Ambushed

McGee and his mouthpiece

My dog, McGee, is a comical fellow.  He reminds me a little of Scrappy from Scooby Doo, earnest, but impossible to take seriously.  I’m influenced, in part, by the fact that McGee speaks through my wife.  Is this a thing for other people?  We go on walks, and though McGee faces forward most of the time, occasionally looking back to make sure we haven’t gotten lost (even though we are connected by a leash), he is constantly narrating his experience, through his mouthpiece, Nancy.  At times I find myself the foil to his bluster, maybe even his rival.

“You’ll want to speed up through this part, guys,” he says as we approach an underpass.  “This is a dangerous spot.   There have been sightings of monsters.”  The underpass of which McGee speaks takes us under the train tracks near our house.   McGee finds it a bit disconcerting when we are walking below and the train roars past above.  He refers to these vehicles as monsters.  Or so Nancy tells me.  “I’m not essscared of the monsters, mind you,” he says with a slight tremble in his voice.  “It’s just that I am concerned about your safety.  It’s a very big monster.”

McGee was rescued from Arkansas as a puppy.  He is most decidedly a mutt, a Mr. Potato Head creature if ever there was one, with tiny feet on top of a barrel-shaped body, a thick coat of black fur, and a small angular face.  It’s hard to know if it’s a face only we could love, because, well, we’re the ones who love it.  Though clearly a dog of mixed heritage, he has some powerful instinctive tendencies.  We dubbed him a Little Rock Terrier when he was a puppy, since his first instinct was to extract all of the rocks from the Connecticut soil and attempt to eat them.  Our yard looked as though it had been attacked by an army of moles.  Fortunately, that habit did not last.

His more dominant instinct is for herding, and it has stuck.  He follows us around the house, shows us where we should be, and becomes distressed when it appears that we’ve been lost.   This is often what he talks about on the walks. “We should go left here.  Probably.  That’s what we usually do,  We go left, toward the lady who leaves the water bowl in front of the store.” In the case of the underpass, he often has to tell us why we need not be too worried.  “This is the place where the monsters are, but I’m not esscared.  I’m just shaking out of excitement.  Sometimes I’m worried for you humans, but don’t worry, because I am brave and herioc, and I can save you, if necessary.”

This delusion of bravery and heroism has been a part of his narrative ever since he was on a hike in the Adirondacks and stepped into what he thought was a puddle.  It turned out to be a fairly large bog.  He eventually extracted himself, shook the combination of mud and muddy water all over us, and proceeded to spin the event in an implausible manner. “Wow.  It is a good thing that I am here for you.  That was a massive tsunami.  Fortunately for you, I am brave and heroic, and I was able to rescue you from that near-fatal disaster.”  Right, McGee.  Ever since that moment (about 5 years ago), he has been unable to let go of the notion.  I look for moments when I can take him down a few notches.

Yesterday, after the storm, we went for a walk to survey the damage.  McGee led the way.  With his usual swagger, he waddled up to every snow bank, dug-out fire hydrant, and tree limb and left his mark.  “You guys don’t need to be worried.  I’ve subdued all of these potential dangers.”  He does a lot of “subduing” on these walks, letting everyone know that he has a stake in this territory…and that he takes small steps.   He has, though, through years of practice, learned to lift his leg quite high without toppling over.  “It takes a great deal of skill, balance, and heroism, you know.”

Nearing the end of our walk, McGee approached a snow laden shrub next to a mailbox by the side of the road.  This presented him with a choice of subjects to subdue:  shrub? mailbox? both?  McGee is nothing if he’s not decisive, though.  He advanced boldly upon the shrub.  He doesn’t believe in the sneak attack.  “It’s not how heroes do it.”  After advancing, however, you have to sort of adjust your position so that you have sidled up to the subject.  McGee did so.  Now, alongside the shrub, he hoisted his left leg high into the air, careful not to go so high as to send himself tumbling onto his back.  “Amateur move.  I would never do that.”  McGee did not tumble over at this point, but he had underestimated his subject. Just as McGee’s left leg brushed the shrub, and just as McGee was about to signal that this territory was most certainly under his dominion, the shrub released its entire snowy burden upon our unsuspecting hero.  Major ambush.  I loved it.

McGee nearly toppled.  He did jump.  He did recoil.  He did shake.  But he recovered quickly from the close call.  As I looked at my ridiculous dog, thick fur still dusted with snow, I wondered if this would be that long-awaited humbling experience.

“Wow, that was a close one.  It’s a good thing I was here to heroically and bravely save you from Sasquatch disguised as an innocent-looking piece of shrubbery.”

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