Boxer

 [This story is a Storymatic exercise]

Now

Drip.  

A sound follows, approaching from the far end.  It arrives fashionably late, as if held up by rush hour traffic.  Finally, it comes.  My ears angle to follow its retreat.  In its wake, the pipe seems silent.  Gradually, ongoing noises retake center stage.  The gurgle of water streaming down the ribbed floor.  The gentle hiss of sand grains carried by the flow.  The buzz of a fly taking care of urgent business some ways up ahead.  Distant human sounds, so faint that they have little individual identity.  

Human sounds.  Humans.  I suddenly feel a deep longing.  What am I doing here?

Drip.

Right on the base of my tail.  One more drop and I'm getting up to shake.  Seriously now.  I'm already shaking.  Just one more drop.

Human sounds again.  The longing too.

Drip.

Fine, maybe next time.  I'm not ready.  How did I get here?  Ah!

Before

I first felt it in the ears.  Not ears, exactly, but someplace between them.  The pressure.  I looked up at dad.  He didn't seem to notice, so I mentioned it.  Casually.  "Mmm-hmm," he replied.  Casually.  Without looking up from his phone.  Fine.  I got up and bumped his leg.  Then I explained it to him in detail.  

"Please be advised, esteemed parent, that a significant storm system is rapidly approaching so we should get my outdoor needs taken care of at your earliest convenience."  I thought that was fairly clear, but all I got was a "Yeah, yeah, in a minute."  

According to my calculations, dad does not understand minutes.  By the time he put on my harness, the air pressure was… oppressing.  Or decompressing.  I don't have much fur, but whatever I have was starting to stand up.

"It sure got cloudy," dad observed as we passed the Insta… I mean, the big community oak.  A storm, really?  You don't say.  

"Hey dad, let's skip the park today," I suggested, trying my best to sound confident and definitely not a bit scared.  I then proceeded to use the Millers' lawn, to emphasize my point.  I didn't count on Miller senior, who must have been waiting all day for an opportunity to have some social interaction.  Then there was screaming.  I remember something along the lines of "I was going to pick it up, calm down, Keith!", and "Get that rabid dog away from me!", but most of it was unintelligible.  

To tell the truth, I was feeling a little rabid just then.  Nobody talks to dad like that, and I was about to snap.  Whether I would start with Miller's neck or my leash, I didn't very much care.  I prepared to lunge, and then it hit.  It was blinding, deafening, and, not to make excuses, it was altogether too much given the level of tension I was already experiencing.  Then sparks came out of a transformer at the end of the block.  

Then I was running.  In retrospect, this is not necessarily true.  There was running, and there was fear, and there was no I.  The running and the fear continued, and then rain and more thunder joined them.  It was dark, cold, and pipe.  Then the running was gone, and all that was left was the fear, the dark, the cold, and the pipe.  

Now

Drip.

Maybe if I just scoot over just a bit, it'll stop, and I won't have to get up.  Or shake.  Or make a sound.  Or admit to the world that I exist, here, in this pipe, feeling helpless and lost.  Then I won't have to do anything about it.  How long can I keep that up?  Come to think of it, how long has it been?  Has my legendary sense of time forsaken me?  Maybe I've always been here, and all my memories are echoes of a dream, fading now that I've awoken into reality.

That must be it.  Reality is a cylinder.  A murky, dark cylinder with a gurgling soundtrack.

Drip.

Alright, a leaky cylinder with a fly.  Also, there is hunger, which brings up an important question.  "Can I eat that fly?"  No, not that question!  "Who is feeling the hunger?"  Someone is also feeling the droplets.  Then, am I a tubular entity dreaming of being a dog, or a dog dreaming itself into paralysis?  I got goosebumps thinking about that one.  Do pipes get goosebumps, or is it just dogs?

I propose the empirical approach to resolving this dilemma.  A journey of a thousand steps begins with one.  Two, in my case.  Incidentally, is it two thousand for quadrupeds?  I shall make my first two steps now.  After I stretch.  That feels nice.  And shake.  Now step, paw, I command thee!

