Copyright (c) 1998 by Michael Finley
My friend Mary Ellen insists to me that her German shepherd tries to mouth words. He wants so desperately to be part of their conversations that he apes the motions. Alas, dogs can't talk.
You would think, since dogs can't talk, that this limits the dialogue between people and dogs. But this is not so. When I am out with Beau, I often notice other dogpeople maintaining a low level of patter with their charges. If I crane my head and listen, I hear them saying things like:
"Mind the broken glass here. Looks like someone had an accident, eh?"
"What have you go there, boy? Yes, that's doodoo, all right."
"So I told her, if that's the kind of person you think I am, we should maybe better call the whole thing off right now."
That the dogs never reply, except perhaps with a moment of eye contact and a reassuring grin, is evidently OK. People know that, to the dog, the speech of humans, especially if it is soft and friendly, is a source of reassurance in a strange world. And it allows them, the humans, to talk. It's a good way to find out what's on your own mind.
When Beau was young, for instance, I sang to him. I often had the song "Little Deuce Coupe" going through my head. I never learned the words to the song, and I don't even know what a deuce coupe is, but I could tell it made the Beach Boys very happy and proud, and that was what Beau made me. And he liked it, too -- you could tell by the sprightly pace he maintained.
Days in the office, I can go hours not speaking to him. Since he is not much of a barker, he may come across as the strong silent type to some people. With Rachel he is just the opposite. Long before we got a dog, Rachel had raised the practice of baby talk to a celestial art. She has at least a hundred nicknames apiece for me and the kids. They spring so naturally from her tongue that they are a delight to human and nonhuman alike. When she comes home and Beau greets her at the door, she cries out in a very musical voice, "O-no the o-nee-Beau!"
From my many years of experience, I can parse that sentence. "O-nee" is the pejorative word suffix she applies to anything she loves. It's like "-ito" in a Spanish nickname. Beau is the dog. "O-no" is just a bit of sonic nonsense she threw in to rhyme with Beau and parallel "O-nee." O-no the o-nee-Beau. It is more than a greeting. It is a greeting, a salute, and a happy hymn all rolled into one.
I could write an entire book just on the grammar and syntax of Rachel's baby talk. Believe it or not, it is never cloying, and it is always joyful. My hope is that this kind of virtuoso babytalk is certified as an Olympic event before she is too old, and too bitter from the long years of nonrecognition, to compete. Because she would never settle for silver.
For his part, Beauregard is not without something to say. While generally a quiet dog, he makes numerous exceptions, and I have compiled a list of them:
There is his lovely woof, which is his way of serving notice. His first complaint to an approaching dog is this woof. It arises from his throat, and is a foreshadowing of louder noises coming from deeper in him.
The deeper noise he makes is his bark. When he barks, he is all business. It is neither friendly nor unfriendly. It is a clinical sound, but a powerful one, arising from deep in his diaphragm. Sometimes I will be working very serenely with my back toward him, and he will suddenly bark, indicating his wish for a Milk-Bone. It is like a gun going off by your ear.
There is his ominous growl. It is like a purr, only deeper, and intended to sound mean. He emits this when he thinks another dog is dissing him. He would never go into battle without first growling.* It is a cold and menacing sound, and I hate it.
There is the hint that escapes from him involuntarily, a rapid, defeated exhalation (hnnn!), as when he sees another dog, and he wants so badly to be with that dog.
There is his howl, that he makes almost against his will, when he hears another dog in the neighborhood call out, late at night.
The cute merp sound he makes at the table, when he wants a taste of what we're having, and the faux-menacing growl he follows up with, when he realizes we will not be blackmailed, and he must up the ante.
There is a whine of engagement, as when he is wrestling with a chew toy on the carpet, throwing it up in the air and pouncing on it. He is conversing with his prey at such times. ("I'll show you. Take that! My name is Beau!")
There is a blip sound he makes with his tongue, sklupping water backwards from his dish. And a corresponding blap, when he drinks deep from the toilet, the round ceramic bowl around his head, causing the sound to resonate.
There are the moans and groans he makes when he is rubbed at night. He has to be in a sleepy, sensuous mood. It is a pretty, animal sound, a hum that rises and falls like a very low-pitched slide whistle.
The sigh when he is asleep, and he lets the air tumble out of him
Rachel decided some time ago that she wanted to sing opera, and so spends an hour every evening running through scales and arpeggios and stuff. The kids and I have forged an attitude about this that contains elements of tolerance, encouragement, and eye-rolling sarcasm.
For his part, Beau is simply bewitched by the singing. He can be lying on his side, asleep, when she begins. Rachel will sing a scale, and without opening his eyes, he ventures a practice whimper. Rachel will respond with a snippet, and he will sit up and sing in earnest.
