Walks with Leporello, Thoughts on LOVE, GOD and DOG - 4. IV. Disaster Dog/Devil Dog

IV. Disaster Dog/Devil Dog

May 14, 2011

I may be only half as patient as I pretend, to paraphrase the Earl of Sandwich (Yes, that Earl of bread-and-roast-beef Sandwich fame!) who once declared himself to be only half as wicked as he acted, and said it to the Devil no less, or at least to someone he believed to be the Devil. But for me, patience is a challenge. I gradually watched the Bambi-eyed wonder of our beloved pet gradually give way to a mastery of confidence as our adolescent pup grew. In those eyes too appeared a certain calculation: punishment versus impulse-reward. The gears turned behind those windows of his soul, and we often termed our teenage companion canine a Devil Dog. Many are the times that the in-between child and adult dog pulled me over my unsteady edge, as the one time in the Marin Headlands where he actually did pull me over an eight-foot embankment to go crashing to the dirt road below on my knees; and many are the sad regrets that my chastisements were too strongly rough. But that visible flicker of mental function, as seen via the sparkle of the eyes, weighed the calculus of fleeting reward versus the punishment. When, however, what he wanted to do – run out into the street for example – was a threat to his health, I, despite my best efforts at neutrality, once the dust settled down, found myself in admiration of his spirit. His devilish reasoning ability conflated fair with unfair.

Examples of the worst sort are these: once while we were stopped at a red light, he jumped out the car window. Now, you probably think to yourself, the window was open? Well, yes, but only a quarter of the way down. How he scrambled through without breaking it, I shall never know. Fortune allowed that I was holding onto the leash when he bailed out, so he couldn’t run off through the intersection, and into traffic.

His first Easter, about four or five months old, he climbed on a Hitchcock chair to get at the table holding our Easter basket. We found it later, shredded, the paper grass spread to every corner of the house, and the marshmallow chicks and chocolate bunny eaten with most with its foil still attached. I know. Now you are saying that we left chocolate within the dog’s reach . . . but for this tyke to get to the tabletop required a Herculean effort, and like Laddie Boy fetching a golf ball from a tree, took an engineering mind. We learned a valuable Airedale lesson – nothing is beyond their will. With them, as Billy Shakespeare said, all things be ready if the mind be so. However, that was only the opening volley in that day’s disasters, for perhaps the elusive non-digestible element in the chocolate, or just a plain old-fashioned sugar rush caused our dear Leporello to proceed to chew the entire side rail off of the accomplice Hitchcock chair, then to go willfully to the other side of the table – to the other companion Hitchcock chair – and go after its leg. Not satiated, he proceeded to gnaw on three corners of the treat-hosting table. Note: he must have been standing on the chairs to reach these corners . . . so he must have done these first.

I believe this time marked the one and only instance when Leppy ‘talked back’ to me as he was being punished. Our method was this – he was sent to the back room, either he went on his own, following my pointed finger, or I firmly applied my grip to his collar and led him there. There he’d get a dressing down. On this occasion, prompted by the inadvertently harassing tatters of an Easter basket in my waving hand, or the aforementioned lack of enzymes to digest the chocolate – or, an abundance of sugar, or I know not which – he cracked. The usual humility he suffered during these punishments was shown by remorsefully bent ears and lowered eyes, but this time, halfway through, he glowered sharply at me and slowly, a low rumbling growl sounded from under his breath. This surprised me, but emotions took over and I heard myself yell so loudly in response to his murmur that he instantly crumpled to the floor. He never growled at me, or indeed at anyone, ever again in his life.

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The question in my mind is how do you learn the concept of unfairness? Did Leppy react as he did from the function of being, in his mind, unfairly punished? In the fourth grade, our teacher had a sort of tribunal system for minor in-class infractions. The accused was formally arraigned by a witness, or the teacher, and a group of students heard testimony and decided on exoneration or a fitting punishment. Once I was accused and found guilty of something Joey did. What, I do not recall, but as no tattle-tale, I kept the truth to my defenseless self. The punishment was for me to extend my arms and hold several encyclopedia volumes level for the entire ten minutes of recess. Bitter was the experience – the physical pain, the accentuator of psychological injustice.

