Q: 2/4/03

Work Diary, 2/4/03

The only animal I have ever truly despised was my aunt and uncle's dog,
Floppy, whom I tolerated only because she'd started living with my aunt
and uncle first. Floppy was an obese, asthmatic beagle. She suffered
from partial blindness, hearing loss, and arthritis. Had she been
human, she would have been the perfect poster child for the disabled.
Along with her long, long toenails, bad breath, and putrid drool,
Floppy had a grouchy disposition that left me cold and made the
neighbors refuse to enter the house.

Floppy died from internal hemorrhaging, after the twins next door gave
her some left over chicken bones. The twins were innocent; Floppy was
not. She would eat anything edible and then some, including her own
feces (which she would promptly throw up, only to eat it again. Usually
the second time did the trick). Anything left on the breakfast table
would disappear as soon as our heads were turned. Food in a bedroom
resulted in a mess that rivaled a diarrheic infant (it also resulted in
a great many tears, like the time Floppy ate my older sister's
chocolate birthday cake. My sister boo-hooed while the dog ran circles
in a chocolate-induced hysteria).

When I caught Floppy running off with a used condom (my own,
fortunately), I knew there was no line she wouldn't cross. That she
died from the very thing she did best was certainly no surprise.

My cousin named floppy when he was just a boy. Obviously, the name came
from Floppy's ears, which even by beagle standards were long and wide
and did, in fact, flop all over the place. But a name like "Floppy" is
suitable for young pups and perhaps middle-aged dogs with excessive
energy. To call a fat, hairy sausage with teeth "Floppy" is something
else altogether. Likewise, shouting the name "Floppy" - in anger, play,
or fear - is equally ludicrous (though I do have some friends who named
their cat Poontang, and then allowed their unsuspecting mother to stand
on the porch, night after night, calling for the damn thing. That's
definitely worse than screaming, "Floppy!").

I was never mean to Floppy, at least not in a physical sense. My room
was in the basement, and often I could hear the "click-click-click,
click-clickety-click-click" of her toenails across the kitchen linoleum
as she made a meal out of the trash. I'd yell at her on those
occasions, then return to my studying, only to hear
"click-click-click?" after two or three minutes. Floppy seemed to sense
when she had gone too far, and allowed a cooling-down period for any
disturbance she'd created.

One of my favorite ways to entertain my friends was to place Floppy
outside. The yard was reached through a sliding glass door that never
worked correctly, so the dog couldn't push it open. I would shut the
door just enough so that Floppy couldn't squeeze back in, then place a
cracker on the floor just out of her reach. Like all beagles, Floppy
bayed and howled, but she also grunted. She'd grunt getting on or off
the couch, using stairs, going to the bathroom?and she definitely
grunted trying to reach that cracker. In the end, I always gave her the
cracker, but only after she'd provided a good show for my friends.
Fifteen years later, I still can't believe I did such a thing.

Spurred on by suburban boredom, I once decided to start taking Floppy
on walks around our neighborhood, one of those 1970s pre-fab divisions
where every fourth house was exactly the same (unlike today's new
homes, where every house is just the same). The instant I would touch
the chain under the sink, Floppy reanimated, springing off her place on
the couch and running into the kitchen to be attached to her lead. Once
outfitted, she'd drag me through the front door and along a pre-set
course, a course she'd probably learned when my cousins were still
walking her. Walking a beagle involves a great many starts and stops.
You have to be patient, because every patch of grass contains a new
smell, a dropped piece of candy, or some enticement to squat and
urinate. Unfortunately, the walks were more for my benefit than
Floppy's, and when the neighborhood thugs began honking and hooting at
me for walking such a fat, homely creature, I stopped doing it. This
pathetic bit of conformity still haunts me. I didn't like Floppy but
she so enjoyed those walks, which must have been a huge reprieve from
her own sorry, boring existence.

I came back to Colorado after visiting my family in Texas one summer,
the summer before my senior year in high school. For two days I
wandered around the house, restless and irritable and - as always -
bored. At one point, while watching TV, I looked at Floppy's spot on
the couch, which was usually a hairy nest of Floppy's tri-color coat.
But the couch cushion was fur-free. In fact, I hadn't run into Floppy
the entire time I'd been back. I hadn't heard her baying at the
doorbell, or click-click-clicking her way through the kitchen.

"Where's Floppy?" I asked my aunt.

"Oh, she died," my aunt said, and told me the whole sordid story. My
aunt is famous in our family for forgetting to pass on major life
events to the rest of us. We learn months later that a cousin has had a
baby, or that a grandparent has died. My aunt and uncle had had Floppy
for sixteen years, but I knew my aunt, and her delayed reporting didn't
surprise me.

I wasn't upset, either. Instead, I had a party over the weekend while
my family was at its mountain house. Hardly anyone showed up.
Eventually I locked up the house and went to a teeny-bopper club that
played fast British pop and made your clothes smell like cheap clove
cigarettes.

Surely someone wise once said, "In everything, there is a lesson" (or
some equally unsatisfying platitude having to do with experience). My
lesson here was not how to take care of my pets (That's easy: Spoil
them). It wasn't that you should treat animals with respect (Make them
part of your pack and the respect comes naturally). It certainly wasn't
that you should never abuse animals (Besides, Floppy would have removed
several of my fingers with her discolored, tartar-caked teeth if I'd
raised a hand to her).

No, the lesson of Floppy was less concrete, more personal. It has
something to do with shame, and living with consequences. I didn't like
Floppy - sometimes I downright hated her - but should that have
mattered?