Stay!: Keeper's Story
I submitted grudgingly to the indignity of it. I sat in a half-full bathtub and allowed him to rub dog shampoo into my fur. I gritted my teeth and kept my poise as he poured buckets of rinse water over me. I permitted him to wrap and rub me with a thick towel. Finally I let him aim a hair dryer at me for a few warm and terrifying moments and then scrape at me with a steel comb.
But I did not let him buckle the leather collar that he had somehow slipped around my neck. When he suggested it, I glittered my eyes and growled. The photographer was gracious in admitting defeat.
"Actually," he said, "I think it enhances your look, that primitive nakedness. We'll leave it as is. Good idea, Pal."
As if it were his, the idea. Ha. But he put the collar away in a drawer.
Before long the calendar was full, and my price, apparently, had risen. I watched as the photographer opened envelopes that contained checks, and heard him chortle with satisfaction as he put them away. He and I were busy every day, driving in the Jeep from location to location. It wasn't difficult work. For the Vogue shoot, I stood on the steps of the stock exchange beside a skinny woman wearing a long, billowing gown. When the photographer gave me the signal, I sneered and the camera clicked.
For a Calvin Klein ad, I posed, sneering, beside a man wearing nothing but a plaid towel and a bored look.
On the cover of Gourmet, I sneered at a picnic lunch on a Tuscan hillside. I sneered wearing a milk mustache in several publications and eventually on a billboard as well, and in Vanity Fair I sneered at a group of paparazzi blocking my path to a showing at the Cannes Film Festival.
I became a world traveler, adroit in airports and taxis, and added some Italian to the French I had understood since infancy.
I sneered at Paul Newmans salad dressing, raising millions for charity. I did a dogfood commercial, sneering at the competitor's product and then wolfing down a bowl (and oh, it was difficult) of crunchy liver-flavored nuggets. I sneered at Senator Strom Thurmond on a political poster. I sneered on the Jay Leno show, seated on a couch beside Cybill Shepherd, who tried to sneer back but collapsed instead in giggles, causing the shoulder straps of her silk dress to slip.
I did a calendar but turned down a guest appearance on Oprah. I declined to do an autobiography, though publishers called almost daily, offering the services of the most distinguished ghostwriters.
I began, of course, to have imitators. There was a German shepherd who could produce a voluptuous yawn on request, but it did not have the panache of my sneer. A matched pair of Pomeranians who could raise their upper lips in unison appeared on Dave Letterman's show but did not garner much praise or any further bookings. In truth, they were laughable. The photographer and I stayed up late that evening to watch them, but we went to bed satisfied that they were no more than a poor joke.
My frayed blanket, so permeated with my own history and scent, disappeared. I was upgraded to a dog bed filled with cedar shavings from L. L. Bean: a costly and impressive sleeping place but one that filled me with loathing. Toward the end of our first year together, the photographer and I moved from the shabby apartment to a fancier neighborhood three blocks away, into a seven-room, eighth-floor co-op with a river view, so that now, standing on the balcony, I looked down upon my own past. The apartment was decorated with a southwestern motif, with weavings and pottery everywhere and on the floor an assortment of costly Navajo rugs which I was directed to avoid walking upon. Everything smelled new and expensive and clean and completely without pungence or charm.
The photographer hired someone to walk me, because his life had become so busy with social engagements now that he was rich and famous.
The dogwalker, an unemployed actor, was a pleasant enough person but not at all sympathetic to my needs. He insisted on using a leash. I began to think seriously about running away.
Stay!: Keeper's Story
Stay!: Keeper's Story
Chapter 9
I THINK IT IS FAIR TO SAY THAT I WAS, and am, a clever dog. I had always, since infancy, been able to think my way through problems that confronted me.
I have heard that there is a book that rates dog breeds according to intelligence. It is a book, I'm told, that makes poodle owners very happy and Afghan owners fall into severe states of depression.
But I question its accuracy. One of its testing procedures—so I have been told—involves placing a towel over the head of one's dog and then observing how quickly the dog wriggles free of the towel.
What kind of test is that? It fails to consider various important factors.
For example, if I happened to be lying on my bed of cedar shavings late some evening, and in the same room (this has happened) the photographer was entertaining a large group of friends by playing irritating music too loudly, and if several of his friends (this has happened) were smoking cigarettes, filling the room with a completely repellent haze of gray smoke; and if, under those circumstances, someone happened to drop a towel on my head?
According to the book, I would be deemed "highly intelligent" if I removed the towel. Pardonez-moi?
I don't think so. I think any highly intelligent, self-respecting dog, poodle, Afghan, dingo, or coyote, would be grateful for that towel, and would heave a sigh of relief and go peacefully to sleep.
I, of course, being of mixed ancestry, am not listed in that book. But I feel certain that I am a clever dog, able to discern when and when not to allow a towel to remain on my head.
Yet somehow I was not able to work out a foolproof plan for running away. My life had become so organized and so protected that I had no moments for wandering on my own. There was no way that I could simply, casually, disappear.
I could have, in my days with Jack. Often during our time on the street I would go for a stroll. I had physical needs to attend to, after all; Jack understood that. Sometimes I wandered out of his line of vision, turning the corner, simply checking the neighborhood. In truth, I was always on the lookout for two things: the appearance of Scar, so that I could flee (later, as I developed more self-confidence, I began to think that instead of fleeing I might fight), or the appearance of my lost sister, Wispy, who I always hoped might be somewhere just around the corner, looking for me.
Occasionally I glimpsed Scar. He was usually lurking some distance away, not noticing me, so that I was never called upon to make the crucial decision between fleeing and fighting. I would watch from my safe stance as he terrorized some other puppy or human. Our last confrontation had been indecisive, and I knew I must one day face him again. In those last days with Jack, my attention had been solely directed to my friend. It had not been a time for battle. But I had vowed that when the time was right, I would drive Scar from the neighborhood forever.