Eddie Meets the Beautiful People

My indoor dog, Eddie, got his first detectable flea of the season last week, so I rushed him down to the groomers for a bath. I’d actually spotted the flea a few days earlier. It was tough to catch it, though, because Eddie is a papillon, and has very long, fine hair that a flea can hide in. On one inspection, I thought I had it, so I pinched down real hard with thumbnail and forefinger but got only a little cuticle of pink skin and Eddie bit me, then ran away screeching.

I used to bathe him myself and enjoyed it immensely because when you get papillons wet, they’re hilarious to look at. Their bodies shrink down, but their gigantic ears, all cartilage, stand out at woebegone angles to their slick, round heads. Their legs are about the diameter of chopsticks. There is something unfailingly humorous about the sight of one of these tiny brutes standing in the middle of a bathtub of suds.

But there were problems with the self-wash. First, it takes time, and you have to do it during the warm part of the day so the wet dog doesn’t catch a cold and die. Second, no matter what kind of shampoo I used, his hair would always turn into a dreadlocked tangle within a week and I’d end up cutting half of it away with a pair of scissors.

Anyway, Eddie loves to go down to groomers and get taken care of by owner Shelley and groomer Bart. All I have to do now is get his leash, ask him whether he wants to get groomed and Eddie starts bouncing up and down like a hairy frog. He can get about a yard high from a standing start; while he’s in midair--which seems forever--he wiggles like a hooked trout.

So I called to make sure they could take him, then loaded him onto the front seat of my truck and sped into town.

Now, contradictions are a part of life, and a papillon on the front seat of a beat-up Ford Bronco is a superb one. This 351-cubic-inch monster was roaring toward town to deliver an eight-pound toy breed lap dog for a flea bath. Eddie stood on his hind legs, rested his front paws on the side of the door and looked out the window, panting with excitement. People next to us at the Forest Avenue signal just gawked at him and shook their heads.

The only place to park was directly in front of Laguna’s trendiest little coffee bar and cafe, where the attempted hip loiter at outdoor tables and look at one another through indispensable sunglasses. I kind of hate the place because the coffee, food and service are all pretty bad and I don’t like to be stared at by pretty, hyper-casual people who I believe should be working or helping the poor or getting their dogs washed or doing anything but watching me take a papillon out of what is supposed to be a brawny, no-nonsense truck.

I tucked Eddie under my arm like a football and shut the door, ready to sprint across the street in case anybody in the cafe recognized me.

“Hi, Jeff! God, what’s that?”

The human heart can sink no further.

“My dog.”

“I mean what kind of . . .”

“A papillon.”

“He’s so cute.”

“He bites. Talk later, OK?”

Under the gaze of a hundred shaded eyes I set Eddie down and started across the street. One of the nice things about walking an indoor dog on a hot day--it was close to 80--is that the asphalt heats up their little pink footpads and the dog has to kind of high-step along to keep from getting singed. Ed is great at this, legs swinging upward, paws hardly touching the street, a real show dog’s gait.

Once we made it to the shady side of Forest, he dug into his real passion on such excursions, which is peeing in the planters where so many other dogs have done the same. It’s truly hard to imagine what goes through a dog’s mind when it catches the aromatic symphony that means so much to them. Eddie only carries enough actual fluid for, say, three legitimate statements, so after that it’s just a pantomime.

Matters not to Eddie, though; he stops at every planter, bush or tree and drops his nose, circles around like a fretful host, then ups the leg. For some reason, he looks out and squints into the sun when he does this, giving him the kind of flinty stare associated with movie cowboys. At these moments, I think of him as just another poseur with a part to play. Sometimes I let him act it out; other times, I’ll yank his leash, which will launch him out of the planter like some hairy kite, and he’ll land again on the sidewalk about five feet away with a dazed look on his face, and we’ll be on our way. This day I let him do all he wanted.

Arrival at groomers is always a celebration. Shelley acts as if Eddie is the only dog in her world, when, in fact, she has a dozen lined up behind her. Eddie falls for this ploy every time. She gave him the corner of a dog biscuit, then took him into her arms and whispered sweet nothings into his oversized, bat-like ears. It was close to my idea of heaven, and I wondered whether I could get the same treatment for 20-some bucks.

She put Eddie in an upper-story cage and told me she’d call when he was done. Bart came over to say hi, which isn’t easy at the groomers because it’s louder in there than a car wash. I wondered whether any really small dogs or cats had ever been sucked into the guts of one of their washer-dryer machines and how management might explain such a catastrophe. I told Bart about the flea, and he pledged to remove it.

Two hours later, I picked up the new Eddie. He was in the same top condo where I’d seen him last, but he had an Easter bunny-themed ribbon on instead of the more assertive white paw print on red that he had before. He trembled, not with excitement at seeing me, but with pride in his own appearance, which I must say was excellent. He is as vain as any model. Gone were the dreadlocks of a few hours earlier, gone were the drooping, clotted leg hairs, gone was his general air of self-neglect and existential Angst.

“Bart found the flea,” reported Shelley. “It’s a goner.”

Eddie and I headed down the stairs and high-stepped across the asphalt again, heading for the truck. It was such a nice day and Eddie was so proud of himself--not to mention flea-less--that we just kept walking around town, then walked around town some more.

When I dropped him back into the house, he streaked around from room to room in his version of a thank-you. He was little more than a blur with a ribbon. He ate about three pounds of food, lapped some water. Five minutes later, he was conked out on my pillow, living testimony to the pressures of a dog’s life.