Page 562 - WhyAsInY

Why (as in yaverbaum)
was at first more like Gus walking Kathy. She found their wrestling matches particularly difficult, especially when the streets were icy. In time, he calmed down and was delighted to be obedient when Kathy walked him accompanied by our neighbor Corrie Reider and, more important, what turned out to be Gus’s lifelong friend, Corrie’s dog, Victor. Gus loved his walks and was quite sensitive to the signs that Kathy was about to take him out. Reaching for the leash was an easy sign to comprehend, but it took us a while to figure out that one of Kathy’s favorite words of transition was “Alrighty,” which Gus inevitably took as a cue to get ready, whether or not Kathy was intending to go out with him. He loved his walks so much that, at one point, Kathy started refer- ring to a walk as a W, as if Gus knew words, and knew that W was but a letter, but couldn’t spell. Kathy’s stratagem was quickly rendered inef- fective, but we nevertheless still refer to a walk as a W.
Gus was a true leader of dogs, which he demonstrated when he led about six of his peers on a romp away from the designated field during doggie play group, and Kathy had to scramble to retrieve the retriever while the other owners chased after their own pets.
And from the very beginning, he truly had a mind of his own. One day he decided that it would be a good thing to explore our neighbor- hood, but he neither asked nor told us his intentions. Maybe he would have asked or told us, but we were both at work. When the kids returned after school, they discovered that he was missing. Kathy doesn’t recall how it played out, but there were a number of phone calls, and Kathy retrieved him after she got home. Apparently, a neighbor had found him cruising around and thought it best to give him shelter. He was very happy to have made her acquaintance and was quite comfortable with this very nice stranger—so comfortable, in fact, that he spent most of the time in her house sitting on one of her couches.
On two other sorties, Gus managed to try to befriend a skunk, who was apparently not similarly inclined—and let him know it in the way that skunks do. Wet dogs are bad enough; skunked dogs are close to intolerable and require gallons of tomato juice, of all things, to be poured on them merely to reduce the smell, which would last for weeks.
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