#14 PUPPY - PROGRESS REPORT
A message from Scooter Sublime of Heron’s Key:
You can see from the photograph—please don’t use words like “photo” or “picture” which would be like calling “Casablanca” a “movie” rather than a “Film”—you can see from the accompanying photograph that I have matured. I am now a full seven months old. I have forty-two clean, white teeth, two emerging testicles, a coat undergoing change, an unfamiliar but strong urge to hump things, and get this — I have howled. Yes, howled. Imagine the surprise that created.
One day recently, my “must stay at home now” mistress found that playing with me, training me, feeding me, brushing me, accompanying my outings, and standing with me at the front window to watch living things or flying leaves go by, seemed not quite enough to occupy her. So, from a cupboard I’d not seen opened before, she pulled a book of music and a wooden stick called Recorder. She showed it to me. She did not throw it for me. She caused it to speak. I jumped. I mean (as she frequently says), I jumped.
Then, while I am not allowed to bark (“No Speak, Scooter!”) at things that pass outside our windows, or pass by our closed apartment door (even if its a dog worthy of being warned away); she let that Recorder speak full sentences.
THAT was ENOUGH! I howled. I was sitting on the sofa when the strange thing first spoke and something I never felt before moved through my soul, snapped my chin ceiling-ward, set my beard aquiver, and sent a howling sound soaring. She stopped that thing mid-sentence. She and I talked about it. She let it speak again, this time adding a listening device lit by a red light. Her fingers flitted meaninglessly over the row of open mouths on that wooden stick. It spoke. I howled. I stopped that thing with a sustained, and I think ancient, sound escaping from my very soul. It, and I were startled,
I meant to tell you about my first grooming experience, my first bath, my first free-from-the-leash chasing of an admirable stick thrown over a very steep hill, and my first really major, major scolding, but what can top a howling story. I know when it’s time to stop.
