Our son’s dog is sleeping on my bed, stretched out against my leg leaving me about four inches to the edge of the mattress. We’re dog-sitting. I don’t really mind. It has been a long time since a dog let me share my bed. We are dog people and yet our home has been without a live dog for several years. Ours are on the mantle, in two green boxes with flowers on them, reduced to ashes that we cannot bring ourselves to scatter. Scooter was a Bichon who lived a full life and died of nothing in particular at age 18. Roma was a Cane Corso, an Italian Mastiff five times the size of Scooter, who invaded our hearts and left a hole that will never be filled when she got bone cancer and had to be put down before her 10th birthday. I’d never had a BIG dog before. There’s something about a BIG dog. They are forces to be reckoned with. You cannot shoo them off a sofa or a chair; they have to want to get off. When they greet you at the door, it isn’t a pesky-jumping-all-over-you kind of greeting but a lumbering-Thank-God--you’re-home-give-me-a-hug-because-I-was-worried-about-you-every-minute-you-were-gone. Roma was a person. She guarded our family like a benevolent nanny: like Nurse in “Romeo & Juliet; Nana in “Peter Pan”. Her appearance in the window was enough to make grown men flee. Once I spotted the UPS truck at the foot of the driveway and went to meet him on the front porch. He came up the steps, saw the dog in the window and threw the package at me with such force I was blasted back through the front door and onto my ass on inside the steps. I could swear Roma, who hadn’t so much as growled, shrugged. She was a gentle giant that small children could ride; small dogs would hang from her jowls in a feeble attempt to dominate.

Now, Bailey is a mid-sized dog; a Puggle; a ‘Designer Dog’; a genetically engineered mutt. Although he has a Beagle’s snout his face is frozen into the perpetual sneer of a Pug making you wonder if you’ve done something wrong. The saving grace of this nasal correction is that Bailey doesn’t snore; an excellent quality since he is determined to sleep as close to my pillow as possible. He requires long walks which is not a bad thing when you are out of work and looking for excuses to exercise. It is, however, disconcerting when it is 11 o’clock at night and the road is covered in fog and the only noises you hear are nocturnal animals prowling through the woods. (Note to self: Walk Bailey before it gets dark!) He watches TV and charges the screen whenever he sees an animal. Seriously! Dogs, horses… We were watching the scene in “Women in Love” where Oliver Reed as Gerald tries to ride his horse through a moving train and Bailey, who had been asleep on the sofa, cramming me into my allotted four inches next to the arm, tried to leap right through the screen and over the boxcars! It was very funny actually, if a little distracting; not quite the mood Ken Russell was trying to create. Or maybe it was. Ursula & Gudrun were terrified that Gerald would kill the poor horse against the side of the train. We were terrified that Bailey would shatter and kill our currently irreplaceable flat screen TV. Fear is fear.
Its morning now and time to take Bailey for a marathon. The sky is thick with clouds and thunderstorms are predicted again. We’d better walk quickly. Good exercise. Bailey goes home tomorrow. I wonder what reason I’ll invent to get up.