Frankie

By Sue Stephenson Lee

“When will it be warm again?” I wonder, as I sniff around the fenced garden looking for the perfect place for a poo.

          My pink hoodie keeps my body warm, but my floopy ears are cold in the wintry breeze. My peets are cold too, against the damp ground. I wish I could use the dirt box in the house for pooing, but that seems to be reserved exclusively for Cat. Mommy and The Daddy Person get so mad at me if I pee, even just a little, near that box. I don’t understand. Cat gets to pee and poo in the box in the house. It’s not like when I peed on the couch. I haven’t done that for a long, long time. Not since that time I got super stressed when they brought Cat home and she didn’t leave. Cat is smart, but Cat is stupid. Cat runs away whenever I want to play with her. She thinks I like to play chase cat. I don’t like to play chase cat. Hold on, I do like to play chase cat. It’s like hunting, which I think is what my ancestors did. Mommy said one time that my DNA is 98% wolf.

          “Oh, this smells like a good spot.”

I squat, lifting myself up on my hind toes. No way do I want to get poo on what little fur I have on my butt or tummy, or on my hoodie. This is one of my favorite hoodies. It doesn’t make me itch. I stomp my left poot a little bit.

“Stomp, stomp, stomp helps the poo come out,” I sing my pooing song to myself.

I scratch at the ground when I’m done, kicking up a good bit of grass. Let anyone watching know, I am a complete pooing badass. I turn around and give the steaming pile a good sniff.

“Yep, that’s me alright.”

I feel a bit of a frolic, a zoom if you will, coming on. I run at top speed around the fenced garden. I run so fast, my ears are flying behind me. I am an amazingly fast runner. I run faster than both Mommy and The Daddy Person when they are trying to catch me when I get into the pasture. But I get tired and out of breath fast now too. Mommy said I’m a senior pup and that’s why I can’t run fast for a long time anymore. I guess that makes sense. But that was a little while ago she said that. Maybe I’m not old anymore. I don’t know because no one talks to me anymore. I mean they still move their food holes the same way they did when they used to talk to me, but now no sound comes out. It’s weird. Weirder still, cars don’t make noise anymore either. Really nothing makes noises. Except Cat. For some reason Cat still makes noises. Good thing I understand basic cat language, so I still have someone to talk with.

I’m panting a little bit when I get to the top of the hill in the fenced garden. I stop to sniff the air, and maybe catch my breath. Cat. I smell Cat. I sniff more. I have a well-developed sniff system. A super sniffer. I sniff up against the gate, and it moves. The gate never moves, but…I push harder with my head…no, it’s definitely moving. I push more and it opens enough that I could trot right through it, if I wanted to. I don’t want to. I’m not allowed to go through the gate unless my leash is attached to my collar. I sit. I’m sad, because I really want to go have a good zoom across the pasture or go down to the chicken pen and play with the chickens. They’re fun to play with. This one time, I catched one of the chickens by the neck. I was so proud I catched it. I thought I was such a good girl. I shaked it and and shaked it and Mommy screamed at me to drop it. I did. Because I’m a good girl. And the chicken didn’t move. It played dead. But Mommy didn’t give it a treat for playing dead like she does when she tells me to play dead. I guess she likes me better than she likes the chicken. Later that night, I smelled chicken cooking. It smelled so good. But that night, The Daddy Person didn’t put any chicken in my bowl with my kibble. I was sad then too.

I look around for Mommy or The Daddy Person. Maybe they’ll see me sitting at the gate, like the good girl I am. Good girls get to go for a walk on the leash. I don’t see them or even super sniff them. But I smell Squirrel. I don’t mean to be mean, but Squirrel is a jerk. Like I mean really a jerk. Way more of a jerk than Cat. Cat will at least curl up with me at night in my bed by the fire. Cat keeps me warm and doesn’t mind if I say “boof” and “burf” in my sleep and jerk my legs. She just moves over a little bit and tells me about it in the morning. Squirrel taunts me. EVERY SINGLE TIME we see each other. Right now, Squirrel sits there, outside the fenced garden gate, holding a pecan in its mouth from Mommy’s tree. It twitches its tail at me. I hate Squirrel. It makes fun of my hoodies, which is not fair. I don’t have as much fur as Squirrel does. I have almost no fur on my tummy. The rest of my golden red fur is super duper short. Except for the tufts on my shoulders. The ones that Mommy braided one time, as a joke she said. Now Squirrel is glaring at me, mocking me. Maybe because of my hoodie, I don’t know. All I know is I want to chase Squirrel so, so bad. Maybe, this time I can catch Squirrel. I run fast, after all.

