DIGGY

DIGGY (Written in 1986)

Our sweet little black dog ran away this year, but our grouchy little black dog stayed. The dog is a pain in the neck.

The dog claimed our house as his stopping place about five years ago. Diggy (I don’t know how he got his name) had no home and had befriended all the neighborhood kids and my husband. One rainy day he squeezed his little body against our back door and my husband said, “Let him in.”

I asked him, “Why do you want to keep an ugly dog like that?” I asked my kids, “How can you love a dog that bites your friends?” I asked the dog, “Can’t you go scratch your fleas somewhere else?” Finally I told myself, “Well, he’s so grouchy that I’m sure he’s a pretty old dog. Probably has arthritis. See? He even has gray hair on his face. He won’t be around for many years. I guess I can stand it.”

The vet said, “That’s not gray hair. That’s silver. And this right here is puppy hair. This dog is about six months old.

I said, “No.”

As time has gone along, I have gotten accustomed to the mutt’s weird habits. He barks at things he doesn’t understand – like grocery bags. Sometimes he barks at a plaque hanging in my kitchen. It’s always the same plaque, and it always hangs in the same place. It doesn’t move or make noise. It just hangs there. The dog gets mad at it or something. Who knows?

One day this week the TV and radios were blaring, my daughter was singing, and my son was playing a drum in his bedroom. Diggy started barking. Not at the drums. He was barking at the drum case sitting on the bed.

When the school bus rounds the curve in the afternoon, Diggy whimpers, moans, cries, and gasps. Click click click go his toenails down the hall. Clatter clatter clatter go his toenails in front of the door. Thump thump thump go his feet through the kitchen. By the time the kids come through the door he’s dancing the WahWahToosie on his hind legs.

I admit he is cute. He has even quit biting our friends. And how can you not like someone who sits on your feet when you’re typing?