I smell freedom!  Wait a minute, freedom smells like mom's cooking.  Mom!  Dad!  I remember!  Wait, is that my house?

Forgive and Forget

In Review: Mount Cube in winter
Rating: Some like it more than others

We're hiking up Mount Cube with our human friend Laurie and her dog Winslow. Misha is leading the charge, undeterred by the mounting winter conditions. "You have got to be kidding me," Oliver grumbles behind us silently (because he is a dog) as he picks his way gingerly across a thin layer of ice, his feet crashing through at every step and sinking him into a cold but shallow stream. "It said 'winter weather advisory'; can't you read?" But then Winslow runs by carrying a stick (more of a small tree than a branch, but let's not split logs here) and Oliver's biological imperative to tug kicks in, making him forget about his woes. They efficiently clothesline me, because I am peacefully hiking up ahead, not prepared for the coordinated assault on the backs of my knees by a young pine well-balanced between two big dogs. Who knows why not; this is probably the tenth time during this hike alone. But I have my own troubles. I've chosen a pair of boots most ill-suited to the task of climbing a steep mountain covered in a thin layer of ice, because they are not insulated and have less tread left on them than on the tires of our 1994 Corolla. I don't know how many times I've now ended up sprawled on my belly, clinging desperately to a root with my for-some-reason-not-waterproof mittens and attempting to use my upper body strength to get past this particular icy slope while my legs wiggle uselessly below, occasionally being nudged by a curious paw. And we've only been hiking for half an hour. And it's three and a half miles to the summit.

Okay, let me start over. It's actually not that bad. There's nobody here but us, and the trail is quiet and beautiful. A bit of snow is falling slowly, and having to scramble here and there is actually pretty fun. Even Oliver, who is not the most agile of dogs, is having a good time tugging on sticks with Winslow, and I think Misha is having a good time staying out of their way. Everyone has had a fall or two, but no damage has been done. We're probably almost half of the way up... when we reach disaster.

A half frozen river far too wide to jump.

After vacuum cleaners, Oliver's greatest nemesis is ice. His experience with these early winter river crossings has been consistently tragicomic (though I don't think he'd agree with the -omic part). Winslow and Misha run across easily, blundering through the rushing water and even stopping to pound the ice with a front paw until it cracks, allowing access to what must be the most delicious water, since they clearly prefer to it the iceless water surrounding them. We humans manage to balance, scoot, and jump our ways across some conveniently fallen logs. But Oliver can only stand at the water's edge, whimpering to himself as he nervously drinks in an attempt to lower the water level to a safer depth. We humans stand on the other bank, calling encouragingly and offering treats, while his canine companions run back and forth across the river, either to give him hope or just to rub it in. Eventually, we take the only tack that has ever worked with Oliver, and appeal to his fear of abandonment. We walk away from the river, down the hill, and out of sight, standing huddled together and trying to ignore his cries. It works beautifully, and only a minute later, Oliver triumphantly crests the hill, galloping on four completely uncoordinated limbs. We cheer and continue on to the summit, all six of us gleefully ignoring the inevitable: the way back.

The rest of the hike goes on without trouble, and though there are a few smaller river crossings, Oliver keeps up his positive attitude, having (in true canine fashion) forgiven us. "No I haven't," he mumbles to himself, sparing us a quick glance while chasing the full grown shrub Winslow is dragging along. We've made it to the top and eaten victory treats (Laurie's staple congratulations of cubes of gourmet cheese -- for the dogs, that is; the humans get enough snacks at home), attacked the steepest part of the descent with the grace of a recently woken bear, and unearthed several more trees before that menace loomed up ahead: the river we had forgotten about. "I definitely had not forgotten this," Oliver seems to say as he looks from us to the thin ice.

The way back is somehow more challenging. Winslow and Misha take it slower this time, but they make it across eventually. With some assistance from the other humans, I do, too. And that leaves Oliver. He knows that the only thing awaiting him is abandonment, so he tries his hardest to keep up. He's made it almost all the way across -- he's separated from the shore by no more than a few feet. A few feet consisting of three-foot-deep rapids. "Yeah, that's not happening, guys," he glares at us. "Aw, come on, are you serious? GUYS. I know you can hear me!" But our hearts are made of stone, and we don't even turn around as we walk out of sight.

