Page 36 of Love in Training
“Who would you suggest?”
CHAPTER
TWELVE
I spenddays two and three of my canine confinement much the same as I did day one. Well, minus time spent with a dog trainer, because that was enough of that. I continue writing my Unmatched piece, carefully reviewing notes from my interview with Mimi Vanderpool. I don’t go to the gym. I walk the dog at seven a.m. At ten a.m. At one o’clock, five o’clock, and nine o’clock. Consider becoming a professional dog walker. I reply to emails and order groceries because I can’t go to the store. Try not to lose my mind.
I resort to doing crunches and lifting a few hand weights in my living room in a desperate effort to keep up my muscle tone, but between the lack of cardio and my boss asking when I might return to the office, I don’t know how I’ll keep up this existence.
Wednesday morning, after pulling dog hair out of my coffee and finding it plastered to my leggings, I attempt to vacuum. But as soon as I turn on my little apartment-sized stick vac, Rufus freaks out, leaping back and forth, whining and growling at the appliance like it’s some kind of malicious robot. I ignore him, heading straight for the hair-covered dead couch. But when he escalates, snarling and barking like he might actually attack, I turn the thing off.
We both back away, a little surprised, before he settles back into an urgent whine. He doesn’t take his eyes off the vacuum until I’ve put it back in my front closet. Then he starts pacing and whimpering.
I stare at him.
He stares at me.
I let out a long breath.
Then I crumple to my knees. I thought this would settle into some sort of routine. I’d take care of him, meet his needs, live my life around him—coexist. He eats enthusiastically. He clearly likes his walks. But for the past day or so, when we come home, he won’t lie down. I can’t clean. I can’t even close the door of the bathroom to pee. I can’tleave. He just paces around and cries, even if I’m here, no matter what I do. This seems like the opposite of settling in.
When I raise my head, the dog is two inches from my face. His tongue curls toward my cheek. I push him away.
Wednesday, March 17, 20__, 11:24 AM
From:[email protected]
Subject: Re: Re: no subject
Dear Kyle,
Your stupid, smelly dog is ruining my life, and he wants you to know the mission was successful—I hate both of you now. Also, he would’ve been happier with your idiot brother. I don’t care about your reasons. Clearly you were shit at good decisions.
C
Lydia stops by on her way home from a prenatal appointment Wednesday evening, and I meet her at the door with a new level of desperation. “Can youpleasejust walk him up and down the hall for ten minutes while I clean?” I plead. “He thinks the vacuum is the enemy. But I’m starting to feel like I live in a barn.”
She takes pity on me. Even brings him outside to do his business. By the time she returns, I have sucked up literal tumbleweeds of dog hair from all over my apartment, and finally achieved a level of mental peace I didn’t even realize I’d been missing.
It evaporates as soon as they walk back through the door.
“I think Anton and Seth can get this out of here Sunday,” Lydia says, gesturing to the former couch. She unclips Rufus’s leash and watches him circle my apartment, panting. “Did you feed him tonight?”
“Yeah. Twohoursago,” I snarl. “I can’t go on like this, Lydia. I’m doing everything you said, but even when I’m home now, this is all he does. When he’s not stealing my stuff.”
She raises her eyebrows. “What does he steal?”
“The other day I caught him with my phone in his mouth—why would that even taste good? He’s taken a bagel off my plate. He steals my underwear if I don’t put it right in the laundry...”
She watches him circle the coffee table, another nails-on-chalkboard whine starting up in his throat. “It seems to me like he’s bored.”
“Are you sure he can’t come to The Pooch Park?” I beg. “Just for a few hours?”
She gives me a sympathetic smile. “Maybe eventually. But I wouldn’t even let him take our entrance test if he can’t settle down at home first.”
“They have to take atest?” I study her face for some sign she’s joking, but she just nods.
