Features

Now that my husband Ralph is home from a 51-day stay in Kaiser’s ICU, there are some things I need to catch up on. I took our car to the mechanic for a tune-up, and our dog to the veterinary clinic for the same.  

“Are you brushing Whiskers’s teeth?” asked the vet.  

“No,” I said with a trace of guilt. During our last check-up together, Whiskers and I were given a mini toothbrush and a tiny tube of canine toothpaste. The vet instructed me to brush Whiskers’ teeth, particularly the back molars everyday, but I had ignored him. I brush my own teeth and my husband’s teeth. It’s about all the daily dental hygiene I can handle.  

But now my lack of attention to Whiskers’s mouth was coming back to haunt me. The doctor shook his head in frustration as I reflected on the ghost dogs of my past. Back when I was a kid I don’t remember anyone ever brushing their dog’s teeth.  

Growing up in the New Jersey suburbs in the 50s and 60s, my family owned big dogs: Shepherds, Boxers, Dobermans and Great Danes; dogs with monstrous barks and enormous slobbering tongues; canines who scared the milkman, threatened the mailman and responded to names like King, Ace, Mickey and Mack. We didn’t brush their teeth. We threw them bones.  

In our family we called diminutive designer dogs like Whiskers, punting dogs: dogs that were only good for kicking around. We didn’t mess with wimpy little mutts. We had dogs with official papers and family trees that went back to the Mayflower.  

Our dogs were never allowed to sleep in the house, not even on the coldest winter nights. They roughed it outside in a huge doghouse with an extensive chain-link fence surrounding an exercise “pad” that gave them plenty of room to move. Our dogs didn’t squirm. They paced.  

So imagine my dismay when, several months after Ralph’s accident, a miniature Schnauzer was placed gently on my lap, a present from a friend. “Try this,” said the gift-giver. “She’s better than therapy. You won’t need Zoloft anymore.”  

Accompanying the perfume-smelling fur ball was a seven-month supply of puppy chow, a pink plastic toy, canine combs and brushes, a sheepskin dog bed and a book entitled How to Train Small Dogs. The pooch’s name was Misty. “That has to go,” I said when no one was listening.  

Ralph renamed her Whiskers. I stopped combing her curly hair and soaking her in perfume. I took her for long walks in my neighborhood.  

Slowly I’ve begun to appreciate her small charms. Her turds are minuscule. She fits into my crowded house quite well. She doesn’t eat much, but she barks like a son-of-a-bitch, and even though it is more of a high-pitched squeal than a low menacing woof, she sounds vicious and ready to tear apart, limb by limb, anyone who dares to threaten me. When we walk by schools, children flock up against the playground fence, begging me to stop and let them pet her. Elderly men and women pause from their gardening to tell me about their own pets. Homeless people with shopping carts give us a wide berth, and delivery men ask if she bites.  

I got rid of the fleece-lined dog bed. Whiskers really didn’t enjoy sleeping in it. She prefers to curl up with me in bed, wrapping her furry body around my neck, emulating those coats old ladies used to wear to church, foxes clenching tails, head to ass.  

I looked up from my revelry to see the veterinarian petting Whiskers. “She’s a good dog,” he said, “but she’s got bad teeth. This could cost you a pretty penny if you don’t start brushing today.”  

“Give me another toothbrush,” I demanded. He’d said the magic words.  

Now I sit in my living room, tiny toothbrush in hand, scrubbing Whiskers’ back molars, grateful that she isn’t Ace, King, Mickey, or Mack. She wiggles in my arms, a little ball of unruly curls who is saving me a bundle in therapy bills. Brushing her teeth is the least I can do in return.