A Dog’s Breakfast

The annoying beast awakens in the darkness, abruptly interrupting my dream world with her careless whimpers. So I rise in the dark, and must search for soft pants, locate shoes and begin to unlace the knots in my shoelaces from the day before.

It is autumn, the season of transition, colours changing from green to red, from yellow to brown. The plant world formerly lush, is slowly dying. A new season is upon us. Walking a dog, especially a dog who is so low to the ground as ours, is a challenge in Fall, as the leaves on the ground can hide untold treasures- if you are a dog! Besides when it is dark, I can’t see details or devils. It is a garden buffet for Miss Maisy.

I pick out a scarf, because I hate being cold. I grab my black bomber jacket, which I found yesterday stashed away in a luggage case stored in the closet. I carefully try to manage the zipper, but when I fit the one side into the other, it does not draw together and close the jacket. Instead the zipper opens from the bottom. After a few attempts, I come to the conclusion that this great find of a jacket a few years ago, is now sullied by a cheap zipper. If the jacket won’t zip up, it defeats the one purpose of a jacket, which contrary to my earlier thoughts of style, is the simple function of keeping one more warm with jacket than without. ( Later in the day, I figured the zipper out).

This is the part where the usually swearing starts, but I soldier on, grabbing the leash, reaching down to fasten said leash to collar, and pull open the heavy front door to exit the warm apartment, just as I earlier had to exit my warm bed.

In the hallway, little Missy is playing hard to get, or at least hard to walk, as she puts on the brakes every three steps. I turn back and look into her rheumy eyes.

What now? You were the one who wanted to go for a walk.

Nothing.

She gives me the silent treatment. Is it insolence or incontinence? I gently drag her in the direction of the elevator. She stops again, right in the tracks of the elevator door, forcing me to pull her into the elevator before the door closes on her tail.

Work with me, Maisy.

We exit the elevator and the building, and I remove the diaper she has been wearing since the evening before.

Surprise! Surprise!

She has already done her business. Perhaps she didn’t need to go, as she had already went, leaving a small biscuit of excrement for my viewing pleasure. Perhaps she just wanted the damned diaper off. And breakfast. A dog’s breakfast.

I had a math teacher in grade 10, named Mr Donaldson, who would go up and down the aisles of desks,and swat student’s hands with his ruler.

That homework looks like a dog’s breakfast!

Years later I saw him on the street in Chinatown. At best, you would call him disheveled.

For those not in the know, a dog’s breakfast is an English slang expression meaning an unappealing mixture; a disorderly situation; a mess.

Well the mess was in her diaper. Certainly not in her kiss. This is an American punk reference to the LA band X, who sang The World’s A Mess (Its In My Kiss).

I gather up the disposable diaper, and look to where I can dispose it. There is a dumpster across the street. I head with her down the rampway to the sidewalk, with my eye on the dumpster. It is dark, the streetlights are still on, and it is not quite raining, yet.

She stops in the middle of the street, as she is wont to do. She stares into space.

Let’s go, I insist. You can’t stop in the middle of the street, even if it is the middle of the night, cars might whip around the corner. Besides, there are skunks and coyotes out here at this time of day.

More staring into space. To use another punk rock reference, pretty vacant.

Once again, may I remind you that you were the one who wanted to go out for a walk just shy of five in the morning. A walk, not a sit down in the middle of the road.

I begin the ordeal of dragging, gently dragging, the recalcitrant terrier, hopefully across the street to the target dumpster, them around the block, at the very least. Her leash is taut, braking is in full effect. She is still stopped in the middle of the road. I pull her to the other side for her own safety. A small back dog on a grey overcast night/day does not bode well for visibility.

The spent diaper finds its way to the dumpster. We push ( and pull) forward up the hill. Our direction today is in reverse to the usual direction we take on our walks.

At last the short walk is over and we come back to the building. We both have our first breakfast. Hers is literally a dog’s breakfast.

Mine is a breakfast of least resistance, a simple bowl of cereal and oat milk.

Questions still abound.

Like how does one milk an oat?