Gone to the Dogs

I walked Mr. B around the neighborhood this morning. Donna, who was watching from the family room as we came up the street on our way home, saw a coyote stalking us from behind. I never had a clue. I’d better start training myself to check six again.

Our new dachshund is a standard, considerably larger than our miniature dachshund Maxie. With his long body, he can stretch far enough to snatch stuff off the kitchen counter. A few days after we brought him home he pulled an uncooked veal cutlet from a pile of freshly breaded wiener schnitzels ready for the frying pan … don’t think the irony of that escaped us … and ran off with it. We caught him before he could scarf it down, fried the purloined schnitzel separately, and cut it up in small pieces to mix with the dogs’ dry food.

The lesson we should have learned then is to keep food well back from the edges of the countertops. Did we? Of course not. Two nights ago he scored again: this time a pound of ground beef, still in its wrapper. I don’t know how much of the plastic wrap he ingested, but he wolfed down all the meat before we realized what he was up to.

Mr. B was in a food coma all night. I tried twice to get him to poop before we went to bed but he couldn’t. Later that night, though, he could, and did. In the living room, because by then we had the doggy door closed for the night. The next day one of the dogs had diarrhea in the house; we assumed it was Mr. B, still recovering from his rich meal, but now we think it may have been Maxie, who just threw up her breakfast (out on the patio, mercifully).

And now for a different breed of dog, the human male.

There might be a photo of me as a second lieutenant, in uniform, drunkenly leering at naked strippers simulating lesbian oral sex on the bar at the Vance AFB Officers’ Club. If I were on active duty today, that photo would be enough to end my career. I know for a fact there are photos of me participating in all manner of vulgarity at Hash House Harrier events; those photos too would be career-stoppers.

How many men, still of working age and dependent on their paychecks, can confidently say there’s nothing in their pasts that might cause them trouble if photos were to surface? How many men, in today’s climate, could survive accusations of sexual abuse or worse, whether or not the accusations are true?

The general rule is that where there’s smoke there’s fire, and damn it, when it comes to men and accusations of sexual abuse, it almost always proves true. There’s no doubt in my mind Donald Trump and Roy Moore are guilty of everything they’ve been accused of. So too Harvey Weinstein, Louis C.K., Kevin Spacey, Bill Cosby, and on and on. And now, of course, Senator Al Franken, my personal great white hope for 2020, shot out of the sky or at least badly winged. Damn it.

Politically? I hope Franken guts it out à la Bill Clinton. He’s a good senator, just as Clinton was a good president; his party and his country need him. He has apologized and offered to cooperate with any investigation Congress may want to conduct; he can dedicate the rest of his public service career to good works.

Then too, there’s this: prominent Republicans like Trump and Moore are almost certainly guilty of far worse crimes than Franken; unlike Franken, they not only deny the accusations against them but threaten their accusers. Democrats have largely condemned Franken and urged him to resign; no Republican has spoken out against Trump, while Alabama Republicans have doubled down in their support of Moore. If Franken gives in the Democrats lose and the Republicans win. It’s a basic political calculation, Bannon-like in its simplicity.

So hang in there, Al Franken. It’s disappointing to realize you have feet of clay, but so do I and so does almost every man I know.

It’s no wonder I’m starting to like dogs more than people.