Please May I Keep It?

Catch and release canine-style.

A month after I had abdominal surgery my dog and I headed to the nearby Commons, it was our first time back. His unusually low centre of gravity combined with formidable chest and foreleg strength and disdain for the leash sometimes make him hard to steer. Today, however, he was being unusually respectful. My abdomen thanked him.

Each of us finally off-leash we set out in our respective but roughly parallel directions around the park, him guided by his nose. In the distance I saw him throw himself on the ground repeatedly as if in a controlled epileptic fit. He’d found duck shit, I figured. No doubt he was smiling. Who wouldn’t? Back on his feet he galloped toward me. He had something in his mouth. A stick? The lines were too clean, too smooth. It flopped. When he got closer I saw the stick had an eye. And scales. A fish. The rolling. Now I understood. On that flat, dry expanse of Commons, not a drop of water to be found, he’d caught himself a fish.

We have a deal he and I: any street food he finds he gets to keep, it reduces the squabbles, that and I’m no match for his vice-like jaw. We live near a pizzeria. Street food typically consists of a slice or a crust. That’s the first part of the deal: finders keepers. The second part is that he has to wait until we get home to eat what he finds. He’s a slow eater, a slice is large, better we should both be comfortable. But this time he has something I don’t want him to have at home or on the street. It stinks and it’s a choking hazard. Some squabbles aren’t to be avoided.

I get him on the leash in order to reel him in and arm wrestle him for the fish but he drags me forward like he’s a four-legged tuna and I’m a deep sea fisher. I can read his thoughts: we have to get home. But my abdomen protests. Nooooooooo, it screams, Stop, Stop, Stop. It can’t keep up. In self-defense I adopt a shuffle, a quickstep scoot, that makes it look as if I’m waterskiing behind my dog. I glide woodenly across the Commons, arms straight out.

We make it to within a block of home. I’ve managed to pull him close, hard by my side, no slack. I need reinforcements. I tie him to a signpost, exhausted but relieved, and carry on alone. I spot my neighbour across a busy street having a smoke on her stoop. Colleen, I yell over the traffic, I need your help. She comes. I point to the dog. Where did he catch the fish, she says.

Apprised of the situation she agrees to help out. She unties him and he tugs her the rest of the way home. While I go to get dog treats she enlists a business acquaintance in the effort to get the fish. I coach them. Don’t be fooled, I say, He may not look it but he’s fast. Each of them puts a poo bag on their hand, ready to snatch. I drop the treat under his snout, he hesitates, drops the fish, grabs the treat, grabs the fish, and now he has both of them in his mouth. It’s a game of jacks to him and he’s just won.

Give it a second, I say. He’s literally bitten off more than he can chew. He has a decision to make: the fish or the treat. We wait. It happens. He makes a choking sound, gags, the fish falls to the ground, my assistants grab it, he chews on the now dislodged dog treat. The fish is dispatched to the wastebasket on the telephone pole at the end of the street.

For the next several days he tugs me toward the site of his Waterloo every time we pass. Hopeful. He sniffs and sniffs until reluctantly accepting that whatever victory he once tasted, whatever riches he once possessed, were forever snatched from his jaws and replaced with defeat, my furry Napoleon.