Dog Fever

The canyon is eerily quiet at 3:25am and I've just made the stupid mistake of letting the antsy black dog out into it (she was walking about, unable to sleep and I thought perhaps her tummy was bothering her again). Now even Dodie Smith should bear witness to the magnitude of the starlight barking. My neighbors must be swearing at me from their beds. I had no idea that so many dogs existed in a half mile radius. Better is the sight of me standing by the door to the deck naked and shivering and whistling as surreptitiously as possible (remember now that the black dog is deaf and half blind too) and gently saying "Briar..." into the cold night air, as politely as possible. My dogs have whipped the whole canine neighborhood into a furor, much like, I would imagine, Jon Bon Jovi at an 80s comeback show in New Jersey.