Category: dogs

The Nother Dog

The sixth and final children’s poem of half a dozen that I wrote many years ago.

Hair of the Dog That Bit Me

I gave my Spot a brushing;
He shed a lot of hair,
So much that when we finished, a whole
Nother Dog was there.

The Nother Dog was shadowy.
Its soul was black as fur.
Spot barked hello. It growled out
A snarly, wolfish grr.

We found Spot’s tug-me toy and gave
The Nother Dog an end.
The Nother phoned for take-out: beets
And carrots, julienned.

I offered it the kibble
To which my Spot was used.
The Nother Dog preferred to read
Six books by Marcel Proust.

Biscuits were available
To dogs who learned to sit.
The Nother Dog liked biscuits, but
Instead of sit, he bit.

“Enough!” said I. “Arf-woof,” barked Spot.
“This Nother Dog can’t stay.”
We turned the ceiling fan on high
And let it blow away.

Spot played with his tug-me,
And didn’t bite my hand.
He ate kibble, till we both agreed
That life was kind of bland.

He fetched the brush, and soon we coughed
In tickly, furry fog.
But when the fur had settled—
A whole ‘nother Nother Dog!

Canine-internet metaphors

Dogs take a candid interest in the smells of other dogs’ pee, and one day a couple of years ago, when I was walking our late lab-shepherd mix, we met a hound who ignored us in order to focus on the scents left on a tree. The hound’s owner apologized by saying, “He’s checking his email.”

Yesterday I heard another such canine-internet metaphor. In anticipation of meeting an elderly dog on the corner, our puppy collapsed on the sidewalk, as if lying in wait in the tall grass. When the elderly dog reached us, Toby sprang up, but the traditional greeting ritual between dogs—butt sniffing—was one-sided, because the elderly dog, uncurious, just stood stolidly and patiently in place. “This is my indifferent lab,” the dog’s owner explained. “‘You do whatever you want,’ he’s saying. ‘You go ahead and Google me, but I’m just going to stand here.'”