The night was going so well.

Last night, Friday night, the wife and I went out for a sushi dinner at a nearby Chinese place (yes, the best sushi in 10 miles is at a Chinese restaurant called Eastern Dragon). The food was excellent. Crisp, clean, lovingly prepared. The owners came over and gave us each a free mango mochi, which was stupidly delicious. Even the video playing on the LCD television on the wall did little to dissuade us. (Eastern Dragon plays a nature video from a Chinese television station. It’s a breathtaking video for the most part, and has all the requisite cuteness and gaspworthiness one might associate with grand, sweeping nature epics. It also has a cute little gull with a broken wing on a beach being chased by one crab, and then dozens of crabs, and they grow ever more bolder as the bird approaches the shoreline. The last image you see in this vignette is a pile of swarming crabs tearing the bird asunder. Mmm. Dinner!)

After, we went to Lowe’s.

I bought insecticidal soap.

Then, we hit the local farm-to-table ice cream joint. Wife had strawberry daquiri (with real rum). I had espresso ice cream.

Delicious. Still good.

Got home, watched a little television, ate a couple-few of the ginger almonds I’d made earlier in the afternoon.

Watched The Soup and an episode of House Hunters International. I know. A kickin’ Friday night. Man, throw in a one-armed hooker or two and it would be the most bombastic night of debauchery ever.

And then we went to bed.

At this point, you should be saying, “This story sucks.”

Because it does. It is a tale without conflict. A tale without any narrative impulsion. “Things happened that were good. Then other good things transpired. The end!”

Ah. Yes. Except: night ain’t over.

Cut to 3:00 AM.

I hear a noise. A high-pitched squeak, maybe. It rattles me a little, but I continue to sleep.

Then: again. Squeak. This time accompanied by a faint thud. By now, consciousness is rushing up on me the way the ground comes to meet a suicidal leaper. Squeak-thud, squeak-thud, squeak-thud, getting louder and louder and then, as I manifest full-bore awakedness, I realize our bedroom door is being pushed inward. The squeak is the hinges. The thud is the door jamb. (We live in a 100+ year old house, and the door fits poorly in the frame, and thus has room to move even when closed.)

I stumble awake, as does the wife, and I go to the door, seeing a low-to-the-ground shadow in the hallway.

It is the dog. The Belgian shepherd mix known as Yaga. (Yes, this dummy over here —>)

He’s worked up about something.

I figure, okay, he wants to go out. Good on him. It’s quite rare he goes to the bathroom in the house, but he is getting older now (12), so you never know. We go downstairs. I let him out. He goes to do his business, but then returns to the porch and sits on it with an Anubis pose, staring diligently outward. Like he’s watching for something.

Hm.

I invite him back in. I go back upstairs.

Door closed, lights off, nighty-night. The end!

Except: ten minutes later?

Squeak-thud. Squeak-thud.

What the fuck?

I open the door. He, once again, is worked up about something. I, once again, go around the house to check around, see what’s up. I take a gun with me, just in case. I find the taco terrier, Tai-shen, completely uninterested in the goings-on around her (looking much like she does to the left, there). I check to make sure the doors are locked. I check the basement. I look outside. I roam and rove, now utterly awake, and Yaga is with me every step of the way, breathing heavy, looking utterly alert.

Maybe it’s a storm? Maybe a storm is coming? He has turned into a pussy lately when it comes to storms and shit. Maybe that’s it.

And then I think:

Something’s wrong with him.

He’s breathing really heavy.

He’s worked up.

He’s kind of insane.

Is there some kind of senile dementia for dogs? Is he trying to tell me he’s going to have a heart attack?

Or — oh. Oh. Oh no.

He can smell the future. He’s trying to tell me I’m going to have a heart attack. Or he’s — unbeknownst to me — one of those cancer-smelling dogs, and he’s smelling cancer on me right now and this is him trying to guard me from, I dunno, the carcinodemons.

I try to put all those crazy thoughts out of my head. I make sure he drinks some water. I give him a treat. Back upstairs, then. I keep the gun by the bed and the wife says, “Let him sleep in here, maybe he just wants company.”

Okay, fine. We let him lay with us, and we also keep the door open now in case he wants to wander into the hall and fall to the ground like a sack of potatoes and sleep there. (Seriously, that’s how he lays down. He just lets his legs go limp and — fuhtumblethump.)

Lights out. Fan back on.