He can't help himself, and he sings with an eerie passion that seems to fit the opera she is singing from that week. We thought when he first did this that the sound might be hurting him, but no - his singing is an honest contribution, freely offered.
When she changes pitch, he struggles to change his, too, which is difficult because Rachel ranges freely across four octaves and Beau is limited to a 12-note register at best. But his ambition in meeting her call with his own seems very sincere and artistic. What he is thinking, I cannot say -- some ancient coyote ritual that retains some holy meaning for him. He looks about the room so soulfully as he bellows, while the rest of us shoot milk out our noses.
The people who developed the poodle breed, sometime 600 to 1,200 years ago, were individuals of remarkable ingenuity. They created an animal of superior intelligence that could run like a cheetah, that could hunt and retrieve, that could fight and laugh, and whose incomparable coat protected it from rain, wind, sleet, and snow.
But as with the invincible Achilles, one part of the miracle dog was left vulnerable - the ears.
A poodle's ears go in forever. You twist the flap this way, and you can make out a dogleg to the right that twists and curls several inches. Then, if you pull the ear out straight, you see another long curling chamber aimed right at the middle of the head.
The dog's entire head is only about five and a half inches wide at the ears. But the twisting chambers of the earways create spaces and crannies no finger, no swab can get to.
The problem is that the dog is the same inside as it is outside. Its thick coat can grow inside its ears, and the profusion of hair creates a climate conducive to the creation of waxy deposits, the entrapment of moisture from swimming and bathing, the infestation of mites and ticks, and the culturation of yeasts and bacteria.
The first time Daniele and I brought Beau to Brigitte for grooming, we worked with the dog for four and a half exasperating hours. Brigitte clipped away at Beau's puppy hair with a pair of barber scissors, while entertaining me with one horrific story after another about betrayals that had occurred to her in the breeding business.
She told me about handlers who so damaged certain of her prize-winning poodles that they replaced them with different, lower-quality animals, hoping the switches wouldn't be noticed. Handlers, she said, were about one rung lower on the ladder of creation that field smut.
Other breeders cared nothing for the dogs in their care. Horrible deceptions were rigged to win ribbons at the expense of the dogs' health. Animals were spray painted, fitted with prosthetics, taken apart, mixed and matched, driven mad by sordid deprivations just to bring home the victory bow. Only she cared about health, about integrity, about the dogs' well-being.
Then she came to Beau's ears.
"Oh," she said. "Oh, my." She stepped back and bit her knuckle.
"What is it?"
"His ears. They are bad."
"How bad?"
She looked at me without wavering. "Bad," was all she would say.
The got out a bottle of ear dust and a pair of Foley surgical clamps, and had me hold the puppy's head still while she went in after the hair. The dust allowed her to grab great fingerfuls of easy hair and pull it out, with the dog yipping. Every now and then she would grab a taproot hair, that had its origin deep inside the animal's head, and yank it out. Beau would scream when she pulled one of these hairs.
Brigitte looked grimly at me. "I did not know about this condition when I sold you this dog," she said. She went back to work, muttering bad, bad.
"Well, how often does this need to be done?" I asked. It was my plan to ignore everything she was saying. I was no canine ear surgeon, and Beau had never complained about his ears in the months I had had him.
"You do it all the time. If you are watching the TV, get in there and pluck out the easy hairs. Oh, this one will hurt," she said, and wrenched a giant hair from Beauregard's ear, and a giant cry from Beauregard himself.
"If you fail to do this," she said, pointing the Foley clamp at me, "you will destroy the dog."
I nodded, that I would be vigilant. But I wasn't, and the ear problem came back. When Beau was about eight months old he began shaking his head. Something was bothering him. I continued to ignore it, until he was crying out when he would scratch his own ears.
The veterinarian I took him to told me that this would be a chronic problem Beau would have all his life. I could no longer ignore it, and began doing ear interventions at least every four days. A year later, his ears are as sensitive as ever, and I have been to four different vets about it, ranging in orientation from straight to natural healing. I have bought at least twenty different medicines - oils, unguents, dusts, and alcohol-based cleansers.
But the problem is insoluble. No antibiotic exists that will kill the infection and also reduce the pain. No cleaner exists that will scour out the wax effectively. The oils don't seem to work at all, and some of the natural agents I have bought seem to make a bad condition much worse. Meanwhile, Beau is far from the perfect patient, squirming whenever I try anything. And I am far from the perfect doctor, with my bad eyes and low aptitude for detail.
I date the onset of adulthood in Beau to the time he had his first earache, and I was unable to bring him any relief. I have cleaned him, and massaged his ears, and painted them with tinctures of this and that. But the pain won't go away, because his Ears are freakishly predisposed to this kind of infection.
I call it adulthood, because it is about the acceptance of suffering. From the day the pain began, Beau was a different dog.
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