When my dog Ed's hips first went out, we didn't know what to do with one another. In her estimation, my picking her up was always a portent of evil. Baths. Rectal thermometers. Dancing to the Isley Brothers' I Wanna Be With You. Suddenly I was picking her up several times a day, and she hated it.
It didn't last. Now she comfortably demands courier service down the beach stairs or to the car. "Father," her eyes summon daily, "I am ready to get out of bed now. Be a dear and get off the couch so that I might get a snootful of water, then snarf all over the glass coffee table." In no time at all, she became a complete fucking goldbrick.
Last night, I carried her down the stairs so that we could watch the sun set over Puget Sound. As I smoked a cigar, she pranced around like a pup, notably having no problem whatsoever getting up after having rolled in a dead crab. Then we both spotted an enormous harbor seal—so large I mistook him for a sea lion. The seal came closer to Ed, who bounded out to greet him. Leaning out warily, Ed touched her nose to his. She then panicked and lunged away, which caused him to disappear. No matter. It was a marvelous photo op. Alas, I typically had no camera.
I came across this in the latest Atlantic. I wish I'd written it.
Dogs belong to that select group of con artists at the very top of the profession, the ones who pick our pockets clean and leave us smiling about it. Dogs take from the rich, they take from the poor, and they keep it all. They lie on top of the air-conditioning vent in the summer; they curl up by the fireplace in the winter; they commit outrages against our property too varied and unspeakable to name. They decide when we may go to bed at night and when we must rise in the morning, where we may go on vacation and for how long, whom we may invite over to dinner, and how we should decorate our living rooms. They steal the very bread from our plates. If we had roommates who behaved like this, we'd be calling a lawyer. Or the police. (Stephen Budiansky)