He’s panting. Roving. Eventually he calms down, though the wife and I can’t. Wife eventually says, “He’s laying here, but he’s… just staring out the door.”

Well, that’s creepy. Okay. Fine. Try to sleep. Eyes closed. Shhh. Shut up. Dark. Peace. Heart slow. Shh.

Then — I hear something.

I swear to Christ, I hear a fucking squeak, except this time not followed by a thud.

Am I nuts? Am I hearing shit? I confirm said sound with the wife; yes, she hears it, too. We have bats in our attic periodically, but this isn’t them. This sounded like it was coming from downstairs.

Lights back on. Dog is up. Ready for action. Fan off. Dead silent. Once more, another roam and rove, once more, nothing found, once more, the dog is vigilant, hyper-alert.

So, we leave the fan off, and we lay back in bed, and we wait, and nothing, then nothing some more, then a little more nothing until –

Beep. Beep.

And then we have it. Culprit, nailed.

It was the gas-and-carbon monoxide detector beeping because its battery is going low. It makes two loud high-pitched beeps. Oh, you can plug it into the wall, but lately it’s been acting up — it’ll just fucking go apeshit all of a sudden, beeeep beeeep BEEP holy shit you have DANGEROUS GAS IN THE HOUSE, 200! 207! 214! 209! — except, we can’t have a gas leak because, hey, gas stinks like egg poop. No smell, no gas. So, I unplugged it a day or two ago and apparently this was enough to clean the battery’s clock, and –

The dog was trying to be our supplementary alarm.

We weren’t hearing it. The alarm meant danger.

He wanted us to be alert for whatever evil the alarm was presaging.

The shepherd was just looking over his flock. Just like he did so many moons ago when I let a candle burn down when I was asleep and my desk caught fire, and the dog woke me up (once more not with a bark, but he nosed the door open and then nosed me in the head until I awoke).

He’s a dipshit sometimes, that dog, but he damn sure looks out for his pack.

That’s a good boy.

Creepy postscript to the story: when we removed the battery from the detector, it made… a sound.

A high-pitched warble, like some weird frequency, like one of those marrow-chilling numbers stations.

Slowly, the sound faded. Wound down, sans power. I don’t know how it had any power to begin with, but there you go.

That was our night. The madness began at 3AM, ended at 4AM. Once the dreaded alarm was silenced, Yaga calmed and slept in the hallway like the aforementioned sack of potatoes.

Fuhtumblethump.

This morning, I had to give two pills to the smaller (and demonstrably more insane) dog, the chihuahua fox terrier mix, lovingly known as a Taco Terrier. We call her Taishen or Taishan, which means something like “peaceful, immovable mountain.”

Immovable, yes. Peaceful, probably not so much.

Giving two pills to the teenier of the pooches is an exercise in misery and futility. One pill, fine. Two pills, the deepest stratum of Hell. I pop the first pill, everything seems fine. I wait. I administer the second pill — and somehow, the first pill is located in a secret transdimensional pocket in her esophagus. It rises to meet the other pill, as if they are old friends.

It takes me five minutes to get the two pills into her body.

She doesn’t squirm or bite. But she has a powerful throat that can perform reverse peristalsis at the drop of a hat. Her esophagus features the muscles of a boa constrictor.

Above is Yaga.

He is a Belgian Shepherd (Groenendael) and Chow-Chow mix. You will see no Chow in him, except for the faintly purple tongue.

Yaga is, depending on who’s asking, either a guttural cry without meaning, an ancient African or Native American name, or the name of a Black Spiral Dancer NPC from a truly apocalyptic game of Werewolf: The Apocalypse way back when.

Two of those are actually accurate. And, for the record, his full name is Eeyaga.

Last week, Yaga entered the home after being outside in the yard.

Yaga had a second tail. This is not normal.

It dangled below his first and actual tail.

This second tail was white(ish) to his other black tail. The second tail hung about a foot-and-a-half and swung with some weight. At first, I thought, “That might be a length of intestine.”

But no. It was however, a coil of paper towel formed by an intestine, like play dough pushed through a certain mold. Yaga eats paper towels and tissues rather voraciously, you see. The yard is littered with dooky-bombs and poo-mines, many half-white as if claimed by tapeworms, but truly only because he is thrilled at the prospect of gulping down paper products into his belly.

Took him outside, had the wife hold his collar, and with gloves made ironically of paper towels, I pulled the intestinal towels out of his asshole. They were in there another good couple of inches. That second tail would’ve stayed dangling there for days, I think.

