A Helpful Pointer

by Michael Finley

Copyright (c) 1998 by Michael Finley

I had a dog once, a mighty soul and friend of my youth. Not the dog I had for three days, but the one I had for three years.

I was a hippie, but not an especially optimistic one. It was already 1970, and most of the things I assumed would come to pass - the collapse of the military-industrial era and the ushering in of Aquarian one - had not come true.

And instead of being a part of some exploding plastic communal geodesic utopia, I was 20 years old, living alone, working alone on the graveyard shift as an autoclave operator at the University hospital, making the goo-splattered instruments and linen of each day's surgeries sterile again for the next.

I had one friend, Worth. I had had a girlfriend, but she told me to get lost, so I did. But we broke up on the last day of the 60s. Now it was six months later, and I felt depressed and lonely almost all the time. I remember one night I had a pain deep in my back, and I just lay on my mattress, on the floor, and I cried.

However. One day Worth showed up in his Volvo and invited me to take a car trip through the western states with him and his new dog Girl, a doleful-eyed Humane Society foundling. The plan was to drive to Colorado, visit a commune some college friends had started, and then make a trip up the West Coast and back to Minnesota through Canada, stopping at a rock festival in Oregon called The Vortex.

Sounded good to me. I threw my duffel bag in back with Girl, who was just coming into her first heat, and Worth and I were off.

It was a remarkable trip. We picked up hitchhikers, crashed along roadsides, camped out, and held a powwow with a busload of Mormon teenagers. We even beheld the spectacle of Spiro Agnew alighting from a whirring helicopter in the middle of an acid-drenched rock festival, thinking it was a good place to meet today's kids.

But the reason the trip was important was the commune we visited in the Colorado Rockies. This commune was peopled by progressive, moneyed hippies we knew from college. There were several lovely women there, and I was on the silent make for all of them. If you lined them up, they almost looked like the same woman. The sun shone through their straight broom-colored hair, and their populist cotton dresses. I stared at them whenever I thought they weren't aware of me.

As communes go, this was an orderly place, but order began to began to break down after we arrived. The commune had several large, gorgeous male dogs, a Grand Pyrenees, a collie, and an American bulldog mix - the good-looking kind. They were the kind of dogs you could make movies about - confident, independent, and breathtakingly handsome. They seemed like angels to me, messengers of joy and positivity to humans, bodhisattvas in fur.

What I did not then know was that the characteristic blissful look dogs get -- mouth open in a beatific smile, eyes sparkling, chest heaving with enthusiasm -- is how dogs react to high temperature. Oppositely, when a dog seems expressionless -- mouth closed, eyes seeming doleful -- is not sadness, but the natural expression of a dog that is not hot.

The dogs all went berserk when we arrived with Girl in estrus, snuffling after her, baying at the scent of her blood. I remember the behaviorist hippies joking about it over the fire - that they could alter everything about their own social order, but forget about changing dogs. Everyone laughed kind of emptily, sad that dogs should be denied the utopia that they had so little difficulty achieving. The oldest dog, the collie Rimbaud, outlived the group by a couple of years.

So ardent were the male dogs that Worth and I decided to sleep in a tree house, with Girl up in the tree with us, to prevent her from mating on her first heat. It was comical pushing the dog up the ladder into the tree, but not as comical as what followed.

Worth and I awoke in the middle of the night to see Girl and Butch, the Grand Pyrenees, locked in a canine embrace, high in the crook of the tree, a good four feet above our platform. Somehow, the dog -- one of the least arboreal creatures in the entire animal phyla -- had climbed up an eight-foot ladder to be one with his intended, and the two of them had shimmied up even higher in the branches.

And one was what they were. We coaxed, pleaded, and cajoled Butch to disengage, but to no avail. The holy seed was planted.

Back in Minneapolis, Girl gave birth to a litter of pretty white and liver-colored pups. I would visit Worth's place often, and let them all swarm over me on the basement floor, licking me and batting me with their little tails. I had been feeling so sad, that their joy had a curative effect on me. When they licked me I respected the wisdom of their licks - I had to be lovable to deserve them.

Worth had pried from me a promise to adopt one of the litter, and although I was apprehensive about the responsibility, I chose an amiable, people-loving female I called Zazie at first, after a character in a French movie. Later, her name mutated into Casi (pronounced sah-CEE).

Casi was the star of the litter, outgoing and funny. She looked exactly like the Poky Little Puppy in the Golden Book. Her body was so soft you could not see a muscle twitch under her skin. Even as a pup she was built strong, big in the legs and haunches, square in the face. She had that Buster Keaton look that good dogs have - faithful despite all perplexity. All her life people would take one look at her and bust out laughing.

But she was sweet-tempered to the core, and so devoted to me, from the moment we first locked eyes. That feeling was mutual - I benefited terrifically from her love, and from loving her. She gave a life in disarray a new center, based on fun and routine, and I answered back with groceries and a place on my bed.

As I raised Casi through the glory days of puppyhood, I concocted a new philosophy of life. The human hippie dream was dead, but I decided I could make my canine hippie world with this little dog. I would give her every freedom and every sort of stimulation, and I would never spank her, or chain her up, or call her bad. We would be like the Three Musketeers, even thought there were two of us, and I was against guns. Both for one, and one for both.

