Ode to a Dog

Since making the move to Wisconsin, life has changed the most, surprisingly, for our dog Agee. She hates apartment life, so even though we're looking for houses and only have a sublet, the pressure seems even higher to find someplace else just to pull her out of her temporary depression.

Needless to say, she and I have been going on more walks than we did in Tennessee--three a day or so. Spending all this time walking her, coupled with the fact that I spend most of the day in the apartment with her while writing cover letters (checking facebook), looking for jobs (reading emails), and drafting my teaching memoir (playing guitar in the spare room), I've gotten the chance to remember some things about her that I love, but had forgotten.

Here they are.

1) She has a beautiful, snow-white blaze on her neck and chest. It comes to a perfect point under her chin, and I always notice it when I'm walking behind her and she's bent down to sniff something inappropriate. It's like when an actress is sort of interesting-looking, and then she smiles, and she's gorgeous. It's Agee's secret weapon. Which makes her the canine equivalent of Helen Hunt, I guess.

2) I love how she's completely given up on squirrels and cats. One day she figured out that they will always have trees, and she never will. She looks at them with interest, then gives an almost-perceptible shrug. But after five years of fruitless pursuit, she will still chase the living hell out of a rabbit. They're like crack to her.

3) When she stops to smell stuff on a walk, she has a very tender, gentle expression. Like she doesn't want to miss any smells by being too aggressive with her gigantic snout--she's just coaxing them out of there like she's a freaking sommelier or something.

4) Little dogs go bananas when they see her. I mean, you would think she was a dragon, based on their reactions. They scream and claw at their owners' pant legs, then pull against their skinny pink leashes, yipping and shrieking at Agee like tiny banshees. Agee never barks at them. She rarely acknowledges them with a look, and when she does, it's a bewildered one. I love smiling and waving at those dog owners when we pass, while they struggle to pacify their batshit crazy pets, and Agee is shored up to me, my obedient little tugboat.

It almost makes up for the fact that I'm now a regular poop-scooper for a 90 pound mutt.