a dog and his eel

we head outside this first seriously springish day, the small dog, his lizard and i. guthrie focuses immediately on the task at hand and drops his lizard in front of him, close under his chest where he can keep a good eye on it. he cannot pee and carry his lizard at the same time. this is his rule and he does not consider, probably because he is a dog, that the lizard is lying helpless on a slope downhill from his chest and from the part of him that lies back of that. the stream of pee rolls down between his front paws and over the hind feet of the lizard before i can grab it away. because he is an animal who occasionally snacks on his own poo, i figure he will be the one to carry the lizard to the pet store.

we stroll down the street and he does not seem to mind the pee-soaked hindquarters clenched in his jaws. a woman comes up and asks about the lizard. she has folks with two low dogs and thinks they would love lizards of their own. they live in florida, these low dogs, and have been known to snack on real lizards. i tell her where to get them, say we're on our way there. we are a walking advertisement for the lizard making people.

we make our way to the dog toy store and there are no lizards on the lizard rack. the only toy from the lizard's family is is something named neelmo. this is a stupid name. neelmo is an eel. white and orange striped. legless. we are in a desperate place with no time to worry about legs or stupid names. i get the eel and we head out of the store, the low dog with is lizard, me with a ridiculous legless eel. now, guthrie is loyal to his lizard. he loves it like it is family. he is the dog with the lizard in our neighborhood which means if you say those words to anyone around here that person nods and smiles and knows you mean guthrie. but what i know about guthrie is that he will carry around any toy this company makes. he is brand loyal. seriously. i drop the eel on the sidewalk in front of him and take hold of the lizard tail. he relaxes his jaws and as i slide the lizard away, surely touching a peed on part of the thing, he is already clamped down on the eel. i toss the lizard in a plastic bag. without legs the fat-headed eel is a balance trainwreck but the small dog shifts around and quickly finds that gripping the neck allows him to keep the thing level. he looks like a pirate with a sword in his mouth. he looks like my grandpa george with a cigar.

and it starts all over. a cluster of teenagers sitting in a doorway with trumpets and some unidentifiable brass instruments are playing- high school band style playing- and they squeal between notes about guthrie's unbearable cuteness. we wait at an intersection and a woman asks to take a picture, asks his name. she manages (a miracle, really) to get him to look right at her while she snaps the photo and then congratulates him again on catching such an amazing toy. we walk along and a group of teens behind us chatters about how he's always carrying some great toy. people point and wave.

and like when he first carried the lizard, parents nearly rip their children's heads right off their fragile necks trying to get them to look at this eel and dog spectacle. they point and say, "look! that doggy has a.... a..... well, it's a thing!" all the articulateness of these well-educated, thousand-dollar-stroller-pushing grown folks crumbles into nothing. words fail. because nobody is going to tell a kid from brooklyn that a dachshund is prancing around with a striped eel. nobody who wants to keep any credibility as a parent.