Most people get the timbre of their voices from their parents. They learn how to speak at an early age and, depending on their upbringing, the majority become adults who speak in moderate tones.
That may be true in most cases, but me? I got my voice from my first dog, Licorice. Not in any magical dog whisper way, but in volume. Very loud volume. You see, Licorice never stopped barking, a rough-hewn but shrill exclamation of defiance, despite our use of “No.” Bad boy.” “Shut the hell up.”
In short, if they made a movie about Licorice, it would be called “The Dog That Never Stopped Barking.” Well, that’s not entirely true. Licorice did stop barking on occasion–long enough to bite someone, eat, or grab a pair of dirty underpants and, like a hyena guarding its freshly-killed antelope leg, protect them under the dining room table.
But back to the barking. As a family, we couldn’t hear over Licorice. If we tried to have a regular conversation at the dinner table, the words would be lost.
“How was your day?” BARK.
“What?”
“Day. How was your day?” BARK.
“I can’t hear you.”
A little bit louder now, a little bit louder now, as Ray Charles would say. If our voices were feet, we’d be dancing in the aisles, screaming our hearts out, our arms and legs flailing. A little bit louder now. “HOW ARE YOU?” BARK.
“SHUT UP, LICORICE.” Snarl. Then a pause. BARK.
“GOOD. YOURS?”
Okay, okay. There’s no bad dogs. Just bad owners. I can accept that. But still, you must be wondering why we got Licorice, why we just didn’t send him back, or for the love of God, get a trainer. Let’s just say that ignorance is not bliss.
My mother never had a dog growing up. Neither did my dad. And neither did their parents, grandparents, and so on down the line. To be fair, my great-great-grandparents were too busy surviving pogroms to think about dogs, or any pet for that matter.
And then there’s the Old Testament, which doesn’t say much about cats or dogs or any other animals except for serpents, beasts of the field, and goats. A lot of goats. True, Noah did bring two dogs aboard his Ark, but they weren’t the kind with little bows in their hair. They were dogs bred to hunt. To corral sheep. To ward off invaders.
There isn’t any rules on “catch” or “roll over” in the Old Testament either. There’s a lot about children, having children, getting married for children, raising children, naming children, having more children. The Jews don’t believe in an Afterlife. Mortality exists only in those you leave behind, i.e. your children. Like America circa 1950 on speed, having children in the Jewish religion is THE mission in life.
Like other fundamental truths in most cultures, you just didn’t think about it. You grew up, got married, became pregnant (or got your wife pregnant or, in the vernacular of the “we got pregnant.”) It didn’t matter if you were ill-equipped to handle parenthood. You’d learn. It’s all instinct. All you need is love. (This was the late sixties. Good-bye Ray Charles. Hello John Lennon.)
So there I was, a prodigal daughter in high school, my brother away at college, and my communal, ancestral maternal yearning to come out. But not for a baby. I was too young for a baby. I didn’t dream of swaddling. I dreamed of fur. I hated Tiny Tears. (Okay, I’m showing my age here.) She was rubbery-skinned and peed. A lot. Every time you gave Tiny Tears a tiny bottle of water, a not-so-tiny wetness would occur. And you had change her. Ugh. I wanted fur. A wagging tail. I wanted a dog more than anything.
Lassie was a dog.
Rin-Tin-Tin was a dog.
Tiffany was a dog. (Sorry, I didn’t give her the name.) She was my best friend’s Shit-zu and, despite her gag-me-with-a-spoon name, she looked so cute with her long hair trailing like a mop. You could pick her up and hold her just like a real baby. But she was soft, cuddly. You didn’t have to change her. She kissed my cheek once and that was it. I was gone.
I wanted a dog.
“Please, please, please. Pleaseletmegetadog.”
“I swear, on a Bible, I will walk him.”
“You don’t have to do anything. I swear.”
“I’ll feed him before I go to school and when I come home.”
As parents, new or old, know, it’s all one big fat lie. You bring a dog into the house and he or she becomes the second, or third, or fourth child–needing your loving care and, one hopes, discipline.
Unfortunately, my parents, not only suckered in by my big moist eyes, but also ignorant to the real facts of dog ownership, eventually said yes.
Licorice was a cross between a golden retriever, beagle, shepherd, and although there was no resemblance, I’ll bet there was some pit bull in the mix. The kind that men with big tatoos and chain-link chokers have.
While my mother spread newspaper across the entire kitchen floor (I wasn’t sure if she thought the pee would spread to the four corners of its world, or if, by covering every inch, she wouldn’t have to change the paper as often. (There’s that “changing” again.) While she was papering away, my father and I went to the pound. When I first went into the back room to see the dogs, I was scared. There were only 4 dogs at the shelter. I had no idea which one to pick. How can you decide on a dog when all you want to do is open all the cages and let them all free? Little creatures. Big cages. Little water dishes. Cement floors. All four looked, understandably, so sad.
