She's a Lady

I would consider myself an animal lover, but as I get older I understand that it is specific animals that I love (my cats) or general classes of animals (dolphins, alpacas) rather than, say, that dog over there who is barking at me. And so it is that I declare my contempt for my brother’s dog, who is a one-year-old yellow lab and dumb as a rock. He brought her on vacation to the beach with us and I have never seen a creature so obsessed with eating sand. She eats sand, she rolls in it, and then she throws it up, the whole dog cycle of life.

My brother has trained her to sit, stay, and drop a Frisbee, so I suppose I must give her credit for being slightly more intelligent than a rock. She obeys him about seventy-five percent of the time, but whenever I’m left to watch her she immediately goes charging down the beach like a rabid dingo to bark in the face of someone’s toddler. I have to stumble through the sand after her screaming in my angriest, most urgent voice, making it all the more embarrassing that she completely ignores me. Sometimes she’ll glance over her shoulder as she’s running away, and you can actually see the moment when she decides to blow me off and keep going for the toddler.

Humorously, her name is Lady. Not only is this name generic, inaccurate, and responsible for getting the Tom Jones song “She’s a Lady” stuck in my head for four consecutive days, it also means that I have to holler it at her when she’s galloping away from me at the beach. I worry that people will think that I both own this horrible dog and am responsible for having named her. Which would be untenable.

Lady has fleas. Apparently, my brother put Frontline on her twice before bringing her on vacation, but the fleas persist. Now every time I get an itch on my foot, I have to check to see if it’s a Lady flea. I’m guessing that Lady fleas are somehow special and impervious to all chemical treatments, and I will probably transport them home with me where my cats will have them for the rest of their lives.

I was lying on my towel at the beach this afternoon, drowsing to the rush and roar of waves, when from afar I heard an agitated choking and strangling sound. I continued to drowse. The choking and gagging sounds grew closer, and with them an ongoing wheezing sound, like someone panting as they struggled to push a boulder up a hill. I didn’t have to glance up but I did anyways, and sure enough, there was Lady, towing brother down the beach on her leash. She doesn’t understand, simply does not compute, that she will get where she’s going in exactly the same amount of time but with far fewer respiratory issues, if she simply walks beside the person holding her leash rather than dragging them like a frothing, wild-eyed draft horse.

Today I watched Lady eat some sand, and then trot down to the ocean to pee in the waves. In her, I see an eagerness and zest for life that is matched only by her profound stupidity. In a strange way, I’m almost jealous.