Read My Life in Dog Years for Free Online Page B

asked withoutopening her eyes—indeed, she could talk without awakening.
    “The dog,” I said, “is ready to eat”
    I rose and made my way to the kitchen, the Great Beast padding along behind me. On the floor were three dishes. One had held canned dog food, a second dry dog food and the third water. They were all empty, licked shiny, and I took the sack of dry food down and filled one of the bowls.
    He looked at it, then at me.
    “Was I wrong?” I said. “Aren’t you hungry?”
    He looked at the refrigerator, at the door handle.
    “Something in there?”
    I swear I saw him nod.
    I opened the door and he slid his big head past my leg and studied the shelves for a moment before selecting a leftover chicken, which he swallowed virtually whole, thena cold beef sandwich I’d made for lunch— gone in a bite—and half a lemon meringue pie, before I could catch his collar and pull him back.
    “Sit down…”
    He sat—taking a few seconds to work his bony tail down—and looked at me and belched.
    “You’re welcome. Do you have to go outside?”
    He jumped up and put his paws on my shoulders—his weight compressed my legs a full inch—and then made for the door.
    I was in a bit of a dilemma. We lived in the mountains with a great deal of wild country around. The owner had said nothing about whether or not Caesar would run away, but he’d only been with us five nights and I wasn’t sure he’d stay. I took his leash and hooked it to his collar and reached for the knob.
    I would, I thought, hold him while he did his business (a phrase I’ve always thought oddly appropriate).
    We did not have neighbors within a quarter of a mile so I threw on a pair of sandals sitting by the door, hitched up my boxer shorts—all I was wearing—and opened the door.
    I should add here that Caesar’s collar was stout nylon and that the leash—which was about six feet long—had a forged-steel snap and was made from woven synthetic braid that would withstand a six-thousand-pound test and that I twisted the loop of the leash tightly around my wrist.
    I think—little of it is clear in my memory— I
think
I had the door open an inch before everything went crazy. Later I would piece it together and come up with some of the details—a time-flow of the events leading up to the disaster.
    I cracked the door. Caesar got his nose intothe opening. He slammed through the door, taking the screen door off its hinges, and headed down the three steps to the gravel drive and across the drive, where I believe he had every intention of stopping to go to the bathroom. For a moment I came close to keeping up but then I lost a sandal—I thought of it later as blowing a tire—and from then on more or less dragged in back of him screaming obscenities and yelling at him to stop. And I think he had every thought to stop, as I said, but my wife’s cat, a big torn named Arnie that had been off for days looking for a mate, chose that moment to return home. Arnie, of course, had no knowledge that we’d acquired a dog, not just a dog but a house of a dog, a dog to strike terror into a full-size lion, let alone a ten-pound house cat.
    The effect was immediate. Arnie was a survivor and when he saw Caesar he did whathe was best at—he turned and ran. Not up a tree, as one would suppose, but across the road and along a ditch. With a satisfied growl that sounded like thunder, Caesar gave chase.
    My tripping feet had nearly caught up with him—I remember the heel of my one sandal slapping so fast it sounded like a motor running—and I was reaching to shorten the leash when Caesar went after Arnie, and I never quite caught up again.
    We went through the neighbor’s yard at what felt like twenty miles an hour—cat, bounding dog and dragging, underwear-clad human yelling in monosyllabic shrieks. My neighbor was standing in his garage and waved—he may have thought I was waving.
    By this time I was just trying to stay alive and couldn’t have cared less if