Black Hair and Big Black Eyes

Walking Velvet, our eight-pound black Maltipoo, through the neighborhood—with my speaker blasting and some neighbors looking upon me with approval and some shaking their heads in annoyance.  Velvet barks too much but, like a baby, she just wants to be held.  She always has to be in the middle of me and Michelle when we cuddle in bed.  Makes it hard to be intimate with each other when she is always nudging her head in to be a part of it.  We push her to the end of the bed but she is so sweet that it would seem gritty and shameful to do it while her curious, loving eyes fall upon us like they always do.  Sometimes she falls asleep, but other times she gets lonely and restless and decides to pounce.  It’s really a mood-killer, so we relocate her to the floor.  Last week we came downstairs to find a Christmas ornament chewed up, with the broken pieces all scattered around the living room.  Another time, Michelle went downstairs for a glass of water and I heard her scream: “OH NO!  WHAT THE FUUUCK!”  I said: “What’s going on?”  “Velvet ate a DO NOT EAT packet!”  “Where did she get one of those?” I said, running down the stairs to make sure Velvet was okay.  Velvet was sitting in her favorite spot in the house—in front of the fireplace.  She had a grin on her face that said: Serves you right for kicking me off the bed.  She’s a crazy dog.  She used to lick electrical outlets when she was just a pup.  One time she was standing by the door with something brown and mushy in her mouth.  She was so tiny, we’d only had her for a couple weeks.  She eats everything, so I went to take it from her.  I grabbed it, then dropped it, and shouted: “That was poop!  She was eating her own fuckin poop.”  We had to sprinkle a probiotic in her food, which would make the smell of her poop unappealing to her.  I’m pretty sure if it smelled at all, like anything good or bad, she was thrilled to eat it.  On walks Michelle would hold a dandelion up to her face and Velvet would sniff it, like she was marveling at this magnificent specimen, then she would lean in and chomp it down.  Walking her is the worst on days I just want to be a mute.  Most days I don’t want people to talk to me.  Nor do I want to talk to them.  But trying to say no to her when she wants to say hi to someone is impossible.  She pulls and pulls and cries and cries, and I try to direct her away but then the person in her sight looks up and says: “Oh, Velvet.  You’re such a good girl.”  Velvet pulls me toward them, and jumps and yaps and scurries around their feet.  I just stay quiet, and then when Velvet tires out I nudge her in the way of the walk and she goes, and the person standing there says: “Thanks a bunch.  She’s so sweet.”  I nod my head and hurry off, until someone else leaves their house.  She stops and pulls so much on walks that at one point in the summer I was trying to lose weight and I would walk without her and everyone came up to me and said: “Where’s Velvet?  Is she okay?” and then I’d have to explain that I’m just trying to lose weight and Velvet is okay but she slows me down and I need to do this on my own.  Then they would say: “Well, I’m glad she’s okay.”  One time Michelle took Velvet to New Hampshire without me and I was so lonely without the two of them here and I’d have to take the bus to do errands, and people would be like: “Where’s Velvet?” and I’d say: “Not today, she’s not here today.”  I’m such a messy eater that Michelle would be up in bed with Velvet while I’m in the kitchen eating something and then I’d go upstairs and Velvet would smell the food on my breath and she’d go right to the end of the bed and cry because she wants to see what crumbs I left on the floor for her to eat.  If I eat anything poisonous to her, like chocolate for example, I eat it over the sink so I don’t drop any pieces on the floor.  When we watch TV in the living room she barks at the screen the whole time and it’s so annoying so now we can only watch TV on our computers in bed, and Velvet loves to sit there and watch it with us.  She has this intrigued, upright look that makes it obvious that she is watching, now that the screen is closer to her size and therefore much safer to be around.  Her bark is the most annoying bark.  Saying no to her is incredibly hard because she barks so loud in the middle of the night that we’re afraid it’ll wake up the neighbors, and when she does it right next to me, my ears actually sting.  When she was a puppy she would scream when she got hurt because she didn’t understand this strange land and she was scared.  Once, my stepdaughter Annmarie dropped her and she howled; it sounded almost human but as loud as a sasquatch, and it just rang on until Michelle picked her up and held her so she would calm down.  Now she is four years old.  She runs when we go to pick her up; it’s just a game to her.  In the last year, I started saying: “Stop running,” and she’d immediately stop so I could pick her up.  This one time she got out in New Hampshire when I wasn’t nearby, and I heard Michelle screaming VELVET, and I ran to the door and Michelle was out there trying to catch her and she saw me coming through the door and ran straight toward me and leapt into my arms.  That’s why it’s my job to catch her if she gets away.  She got out the back door once and ran around to the front of the house and then I came out the front door and she ran straight to me.  When she was a little puppy I had to chase her around the parking lot for 20 to 30 minutes when she got out.  I only caught her because one of the neighbors was walking to her car and she ran to greet the woman and I asked her to pick up Velvet, and she did, and she handed her to me.  She doesn’t run because she wants to get away, but it’s just how she plays.  She didn’t leave the parking lot that day, she circled around the grass, and the garages, and the lot, while I would dive in the mud to try and catch her but she’d always slip away from me.  I’m glad those days are over.  When I come home she gets so excited to see me.  She barks her loud nasty bark, accusing me of abandoning her.  I get it, I have abandonment issues too, so I understand; and that is why this dog, she is the second love of my life.