DeNene Opal's World WOW

Dear all, I had a real-life moment that spawned this story. I rushed to grab hold of it until it floated away. I hope you enjoy it.

Opal’s World

My man openes my crate to start the day. “Hello Opal, how are you this morning? Are you ready for breakfast?”

“YES! YES! YES! LET’S GO! LET’S GO! LET’S GO!”

But wait. . . the door to the room where my woman sleeps is still closed. I look at the man, waiting for him to let her out of her crate, but he walks slowly to the kitchen instead.

I miss the woman. She opens and closes my day with her sweet breath.

. . .

“Goodnight Opal. . . Sleep tight.” Her eyes are a startling blue like the sky, and I don’t know what she’s saying except that it is a soft and slow sound like the wind outside on a warm spring evening. Soft and slow.

So much about the woman is soft. I like to listen to her sounds. She has more sounds than I have. I have a loud and excited sound for the mailman, a very loud sound that is a scream for the garbage man. I also have a leap that is so perfect that I can look into the eyes of any visitor through the glass door. That really makes them jump. I’m proud of my leaps.

The nose prints that I leave on the glass door are higher than the woman’s head. There is a girl that comes often to wipe away all my most precious gifts for my people: the nose prints, the spit from my squirrel chasing that paints the back slider, and the soft fur that I leave for their nest. My gifts are swept away by the girl with the water bucket. Nothing I do stops her.

Since I don’t speak the language of my people, I can’t tell them how much this hurts my feelings, I just get busy trying to do better. I hope that one day the girl with the bucket will stop and see my master works, but so far, she is blind to my brilliance and generosity. Every time I look at her work in disapproval, she is clueless, so I must start again.

If I do my chasing, leaping, and screaming job too much, my people “put me away” in the woman’s cave where she taps on a small metal square as she looks into a glowing window. She stays there for mornings or afternoons in silence except when she does some different kind of barking. This barking is short and sharp.

“Fuck!” “God Damn it!” “Son of a Bitch!”

I know these sounds from her cave because she utters them plenty. I wish I could bark with her like I could with my litter mates, numbers 2, 3, 4, and 5. I’ve even tried, but my muzzle is not shaped like the woman’s, or the man’s, for that matter. My lips and snout although blackly beautiful and wet, don’t come together in the little perfect circles that my humans can make when they call me to dinner or their lap.

My crate is inside the woman’s cave. My bed is soft and warm, protected by black bars that nothing can bite through, so I feel safe there too. It reminds me of the safe place where mama put me and my litter mates. We slept all together in a pile of polka dots. I couldn’t see #2, #3, #4, or #5 separately. We melted into a soft squirming pile that smelled like warm milk. I can still see the little ears, the twitching noses, and pink-padded feet with the perfect sharp nails, and all of us smelling like milk and Mama.

My woman looks like a golden retriever. Her coat is soft and shiny. Her skin is pink, and she must go to the groomer often because her nails are also pink and shiny with no garden dirt under them like mine. I wonder why she doesn’t make my nails pink and shiny too, but she doesn’t.

My man is big and dark, and his bark can be loud. Sometimes he barks for a long time, louder than ever. His big brown paws can pick up a bowl and fling it to the floor. Those bowls splinter, and my woman slowly gathers the pieces and throws them away. This makes the forbidden food that I sneak from the garbage dangerous, so I can’t eat it, or my mouth will be cut and bleeding. I did that once. It wasn’t a good idea.

My man and woman leave me alone when they disappear into the white box that glides down the street with all the other boxes. Sometimes they put my crate into the white box and take me to a huge building full of other dogs who play and racket their way through a long day and through an even longer night. I am sometimes afraid of the others because they speak different languages and smell different. I try to listen for my litter mates, but I don’t hear them.

I don’t like all the smells there. The sharp smell of the cleaning bucket is always there, so is the odd smell of the foods that the foreign dogs eat, and their sweat. The people who feed us and play with us all have their own smell too, and it doesn’t smell like home.

After too long, my man and woman come back to put me in their white box and take me home again. I’m never sure that they will come to get me. I worry that someone new will take me just like they took me from my first home and the man who was always gone and left me in my crate until I had to urinate there. I worry that he will pick me up instead, but he doesn’t, and I am grateful to see my man and my woman walk through the door.

My days pass this way: eating, napping, barking, screaming, and bolting out the back door to catch my enemies, the grey ones with long tails who taunt me through the glass door or the windows. They dig in my woman’s garden to hide peanuts. I dug one up last week and it tasted like dirt. Well, I do like dirt, but it doesn’t go far to keep me from being hungry. I was hungry often when I lived with the other man. I tried eating dirt, and grass. No luck. I ate the couch once, and that was a bad idea. I lived in my crate for 2 days after that.

Last night the woman didn’t put me to bed. The man did. No one said, “Good night, Opal, sleep tight.” There was nothing.

Outside my door, my man started to bark and bark. The woman barked back. There was a crash that sounded like the bowl that was dropped and thrown into the trash, then another. The door to one of the caves slammed shut. Then more did.

My woman was wailing like she does when my man barks. Then she was barking her golden retriever bark too. It seemed like all the doors to all the caves came alive and were opening and slamming shut over and over and over. Finally, the big door to the front grass opened and was slammed shut.

I was afraid. I was glad to be in my crate inside the woman’s cave that smelled like her. It helped to smell her, but only a little.

I heard the white box start. Then the quiet hum of the backing-up sound. Through my window in the cave, lights slanted in and traveled along the wall over the picture of the man and the woman and the silver circle with 2 paws that never stop running. Then it was quiet and dark.

The darkness and the quiet helped. I closed my eyes and dreamed, as I often do of Mama and milk and 2, 3, 4, and 5. I could smell my littermates and the sweet smell of milk. When I have my night visions, I can feel safe, or afraid. But tonight, I felt safe. I joined the quietness of the house and the cave and the crate. As I fell into the dark, I could feel my paws start to twitch in the night-running.

This morning my man opened my crate to start the day. “Hello Opal, how are you this morning? Are you ready for breakfast?”

“YES! YES! YES! LET’S GO! LET’S GO! LET’S GO!”

But wait. . . the door to the room where my woman sleeps is still closed. It is always open when I get up. The smell of her hot black water hits me first, then the smell of their sleep sweat. But there is none of that now. No smell of his toast. No talking from the box on top of the set of tall cold shelves. Quiet.

I stop, then trot back to the woman’s sleep cave. The door is still closed and inside, under the door where I sniff, there is no light. No woman smell. No sleep sounds either.

I look up at the man to send one of my eye messages, “Why don’t you let her out of her crate?” I send with my brown eyes. Then I sit and sniff under the door again for signs of her. I listen again, nothing. Still, he doesn’t open the door to let her out. He doesn’t understand. The woman has to come out of her crate so our family can be together. I sit and won’t be moved, even by the thought of food.

“She’s not coming Opal, she’s not there.” I don’t understand his sounds, they are sad, like the woman’s cries. His sounds are so sad that I look ahead and walk right to the sleeping cave and push the door with my nose. It doesn’t open. He still doesn’t get it, so I sit.

I sit. And I stay.