Walkin’ Odie – Part II
by
Zalman Velvel
Odie was a very old dog when we were by ourselves again.
My daughter went out of town to Disneyworld, along with her 1 year old son. She took my wife along for the ride, leaving me alone as his caretaker. When I woke up, Odie heard me from the back porch and made crying sounds.
"Yeah, good morning to you, too, Odie!" I yelled from the kitchen. Odie's hearing was going and I had to shout to be understood.
He was outside on the porch in a large cage because Odie had relinquished control of his bowels and bladder. When he was free to roam about, he lifted his leg with careless abandon on couch and table legs, and worse, rugs. He also squatted down and did his duty wherever he pleased. When he was in the large cage, he controlled himself because of some higher law of nature. We couldn't keep the cage in the house because if he saw you, he howled incessantly, to boot.
I put water on to boil, and then took out the big Tupperware canister left by my daughter, with instructions taped to the top – "One scoop, two times a day." I measured a scoop of the special pellets made for older dogs, walked out to the porch, opened his cage, and put the scoop in his food dish. I added water to his little water dish and listened to Odie whine pathetically.
"Look, Odie, this isn't my fault. If you showed the least inclination to control your bowels, I would let you stay inside with me … but there's no way I'm waking up to your mess in the morning … or listening to your incessant whining."
I looked him in the eyes, eyes that used to be full of mischief and energy, but were rheumy now, and waited for an answer. He stared back like he understood and stopped whining, then turned away, disgusted, and crunched on his special brown pellets with the remaining teeth he had left.
"Oh, keeping quiet are we, this morning?" I taunted him.
No response.
The tea pot whistled back in the kitchen, so I went inside and poured the boiling water into my cup, added instant coffee, sugar and milk, and took my first sip. The whining started up again outside.
"Look, I know you're out there, Odie. I'm going to take you for a walk, just not this minute," I shouted.
"Hurry up, Pal. I'm about to bust a kidney."
I spit coffee all over the table.
"Oh, we've found our voice, have we?" I called out while I cleaned up.
"Yeah, so shove down that coffee and get a move on. I've got to do Number 2 now, also, Pal."
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© Copyright 2012 by Zalman Velvel Inc.
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