On arriving in Patagonia I noticed that everyone had a dog. Not for me. They are too much trouble. They need to be walked, and even worse, you have to “pick up” after your pet. As a gagger I find this particularly distasteful. You can’t travel ’cause who’s going to watch the dog? You need to be prepared for vet bills that always occur when you can least afford them. I wasn’t going to put up with that hassle.
In my case I am now owned by a yellow lab named Sammi.
I saw a sign in Adrienne’s that said that dogs have masters and cats have servants. I beg to disagree. I feed my master several times a day which may account for her rather Reubenesque appearance, I walk her several times a day, I provide a nice place to live, I chauffeur her everywhere, I brush her, etc., etc. Who is the servant in this deal?
On Facebook someone posted a photo of a billboard advertising the movie “Marley and Me.” It’s the story of a family and their yellow lab.
For anyone who saw that movie you will know why some graffiti artist spray painted three foot high letters across the sign saying “The f**king dog dies.” It occurs to me that Marley and Me is bad grammar—you can’t say Sammi and me went for a walk. I be writing a letter to the author sometime.
Sammi has not done the naughty things that Marley did, with the possible exception of destroying the cushions on the wicker porch furniture, destroying the couches in the living room and digging a few holes in the yard as large as lap pools. And let’s not forget—she has an affinity for skunks.
Perhaps the worst-enforced town regulation concerns barking dogs. Occasionally Sammi will bark, but only if she sees someone on a bicycle, or walking a dog, or sees a truck, car, pedestrian, or someone pushing a stroller, walking past my office towards the Gathering Grounds. And there is something about the metal animal sculptures in front of Adrienne’s that she finds alarming. I will admit that she loses it when she sees the UPS truck. I can’t figure out why this is, perhaps the color, but I am pretty sure it has cost me a lot of really nice things that never made it to my door.
Sammi generates a completely new fur coat every nine days, leaving the old coat everywhere, and I mean everywhere. I have so much dog hair in my car it looks like I have camel hair upholstery. Can you make clothes out of dog fur?
Now, Sammi is a Labrador “Retriever,” which would imply that she would like to fetch. However, she does not. She will get the object, then immediately sit down and chew on it with no thought of bringing it back to me. Like all Labs she does like water—so much so that she is happy to share the water with the interior of my car and on the bedspread. I also have noticed that wet dogs have a distinct odor.
Losing Sammi is not my worry, since she and I have put pen and paw to paper wherein she agrees that I go first. Losing her is something I could not be a part of. If I’ve given the impression that I don’t love my Sammi. I do. A lot, a whole lot.