Real injustice though was on display in Duboce Park; inequities that punished the canine victims more than their human tormentors. There was a man, say in his 50s, who had the sweetest and most demure rottweiler. This dog would run and cavort with all the other dogs in brilliant fellowship, that is, after he received his daily ‘training’ from the man. This man arrived at the park not to let his canine buddy socialize, but to control-freak the dog into a sitting position and lock his eyes onto every whim of his ‘master.’ He trained this companionable dog – there in the open, public fresh air – with the German words for “attack,” “bite,” “don’t let go,” and would extend his padded arm to force the dog to attack him. The end of this dog’s fable is that one fine day he attacked his owner severely, then killed a small dog and viciously bit the woman shielding her Maltese. The real victim, the rottweiler, was lethally-injected by the Humane Society; the real criminal, the man, was ticketed and seen in the park in a couple of weeks ‘training’ a German shepherd puppy. Another was a twenty-something hipster fond of wearing a knitted cap all year round, including in the height of summer. He had armfuls of tattoos and many more holes in his head that God originally gave him. This guy also had a smaller-sized Staffordshire Terrier mix, but his dog was allowed to play, was well-socialized, and a favorite among the human visitors to the play field. In short, the dog was evidently well looked after and loved. After a few days of noted absence from the scene, this dog reappeared in the park barely able to walk. The problem was between his front legs – his entire chest and neck had been shaven and was painfully red and swollen. This red irritation and swelling made it uncomfortable for him to walk, and impossible for him to frolic. But why was it swollen? Mr. Knit Cap had tattooed the entirety of his dog’s chest in a sunburst pattern. The result: the dog was ‘rescued’ by being cage-isolated in the pound, while the man was wrist-slapped. Two examples of sweet dogs mangled on the rocks of human caprice.

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As for Leporello’s other Devil Dog examples, there are many; like the time he ran four blocks out of the park to chase down a particular Chow Chow he was in love with. But dogs’ errant ways are nothing if not pure unalloyed expressions of Nature. So different are they from Man’s embodiment of evil avarice – by which I mean, not merely dumb open-handed greed, but man-style plotting and scheming to rob others of their fair share. The real name for the deadly sin is avarice; ‘greed’ is a dull stand-in.

It’s ironic schools fail to quantify traits like these in their young charges. For recent news of an innovative measure of IQ, or rather of a refinement on how to assess it, has come to light. The concept is referred to as Emotional Intelligence (which is also called EQ, or a person’s Emotional Quotient.) Standardized IQ testing does not change, but predictions of future well-being are tested for in children via the EQ method. A classic example: kids are given an ice cream cone. They are told to hold off eating it until the tester gives the signal. Then another person enters the room and whispers something in the ear of the tester and leaves. The tester tells the kids he must step out for a minute; the little ones can eat the ice cream if they want, but if they wait until he comes back, he will give them an additional treat. Those who are unable to wait will get the cone in their hand but nothing more. The EQ theory holds that the kids who can focus on the future, despite the temptation and reward of instant gratification, will be more likely to develop into contented adults. The theory says they will also be better able to utilize their grownup Intelligence Quotient.

I wondered about this in regards to the child I was, and incredibly, I had a parallel ice cream example, though not an exact match. One hot day when I was five – it must have been in late September, for the school-aged kids were not around – Marian, the young mother of five children who looked after me mornings and afternoons, said she could bear the heat no more and packed me off with her to the frozen treat kiosk at the public pool. Marian bought two cones, one for herself and one for me, but insisted we wait until we got back home to eat them. She said I could watch Flipper instead of her daily 3 PM soap if I waited and held her cone for her while she drove. [i] So there I sat – in the back seat of their family’s mid-1970s LTD, in heat well over ninety degrees, my sweaty legs sticking to the vinyl below my Bermuda shorts – with towering ice cream cones propped in both hands. Even with the windows down, the back of the sedan was like an oven, and Marian drove through the back streets of town like a bat out of hell. [ii] She took corners so sharply that I was toppled over onto my elbow. Had I not been sweat-glued to the plastic upholstery, I would have slid across that great sofa of a back seat to the other side. I tried to hold the cones upright, I tried to focus on which way to adjust for the upcoming turn, but my sight was obscured by Marian’s shoulders, and consequently there was more ice cream to vinyl contact than was warranted. Safely parked at home, she opened the back door and glowered at the mess. Not only was there ice cream deposited on the seat and side of the car door, but there was also some on the back of the front seat (did I mention the brake-slamming?). And me, I sat still with more of the sticky stuff oozing down the length of arms and hands, from the tips of my elbows to the top and sides of my legs. “Why didn’t you lick some?” she demanded to know. “You said to wait” was my only defense.

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Perhaps not meaning to, the effect was that Marian punished me for doing what she asked, and sadly introduced me to my first taste of injustice. Perhaps it’s inevitable that as parents we come to these moments, and with Leppy I was the first who watched his bright eyes sink when I unwittingly dealt him his initial blow of this miserable feeling. I had played with him, taking up one of his toys from the floor and hugging it close to my chest saying “Mine.” He’d come over, try to take it, etc. We’d play, but the clarity of “mine” in Leppy’s mind solidified in my brain as I was snacking on something. He sat before me, looking to partake of whatever it was I was enjoying. On a spur of the moment – an evil spur of ill-conceived conceit – I clutched the food to my chest and said the dreadfully inappropriate word “mine.” His expectant ears went limp, and the jollity of his sparkle blinked a single sad hurt. A sense of injustice, a sense of what human avarice looks like, slackened his jaw and cracked open his face. This is the precise moment he learned what “unfair” meant; what capricious greed looks like in the face of openness; and I had taught it to him.