Pup Talk

After recently donning a freshly laundered pair of pants, I plunged my hands into my pockets, as all men are wont to do when cloaking their morning thorax, only to discover several tablespoons of brown powder. I ransacked my memory but could not recall a recent instance of purchasing hash or heroin, having drowned my Guatemalan drug mules the day I noticed a strange car parked on my block. Turns out it was merely the houseguest of a neighbor, but I stand by my decision. You can never be too careful in this game. Thus I was baffled to find this mysterious substance lurking in mine pantaloons. I sniffed the powder and it smelled of liver. And then I realized I had washed my pants with an entire pocket full of dog treats. And in that exact moment, the Adam whom you thought you knew perished like a discarded, underfed, overworked drug mule, and the Adam who now writes this was born.

Because the puppy that I hinted at several months back is now living with me. Annabel, my prize Chesapeake Bay Retriever, has been at my house for over two weeks, and her mere presence has turned me into a doting, baby-talking, carpet-cleanser-clutching shell of myself. On the bright side, though, I taught her how to snort the treat residue I found in my pockets — so at least now we have that hobby in common. Tonight we're probably just going to stay up together snorting a bunch of weird shit and watching Speed.

Here's how my days now go. I wake up to the sound of a whimpering Annabel in her crate, letting me know that she needs to go outside. This typically occurs at, oh, 5:30 a.m. or so. I take her outside, shivering shirtless in the cold. At this point, Annabel likes to shit and pee, and if the shit is a sloppy one, she enjoys walking through it, then jumping up on me to say hello. Next comes the foot scrub-down before I take her inside, where I put Annabel back in the crate and try to go back to sleep — at which point she does the most amazing impression of a chimpanzee being knifed to death, which involves twenty minutes of frenzied shrieking. I give up and allow Annabel to sleep on the bed, and she allows me a half-hour of silence while she ingests the comforter. Then she does her impression of a chimp being raped, which means it's time to eat.

After this, I situate her in my car like white trash and we go for a cup of joe. Back home, I start to do some work, and Annabel goes about eating, then puking, the coffee table. After that we take a walk, and people swoon over Annabel until she coughs up some wood chips and sticks glazed in a mucus-and-saliva rémoulade.

Her brother and sisters are scattered around the city, so I usually try to set up a play date to exhaust the little bitch. After the siblings are done pouncing on each other, Annabel conks out for a good three hours, dreaming so hard that she spasms and shakes and I have to convince myself that she is not seizuring. Then I put her in the back yard for a bit, which gives her the opportunity to reprise her starring role in Chimpanzee Murder-Suicide Pact 4: The Reckoning — unless it is a day like yesterday, when she somehow obtained a pigeon. Whether she killed it or the poor bird merely fell in my back yard, I cannot say. I doubt she can kill anything yet — she can barely catch a ball — but the bird was freshly dead and its neck was broken, which provided a refreshing break in the schedule.

After dinner, we watch TV together and I drink alone, trying to get myself sauced to the point where I can sleep through Annabel's bellowing when I put her in her crate.

They say this period is merely the puppy period, that it will be over soon and I will look back upon it fondly. And I can see that. But there are some veterans who look back on war fondly, too, so really, what does any of that mean? Right now, I'm merely doing what is asked of me by my little Annabel, which is what a good father does. In return, I hope she lands me a date with a lady lawyer or doctor I'll meet in the park this weekend. Because Annabel's eating, then puking, Daddy out of house and home. And we're going to need a new coffee table soon.