Mornings can be hard for a morning person. You see, a lot of my universe centers around the fact that I get up early. I get up early, I do my writing early, I work out early. And so before I leave for work, I have accomplished these things. The hinge factor here is – you guessed it – getting up early.

The problem is, I am not necessarily a morning person. I am more not an afternoon person. I write and work out in the morning because I can’t reasonably accomplish them in the afternoon.  

Oh, I enjoy doing these activities – or as Mark Twain said, I enjoy having done these activities. But my day-to-day is pretty tiring, so if I don’t write or work out in the morning, the chances of them happening later in the day are in line with Donald Trump getting a fourth presidential term and me voting for him. With each passing hour and its new mini-soul-crushing defeat, my motivation and discipline take another shot of ain’t-gonna-happen juice at the metaphorical sadness pub in my thorax. And if I go a few days without working out or writing, well I start having gamey fantasies the likes of which would garner the attention of medical professionals.

And so – for my sanity – I do it in the morning.

But I feel cheated, because I don’t have the morning person experience. That experience? Well, let’s imagine a genuine, card-carrying morning person. They’re up before their alarm dancing and singing ABBA songs into one of the croissants they’d baked in the wee hours. Their minds are awake, aware, alert, and ready to create or produce by 5 am. They look good.

Not me, no. When my alarm goes off, I let out a whimper and evolve myself out bed like the creature of the Black Lagoon. I put clothes on backwards; I retrain my body how to walk and reach for things. Then I stumble around and question my life choices. Good morning!

We have a dog. It’s a shih tzu with crooked teeth who sleeps in bed with us where she grooves herself around things – pillows, legs – like a hairy jigsaw puzzle piece. Long ago, I noticed that this dog awoke each morning as though someone had snuck in and injected her with 1000 ccs of whatever acts as doggy caffeine. My alarm goes off and she jumps up and hops around and licks us and just seems to be in a state of absolute and utter joy.

I am walking up to the building up the road from me. It’s almost exactly the same as my building. Along the ground-floor are a string of small businesses mostly focusing on body parts – hair, nails, sore backs. Now and then an accountant or an interior designer surprises us and in one spot near my flat, a leatherworker blew our minds.

I have arranged a hair appointment for our dog with one such business lady named Eliska. I love Eliska for several reasons, first of which being that she is a badass. She works in a one-room no froufrou salon which looks as though it was previously used to torture people into handing out their secret gulas recipes.

The door swings open, the dog has already anticipated the arrival of Eliska (strong noses) and she dancing on her hindlegs and her tail is wagging in a frankly upsetting way. The room has one bed that would be home in a doctor’s office. Next to it is a pair of clippers and a box of cookies that our dog would cut our throats for. We agree that I will return in an hour and I leave. The dog grants me one pity yelp of sadness at my dismissal, but we both know it’s a lie.  

Every two or so months my dog’s hair gets all matted and her fringe hides were eyes. She’s pretty wily to begin with, and the fringe just makes her look shifty and untrustworthy. It’s at times like these that she needs a haircut. And when she’s getting her haircut, I get mine. I walk a few buildings over.

The mellow Vietnamese dude waves me to the chair and I sit. Behind me, two women work on another two women’s nails. I zone out and go to a pleasant little sunken place wherein I can only grunt monosyllabic sounds to my barber and hope he doesn’t shave me into a mohawk. It’s one of the most trusting relationships I’ve ever had.

Once I wake up and get back to the groomer, she comments: ‘Jste dvojčata.’ You’re twins.

I’d love to claim her incorrect, but I’m not great at lying in Czech. We take out leave. More than a few people point out our twinness. At first, I resist, but once the dog forces me to pick her up and carry her – presumably because she’s traumatized from her haircut – I just lean my shoulder into it.

And why not? Once you get matching haircuts with a dog, there’s no going back. We could get matching leather jackets and ride a motorcycle through Hungary. She would of course sit sidecar. We would naturally wear goggles. Maybe we could start a rugby team.

By the time we get home – me sweating, she asleep – there are some reckonings to deal with. Do people think I’m weird? Am I going to develop my twin dog’s wonky eye? But these questions will have to wait until after our gristle byproduct cooking course next week.       