I picked Licorice because my father said, “What about him?” He pointed to a little black puppy pushing himself as much as he could against the bars at the far end of the cage. He wasn’t wagging his tail. He wasn’t counter-anthropomorphizing, “Pick me! Pick me!” And he wasn’t barking. (Never trust a puppy.) He looked terrified. Pure fear. I knew I had found my match. Fear I could understand. Maybe I would take away his fear, and he would take away mine. (Fear is another word for neurotic in the normal Jewish household. And I was terrified pretty much all the time. But that’s another story for another day.)
In those early days, Licorice didn’t bark. That came later. When the family sat down at the dinner table and tried to speak, we all had loud voices, Licorice would chime in. Bark, Bark BARK. PASS THE SODA, PLEASE. Bark. His head and his paws would be on the table and no one said anything. That was because we either learned to ignore it or we didn’t hear it since our heads were always in a book. My father, my older brother, and me would sit reading whatever book we were working through at the time, using a fork or knife to hold the page down without hands so we could eat. My mother would sit at the table, looking at us. She didn’t want to read. She wanted us to be a family that talks about their day at school. On the job. She tried to talk to us, but we’d nod or say, ”Yes” or “No” or “Later.” Or BARK. She finally put her foot down and we attempted conversation in between barks.
(I was a voracious reader in those days. Still am. When I was about five, I got special permission from the local library to take out as many books as I wanted every week. The Green Fairy Tale book. The Purple Fairy Tale Book. The Blue Fairy Tale Book. Not to mention Greek myths, science fiction, and any book that took me away from the real world. I had plenty of time to read, especially at dinner.)
Anyway, back to the bark. To this day, people are constantly asking me to “Ssh”. “Be quiet.” “Lower your voice.” I don’t see it, but all those years of barking must have taken a toll. It would have been perfect for me to be an actress, projecting from the stage, but my parents wanted me to be a teacher.
“You need something to fall back on” from my dad.
“You do” from my mom.
I guess a loud voice would have been good for a teacher, too, but I rebelled and became a film major instead.
Unless your last name is Hollywood royalty, there’s not a lot of money to be made in film, at least not without hard work and knocking on doors. I heard Stephen Spielberg got his start because he went to the Universal Studios set every day and wouldn’t take no for an answer. I guess I didn’t want it hard enough.
So what did I do? Marry a guy who wanted to be a film producer. If only he’d been Stephen Spielberg, we’d be having a whole other conversation right now, with first editions of any book, champagne, and a kennel full of dogs up the whazoo.
Nope. He didn’t make it. He made other things which I won’t mention that led to our divorce.
What was that about teaching again?
BARK.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
During my last year in high school, my father devised a way of keeping Licorice downstairs at night, but with lots of room. (This was in the days before crates.) It consisted of closing the door leading to the foyer and putting a wooden barricade by the kitchen steps on the other side of the foyer door, creating a square shape with stairs. I wasn’t sure why Licorice couldn’t sleep upstairs, but I think it had to do with his peeing. Although it might have been his biting. Or maybe his barking. I’d go downstairs at night when everyone else was asleep and open the barricade and pick him up in my arms. I’d sing “Rock a Bye Baby” to him, holding him. It was a special time for me, it calmed me. Did Licorice like it? Well, he didn’t bark.
When I left for college, I’d call home at least once a week. “How’s Licorice?” I’d ask when I called. “Give him a hug. I miss him!”
But things were never the same when I left home. My parents still left the barricade up, but they ended up going out to dinner a lot. So the barking became moot.
My dad still walked him, like clockwork, when he came home from work. Licorice went crazy when he sensed my dad’s step, turning the corner to the house.
BARK.
They shared ice cream at night. I know that because in one of my phone calls home, my dad told me Licorice’s favorite ice cream was strawberry. It showed how close they were because that happened to be my dad’s favorite, too.
Things would have gone on until Licorice grew old and grey and someday he would die. I knew that. Dogs only live forever in any editions of the Pink and Blue and Purple fairy tale books.
But what I didn’t realize was that your parents could die first. Like really young. Like my dad.
Licorice went crazy after that. He kept waiting for my dad to come home. I did too, three thousand miles away in California in a marriage that had as much spark in it as a lighter left out in the rain. I wanted to bark but all I could do was cry.
My mom had to give Licorice away. I didn’t blame her. She couldn’t cope with the barricade and the barking and the biting. She was grieving, too.
So that was that. After seven years, there was no more barking. But I’d give anything to hear that ear-splitting, meal-ruining, chalk-on-the blackboard sound again.
Bark.
soadogwalksintoabar is my story as written through the lens of my dogs, the lives, the loves, the disappointments, and the pure joys that they experienced (not always by choice) with me.