Spittin' Nickels

Sometimes, my goodlady wife and I do things that are rather a tad beyond our means.

Last April, bought a used Volvo. I'm still trying to reconcile the decision and the guilt, and the oil changes that now cost $48.00 instead of $39.00 because of the special, hotsy-totsy filters. People like us should not have Volvos.

Our ridiculous-looking, struggling-to-get-out-of-the-sixties kitchen has a brand-new cork floor. Every time I walk on its warm, smooth surface, I feel like an impostor. People like us should not have cork floors.

Yesterday, a dog trainer came to our home, for two hours, to give us scads of knowledge, techniques, and one-on-one attention to attempt to fix our broken, adopted dog, Molly. People like us should not have personal dog trainers who make housecalls.

I was prepared for this visit by Wendy, the dog trainer, to be painful. I expected tears from my wife, and barely concealable frustration and rage from me, but neither happened. And it wasn't especially painful, either. Perhaps this was because we were outside for one hour and forty-five minutes' worth of the two hours Wendy spent in our presence, in 30 degree weather. Who can feel pain when one's extremities are all numb? Actually, I do admit to feeling a twinge of... we'll call it "discomfort" when I wrote out the check for $235.00.

"Don't forget," Wendy said, presumably to re-install a little color into my blanched cheeks, "that includes two weeks of telephone 'tech support'."

Cute.

Don't get me wrong-- I like Wendy, and she wasn't even remotely attractive. I like that she was outside with us for an hour and forty-five minutes in jeans, boots, and a lime green North Face fleece.

"I can't believe you're not even wearing a jacket," I said, ever the Jewish nag.

"I've been outside in winter working with horses since I was twelve-- I'm good," she said with a confident smile.

Everything about her was confident, and I think it might have been a little contagious. She was full of quaint and colorful colloquialisms, which, uttered by anybody else would probably have instilled in me the urge to garotte-- or at least roll my eyes-- but I didn't mind when Wendy said things like, "Look, if she's standing still and not pullin', that's good enough for me. She doesn't have to be sittin' down. She can be standin' on her head spittin' nickels if she wants."

She taught our dog commands to listen for, which she reinforced liberally with training treats. She taught our dog to want to be good on the leash. She taught us patience.

"She wants to watch the cat movie without pulling and going berserk? Fabulous prizes. She walks next to you for five seconds without pulling? Fabulous prizes. She goes on a walk down the block without pulling your arm off, and she looks at you when you call her name? Fabulous. Prizes."

"You gotta meet this gal where she is, where she lives. Right now, she thinks that pullin' is the way to go. That's what she knows. And you guys give in because you know, 'She's gotta poop in 15 minutes or else I'm going to be late'-- you've gotta let go of that."

"Look for small miracles," Wendy advised. "You don't take your two-year-old to the five-star restaurant right off the bat. Get all the antisocial stuff out of the way at McDonald's and work your way up the star ratings from there."

Right now, Molly isn't exactly McDonald's material. Maybe the dumpster behind McDonald's.

But we're trying.

"Gentle."

"About."

"Wait."

The last one might just be more about us than it is about Molly. We've got to wait for her to get her ya-ya's out. For her to mature. For her to listen. For her to grow. And we've got to wait for our patience to catch up with us, with our expectations.

In the meantime, it's going to be a struggle, there's going to be lots and lots of phone calls to Doggie Tech Support Central, but, God... she's beautiful, just beautiful when she's sleeping.

DOGS: Bad Dogs, Bad Dogs-- Whatcha Gonna Do, Whatcha Gonna Do...

It's no secret that I love "COPS." I love COPS even more than I love Gilbert & Sullivan-- and I may be the only person in the whole goddamn world who can say that sentence in all seriousness. Give me a choice between a night at the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company and a marathon of "COPS," I would be hard-pressed to choose those expertly-trained voices over a couple hours of baton-bashing, dumbass-tasing fun.

I mean-- a free night of Gilbert & Sullivan might sway me-- but opera tickets are expensive, and COPS is free and out on bail.

