About Elky

I have already told you a bit about happy Tassel, who moves in grace in beauty. Let me now sing a loopy and spontaneous song to Elky, the vociferocious girl.

The thing is, this little dog has some issues. The same true to some degree for all of us, I suppose, and while Elky's issues are nothing to be alarmed about, they sure make living with her an interesting proposition. Take mealtime: she follows me around the house most of the time, but when mealtime approaches she stays particularly close. When I walk toward the laundry room where I keep the dogs' bowls and food, she begins to whine in a squeaky voice in anticipation, and when I take down from the shelf and open the plastic bucket containing the kibble, unless I have given her the "quiet" command (the hand signal accompanying the verbal command is to draw the right hand knife-like across my throat), she will bark at me and growl at Tassel. I feed her in the laundry room with the door closed, lest she run between her bowl and Tassel's, growling and fretting.

Elky considers anything to do with grooming as torture. Yesterday the dogs managed to find some stagnant and fetid drainage from the compost bin and, as dogs are wont to do, rolled in it. As the worst offender, Tassel went into the tub first and was her usual compliant self, even standing still while I trimmed her nails afterwards. When I called Elky for her turn she sat across the room staring at me as though she couldn't understand what I wanted her to do. All I have to do is say "brush" (a common expression in a house with two Corgis) and she starts looking for a place to hide.

In the evenings Tassel generally goes to bed in her crate around 8:30, but Elky prefers to stay up with us regardless of the hour, even if it's simply to doze at our feet.

On our trips in my pickup truck to the park she gets very excited whenever we slow down or when she hears the turn signal...which she interprets as "Are we there yet? Oh boy!" She has an adorable intensity in everything she does: be it watching me with her bright eyes to find out what is next on the agenda, dancing around me on the way to the back door to receive her afternoon treat, or jumping into and out of the truck before and after our morning run. Her intense gaze conveys the impression of a sharp curiosity about the world...in particular whatever it is that I am doing in her world...and perhaps because of this impression I find that I engage in a fairly continuous one-way conversation with her: "OK, Elky, here we go. You're a great dog, but wait, WAIT!, till I get the leash on you and Tassel. Want to start at the pond or the soccer field? When we finish our walk I'm going to have to run by the grocery store and pick up some things for lunch, but don't worry, I'll park in the shade and won't be but just a minute." And so on. She divides her attention between eye contact with me and and intent survey of our route and progress. To observe dog and man would be to conclude that the old guy is certifiably losing it, the creature at his side is perhaps really a small person in a Corgi suit, or mabye that he is wired up with one of those disconcerting "no-hands" cel phones that have people walking down the grocery aisles speaking as though to the canned tomatoes or an imaginary friend.


Joanna, my bride of 42 years says that my one-way conversation with the dogs is like when I was a boy and sang to my dog.

She refers to a childhood memory I shared with her when we were in the process of adopting Elky and Tassel: it is a dreamy summer day and I am sitting on the shady back porch steps with my first dog, Sandy, a female Spitz-Chow mix. The dog lay on her stomach on the cool concrete and I knelt there with my arms around her neck. I was about nine years old and so full of love and adoration for my dog that I felt my heart would burst with it. There was every comfort in her nearness and I remember singing to her loopy, spontaneous songs that seemed to pour out of me.