Squirrel twitches its tail at me again.

“Okay stupid Squirrel,” I warn it, “It’s on!”

I launch from my sit. Squirrel takes off, our eight feet scampering in unison. I’m getting close. We’re on the driveway now. It’s easy to run on the driveway. I’m going so fast. Today’s the day, stupid Squirrel. I can feel it. We blast out the open driveway gate and cross the one lane road. I don’t even stop. I remember I’m supposed to, that was how Mommy and The Daddy Person trained me. Never go past the driveway unless I’m on a leash or given the ‘go ahead’ command. But today, all bets are off, because…squirrel. I give an extra burst of speed and push my snoot forward. I’m full bark, because I just cannot contain my joy. I lunge and snap my powerful but nearly toothless jaw closed around Squirrel. Only I missed. And Squirrel scampers up the old oak tree across the road from the driveway. It looks down at me. Did it just stick its tongue out at me? I bark incessantly at the base of the tree, trying to jump up it, but my Terrier legs attached to my Dachshund body aren’t powerful enough. Squirrel flips me off and jumps to a limb on the nearby olive tree. Then the next olive tree, and the next, and the next…I follow on the ground never taking my eyes off stupid Squirrel. I have good eyesight. Sort of. I never stop barking. This whole time, I’m running, barking and jumping. From tree to tree to tree to,

“Hold on. Where the hell is Squirrel?” I don’t see it anymore. And I can’t smell it. “Damnit,” I realize Squirrel has won, again.

I’m panting really hard. I want a drink of water. I see a pond, so I go over. “Ick, oof,” my peets are getting wet from standing on the edge of the pond. I don’t like to wear water. Grandma’s dog on her farm jumps into the water, ON PURPOSE. I followed it once. Never again. But I need a drink, so I persevere. I give a good shake when I’m done. It’s fun watching water drops fly from my beard. Mommy and The Daddy Person don’t think it’s fun when I do that after drinking from my water bowl in the kitchen. They don’t know what they’re missing. I never see them shake after they drink from the tiny water bowls they hold with their front peets. They are such weird looking dogs, if I’m honest. But I do love them.

Now that I’ve had my drink and caught my breath I think maybe I’ll head back and have a good frolic in the pasture before I’m inevitably found and led back to the fenced garden. I take a good look and sniff around. I don’t see my house or my yard, or Mommy or The Daddy Person. I don’t smell the chicken poo, which is one of my favorite smells. In fact, I don’t smell anything familiar, except a little of me. I worry, but not a lot. When I’ve left the driveway before, someone has always found me and looked at my collar tag. Then, they’ve used the little gizmo in their front peets to make Mommy’s muffled voice appear, then usually Mommy herself appears. She picks me up and carries me home. And scolds me about leaving the farm but gives me lots of kisses. I decide to sit and wait for someone to find me. And I sit and wait and wait and sit. But nobody finds me. Maybe because all I see is trees, and not the road.

“I’m a good girl,” I think, “and a good girl should be able to find her way home.”

I super sniff around the ground, this way and that way. Sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff…, “wait, that’s me.” I follow the me smell. I’m getting excited. I smell good.

“Hold on, what’s that?”

  I smell something new. Something I don’t think I’ve ever smelled before. I’m good at remembering smells. This is definitely new. Then I see it, out of the corner of my eye. I’ve never seen that before. It looks kind of like a cat, but not exactly. It’s dark, but it has a white stripe all the way down its back fur.

I wag my tail. I can’t help it. I’m always excited when I think I’m about to make a new friend. And of course, the best way to make a new friend is to rush towards them, barking, “Hi I’m Frankie, do you want to be my friend?"

“I’m Skunk,” it said, slowly and firmly, “And I do not wish to partake in friendship with you.”

“But why?” I insisted, “I’m so friendly.” I get closer, still barking my offer of friendship. My tail is really, really waggy.

My new friend Skunk backs up and stamps its little peets on the ground. For sure that means Skunk wants to play. I bark some more and get closer some more.

Skunk turns around. It must want to play my favorite game, chase. Skunk lifts up its tail. I’m so ready to play. This is going to be so much fun, “HOLD ON, what the HELL is that?”

My eyes are burning, inside my sniffer is burning. And the smell. OMG! Now I’m usually a fan of a good strong, malodor, but this? This is too much. I let out a sharp yelp of pain and confusion.

“I tried to tell you,” Skunk said as it ambled away into the underbrush. “I don’t f’ing play.”

