Tales from the Dog Bed

Oh, hi. You’re here for another story? We need to hurry because the she-human booked Maggie and me for a spa day and she’s going to grab us any minute.

It’s been a few days since I wrote Chapter 2. Although the humans have been out of the house plenty and the computer’s been available, I’ve been feeling blank when I try to type. Maybe I have writer’s block, something the female human said she had for three years. I was pretty worried when I heard that, because I thought it meant she was constipated. I was relieved when Zena explained writer’s block, because the housekeeper slash writer is a lot easier to live with when she’s regular. At writing.

Hey, while we’re on the subject, I’m so over calling our humans clumsy names like she- and he-human, female- or male person, naked- or furless one, butler, housekeeper, roommate, whatever. That’s just too much to type every time. They sometimes call themselves our Mommy and Daddy but no, nope, never. That’s just wrong on so many levels.

I’m just going to call them Bea and Kay. Bea’s the female and Kay’s the male.

Have yourself a very broke Christmas

Maggie heard them say Christmas is going to be different this year. They’re not going to drag a poor dead pine tree into the corner of the living room and curse at it while they try to make it stand straight and again when it falls over at least once. They’re not going to drop f-bombs as they clean up drifts of dead fir and dead fur that somehow found each other right away like long-lost cousins. Which maybe they are.

They won’t cover the tree in lights, pictures of us, and little woodland creatures like — Dog help us — squirrels, or glass things that fall off and break. There won’t be flurries of crumply paper falling to the floor all morning, while they have a fake fire with music playing on TV. For some reason, they call that TV fire a You’ll Hog. Maybe because we make pigs of ourselves at Christmas dinner?

Instead, we’re going on a road trip to Lost Wages. I don’t know why they want to go somewhere to lose money; the more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that humans are not very bright. The problem with Lost Wages is that it’s a lot more fun for humans than dogs. A nice patch of grass to do your business on? No such thing. The best you can hope for is sand or fake grass because people out there sure like rock-scapes.

Ow. My paws hurt just thinking about it.

It’ll be a road trip, which Bea and Kay do for fun, although they do fly places or go on cruises, too. They say they do road trips because they can bring us, because they love us and would miss us if we weren’t there. Sure, but it’s not lost on me that they save a lot of Milk Bones if they don’t have to pay for Dee the doggy sitter. Milk Bones to lose at the blackjack table.

Don’t get me wrong. Dee’s great. Her dogs are our buddies, especially her silly black lab, and she lets us sleep with her, too. I wish she’d lay off all the walks, though. Her dogs and Zena like walkies, but Maggie and I prefer to just use the yard for business and get our exercise doing zoomies around the house once a day.

We hate mixing pleasure with business.

Road warriors

We’re all road warriors here—so many vacations and weekend trips so Bea can run here marathons and half marathons. The rest of us go with her so we can share her carbo-load meal the night before and to make sure she wakes up at zero dark ten to get to the starting line before they blow the air horn.

We make sure she wakes up and gets out the door. Then our work is done and we all go back to bed with Kay. The best part is that while she is running, he takes us out to breakfast. Mmm, sausage. Then we all go to the finish line to cheer her across.

At one point she was doing four runs a year, all over the state, and we were there for all of them. I remember one cold January day in San Diego when Red locked Zena and me in the car. Bea was all sunburned and cranky, shivering in her running clothes, trying to get a signal to call Trip Play on a bad cell network. She finally got through on a borrowed phone, but then it took them hours to get to us because there was only one road to get there and it was jammed with other cars picking up runners.

Still, everybody had a good laugh on the way home because nobody can ever stay mad at Red.

We’ve been everywhere: Santa Cruz Monterey Santa Jose Bakersfield Anaheim Riverside Palmdale Oxnard Camarillo Lake Mead Santa Maria Phoenix Blythe Boulder City Red Rock Canyon Big Bear many times Big Sur Grand Canyon San Diego Santa Barbara Shaver Lake Palm Springs Sacramento Reno Chico Winnemuca Laughlin Hoover Dam Death Valley Visalia Santa Ana Temecula Tempe Tonopa Giant Sequoia National Monument Oroville Maryville Lake Tahoe twice both California and Nevada sides and that’s just a few.

We’ve seen everything: Oceans mountains valleys cities lakes rivers farmland orchards strawberry fields prairies forests mesas passes towns villages cliffs fog banks big rocks peninsulas deltas islands hills dales rain snow sleet slush grassland high desert low desert and much much more.

And everywhere we go, I ride shotgun, because that’s my thing.

Dog is my pilot

In the late 1980s, I was a tricolor basset hound named Joe and my human was Dean. Dean flew his 1979 single-prop Piper Dakota every weekend and, from the time I was a pup, he always took me along. That lifetime, I had two gifts. I could sniff out a squirrel at 35 yards.

And I could fly.

What? You think we can’t fly because our ears are too sensitive to high altitudes and engine noise? I was a basset hound. Ear protection is built in.

Dean called me his copilot, and technically I was. But he never told anyone how many times I flew us home after he had a few too many beers with lunch. I liked Dean as much as any human, but like all of them, he took credit for my Dog-given talents.

I loved being able to fly. Flight makes impossible connections possible. Imagine having breakfast at a diner in Death Valley below sea level and lunch on Mount Whitney, the highest peak in the continental U.S. at just under 14,500 feet.

And nothing in this world compares with riding an updraft into the blue where eagles also soar.