Texts From the Dog

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Page 11

AT THE SIDEBAR (Column)

Texts From the Dog

By J’AMY PACHECO

I was driving my daughter to school a few days ago when we had to delay making a right-hand turn. A teenaged girl, presumably on her way to my daughter’s high school, was trudging through the crosswalk, moving so slowly that she used up most of our green light.

It wasn’t high heels or any kind of physical disability that made her walk so painfully slowly across the street. Rather, it was the fact that she wasn’t looking where she was going; wasn’t paying attention to anything except the phone in her hand. She appeared to be texting.

My daughter and I had a great laugh at her expense, trying to figure out what she could be talking about—what could be more important than keeping an eye on the potentially deadly cars with which she was sharing the road.

“Maybe she’s updating her Facebook status,” I suggested. That’s when it started.

“I’m moving my right foot,” my daughter said in her hilarious Valley Girl voice. “Moving my left foot now. Right foot. Left foot. OMG, I just got hit by an SUV. Bleeding on my Uggs. Tragedy!”

Eventually, she made it across the street without incident, we made it around the corner, and we all went on with our lives.

When I arrived home later, our dog lifted her head from her spot on the couch, and gave me a glare that I swear looked like annoyance.

Since the hair on half her head was smooshed, I assumed she’d been asleep for some time. I wasn’t sure if she was mad at me for waking her up, or for not letting her go on the car ride in the first place.

With the crosswalk experience fresh in my mind, it occurred to me that if the pooch could text, she could help me understand just what it is that’s on her mind at any given time. Of course, that made me wonder what our dog would say if she could text.

“Aren’t opposable thumbs the greatest?” would be my first guess. Because without them, I doubt she could even hold her little pup phone.

I imagine we’d get texts from the dog any time we went out for dinner.

“There’s a reason they call them ‘doggy bags,’” she would text. “Don’t eat all the steak.” If we stayed out too long, she could text her displeasure and need.

“G2G,” she’d write. “And I don’t mean the leaving kind.” We could race home and open the door for her. Of course, if she had opposable thumbs and could text, chances are she could open the door as well.

We’d probably get a lot less sleep if the dog could text. She sleeps in her crate in the kitchen; the rest of the family sleeps upstairs. By 6:30 most mornings, she’s whining from her crate and I head downstairs to let her outside.

Half the time, she doesn’t even want to go out yet. She just wants everybody else to come downstairs. Once she’s been fed, watered and emptied, she’ll sit at the bottom of the stairs, behind a baby gate, and whine until everybody else wakes up. And then she’ll go back to sleep.

I can imagine her sending wake-up texts from her crate in the kitchen.

“It’s wakey-wakey time,” she would advise. “Somebody’s hungry down here! Hellooooo…”

Based upon my observations of her tendency to be easily distracted, I imagine some of her texts would be pretty disjointed. When she goes to outside to do her business, for example, it’s not unusual for her attention to be drawn to a sudden gust of wind, a noise from a surrounding house, a passing car or anything else. I suspect she would enjoy tweeting about her outdoor experiences.

“The kid next door is looking out the window,” she would text. “Someone’s honking their horn. Mail truck! OMG—there’s a tail following me! Chase the tail…chase the tail…what was I doing out here again?”

It probably wouldn’t take long for the dog to develop her own line of text-speak, like “NATR” to indicate she has a tummy desperately in need of a rub.

The idea of our dog texting is a pretty good one, I think. I’d love to know what’s on her mind, and she’s likely to be a lot more considerate than a teenager with a phone. I just wonder what the dog would think about it.

I should probably check her Facebook page…