My basset hound boydog, Rufus, just got a big lifestyle upgrade. A couple weeks back, I hired carpenter Jim to install a dog door that connects the Jowers backyard to the Jowers house. Now, Rufus can alternate between indoor and outdoor living at his pleasure.
I’m ashamed to say that I procrastinated on the dog door project for almost four years. I hadn’t even considered a dog door until 2002, when a grouchy neighbor called me at 4 o’clock in the morning, complaining that Rufus’ innocent and playful baying, barking and chortling had roused him from his sleep.
I wrote a column about that, in which I explained that if my neighbor had been really and truly asleep—like I was at 4 o’clock in the morning—he would’ve been unconscious and wouldn’t have heard Rufus bark at all. Heck, I can’t recall a time when I ever heard anything when I was asleep. So how did my neighbor know for sure that that it was Rufus who woke him up? It’s more likely, I think, that the grouchy neighbor woke up because the whiskey wore off, and Rufus just happened to be barking at the time. I figure the guy’s been blaming dogs for his troubles all his life. The dog wet the bed, the dog ate my homework, the dog got drunk and wrecked the car, the dog bounced checks all over town, and on and on.
Anyhow, the column about my neighbor’s rude awakening earned me some hate mail from a woman in California. She told me that I had made Rufus psychotic, because I made him live in a 400-square-foot outbuilding. There, my poor dogfriend had to suffer through summers with a big fan pointing at his rest area, and survive winters lying on a heated blanket inside his insulated doghouse. The California woman told me that I should move Rufus into the Jowers house, treat him like a person and try to restore his sanity. If I recall her email correctly, she wanted me to buy Rufus some silk pajamas like Hugh Hefner wears, put him in a four-poster bed from Sharper Image, hook him up with a big-screen TV and get him a tricycle so he could travel a little.
I talked to Rufus about that. He told me that he was happy with his dog bachelor pad, but he really would like to come in the house more often. I know, some of you may think Rufus and I can’t actually have a conversation. Suffice it to say that I can talk just fine and Rufus is a good listener. When Rufus has something to say to me, he does it by making dog faces and shooting out a little low-grade telepathy. His telepathic voice sounds a lot like that Jon Heder kid, who played Napoleon Dynamite.
I told Rufus that I didn’t have time to fool with any dog-door installation, but I’d open the back door now and then and let him in the house. Rufus and we Jowers humans kept that arrangement until last month, when carpenter Jim’s swinging dog door gave Rufus the run of the house.
At first, Rufus was a little scared of the door. Best I could tell, he thought the swinging door was alive and might try to eat him. Wife Brenda, kindly and helpful soul that she is, helped Rufus overcome his fears by tossing dog treats through the door. Soon, Rufus decided that no plastic swinging door was powerful enough to keep him away from his Snausages.
“Good job, darlin’,” I said to Brenda. “You’ve empowered Rufus Jowers. Now he can live like a California dog.”
“I made him two beds,” Brenda offered. “One on the upstairs sleeping porch, so he can bark through the windows at the Yankee dogs, and another one in our bedroom, so he can feel safe when there’s a thunderstorm.”
“Reminds me of when you moved into the house with me,” I said.
“It is a little like that,” Brenda replied. “I felt all safe and warm. And I had my own little arts-and-crafts room.”
“Rufus can’t do art,” I said. “Maybe crafts, though. Anybody can do crafts.”
“Rufus is art,” Brenda pointed out.
Right now, Rufus is lying on his bed on the sleeping porch, warmed by a sunbeam. He’s got a Lee Harvey Oswald view of the nearby Yankee dogs. When one of them makes a move, Rufus will unleash a stream of barking from 30 feet up and make the Yankee dogs tremble in fear of the baying dog god.
Rufus doesn’t have to get his feet wet anymore. He’s got central heat and air, a cat that he can chase but never catch, and high-definition cable television. His favorite show is Weeds, on Showtime. In spite of his having been fixed—or maybe because of it—Rufus has a crush on Weeds’ female lead, Mary-Louise Parker.
This evening, Brenda will sprinkle Rufus with baby powder and brush him. From now on, Rufus’ body will smell like a baby human; only his breath will have any dog stink on it.
It is a good time to be Rufus Jowers.
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