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Authors: M.L. Brennan
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were now affixed to it. By wordless agreement, neither of us mentioned it to Dan. I also decided that the addition I’d noticed on the ice cube trays the previous night could wait for a more opportune time.
* * *
The early morning passed in a quick series of doggy pee breaks. There weren’t that many of them—most dog owners, no matter how busy their work schedules, were able to run their dogs out for a fast poop before they had to head out for the day. But there were a few people who worked third shift and wouldn’t be home until almost noon, and one or two families had clearly gotten the dog as some sort of prop for their kid’s childhood and now attempted to farm out every inconvenient facet of the dog’s existence. Hank’s dog-walking kingdom was based on the very marketable importance of reliability—his clients might not always know
who
was going to be walking their dog, but they knew that
someone
would be showing up, and in a timely enough fashion that they wouldn’t be coming home to find a puddle of urine in the middle of their carpet. To make that possible, Hank required all of his clients to hang a combination-based keyholder on their doors, the same way that real estate agencies did. Hank changed all of the combinations himself every month, to cut down on theft concerns. Each walker was e-mailed their walking schedule, addresses, and the combination keys the night before their route started, and in all the houses where I’d shown up to collect a dog for Hank, I’d never been given the wrong combination code.
Once the morning sanitary checks were completed without a problem (though Venus, the elderly French bulldog, managed to take twenty minutes to locate her ideal spot before solemnly defecating on the front steps of a synagogue, while the very unamused rabbi watchedto make certain that I collected every single particle of poop), I moved on to the exercise runs. For most of the dogs, a half-hour jog at a good pace was enough to ensure that they were left panting and happily mellowed out. Others, like Hercule, the Great Pyrenees, or Mogsy, the Rhodesian Ridgeback, ended up with a full hour. At two o’clock, my schedule temporarily shifted back to poop maintenance, giving several desperately grateful dogs a well-needed bathroom break to tide them over until their owners got home in the evening, but everything ran mostly on track, with the only hiccup being when Pip, the long-haired dachshund, attempted to attack, for no discernible reason, a mailbox. He ended up settling for peeing on it, but looked balefully over his shoulder several times as we departed. Whatever issues lay between Pip and the mailbox, they were clearly far from over.
Despite the ignominy of scooping up dog feces and having my crotch ritualistically sniffed by fifteen different snouts, I enjoyed the work. Jogging around the College Hill area of Providence, even during November, was far less soul-crushing than any retail job I’d ever held, and the dogs were always happy to see me, which made them a cut above most of my former coworkers. Plus, spending the majority of the day jogging was good enough exercise that I didn’t have to maintain a gym membership. While there were the occasional moments of watching a dog urinate and pondering the usefulness of my Ivy League degree and periodic spots of weirdness like the day Ella (apparently an inveterate trash eater) pooped out two elastic bands, some chicken bones, and a condom, I’d so far been very happy at how the job was working out.
I was on my last assignment of the day, jogging a matched set of brick red Pharaoh Hounds named Fawkes and Codex, when my phone rang. I checked the caller ID, then slowed down to answer when I saw that it was Loren Noka. The dogs whined pitifully, hauling against the leashes and looking back at me with wide eyes thatbegged me to
ruuuuuun
, but I ignored them and listened to Ms. Noka’s clipped delivery.
“I just got a call on the
* * *
The early morning passed in a quick series of doggy pee breaks. There weren’t that many of them—most dog owners, no matter how busy their work schedules, were able to run their dogs out for a fast poop before they had to head out for the day. But there were a few people who worked third shift and wouldn’t be home until almost noon, and one or two families had clearly gotten the dog as some sort of prop for their kid’s childhood and now attempted to farm out every inconvenient facet of the dog’s existence. Hank’s dog-walking kingdom was based on the very marketable importance of reliability—his clients might not always know
who
was going to be walking their dog, but they knew that
someone
would be showing up, and in a timely enough fashion that they wouldn’t be coming home to find a puddle of urine in the middle of their carpet. To make that possible, Hank required all of his clients to hang a combination-based keyholder on their doors, the same way that real estate agencies did. Hank changed all of the combinations himself every month, to cut down on theft concerns. Each walker was e-mailed their walking schedule, addresses, and the combination keys the night before their route started, and in all the houses where I’d shown up to collect a dog for Hank, I’d never been given the wrong combination code.
Once the morning sanitary checks were completed without a problem (though Venus, the elderly French bulldog, managed to take twenty minutes to locate her ideal spot before solemnly defecating on the front steps of a synagogue, while the very unamused rabbi watchedto make certain that I collected every single particle of poop), I moved on to the exercise runs. For most of the dogs, a half-hour jog at a good pace was enough to ensure that they were left panting and happily mellowed out. Others, like Hercule, the Great Pyrenees, or Mogsy, the Rhodesian Ridgeback, ended up with a full hour. At two o’clock, my schedule temporarily shifted back to poop maintenance, giving several desperately grateful dogs a well-needed bathroom break to tide them over until their owners got home in the evening, but everything ran mostly on track, with the only hiccup being when Pip, the long-haired dachshund, attempted to attack, for no discernible reason, a mailbox. He ended up settling for peeing on it, but looked balefully over his shoulder several times as we departed. Whatever issues lay between Pip and the mailbox, they were clearly far from over.
Despite the ignominy of scooping up dog feces and having my crotch ritualistically sniffed by fifteen different snouts, I enjoyed the work. Jogging around the College Hill area of Providence, even during November, was far less soul-crushing than any retail job I’d ever held, and the dogs were always happy to see me, which made them a cut above most of my former coworkers. Plus, spending the majority of the day jogging was good enough exercise that I didn’t have to maintain a gym membership. While there were the occasional moments of watching a dog urinate and pondering the usefulness of my Ivy League degree and periodic spots of weirdness like the day Ella (apparently an inveterate trash eater) pooped out two elastic bands, some chicken bones, and a condom, I’d so far been very happy at how the job was working out.
I was on my last assignment of the day, jogging a matched set of brick red Pharaoh Hounds named Fawkes and Codex, when my phone rang. I checked the caller ID, then slowed down to answer when I saw that it was Loren Noka. The dogs whined pitifully, hauling against the leashes and looking back at me with wide eyes thatbegged me to
ruuuuuun
, but I ignored them and listened to Ms. Noka’s clipped delivery.
“I just got a call on the
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