I was working in my living room, trying to figure out how I was going to get my latest heroine into trouble so she could work her way out of it again. I do most of my writing from my laptop, moving about my house in search of the elusive muse. I had wired the house with network ports in most of the rooms, including the gazebo attached to the deck. I do most of my writing from my living room, or sitting at a table at a restaurant, but I particularly like working from the gazebo on warm summer nights. It was an icky night outside - hot and muggy - so I was inside, enjoying the central air conditioning.
While I was pondering the subtle implications of the problems my heroine would face, Nickolai lowered his big, furry head to the keyboard on my lap. The results on my heroine’s dilemma were amusing, but I didn’t think she would know how to deal with a "azxswq <tab> <tab> sds". I think a keyboard monster would be an anomaly in her universe.
"Yes, I know, boy," I told him. "You think I should stop paying all this attention to the odd toy on my lap and pay attention to the exciting toy in your mouth."
Nickolai is my Borzoi/Long Haired Retriever mix. A borzoi is a Russian wolf hound. If you want to catch a glimpse of one, watch the Jodie Foster / Mel Gibson movie "Maverick". The crazy Russian, when you first meet him, standing on his rail car, has two borzois with him. They’re very regal-looking animals, but I’ve never called them "gorgeous". Long haired retrievers look somewhat like a big, furry lab. They’re pretty, but I don’t call them regal.
The mix, however, is awesome. I know, I’m prejudiced. But I’ve been around dogs all my life - I always keep two in my house at any given time - and I know a gorgeous dog when I see one. Nickolai is big, but not as heavy as he looks. He’s as tall and as long as my love seat, but only weighs about a hundred pounds. And by "tall", I’m measuring at the shoulder, not the top of his head. But as I said, he’s not as heavy as he looks. Lovers of small dogs think 100 pounds is a lot, but if you compare him to other large dogs, you’ll understand. A rottweiler, for instance, could weigh as much as 160 pounds, but Nickolai would still be several inches longer and an inch or two taller. Nickolai carries the sleekness of his borzoi side, hidden behind the long black hair of the retriever.
I spared my heroine any further indignities by moving the laptop aside. I patted the dog’s head, talking to him. The goal at this point is to distract him. Or more exactly, distract that part of his brain that was holding his jaws shut in the grip of death around his favorite toy of the moment. Nickolai’s game is to get me to try to take his toy away. My game is to take it away and throw it for him several times. Eventually, he’ll leave me alone for a half hour so I can get more writing done.
So I used my left hand to scratch his ears, while making a big show of moving my right hand around where he would see it. While worrying about the hand that’s moving, he’ll forget just how close my left hand is and relax his grip. A quick move, and it had better be real quick, and I have the toy.
Of course, I could make him drop it, but what fun is that? And if I ignore him long enough, he’ll leave it in my lap and back off. But he’s right - I should play with him. That, and I just can’t stand how soggy my jeans get while he’s shoving that stupid, dog-saliva-soaked toy at me.
It’s okay if you just said, "eewww."
So I scratched, I talked, I moved my right hand. He relaxed, I grabbed. He stepped back and gave me a look as if to say, "That old trick? Boy, I won’t fall for that one again."
Then, of course, the predictable event occurred. No, the phone didn’t ring - that’ll happen right after the dogs leave me alone and I return to working on the book. But the silence was certainly shattered with a loud bark. Well, several loud barks.
"Shut up, Sarah," I told my other dog. "You get so worked up."
She does, too. Whatever is built into Nickolai that makes him so mellow and easy going -- well, Sarah missed out on that. She’s a great dog, and I wouldn’t call her high strung. But she has a lot of energy. I think it’s part of her dominance games with Nickolai, but I can’t be sure.
I threw the toy upstairs. My home is a two-story house, and there’s a walkway between the upstairs bedrooms. The walkway overlooks the living room where I was sitting. It’s a very 1990s style house, and I love it. From my couch, I can throw toys upstairs. With a little luck, I can bounce them into one of the four rooms upstairs, increasing the search time the dogs spend trying to find it. It’s hell on the paint, but anyone with dogs accepts a certain amount of wear and tear. Paint is easy to repair.
It’s always a toss up as to which dog will chase the toy after I throw it. Sarah goes more often than Nickolai. Nick-Nick will then wait at the bottom of the stairs, waiting to pounce if Sarah makes a tactical error and walks too close when she comes back down. Sometimes Sarah stays upstairs and barks to get me to throw another toy to her. Occasionally, I do, which is all the encouragement she needs.
Okay, so the professional dog trainers are all cringing by now with all the mistakes I make with my dogs. But you know what - they come to me when I call, they haven’t eaten the cat, they never steal food unless I leave the house after forgetting to put it away, and they do an incredible job convincing people who come to the door not to enter without an invitation. So sue me.
Well, I’ve given you a description of Nickolai, so it’s only fair to tell you about Sarah. Sarah’s about two years older than Nick-Nick, making them 5 and 3. Sarah’s a farm dog whereas Nickolai came from the Humane Society. They’re both mixes, both black. Sarah’s a German Shepherd / Black Lab mix. She’s long, with a long, furry tail, much like her Shepherd mother. She has short, lab fur. She weighs about 70 pounds, which makes her a medium sized dog in my book. I’m afraid I can’t call her pretty or even handsome. Her edges are all kind of rounded, and her ears usually lay flat across the back of her head. However, she does cute very well, vocalizes over an amazing range, and is highly attuned to my moods.
She’s a great dog.
Non-dog owners are probably assuming that "vocalizes" is a euphemism for "barks". Well, she barks, but she also howls, yips, woo-woos, and even makes a noise that could best be described as a moo. And, of course, she mixes up all these noises together. She has a sequence of noises she makes when she wants someone to play with her that I love. It starts with a firm howl, includes a woo-woo and a moo, then finishes with a vibrato howl again. It’s priceless.
Sarah is also alpha over Nickolai. He outweighs her by 30 pounds (nearly half her body weight), but she still bosses him around. I feel sorry for him, but it’s probably best this way.
Well, I know I was telling a story here somewhere. But the dogs are good at distracting me in my stories just as well as they are in real life. Suffice it to say I threw the toy a few times, the dogs took turns chasing each other, Nick-Nick took it over to the corner and plopped down, and Sarah asked to go out. Typical. I chained them from the deck, headed back in. I figured I had up to a half hour before they would become so obnoxious I would have to let them back in again.
I got back to the couch, grabbed the laptop, and... the phone didn’t even ring. Instead, the computer beeped at me. My house is wired with a DSL connection to the internet, so anytime I am plugged in, I’m also on-line. Email comes straight to my lap at the speed of electrons.
Copyright (c) 1999, Joe Larson.