Songs from a Spiral Tree

Letting my dog Waldo out first thing in the morning is like uncorking warm champagne. From a bottle that’s been shaken. The door opens and Waldo explodes in twenty-five directions at once, a night’s worth of energy expended in one exuberant dash.

He has a couple of badly-frayed rope toys and he will grab one of them as he flies, shaking it furiously as he races toward his favorite tree. He has learned that he can bounce off the stockade fence, catapulting himself toward a tree branch that’s about six and a half feet off the ground, grab the branch in his mouth (after dropping the rope toy) and swing from it for a few moments. He lets go and drops to the ground with a loud “Ungh!”, then tears around the backyard like a gameshow contestant, racing to each of his favorite spots (usually where there are holes in the fence) before beginning the circuit all over again.

A number of years ago I visited the home of Ralph Waldo Emerson in Concord. It’s a wonderful place because most of his things are still there, right down to a beat-up hat hanging by the side door, waiting to be grabbed on his way out. I love to read Emerson’s essays and I remember thinking excitedly, “If I get a dog, I’m going to name him Waldo.”

It’s hard to convince people that my dervish is named not after the cartoon character, but after the premier American transcendentalist of the nineteenth century. But Emerson did write “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,” which, I suppose, could be applied to Waldo. Like most dogs he is notoriously set in his ways. but his mind is always working on self-improvement. How to counter-surf faster, how to tease Jasper the sheltie in new ways, how to remind Rosie the collie that he will be the alpha.

When he was younger much of his energy was devoted to escaping the back yard, and he was successful a few times. One day a woman rang my doorbell to ask: Do you have a nutty black and white dog? She pointed to Waldo, who was furiously trying to get back into the back yard but couldn’t figure out how. When he saw me he ran into my arms and let me carry him into the house.

Another time Jasper “told” on him and I looked out to see Waldo’s tail disappear under the fence. I made the mistake of chasing him: across a busy street, through an alley filled with poison ivy, into someone’s back yard. It was like a dream–he kept me in sight, of course, but always at a distance of about twenty yards. He’s not a small dog, but he’s spindly and fast.

He spotted a woman coming out of a busy breakfast restaurant nearby, and I swear I could read the little thought-balloon over his head: “AHA, THIS will mortify her!” He disappeared past the startled diner into the restaurant, and for a brief moment as I approached I weighed my options: one–pretend he wasn’t my dog and head for home, or–two–face the music and follow him into the restaurant? Sigh. By the time I entered the cook was chasing Waldo around the dining room, where he briefly jumped into the lap of a man who was dreamily drinking his coffee and reading the paper (it was a Sunday morning). “Get him out of here!” the cook yelled, and then I screamed, “NO don’t let him out–I’ll get him!!” The Marx Brothers would have been proud of me as I tackled Waldo and carried him out. He was exhausted, as I was.

My little transcendentalist finally brought the tree branch down after whittling it away with his teeth by swinging from it one time too many. I’m surprised he didn’t try to bring it into the house, but it WAS about six feet long and had undoubtedly lost the allure it had when still attached to the tree. Now he’s got something going on the side of the house–it may be a fallout shelter or possibly just a place to bury Jasper. (I caught Jasper in it one day and could only see the top of his head.) I’ll have to keep my eye on this.