My wife is a "COPS" (and G&S) convert, I'm happy to say-- and I didn't even have to resort to the last-ditch tactic of cuffing and stuffing her... on the sofa in front of the TV on a Saturday night. She went willingly. Maybe she gets all misty-eyed and remembers the times when we were first long-distance dating and I would be watching "COPS" at my place in suburban Philadelphia, and she would be watching "COPS" at her place in Pittsburgh and we would discuss the various foot pursuits and felony car stops with intense sexual longing.

Like most couples do.

One of the things that my wife likes to poke some justified fun at are the police pontifications that inevitably occur at the beginning of each segment.

They're unscripted, but they might as well be, because they're all the fucking same:

I always knew I wanted to be a cop.

I got into law enforcement 'cuz I wanted to help people.

My dad's a cop, his dad was a cop, my uncles and cousins are all cops-- my wife's a dispatcher, my grandmother was a cop-- kicked the shit out of Al Capone once-- and my dog's a K-9 cop. My gerbil's a sergeant on the tactical entry unit of the SWAT team the next county over.

You meet a lot of interesting people in this job.

Every day you come into work, you never know what's going to happen.

It's that last one that gets me every time. Pal, nobody knows what the fuck is going to happen when they come into work. Yes, you might be getting mooned by a busload of drunken frat assholes from the local community college one minute and be arresting some banged-up hooker with tit-rings and anal leakage the next-- but, like, last week, I went to "Staples" and both of the black-and-white photocopiers were broken. Not only that, but the line at the post office was nine people long, and I had to take my bulk mailing in the next day, because, well, I just couldn't wait that long.

I mean-- I sure didn't know that was going to happen.

On Wednesday night, my wife and I got a puppy. Her name is Molly. She's very cute. God takes great pains to make puppies extra special cute so you don't beat their heads in with their empty food bowl when they hot-shit all over your brand new hand-woven oriental hallway runner.

I admit that I don't know what being a cop is like, but I suspect that, judging from the opening monologues diligently recited by police officers the country over that it's a lot like being the owner of a puppy.

"Every day, you never know what's going to happen."

Fuckin' aye, Ossifer. After a day or two of being a Puppy Daddy, I feel that shit. Hard. At 1:45 in the morning, I have also been known to step in it, bleary-eyed, on our bedroom floor.

On Thursday, I popped in on our little pup three times, to see how she was doing. We keep our veteran dog gated in the kitchen, because he has a nasty tendency to scratch/eat through doors when left alone, and so we thought we'd try gating our rookie dog with him until such time as we could procure a crate to crate-train the little Molly Monster. When I arrived home for Check-up #1, I entered the house and it was very, very quiet.

You never know what's gonna happen...

As I made my way to the kitchen, I saw one big, gray head in the kitchen doorway, above the top of the gate. Ah, hello, Finley, you good, old dog. But there was no sweet, small, blonde head to be seen. Finley was alone in the kitchen, the gate was still up.

"Oh, my God," I thought to myself, "she's dead."

And so, as a cop would, I cleared room after room. Kitchen: clear! Dining room: clear! Living room: clear! I started up the stairs one by one, smelling something unfortunate. As I stepped on the fifth or six stair, I saw that little blonde head poking out. And then I saw her little chocolate muffin treats all over our rug. Oh, and a pee-pee lake in the office. She had pushed against the gate with her head until it made enough of a space for her to crawl under.

The second time I came home, she showed Daddy her new trick: vaulting clear over the gate like an Olympic hurdle star.

When you own a puppy, you come home and take stock. The snow shovel is on the ground. There's a wet spot on the couch. The rug's mussed up. The bathroom door is ajar. The old dog looks very disturbed. A sweater is on the floor. It smells like a nursing home. It's time to play everybody's favorite game: "Find That Shitheap."

Predictability, like the ho-hum, hum-drum of the cubicle/office/non-profit administration world, is gone-- at least, until she's housebroken.

Until then, whatcha gonna do, whatcha gonna do....