Musings
an Online Journal of Sorts

By Alyce Wilson

Dec. 21, 2002: Una's Owner

My dog has more friends than I do.

Well, that's probably not strictly true. It is true, however, that she has a lot of friends in the neighborhood and that she's amazingly friendly and outgoing, considering that she's afraid of just about everything. She used to be afraid of walking down steps, and I had to carry her. Then, once she got used to our apartment steps, she was still afraid of every new flight of stairs.

Fortunately, she's gotten over that. My back was starting to hurt.

My dog has now dispensed with most of the usual phobias and is only afraid of random weirdness, such as my brother making monkey noises. I can understand that; it frightens me, too.

But yes, I am known more widely as "Una's owner" than by my own name in my neighborhood. Una is widely known and liked as a "good dog" who is friendly and sweet-natured. It reminds me of two of the neighborhood dogs while I was growing up: Corky and Meg. Corky was a big, fluffy sheepdog who used to cross the busy road every morning to greet us kids at the bus stop. He always looked both ways for traffic, too. Meg was a beautiful, curly haired retriever who our dog used to run to when he escaped.

I never knew either of the owners' names, I only knew them as "Corky's owner" and "Meg's owner." To this day, my brother and I still refer to "Meg's owner," even though she's long since passed on. Only now we call him "the guy who used to own Meg."

Una has both human and dog friends. There is the couple on the corner who loved her so much they got themselves two puppies. There is the older lady down the block who has an old Chihuahua named Oscar and a black Chihuahua puppy named Zoe who loves to lick Una through the fence.

There are the two dogs owned by a creepy, middle-aged guy who doesn't realize we're only interested in the dogs. He asked me to go fishing with him once, and he asked me if I frequent Internet chat rooms. I said, "Uh, no, what's that?" Once, when his wife was out, he asked me to come inside and see their new carpets. I passed.

Then there is the elderly Italian man who smokes cigars and is usually out on his porch when it's warm out. He always seems so thrilled to see us, and he calls Una, who he thinks is a male, "Brownie."

When we used to get up early enough to run into her, there was an elderly woman we used to encounter on her morning walk. She brought biscuits for Una the last time we saw her. She was living with her daughter and kept telling us about the dog she used to have.

There is Buster, the frisky older bulldog we once had in our apartment for a day. He'd escaped from his yard and wondered our way, and we took him in until I could notify the owners. He spent most of the time trying to hump Una while she hid in the corners. When we walk by, his whole body tenses up in interest. Typical guy.

A few neighborhood children are fascinated with Una, which is a shame, because her remaining phobia is of children. I think that she believes they are too small to be human. Plus, they act funny. I'm particularly fond of the Indian family in the big brick house, and of one of the daughters whose eyes light up when she sees us walk by. She once called out to me, when I was having a particularly bad day, "You're beautiful."

And then there are the children two doors down who point at Una with wide-eyed wonder and say, "Doggie!"

Una is friends with our upstairs neighbors' dog, and she sometimes drags me outside when Billie is in the yard, so they can play. They apparently have some sort of turf war going on out on the lawn, where Billie owns most of the lawn and Una's only allowed to pee on the edges.

The truth is, I don't really mind that Una's more popular in my neighborhood than I am. After all, their good feelings about her probably spill over onto me by association. Plus, she reminds me that being social is generally a good thing, which can be difficult for a freelance writer to remember.

Moral:
Sniffing crotches is a good icebreaker.

Copyright 2002 by Alyce Wilson

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