And, my friends, for four years I was true to that promise. I cracked the whip ever so slightly while Casi was housebroken. Otherwise, she lived in an Eden of my making in our $85 a month apartment on 19th Avenue in Minneapolis. I gave up my hospital job and lived off unemployment for almost a year. When it came time to work again, I took a night job so she would not feel abandoned, working the graveyard shift guarding bell-bottom pants at a fashion outlet downtown.

I owned a leash, but I hardly ever used it. I got around mostly by bike, with Casi galloping alongside on the sidewalk. She was a terrific traveler. She never bumped into anyone or bothered them. She could dance through a crowd of people waiting for a bus. And she always stopped at corners until I uttered the command: CROSS!

Police would sometimes stop us and remind us a leash law was in effect. But what could they do, put us in the car and take us to jail with the bicycle? So we ignored them, figuring the law did not count, and would probably be repealed any day.

I wanted her to be free. I didn't want the apartment door to be an impediment. I tried adding a doggie entrance to the apartment door, so she could get in and out at night. I took the door down, cut out a square, and screwed in two two-way hinges. When I tried to rehang the door I saw I had put the dog portal on the top half of the door, not the bottom. Casi stared at my handiwork with that dubious tilted-head expressions dogs have. I latched the piece back onto the door and from then on just left the door unlocked. I assumed she was going outside every night to poop and pee. I found out later she was just going down to the building's boiler room and doing it there.

I didn't want Çasi to have a litter her first heat, because her mom had given birth too young, and been a poor mother. But one day I was hosing the garden behind the apartments, and I looked over, and this scruffy white dog with tipped ears was already climbing onto her. I cried out no, no, and I came over and tried to pull him off, but it was like history repeating itself. There's some sort of bulb in the boy dog's penis that swells, and keeps the two dogs attached to the bitter end. But I didn't know that then, and I was pulling on the dog's head, turning the hose on them, and verbally imploring them to stop. They looked sheepishly at me, but they didn't stop.

Eventually the absentee landlord, a man named Chrisney, stopped by for his quarterly visit, and discovered in the basement all the dog poop - hundreds and hundreds of hardened specimens -- and had us evicted. By then Çasi was already heavy with puppies. I told him I only had one dog, and those messes were ancient, and what kind of man would put a pregnant dog out in the Minnesota winter?

But he listened about as well as the dogs screwing did. Years later, when Rachel and I were looking to buy a first home, we went to an open house run by Chrisney, the man who evicted Casi and me. I hated to tell him it was me, because we didn't want to lose the house. But it was too good a story, so I told him anyway. And bought the house.

Çasi had a bunch of babies, eight in all. And sure enough, she was a mediocre mother. She lay down and nursed them, but the misgivings were plain on her face. After a few weeks we took the whole basket to the Humane Society to adopt. I never got a glimmer from Çasi that she missed them. Her true love in life remained me.

Fully grown, she was a large dog, weighing almost 90 pounds. She was no speedster, but her intensity made her seem quick. I remember once biking to the University with her. When the fourth period bell rang, and the doors to Ford Hall opened and the sophomores exited their courses in Thoreau and Emerson, and there was Çasi leaping onto this astonished college squirrel in a moment and tearing it to bits. That is one of the few moments I ever doubted that she, too, was a bodhisattva.

There were other moments, too. Little kids scared her -- they were so unpredictable. Toddlers especially sent her into a panic, and she would gallop away, excreting an awful apocrine scent that hung in the air for days. Every three months or so, if she thought I was neglecting her in any way, she would go on an odor binge, rolling in some neighborhood fisherman's fish mess, or dog feces -- anything to put stink behind her ears. And she would come to me, slinking in a crouch, knowing I would go ballistic, knowing it was time for quadruple shampoos and rinses and backyard berating. But hey, it was attention.

Otherwise, she was so compliant. I could put my mouth on her nose and blow, and she would shake her head so her ears stood up, as if my breath had made them stick up.

She could spell. Early on I learned to avoid using the word 'park' in conversation because she would go nuts. But when I started saying 'p-a-r-k' instead, she picked up on it, and went into the same eager routine, fetching the leash and banging her head on the door. And we would go to Powderhorn Park or down by the Mississippi, and she would fetch sticks in the water in any season, dutifully bringing me the stick I needed back, dropping it at my feet, and gazing out alertly over the waters for signs of another errant stick.

We would perform Dog Jeopardy in front of people. I would ask, "What is the structure found atop most buildings?" ("Roof!") "Who was called the Sultan of Swat?" ("Ruth!") "What is the name given the aesthetic movement led by Post-Victorian novelist Walter Pater?" ("Art for art's sake!") "Good dog!"

I got a job as a security guard because the hours were good for us. I would spend the day playing with her, put on my blue uniform, go guard bell-bottomed pants or patrol a parking ramp, punch the clocks, bus home, turn the key in the door, and she would already be advancing toward me, roused from her slumbers, squinting with delight, beating the furniture legs with her tail, her hot breath and tongue all over my face.

