Scarface, by Robert Rodi

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The book was typeset and copyedited, the cover finished, the flap copy written and approved; there was nothing else to do, except look forward to publication.  And to try to figure out how best to ease Dusty into promotional mode.  The difficulties with that particular proposition were twofold: first, Dusty distrusts and dislikes people.  Second, Dusty is very seldom presentable.

The first isn't an insurmountable obstacle; after all, I had a year of training and competing him in many different locales and under many different circumstances.  He's accustomed to being poked, bumped, nudged, stroked, prodded, grazed, and petted.  He loathes it-hates it like hellmouth-but he endures it.  And if it gets to be too much and risks pushing over the edge into loup garou territory, he gives me plenty of warning in the way of bristling fur, lowered ears, and curled upper lip, so I can step in in time to stop the apocalypse.

The second difficulty is a bit more problematic. 

Now, I've received some emails from tender-hearted souls, protesting my habitual deriding of Dusty's appearance.  What can I say; I'm crazy about the little guy, but I can't pretend he's a looker.  Love may be blind, but in this case it'd have to be nigh on comatose.  If you want some perspective, all you have to do is glom a look at him next to his sister, Carmen, a classic Sheltie beauty.  Her voluminous coat, perfect poise, and classically sculpted features throw into high relief Dusty's bow-legged limbs, emaciated torso, and salamander grin.  At his best, he's like a cross between Wile E. Coyote and a fruit bat.  At his worst, he's like some lurking thing out of The Dark Crystal.  In the book I compare him to Iggy Pop; a more apt analogy is the young Peter Lorre, circa M.

He cleans up nice enough; for a full day after he's been bathed, you can't take your eyes off how white his ruff is, or how fluffy his fur.  You can't resist touching him, or smelling him, the way you do with clean linens (though there's never the risk that a freshly laundered pillow sham will claw out your intestines trying to get away from you).  The trouble is, he doesn't hold his bath much beyond that.  By Day 2, he's marginally dingier-yesterday's snowlike purity dimmed to the chalky murk of skim milk.  By the end of Day 4 he's like the dust mop you don't dare use anymore but haven't yet got around to throwing out.  By Day 6 there are little crusty patches on his fur and snout caused by you can't imagine what and are fairly sure you're better off not knowing.

But people already want to meet him.  And as the book's readership grows (as I hope it will), more will feel the same.  So I've got to keep him as camera-ready as possible.  Which is a serious impingement on my time, given that I've got two other dogs to attend to, plus, hello, a full slate of other demands on my time, for instance, oh, basic personal hygiene, and breathing.

If you suspect me of making a little too much of all this, let me recount what happened just a few months ago, in mid-March.  I had Dusty out for a walk on what had proven to be a delightfully clement day-a little whisper of the Spring to come-and I was unwisely exulting in the warmth and sunlight at the expense of the eternal vigilance required of any owner of Dusty.  We passed a house in which one of his enemies resides: a black lab who's almost never permitted out of doors (the history of his feud with Dusty mainly involves hurling himself against various windows). I was so lulled into a hazy tranquility that I didn't notice the lab was RIGHT THERE until it was too late.  As he and Dusty began throwing down through the bars in the gate, I snapped to attention and quickly reeled Dusty away; but there was an awful moment when I encountered a bit of resistance, and I knew enough to slacken up.  A moment later I saw that the lab had got hold of Dusty's nose.  If I'd persisted in pulling, I'd have torn it clear away.

I bellowed wildly and kicked the gate, thus spooking the lab intro retreating; then I picked up Dusty, ran home, and sat him on the relative safety of the front porch and examined his wound.  It wasn't pretty; half of his nose was hanging off, like a pull-tab.  Blood was everywhere; you'd have thought there'd been a mob hit on my doorstep.

I'm pretty calm in a crisis; I know what to do and can focus on doing it swiftly.  In this case, that involved loading Dusty into the car-by now he was beginning to tremble-and make tracks for my vet.  While en route I called ahead and told her we were coming, and why.  Then I concentrated on maneuvering up Clark Street, a diagonal thoroughfare that was the quickest way to cut across town to the hospital.

Unfortunately, I'd forgotten it was St. Patrick's Day.  And for half a mile south of Wrigley Field, Clark Street is a virtual Valhalla of pubs, bars and taverns, all of which were burgeoning, even this early afternoon hour, with the kind of staggering, stumbling, regurgitating revelers who make my Puritanical mother recoil in horror and hiss, "It's the fall of Rome!"

I'm not immune to stress.  And seated there in stalled traffic, with a bleeding, quivering Sheltie in the seat next to me and some lightweight frat boy summoning forth his recently quaffed gallon of pale ale to anoint the road before me, I was, I admit it, experiencing a rapid waning of self-possession.

Eventually I got Dusty to the doctor's office; got him stitched up (two hundred bucks I can't spare, thank you very much); and rook him home again.  And as he healed, his nose took on a hideously piebald look-part black, part scarlet; like an orange you've held over an open flame till it blistered.  I thought, "Well, there go the photo ops."  When I took him to signings, I'd have to cover his head with a sheet, like Michael Jackson.

Fortunately, his nose returned to moist, inky normality not long after.  But we have a long road ahead and many people to meet, and there are perils lurking on every block.  I can make no guarantees.  Should you run into us, at any of our events?...Please.  Be kind.

Robert Rodi, Dogged Pursuit, dog shows, canine agility, Hudson Street Press, Penguin Books