Dogspeak

Tuktoy, dachshund/shih tzu mix, heard it in the dog park from Nellietwo, golden retriever and everybody’s nanny. He promptly sought Mackadaisical, Scottish terrier and gentleman, for his assessment.

Mack, to his friends, squared his shoulders to match his coiffed chin whiskers and gave sober confirmation.

He stated that an older being of his own breed in the kennel of his birth had told him that in his old country, known among two-foots as Scotland, it was widely understood that on the stroke of midnight on a date recognized as ‘Christmas eve’, animals could speak.

To be clear, ‘speak’ meant they could limit their skills to those orderly sounds intelligible to two-foots.

Mack could not corroborate this from personal experience. His household was one in which everyone retired well before that hour, so the opportunity had not presented in his four years of cohabitation.

Tuktoy outlined the problem. His household consisted of two large, and one growing, of the human variety. This had been an admirable situation until recently.

The growing one, called Bobby, had acquired something called a skateboard. Although he, Tuktoy, was still invited for walks they had become somewhat stressful. Recent excursions had called upon him to gallop along to the limits of his lungs and energy. They would then pause at a certain street and Bobby would engage in back and forth waves along a short block.

Bobby had slowed only briefly on two outings. When a growing human female had appeared in a yard mid-block, he had turned his head nonchalantly in another direction, climbed off his board and checked his wheels. When growing female had swung her meagre supply of fur beside her face, Bobby climbed back. The pace of the return journey slowed only when Tuktoy concentrated his energy and focus to contrive a leash entanglement on the corner.

Tuktoy kept quiet all Christmas eve, tucking himself into Bobby’s room. Waiting until his charge was asleep and the number 12 appeared on the bedside clock, he spoke quietly into Bobby’s ear as Mack had advised.

“Let Tuktoy go first. Let Tuktoy go first.”

He repeated this simple phrase until a small ‘woof’ escaped and signalled the return of his normal expansive vocabulary, and fell asleep at the foot of the bed.

The next morning he could only sigh. Bobby was pleased to see him, but gave no sign of anything different between them.

Their morning outing went as before, until they reached the corner of ‘that’ street. To Tuktoy’s amazement Bobby stooped down and undid the leash.

With hardly a pause Tuktoy took one deep breath and galloped to ‘the’ yard, squishing himself through a previously observed low point in the fence. He wandered in view of the large front window, sniffing and pawing the ground until growing female appeared with jacket in the doorway.

She came up to him, kneeled and said, “Are you lost?”

Mack always laughed when Tuktoy reached this point in his story.