MY NAME IS NOT ADAM

Okay. So I have a dog. His name is Lou. I think we've been over this before? Well, this bears repeating: I have a dog; his name is Lou; he lends his name to my blog; and I love him, too. But. A big "but." Cujo, he ain't.

And that may surprise some people, seeing as how he is a 50-50 splice of Boxer and Pit Bull. I reckon people are scared of both breeds of dog, let alone a hybrid version o' da Canine Killah. (I know for a fact that my neighbor is scared of Lou; but that was a story for a different day.)

Today, I wish to write about my fearsome Louie, who, at this moment, is sprawled out on the couch, napping, his paws crossed daintily on the armrest before him, his tail curled 'round his rump.

I got home from work at around 5:00 today, and I decided to go in the front door instead of the side door like I usually do. Here is the layout of my home: You walk in the front door, into the living room. Ten paces ahead is a hallway, with a door leading to the attic on the east side and the hallway leading to the bedroom and back room and bathroom to the west. The door straight ahead seperates the kitchen and the stairs to the basement from the rest of the house. I keep this door closed when I'm at work, thus ensuring that Lou not have free range of the house whereupon he could, say, tear a hole in my pillows or, perhaps, eat the couch. Lou has plenty of room in the kitchen-slash-dining room and he has his food and his water and the floors are much easier to clean in the case of an "accident."

I decided to fuck with him, to see just how much of a guard dog he is.

I slowly opened the door to the kitchen--just a crack, mind you--and peered around the edge of the door to see where Lou was. He was in the middle of the kitchen looking quizzically at me, in the way that Boxers have mastered. I eased the door shut. Waited a few beats. I opened the door--again, just a crack--and I peered, again, emotionlessly and silently at Lou as he stared back at me. I closed the door slowly. Waited a few beats. This time, when I opened the door and did my Zombie Adam impression, Lou voiced his displeasure with a low growl. I almost opened my mouth and said, "You growling at me?" but I stayed silent; I wanted to see what would happen. I did this open door-stare-close door routine a couple more times and each time I opened the door anew Lou's growls grew louder and more animated.

This was getting interesting. Did he not smell the Adam-ness of me? Was my silence disturbing to him? Did he think me an intruder, an interloper? A hobo? A transient?

I decided to push the envelope.

I opened the door fully this time. But slowly. Oh so slowly. (I felt a bit like the narrator in Poe's "A Tell-Tale Heart.") I never broke eye-contact with Lou and I never said a word. Hell, I barely breathed. The garbage can was in the way of the door, but I payed it no heed. Slowly the door opened on its hinges and so the trash (empty) toppled over into the kitchen.

Lou leapt back, startled. His unease gave way to barking, deep and loud and punctuated with throaty growls. I shambled in to the room, hunched over like Quasimodo. My mouth was tight, my eyes were expressionless (I hoped) and my left arm dangled at my side. I then decided to pretend that I'd been shot and so I dropped to the kitchen floor like a sackful of flounder.

Lou scrabbled back to the far wall, near the TV, and started to howl. Howl and bark. Bark and growl. Kid was freaked out. I maintained my silence as I began to soldier stomach-crawl towards Louie. I couldn't see him completely, as the dining room table slightly obstructed the view, but I could see how he began to claw at the far wall as his barks echoed in the sparsely-furnished room. He was trying to climb the wall, like a cat from Looney Toons.

His barking never ceased; hell, he barely looked at me as I crawled towards him. Growls and barks. I began to wonder if Lou might, in fact, bite me. No way, right? He knows me, for crying out loud. He can at least smell me, right? I got to within a few feet of the dog and decided that enough was enough. I called it off. Uncle.

"Hey, Louie!" I cooed. "What's up, kid?!" I jumped to my feet and Lou bounced over, his hindquarters waggling furiously and his tongue dangling like a pink tail. I went to pat him on his head and he shied away and his ears flattened against his skull. "C'mon, Lou! Go outside?!"

We went outside and Lou promptly dropped a load and sprinkled some lemonade. I made some crack about having literally scared the shit out of him and we went back inside, he somewhat uncertainly. I discovered shortly why he'd been trepidatious to go back in: Poor kid had squirted out a bit of Yoor-Rhyne at a couple of spots on the dining room carpet. I guess that I had scared him (or freaked him out) more than I'd thought.

The Yoor-Rhyne? Completely my fault. I cleaned it up without admonishment. Now, if this story doesn't put me in the running for "Owner of the Year," nothing will!

***

Ancillary: In a way, I can understand completely what Lou had been feeling. My sister Alexis used to, back in the day, when we'd all been young and goofy and impressionable, insist to me that she wasn't Alexis. Verily, she was Frank, a ghost who kicked it at our house, considered our homestead his crib. Intellectually, I knew that she was full of shit. But--damn!--she was convincing! Her eyes lost her Alexis-ness and became really spooky. "Where's Alexis?" I would ask her, kind of playing along. Her voice would lose its little girl shrillness, become an octave deeper. "Alexis died," she'd answer. "I'm Frank. I'll be here forever and ever. And ever. She's never comin' back." When she finally broke the act, I was relieved and somewhat pissed...but mostly relieved.

Sorry, Lou. :o(