Oscar Casares
Pet Project
My dad taught me a lot of things about caring for a dog. Flaco should thank his lucky chew toys that I ignore every one of them.
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Now that I live in Austin, I’ve had to learn certain rules about owning a dog. One rule is that your dog must stay inside your property or be on a leash at all times, unless you happen to be at one of the twelve dog parks. Another rule, the one that comes up most often, is that you are always responsible for your dog. In my neighborhood, for instance, several people have made their own yard signs that read “Please pick up after your dog!!” Which is why you see dog owners carrying small plastic bags filled with you-know-what. Actually, it’s rare to see someone walking a dog who isn’t carrying a plastic bag. Since Flaco is an indoor dog, I walk him no fewer than three times a day: one long walk in the morning, after we eat breakfast; a shorter one after lunch; and then another longer one before we go to bed. Our routine changes only if it happens to be raining and I have to wait until Flaco’s willing to go outside and get his paws wet. My favorite time to walk is in the early morning, when the sun is still coming up and, except for a few squirrels, Flaco and I are the only ones moving about in the neighborhood. Once, we were out for a walk and an older lady came out on her porch, smiling. She was wearing a long terry cloth robe and holding a steaming mug of what looked like her first coffee of the day. I thought she was going to say good morning, but instead she said, “You got bags?”
After we get back from our walk, Flaco spends most of his time on a multistriped dog bed I bought for him at Pottery Barn. During the day the bed stays near the front window, where he can nap until the mailman comes around. Then in the evening I drag the dog bed into my room. There was a time when Flaco slept on my bed, but this was before he got his own.
The last time I took Flaco to the vet’s office it was for his annual shots, but afterward, the vet asked if I wanted him to clean my dog’s teeth. He’d noticed some plaque and felt it’d be better to take care of this before it led to something more serious, like gingivitis. The procedure involves the dog fasting the night before—no water, either—arriving at the vet’s office early the next morning, anesthetizing the dog for twenty to thirty minutes, thoroughly cleaning the dog’s teeth, and then the dog fasting again that evening, just to avoid any risk of choking due to the side effects of the anesthesia. The price for the procedure is $208. When I told the vet I wanted to think about it, he looked disappointed, as if I’d told him I didn’t want a tumor removed after all.
He may have thought the price was an issue, though over the years I’ve opened my wallet just as wide, and even wider, for other visits to his office that weren’t life threatening. Maybe he considered me a negligent pet owner for not at the very least buying the special dog toothpaste and brush that he recommended. From what he’d said, the cleaning seemed like a sensible thing to do, but something still kept me from going along with the procedure. I thought about it the whole way home. There didn’t seem to be any limit to what I was expected to do if I wanted a healthy and happy dog. I’d never heard of most of these things until I moved to Austin. I wondered what any of it had to do with a dog actually being a dog. And then I remembered this one time we took Mingo to get his shots.
My father had read in the newspaper that the city, in an effort to get more people to vaccinate their dogs, was sending a veterinarian into our neighborhood to administer rabies shots. For my father this meant that it would be a lot easier to get the dog registered; for Mingo it meant that he didn’t have to take his usual ride inside the trunk. The city would be setting up a table outside the elementary school close to our house, within walking distance.
The vaccinations started at five, but it was nearly six before my father showed up from work. He tied an old rope around Mingo’s collar, and we headed out. We walked the two blocks to the school, which was the longest distance Mingo had ever been on a leash. He kept his nose to the ground, jerking me along as he followed the scent of the rest of the neighborhood dogs.
We had to watch our step the closer we got to the table and the place where the other dogs had been waiting in line. My father finally took the rope from me because Mingo kept stopping for a whiff.
There were two dogs ahead of us, both chow mixes, one of which had an extension cord for a leash. The vet was an older man with thick forearms, freckled and with tufts of brown hair that bristled out of his white smock. It was almost dark now and probably later than the man was used to working most days. He seemed eager to finish with these last three dogs so he could go home. Once his assistant had filled out the necessary paperwork, she asked my father to place the dog on the table. My father bent down and then quickly scooped Mingo up with his arms around all four legs, as I’d seen him do once out in the country with a stray calf.
When the vet finally came around, he gave Mingo the same cursory exam he’d given the other two dogs, looking at the dog’s eyes, then his teeth, and finally inside one of his ears. He peered into the other one and shook his head.
“Wouldn’t hurt to clean those ears,” he said.
A second later he stuck Mingo with the syringe. My father paid the small fee to the assistant, and she gave us our new rabies tags.
“Do you think we should clean his ears?” I asked on the way home.
My father thought about this for a moment and then nodded.
“That sounds like a good idea,” he said. “And after we clean the dog’s ears, maybe he can brush his teeth.”
Then he laughed and shook his head. I imagined Mingo brushing his teeth in our bathroom, rinsing his mouth out with the smelly Listerine that my father used, and it did seem kind of funny, so I laughed too.
I was holding the rope, and Mingo seemed more excited when we came up to our street.
“Here, let me see that,” my father said. Then he pulled out his Buck knife and cut the rope off Mingo’s collar, letting him take off with the rest of the dogs that were running in the street.
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