” And right then, DB Sweeney puts his head down on his paws and lets out a world-weary sigh, and Meredith thinks it is a sigh that is weary not only of this world but of many, because he knows so much. She looks at him and looks out the window and thinks that what she tells him is true, he will never be harmed by a thunderstorm, no matter what his instincts, no matter what all his history may tell him. And it’s not an overwhelming sadness, but it is sadness she feels as she looks at the top of his head because she’s thinking of all his history, and she’s thinking of all the things he might never do.