I didn't date because I worried she would be jealous, and I felt no great need for another person. At night we climbed into bed together, me first, her second, treading circles on the covers till she was sure the coast was clear. Then she would kneel alongside me and sleep with her chin across my knees. She never complained about my drinking, or snoring, or housekeeping, or sleeping in, or lack of ambition. I could always see my perfection in her eyes, and I was just enough in doubt to benefit from it.

One day I was awakened by the phone, inviting me to apply for a job at the University. How I ended up on a list of candidates, I can't say. I had I had never applied for a job there. But I went to the interview, and was offered the job. That was exciting but it was a day job, and full-time, and I anguished over how Çasi would bear up during the days.

I took the job, and soon found myself installed on the lowest rung of the middle class. Casi handled it well. Some days she would get impatient and mosh an unabridged dictionary, or chew up some Pink Floyd albums. But we worked it out. I took her for longer bike rides, just before work and again just after. I even went out on a few dates, and Casi seemed to bear them no ill. She knew she wasn't my wife, even if I was a little confused.

We traveled. We spent the holidays once in Miles City, Montana, at a friend's house. This was the one time she did something massively destructive. My friend, who lured me out to Montana with the image of us riding horses in the snow, with Casi bounding through the drifts, did not mention the snow was eight feet high. We were snowed in, stuck in his mother's basement. The one day he and I ventured out, Casi, locked below, went berserk and ate a hole in the oak door to escape. My friend's mother, an over-the-top Shelly Winters actalike, burst into tears over the damage.

A little later, when I got my first car - I was 24 -- we drove all the way from Minneapolis to Boston to visit my friend Ray. Ray and I walked around Walden Pond, with Çasi running ahead of us, peeing on the foundation of Thoreau's old shack. I have a snapshot of me that day, lifting my giant dog up off the ground. The color is no good, the picture has too much blue, but I look so happy in it, me and my bodhisattva dog.

In 1974, I met Rachel. She came with a friend to my annual Straggler's Thanksgiving Dinner at my house, where I was cooking goose in apple and plum sauce. The moment she was inside the door she wrinkled her nose, and said, "You're cooking meat?"

I knew the second I saw her that she was highly plausible as a life partner. Her face was a galaxy of darling freckles. Sunlight caught her auburn hair the same way it caught the hippie girls' hair in Colorado. And she wore blue jeans with the knees worn through, just like they did. I was helpless.

She was beyond perfect, and within seconds we were each giving the other long looks. By February we were squarely in love, with only one problem to overcome: Rachel was allergic to animal hair, and my apartment -- my life -- was full of the stuff.

One wintry night Çasi went out the back door, as she always did, and I awoke to feel her standing beside the bed, trying to jump up. She couldn't. I sat up and felt her. She was trembling terribly, her heart going three hundred beats a minute. I picked her up, and held her in my arms, as frightened as she was. In a few short minutes her heart stopped beating, and she was still in my arms.

She must have been struck by a car and been busted up inside. I can imagine how it was for her, to sense the damage, and to do everything in her power to return to our house, climb up the icy back stairs, and appear before me, to receive my healing magic, which had fixed her so many times before, or failing that, to die in my arms.

Oh, how I cried in the middle of that night. I cried and cried. For Çasi, who was a good dog, and a good friend. And for myself, who would never be loved so well again. I set her down on the braid rug she used as her napping place and played my nylon string guitar for her, as I had done many times, repeating the same three descending chords from a song by Yes, over and over again, tears rolling down my cheeks.

When I was done, I called the animal patrol, and they agreed to get her in the morning. I placed her body on the front porch, and went to sleep. That night I dreamed she had just been stunned, but that when she awakened, she was freezing cold. I bolted out of the bed and looked out onto the landing in the dark. She lay there frozen hard. When the pickup van arrived in the morning. I slid her stiff body onto the steel floor, and watched as the van turned the corner and disappeared.

I have had sadder things happen to me. My sister died when she was 15, and I was 11. That was worse, and the destruction of my family continued for years. But I never felt sadder than I did at this moment. I tried to go to work, but I kept breaking down sobbing, and the people sent me home. It took me a week before my voice cleared, and I could confidently finish a sentence.

But you know, I was all right. This was grief, not depression. I would eventually package all this pain and set it aside, and get on with things. I would never revert to the unsure status I had when I got my dog. She had lifted me out of that, and like any good angel, set me down on the proper path.

And I had Rachel now, and we were suddenly free to be with one another and have human fun. I vacuumed the hair off the upholstery, and packed away the dog dish and leather.

Years after that I would still come across items of clothing in summer storage box and they would be herringboned with Casi's white hairs, and I would hold it to my nose and smell, with a tiny fraction of her power, her musky doggy body, and think of her. So powerful, so gentle, so serious, despite all our fun, so humble in her love.

That was 23 years ago. But I doubt a week went in that time by that I did not think of my old friend. One thing I knew was that I would never want to go through all that emotion again.

A free gift awaits visitors to Michael Finley's web site at http://mfinley.com. Mike is co-author of this spring's eagerly waited book Transcompetition.