Doggedly resisting a canine vacation
I was about to write an intelligent column regarding war, peace, disease, police brutality and the impact of Viagra on the Republican Party when it occurred to me that it would run the day after Thanksgiving, and that writing anything intelligent for you would be lost. I picture you sprawled on the couch, your feet in the air, stuffed to the earlobes with dead bird, and I’m not going to waste good words on your bloated brain. So how’s your dog?
The reason I ask is that my wife, the innovative Cinelli, is determined that Barkley is going to learn to take long trips with us. I say if she’s talking about taking the dog on vacations, I don’t go. She says fine. I say fine with me too, and when the credit-card bill comes, ask the dog if he can pay it. She says fine, I’ll open an account for him. I say fine. She says fine.
The reason this whole debate began is that we have a book in the house by Eileen Barish concerning traveling with your dog. It’s called “Vacationing With Your Pet.” The book is full of tips and lively ways of having fun with your dog while trying to get away from it all, plus places to stay that will tolerate your pet without having to sneak him past the night clerk in a picnic basket or a suitcase.
Barish is no doubt a cheerful, upbeat lady whose dogs are calm, well-mannered animals that do not try to leap into the driver’s seat and take over at 60 miles an hour or attempt to leap out a window somewhere between here and Buttonwillow in pursuit of a passing bird. I say God bless and keep those kinds of pets, and why have I never had one?
You probably read our story the other day that quoted scientists as saying dog behavior has changed in about the past 10,000 years of their domesticity to more closely match the needs of humans. That’s simplifying months of agonizing study, but that’s what I do for a living, I simplify.
Barkley, a springer spaniel, who may understand our needs, chooses to ignore them. He believes in doing whatever suits him at the moment. Fine. But that’s why I will never take a vacation with him.
Cinelli has forgotten the misadventures with our cursed dog Hoover during a cross-country trip in a rented camper. Three times he broke free and went dashing away with both of us in pursuit, screaming his name, fearful that he would disappear into the crowds and never be seen again.
Now that I think back on it, the idea has some appeal, but Cinelli loved that stupid dog and would have spent her life looking for him.
“You remember all that?” I said to her. “The wild chases in our underwear, the screaming, the people who watched and thought we were crazy?”
“I wasn’t in my underwear. It was a nightgown. He just misunderstood the rules.”
“He understood and so does Barkley, and I’m not traveling with a dog!”
“Fine. We’ll go alone.”
“Fine.”
I know that, really, she won’t. Every time she’s had to take the dog to get his hair cut, she has come home at wit’s end. He pulls her arm off trying to get into the car. He pulls her arm off trying to get out of the car. He wants to jump out and run alongside the car. He insists on driving.
Those things do not seem to matter. She is ready to crate the dog, or whatever, fly him to Paris and take us with him to some of the world’s best restaurants to dine on fine meats and expensive champagnes. This is an animal who once stole three-dozen coconut cookies off the kitchen counter and ran off with a frozen turkey in his teeth. He’s just not ready for lightly sauteed poitrine de veau with a delicate mushroom sauce.
I will grant you that in Paris they sometimes do bring their dogs to restaurants, which is among many things I don’t understand about the French. The last time we were there, a woman brought in her Pomeranian pup, sat him between us on a row of seats and allowed him to stare while I ate. The long, hard look of a hungry dog following each bite is bad enough, but Barkley wouldn’t just stare, he’d take action. I hesitate to consider the consequences of trying to explain his food thievery to the French in English, sacre bleu.
I would like to thank Eileen Barish for writing the book and for including the dog’s prayer and that perfectly darling illustration of a doggie’s little paws in supplication and the “Ode to Dogs,” but traveling with Barkley just isn’t for me. If he were like Steinbeck’s Charley, that would be different. But he’s not, and I’m not going with him on a trip. Fine. Fine.
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Al Martinez’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. He’s at al.martinez@latimes.com.