I roll on the ground in shock and discomfort. Even worse, I can only smell Skunks juice. I can’t smell the me smell I was following anymore. I feel just like I do before I hork up a big old gak on the carpet. ‘hoop, hoop’, my tummy contracts and sure enough, gak is on the ground. I sit down and wait for the feeling to pass. This smell thing is crazy.

All I want to do now is get back home. Mommy or The Daddy Person will know what to do about this smell. They always know what to do when something goes wrong for me. I don’t want to frolic in the pasture anymore, I just want to get back into the fenced garden, or better yet, through my doggy door into the house and curl up in my bed by the fire. But mostly I don’t want to smell this smell anymore. Ever.

I see something moving. At first I’m nervous, because I’m afraid it’s Skunk coming back. But no, that’s Cat. My best friend. “CAT!” I bark as loud as I can. I run to her. Cat does that freak out thing she does when I run at her. Her tail gets all big and her eyes all wild, and her back gets all hunched up. Her peets scrabble against the ground as she takes off. She looks so funny when she does it. It’s one of my favorite things she does.

“Cat, wait!” I bark up the tree she scrambled up. She looks down at me from the branch just out of my reach.

“What, Frankie?” she asks, in that indifferent tone she has. “By the way, you stink.”

“Do you know the way home?” I ask her, ignoring her astute obvious observation about my current smell situation.

“Of course,” she oozes. “Don’t you?”

“I chased Squirrel,” I explained. “I don’t know how I got here.”

“I saw,” Cat said. “What were you thinking? That you’d be the first animal on the farm to catch Squirrel? You will never catch Squirrel. I will never catch Squirrel, and I can climb trees. I don’t know why you keep trying.”

I hang my head down. She’s right. I know she’s right.

“What’s more,” she continued her lecture, “you let Squirrel entice you out of the yard. That was a foolish thing to do. In fact, I’m kind of embarrassed to know you right now.”

Cat tossed her head and jumped down to the ground and sauntered away. I let out a little whimper. I stink, I’m alone, and I don’t know where I am, or where the farm is. I sit. I whimper again.

“No, I will not cry,” I tell myself. I put on my biggest brave girl face. “I will find my way home.”

I sniff extra hard. And yes, there it is. It’s faint, underneath the skunk juice, but I smell me. And I smell Cat. And it’s leading the same way I saw Cat go. Cautious, I follow the smells. I stop and take a good look around. This time I want to know exactly where I am and where I’m going.  

“Fuuuuck,” I see Skunk standing right in the path of the me smell and the Cat smell.

“Bitch,” Skunk says, “I told you, I don’t play.” Skunk stomps its feet more angrily than before. “What you just got was a warning shot. I’m warming up my perianal glands right now and loading up the mother of all stinks for you. I will release the kraken if you don’t get out of my way.”

I don’t know what to do. If I go back or go around, I might lose the smells trail. If I lose the smells trail, I might miss my dinner. And even though I just horked up a gak, I could eat. I realize I’m going to have to risk another spray. But first, maybe I’ll try appeasement.

“Skuuuunk, buddy,” I bark quietly, “I just want to get home. I don’t want to play. And I don’t need any more juice. I learned my lesson. I RESPECT you Skunk.”

“Really?” Skunk replied, unsure, but not turning around or lifting its tail. A promising sign.

“Truly,” I assure Skunk, “Please, just let me by. I SWEAR I won’t chase you. I won’t even sniff you. In fact, I double dog swear it.”

“A double dog swear? That’s a powerful swear. Fine,” Skunk acquiesced, “But the glands are locked and loaded, just in case.”

“Noted.”

With my head down, and not making eye contact with Skunk, I moved forward, sidestepping the offensive animal. I sneak a glance over my shoulder after a few moments, and Skunk is standing in the trail, now at a distance, and unmistakably flipping me the bird. What is it with these woodland creatures and that gesture?

When I sniff my way back to the one lane road, I see Mommy at the end of the driveway. She looks frantic. I bark, “I’m here Mommy, I’m here.” She squats down and opens her arms for me. I run into them. “Mommy!”

Her eyes water, and she looks a lot like she might hork up a gak of her own as I try to lick her face. I see her lips making the movements for, “Someone’s getting a bath.”

For once, I am happy to wear water…and dish soap, and vinegar, and baking soda. When it’s all done, and I can barely smell skunk juice anymore, I zoom out of the towel Mommy uses to dry my golden red fur, I zoom out my doggy door, and I zoom around the fenced garden as fast as I can. I love my fenced garden. I’ll never leave it again. Not for all the stupid squirrels in the world. Chickens on the other hand…