What feels like half a day later, judging by the frostbite that seems to be settling in around my toes, it is pretty clear that this approach sucks. "No kidding," says Oliver. He's tried to make the jump a few times, but he just can't bring himself to lose his footing.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. Asa and I head back down to the river. After some deliberation, Asa straps the two dog leashes together and I tie one end to a tree. He uses the leash to jump, Indiana Jones-style, onto a rock next to Oliver. I free one of the leashes and hand it to him, and he throws it over Oliver's neck like he's taming a dangerous wild beast. Using the leash tied to the tree for support, I give Oliver's leash a tug. "This idea is even worse," he tells me with mounting melancholy in his eyes as he digs his claws into the snowy chunk of ice he's standing on. I tug again. "Woman, do you see where I'm standing? There's no telling how deep that water is!" I tug again, harder, and Oliver loses his resistance. Terrified of the water, he lunges his front half toward a rock halfway between him and the bank, and gets stuck, his legs straining in opposite directions while his body hovers over the rapids. He looks up at me with the saddest eyes I've ever seen on a dog as I pull him one last time, and his entire back half collapses into the water. As he climbs out, his fur drenched and clinging to him to make him look much more like a skinny-legged goat than usual, he glares at me for one quick second before he and Winslow start playing tug with the leash.

Thank goodness that dogs have such short memories.

"Yeah, sure," says Oliver as he walks slowly up the stairs to the bedroom the second he gets home, planning on sleeping on our bed alone for the rest of the day. "I've completely forgotten."

The Pleasure of Puking Things Out

In Review: A long-awaited homecoming
Rating: Comfortably familiar and familiarly uncomfortable

It's our first full week at home since before Thanksgiving. We came home late at night and the house is a disorganized disaster. I can't find my sock, my shoes are scattered around the closet, our passports are on the dinner table, and we haven't even started unpacking. Following our two consecutive weeks out of town around Thanksgiving and our subsequent trip to Costa Rica, we spent (on average between the two of us) two nights at home before heading back down to New Jersey for three nights and then directly to Boston for another two.

So it's nice to relax after all that adventure. Our little bed has a heated mattress pad, and even though we'll be chipping off icicles from various surfaces throughout the house tomorrow morning, at least this night is going to be cozy and warm and comfortable. Pretty comfortable. As comfortable as four mammals together weighing a quarter of a ton on a little full-sized bed is ever going to be. (It's not really that we let the dogs sleep on the bed so much as they sometimes gracefully agree to share pillow space with us.)

It takes a little while to get back into the rhythm of sleeping at home. I'd missed that comforting, familiar trifecta of Oliver's tailing bouncing on my feet as he dreams, Asa's elbow embedded in my spine as he scrabbles for purchase against his precarious perch on the edge of the bed, and Misha's 100+ pound bulk resting peacefully over my face. That rhythm becomes elusive so quickly when we go on vacation, for some reason. But yes, there it is again. I remember how to time my inhalations with Misha's to minimize how much of his terrible breath I intake. I remember how to arch my back like a vaulting pole in mid-jump to minimize the number of vertebrae being coaxed out of alignment by Asa's epiphyseal protuberances. I let the sound of the scampering mice in our ceiling lull me into a deep slumber...

I'm dreaming that the mice have developed the initiative to cooperate and are carrying me on a very uncomfortable palanquin toward what sounds like a great lion having a hair ball, when I start suddenly awake. The lion must still be hacking up this hair ball, though, because the sound hasn't gone anywhere. I look groggily around in the dark, trying to make sense of my current reality. As my eyes adjust, I realize I am looking at Oliver, who has mercifully gotten off the bed and is wreathed in serene moonlight, preparing to embark upon what promises to be an epic vomit-quest. Our eyes meet and he opens his mouth, fixing me with his mournful gaze, and loudly releases a small, wet clump of slimy fabric from the custody of his bowels.

Ah, it feels good to be home. And at least I found my sock.