No Tangle Dual Leash, Comfortable Shock
For three years, my wife ached to rescue a dog. I would list the logics. And when those failed, I’d look behind the bookcases and couch cushions; searching for the verdant, fenced-in yard we must’ve misplaced. No, c’mon: a dog deserves better than this apartment. Don’t you agree, I’d argue, that it would be cruel to get one?
So we got two.
The first came during the bite of winter; handed to us in the parking lot of a suburban animal hospital. The tape from the parvo drip still stuck to her leg. The other came from the wilds of Louisiana, carted north through the midsummer humidities. They grew beyond our expectations. And they grew to the same weight, but in different ways.
Parvo grew slender and tall, a regal lady of the dawn, a guess of black lab and whatever-hound that left her legs and ears a little too long. No one really knew which breeds for certain, and only the creeps seemed to care, so a mutt. Her mind was on fire, which was most evident when she hit the street; her nose hovered millimeters from the ground and remained in position as the urgency pulled her from block to block. She wouldn’t stop until she got to the bottom of all this mess, or needed to shit. In that way, she would’ve made a great gumshoe.
Kingfish bulked up, a boxer with a broken jaw, a guess of catahoula leopard and palmed karambit that left her with perma-puppy eyes and a tensed, dense frame. No one really knew which breeds for certain, and only the creeps seemed to care, so a mutt. She had escaped from an unreported rural war, and though she had reached sanctuary, she remained vigilant and quick to attack. Every dog a threat, every human a hero; there was always another fight around the corner. Shit, she had to protect what’s hers. In that way, she would’ve made a great grunt.
They said -no more than thirty-thirty-five; and again -no more than twenty-five-thirty. We held those estimates as vows. By the ninth month, both were seventy-seventy-five. What do you do with one-forty-one-fifty? We weren’t athletes. We had our limits.
The big problem was O-U-T-S-I-D-E. Inside, they could sit, stay, shake, settle, even return to the crate. But no amount of training, professional or otherwise, could quash the Pull. We had proved proficient in Squirrel, Carcass, and Vomit. I was also certified in Stray Cat and Racoon. But no mortal could master the rabbits, the hippity-hoppity cacodemons whose darts and dalliances summoned an inalienable bloodlust from each dog’s core. If a rabbit should appear, it was imperative to set one’s footing before the whipcrack traveled from leash to bone. Properly braced, i.e. feet perpendicular to the taut parallel lines, one could cantilever one’s bodyweight to neutralize the forward momentum. And as tendons begged to snap from their sticking places, one could wait for the moment to pass.
During a notably manic excursion where I resigned to follow their lead, we found ourselves at Foster, a main vein of morning rush-hour traffic. Cars frequently added fifteen-twenty to the speed limit. Just let one of ‘em inch out, I thought, maybe if the other heard the screech of brakes, saw the impact and the insides scattered on the street, that one, that surviving one, would get in line. But then, there’d only be one. One who always watched, always followed, always needed something from you. The liberties we took while they reeled and tumbled from den to bedroom, the freedoms we had as they established dominance over a doormat; those would be as dead as that one dumb dog (hypothetically). No, we had to have two.
On a gamble fueled by desperation and ben-gay, we ordered the No Tangle Dual Dog Leash. The construct was simple enough, a leash that led to two other leashes, all fastened together at a squeaking swivel. With tactical ruche, the terminating leashes clipped to the harnesses of Parvo and Kingfish.
Things became easier, in a way. Eighty-ninety percent of the time, walks began in a Y-formation: one huffed the parkway grass as the other pawed a neighbor’s lawn. That Y would predictably transmute to a T, one pulling against the other, no ground gained or lost. In that T, with stasis achieved, my end went slack. There was enough time to reply to an email, scroll a neglected Slack channel, read a one-pager: important stuff.
Of course, it was never just Y or T. After the piss puddled and the shit was inspected and bagged, lines would often cyclone-swirl as the two wrestled their way up a parallel street. And when a line inevitably snared a leg or neck, panic would overwhelm play; growls dropped in pitch, raised in volume; and killing teeth were bared. While it mitigated the Pull, the Dual Leash added to the Fight.
Maybe it was the proximity. Unlike the separate lines, the Dual Leash removed the last illusion of autonomy. As one moved, so must the other. Even during the languid plodding of hottest summer, the squeaking swivel would chirp above their heads -- a small, persistent reminder of their shared subjugation.
I’d let the skirmishes last a few seconds longer than I should’ve. Kingfish always won. The home was calmer when Parvo was a touch afraid. To have one cowering in a crate, the other muzzled; it let me get more work done. But when things got bloody, like the couch thing and the duvet thing, a new regime was put in place. Tangles were quickly corrected, playtime ended at the slightest hint of unrest. The freedom to sniff and meander was replaced by father’s loving fist. While it mitigated the Fight, the new protocol added to the Pull.
Such was our burden, maintaining the balance between Fight and Pull. Choosing between the two was wholly a matter of convenience, dictated by the circumstances of the day. In retrospect, in the mind of a dog, it was all arbitrary. But it was manageable. Then winter came.
Winter was a mischievous prick, protean in its temperatures. Saturday snow, Sunday melt, Monday freeze, Tuesday snow, etc. until the alleys and sidewalks were piebald paths of concrete and ice. If a pattern could be discerned, it was quickly obscured by driven snow. As such, the slightest tug could send me to the ground. And if a dog’s body was clipped or pinned by my flailing frame, the blame was shifted to the other, and another attack began. It was a herculean task, to keep control when you’re on your knees. Out of self-preservation, I favored the Pull.
In the first week of February, they pulled me back to Foster. I didn’t notice where we were. I had been busying my thoughts with bones most likely to break: collar bone, clavicle; forearm, radius; ass, coccyx; ankle, what’s the ankle? Man, what the fuck is the ankle bone? Think! The woolgathering of future injuries ended when I felt a slide under boot. I panicked to stay upright and keep the dogs in check. But there was no Y in front of me. No T.
They stood as two set columns, an immutable equal sign. A frozen focus locked both to the sidewalk’s edge. From head to tail, nothing moved but their hackles. And on the other side, through the street’s dot-dash rush, a rabbit. It sat on a patch of snow that hid a sheet of ice: unaware of the day’s significance or its possibilities, unaware of doom’s reach, unaware how quickly insides can go outside.
Don Malkemes lives in Chicago.