On Friday, we took the dog out for a walk. It was nice, a little rainy, and a good day to walk the dog around until she got tired and then we’d aim ourselves to the closest pub. But since we had dinner-at-home plans that would likely not come to fruition were we blasted, we chose the fountain.
The Fountain is a little place in the park. It’s perfect for a drink that you don’t want to develop into several drinks and then two nightcaps at home. They have .4 sized beers, yet (like most places these days) have bolstered that missing traditional .1 of beer by making it more expensive than my first car. Burke gets us beers and I bring her to the hut next door where there are a few tables and chairs and it more or less resembles a place near a campsite. I like it, because I feel like we are roughing it in the wild, rather than having a drink 370 feet from our balcony.
When Burke comes back, the dog (I notice) tenses up and stares at the door – whose surfaces are plastic sheeting held within a frame of wood blocks. When she closes it, the door lightly slams with the slap and zing that anyone who has a screen door is quite familiar with.
It takes us a moment to realize that the dog is staring at the door shivering. Since she’s my best dog-buddy and I have long stopped caring what people in public think of me, I pick her up and rub her back. But she’s not cold. She hates the door. Anytime someone comes in and the door closes, she jolts as if she’s being flogged. She does her weird Shih tzu sing song plea thing that she does when she wants food, to be chased, or food. I pick up the hint and take her for a walk to calm her skittishness. Outside, she’s a whole new dog. She’s happy and relaxed now. She runs, jumps, buries her face in holes, and pees with the freedom of a young Hunter S Thompson. After a circuit, we go back to the hut – which she will not enter. She hunkers down and remains resistant. The walls are clear plastic, so I motion to Burke that the dog won’t go in.
We head to another place. It is rainy, after all, and Fridays are meant for a visit to the pub. We go to the Metro pub, which is, as stunning as you will find it, a pub in the metro. Though normally with a reasonable local clientele, it seems we have come during tweaker hour and two or three shady people come in the place going through several stages of their current drug-induced journeys. We keep to our own as they do theirs (save for one very twitchy woman who couldn’t seem to keep her sunglasses in her hand and who kept making kissing sounds at the dog). We sip our .5 Pilsners.
“You know,” I say, suddenly carried into clarity from the mere interaction with an appropriately sized beer. “She’s afraid of the elevator door, too.”
Burke has noticed.
The dog will loop out and away from the elevator and stand at the top of the steps. Since last week, we have walked down the steps. Sometimes I let her walk two stories up and then carry her the rest of the way (please see above and not caring about others’ feeling towards me). She has learned that this is how it will go and after two floors will extend her arms until I pick her up. She then is brought the rest of the way in luxury as she views the world around her with content as she licks her chops in anticipation of the meal most appropriate to the time of the day. If I do not feel like carrying her, then I will pick her up on the ground floor and bring her into the elevator. She seems fine with this.
We ordered another drink and talked about the weirdos who would spend a Friday afternoon in a pub in the metro. We naturally exclude ourselves, given the fact that we have laid out a list of excuses and precursors that make it OK for us. While we have another appropriately-sized beer, I wonder how fickle it is that the dog was scared once by a door and now it’s a lifelong issue. Strange, I thought. How strange.
As the barman brought our third beer – again, in the size that Dog intended – I am allowed insight on a slightly deeper level. We all know that beer 4 will lead the charge in the other direction – blurry and sloppy thinking – so I decide to hold on to this as long as I can.
When I was seven years old, I awoke as I always did on Saturday, at about 6 am for my cartoons. (Irony was not lost on my long-suffering mother, who couldn’t pry me out of bed Monday through Friday, but who after three bowls of sugar cereal #1 basically had a crackhead running around the house. I poured my cereal, and made my way to the living room of our home. I walked up to the TV and touched the on-button. What I received instead was an absolute blast of a shock. I recoiled in terror. I gripped my wounded finger. My cereal hit the floor. Egats! Insult to injury. How could this have happened and what was this?
That was 42 years ago and since then I touch appliances, TVs, doorknobs in rooms with rugs, and radiators with a few test taps before committing to full-on contact. I could find similar fears with approaching milk that’s near the date (1991), licking a knife (2001), and tequila (1989).
Not that there’s anything to forgive, but by beer four (the blurry one), I have decided to accept my skittish pup no matter her fears – even if they do keep us from getting on the occasional elevator or going to a particular pub. Well, as long as that pub only has .4 beers, I guess it’s fine. Otherwise, we have an intervention.
