Horn Dogs and Puppy Drool in the Winter of Life

For some reason lately, my dog Emmett seems hornier than usual. Maybe he's getting more in touch with his instinctual self - he hasn't had to wear a collar or be on a leash in months. Perhaps he senses in some instinctual way the hormonal changes that are going on inside me as I gradually become more feminine in physiology and is reacting to it. Granted he does have a lonely, boring, cloistered life; lounging at home by himself listening to NPR all day and occassionally nosing through the bathroom trash or emulating a human's ability to stand erect so he can scrounge the counter tops for crumbs. I've also had him on a diet for the last 6 months and he has slimmed down a bit, allowing him to be more active. On the other hand he is getting up in age; coming on 70 in doggy years. The highlight of his winter afternoons is probably when my neighbor kids head off to school in their big yellow, blinking noise machine and he can bark for a few moments in unfettered instinctual guard-dog joy.

Every day, as I settle down after work to do my exercise regimen, he tenaciously goes and gets his tattered, slobbery rope for me to play with him (he loves tug-of-war). And he's a whiner. I think it's the rottweiler in him - they tend to do that. So if I don't play with him he whimpers and drops the spittle-covered rope toy onto my exercise mat. If that fails to gain my attention, he rolls over, sticking his chest out and scratching his arched back while letting out a low-pitched series of moans. It's really very cute and adorable, but not when I'm struggling to finish a set of 300 crunches!

I wish I had the patience and money to get another dog for him to play with, but that just isn't going to happen right now. Besides, he gets 3 or 4 lengthy walks in the fields behind my house a day and has weekly visits with my parents and or grandmother ,who invariably feed him delicious, fatty scraps of whatever chared flesh we're having for dinner that Sunday. Especially my grandmother. Whenever she is in the same house, he is always deferentially at her side with drool dripping visciously at both corners of his mouth - his watchful eyes never leaving her hands in the often fulfilled hope of a dropped morsel or snack.

My last surviving grandparent can barely walk these days (and yet she refuses to let us take away her car - scary!!!) and I think she tries to hide how little she actually eats by feeding most of what's on her plate to the dog. She is a sweet and tough old lady; the wife of a career Air Force man and professional poker player (back in the days way before cheesy, watered-down ESPN tournaments). They both came from ultra-rural, isolated farm families in Minnesota and neither of them ever let go of their inherited fierce independence and small-town mental toughness, despite being stationed in exotic locales all over the world over the years.

In a way I think I inherited some of those traits from them and through my parents. There has always been a strong vein of anti-communication running through both sides of my family. Sharing emotions was (and still is in some aspects) unspokingly frowned upon. My now deceased grandfathers, both military men (my grandfather on my dad's side a tar man during WWII) unconsciously fed and enforced such an emotionally repressive atmosphere through genial sarcasm and oft-spoken maxims. "It's not what you want in this world, it's what you get" or "Play one; look at the rest," my grandfather would often exclaim when someone would bitch at the cards they were dealt or take too long to decide on a card to play during our intense and jealously competitive family games of hearts. And yet they were both gentle and caring men in their own ways; they would dote on myself and the other grandchildren as most grandparents do and obviously loved my grandmothers steadily and intensely.

I see this dialogue has wandered into unexpected and non-canine related territory so I will now end it and perhaps plan to continue an examination of my grandparents in more detail at a later date.