The Danger of

Dating with Dogs


 

 



Some days my life resembles a tabloid headline: Dog sinks owner’s love boat! Perhaps this only happens to the hapless, c’est moi, looking for love in all the right places, but forgetting to leave the dog home or outside or to use the lint roller on my clothing before the big date.


I’ve heard some people show up with their children on first dates, to let the prospective new man or woman in their life know up front and immediately that kids are part of the picture. Maybe this works because kids are cute and often well disciplined or actually will sit down and shut up when told or be placated by a gumball. My dog is terribly cute if not a raving beauty, but she’s also a raving maniac. She is insane to meet new people. She howls, yowls, strains at her leash, stands on hind legs, paddles her front paws in the air, targeting some poor affrighted human who backs against a wall and whimpers, Is she friendly . . . or does she want to rip my arm off?


So casual introductions are hard, you know, like meeting that certain someone along a hiking trail, making some promising eye contact, then the dog finishes up her business in a nearby bush and bolts onto the scene, knocking poor Cupid on his derriere just as he was about to scatter some fairy dust that would convince the handsome passing hiker to ask me out.


Home visits are even worse. I lock the dog on the deck and let my date enter through the other door. Soon he notices windows rattling, plaster chips falling from the ceiling, a doorknob ominously trembling and some eerie frantic whining.


"What’s that?" he asks politely, the love light in his eyes growing somewhat murky.


"Oh, I thought the dog might bother you so I left her where she can’t get at you."


"Well, that’s not fair, it’s her house," he says with genuine chivalry, prompting me to think, Wow, this one’s a keeper. "She can come in while I’m here. I’m sure it’ll be fine."


Famous last words. This dog is the progeny of a father named Cyclone and a mother named Hurricane. Nothing is ever fine with her except when she is asleep and can instigate no new crisis in my life, home or vehicle. She barrels down the hallway, skids a hard left turn into the living room, her rodlike tail whomping into my new floor lamp. This in turn impacts the coffee table, which jolts and lists as one leg gives way, sending knickknacks, drinks, framed photographs and the box of See’s candy my new lovely just brought me scattering onto the carpet.


"I’m sure cranberry juice washes out of carpets!" my lovely cries encouragingly. I hadn’t noticed before quite how blue his eyes were, because suddenly they are open very, very wide. Tragically he takes a step backwards and stumbles over a chew bone the size of a mastodon tusk, loses his footing and tumbles to the carpet. His head impacts a favorite dog squeaky toy. The dog zeroes in—not for the kill, mind you, but for the lovin’.


"Oh my, she does like to kiss, enough, enough!" He writhes this way and that but she has found his chin, and this dog has a major chin-licking fetish. Then there are those long hooked nails she likes giving bear hugs with. I don’t know who taught her this, this strange business of grabbing then impaling a human and holding him fast in a very huglike fashion, the better to smother one in kisses.


Ever playful, she sniffs around his shirt pocket and with a really slick move extricates a pair of movie tickets.


"Those cost good money!" my possible sweetie-to-be sings out. A little scotch tape and a liberal bribe, and the 16-year-old ticket taker may yet let us in.


I lift the dog bodily and don’t release her until she’s back on the deck, eagerly peering back in to get another glimpse of her victim, who is working his way back to his feet, feeling for broken bones and his wallet. The dog’s not that clever, I tell him. He delivers a huge fake sneeze, then another and another, and throws in some wheezing for good measure, holding his throat as if it’s become constricted.


"Gosh, I—I, uh, when I was younger I used to be allergic to dogs. Um, uh, maybe it’s come back." His blue eyes still look dilated, or as if he has seen Godzilla’s ghost in his rearview mirror gaining ground as his gas tank gauge plunges below E. I bring him a tissue box. He keeps up his theatrics for a good five minutes.


"Pet dander is awful," I say, sympathetically patting his back. My entire house is shrouded in pet dander. Some delicate types enter the front door, sniff and say, Oh, you have a dog. I never assess a house by its odors unless I can identify rotting flesh; then I won’t cross the threshold.


The blue-eyed sweetie makes an exit and I don’t question him, he is giving the performance of a lifetime, hacking and scratching at his eyes. At least he leaves me the mangled movie tickets.


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