The Dog Walker

It is a difficult thing to explain to your dog walker that you no longer require her services—though you haven’t retired or begun working from home or started bringing your pet to work. And she’ll still be seeing you around, because you aren’t moving either.

Here’s what I’d hired her, Marie, my dog walker, for: two daily visits to my condo, weekends excepted, where she’d leash up my black lab Luna and get her out. In the late morning, a thirty-minute walk through the rolling hills of my almost-by-the-sea neighborhood. In the afternoon, a trip to the park, where Luna would be set free with other dogs. All this for ten bucks a day.

So here was the problem—since I’m not going to tell Marie, I might as well tell it here: she was too good.

I would arrive home from my little dog-run of a cubicle, ready to romp. Luna, however, was ready for dinner... if I could bring the bowl to her. If not, she’d get to it in a little while. When I insisted on walking first, she’d lay on her collar’s metal loop, so I’d have to roll her over like a hay bale to attach the leash. Finally out the door, she’d try turning back at every corner.

What went on during Luna’s daytime outings? Here’s my best guess: the morning walk is brisk. Perhaps they pick it up on the downhills, Luna’s legs reassembling themselves into a canter. Marie, sixty-seven and built like a locomotive, starts to run. Neighbors have told me of seeing Luna “barreling down the block” with a retired woman. Then in the afternoon there was the park, where Luna got in a second cardio session by chasing a ball.

Marie was militant. Maybe because her husband had run off with a Twinkie and their retirement funds, Marie had a primal urge to give people what she thought they were due. For me, it was a positively sapped dog.

I decided I had to do something the Saturday I drove Luna to the beach and she claimed a surfer’s towel and refused to budge. When the surfer kid came out of the water, I told him we’d run here from north county. He was nice about it, tugging the towel’s corner, his wetsuit half off and hanging at the waist. I told him it was going to take a lot more than that, and took another corner. His neoprene arms dangled, occasionally glancing off Luna’s head. She didn’t like it, but she didn’t move. We tried the hay bale maneuver, but her legs caught the towel and it rolled with her. He told me not to worry about it, that he had another in the car.

It was just a towel, but woven in those cotton fibers was the pathetic truth that I couldn’t take care of Luna by myself. Without Marie, she’d be overweight and arthritic and I’d be guilty. With Marie, she’d need joint replacement and I’d be broke. What we both needed was a slouch of a dog walker.

The surfer kid, stick under his arm, told me about a community run in July where people brought their dogs. I said I’d consider it, then he trotted off, sand kicking up behind his bare feet and rubber legs.

If I could find the nerve to fire Marie by next week, Luna would have rested enough to want to run with me. Afterwards, I’d look for an inept dog walker. Someone who’d exercise Luna just enough that she wouldn’t tear up the couch, but still need me for an evening walk.