of the time it curled up and slept on the seat, snuffling in its dreams— or it
panted and yawned and looked bored.
When the odor of the dog’s filthy coat became intolerable, Travis rolled down
the windows for ventilation, and the retriever stuck its head out in the wind.
With its ears blown back, hair streaming, it grinned the foolish and charmingly
witless grin of all dogs who had ever ridden shotgun in such a fashion.
In Santa Barbara, Travis stopped at a shopping center, where he bought Several
cans of Alpo, a box of Milk-Bone dog biscuits, heavy plastic dishes for pet food
and water, a galvanized tin washtub, a bottle of pet shampoo With a flea- and
tick-killing compound, a brush to comb out the animal’s tangled coat, a collar,
and a leash.
As Travis loaded those items into the back of the pickup, the dog watched
him through the rear window of the cab, its damp nose pressed to the glass.
Getting behind the wheel, he said, “You’re filthy, and you stink. You’re
not going to be a lot of trouble about taking a bath, are you?” The dog yawned.
By the time Travis pulled into the driveway of his four-room rented bungalow on
the northern edge of Santa Barbara and switched off the pickup’s engine, he was
beginning to wonder if the pooch’s actions that morning had really been as
amazing as he remembered.
“If you don’t show me the right stuff again soon,” he told the dog as he slipped
his key into the front door of the house, “I’m going to have to assume that I
stripped a gear out there in the woods, that I’m just nuts and that I imagined
everything.”
Standing beside him on the stoop, the dog looked up quizzically.
“Do you want to be responsible for giving me doubts about my own sanity?
Hmmmmm?”
An orange and black butterfly swooped past the retriever’s face, startling it.
The dog barked once and raced after the fluttering prey, off the stoop, down the
walkway. Dashing back and forth across the lawn, leaping high, snapping at the
air, repeatedly missing its bright quarry, it nearly collided with the
diamond-patterned trunk of a big Canary Island date palm, then narrowly avoided
knocking itself unconscious in a head-on encounter with a concrete birdbath, and
at last crashed clumsily into a bed of New Guinea impatiens over which the
butterfly soared to safety. The retriever rolled once, scrambled to its feet,
and lunged out of the flowers.
When it realized that it had been foiled, the dog returned to Travis. It gave
him a sheepish look.
“Some wonder dog,” he said. “Good grief.”
He opened the door, and the retriever slipped in ahead of him. It padded off
immediately to explore these new rooms.
“You better be housebroken,” Travis shouted after it.
He carried the galvanized washtub and the plastic bag full of other purchases
into the kitchen. He left the food and pet dishes there, and took everything
else outside through the back door. He put the bag on the concrete patio and set
the tub beside it, near a coiled hose that was attached to an outdoor faucet.
Inside again, he removed a bucket from beneath the kitchen sink, filled it with
the hottest water he could draw, carried it outside, and emptied it into the
tub. When Travis had made four trips with the hot water, the retriever appeared
and began to explore the backyard. By the time Travis filled the tub more than
half full, the dog had begun to urinate every few feet along the whitewashed
concrete-block wall that defined the property line, marking its territory.
“When you finish killing the grass,” Travis said, “you’d better be in the mood
for a bath. You reek.”
The retriever turned toward him and cocked its head and appeared to listen when
he spoke. But it did not look like one of those smart dogs in the movies. It did
not look as if it understood him. It just looked dumb. As soon as he
stopped talking, it hurried a few steps farther along the wall and peed again.
Watching the dog relieve itself, Travis felt an urge of his own. He went