The Voiceless Dog

I yammer constantly to my toddler on our walks together.  "Look at the pretty bird!" (It's a pigeon.) "What do you see?  So many trees!" (Mostly pine in this figurative neck of the woods.)  "Wow!  A bus!"  (I will then lustily launch into "The Wheels on the Bus," and from my rear view, the dents in my son's cheeks tell me he is smiling.)  We move quickly up and down the sidewalked hills of our neighborhood, stopping occasionally for a garage sale or to take a picture of some interesting-looking bark on a tree:

This morning, as we careened through a more affluent neighborhood than the one in which we currently reside, I saw and heard the voiceless dog simultaneously.  He was small, maybe 20 pounds, with short, dark hair, pointy ears, and a sturdy body that looked terrier.  He jumped up and down, all four legs springing from the ground at the same time.  He was barking, but he wasn't barking.

"Oh, look!  A doggie!"  I said to my son, and he looked.  "Oh!  He's barking, but he's not making much sound because he's had his voice box removed!"  His bark was raspy and windy, a dry cough.  "See?  He is trying to bark, but he can't make much noise," I rambled on.  "Some people might think that's cruel, removing a dogger's voice box, but I have to say, sometimes I've wanted to throttle the Bean Dog when she starts barking like crazy just after you've gone to sleep."  Bean is our elderly and adorable dachshund who barks a normal amount for a dachshund, and that normal amount sometimes feels like way too friggin' much when it messes with the sleep of the people in the house.

We're way past the dog, but I'm not done.  "See, sometimes dogs bark too much, and maybe it drives the owners crazy.  Or maybe the neighbors complain.  It can get to the point where they might have to get rid of the dog because of all the barking, so they decide it's better to get the dog's voice box removed."

I walk on, and my son crosses his feet at the ankles and grabs another graham cracker from his snack bowl.  For me, this is exercise.  For him, this is toddler TV.  

It's another weekend, but it's a long one; Labor Day is Monday, and while my coworkers are planning trips to the Boundary Waters with their adult children, I am trying to figure out two more things we can do on Monday: pre-nap and post-nap fun.  Parenting a toddler is like that, or at least, it has been for me: get him out of the house as much as possible, experiencing new things to help get the energy out and the brain matter growing.  My mother wonders if I do this stuff more for me or for him.  It doesn't matter.  It is how I do.

As a professor, my schedule tends to be fairly "loose"--I must be in the school for office hours, class, and meetings--but the rest of my time is unscheduled.  Last year, when I didn't have specific obligations on one day a week, I had my son stay home with me from daycare.  I was trying to do work and entertain him--an impossible task, to be sure.  This year, he goes to daycare five days a week, even though my Fridays are unscheduled.  Two weeks in, and it feels amazing.  I have TIME!!!! on Fridays to grade things and get things ready for the upcoming week so I'm not worrying about that on top of being a toddler concierge on the weekend.

What happens, then, is that I work very hard during the week (I could, and frequently do, easily work on the weekends) so I can then plan fun things to do on the weekend, like go to the Port Wing Fish Boil (yes, that's a thing: Fish Boil) in northwest Wisconsin.  There's not much time to do pre-kid Kelli stuff, like have breakfast with friends and hit a slew of garage sales, or spend some time making jewelry or sewing.  Pre-kid Kelli is a person of the past.

I push the jogging stroller along, mentally committing myself to walking up one of the steep, five-block-long hills in the neighborhood to add some oomph to my walk.  The dog bouncing on pogo-stick legs, though, leaps back into the front of my mind, and I imagined the husband saying to the wife, "I can't handle it anymore.  Baxter just won't shut up.  Milton and Nellie are going to start making nuisance calls--you know Milt's had it in for me ever since I beat his record at the country club."  The wife, pain in her eyes, might reply, "I've done all I can to train him.  He just isn't learning."  She'll look at Baxter who, quiet finally in sleep, twitches his legs in his dog bed.  The husband will inevitably say, "We need to do it, Susan.  I can't take it anymore."  And Susan, because she knows that he is kind but also pragmatic and because she doesn't have a choice, will agree. "I'll make the appointment on Monday."  And Baxter will "Urf!" in his sleep, a small fellow whose nurture tells him to protect these people and his loud, obnoxious voice the only thing nature gave him to do it.

I take a deep breath and let it out, taking a right turn to head up the steep hill.  "See, kiddo, it's like this.  Sometimes you have to make hard decisions."  

"Mama!" he says, pointing at a squirrel.  

"Hey, cool!" I respond, puffing up the hill.