Joel, Part I

I'm distraught at my absence from this site, which makes me realize I'm a blog addict. Be that good or bad, I'm resenting my primary employer for sucking the life out of me this last week. I've had no time to grocery shop, clean house or watch "Friends" reruns. In short, I'm a mess.

My first issue of Yoga Journal sits on the table where I threw it five nights ago, silently admonishing me to read it. The woman on the cover, standing with her back arched in a reverse C, head dangling to butt level and hands in prayer position is, I think, following me with her one visible eye. "Breathe deep," her eye says. "You've allowed your life to overtake your spirit. You've lost your Dristhi (a spirtual sounding way of saying 'focus'). Come back to center."

I silently tell her and her wandering eye to fuck off, that I don't have time to find my Dristhi. But I realize she's right, and that part of my Dristhi comes through this blog.

Nevertheless, the hour is late. An employee evaluation that I do not expect to be all wine and roses is set for tomorrow. A weekend story is due. So I'll post as best I can for the moment, by telling you half of the following story. It's a good one, so come back in a few days.

But I wonder, if I think hard and find my focus, can I write it upside down, in the throes of a backward bend like the Yoga Journal model? And if so, the bigger question: Will it make my boobs look bigger?

Joel

Joel didn't just come into my life. He slammed into it with all the force of a fire hydrant on legs. He made his entrance on a cool November night, a shivering bundle of white charging confusedly into the pool of light cast by my car’s headlights.

Joel - real name unknown - is a small, white terrier. He was running down the middle of my neighborhood's main drag. He ran straight and desperately at my car, as though it were a life ring.

I stopped and opened the door, and he leapt onto my lap, a solid body of about 30 pounds. He was mine, and I was his. I heard this in the unspoken determination he projected toward me.

From the backseat, my black Belgian Shepherd Ally leaned forward and sniffed loudly at the surprise passenger. She wagged her tail excitedly and did not growl as she normally did with strange dogs. The shaking young terrier, she quickly surmised, was no alpha.

He had a sturdy body, white with a couple caramel-orange Jack Russell-variety spots plopped randomly on his back, a block-shaped head, face covered in tight, white curls from which earnest, brown eyes peered.

His smooth white neck was collarless.

I would take him home for the night, I decided, and drop him by the shelter on my way to work.

Cute as he first appeared, I knew I could not keep him. I lived in a townhouse with a two-pet limit that sheltered my smelly shepherd, cat-dog George and two gerbils. Maybe the gerbils didn’t count, but another dog would definitely put me over the limit.

Naming him was dangerous, of course. But I couldn't block the thought that he looked like a Joel.

Joel, one of the assistant city editors at my office, is short, tightly wound, hyperactive and often brusque. His appeal emerges in unintentional flashes. Dog Joel was likewise compactly built, tightly wound and hyperactive. But he was determined to appeal. You would like him, damnit, no matter how much you resisted.

He walked into my house liked he owned it, the fear gone. I’d liked him initially out of sympathy. Now I liked him for his pluck.

Maybe I could find a way. He was, after all, a smallish dog.

But Joel squashed his chances in a nanosecond. He saw George, paws curled underneath his body, eyes slit in kitty bliss, relaxing on the doorside bench. Terriers are bred to hunt and chase small animals. George, who slaughtered full-sized rabbits and left me their entrails as morning back-door prizes, was decidedly not anyone’s prey.

He also did not offer a chase. He stared at Joel, eyes growing wide, but moved not a hair. Joel would have nothing to do with George's peacefulness. He jumped onto the bench, and George, with equal parts annoyance and alarm, ran across the room and onto the back of the couch - a place big dogs like Ally wouldn't venture. Joel did, leaping onto the cushions without pause.

I ran to the back door, opened it and set George free.

No one messed with George. Joel had sealed his fate. To the shelter he would go.

It was already late when we arrived home, past my usual bed time. I started my night time skin care routine, with Joel whining unceasingly at the back door. I asked him to be silent. He accommodated me for about 15 seconds.

I crawled into bed. He continued to whine. I read for a while, turned out the light, all the while accompanied by Joel's whines.

I was throughly annoyed. He now had not only upset my cat, but threatened to do the same to my sleep. Clearly, the gratitude he'd first shown when I'd saved him from the mean streets of our neighborhood had vanished.

He whined, whined, and whined some more.

I got up and opened the back door. Joel flew out into the night.

Problem solved, I thought. Some other neighbor would take him in. Lacking a cat, he would peacefully sleep in their warm home.

I began to drift toward la-la land. Joel yapped from outside. Once, then three times, then in rapidfire succession. They were the sharp, excited sounds that only small dogs can make.

Still, I waited. I live in a townhouse complex. At least a dozen people live and sleep within yards of me. Surely, one of them would awaken, step outside to tell the dog to hush, see his sweet face and invite him into their abode. In the next few minutes, I could wash my hands of him.

Ten minutes passed. My neighbors surely were all awake by now, but apparently no one thought the dog was homeless. Instead, they likely were lying there, fuming either to themselves or their bed mate about whomever had let their verbose dog out so late on a weeknight.

I got up, opened the door and let Joel back in.

I went back to bed. He resumed his post by the back door, and also resumed whining.

I tossed. I turned. And then I did something for which I am still ashamed.