At least it’s better than the time I had to tie him to a sign post and pull several feet of audio tape out of his butthole. In public.

That is Tai.

Tai will eat goose poop if you give her half a chance.

Tai will bite Yaga in the face. Yaga will love it. Tai, on the other hand, may actually be trying to eat his face and not administer love, as he believes.

Tai will find a way to lay down on clean clothes and cover them in her hairs. The darker the clothing, the better.

Right now, as I write this, Tai is at our window downstairs, on top of the couch, freaking out at what is most likely one of our neighbor’s burgeoning army of stupid cats, cats the neighbor refuses to treat like pets and more like hobos that are allowed to come and go and crap on things and eat out of cans. I like that Tai hates the cats. I hope that Tai does not like cat poop, however, but one wish at at time.

Yaga should probably be dead. He has:

• Been attacked by an elk and thrown again and again into a wire fence by said elk (scooping Yaga up in the elk’s massive Axis Mundi antlers)
• Had a belly full of rat poison. Like, a whole box.
• Eaten an entire box of rich, dark chocolate truffles (subsequently throwing up on my heating vents, so that when the heat came on, the house first smelled of chocolate, and then of dog vomit).
• Freed himself from my home many years and many homes ago, somehow opening the door. He found his way to a neighbor’s house, where their children played with him for the better part of an hour alongside the parents, and then suddenly the parents became concerned, and called the police. Yaga did nothing to concern them, mind — he’s the sweetest dog ever. But some weird parent gene kicked in, and the cops came and took dumbass to the SPCA. The SPCA then treated me like an asshole, which was fun for me, because, y’know, I wasn’t tortured enough over losing my dog.
• Had cancer on his foot.
• Had Lyme Disease.

None of these really affected him that much, honestly.

Tai doesn’t like children. Tai doesn’t like other little dogs. Tai doesn’t like old people. (She does, however, like big dogs. Go figure.)

Actually, this isn’t really true anymore — she’s been socialized. But people, quite frequently at parks, have failed to tell their children (or their old people, I guess) that some dogs are not precisely thrilled when jam-handed five-year-olds come careening toward them with outstretched fingers. That, dear parents, is a good way for your children to lose those little fingers. Tai has never bitten anybody, no, and now she endures children without growling at them. Children who ask if they can approach and do so slowly are often given favor. The rest are viewed rightfully with suspicion.

Yaga, on the other hand, will let any child near him without concern or fear. They can pull on his tail, they can hang on his ears. They can punch him in the face and shove things up his butt. He will not care. This, to him, is love. Yaga loves love.

Love for Yaga is being up your ass all day. As a shepherd, he is forever concerned for the safety and sanctity of his flock. He’s always with you. Up the steps. Down the steps. Even with the wobble in his hips (he’s coming up on 12, now, the old gent), he’s with you.

This is sweet in theory.

This is annoying in practice.

Still, he’s checking on the herd.

He saved me from a fire, so, I won’t complain.

Tai costs us bank.

We bought her from a pet store in the mall six years ago, when she was but a wee critter in your hand. Yes, I know, that was maybe stupid, pet stores are horrible, they buy from puppy farms, blah blah blah. I get it. Bad move. Didn’t realize it at the time, and even still — it gave us her.

But she ain’t a cheap date.

As she came from such a place, she is rife with health problems. None drastic, but accumulating, these health problems form a small battalion that besieges her body daily. She has allergies that cause her to try to tear her own body asunder (thanks to Atopica, a goddamn miracle drug, which stops said allergy in its tracks). We got an allergy test done on her at one point, and the list they read to us over the voicemail literally took five minutes. She is, as it turns out, allergic to every type of grass on Planet Earth. And, some moon-grasses, too.

She has ear problems, too. And inevitably other issues rise and fall. The wind blows differently, and she needs a trip to the vet. Opposed to Yaga, who you should shoot in the ass with a cannonball and he would remain blissfully unaffected. He loves to go to the vet, actually. That cold metal table that no dog loves? He loves it. It’s like a ride.

We used to have a Doberman who would eat Halls lozenges or Lifesavers.

We used to have a Golden Retriever who would eat rocks and once peed on our Christmas tree.

We used to have a poodle that would get groomed and roll around in chicken shit, and then hump pillows or stuffed animals.

What I’m trying to say is, and this is without any sarcasm at all, dogs are the best.

We will always have dogs.

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