Page 148 of The Love Haters

At the wordwalkhis ears shifted forward and his tail started thumping the inside of the closet.

“Do you want to go on awalk?” I asked again, standing up.

When I stood, George Bailey stood.

“Awalk!” I said. “Where is yourleash?”

Atleash, he stepped out and followed me. We walked around, flashing the phone light and looking. “Where does Hutch keep yourleash?” I asked over and over, just to keep the conversation going.

Then I spotted it hanging from a hook near the door.

Is this going to be easy?I wondered.

But I should have known better than to have thoughts like that. George Bailey was totally with me as I got him leashed up… until I opened the door to the rain. That’s when I noticed how much darker the sky had become, and how much the water in the marina was churning.

And that’s when the thunder decided to do its thing.

At the sound, George Bailey planted all four of his feet and sat down.

He did have a point.

“Come on, buddy,” I said, walking confidently toward the door.

But as I reached the threshold, I hit the end of the leash line.

George Bailey wasn’t budging.

I gestured out at the pouring rain like it was fun. “Don’t you want to go for awalk?”

Not that much, apparently.

“Hey, friend,” I said, hoping maybe I could explain it to him logically. “There’s a hurricane coming. A big one. We need to get out of here.”

George Bailey was, quite literally, unmoved.

Next, I tried a bunch of other tactics—from luring him with snacks, to tossing his armadillo squeaky toy out the door, to explaining that Hutch was waiting for him at a big dog party in Miami, toattemptingactual brute force—and none of it budged him even one inch.

I only succeeded in slipping—twice—on the wet entryway floor… and landing on my tailbone both times.

As time wore on, I resorted more and more to trying toexplain things.

Breathless and wet, I kept up a running monologue that George Bailey fully ignored, as I moved around him—pushing from behind, then pulling from the front, desperately trying to set him in motion: “Look, I know you have concerns about all that weather out there, and I get it. I know it seems scarier outside than it does inside right now… but we’ve got a life-threatening storm on our hands. I don’t know if anyone’s ever told you this, but a houseboat is literally the last place on earth you want to be during a hurricane. ACategory Fourhurricane, by the way, according to the Saffir-Simpson scale! This guy Saffir-Simpson is not kidding around. We could really die. Every single person—and dog!—in the keys is evacuating right now. The entire Overseas Highway is one long string of taillights. Come on, buddy! Let’s get the hell out of here.”

Through it all, George Bailey watched me like some kind of jaded law school professor who was pretty sure I was going to fail his class—just waiting for me to say something, anything, persuasive.

The whole thing was pretty much the definition of a bad idea.

As the thunder got louder, and the rain got harsher, and the houseboat bobbed more and more urgently on the waves, knocking against the rickety dock, I googledhow to move a large dogon my phone and scanned search results like:how to motivate a stubborn stallion,coaxing rituals for camels, andhow to move a grand piano.

Turns out, this particular situation is a tough one to crowdsource.

I tried calling Hutch for tips, but as it rang, I heard a faint sound coming from the bedroom.

A phone ringing.

I followed the sound, George Bailey trailing equally curious behind me, until I found Hutch’s phone, which had fallen behind his mattress and through the bed slats.

Oh, shit. Wasthiswhy he hadn’t texted me back?

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