Dog Story: Introducing Malcolm & the Little Red Wagon
Three animals share my home with me: Sophie is a seven-year-old hyperactive nightmare of a Border collie; Malcolm is an eight-year-old basset hound who appears to be in a coma most of the time; and Fancy puzzles is a cat who lives with us but belongs to someone else. Tonight's story is about Malcolm.
Taking this particular basset hound for a walk has been challenging for several years now. We live on the Washington Coast, just across the highway from Willapa Bay and about three miles from the Pacific Ocean. We rarely walk along the bay, preferring the beach. We're sandbillies.
Malcolm has never been big on exercise or demonstrated much an appreciation for the great outdoors. I doubt we'd ever get him outside our yard if God hadn't given him The Nose. The Ears were probably an afterthought but they do channel all those smells straight at Malcolm's Nose. The dog clearly associates his leash with beach smells--salt water, seagull droppings and the intoxicating aroma of dead crab. Nothing but his food dish excites him more.
Others who've met Malcolm might question my use of the word "excites" when describing my basset hound. I can understand that; at times, I have a hard time differentiating between excitement and exhaustion and he's my best friend. It's unfortunate Malcolm doesn't consider me his.
Basset hounds are sweet dogs in many ways. They're cute and quirky. If they weren't, they'd probably all find their sweet, low-slung sweet little asses back at the point of purchase, or the nearest pound within a week. Malcolm has never chased a ball, fetched a stick or caught a Frisbee. He doesn't sit, heel, lie down or play dead (though he does do an excellent imitation of a dead dog). He's stubborn, determined and tunnel-vissioned. We can be two miles from home when the damn dog arbitrarily decides he's done walking. At that point he flops down on the sand and there was absolutely nothing anyone can do to get him back up on his feet.
The first couple of times Malcolm ended our walk so abruptly I tried to wait him out. Certainly he'd be willing--if only grudgingly so--to head home under his own steam the closer it got to dinner time. He wasn't. The third time I had to drag Malcolm's 75 pound ass home, travois-style, on my hoodie, I refused to walk him unless accompanied by a much younger, much stronger set of arms and legs. My granddaughter's.
Chelsea thought my dog-walking story was hilarious until she found herself stumbling across soft sand, lugging the rump-end of my basset hound towards home. It was a hot day for this part of the world and the more stumbling and lugging we did, the pissier we each became. Then Chelsea stopped walking; I didn't notice until I'd taken a couple more steps forward and had pulled had Malcolm from her arms. He fell from my own and thudded softly to the soft ground.
"Why'd you stop? We'll never get his fat ass off the ground again," I said. I could hear the tone in my voice. Chelsea simply collapsed on the beach beside the dog, laughing.
"Didn't you hear him, grandma? He was snoring."
It was quite a chore getting Malcolm's lazy, uncooperative butt home that day, which probably had as much do with our uncontrollable bursts of laughing as it did with the dog's dead weight. But we managed.
The next day Chelsea showed up at my house pulling a little red wagon. She'd made a doggie bed inside and could hardly wait to take said doggie for his daily walk. Chelsea was absolutely full of herself that day. At the time, I thought it was a brilliant idea, too. And since she bought the wagon, we haven't had to carry Malcolm home. Not once.
The first week of walks went swimmingly. Chelsea began packing picnic feasts, and even thought to load a small beach umbrella in the wagon so we could lounge on the sand and not have to worry about skin cancer. But over the next couple of days she got a bit carried away, adding more and more things to the wagon. By Day Five it seemed we were carrying Malcolm's weight in beach accessories on the return trip so there was room for Malcolm in his little red wagon. Nevertheless, we were having fun on these outings and probably would have continued packing everything but the kitchen sink on our walks if it hadn't have been for Malcolm himself.
In retrospect, I can't pinpoint exactly when his agenda changed but I do recall that on Day Nine, Chelsea and I were loaded up like pack mules before we reached the beach. Malcolm was already stretched out in the wagon when we stepped on first stepped on the sand, sound asleep. The next day we left all accessories home. I watched my hound dog closely as we walked, saw him grow weary and then plop down on the ground, evidently done walking. We hadn't even made it to the end of my driveway.