Before you get a dog, you get a lot of input on what it’s like to have a dog. This input comes from memes – which suggest that owning a dog will fix all your world woes and give you understand second only to the pithy understandings of Marcus Aurelius. The dog-human relationship in movies and TV is often so chummy and sympatico that it’s easy to forget that the studios have a fleet of well-trained dogs ready to hang out with Brad Pitt.

But these depictions hardly cover the dog-human relationship in all its gory glory. Oh, I’m not saying the depictions are wrong. I am indeed best buddies with my dog. And my life has been infinitely enhanced since we welcomed her into our home. She is a pure lapdog – originally bred by Tibetan monks to be pleasant towards people (royalty and other monks) and keep them company. Her job was to hang out and be delightful with a side gig as a bed warmer. So those depictions are correct, I’m just saying they leave some stuff out.

What they leave out is the part where you learn maybe too much about your dog. Burke and I discuss our dog’s poop and regularity more often than people who aren’t sociopaths should. I notice when she’s licking too much. Ticks seem unfairly attracted to her eyes, so I spend more time than I’d like to admit scouring through her face and looking for ticks, the world’s little dickheads.

It’s my keen eye that ends us up in the vet’s. Being a vet is another world completely misrepresented by movies. In the movies, vets are beloved by all things with four legs and they give off a certain St. Francis of Assisi vibe. In real life, vets are the pet world’s grim reaper. Once we get close enough to the vet for my dog to understand that’s where she’s going, she tries her best to get the hell away. Once in the waiting room, she shivers the whole time – as do all the other animals. We get in to the office.

“She’s been peeing a lot.”

“Do you have some of her urine?”

“I do,” I say, extracting a test tube from my bag like it’s a bottle of water. “Here you go.”

I’m not sure, but I think another aspect left out of the movie version of the dog-human relationship is the collecting of urine for a pee sample. Don’t remember seeing Brad Pitt running around behind the dog with a test tube. Nope.

“So, she has a slight urinary tract infection. You will give her antibiotics for this.”

“Okay. But she also has a very slight yeast infection – that’s why she’s licking so much.”

“Okay. What do—”

She takes out a tube of ointment and it suddenly dawns on me how I will treat this one. She points out the area – exactly the area you associate yeast infections with – and then applies the cream. The dog accepts her fate with a mixture of gratitude and probably humor.

Let me tell you one thing they leave out of the dog-human relationship in movies: applying ointment to your dog’s yeast infection. But it’s what we do for our little buddies. She is after all delightful and my bed warmer. But what I wouldn’t give to see Brad Pitt do this in a movie.    

The shortest and longest successive parts of my day are the period following the moment I put on my workout shorts and the workout itself. Once I put on my shorts and the could-stand-by-itself T-shirt, time shoots by like a city bus on the way to the garage. Once I start the workout, time moves with the speed and dexterity of a raging arctic glacier.

I have heard this time perception is an age thing. As we barrel towards out great reward (which I hope consists of tacos) time moves faster or slower in a situation based on factors such as newness of experience, cognitive speed, and how badly you need to go to the bathroom.  

In any event, for about 30 minutes a day, I try to convince the gods of the rapidly aging that I am living responsibly. Same goes to some degree when I try to convince the gods of cholesterol that I am living healthy by eating salad-colored candy.

But that doesn’t mean I won’t hem and haw. In my workout clothes, I have written full emails, a partial story, edited 20 pages of text, cooked a chicken, and cleaned the entire apartment (windows included). There is virtually nothing I won’t do to try and delay the inevitable.

While I do this pre-workout regimen, Burke works and the dog sleeps or lounges, her bangs acting as a curtain to her current mood or actual state of awareness. I pull out the workout mat and can hear my downstairs neighbor groan aloud. I assume she is worried about my health and the sounds I make – something between a seal jumping out of the water for treats and a seal being bludgeoned by a polar bear – upset her.

Dogs are smart. Or are they? Is it that dogs are smart or do they just become aware of routine? When I take the leash off the door, the dog hops out of a deep sleep to play the game where she runs away from her leash. It’s very similar for when anyone goes into the kitchen. When I take out my exercise mat, she gets up and goes to her box of toys. She pulls the lid off of it and drags a few toys out onto my mat.