Trip Hazard

The French poet Gérard de Nerval used to walk his pet lobster, named Thibault, on a leash on the streets of Paris. Me, I walk Truffle up and down a couple of blocks in our neighborhood. Over the years, I have trained four German Shepherds to walk on leash. No matter how compliant the dog, I always had the sense of a great reservoir of power at the end of the leash, and the awareness that he or she could at any moment drag me all the way to the North Pole. By contrast, walking Truffle feels like having a butterfly at the end of the leash. He skims along beside me, barely seeming to touch the ground. But when the creature walking next to you reaches only as high as your ankles, it is dangerously easy to trip over him. I wonder if Nerval ever tripped over Thibault.

During our walks I make sure that Truffle has plenty of chances to sniff. Given his history, I am especially determined to let him lead the doggiest possible life. This means endless stopping on his part and endless patience on mine as he sniffs the traces of rabbits, foxes, and skunks on the melting snow and deepening mud. Often, for no reason I can see, he stops as if turned to stone and gazes towards the horizon. There are no other dogs or people, no cars, no flags waving or newspapers flapping in the wind. I can only surmise that he is compensating for all those years of confinement, when he was only able to focus as far as the bars of his cage. When I call his name he comes to himself with a start, and trots up to me.

The next bit of excitement happens when we enter the house. He is afraid of the sucking sound of the screen door, but only when going in, never when going out. To help him get over this, I’ve taken to throwing a tiny piece of dried turkey heart just inside the door, and now he looks at me before he ventures in, to make sure the treat is in my hand. This is followed by the thrill of the temperature change, from the low twenties outside to a semi-tropical sixty-eight inside, which causes him to race in manic circles all over the house.

His excitement arouses the cat Telemann, who comes rushing out from under the bed, leaps over Truffle, and administers a couple of swats,  to which Truffle responds with a weirdly nasal half growl/half snarl. I’m not sure what to do about these altercations. They usually take place behind me, or in another room, and are over in a second. I have never heard Truffle yelp in distress, and he seems to stand his ground. His thick coat is excellent protection against cat claws. Still, I feel that under my roof cats and dogs should get along at all times, and not just when they are napping together.

Speaking of Truffle’s coat, it is not for nothing that his ancestors were sled dogs. He can go out in a blizzard and the snow collects on the tips of his fuzzy hairs without melting. I have to brush his thick, woolly fur every day, or risk epic mats. First I go over him with a slicker brush—a gizmo with dozens of short angled wires attached on a flat surface—and then I repeat with a long-toothed comb to make sure there are no knots lurking next to the skin. And every night while I do this I wonder how the puppy mill owners who breed Pomeranians deal with the dogs’ need for daily brushing. I know that when Truffle went into foster care he had a fungal skin infection and his coat was so matted that big chunks of it had to be cut off. Happily, the infection is gone, his coat is growing in soft and luxurious, and his once-ratty tail has become the gallant plume typical of the breed.